Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 51

One day the father stopped in to see Charles. It was a raw spring day.

Charles remarked that the overcoat Henry wore was too thin.

"Go to my tailor and get an overcoat," he said.

"Not much," said the father. "Your tailor is too expensive. He robs you.

He wouldn't make one under seventy-five dollars, and I never pay more than twenty dollars."

Charles's eye twinkled. He said, quickly:

"You are mistaken. My tailor will make you a coat for twenty dollars. Go down and get one."

Father went down to the fas.h.i.+onable Fifth Avenue tailor. Meanwhile Frohman called him up and gave instructions to make a coat for his father at a very low price and have the difference charged to him.

In an hour Henry Frohman came back all excitement. "I am a real business man," he said. "I persuaded that tailor of yours to make me an overcoat for twenty dollars."

Charles immediately gave him the twenty dollars and sent the tailor a check for the difference between that and the real price, which was ninety-five dollars. He dismissed the matter from his mind.

A few days later Charles had another visit from his father. This time he was in high glee. He could hardly wait to tell the great news.

"You've often said I wasn't a good business man," he told his son.

"Well, I can prove to you that I am. The other night one of my friends admired my new overcoat so much that I sold it to him for thirty-five dollars."

Charles said nothing, but had to pay for another one-hundred-and-fifteen-dollar overcoat because he did not want to shatter his father's illusion.

Here is still another. When Frohman got back to New York from a trip few things interested him so much as a good dinner. It always wiped out the memory of hard times or unpleasant experiences. Once he returned from a costly visit to the West. On Broadway he met an old-time comedian who had been in one of his companies. His greeting was cordial.

"And now, 'C. F.,'" said the comedian, "you've got to come to dinner with me. We have a new club, for actors only, and we have the best roast beef in town. We make a specialty of a substantial, homelike dinner.

Come right along."

The club rooms were over a saloon on the west side of Broadway, between Thirty-first and Thirty-second streets. The two went up to the room and sat down. The actor ordered dinner for two. The waiter went away and Frohman's spirits began to rise.

"It's the best roast beef in New York, I tell you," said the host, by way of an appetizer.

Then the waiter reappeared, but not with the food. He was visibly embarra.s.sed.

"Sorry, sir," he said to the comedian, "but the steward tells me that you can't have dinner to-night. He says you were posted to-day, and that you can't be served again until everything is settled."

Charles used to tell this story and say that he never had such an appet.i.te for roast beef as he did when he rose from that club table to go out again into Broadway.

Frohman was always interested in mechanical things. When the phonograph was first put on the market he had one in his office at 1127 Broadway.

Once in London he found a mechanical tiger that growled, walked, and even clawed. He enjoyed watching it crouch and spring.

He took it with him on the steamer back to New York, and played with it on the deck. One day Richard Croker, who was a fellow-pa.s.senger, came along and became interested in the toy, whereupon Frohman showed him how it worked.

Frohman told of this episode with great satisfaction. He would always end his description by saying:

"Fancy showing the boss of Tammany Hall how to work a tiger!"

The extraordinary affinity that existed between Frohman and a small group of intimates was shown by an incident that occurred on s.h.i.+pboard.

He and Dillingham were on their way to Europe. They were playing checkers in the smoking-room when an impertinent, pus.h.i.+ng American came up and half hung himself over the table. Frohman said nothing, but made a very ridiculous move. Dillingham followed suit.

"What chumps you are!" said the interloper, and went away.

Frohman wanted to get rid of the man without saying anything. This was his way of doing it, and it succeeded.

Frohman was always having queer adventures out of which he spun the most amazing yarns. This is an experience that he liked to recount:

When Augustus Thomas had an apartment in Paris he received a visit from Frohman. The flat was five flights up, but there was an elevator that worked by pus.h.i.+ng a b.u.t.ton.

There was a ring at the bell of the Thomas apartment. When the playwright opened the door he found Frohman gasping for breath, and he sank exhausted on a settee.

"I walked up," he managed to say. When he was able to talk Thomas said to him:

"Why in Heaven's name didn't you use the elevator?"

Frohman replied:

"I couldn't make the woman down-stairs understand what I wanted. She made motions and showed me a little door, but I thought she had designs on my life, so I preferred to walk."

That Charles Frohman had the happy faculty of saying the right thing and saying it gracefully is well ill.u.s.trated by the following:

When the beautiful Scala Theater in London was opened it made such a sensation that Frohman asked Lestocq if he could not inspect it. The proprietor, Dr. Distin Madd.i.c.k, being an old friend of Lestocq, the latter called informally with Frohman. While they were admiring the white stone and bra.s.s interior, Madd.i.c.k was suddenly called away. He returned in a few minutes to say that a manager friend from Edinburgh, hearing that Frohman was in the theater, had come in and asked to be introduced. Of course Frohman acquiesced. After a little talk the gentleman said:

"We have no beautiful theater like this in Edinburgh."

Quickly Frohman replied, with his fascinating smile, "No, but you have Edinburgh."

Frohman hated exercise. In this he had a great community of interest with Mark Twain.

On Sunday mornings, when he was out at his farm at White Plains, he would read all the dramatic news in the papers, and then he searched them carefully for items about people who had died from over-exertion.

When he found one he was greatly pleased, and always sent it to Mark Twain.

In order to get him to exercise Dillingham once took him for a stroll and pretended to be lost. The second time he tried this, however, Frohman discovered the subterfuge and refused to go walking.