The Footlights Fore And Aft Part 6

He stuttered hopelessly.

The most astonishing feature of stage fever, however, is that its ravages are not confined to the ranks of people who would be bettered by success in their chosen profession. My wealthiest friend, a silk importer, who owns a charming home in Central Park West, dines alone while his wife stands in the wings of a dirty little theater in Paris, where their only daughter earns a hundred francs a week by dancing. A successful literary man of my acquaintance, who would cheerfully devote his entire income, something more than fifteen thousand a year, to making his young wife happy in his cozy apartment yields per force to her wish to appear in vaudeville. The most valuable member of the staff of an out-of-town newspaper, recipient of a big salary, suddenly threw up his position two years ago, since when he has been employed seven weeks, and that seven weeks in an organization presenting "The Chinatown Trunk Mystery."

A. L. Wilbur, at the time when he conducted the well-known Wilbur Opera Company, printed in the program of his performances an advertis.e.m.e.nt for chorus girls. Successful applicants were paid twelve dollars a week, yet recruits came by the dozens from the best families in the territory through which the aggregation was touring. Scores of the young women who play merry villagers on Broadway today are well born and bred victims of the virus. "Society" has contributed even to the ranks of the chorus men, whose caste is far below that of their betighted sisters. When Maybelle Gilman opened her metropolitan season in "The Mocking Bird" a male chorister, whose weekly stipend was eighteen dollars, electrified the management by purchasing nine boxes.

This Croesus of the chorus proved to be "Deacon" Moore, a Cornell graduate and son of one of the biggest mine operators in the West.

The germ of stage fever frequently is as slow to get out of the system as it is quick to enter it. Douglas Fairbanks is a clever comedian, who, after a long apprenticeship, has been elevated to the stellar rank by William A. Brady. Mr. Fairbanks fell in love with the daughter of Daniel J. Sully, and, according to report, was given parental permission to marry her if he would abandon his profession. Mr.

Fairbanks retired from the stage, and was out of the cast of "The Man of the Hour" for a trifle less than two months. Margaret Fuller came to town a few years ago with an ambition to star. She enlisted the help of a well-known manager, who told her that he would give her a chance to play Camille if she could get rid of twenty pounds of superfluous flesh. Miss Fuller presented "Camille" at a special matinee, and has not been heard of since. She is still in the theatrical profession, content with minor roles, but clinging tenaciously to the vocation. There are hundreds of men and women haunting the agencies in New York, promenading that graveyard of buried hopes, The Great White Way, who might be enjoying the comfort of luxurious homes and the affectionate care of doting relatives.

In nine cases out of ten the mania to go on the stage is prompted by pure desire for glorification. Love of excitement, and the fallacious notion that the profession is one of comparative ease and luxury, may be alloying factors, but the essence of the virus is vanity. No other field offers the same quick approval of successful effort, and no other climber is quite so much the center of his eventual triumph. In the other arts, approbation follows less promptly and is less direct.

The fortunate player hears the intoxicating music of applause a dozen times every evening and two dozen times on matinee days. He struts about his mimic world, the observed of all observers, conscious of the strained attention of the thousands who have paid to see him, profiting not only by his own achievements but by those of the author, the director, the scene-painter and the orchestra. The newspapers are full of his praise and his photographs, recording his slightest doing and giving to the opinions expressed by him, or by his press agent, an importance scarcely less than might be accorded the President of the United States. In the course of time he even begins to arrogate to himself the heroic virtues of the characters he impersonates. It is sweet to see one's name on the cover of a novel, sweet to scrawl one's autograph in the lower left-hand corner of a painting, but O, how doubly and trebly sweet to meet one's own image lithographed under a laudatory line and posted between advertis.e.m.e.nts of the newest breakfast food and the latest five cent cigar!

The temptation is the stronger, as the rewards are more numerous, if the aspirant happens to be a woman. The gentler s.e.x may not have greater vanity than the stronger, but it takes greater delight in commendation and it has keener appreciation of luxury. If the much-mentioned "society belle" longs for the glitter and gaud supposed to exist behind the footlights, how can one blame the daughters of poverty and squalor who make up the rank and file of the chorus?

James Forbes has embodied the minds of these girls in his Patricia O'Brien in "The Chorus Lady." What wonder that they try to escape the sordid commonplaces of their poor lives for the glory of the theater, and delight to strut their "brief hour" in a palace, even if that palace be of canvas and scantling? The prospect of diamonds and automobiles cannot exert a stronger appeal to the men and women who dwell in dreary drudgery than does the hope of becoming _somebody_, of enjoying even a temporary illumination of their obscurity.

Charles d.i.c.kens vividly explained the psychology of this longing for prominence in his chapter on "Private Theaters" in "Sketches by Boz."

In his day there were scores of these inst.i.tutions in London, each "the center of a little stage-struck neighborhood." In the lobby of each was hung a placard quoting the price for which willing amateurs might play certain desirable parts. To be the Duke of Glo'ster, in "Richard III", cost 2, the part being well worth that amount because "the Duke must wear a real sword, and, what is better still, he must draw it several times in the course of the piece." We have no such private theaters on this side of the water, but there are nearly two hundred amateur dramatic clubs in Brooklyn, while other communities possess these organizations in proportion to their size.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_How sweet to meet one's own image_"]

There are three well-trod roads to the stage. One wanders through membership in a society like those mentioned, another and straighter is by way of the dramatic schools, while the third, and most frequented, goes direct from the home to the office of agent or manager. Of dramatic schools the number is legion, but only those conducted by dishonest adventurers promise employment to the enrolled student. "Be an actor for $1", is the alluring caption of an advertis.e.m.e.nt carried weekly by a number of periodicals, but the aspirants who make it profitable for that inst.i.tution to go on advertising must be exceptionally gullible. New York has many "academies" in which useful technicalities of the art are carefully taught, and the managers of several of these "academies" keep in close touch with the producing interests of the country. While they guarantee nothing, they frequently are able to place their graduates in small parts. Grace George, Margaret Illington, and other well-known stars have come out of these schools.

The direct path to which reference has been made is full of difficulties and obstacles. Agencies are established with the purpose of helping communication between managers and the actors most in demand. They are busy places, with little time to devote to the novice, and the average impressario is not more nearly inaccessible than their executive heads. Every year the producing manager is less inclined to see applicants or to make opportunities for people of whom he knows nothing. It is all very well to be recommended by some acquaintance of the man who "presents", but friendship is only friendship, and n.o.body will risk the success of a production that has cost thousands of dollars merely to please an a.s.sociate. The current method of selecting a company is quick and simple. A copy of the play's cast is sent to the manager, who writes opposite each character the name of the actor whom he thinks most likely to interpret that role to advantage. Then the manager's secretary sends for the fortunate Thespian. This system is undeniably hard, and perhaps unjust to the beginner, but such sentiment as gets into the theater comes in ma.n.u.scripts, and, in these days of severe critical judgment, the investor in drama has the fullest right to minimize his risk.

Out of every hundred tyros who come to town in search of an engagement ten may secure the coveted prize, and not more than one person out of that ten makes a decent living from his or her adopted profession. It is too much to say that one aspirant in a thousand achieves real success. The average salary in the chorus is $18, and for speaking parts in dramatic performances it cannot be more than $40. No one is paid during the period devoted to rehearsal, and a long season lasts somewhere between thirty and thirty-five weeks. The sane way of computing wages in the theatrical business, therefore, is to multiply by thirty and divide the result by fifty-two. Following this system, it will be seen that the seeming $40 a week really is only $23. The most ardent and ambitious among the stage-struck will admit that this is not an income permitting the employment of a chauffeur or the purchase of a palatial residence on Riverside Drive.

Nor is the matter of remuneration the only disappointment connected with entrance into the theatrical profession. This is the one vocation in which the worker must begin again every year. If the fairly-successful actor "gets something" for the current season, he will find almost equal difficulty in getting something else for the season to follow. Unless he has made a prodigious. .h.i.t--and prodigious. .h.i.ts are very rare--he finds himself no farther advanced next June than he was last September. Should he be lucky enough to remain in New York, he occupies a hall room in a boarding house, and, failing in this doubtful good fortune, he faces a long term on "the road."

Excepting only solitary confinement in prison, the world probably holds no terror surpa.s.sing that of touring the "one night stands."

Lost to his best friends and companions, travelling at all hours of the day and night, grateful for board and lodging that would not be tolerated by a domestic servant, the player with a small road company has ample reason to repent his choice of a career. To ill.u.s.trate the universal dread of this fate, I quote the lines printed under a comic picture in the Christmas issue of a prominent dramatic weekly:

DOCTOR--You're pretty badly run down, my friend. I should advise change of scene.

PATIENT--(Just returned from thirty weeks of "one night stands"

with the Ripping Repertoire Company). Heaven have mercy on me!

(He dies).

Of course, it is quite futile to recite facts like these to the victim of stage fever. That unhappy individual is certain that he or she will positively enjoy such discomforts as your feeble fancy can paint, and doubly sure that the ugly present will fade into a roseate future just as it does in the transformation scene at the end of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Tell this adventurer that one histrion in a thousand succeeds and your reply is bound to be: "I'll be that one."

And, to speak truth, he or she _may_ be that one. Celebrated actors are made from queer material sometimes, and the roster of well-known people on our stage includes the names of men and women who were originally plumbers, waitresses, floor-walkers and cloak-models. The beginner may be positive, however, that these players did not advance while they still had the intellects and the training required in the occupations mentioned. No person can possibly succeed on the dramatic stage without the foundation of genuine talent and a superstructure of culture and education. A woman whose p.r.o.nunciation betrayed the baseness of her early environment could not win enduring fame if she had the temperament of a Bernhardt.

Generally, however, the woman who thinks she has the temperament of a Bernhardt really has only anaemia and a great deal of vanity. If she has not mistaken her symptoms, and, besides genuine ability, has a good education, some money, infinite patience, an iron const.i.tution, and a mind made up to the bitterness of long waiting and constant disappointment, she may eventually win a position half as important and a fourth as agreeable as that which she pictured in her imagination.

She is far luckier if her desire to go on the stage proves akin to and as fleeting as the average small boy's desire to be a burglar.

_ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY_

Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters.

The Great White Way is a rec.u.mbent letter I. It is rec.u.mbent because the _habitues_ of the Rialto have used it to the point of exhaustion, and because streets are never vertical except in Naples. The Rialto is the name by which The Great White Way was known before the present reckless mania for electric signs suggested the more significant appellation. In that long-ago time one who spoke of the district in question referred to Broadway between the Star Theatre and the office of The Dramatic Mirror. The Great White Way is bounded on the South by the Flatiron Building, on the West by the Metropolitan Opera House, on the North by an enormous incandescent spread-eagle advertising a certain kind of beer, and on the East by the Actors' Society.

Around these material landmarks runs an invisible but insurmountable wall of clannishness and complacent self-satisfaction. To be on the Great White Way you have only to leave the Subway at Times Square; to be of it you must follow the Biblical camel through the eye of a needle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_The Great White Way is a rec.u.mbent letter I_"]

There isn't another Great White Way on the face of the earth. Paris has its Place de l'Opera, London its Strand, and Vienna its Ringstra.s.se, but these resemble New York's theater path only as a candle resembles an arc light. They are streets given up to seekers after pleasure; the Rialto is a street given up to seekers after pleasure, and to seekers after seekers after pleasure. It is not the moths attracted to the flame that lend particular interest to the Great White Way; it is the flame itself, coruscating, scintillant, multi-hued and glowing. Broadway, within the limits set down, is a street of players and playhouses; the only mile of pavement in the world devoted entirely to the members of one profession.

Two newspaper buildings rear themselves defiantly in this portion of New York. They seem out of place, though newspaper men are night-workers, too, and come nearer than any other cla.s.s of men to being _of_ The Great White Way. A few tailors and haberdashers have intruded themselves into the district, settling beside wig makers and sellers of grease paint, but they are neither numerous nor ostentatious. Broadway, as you walk from Twenty-third Street to Forty-seventh, unfolds itself to the view as a line of theaters, theatrical offices, agencies and all-night restaurants. Outsiders go there to see performances and to eat; insiders make of it a world of their own--a queer little, blear little world of unclear visions, abnormal instincts, unreal externals and astigmatic sense of proportion.

Parisians call their actors "_M'as-tu-vu_", which means "Have you seen me?" That is because the first question a French actor asks is "Have you seen me in such-and-such a role?" Your true American actor doesn't waste time with a question of that sort. He feels a peaceful certainty that not to know him argues yourself unknown, and he wouldn't like to hint at such obscurity for an acquaintance. Take all the talk of all the year on The Great White Way, run it through a wringer, and you will have that same letter I, with vanity dripping from every inch of the texture. Such egotism as the rest of creation entertains is watered brandy to that of the Thespian. He thinks of only one thing, he can talk of only one thing, all the affairs in the world are inconsequential in comparison with that one thing, and that one thing is himself. Stand at my elbow while I halt my friend Junius B. Starr at the corner of Fortieth and Broadway. "How are you, old man?" say I.

"Fine", is his reply. "Been playing the 'heavy' with Florence Rant since November. Everybody said I 'hogged the show.'"

Half a block farther along we will have occasion to mention a business matter to Sue Brette. "My agent tells me you would go into vaudeville if you had a 'sketch.' She mentioned the possibility of my writing one for you."

"Yes. I spoke to her about your giving me a part like the one I played in 'The Greatness of the Small.' You know that was the engagement I lost because I was so much better than the leading woman. She took the piece off and revived 'Across the Divide', and I handed in my notice.

The play ended with me dancing on the table--"

Twenty minutes later we saunter on with a store of minute information regarding Miss Brette's performance, and how it was enjoyed by the world at large, but with our minds still in Darkest Africa so far as the business of the meeting is concerned.

Most people are self-conscious when they speak highly of themselves.

Not so actors, to whom such statements as "Everybody said I was the best they had ever seen" or "Alan Dale came three nights running just to watch me" are simply a matter of course. Long thought in this strain has so accustomed the people of the stage to talking in the same fashion that they find nothing extraordinary about it. Then, too, his distorted sense of proportion makes the actor see himself so large and the rest of the world so small that he cannot conceive of any mind which will not grasp, with unalloyed delight, at first-hand information regarding himself. Newspapers have flattered your average histrion into the idea that an eager humanity waits impatiently for accounts of his most unimportant doings. During the term of my press agency, a certain comedienne whose specialty is burnt cork ran after me along Broadway one afternoon, crying: "Stop! I've got a great news 'story' for you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_The actor sees himself so large, and the rest of the world so small_"]

I stopped. "What is it?" I inquired.

"A man came up to me as I was leaving the stage door and said: 'Why, you're not really colored, after all!'"

A star of my acquaintance recently dismissed an excellent business manager because that individual mentioned the author of the play in his advertising. "You're not working for Scribble; you're working for me", was his comment. Another has ceased to be a friend because I told him that I didn't care for his performance. A third has clippings of the criticisms that have treated him best pasted on the inside of his card case and shows them to you if he can get your ear and your b.u.t.ton-hole.

Everybody talks shop a good deal, but shop is the _only_ thing talked on The Great White Way. Art and science and literature, politics and wars and national calamities have no interest, if they have so much as existence, for the player. "Awful catastrophe that earthquake in 'Frisco!" I exclaimed to an intimate I met at breakfast five or six years ago.

"By George, yes!" said he. "Costs me twenty weeks I had booked over the Orpheum Circuit."

Your shoe dealer, though he converses about shoes from eight in the morning until six at night, at least drops the subject during the evening. The typical histrion reads nothing in the papers except the theatrical news and refuses steadfastly to discourse on any other subject. This is equally true of the manager.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Alan Dale came three nights running_"]

The theatrical world is as much of and to itself as though the Rialto were a tiny island isolated in the waters of the Pacific. It has its own language, its own daily journal, its own celebrities and its own great events. The jargon spoken would be absolutely unintelligible to a layman. "I doubled the heavy and a character bit because the Guv'ner said cuttin' everything down was our only chance to stay out. We hit 'em hard in Omaha, and it looked like a constant sell out to me, but the Guv'ner swore the show was a frost and we was playin' to paper."

What would be your translation of this, gentle reader? Doesn't sound like English, does it? Yet it is--English as you hear it on Broadway.

The Telegraph is the organ of the theatrical profession. It is a morning paper published at midnight for the benefit of a clientele that has plenty of time for reading between that hour and bed time.

The Telegraph is the connecting link between the last editions of the "yellow" evening papers, most of which, by the way, are pink, and the "bull dog editions" of the regular morning papers. It is the one daily in the world devoted exclusively to sport and the theater. To its editorial staff and its readers a declaration of war between England and France wouldn't be worth half the s.p.a.ce given to a street fight between two matinee idols. The followers of this journal might be a trifle shakey as to the ident.i.ty of Christopher Wren, but they could answer without hesitation any question relating to "Ted" Marks. They are awake to conditions, physical and domestic, utterly strange to outsiders, and understand personal allusions that would be Greek to the best-informed editorial writer on The London Times. If you picked up a newspaper and read "Famous Sayings of Great Men--Charles Hepner Meltzer: 'If it's hair it's here'" you would be mystified, yet fifty thousand theatrical people read that quip on the day of its publication and laughed at it heartily.

The populace of The Great White Way is not more sharply individual in its mentality than in its personality. You could not possibly mistake the types that congregate on street corners or shuttle to and fro on business bent. The stoutish, smooth-shaven, commonplace-looking young fellow who pa.s.ses you with a stride is a well-known dramatic author whose latest play is in its third month at a near-by theater. The long-haired man behind him whom you notice because of his deep-set eyes, his tapering fingers and his important bearing is not the great genius that you may suppose him, but an ambitious provincial come to town to market his first comedy. Sybilla Grant, whose real name is Carrie O'Brien, and who gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown conspicuously in the chorus at the Casino, drives to the door of Rector's, while the most prosperous and profitable woman star in America walks quietly down Broadway, a demure little figure in a gray tailor-made gown. The old actor, with frayed linen and threadbare suit, idles about, a trifle the worse for liquor, inquiring after opportunities; the young actor flaunts along in company with a well known theatrical lawyer or a soubrette conspicuous for the fearfulness and wonderfulness of her millinery and her coiffure. Dogs you see in plenty, attached and unattached, but no children. The Great White Way is a childless path.

There are so many celebrities on Broadway that, if you are a familiar of the street, you cease to regard them with awe. Men and women whose names fill newspapers and whose pictures crowd magazines meet you at every turn. During the hour's time required for lunching I have seen in one hotel eating room Henry Arthur Jones, Charles Klein, John Kendrick Bangs, Winthrop Ames, George Ade, Paul West, Edgar Selwyn, Roy McCardell, Victor Herbert, Reginald De Koven, Raymond Hubbell, Manuel Klein, Archie Gunn, Hy. Mayer, David Warfield, Frank Keenan, Robert Hilliard, William Faversham, Wilton Lackaye, Theodore Roberts, Henry Miller, Arnold Daly, W. H. Crane, Francis Wilson, Edmund Breese, Henry Woodruff, Sam Bernard, Charles J. Ross, Daniel Frohman, Henry B. Harris, Lee Shubert, Fred W. Whitney, Charles B. Dillingham, J. W. Jacobs, Ben Roeder, David Belasco, Joseph Brooks, Marc Klaw and Abraham L. Erlanger. The gentleman who was sharing my table called attention to the gathering and remarked that if the building should tumble about our ears, the result would be temporary paralysis in theatricals.