Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 42

"I mean that if in casting a play you can find an actor who looks the part you have in mind for him, be thankful; if you can find an actor who can act the part, be very thankful; and if you can find an actor who can look and act the part, _get down on your knees and thank G.o.d!_"

Frohman had a very definite idea about star material. He was once talking with a well-known American publisher who mentioned that a certain very rich woman had announced her determination to go on the stage. The manager made one of his quick and impatient gestures, and said:

"She will never do."

"Why?" asked his friend.

"Because," replied Frohman, "in all my experience with the making of stars I have seldom known of a very rich girl who made a finished success on the stage. The reason is that the daughters of the rich are taught to repress their emotions. In other words, they don't seem to be able to let go their feelings. Give me the common clay, the kind that has suffered and even hungered. It makes the best star material."

There is no doubt that Frohman liked to "make" careers. He wanted to see people develop under his direction. To indulge in this diversion was often a very costly thing, as this incident shows:

Chauncey Olcott, who had been a.s.sociated with him in his minstrel days, and become one of the most profitable stars in the country, once sent a message to Frohman saying that he would like to come under his management. To the intermediary Olcott said:

"Tell Mr. Frohman that I make one hundred thousand dollars a year. He can name his own percentage of this income."

Frohman sent back this message:

"I greatly appreciate the offer, but I don't care to manage Olcott. He is _made_. I like to _make_ stars."

One reason that lay behind Frohman's success as star-maker was the fact that he wove a great deal of himself into the character of the stars. In other words, the personal element counted a great deal. When somebody once remonstrated with him about giving up so much of his valuable time to what seemed to be inconsequential talks with his women stars, he said:

"It is not a waste of time. I have often helped those young women to take a brighter view of things, and it makes me feel that I am not just their manager, but their friend."

Indeed, as Barrie so well put it, he regarded his women stars as his children. If they were playing in New York they were expected to call on him and talk personalities three or four times a week. On the road they sent him daily telegrams; these were placed on his desk every morning, and were dealt with in person before any other business of the day. He had the names of his stars printed in large type on his business envelopes. These were so placed on his table that as he sat and wrote or talked he could see their names ranked before him.

When his women stars played in New York he always tried to visit them at night at the theater before the curtain went up. He always said of this that it was like seeing his birds tucked safely in their nests. Then he would go back to his office or his rooms and read ma.n.u.scripts until late.

One phase of Charles's great success in life was revealed in this att.i.tude toward his women stars. He succeeded because he mixed sentiment with business. He was not all sentiment and he was not all business, but he was an extraordinarily happy blend of each of these qualities, and they endeared him to the people who worked for him.

The att.i.tude of the great star toward Frohman is best explained perhaps by Sir Henry Irving. Once, when the time came for his usual American tour, he said to his long-time manager, Bram Stoker, who was about to start for New York:

"When you get to America just tell Frohman--you need not bother to write him--that I want to come under his management. He always understands. He is always so fair."

One detail will ill.u.s.trate Frohman's feeling about stars, and it is this: He never wanted them, male or female, to make themselves conspicuous or to do commonplace things. He was sensitive about what they said or did. For example, he did not like to see John Drew walk up and down Broadway. He spent a fortune sheltering Maude Adams from all kinds of intrusion. With her especially he exhausted every resource to keep her aloof and secluded. He preferred that she be known through her work and not through her personal self. It was so with himself.

Frohman was one of the most generous-minded of men in his feeling about his co-workers. On one occasion when he was rehearsing "The Dictator,"

William Collier suggested a whole new scene. The next night Frohman took a friend to see it. Afterward, accompanied by his guest, he went back on the stage to congratulate his star. He slapped Collier on the back and, turning to his companion, said:

"Wasn't that a bully scene that Willie put into the play?"

He was always willing to admit that his success came from those who worked for him. Once he was asked the question:

"If you had your life to live over again would you be a theatrical manager?"

Quick as a flash Frohman replied:

"If I could be surrounded by the same actors and writers who have made _me_--yes. Otherwise, no."

This feeling led him to say once:

"I believe a manager's success does not come so much from the public as from his players. When they are ready to march with him without regard to results, then he has indeed succeeded. This is my success. My ambition frankly centers in the welfare of the actor. The day's work holds out to me no finer gratification than to see intelligent, earnest, deserving actors go into the fame and fortune of being stars."

Nothing could down his immense pride in his stars. Once he was making his annual visit to England with Dillingham. At that time Olga Nethersole, who had been playing "Carmen," was under his management.

She was also on the boat. The pa.s.senger-list included many other celebrities, among them Madame Emma Calve, the opera-singer, who had just made her great success in the opera "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera House. Naturally there was some rivalry between the two _Carmens_.

At the usual s.h.i.+p's concert both Nethersole and Calve inscribed their names on programs which were auctioned off for the benefit of the disabled sailors' fund. Compet.i.tion was brisk. The card that Calve signed fetched nine hundred dollars. When Nethersole's program was put up Frohman led the bidding and drove it up to a thousand dollars, which he paid himself. It was all the money he had with him. Dillingham remonstrated for what seemed a foolish extravagance.

"I wanted my star to get the best of it, and she did," was the reply.

Frohman, as is well known, would never make a contract with his stars.

When some one urged him to make written agreements, he said:

"No, I won't do it. I want them to be in a position so that if they ever become dissatisfied they know they are free to leave me."

Like all his other stars, William Collier had no contract with Charles, merely a verbal understanding extending over a period of years. After this agreement expired and another year and a half had gone by, Collier one day asked Frohman if he realized that their original agreement had run out. Frohman looked up with a start and said:

"Is that so? Well, it's all right, Willie, you know."

"Of course," said Collier, and that ended it.

The next Sat.u.r.day when Collier got his pay-envelope he found inside a very charming letter from Frohman, which said:

_I'm sorry that I overlooked the expiration of our agreement. I hope that you will find a little increase in your salary satisfactory._

There was an advance of one hundred dollars a week.

Frohman literally loved the word "star," and he delighted in the so-called "all-star casts." He had great respect for the big names of the profession; for those who had achieved success. He liked to do business with them.

In speaking about "all-star casts," he once said to his brother:

"I have to look after so many enterprises that I have no time to conduct a theatrical kindergarten in developing actors or playwrights save where the play of the unknown author or the exceptional talents of the unknown actor or actress appeal to me strongly. There is an element of safety in considering work by experts, because the theaters I represent need quick results."

In reply to the oft-repeated question as to why he took his American stars to London when they could play to larger audiences and make more money at home, he said:

"In the first place, such exchanges const.i.tute the finest medium for the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive hold upon her art."

When Frohman was asked to define success in theatrical management he made this answer:

"The terms of success in the theater seem to me to be the co-operating abilities of playwright and actor with the princ.i.p.al burden on the actor. In other words, the play is not altogether 'the thing.' The right player in the right play is the thing."

The shaping of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded person to mutual advantage.

The relations.h.i.+p between stars and audiences is of necessity a very close one. The Frohman philosophy, however, was not the generally accepted theory that audiences make stars.

On one of those very rare occasions in his life when he wrote for publication, he made the following illuminating statement:

_No star or manager should feel grateful to any audience for the success of a play in which he has figured. A play succeeds because it is a living, vital thing--and that is why it has got upon the stage at all. There is life in it and it does not, and will not, die. It keeps itself alive until the opportunity comes along. Often a kind of instinct makes the opportunity._

_It is instinct also that prompts an audience to applaud when it is pleased, laugh when it is amused, weep when it is moved, hiss when it is dissatisfied. No actor should feel indebted to an audience for the recognition of good work, because that same audience that appears to be so friendly, at another time, when one character or play does not please it, will resent both actor and play. This is as it should be. The loyalty of English audiences to their old favorites is fine, but it is bad for the old favorites. It is stagnating._