Chapter II: Part 2

Truth is never important in a press agent's story, and there are some occurrences that he actually suppresses. Accounts of small fires, accidents, thefts and quarrels do not get into type if he can help it. Several kinds of news items have been "faked" so often that no one would attempt to have them mentioned journalistically should examples of their class really happen. He would be a brave publicity promoter, for instance, who sent to an editor the tale of his star stopping a runaway, no matter how firmly the tale might be based on fact. Miss George had stolen from her a valuable diamond necklace while she was playing in "Pretty Peggy" and knew better than to permit my sending out an announcement of the theft. "An Actress Loses Her Diamonds!" You laugh scornfully at the very idea. The papers no longer publish accounts of people standing in line before box offices all night in order to secure good seats in the morning, though I succeeded in obtaining mention of this feature of Sarah Bernhardt's last engagement but one in New York by injecting into the yarn a few drops of what theatrical managers call "heart interest." Five dollars and a little careful coaching secured for me a picturesque looking old woman who convinced her inquisitors that she once had acted with the Divine Sarah in Paris. Her vigil in the lobby of the Lyric received more attention than did the _bona fide_ line of three thousand persons that I rose at five to have photographed on the morning following.

This imposter's husband afterward figured at the Casino in the role of a man whose visit to "Happyland" was the first he had made to a theater since the night on which he had witnessed the shooting of Abraham Lincoln. The tale we told was that this spectacle had so affected him that the soothing influence of forty years was required to bring him again into the precincts of a playhouse. Interviewed by the representatives of several journals, he made a comparison between theatrical performances of ante bellum times and those of today that could hardly have been more convincing had my confederate's price not included two seats for the preceding evening at another place of amusement under direction of the Shuberts. This story, which went the rounds of the country, cost, all in all, ten minutes work and three silver dollars. I mention it as an instance of the simple "fake" that sometimes proves most effective.

An equally simple story, used almost simultaneously, came near being less inexpensive. Henry Miller was about to produce "Grierson's Way" at the Princess Theater, and, rehearsals not progressing to his satisfaction, he determined to postpone the scheduled date of opening. This determination we resolved upon turning to our own account. We advertised widely that Mr. Miller had lost the only existing manuscript of the play, without which the performance could not be given, and that he would pay $500 reward for its restoration. Two days afterward Mr. Miller called me up on the telephone. "An awful thing has happened!" he said. "I've actually lost a manuscript of 'Grierson's Way.'"

"What of it?" I inquired.

"What of it!" echoed Mr. Miller. "Supposing somebody brings the 'script to me and demands that $500?"

Fortunately, "Grierson's Way" was found by a stage hand who was satisfied with a small bill and an explanation.

It seems hardly probable that anyone will recall how a barber once delayed the beginning of a performance of "Taps" until half past eight o'clock, yet that tale was one of the most successful of simple stories. The only preparation required was posting the chosen tonsorialist and holding the curtain at the Lyric. Herbert Kelcey, according to the explanation given out, had been shaved when he discovered that he did not have the usual fee about him. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he had remarked. "I'm Herbert Kelcey."

"Herbert Kelcey nuttin'!" his creditor had replied. "Dat gag don't go! You stay here until you get dat fifteen cents!"

A messenger, hastily summoned, was said to have released the actor shortly after the hour for "ringing up." The idea that a barber could keep a thousand people waiting for their entertainment was both novel and humorous, and, in the vernacular, our story "landed hard." The strike of the Helen May Butler Military Band at the Woman's Exhibition was arranged with equal ease and proved equally good. That exhibition was wonderfully fruitful. Almost anything the women did seemed amusing, and the show itself was so extraordinary that its smallest features were interesting.

As elaborate a tale as, for example, the famous Anna Held milk bath story, to which I have referred, requires more plotting and arranging than would the founding of a revolutionary society in Russia. One may spend weeks of work and hundreds of dollars on such a "fake," only to trace its subsequent failure to some trifling flaw in the chain of circumstance. Widely though a successful story of this sort may be chronicled, the reward is absolutely incommensurate with the labor involved, and I think few press agents would ever attempt one were it not for a gambler's love of excitement.

It was during Judge Alton B. Parker's presidential campaign that I evolved what I consider my most magnificent "fake." At that time I represented several attractions in New York, chief among the number two musical comedies, entitled "The Royal Chef" and "Piff, Paff, Pouf." I wired Judge Parker's secretary that the choruses of these productions had formed a club, which was to be known as The Theatrical Women's Parker Association, and the purpose of which was to induce male performers to go home to vote. Would Judge Parker receive a delegation from this society? The wire was signed "Nena Blake," and, in due time, Miss Blake received a courteous and conclusive reply. Judge Parker would not.

That message was a stunner. In the face of it, there was only one thing to do--send along our delegation on the pretence that no answer to our communication had ever been received. Nine chorus ladies were picked out in a hurry, placed in charge of a shrewd newspaper woman who passed as another show girl, and the whole outfit was dispatched to Aesopus. The newspaper woman had instructions to register at a prominent hotel as a delegation from the Theatrical Women's Parker Association, and to parade herself and her charges before all the alert correspondents in the little town on the Hudson. That done, we who had stayed behind got ready photographs of the pilgrims and waited.

The wait was not long. By nine o'clock that night the bait had been swallowed at Aesopus, and my office was crowded with reporters anxious to verify the story wired from up the river. Judge Parker, with characteristic kindness, had lunched the party, allowed it to sing to him, and sent it away rejoicing. Most of the boys "smelled a mouse," but the thing was undeniably true and much too important to be ignored. The Theatrical Women's Parker Club, "Piff, Paff, Pouf" and "The Royal Chef" were well advertised the next morning.

It was the failure of a prominent newspaper to mention either of our plays by name that drove me to further utilization of this scheme. Such an omission is always unfair and unjust. A story is good enough to be printed or it is not; if not, nobody has cause for complaint, if it is, there is no reason why a newspaper should deny the expected compensation. Resolving that I would compel this payment, I immediately arranged for a public meeting of the Theatrical Women's Parker Club. The Democratic National Committee furnished us with a cart-load of campaign literature and with three speakers, one of whom was Senator Charles A. Towne. The other orators we provided. They were Eddie Foy, Dave Lewis, Nena Blake, Grace Cameron and Amelia Stone. The juxtaposition, I felt confident, was sufficiently grotesque to provoke comment.

I wrote nine political speeches for the occasion, held two rehearsals, and, when our advertisements failed to draw an audience, secured a fine one by sending to such congregating places as the Actors' Society. The affair passed off beautifully, Senator Towne adapting himself to circumstances and making one of the most graceful and agreeable addresses imaginable. I heard it from a nook in the fly gallery, where I remained until the meeting was adjourned. This "fake" accomplished its purpose, the delinquent newspaper falling in line with the others in publishing the story.

It would tax your patience and your faith in the existence of modesty were I to go into detail regarding a score of similar "fakes" which come to mind. How this same Nena Blake was kidnapped from the Garrick Theater, Chicago, and sent to New York in the costume she wore in "The Royal Chef"; how her sister, Bertha, was sent to Zion to kiss the unkissed son of John Alexander Dowie; how a supposed German baron threw across the footlights to Julia Sanderson a bouquet from which dropped an $18,000 diamond necklace; how a chorus girl named Thorne created a sensation at a Physical Culture Show in Madison Square Garden by declaring the costume she was expected to wear "shockingly immodest"; how a niece of Adele Ritchie changed her name to Adele Ritchie Jr., and Miss Ritchie herself was sought in marriage by a Siamese millionaire--all of these anecdotes must pass with the mere mention that they were successful "fakes."

The manner in which a good story may go wrong merits more extended description. While an extravaganza, yclept "The Babes and the Baron", was in town, I resolved upon a news event so complicated that I wonder now at my temerity in undertaking it. The idea was that some well known doctor should find on his doorstep one morning a young and pretty girl, fashionably dressed and intelligent-looking, but quite unable to recall her name or to give an account of herself. The doctor, naturally enough, would report the affair to the police, who, in turn, would give it to the reporters. These gentlemen, deceived by the fact that no possible advertising could be suspected in the case of a woman who looked untheatrical and who did not even know her own name, were expected to give untold space in the evening papers to the mystery. After the journals in question had been published, the girl was to be identified, so that her name and that of "The Babes and the Baron" might be printed in the morning.

It was necessary that, at this time, the victim should be able to give a good reason for her condition. The reason selected was as follows: During the performance of the extravaganza, some question had arisen as to the young woman's courage or cowardice. To prove the former, she had volunteered to hide in the Eden Musee and to remain all night in the "chamber of horrors." The terrible sights of this place had frightened her into hysteria; the porter, hearing her scream and believing her to be intoxicated, had ejected her; a kindly old gentleman had found her in the street and started to drive her to a hospital, when, becoming alarmed, he had decided instead to place her on the doorstep of a physician's house, ring the bell, and get away.

Anyone will tell you that the first essential to having roast goose for dinner is to get your goose. At least twenty chorus girls must have been interrogated before I found one willing and competent to try the experiment. Mabel Wilbur, afterward prima donna of "The Merry Widow", was chosen, and she spent eleven days being instructed in the symptoms of the mental disease known as asphasia. The officials of the Eden Musee, glad to share the advertising, carefully coached the porter in the story he was to tell. The stage manager of "The Babes and the Baron" was admitted into the secret and a bright journalist was engaged to hover about and superintend affairs. Of course, my appearance in the neighborhood of the sickroom would have been fatal to the "fake."

Miss Wilbur was left on the doctor's doorstep shortly after four o'clock one mild morning. From that time until night the scheme worked like a charm. Miss Wilbur, bravely enduring all sorts of physical and mental tests, passed the scrutiny of a dozen detectives and medical men. After vainly buying a dozen editions of the evening papers in an anxious effort to learn how matters were progressing, I suddenly found the journals filled with the affair. "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab--Pretty Girl Left on Doctor's Doorstep in Dying Condition" and "Police Have New Problem" were headlines that flared across front pages. Up to that point the story had been a huge success. There remained only the matter of identification to connect with the other story, like two ends of a tunnel meeting, and this promised to be a delicate matter. Say "chorus girl" to a newspaper man and he immediately becomes suspicious. Our hardest work was before us.

At nine o'clock the stage manager of "The Babes and the Baron" was sent around to recognize Miss Wilbur. It was he who had challenged her courage, and, alarmed at her failure to report for the performance, he had hastened to pick up the clue given him by the evening papers. Miss Wilbur's identity was established in the presence of a score of reporters and photographers, none of whom seemed to suspect anything. "At the hour of going to press" we all felt certain that we had "pulled off" the biggest theatrical "fake" known to history.

Every paper in town had the story the next morning--but it was the true story. A City News Association man had recognized my bright journalist, at that time passing himself off as a brother of Miss Wilbur, and the net result of our fortnight's toiling and moiling was some six columns of ridicule.

These confessions would be incomplete if I did not admit here and now that this story was the most ill-advised of my career. It brought discomfit and discredit to a dozen persons, it involved an attempt to deceive some of my best friends, and it put me in a bad light at the very time that the approaching premiere of a play from my pen made that most undesirable. A great many city editors have never forgiven me my part in this particular "fake," although the owner of an evening paper wrote me the next day: "I was fooled from first to last. You're a wonder. Congratulations."

Another bad mistake was my story regarding the willingness of the management to pay $50 a week for exceptionally beautiful chorus girls to appear in "Mexicana." The story was printed all over the world, but it caused critics to stamp as ugly one of the most attractive ensembles ever brought to New York. "If any of these girls," said _The Sun_, "gets $50 a week her employers are entitled to a rebate." I cannot place in the same catalogue Madame Bernhardt's appeal to the French Ambassador at Washington to protest against her exclusion from playhouses controlled by the so-called Theatrical Syndicate. Madame denied this over her own signature, but, from a press agent's point of view, it was an exceedingly creditable falsehood.

It is possible to discuss at endless length the real value of the "fake" and its place in theatrical advertising. Perhaps no one ever went to a theater merely because one of the performers at that theater was supposed to have bathed in milk or to have stopped a runaway horse. On the other hand, I am sure that no one ever went to a theater because he or she had seen the name of the play acted there posted conspicuously on a bill-board. The mission of the bill-board is to call attention to the fact that there is such-and-such an entertainment and that it may be seen at such-and-such a house. There is no question in my mind but that this much is done for a production by "fake" stories concerning it. In rare instances, where the story accentuates the importance of the presentation and its success, or awakens interest in some member of the presenting company, the service performed may be even greater. At all events, the average manager expects this kind of advertising from the publicity promoter to whom he pays a salary, and, naturally, the publicity promotor feels that it is "his not to reason why." The press agent realizes that to any failure on his part will always be attributed the misfortunes of the management with which he is connected. Productions do a good business because they are good productions, and a bad business because they have bad press agents.

Every theatrical newspaper man knows the anecdote of the German cornetist _en tour_ with a minstrel company. The organization was toiling up a steep hill that lay between the railway station and the town. The cornetist was warm and he was tired. "The camel's back" broke when at last he stubbed his toe against a stone. Picking up the obstruction, he threw it as far away as he could. "Ach!" he exclaimed. "Ve got a fine advance agent!"

_THE WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS_

Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more painful,
with various entertaining and instructive remarks as to the
method of following both.

At my side lies an advertisement reading: "I will teach you to write plays for $10!"

If the professor means that he can teach you to write plays that will bring you ten dollars, he may be speaking the truth. If he means that for ten dollars, or a hundred dollars, or a hundred thousand, he can teach you to write plays, he is a liar!

Aunt Emma, who represents the palmy days of the stage, and "used to be with Booth and Barrett", once gave me her opinion of schools of acting. "One can learn to fence", she said, "and to walk and articulate properly. But one cannot learn to think or to feel, and without thinking and feeling there is no acting." Precisely the same thing may be said of playwriting.

Of course, there is a great deal that the dramatist must know about drama. W. T. Price's interesting volume on the subject contains about a hundred iron-clad principles that should be read, and re-read, and then forgotten. Such of the number as cling to your subconsciousness can't do you any harm, and probably will do you a lot of good. The others might help to make you a capable mechanic. Rostand's rooster, once he had been told how to crow, couldn't crow--fell to the ground, as it were, between two schools. Bronson Howard, asked to compile a book of rules for playwriting, declined on the ground that he feared being tempted to follow them.

To learn to do anything--do it! If you would know how to write plays write them, read them, go to see them. Then think a while, and write some more. If you feel sure you have a big idea--and sometimes it seems to me that the big ideas come most often to people who can't use them--pool it with the skill of someone who is willing to give craftsmanship for inventive genius--and watch him. Avery Hopwood collaborated on "Clothes" before he went single-handed at "Nobody's Widow", and, midway, he leased his experience to the novelist who furnished the plot of "Seven Days." Harriet Ford helped Joseph Medill Patterson write "The Fourth Estate", and now Mr. Patterson is exhibiting signs by which one may predict that he will do something alone. Wilson Mizner worked with George Bronson Howard on "The Only Law", and with Paul Armstrong on "The Deep Purple", and we may expect soon a piece that will bear only the name of Wilson Mizner.

"What a lucky fellow!" we say occasionally of some new author who springs into notice. "His first play, and a huge success!" But every professional reader in town could tell you that this success _wasn't_ "his first play." While I was reading for the firm of Sam S. & Lee Shubert, I saw three or four manuscripts from the pens of Rachel Crothers and Thompson Buchanan. "The Three of Us" did not surprise me, nor "A Woman's Way." I knew, and every man in my profession knew, that Miss Crothers and Mr. Buchanan had spent years turning out pieces they could not sell. They worked, and they studied, and they went to the theater thoughtfully until they could write pieces that would sell.

Poets may be born or made, according to the field they occupy, but playwrights must be born _and_ made. However, there isn't the least use of dwelling on this fact. To the end of time men and women who wouldn't think of trying to fashion a horseshoe without first having served an apprenticeship with some blacksmith will go on endeavoring to create comedies and tragedies without having made the least effort to shape their talents--even to whet their instincts.

Once upon a time, in a speech delivered somewhere, I said that, everything else being equal, the author who had never produced a play had the best chance of producing a good one. I was wrong. It is true that the newcomer is likely to have fresher ideas than the old stager, and that generally he dramatizes a lifetime of experience, instead of dramatizing only what he has gleaned between contracts. That accounts for the fact that some tyros never repeat their primal successes. But, even in this period of the novice, when appreciation of novelty submerges appreciation of skill, statistics prove that a majority of the pronounced hits are the work of established authors.

We believe the contrary, as we believe that most marriages turn out badly, because beginners at authorship and enders of matrimony attract attention. Much was said of the novices who won laurels last season, and yet every single piece that ran a hundred nights or so on Broadway was by an Avery Hopwood, a Winchell Smith, or a David Belasco. Any number of brilliant young men flashed into view, and probably will remain in view, but, as yet, of necessity, they are conspicuous for promise rather than for fulfillment. The greatest originality, the most synthetic ingenuity, and the sharpest wit were displayed by H. S. Sheldon, in "The Havoc"; by Philip H. Bartholomae, in "Over Night"; by Anne Caldwell, in "The Nest Egg"; by Tom Barry, in "The Upstart"; by Al Thomas, in "Her Husband's Wife", and by George Bronson Howard and Wilson Mizner in "The Only Law."

The danger faced by new men is that they may be snuffed out by their first failures. Such an ungenerous reception as was given "The Upstart", for example, might well discourage an author to the utter ruin of his career. Managers, too, are likely to judge by the box office rather than by the play--an exceedingly short sighted policy in a "business" whose future depends upon the proper nursing of its infants. The fluttering fledgling of today is the eagle of tomorrow. Porter Emerson Browne, Jules Eckert Goodman, Edward Sheldon, Thompson Buchanan, Avery Hopwood, James Forbes, the debutants of yester-year, are the leading dramatists of this.

Naturally, everybody is trying to duplicate their experience. Everybody writes plays. Some time ago an ambitious individual walked into my office and announced that he had come from Rochester to submit a tragedy in blank verse. I suggested that he need not have gone to so much trouble and expense. "It wasn't any trouble or expense", he replied. "I had to come anyway. I'm a conductor on the New York Central."

Theodore Burt Sayre, who wrote "The Commanding Officer", and who is the reader for Charles Frohman, told me not long ago that his most persistent visitor was a policeman, who had composed a farce in six acts. He also showed me a letter the author of which declared "I seen menny plays that cost a doler and wasn't won-too-three with my play." Every manager in New York has received a Brooklyn shoemaker who feels certain he has produced a comic opera infinitely superior to the best efforts of Gilbert and Sullivan. Of the would-be dramatists in the learned professions, I should say that physicians are rarest as playwrights, that journalists provide the best material, and that clergymen produce the most and the worst.

With so many Cinderellas attempting to crowd their feet into the shoes of Pinero and Jones, there can be no limit to the number of manuscripts submitted each week to well known producers. The general idea, I believe, is that managers are quite buried beneath piles of plays. This is not absolutely true. Such an office as that of Henry B. Harris, in the Hudson Theater, or of The Liebler Company, in Fifth Avenue, may be the destination of from six to ten manuscripts a week. About a third of this number come from agents, and these are likely to receive quickest consideration, since the reader knows that, if they were utterly without promise, they would not have been sent him. The crop of flat and cylindrical packages fluctuates with altered conditions. The manager who makes money out of the work of an unknown author is sure to receive far more than his share of contributions during the next year or two. William A. Brady got a thousand plays a month from obscure aspirants immediately after the production of "'Way Down East."

It is a fallacy widely current among new writers that their "copy" is returned unread. One of the first theatrical stories I ever heard concerned a woman who put sand between the pages of her rolled manuscript and found it there still when the piece came back to her. Nowadays, when the demand for material so far exceeds the supply as to have become almost frantic, it is true not only that every play is looked into, but that almost every play is looked into by every manager. Round and round the circle they go, being judged from a hundred viewpoints by a hundred men who know that a lucky strike means a fortune, and who are eager in proportion. It is my firm belief that all the good plays, not to speak of a fair number of bad ones, have been or are about to be produced. Any piece that is not utterly, hopelessly valueless is sure to find some appreciator in the end. There are instances of manuscripts that, like "My Friend From India", travel up and down Broadway for years, only to be accepted and staged at last.

I have said that the dramatist who "arrives" generally has announced himself first through various rolled and typewritten visiting cards. The parcel that comes from Findlay, Ohio, or Omaha, Nebraska, bearing the address of some one of whom the reader never heard before, is pretty certain to be without promise. Usually, the manuscript betrays itself in its first ten pages, and what follows rarely contains an idea that might have been valuable even if its owner had learned his trade. When the manager does discover a story worth while, or the suggestion of a story, usually he is quick to put its originator in touch with a literary manicure.

Charles Frohman, who frequently is styled "The Napoleon of the Drama", takes no such Napoleonic chances. If you will look over one of Mr. Frohman's budgets you will find that two-thirds of the plays he announces have been presented abroad, and that the other third are from the pens of such celebrities as Augustus Thomas. Naturally, this is the safe, sane, and more-or-less sure method, and yet, even when judged from a purely commercial view-point, it has its disadvantages. If the system does not entail such losses as other managers suffer, neither does it render possible such gains. Mr. Frohman paid George Ade royalties for "Just Out of College", which was a failure, far in excess of those granted by Henry W. Savage for "The County Chairman." Popular dramatists turn out pretty poor stuff at times, as Mr. Frohman was reminded when he produced William Gillette's "Electricity", and excellent material may come from an unexpected source, as Wagenhals & Kemper discovered when they purchased "Paid in Full" from a man whose only previous work had been the unlucky "Sergeant James." As to the invariable wisdom of offering here plays that were hits in Paris and London, I can say only that sometimes we in America differ with our cousins in France and England. We differed widely in the cases of "The Speckled Band", "The Scarlet Pimpernel", and "The Foolish Virgin." It would appear to be a much safer expedient to turn over doubtful pieces to stock companies in one provincial city or another and then to abide by the result. This expedient, by the way, has the advantage of being inexpensive.

It is very difficult to identify a good play. When I was sixteen years old, and didn't know whether manuscripts were an inch thick or a mile, I felt quite sure that the manager who produced a bad play was a fool. I used to say this frankly in the newspaper on which I was employed, just as a lot of other cock-sure young men have been doing ever since. Latterly, however, I have observed that a great many experienced producers average about three failures to every one success, and I leave the superior attitude to the literatti whose cleverness is valued by their employers at from fifteen to fifty dollars a week. The late A. M. Palmer, after a long life-time of experience, said to me: "There does not live a man who can tell a good play from a bad one by reading it. If there _were_ such a Solomon he would be worth half a million dollars per annum to any manager in New York. Personally, I have refused so many money-makers and accepted so many money-losers that I select material now-a-days by guess work. I tossed a coin once to decide whether or not I should buy what afterward proved to be one of the biggest hits of my career."

I have said that it is difficult to identify a good play; it should not be difficult to pass upon a bad one. Some of the things that reach our stage are so very bad that nothing in the foregoing paragraph excuses or explains their production. Several years ago there was referred to me a romantic drama, written by a visiting Englishman. I advised against it, but my employers were determined in its favor, and the piece was presented soon afterward at the Princess Theater.

On the opening night, just after the second act, Louis De Foe, dramatic critic of The World, came to me, and said: "I got here late, and so lost the thread of the story. Can you tell me what the play is about?"

I tried and failed.

One of my employers stood nearby. "Let's ask him?" I suggested. We did--and _he_ didn't know. "Haven't you seen it?" inquired Mr. De Foe.

"Yes", quoth the manager, "and I've read it, and--and it has something to do with love, but I--I forget the details." He suggested that we wait until after the performance and speak to the author.

That gentleman told us that the story concerned a soldier of fortune, who was about to do something or other--I don't remember what--when he received a letter that altered his intentions.

"So I observed", said Mr. De Foe. "But why should it have altered them? What was in the letter?"

The author looked at him blankly. "By Jove!" he explained. "I don't know. I never thought of _that_!"

The next day he drafted a letter that would explain matters and asked me to have it printed in the program. But, as the piece was to close the following night, it didn't seem worth while.

Of course, no play as bad as this should ever find its way to the footlights, and yet I am obliged to confess that a great many do. In fact, fifteen years of observation have forced me to the conclusion that the finer the texture of a play, the more unusual its theme, the smaller the author's chance of finding a manager for it. Also, one must admit, the smaller that manager's chance of finding a public. Though they are not so numerous as one would like to see them, we have producers of keen artistic sensibilities; some of them, like Charles Frohman, George Tyler, Henry B. Harris, David Belasco, Henry Miller and Wagenhals & Kemper, men who are not averse to losing money on a worthy enterprise or, at least, to taking a long chance of making it. For these men we should be grateful, and, though the New Theater has brought out nothing remarkable from an untried pen, we should be grateful, too, for an institution whose purpose is producing the best, whether the best is profitable or not.

So many mental qualities are essential to the correct appraisal of a play. For one thing, the manager must see not only what it is but what it may become. Often the hardest work in playwriting has to be done after the play has been produced. Pieces that seemed hopeless when they were acted initially have been turned into huge successes. Scenes are switched about, lines changed, often whole acts reconstructed. I know a woman who was compelled to cut her play in half after it was produced. Ordinarily one minute is required to act each page of typewritten manuscript, but this work, which contained only one hundred and fifty pages, ran nearly five hours. Difficult as such condensation must have been, the task that confronted the author in question was not to be compared with that of lengthening a play. It is not advisable for embryonic dramatists to cut too closely according to pattern. To tone down a strong play or shorten a long one is easy; to build up a weak play or successfully pad out a short one is impossible.

Most of the manuscripts that come to the desk of the reader do not prompt sufficient doubt for any manager to be willing to try them. A great many would seem to be the product of lunatics. Not long ago I had a dramatization of a Russian novel that contained eleven acts and twenty-one scenes. The adapter simply had melted down the whole six hundred pages of fiction and was trying to pour it onto the stage. Another offering, called "The Dogs of Infidelity", proved to be an argument against atheism in five acts and seven scenes. The scoundrel of this masterpiece was Robert G. Ingersol, and the play was accompanied by a cartoon showing the agnostic fleeing from two police officers, marked "Logic" and "Sarcasm", who were pursuing him at the bidding of Justice, in the person of the author. Beneath this picture were typewritten the favorable opinions of a number of people who claimed to have read the piece. Standing in the center of the stage, the villain of a melodrama still in my possession is supposed to commit suicide by exploding a dynamite cartridge in his mouth. Beneath the directions for this bit of business, the author has written: "The performance concludes here." I should think it might!

Of course, it is not often that one gets plays as absurd as these. If it were, the reading of manuscripts would not be so dull and profitless a task. The ordinary play is notable only for its crudity, its artificiality, its lack of color, and its hopeless failure to rise above the conventional and the commonplace. Dramatists follow each other like sheep, and the smaller the dramatist happens to be the more closely he follows. Thus it is that whenever somebody produces a piece with a situation that creates comment, every second manuscript one reads from that time on contains exactly the same situation. A long while ago I grew so much interested in the likeness between plot and plot that I catalogued two hundred plays according to their general character. The result was as follows:

Dramas in which woman goes to man's
rooms at midnight 37

" in which woman betrays man and
then saves him 19

" in which wronged woman gives evidence
at end of play 6

" in which man unwittingly falls in
love with woman meant for him 9

" in which woman unwittingly falls
in love with man meant for her 3

" in which wealth is unexpectedly
derived from a mine or a patent 22

" built on the question of "love or
duty" 24

" built on the question of the fitness
of a reformed man or woman
to marry 16

" in which man or woman reforms
the person he or she loves 3

Comedies in which husband or wife ends
the philandering of wife or husband
by seeming to condone it 20

Farces based on mistaken identity 31

" built around the necessity of a man
lying to his wife 28

The total of the table is not two hundred, because several of these plays had none of the features mentioned, while others had more than one.

Of course, it is well-nigh impossible for any dramatist, no matter how well-meaning, to devise unparalleled characters, situations and stories. Just as the fact that there are only so many notes in the scale has been urged as an excuse for composers whose music is reminiscent, so I would insist that there are only so many strings in the heart. There is a limit to the number of situations that can be brought about in real life, and, of course, there is a much more definite limit to the number of these situations which have dramatic value. In certain elemental facts all plays must be alike. For example, it is inevitable that a large number of plays shall have what is known as the "dramatic triangle"--which means the conflict of two men and a woman or of two women and a man. It is inevitable that a great majority of plays shall deal with that one great elemental emotion--love. Once, when I was very young indeed, I experimented in writing a comedy in which nobody was in love. The piece was presented in Washington, and, to the best of my recollection, it lasted two consecutive nights. This convinced me that there might be a line beyond which one could not go in the effort to be unique.

There are a great number of things, however, that are so hackneyed and conventional that it is no longer possible for an author to attempt them. I do not think any manager would buy another play in which the crucial situation was the concealment of the heroine in the apartments of the hero or the villain. From time immemorial this has been the stock episode for the third act climax in a four act play, and audiences have begun to expect it as they expect supper after the fourth act. Personally, I am free to confess that I should not be likely to recommend the purchase of any drama in which the conclusion of the third act did not bring a surprise calculated to make an audience sit up and take notice. No author of today would dare begin his work with a conversation between a maid and a butler. Neither would he care to conceal one of his characters behind a screen or to conclude his play with the finding of a bundle of papers. The cigarette is still the hero of the society drama, and it is still true on the stage that the happy conclusion of the love affair between the juvenile and the ingenue usually is coincident with the conclusion of the love affair between the leading man and the leading woman. We begin to have heroes who are not too angelically good, however, and villains who have motives more human than the mere desire to be beastly and draw a hundred and fifty dollars a week for it. Very slowly and gradually the perfect woman, the high-hatted knave, the wronged girl, the comic Irishman, the naval lieutenant of comic opera, the English butler and their associates are passing from our midst. Peace to their ashes!

Plays have their epochs, just as books do, and there are fashions in the drama as pronounced as those in dress. Always one successful work of a particular class brings about a host of imitations, and, for a time, it seems as though the public would never tire of that particular kind of entertainment. "The Prisoner of Zenda" was responsible for a hundred romances laid in mythical kingdoms; "Lady Windimere's Fan" brought drawing room comedy into vogue; "'Way Down East" bred a perfect epidemic of pastorals; "Sherlock Holmes" created a demand for plays concerning criminals. All of these varieties of entertainment, save possibly the last, have been laid on the shelf, and we now are going in vigorously for frothy farce and comic opera in long skirts. The manner in which one author follows the lead of another, as demonstrated above, extends beyond the selection of such important things as stories, and reaches even to titles. Ten years ago we couldn't have a name without the word "of" in it. On the bill-boards were advertised "The Whitewashing of Julia", "The Manoeuvres of Jane", "The Superstitions of Sue", "The Stubbornness of Geraldine" and a score of others. Then somebody christened a charming sketch "Hop-o'-My-Thumb", and for a while it seemed that we could get nothing but hyphenated titles, such as "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire" and "All-of-a-Sudden-Peggy." Now-a-days the vogue seems to be the combination of an article and a noun--"The Boss", "The Nigger", "The Gamblers" and "The Concert."

Please do not understand that, in calling attention to these similarities, I intend to accuse anyone of plagiarism. Deliberate theft of ideas from contemporary offerings is likely to result in law-suits, and I don't believe that there are left in the printed dramas any ideas worth stealing. I used to hear an interesting story of Paul Potter's writing original plays in the Boston Public Library, but it seemed to me that much of his work was too good to have been filched from the old fellows whose publishers bound their vulgarity, their leaden dialogue and their uningenious situations in yellow covers. It is very difficult, as I have said, to squeeze new situations out of a dull world, from the manners and morals of which about four hundred dramas have been pressed every year during the past half century. It is especially hard to devise original material in America, where prudish restrictions hedge us about and anything deep and vital in life immediately is set down as immoral. American authors cannot wring novel incidents from the emotions; they must profit by such circumstances as the invention of wireless telegraphy and the automobile. The telephone and the motor car are speedily becoming bulwarks of the drama in the United States!

The possibility of giving subtle and original treatment to familiar phases of life, together with the attendant possibility of revealing human nature in the theater, hold forth the chief promise along this line. Clever twisting and turning will make a new incident from an old one, as is best demonstrated in what Beaumont and Fletcher did with Lope de Vega when they adapted "Sancho Ortez" into "The Custom of the Country", and playwrights are learning to turn little things to vital account in the construction of their plays. A glance at a photograph now-a-days is made to convey all what was indicated in a five-minutes talk between butler and maid twenty years ago.

As to the matter of heart interest, that, after all, is the thing that counts most, and that is eternal and inexhaustible. Charles Klein, author of "The Music Master", put this to me neatly not long ago in an attempt to prove the advantage of the realistic drama over the romantic. "Supposing a man comes to you", he remarked, "and says that his wife has just fallen out of a balloon. You're not sorry, because you can't understand why his wife should have gone up in a balloon. Let the same man say to you, however, that he is out of a position and that his family is starving, and see how quickly the tears will come into your eyes. So far as modern audiences are concerned, the old duel-fighting, hose-wearing romantic heroes are up in a balloon. We want sorrows and joys we can comprehend."

It is this creed that makes the new dramatist an entity worth seeking. If it proves difficult to discover him among the thousands who write plays, it at least is worth while to cultivate him when he is found among those who write promising plays. "By their works ye shall know them" is particularly applicable to the men who will some day succeed Barrie and Pinero. They will bear watching. If I were a producing manager I should keep in touch with the men whose first pieces indicate the possession of ability. I would set them at work, not at tailoring plays to fit personalities, but at realizing their ideas and their ideals. Certainly this great country is full of material waiting for dramatization, and it must be equally true that it is full of authors capable of accomplishing the task. They will not be the illiterate glory-hunters who deluge theatrical offices with their manuscripts, nor will they be the celebrities whose brains have been pressed dry. It were wise to look for them among the people whose professions draw them into close touch with the real world and the theater; among the newspaper men and the enthusiastic play-lovers; among those whose first and second efforts are now the financial failures on Broadway.

_THE PERSONALITIES OF OUR PLAYWRIGHTS_

Being an effort to out do Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G.
D. Roberts at their own game--which is speaking literally.

Not long ago an intelligent young man walked into a meeting of the Society of American Dramatists and Composers, at the Hotel Astor, and, after scanning the faces about him, inquired: "Is this the Cloak and Suit Manufacturers' Association?"

Don't blame the young man. If tomorrow you undertook on a wager to tell a prosperous tailor from a celebrated author, your safest plan would be to select the individual who looked more like a tailor, and say: "That is the author!" Among persons whose acquaintances do not figure in the public prints, except as "Old Subscriber" or "Vox Populi", the playwright is still supposed to be distinguishable by long, curly hair, a flowing tie, a high hat, and a frock coat, worn with the right hand inserted in the space between the first and second buttons.

As a matter of fact, this description fits only the quack doctor and the vender of patent medicines. There _are_ flowing-tie playwrights, but generally they belong in the ranks of the ineffectual and the unproduced. One sees them oftener at studio teas than at "first nights." In whatever other respects they may differ, our dramatists are pretty much alike as regards the commonplaceness of their manner and appearance. Most of them regard the writing of plays as a business, and go about it as a baker goes about making his loaves or a plumber about mending a pipe.

On the whole, it is easy to understand the disappointment of a hero-worshipper to whom a companion pointed out Charles Klein. The author of a dozen successful pieces tells the story with great gusto. "It was on a ferry boat," he relates, "and two young chaps were standing near the forward doors. As I strolled past, one of them remarked: 'That's the fellow that wrote "The Gamblers."'"

"My chest had already begun to expand when I caught the rejoinder. 'Him!' exclaimed the other. 'Well, I'll be damned!'"

Augustus Thomas and David Belasco are two dramatists who would rob no layman of his illusions. Mr. Belasco, whose clerical collar and spiritual face have been pictured in numberless newspapers and magazines, looks every inch a poet, and his soft voice and far-away manner help sustain the impression. Mr. Thomas more evidently belongs to our own mundane sphere; he is a man of the world, distinguished by his poise and polish, by the suavity, reserve and equilibrium that come with confidence and after long experience. The late Clyde Fitch had these qualities, too. He was an artist to his finger tips, a thinker of fine thoughts and a dreamer of great dreams. This article originally began with an account of him, and, since Clyde Fitch was much more than a transient figure in our theater, I see no reason why he should be left out of it now.

"Mr. Fitch", I wrote the day he sailed for France, never to return, "is the son of a former army officer, forty-four years old, graduated from Amherst College, and has spent much of his life traveling about Europe. He is quite tall, rather thickly built, and has a heavy, dark mustache. My acquaintance with him dates from the performance of my first original comedy, 'The Little Gray Lady', and is due to a friendly feeling for the new-comers in his profession that is one of his finest traits.

"'The Little Gray Lady' was being presented in the Garrick Theater, and I was somewhat excited, the morning after its premiere, at learning that a box had been secured for Mr. Fitch. That night I stationed myself across the auditorium, so that I might judge how he enjoyed the entertainment. My heart almost stopped beating when, soon after the curtain lifted, the object of my interest arose from his seat, and manifested every intention of departing. 'Good heaven!' I exclaimed to myself. 'Is the piece as contemptible as that? And, even if it is, what an affront; what a rude thing to do!' My mortification was short-lived. Mr. Fitch and his party did walk out of their box, but only to take orchestra chairs, from which they had a better view of the stage. The next morning I received a generous letter. '"The Little Gray Lady" is a big "Little Lady", I think.' And would I lunch tomorrow at Mr. Fitch's town house, in East Fortieth Street?

"This house has afforded a wide-open outlet for its owner's constitutional lavishness, and is, perhaps, as luxuriously appointed and as exquisitely fitted as any residence of its size in New York. Mr. Fitch loves beautiful things, and invests in them with a prodigality that would frighten the heirs of a copper king. 'It doesn't matter how much money I make,' he said to me one afternoon. 'I spend a big income as quickly as a little one.' The Fortieth Street domicile is literally crowded with paintings, carvings, ceramics, and other objects of art. A gentleman who dined there recently had his attention attracted by three curiously wrought cigarette cases that stood on the table, one at each plate. He supposed them to be beaten brass, set with rhine stones, and was amazed when his wife discovered that they were of solid gold and diamonds. 'Their intrinsic worth,' he said, 'could not have been less than ten thousand dollars. Imagine my horror when I remembered that I had been on the point of inquiring whether they were meant to be dinner favors!'

"Mr. Fitch maintains two establishments beside the place in New York; one at Greenwich, called Quiet Corners--a young woman I know insists upon speaking of it as 'Cozy Corners'--and the other an estate of two hundred acres at Katohna, in Westchester County. James Forbes, who wrote 'The Chorus Lady' and 'The Travelling Salesman', relates an experience of a visit to the former residence. Here he found a stable, which, in lieu of horses, held hundreds of masterpieces in marble and bronze which the collector had not been able to resist purchasing, but for which he had no room in his house!

"Managers who make contracts with Clyde Fitch will tell you that he appreciates the value of money, but that commodity certainly doesn't cling long to his fingers. However, a responsible man can afford to be irresponsible, and an industrious man to be extravagant. Mr. Fitch has written fifty-four plays in less than twenty years, an average of one play every four months! When you stop to consider that an ordinary manuscript consists of about one hundred and thirty typed pages, and that each piece must be thought out, drafted and re-drafted, rehearsed and produced you will admit that the labor involved in making such a record must have been Herculean.

"Nevertheless, Mr. Fitch never seems to be hurried or worried. He entertains a good deal, goes to the theater frequently, and takes a boyish interest in trifles. It is this interest that fills his work with human touches, the small topicalities of the moment. I saw him one night at 'The Three Twins', and he commented laughingly upon the catchiness of the song, 'Cuddle Just a Little Closer.' Two months later I found that air as the motif, almost the Wagnerian theme, of his comedy, 'The Bachelor.'