The Footlights Fore And Aft Part 11

Headliner becomes Mr. Broadway Star. Robert Hilliard had been in the varieties for years when he was restored to "the legitimate" by Porter Emerson Browne's "A Fool There Was." Sarah Bernhardt, as everybody knows, appeared at a music hall in London _en route_ to fill her latest engagement in America. Here we have no "Divine Sarah", but vaudeville has sung its siren-song successfully to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Lily Langtry, Charles Hawtrey, Henrietta Crosman, Henry Miller, Arnold Daly, Lillian Russell, and numberless other mimes of great reputation. This song is most aggravating to producers of musical comedy, whose performers, when the librettist insists upon the preservation of some of his text or when their names do not appear in sufficiently large type on the program, always are ready to "go into vaudeville."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission_"]

A list of people at present offering one-act plays discloses no fewer than twenty actors and actresses of recognized ability. There is Marietta Olly, who did capital work in "The Whirlwind" at Daly's, and Nat C. Goodwin, who, truth to tell, draws a big salary less because of his histrionic than because of his matrimonial versatility. Frank Keenan, Edward Ables, and Maclyn Arbuckle, who has made a hit in Robert Davis' clever comedietta, "The Welcher", have been stars within the twelvemonth and are now in vaudeville, as are also Amelia Bingham, W. H. Thompson, Charles Richman, William Courtleigh, George Beban, Lionel Barrymore, McKee Rankin, Edwin Arden, Sam Chip and Mary Marble.

Vaudeville produces its own luminaries, too--Cissie Loftus, for example, and Elsie Janis, who "did a specialty" for years before she was taken up by Charles Dillingham.

Many of the cleverest entertainers in the world are identified exclusively with the varieties. There are Yvette Guilbert, Albert Chevalier, Harry Lauder, and Alice Lloyd, each of whom has a following as large and appreciative as that of Maude Adams or John Drew. Other players, less widely known, go round the circuits year after year, making themselves solid with a cla.s.s of theater-goers that has come to depend upon them for half an hour of amus.e.m.e.nt. Cressy and Dayne are among these, as are Mr. and Mrs. Perkins D. Fisher, Clayton White, Carrie de Mar, Irene Franklin and Tom Nawn. George Cohan's career began in vaudeville, and no one who has owed twenty minutes of laughter to his ability as a racounteur will ever forget the late Ezra Kendal. Such men as Jesse Lasky and Joseph Hart, recognizing the opportunities of "the two a day", have made elaborate productions of what really are little musical comedies, and have presented them as part of regular variety bills. Mr. Lasky's "The Love Waltz" and "At the Country Club" were as pretentiously staged as any single act in a comic opera.

It is not my desire or disposition to deny the cleverness of these people or the attractiveness of their "turns." I doubt that today the most wearied theater-goer could find a vaudeville bill without one or two numbers that would entertain him. The point is that this amus.e.m.e.nt-seeker would be obliged to take a vast quant.i.ty of chaff with his wheat, to review an endless procession of clog dancers, trick bicyclists, wire walkers, trained animals, tramp comedians, acrobats and equilibrists before coming to that part of the program which might interest him. Most of these fillers-in are notable chiefly for the awe-inspiring quality of their English, and for their persistence in performing dangerous feats that, when performed, add nothing to the sum total of human happiness, knowledge or pleasure. I haven't been able to discover why anybody should want to see a lion stand on its head, or a gentleman tie his legs in a true lovers' knot, and I shall never understand the public _penchant_ for hearing "The Anvil Chorus"

played on tin cans, since it can be played so much better on a piano.

One always thinks of the wit who, being informed enthusiastically that some stunt or other was "very difficult", replied: "I wish it were impossible."

The worst of the matter is that, there being comparatively few performers of merit, the same people, doing the same things, return again and again to the same theaters. I remember having seen one team of comedy acrobats, Rice and Prevost, seven times in the s.p.a.ce of a single season, at the end of which period I had ceased to laugh uproariously when one of the two humorists fell from a table and struck his face violently upon the floor. Half the "turns" at the Victoria this Sat.u.r.day may be at the Colonial next Monday, so that, unless you wish your entertainment, like your wine, well-aged, you would do well to make your vaudeville excursions to one theater. It is too much to expect the average variety performer to change his act more often than once in a decade, and then he is likely to retain everything that has been especially well received. Of course, you remember George Ade's friends, Zoroaster and Zendavesta, who, at the end of five years, subst.i.tuted green whiskers for red, and advertised: "Everything New."

The managers certainly are doing their best to be rid of Zoroasters and Zendavestas. Their agents search every capital of Europe for new talent, and no one makes a hit in the music halls of London or Paris or Berlin without immediately receiving an offer to come to America.

Nor is there any limit to the figures mentioned in such an offer. The salaries paid, both for imported and for native talent, were supposed to have reached their utmost height in the palmy days of Keith and Proctor, but they have doubled since Oscar Hammerstein announced on his billboards that he was paying $1,000 a week to Marie Dressler.

There are half a dozen performers now who get $2,000, and one or two who are reputed to receive even more. Any number of headliners earn five hundred dollars, or seven hundred and fifty dollars, which, you must remember, probably is in excess of the amount tucked into the yellow envelopes of Otis Skinner or Ethel Barrymore.

There is one important difference between the salaries paid in vaudeville and those paid "legitimate" players. The former cannot consider their earnings as "net", since they are obliged frequently to engage small companies, sometimes numbering twelve or sixteen people, whose wages come out of the sum given their princ.i.p.al. Variety performers defray their own travelling expenses, too, and those of their a.s.sistants, together with such other expenses as agents' fees, advertising bills, and similar incidentals. Formerly a great deal of time was lost in long jumps, and between engagements, but managerial combinations have considerably lessened this waste. The successful vaudevillian rarely experiences a break in his bookings now-a-days, and, especially if his act does not depend upon acoustics, he fills out his season with roof gardens, summer parks, and perhaps a circus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Their agents search every capital of Europe_"]

Variety people make up an individual nation in the theatrical world.

They have their own language, their own view-point, their own ambitions and grievances, besides their own clubs, hotels and newspapers. The most important of these societies are The Vaudeville Comedy Club, which has rooms in Forty-sixth Street and gives an annual benefit, and The White Rats, an aggressive organization that has conducted s.p.u.n.ky fights against greedy agents and the blacklist of the United Booking Offices. The White Rats publish a weekly periodical, yclept The Player, but the real trade paper of the profession is issued in a green cover and called Variety.

The vaudeville performer--he insists upon alluding to himself as "the artist"--actually appears on the stage about forty minutes a day. His labor, however, is not quite so light as these figures make it seem.

He must put on and take off his makeup afternoon and evening, and he must be in the theater during a good deal of the time that he is not engaged. Monday morning he rehea.r.s.es with the orchestra, and is a.s.signed a number on the program of the week--vaudevillians, like convicts and hotel guests, being identified by numbers. His place in the bill depends upon the length of his "turn", the stage room required for it, and its nature. Acts that can be given in front of a drop "in one" must be sandwiched between "full stage" acts, so that scenes may be set for the latter without interrupting the performance, and the experienced stage manager arranges his material with a keen eye to variety.

As important as the star dressing room to a leading woman, as vital as full-faced type to a star is his place on the bill to a vaudevillian.

By their numbers ye shall know them. Headliners are given a position midway in the entertainment, and insist upon it as "legitimate" actors upon the center of the stage. Minor acts open or close a show, and the prejudice against being a.s.signed to either end is so great that many stage managers must sympathize with the Irishman who, being informed that a large per centage of the victims of railway accidents are pa.s.sengers in the last car of the train, inquired: "Then, bedad, why don't they leave off the last car?"

A layman may ask reasonably how the managers of variety houses are able to pay double the salaries that prevail in other theaters, while they exact only half the price of admission. The explanation is simple. In the first place, as has been explained, they pay _nothing but_ salaries--neither railway fares nor the cost of costumes and paraphernalia. They are not compelled to make big and expensive productions, to remunerate authors, or, most important of all, to split returns with the managers of theaters in which their shows are given. Henry B. Harris, or Frederic Thompson, presenting "The Country Boy" or "The Spendthrift" at the Chestnut Street Opera House, Philadelphia, or the National Theater, Was.h.i.+ngton, must divide equally, or nearly equally, with the lessees of those places of amus.e.m.e.nt. The vaudeville impressario a.s.sembles his own show in his own theater, and takes the entire amount paid in at the box office.

Even in these times, an exceedingly good bill can be put together for $3,000, and, if the running expenses of the theatre are $2,000, there remains a wide margin of profit.

The United Booking Offices, which do business at 1495 Broadway, is as complete a trust as any in America. The "offices" are maintained by a combination that includes all the powerful vaudeville managers, and all the big vaudeville circuits, from New York to San Francisco. There has been sporadic opposition, like that recently made by William Morris, who had the American and Plaza Music Halls in New York and a few others throughout the country, but the end of this opposition always has been compromise or defeat. Performers claim that they are not permitted to play for rival managements under pain of being placed on the dread "blacklist", and that, once so placed, they may as well retire from the business. Whether this be true or not--it probably is true--and however highhanded the conduct of the combination, the observer must concede that business-like system, economical methods and complete order have been established by the United Booking Offices.

This combination includes the Hammersteins, father and son, who have the Victoria Theater in New York; Percy Williams, who controls the Colonial, the Alhambra, the Bronx, and two theaters in Brooklyn; B. F.

Keith, who operates theaters in the metropolis, in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in Providence; and the heads of great circuits like the Orpheum, and Sullivan and Considine's. There are eight handsome vaudeville theaters on Manhattan Island, not counting the burlesque houses and the places at which moving pictures form a large part of the bill, and it is easy to estimate that, if each of these holds fifteen hundred persons at a performance, twenty-four thousand men, women and children witness a variety entertainment every week in New York. This estimate does not include the "sacred concerts", which, in spite of clerical and legal opposition, continue to flourish. On the Sabbath, apparently, the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of song and dance, and every vaudeville theater in town runs full blast on Sunday.

However bitterly their success may be resented, it is to the newcomers, to the recruits from the "legitimate", that vaudeville owes its steady advancement. One may sympathize with the acrobat who, after a life time spent in acquiring proficiency in his specialty, sees the big salaries being paid to men who devoted a week to rehearsing some sketch, and who couldn't turn a handspring to save their souls. The fact remains that vaudeville's claim to the consideration of intelligent people rests largely upon these tabloid comedies and dramas. The vogue of such clever little plays as "At the Telephone", "The Man From the Sea", "Circ.u.mstantial Evidence", "In Old Edam", "When Pat Was King", "The Welcher" and "The Flag Station"--which, by the way, was written by Eugene Walter, author of "The Easiest Way"--marks a step forward in the possibilities of "the two a day." It enables such men as Will Cressy, whose whole output has been of sketches, to venture upon higher ground, and it banishes more surely the mixture of buffoonery and maudlin sentiment that formerly pa.s.sed as playlets.

The progress made in this sort of entertainment is indicated by the unequivocal success of Frank Keenan in "The Oath", an intense little tragedy, founded upon a theme used by Lope de Vega. Only ten years ago this same Frank Keenan suffered complete lack of appreciation of his fine work in an adaptation of Poe's "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Feather." Many well-made sketches, logically planned and skillfully written, still owe their presence in vaudeville wholly to the reputation of their stars. "The Walsingham", as Walsingham Potts used to say in Madison Morton's farce of "A Regular Fix", "is a sort of guava jelly in which you swallow the bitter pill, Potts." Other one act dramas of great merit fail altogether.

London successes like "The Monkey's Paw", and Paris successes, like "The Submarine" and "After the Opera", have ended miserably in New York. Such authors as Clyde Fitch have seen their work retired after a fortnight's trial. Two tabloid pieces, "Dope" and "By-Products", from the pen of Joseph Medill Patterson, author of "The Fourth Estate", after scoring triumphs of esteem in Chicago, have not been given bookings in the East. It is not yet true that any three one-act plays in vaudeville, if given continuity and put together, would make a pa.s.sable three act play, but there are optimists among us who feel that that time will come. We believe that, without being less entertaining, less diversified, or less easily enjoyed, vaudeville will come to be made up of fewer "Jewish" or "Irish" comedians, fewer "sister acts", fewer trained seals, and a greater number of people who have something really clever to offer in song or speech or impersonation.

The place of the tabloid drama is secure, since it bears the same relation to the ordinary drama that the short story does to the novel.

One day we shall have a Theatre Antoine or a Theatre des Capucines in New York. The popularity of the short play, with all its opportunities for skillful construction and good acting, will follow as the night the day. The nudities and lewdities of last year and this are but a pa.s.sing phase. Whatever vaudeville was in the past, or is in the present, it offers endless promise for the future.

_WITH THE PEOPLE "IN STOCK"_

Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays, parochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other interesting topics.

"Why is a resident theatrical organization known as a _stock_ company?" Blanche Bates repeated after me one afternoon when she was playing in "The Dancing Girl" at the Columbia Theater, Was.h.i.+ngton.

"Simply because the people in it work like horses."

Miss Bates, whose name at that time probably was as unfamiliar to David Belasco as any word in Arabic, knew whereof she spoke. She had been for several seasons with T. Daniel Frawley in San Francisco, she had had four roles and a row with Augustin Daly inside of two months in New York, and finally she had cast her lot with a combination that was whiling away the summer months by producing a new piece every week in the hottest city in America. After a little time I'm going to tell you just what labor is involved in producing a new--or, rather, a different--piece every week. For the present, suffice it to say that Miss Bates' witticism was founded on a whimsical view of facts, and that the modern stock company is exclusively responsible for the existence of that amazing anomaly, a hard-working actor.

Most actors are kept fairly busy three weeks each year, that period being devoted to rehearsing the one play in which they appear during the course of a season. Throughout the remainder of eight months they are actually occupied about four hours per diem, and at the end of these eight months they count on having four months for rest, recreation and relaxation. This is not at all true of the man or woman "in stock", who, in the language of the street, "is on the job"

twenty-four hours a day and, when there is special need of exertion, gets up an hour earlier in the morning to make it twenty-five.

The great bulk of New York theater-goers, with the parochialism that characterizes them, know practically nothing about stock companies. Perhaps, the chief reason of this is that within the memory of man they never have had fewer than five at one time. Stock companies in Philadelphia or Boston they might have studied at long distance as curious inst.i.tutions, but never stock companies so unappealingly near as Fifty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue. Your blithe Broadwayite leaves such places of amus.e.m.e.nt to the people in their neighborhood, and sticks to musical comedy in the vicinity of Times Square.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Known as a stock company ... because the people in it work like horses_"]

Broadway used to keep close track of stock companies when the two Frohmans had fine organizations at the old Lyceum and at the Empire--when John Drew and Henry Miller and Georgia Cayvan were seen in such new pieces as "The Grey Mare" and "The Charity Ball." Fifth Avenue is beginning to re-make an acquaintance with the scheme of resident organizations, through the medium of that at the New Theatre, and Charles Frohman recently has announced his intention of establis.h.i.+ng an important stock company under the directors.h.i.+p of William Gillette. This announcement brings with it high hopes; the very suggestion calls to mind the departed glories, not only of the Empire and the Lyceum, but of the Union Square, Daly's, and the Madison Square.

The stock company with which we have become familiar of late has been a very different kind of affair. Its field has been limited, and the purpose of its managers merely the giving of old plays at popular prices. If you have been in the world long enough to learn that whatever is cheap in price is cheap in quality--that no merchant deliberately sells at a loss--you will have little difficulty in understanding that, with rare exceptions, the performances offered have been mediocre. Sixteen, eighteen or twenty fairly competent actors and actresses are formed into a cast that prepares a different play every week in its season. The plays generally have had their day in the hands of regular traveling organizations. It is not often that the result has in it more than three letters from the word "artistic." Such aggregations have held forth in Gotham at various times on the stages of the American, the Fifty-eighth Street, the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, the Yorkville, the Fifth Avenue, the Murray Hill, the West End, the Plaza, and other theaters. They used to be particularly indigenous to that portion of our metropolitan soil known as Harlem, but now are confined almost entirely to Brooklyn.

This brand of stock company, which we may as well label "The Contemporary Brand", had its origin in some large Eastern city where an enterprising theatrical manager planned to provide summer amus.e.m.e.nt for such of his patrons as wanted to stay in town through the hot weather--and for the husbands of those who didn't. The traveling troupes had all shut up for a few months, so this manager was obliged to form an organization of his own. I'll bet that, at the same time, he originated the story about installing a pipe system for distributing cool air throughout his house--a pleasant little Christian Science lie that since has become cla.s.sic. However that may be, the venture paid. Imitation is called initiative in the theatrical business, and the following year there were fifty "summer stock companies." Then somebody discovered that these combinations, playing at low prices, had attracted a _clientele_ of their own, that they drew people whose purses would not permit their visiting the best theaters, and whose taste stood between them and the other houses. So somebody else tried running a stock company all through the season, and succeeded. Within a little time there were enterprises of this sort in most cities of the size of Pittsburg or Cincinnati; then they crept into towns like Hartford and Providence; now-a-days any village populous enough to boast of two saloons, a church and a dry goods store has also its opera house and its stock company.

In the big cities these aggregations of histrionic talent generally offer a fresh play every week; in some of the smaller places two are given in the course of seven days. One play a week is the usual thing, however, and the amount of labor it involves is stupendous. Not only must that one play be prepared in the time mentioned, but simultaneously the company must be thinking of and acting another play--that already being performed for the benefit of the public. Dr.

Doran, in his "Annals of the Stage", speaks of the hard work accomplished by actors in the Eighteenth Century, when Thomas Betterton "created a number of parts never equaled by any subsequent actor--namely, one hundred and thirty." The good doctor, who waxes quite enthusiastic over Betterton, adds: "In some single seasons he studied and represented no less than eight original parts--an amount of labor that would shake the nerves of the stoutest among us now."

Dr. Doran's esteemed friend, Master Betterton, probably would have had his own nerves a good deal shaken had he found himself in this year of our Lord 1911--say at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia.

Victory Bateman, a charming actress whose health recently was reported to be seriously affected by the strain of the work she had done in stock companies, played twenty leading roles in five months. Of these and the number of words in each she gives the following account in a book she wrote in collaboration with Ada Patterson:

Mrs. Winthrop in "Young Mrs. Winthrop" 7,000

Floradilla in "A Fool's Revenge" 6,750

Louise in "The Two Orphans" 7,250

Cecile in "David Laroque" 6,500

Adrienne in "A Celebrated Case" 7,000

Camille in "Camille" 7,300

Carmen in "Carmen" 7,200

Portia in "Julius Caesar" 6,500

Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 7,500

Ruth in "The Wages of Sin" 6,000