Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 49

He had a brilliancy of retort that suggested Wilde or Whistler. Once he was asked this question:

"What is the difference between metropolitan and out-of-town audiences?"

"Fifty cents," he replied.

Haddon Chambers was writing a note in Frohman's rooms at the Savoy.

"Do you spell high-ball with a hyphen?" he asked.

"No, with a siphon," responded Frohman.

Charles Dillingham, when in Frohman's employ, was ordered to hurry back to New York. From a small town up New York state he wired:

_Wash-out on line. Will return as soon as possible._

Frohman promptly sent the following reply:

_Never mind your wash. Buy a new s.h.i.+rt and come along at once._

That he could also meet failure with a joke is shown by the following incident:

He was producing a play at Atlantic City that seemed doomed from the start. In writing to a member of his family he said:

_I never saw the waves so high and the receipts so low._

Frohman and Pinero were dining in the Carleton grill-room one night when a noisy person rushed up to them, slapped each on the shoulder, and said:

"h.e.l.lo, 'C. F.'! h.e.l.lo, 'Pin.'! I'm Hopkins."

Frohman looked up gravely and said:

"Ah, Mr. Hopkins, I can't say that I remember your name or your face, but your manner is familiar."

When Edna May married Oscar Lewisohn she gave a reception on her return from the honeymoon. She sent Charles one of the conventional engraved cards that read:

"_At home Thursday from four to six._"

Frohman immediately sent back the card, on which he had written, "So am I."

Once when Frohman and Dillingham were crossing to Europe on the _Oceanic_ they had as fellow-pa.s.senger a mutual friend, Henry Dazian, the theatrical costumer, on whom Charles delighted to play pranks. On the first day out Dillingham came rus.h.i.+ng back to Frohman with this exclamation:

"There are a couple of card-sharks on board and Dazian is playing with them. Don't you think we had better warn him?"

"No," replied Frohman. "Warn the sharks."

Some years ago Frohman sent a young actor named John Brennan out on the road in the South in "Too Much Johnson." Brennan was a Southerner, and he believed that he could do a big business in his home country. Frohman then went to London, and, when playing hearts at the Savoy one night with Dillingham, a page brought a cablegram. It was from Brennan, saying:

_Unless I get two hundred dollars by next Sat.u.r.day night I can't close._

Whereupon Frohman wired him:

_Keep going._

Frohman delighted to play jokes on his close friends. In 1900, Dillingham opened the New Jersey Academy of Music with Julia Marlowe, and it was a big event. This was before the day of the tubes under the Hudson connecting New Jersey and New York. When Dillingham went down to the ferry to cross over for the opening night he found a basket of flowers from Frohman marked, "Bon voyage."

Nor could Frohman be lacking in the graceful reply. During a return engagement of "The Man from Mexico," in the Garrick Theater, William Collier became very ill with erysipelas and had to go to a hospital.

The day the engagement was resumed happened to be Frohman's birthday, and Collier sent him the following cablegram:

_Many happy returns from all your box offices._

He received the following answer from Frohman:

_My happiest return is your return to the Garrick._

Behind all of Frohman's jest and humor was a serious outlook on life. It was mixed with big philosophy, too, as this incident will show:

He was visiting Sir George Alexander at his country house in Kent.

Alexander, who is a great dog fancier, asked Frohman to accompany him while he chained up his animals. Frohman watched the performance with great interest. Then he turned to the actor-manager and said:

"I have got a lot of dogs out at my country place in America, but I never tie them up."

"Why?" asked Alexander.

"Let other people tie up the dogs. You let them out and they will always like you."

Frohman was known to his friends as a master of epigram. Some of his distinctive sayings are these:

"The best seat at a theater is the paid one."

"An ounce of imagination is worth a pound of practicality."

"The man who makes up his mind to corner things generally gets cornered."

"You cannot monopolize theaters while there are bricks and mortar."