The Footlights Fore And Aft Part 12

Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" 7,500

Dora in "Diplomacy" 6,900

Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" 7,600

Ophelia in "Hamlet" 7,000

Mrs. Gregory Graxin in "The Tragedy" 6,500

Desdemona in "Oth.e.l.lo" 7,000

Alice in "In Spite of All" 7,500

Frou-Frou in "Frou-Frou" 7,000

Vera in "Moths" 6,000

Roxane in "Cyrano" 8,000 ------- Total 140,000 words

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Master Betterton would have had his nerves a good deal shaken_"]

Some of the details of this statement strike me as being erroneous. I do not believe, for example, that Roxane is a longer part than Juliet.

One thing I do not doubt--that the average stock leading woman learns 140,000 words in a season. And 140,000 words, we must understand, are the number contained in two fair-sized novels or "fourteen pages of a large newspaper."

The mere statement that so much matter has to be committed to memory does not give a fair idea of the amount of work that has to be accomplished by the actor or the actress--especially the actress--under these conditions. In addition to learning each role she must rehea.r.s.e it. These rehearsals will occupy every morning of the six days whose afternoons and evenings are devoted to the public performance of another part. In addition, the actress must figure on giving time to dressmakers, since each character must be properly costumed; to wig makers and to allegedly unavoidable social duties.

The inevitable result is a crudity and carelessness in the interpretation of plays that would not be tolerated by any theater-goers in the world except those that do tolerate it. This can be better understood when one learns that the average time spent in the preparation of a piece to run in New York is something like three weeks--three weeks in which the players have nothing else to occupy their minds.

The members of the ordinary stock company scarcely pretend to know their lines before the third repet.i.tion of the comedy or drama in hand. John Findlay, a fine old actor, used to complain to me that always he "had just begun to understand what a piece was about when they took it off and put on another." I remember an amusing incident in connection with a rendering of a certain light comedy by a stock company in Baltimore. A scene in this comedy was divided between two men, one of them seated at a desk and the other standing before that article of furniture with his hat in his hand. Both actors having forseen opportunities of concealing their ma.n.u.scripts where they could see them and the audience could not, neither had learned a single word of the dialogue. The first player had his part on the desk; the second hid it in his hat. But the second man had forgotten that, at a critical moment, the office boy was supposed to take that hat. The moment arrived, the boy took the hat, and the unlucky Thespian, at his wits' end, could think of nothing better to do than read the remainder of his speeches over the shoulder of his colleague.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_The actress must figure on giving time to dressmakers_"]

Opening nights with stock companies would be dreadful affairs, but for that kindly provision of Fate, "the old stock actor." There usually are three or four of this man and woman in an organization, and each of the three or four, at one time or another, has played nearly every part known to his or her "line of business." Your "old stock actor", who need not be old as to years, will be familiar with half the roles entrusted to him or her in a season, so that a little study serves to prompt recollection of the lines, and even such memory of details as may be of great a.s.sistance when communicated to the stage director.

Unfortunately, scenery and other accessories cannot share this advantage. The small town stock company possesses eight or ten regular settings and a scene painter, whose efforts usually are confined to retouching shabby spots on the canvas and to coloring furniture, cannon, trees and similar trifles. Occasionally he paints new wall paper and pictures, which, with the blessed aid of the stage carpenter, who can change windows from left to right and doors from right to left, transform the banquet hall of some Roman n.o.ble (Period 40 B. C.) to the front room of a Harlem apartment (Period 1911 A. D.) A week doesn't allow much time for accuracy, and mine eyes have seen the tent of Mark Antony electric lighted, Louis XVI chairs in the palace of Macbeth, and a Queen Ann cottage occupied by Shylock and his daughter Jessica.

When melo-drama is produced worse horrors than this are likely to intrude themselves upon first nights. Balky locomotives _will_ refuse to run over prostrate heroines, and I once witnessed a _premier_ matinee of "The Gunner's Mate" at which the jib boom displayed a most distressing _penchant_ for knocking off the helmet of the s.h.i.+p's Captain. Stage management frequently is responsible for even worse blunders.

The theater-goers who frequent the homes of stock companies--they are, for the most part, wives of sign painters and journeyman printers--don't seem to mind things of this sort in the least. Early in the season they begin to pick favorites in the organization, and they follow the annual progress of such play-acting pilgrims with great care. The value of a man or woman to his or her stock company depends largely upon his or her personal following, and I have known leading men to be so sure of this following that, upon being dismissed, they have harangued crowds on the street in front of their theaters. This very episode, by the way, occurred only a few years ago in New York.

Matinee idols achieve popularity, not according to their own deserts, but according to the heroism of the folk they impersonate in the course of a season. It might be estimated safely that one opportunity at Sydney Carton, one at Armand Duval, and one at Romeo would establish the least prepossessing of leading men in the marshmallowy affections of the stock company matinee girl. These young women and their neighbors have singularly distorted ideas of good acting, and their partizans.h.i.+p makes them blind to the imperfections of their favorite players. In Brooklyn it used to be a common thing to hear that Cecil Spooner was much better than Mrs. Leslie Carter as Zaza, and a little time ago Pittsburg did not hesitate to put Sarah Truax above Mrs. Fiske for her impersonation of Nora.

The manager who successfully pilots a stock company through the shoals and shallows of forty weeks must have uncommon perspicacity. Not alone must he secure players who are likely to become popular, but, more important still, he must select plays that will appeal to all of his patrons all of the time. Too much tragedy and he is quite sure to lose the men in his gallery; too much comedy and the girls in the orchestra begin to thin out. Then, too, his purse must be considered. The rental of popular plays is high. When first the piece was released for stock the royalties asked for "Peter Pan" were a thousand dollars per week.

Few plays bring as much as this, but royalties rarely are under one hundred dollars and generally range between two hundred and fifty and four hundred. Of course, there are many dramatic works whose age makes them anybody's property, and the skillful manager balances his profit and loss neatly by sandwiching these in with the costly ones. When you see that your pet stock company is to follow "Salomy Jane" with "Camille" you may be sure that its manager is evening up matters on his books.

The same degree of skill that is required in other theatrical advertising is required of the man who conducts a stock company.

Various odd schemes have been tried with effect, the best seeming to be that of giving things away. There are now various theaters at which food and drink is served between acts, generally eliciting real evidences of appreciation. Personally, I cannot see how a bad performance of "Too Much Johnson" with ice cream would be more endurable than the same performance without, but apparently this failure on my part indicates a unique state of mind. Receptions on the stage, at which the public meets the players, have proved an attraction, and they have the additional merit of helping to establish the necessary _entente cordiale_. The distribution of actors'

photographs, the inauguration of guessing and voting contests, and similar features, keep alert the brain of the man at the helm of the small town "stock."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Evening up matters on his books_"]

To the most casual reader even this very casual article must have made apparent the disadvantages of the average resident aggregation. First among these, perhaps, is the impossibility of producing new plays under a system which requires the presentation of fresh material so frequently. A new play cannot possibly be rehea.r.s.ed in a week. This is a misfortune to the company, which must develop its best talent in unhackneyed vehicles; a misfortune to the public, which must tire of seeing second-handed comedies and tragedies; and most of all a misfortune to the inner circle of theatrical folk, to whom the stock organization should offer unrivalled opportunities for the quick and inexpensive testing of untried ma.n.u.scripts.

Since new plays are not within the range of these organizations, it seems a pity that they cannot be allowed more leisurely preparation of the old. Performances never can be good, much less artistic, while they are made ready as rapidly as is necessary at present. Neither can they be good so long as a certain small body of people must divide among them whatever parts offer, regardless of equipment or natural tendencies. Because Minnie Jones is suited to the _ingenue_ role in this week's farce it does not follow that she will be ideal in the _ingenue_ role of the tragedy done next week.

We hear that this sort of thing means excellent histrionic training, but there is no law compelling audiences to attend training schools, and the results of putting square pegs into any old sort of hole are often too ludicrous. It is appalling to reflect that the lady who plays Mrs. Micawber today may be cast for Du Barry tomorrow. I remember one poor little girl who had been engaged to "do" soubrettes at the National Theater, Was.h.i.+ngton. She was a charming little thing, and for a whole season she successfully met all comers of her weight and age. In "Esmeralda" I recall having thought her the most ethereal of women. Two weeks later she became the comic opera star in "All the Comforts of Home," and I discovered that what was spirituality in "Esmeralda" became emaciation in red silk tights.

Much as I have harped on the disadvantages of the stock company, I believe most solemnly that its advantages are over-balancing. Even bad bread is better for the system than good whiskey, and a crude performance of "Romeo and Juliet" is to be preferred to the best possible performance of "The Girl and the Outlaw." The prices for these "attractions" are about the same, and the people who now go to see "Romeo and Juliet" are precisely the people who otherwise would go to see "The Girl and the Outlaw." Slowly but surely, even the current stock company interpretations educate the taste of theater-lovers, until they begin asking for better things, and, seeking, find. In addition, there seems no doubt that these organizations provide exceptional schooling for young actors, who, by their aid, play two or three hundred parts in a period during which otherwise they would play five. It has been urged against this that they also acquire habits of haste and carelessness, but I always have found actors with stock experience superior to those without it. The consequence of this particular phase of the stock system must be of inestimable value to the theater in America.

Then, too, it is a kind of interchangeable cause and effect that the quality of stock performances improves with the taste of their patrons. Of late years, fewer autographed photographs have been distributed among audiences, and more money has been spent in the painting of proper scenery. Manner has been less frequently required for stage receptions, and more frequently for drawing room drama. The combination of several organizations under one management, like that of the Baker Chain, in Seattle, Portland and Spokane, with consequent possibilities of reciprocal borrowing, has accomplished wonders in the way of betterment.

"Out West", where touring companies are rarer than this side of the Missouri, and where metropolitan successes arrive tardily, notably fine stock aggregations have come largely to take the place of visiting stars. There are two excellent companies located in Los Angeles, and I have heard that the superiority of their performances has seriously injured the business of the "first cla.s.s" theaters. John Blackwood, at the Belasco, and Oliver Morosco, at the Burbank, make complete productions of every piece offered, and often they are able to give Los Angelites their first view of some much-discussed triumph of Broadway. In such cases, it is not unusual for the play to last six or eight weeks, and George Broadhurst's "The Dollar Mark", initially presented at the Belasco, had a longer run there than in New York. It will be seen at once how such public support enables a company to be worthier of support--a kind of beneficent perpetual motion.

While the East is not yet so far advanced, nor so nearly rid of the stock company that has been made typical in this article, there are fine organizations in half a dozen of our larger cities. It can be only a matter of time before enforced haste and economy in staging stock performances will disappear before the demands of a more and more enlightened clientele. There will be a greater number of rehearsals and a smaller number of matinees. The people who patronize these presentations now will have got ahead in the world, and will be able and willing to pay more generously for their entertainment, and it is to be hoped that the people who turned to moving pictures from cheap melodrama--which, in its whilom prosperity, we are to consider in our next chapter--in due time may turn from moving pictures to adequate representations of cla.s.sic, standard and popular plays.

All this will come in the nature of evolution. The movement will be accelerated if Charles Frohman keeps his promise of giving us in New York such a stock company as his brother maintained at the old Lyceum, and which, at the same time, included Edward J. Morgan, William Courtleigh, George C. Boniface, Mary Mannering, Elizabeth Tyree, Mrs.

Charles Walcot, Hilda Spong, Grant Stewart, Mrs. Thomas Whiffen, and John Findlay.

_SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH THE G.o.dS_

Being an old ma.n.u.script with a new preface--the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it.

The article that fills the following pages was written in 1905.

Originally printed as a protest and a prophecy, it is reprinted here as history.

Melodrama is dead. It died of poor circulation and failure of the box office receipts. There were no flowers, and there need be no regrets.

Neither is there reason to fear resuscitation.

I should like to think that popular priced melodrama had been killed by a general desire for better things. That, however, is not the case.

The death blow was struck when the inventor of moving pictures supplied a form of entertainment that demanded even less of the spectator than had been demanded by such cla.s.sics as "Through Death Valley" and "The Millionaire and the Policeman's Wife." The people who patronized these plays are not now patronizing worthier plays; they are attending performances that appeal to them wholly through the medium of the eye.

Of the seven theaters mentioned in this article at present three are devoted to moving pictures, two to burlesque, one to vaudeville, and one to drama in Yiddish. A few cheap companies are presenting melodrama in the provinces, but not a single place of amus.e.m.e.nt shelters it in New York. Requiescat in pace.

"Sitting in Judgment With the G.o.ds" is republished as a contemporary opinion of a lost art. It was my intention to alter the wording somewhat, subst.i.tuting more recent examples for those mentioned, but I found the result was apt to be like a history of Rome brought "up-to-date" by introducing gattling guns at the Battle of Pharsalius.

So here is the story as it was set down in the beginning, and may you find amus.e.m.e.nt in reading it.

Melodrama, according to my dictionary, is "a dramatic performance, usually tragic, in which songs are introduced." The encyclopedia adds that the name was bestowed first upon "the opera by Rinuccini", and that it was derived from two Greek words meaning song and drama. This is extremely awesome and impressive, but I'm afraid I can't allow you to accept it as applying to offerings in our popular-priced places of amus.e.m.e.nt. Melodrama isn't a bit like that in New York.

It was the dictionary that started me on a tour of investigation which comprehended visits to all of the seven theaters in town that habitually present melodrama. There are so many cla.s.ses of people in this big city, and each cla.s.s has so many characteristic ways of working and playing, that no one hundredth of the population can be expected to know how any other one hundredth lives. The men and women who go to see "Man and Superman" don't go to see "No Mother to Guide Her", and I think I am quite safe in saying that most of the men and women who witness "No Mother to Guide Her" are conspicuous by their absence at "Man and Superman."

Sitting in judgment with the G.o.ds leaves me in doubt as to why the latter part of this statement should be true. The plays of the "No Mother to Guide Her" type are so hopelessly bad, so obviously false, so absolutely vicious, that it is hard to comprehend a mind that can prefer them, if not to "Man and Superman", at least to such better melodramas as "The Lion and the Mouse" or "The Squaw Man." The matter of money is no explanation at all. Harry and Harriet might have excellent seats in the balcony of the Lyceum or Wallack's for the price of orchestra chairs at the American, and, if it comes to pride, what choice is there between the gallery, politely disguised as "the second balcony," of the Belasco, and a box at the Thalia?

Melodrama today not only differs from the melodrama of day-before-yesterday defined in the dictionary, but it differs too from the melodrama of yesterday. Bartley Campbell and Dion Boucicault have given way to Theodore Kremer and Martin Hurley, while sterling old plays like "Siberia" and "The Octoroon" have been supplanted by such monstrosities as "Why Girls Leave Home" and "Too Proud to Beg."

Our dramatic literature knows no finer examples of play-building than "The Two Orphans" and "The Rommany Rye", but these pieces are popular no longer with the people who frequent the Fourteenth Street and the Third Avenue. Fading interest in works of that kind led to a falling off in the patronage of "popular-priced" houses which was arrested only by an immediate appeal to the lowest and basest pa.s.sions of which mankind is capable. It is on the power of pandering to these pa.s.sions that the present vogue of melodrama is founded.