XVII

HUMOR AND ANECDOTE

Themost distinctive quality in Charles Frohman's make-up was his sense of humor. He mixed jest with life, and it enabled him to meet crisis and disaster with unflagging spirit and smiling equanimity. Like Lincoln, he often resorted to anecdote and story to illustrate his point. He summed up his whole theory of life one day when he said to Augustus Thomas:

"I am satisfied if the day gives me one good laugh."

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 shirt 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:

"Hello, 'C. F.'! Hello, '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 theOceanicthey had as fellow-passenger a mutual friend, Henry Dazian, the theatrical costumer, on whom Charles delighted to play pranks. On the first day out Dillingham came rushing 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 Saturday 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."

"When I hear of another theater being built I try to build another author."

"No successful theatrical producer ever died rich. He must make money for everybody but himself."

"Great stage successes are the plays that take hold of the masses, not the classes."

Frohman could always reach the heart of a situation with a pithy phrase or reply. On one of the rare occasions when he attended a public dinner he sat at the Metropolitan Club in New York with a group of men representing a variety of interests. He condemned a certain outrageously immodest Oriental dancer, who, at the moment, was shocking New York.

"She must have a nasty mind to dance like that," said Frohman.

"Don't be too hard on her," responded a playwright who sat near by. "Consider how young she is."

"I deny that she is as young as you imply," retorted Frohman. "But I am bound to admit that she is certainly astripling."

Frohman's mind worked with amazing swiftness. Here is an example:

At the formation of a London society called the West End Managers Association, Sir Charles Wyndham gave a luncheon at the Hyde Park Hotel to discuss and arrange preliminaries. Most of the London managers were present, including Frohman. There was a discussion as to what should be the entrance fee for each member. Various sums were discussed from £100 downward. Twenty-five pounds seemed to be the most generally accepted, when one manager said:

"Why should we not each give one night's receipts."

This was discussed for a little while, when Sir Charles said, "What do you say, Frohman?"

The American replied, "I would sooner give a night's receipts than £25."

There was a short silence, then everybody seemed to remember that he had at that moment a failure at his theater. The humor of it was hailed with a shout of laughter.

Just as he mixed sentiment in business so did Frohman infuse wit into most of his relations. He once instructed W. Lestocq, his London manager, to conduct certain negotiations for a new play with a Scotchwoman whose first play had made an enormous success in America, and whose head had been turned by it. The woman's terms were ten thousand dollars in advance and a fifteen-per-cent. royalty. When Lestocq told Frohman these terms over the telephone, all he said was this:

"Did you tell her not to slam the door?"

Frohman would always have his joke in London, as this incident shows:

He had just arrived in town and went to a bank in Charing Cross with a letter of credit, which he deposited. When he emerged he was smiling all over.

"I got one on that young man behind the counter," he said.

"How's that?" asked Lestocq, who was waiting for him.

"Well," he replied, "the young man bade me good morning and asked me if I have brought over anything good this time. I replied, 'Yes, a letter of credit on your bank, and I am waiting to see ifitis any good.'"

A manager, who for present purposes must be named Smith, called on Frohman to secure the services of a star at that time under contract to the latter. His plan was to drop in on Frohman at a busy hour, quickly state the case, and, getting an affirmative answer, leave without talking terms at all. Later he knew it would be enough to recall the affirmative answer that had been given without qualification. The transaction took but a moment, just as the manager wished.

"Well, then, I may have him?" said Smith.

"Er-m-ah-er-yes—I will let you have him," replied Frohman, at the same time running over a paper before him. The visitor was already at the door.

"By the way, Smith," called out Frohman, "how much do you want me to pay you for taking him off my hands?"

Frohman was as playful as a child. Once he was riding in apetite voiturein Paris. It was a desperately hot night. The oldcochertook his hat off, hung it on the lamp, and wiped his forehead. Frohman took the hat and hid it under his seat. When the driver looked for his hat it was gone. He stopped the horse and ran back two or three blocks before he could be stopped. Then he went on without it, muttering and cursing, and turning around every few moments. Watching his opportunity, Frohman slipped the hat back on the lamp, and there was the expected climax that he thoroughly enjoyed.

On one of his trips to Paris he was accompanied by Dillingham. Knowing Frohman's fondness for rich food, his friend decided to take him to dine at Durand's famous restaurant opposite the Madeleine. He even went to the café in the afternoon and told the proprietor that he was going to bring the great American manager. Great anticipation prevailed in the establishment.

That night when they got to the restaurant Frohman gave Dillingham the shock of his life by saying:

"I want to be a real American to-night. All I want is an oyster stew."

Dillingham instructed the chef how to make the stew. After long delay there was a commotion. In strode the chef, followed by two assistants, bearing aloft a gigantic silver tureen which was placed on the table and opened with great ceremony. Inside was a huge quantity of consommé with two lonely oysters floating on top.

Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and ever afterward when he met anybody in Paris that he did not like, he would say to them:

"If you want the finest oyster stew in the world, go to Durand's."

Frohman, who was always playing jokes on his friends, was sometimes the victim himself. He was crossing the ocean with Haddon Chambers when the latter was accosted by two enterprising young men who were arranging the ship's concert. Chambers was asked to take part, but declined. Then he had an inspiration.

"We have on board the greatest American singer of coon songs known to the stage."

"Who is that?" asked the men.

"It's Charles Frohman."

The men gasped.

"Of course we knew him as a great manager, but we never knew he could sing."

"Oh yes," said Chambers. "He is a great singer."

He pointed out Frohman and hid behind a lifeboat to await the result. Soon he heard a sputter and a shriek of rage, and the two men came racing down the boat as if pursued by some terror. Up came Frohman, his face livid with rage.

"What do you think?" he said to Chambers, who stood innocently by. "Those men had the nerve to ask me to sing a coon song. I have never been so insulted in all my life."

He was so enraged that he wrote a letter to the steamship line about it and withdrew his patronage from the company for several years in consequence.

Here is another instance when the joke was on Frohman. No one viewed the manager's immense success with keener pride or pleasure than his father, Henry Frohman. As theater after theater came under the son's direction the parent could gratify his great passion for giving people free passes to its fullest extent. He would appear at the offices at the Empire Theater with his pockets bulging with home-made cigars. The men in the office always accepted the cigars, but never smoked them. But they gave him all the passes he wanted.

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 fashionable 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 embarrassed.

"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 appetite 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-passenger, 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 shipboard. He and Dillingham were on their way to Europe. They were playing checkers in the smoking-room when an impertinent, pushing 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 pushing a button.

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 illustrated 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 Maddick, being an old friend of Lestocq, the latter called informally with Frohman. While they were admiring the white stone and brass interior, Maddick 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.

Frohman could pack a world of meaning in a word or a sentence. As Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree once expressed it, "he was witty with a dry form of humor that takes your breath away with its suddenness." He gave an example of this with Tree one day in London. They were discussing French plays for America. The question of American taste came up. Frohman described certain primitive effects which delighted our audiences.

"Ah," said Tree, "America can stand that sort of thing. It is a new country."

"Was," came the laconic reply.

Frohman's retiring disposition and dislike for putting himself forward was one of his chief traits. An illustration occurred when he controlled the Garden Theater. It was during the presentation of Stephen Phillips's play "Ulysses." There was a new man on the door one night when Frohman dropped into the theater for a few minutes' look at the play. The doorkeeper did not know the producer, his own employer, and would not allow him to enter without a ticket. Instead of storming about the lobby, Frohman simply walked quickly out of the door, around to the stage entrance and through the theater. At the end of the act he walked out of the main entrance. The doorkeeper, recognizing him as the man he had "turned down," was about to ask him how he got in when the manager of the house interposed.

He liked surprise and contrast. On one occasion his old chum, Anson Pond, wanted to talk over business matters with him.

"Let's go to a quiet place," said Frohman.

They went to a Childs restaurant. Before their luncheon was served an intoxicated man came in, ordered a plate of beans, and then exploded a package of fire-crackers on it.

When he went to pay his check Frohman's comment was:

"I didn't know they had changed the date of the Fourth of July."

No other theatrical manager in New York had a better news sense than Frohman. He knew just what a paper wanted, and all the matter sent out from his offices was short, newsy, and direct. He knew how to shape a big "story," and could offhand dictate an interview that was all "meat." While he had little time in New York to greet newspaper men personally, he was especially cordial to all that came to see him on the road. He never went out of town without visiting some of the older critics he had known throughout his career, men like George P. Goodale ofThe Detroit Free Press, and Montgomery Phister ofThe Commercial Tribunein Cincinnati. When in Baltimore he invariably gave an hour for a long interview to Walter E. McCann, the critic of The News of that city.

Frohman knew a newspaper's wants and limitations as far as theatrical matter was concerned. He knew just how far his press representative could be expected to go, and what his obstacles were.

On one occasion in Cleveland, when he was producing a play by Clyde Fitch for the late Clara Bloodgood, the chief press representative from the New York office was taken along to look after the work. The press agent sent stories to all of the papers for Saturday morning's publication, and to his dismay not a line was used. Feeling that Frohman would be hurt about it (for Charles was hurt and not angered by the failure of any of his men), he wrote a note to his chief, stating that he was sorry nothing had been used in print and did not understand it.

At lunch that day Frohman remarked to the agent:

"Why did you send me that note about the papers?"

"Because," replied the young man, "I feared that you would think I had not attended to my work."

"Well," said Frohman, "you sent matter to all the papers, didn't you?"

"Yes," said the agent, "all of them, of course."

"Then," said the manager, "what else could you do? You are not running the papers."

It was not only an evidence of Frohman's fairness, but an instance of his knowledge of newspapers.

Frohman had a remarkable memory. One night during Collier's London engagement he asked the actor to meet him at the Savoy the next morning at nine o'clock. Collier, who had been playing bridge until dawn, showed up at the appointed time, whereupon Frohman said:

"How did you do it?"

"I sat up for it," said Collier.

Five years later Frohman asked Collier one night to meet him at nine o'clock the next morning. Then he added, quickly:

"You can sit up for it."

Frohman got much amusement out of a butler named Max who was employed at his house at White Plains. One of the most original episodes in which this man figured happened on the opening night of "Catherine" at the Garrick Theater.

The play was a little thin, and the whole action depended on a love scene in the third act, in which the hero, a young swell played by J. M. Holland, on telling his mother that he loved a humble girl, gets the unexpected admonition to go and be happy with her. Dillingham had two seats well down in the orchestra. Frohman was to sit in the back of a box. Just before the curtain went up Frohman said to Dillingham, who then had a house on Twenty-fourth Street, "Let us have some of those nice little lamb chops and peas down at your house after the play."

"All right," said Dillingham, and he telephoned the instructions to Max, who had been drafted for town service.

The curtain went up, the first two acts went off all right, and the house was dark for the third act. The seat alongside Dillingham was vacated, so Frohman came down and occupied it. The curtain went up and the action of the play progressed. The great scene which was to carry it was about to begin when Dillingham heard a loud thump, thump, thump down the aisle. Frohman turned to Dillingham and said:

"What in the name of Heaven is that? The play is ruined!"

The thump, thump, thump continued, coming nearer. Just in the middle of the act a German voice spoke up and said:

"Oxkuse me, Meester Dillingham, dere ain't a lam' chop in der house."

It was Max, the butler, who, worried over what seemed the imminent failure of the midnight repast, had come to report to headquarters for further instructions. Fortunately the interruption passed unnoticed and the play made quite a hit.

On one occasion Nat C. Goodwin invited him to the Goodwin residence in West End Avenue, New York. The comedian wanted to place himself under the management of his guest. Goodwin stated the case, and Frohman then asked how remunerative his last season had been. The host produced his books. After a careful examination Frohman remarked, with a smile:

"My dear boy, you don't require a manager. What you need is a lawyer."

THE MAN FROHMAN

Greatas producer, star-maker, and conqueror of two stage-worlds, Charles Frohman was greater as a human being. Like Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, he was more than a man—he was an institution. His quiet courage, his unaffected simplicity, his rare understanding, his ripe philosophy, his uncanny penetration—above all, his abundant humor—made him a figure of fascinating and incessant interest.

No trait of Charles Frohman was more highly developed than his shyness. He was known as "The Great Unphotographed." The only time during the last twenty-five years of his life that he sat for a photograph was when he had to get a picture for his passport, and this picture went to a watery grave with him. Behind his prejudice against being photographed was a perfectly definite reason, which he once explained as follows:

"I once knew a theatrical manager whose prospects were very bright. He became a victim of the camera. Fine pictures of him were made and stuck up on the walls everywhere. He used to spend more time looking at these pictures of himself than he did attending to his business. He made a miserable failure. I was quite a young man when I heard of this, but it made a great impression on me. I resolved then never to have my photograph taken if I could help it."

Once when Frohman and A. L. Erlanger were in London he received the usual request to be photographed by a newspaper camera man. The two magnates looked something alike in that they had a more or less Napoleonic cast of face. Frohman, who always saw a joke in everything, hatched a scheme by which Erlanger was to be photographed for him. The plan worked admirably, and pictures of Erlanger suddenly began to appear all over London labeled "Charles Frohman."

He could be gracious, however, in his refusal to be photographed. One bright afternoon he was watching the races at Henley when he was approached by R. W. MacFarlane, of New York, who had been on the Frohman staff. MacFarlane asked if he could take a photograph of Frohman and give it to his niece, who was traveling with him.

"No," said the manager, "but you can take a picture of your niece and I will pose her for it."

Frohman's shyness led to what is in many respects the most remarkable of the countless anecdotes about him. It grew out of his illness. In 1913 he had a severe attack of neuritis in London. Although his friends urged him to go and see a doctor, he steadfastly refused. He dreaded physicians just as he dreaded photographers.

One day Barrie came to see him at his rooms at the Savoy. Frohman was in such intense pain that the Scotch author said:

"Frohman, it is absurd for you not to see a doctor. You simply must have medical attention. As a matter of fact, I have already made an engagement for you to see Robson-Roose, the great nerve specialist, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."

Frohman, who accepted whatever Barrie said, acquiesced. Next day, when half-past three o'clock came, the manager was almost in a state of panic. He said to Dillingham, who was with him:

"Dillingham, you know how I hate to go to see doctors. You also know what is the matter with me. Why don't you go as my understudy and tell the doctor what is the matter with you? He will give you a nice little prescription or advise you to go to the Riviera or Carlsbad."

"All right," said Dillingham, who adored his friend. "I'll do what you say."

Promptly at four o'clock Dillingham showed up at the great specialist's office and said he was Frohman. He underwent a drastic cross-examination. After which he was asked to remove his clothes, was subjected to the most strenuous massage treatment, and, to cap it all, was given an electric bath that reduced him almost to a wreck. He had entered the doctor's office in the best of health, He emerged from it worn and weary.

When he staggered into Frohman's rooms two hours later and told his tale of woe, Frohman laughed so heartily over the episode that he was a well man the next day.

Frohman had a great fund of pithy sayings, remarkable for their brevity. With these he indicated his wishes to his associates. His charm of manner, his quick insight into a situation, and his influence over the minds of others were great factors in the accomplishment of his end, often attaining the obviously impossible.

For example, when he would tell his business manager to negotiate a business matter with a man, and it would come to a point where there would be a deadlock, he would say:

"I will see him. Ask him to come down to my hotel."

The next morning he would walk into the office with a smile on his face, and the first thing he would say perhaps would be:

"I fixed it up all right yesterday; it is going your way."

"You are a wonder!" his associates would exclaim.

"Oh no! I just talked to him," was the reply.

Frohman disliked formality. He wanted to go straight to the heart of a thing and have it over with. Somebody once asked him why he did not join the Masonic order. He said:

"I would like to very much if I could just write a check and not bother with all the ceremony."

Although he never spoke of his great power in the profession, occasionally there was a glimpse of how he felt about it as this incident shows:

Once, when Frohman and Paul Potter were coming back from Atlantic City, Potter picked up a theatrical paper and said:

"Shall I read you the theatrical news?"

"No," said Frohman. "Imaketheatrical news."

In that supreme test of a man's character—his attitude toward money—he shone. Though his enterprises involved millions, Frohman had an extraordinary disregard of money. He felt its power, but he never idolized it. To him it was a means to an end. He summed up his whole attitude one day when he said:

"My work is to produce plays that succeed, so that I can produce plays that will not succeed. That is why I must have money.

"What I would really like to do is to produce a wonderful something to which I would only go myself. My pleasure would be in seeing a remarkable performance that nobody else could see. But I can't do that. The next best thing is to produce something for the few critical people. That is what I'm trying for. I have to work through the commercial—it is the white heat through which the artistic in me has to come." It was his answer to the oft-made charge of "commercialism."

No one, perhaps, has summed up this money attitude of Frohman's better than George Bernard Shaw, who said of him:

"There is a prevalent impression that Charles Frohman is a hard-headed American man of business who would not look at anything that is not likely to pay. On the contrary, he is the most wildly romantic and adventurous man of my acquaintance. As Charles XII. became an excellent soldier because of his passion for putting himself in the way of being killed, so Charles Frohman became a famous manager through his passion for putting himself in the way of being ruined."

In many respects Frohman's feeling about money was almost childlike. He left all financial details to his subordinates. All he wanted to do was to produce plays and be let alone. Yet he had an infinite respect for the man to whom he had to pay a large sum. He felt that the actor or author who could command it was invested with peculiar significance. Upon himself he spent little. He once said:

"All I want is a good meal, a good cigar, good clothes, a good bed to sleep in, and freedom to produce whatever plays I like."

He was a magnificent loser. Failure never disturbed him. When he saw that a piece was doomed he indulged in no obituary talk. "Let's go to the next," he said, and on he went.

He lost in the same princely way that he spent. The case of "Thermidor" will illustrate. He spent not less than thirty thousand dollars on this production. Yet the moment the curtain went down he realized it was a failure. He stood at one side of the wings and Miss Marbury, who had induced him to put the play on, was at the other. With the fall of the curtain Frohman moved smilingly among his actors with no trace of disappointment on his face. But when he met Miss Marbury on the other side of the stage he said:

"Well, I suppose we have got a magnificent frost. We'll just write this off and forget it."

Frohman played with the theater as if it were a huge game. Like life itself, it was a great adventure. In the parlance of Wall Street, he was a "bull," for he was always raising salaries and royalties. Somebody once said of him:

"What a shame that Frohman works so hard! He never had a day's fun in his life."

"You are very much mistaken," said one of his friends. "His whole life is full of it. He gets his chief fun out of his work." Indeed, work and humor were in reality the great things with him.

One of the best epigrams ever made about Frohman's extravagance was this:

"Give Charles Frohman a check-book and he will lose money on any production."

To say that his word was his bond is to repeat one of the trite tributes to him. But it was nevertheless very true. Often in discussing a business arrangement with his representatives he would say:

"Did I say that?" On being told that he did, he would invariably reply, "Then it must stand at that."

On one of these occasions he said:

"I have only one thing of value to me, and that is my word. I will keep that until I am broke and then I'll jump overboard."

In starting a new venture his method was first to ascertain not how much it would enrich him, but how much it would cost. Thus fortified, he entered into it with enthusiasm, and if he lost he never murmured. Having settled a thing, for good or ill, he would never refer to the negotiations or anything that might have led up to the culmination of that business, either for or against. If his attention was afterward called to it, he would quietly say, "That's yesterday," and in this way indicate that he did not wish the matter referred to again.

Frohman's great desire was to make money for other people. One of his young authors had had a bad failure in London and was very much depressed. Frohman finally worked out a plan to revive his spirits and recoup his finances. He took Alfred Sutro in his confidence and invited the young man to dine. He was like a child, eager to do something good and pleasing. All through the dinner he chaffed the young man, who visibly grew more despondent. Finally he said:

"I have decided to revive a very good play, and I have booked an American tour for it." Then he told the young man that this play was his first success.

Charles Frohman's ignorance of money matters was proverbial. One day just as he was about to take the train for Washington a friend stopped him and said:

"I've got a great investment for you."

"No," said Frohman, "I never invest in anything except theaters."

"But this is the real thing. The only possible fact that can spoil it is war, and we are widely remote from war."

In order to get rid of the man Frohman consented to a modest investment. When he got to Washington the first thing that greeted him was the announcement that we were on the verge of war with Mexico.

William Harris once gently remonstrated with Frohman for such lavish expenditure of money.

"It's simply awful, Charley, the way you spend money," he said.

Frohman smiled and said:

"It would be awful if I lost a finger or a foot, but spending money on the things that you want to do and enjoy doing is never money wasted."

At one time he owed a great deal of money to actors and printers, but he always scorned all suggestions that he go through bankruptcy and wipe these claims out. He said he would pay in full some day, and he did, with interest. An actor to whom he owed some four hundred dollars came to him and offered to settle the claim for one hundred dollars. Frohman said he did not believe in taking advantage of a man like that. He advanced the actor one hundred dollars, and eventually paid the other three hundred dollars.

Like every great man, Frohman's tastes were simple. He always wore clothes of one pattern, and the style seldom varied. He wore no jewelry except a Napoleonic ring on his little finger.

Frohman never married. A friend once asked him why he had chosen to be a bachelor.

"My dear fellow," he answered, "had I possessed a wife and family I could never have taken the risks which, as a theatrical manager, I am constantly called upon to do."

He lived, in truth, for and by the theater; it was his world. His heart was in his profession, and no enterprise was too daring, no venture too perilous, to prevent him from boldly facing it if he believed the step was expected of him.

To his intimates Frohman was always known as "C. F." These were the magic initials that opened or shut the doors to theatrical fame and fortune.

Frohman loved sweet things to eat. Pies were his particular fondness, and he never traveled without a box of candy. As he read plays he munched chocolates. He ate with a sort of Johnsonian avidity. When he went to Europe some of his friends, who knew his tastes well, sent him crates of pies instead of flowers or books.

He shared this fondness for sweets with Clyde Fitch. They did not dare to eat as much pastry as they liked before others, so they often retired to Frohman's rooms at Sherry's or to Fitch's house on Fortieth Street, in New York, and had a dessert orgy.

Frohman almost invariably ate as he worked in his office. When people saw sandwiches piled upon his table, he would say:

"A rehearsal accompanied by a sandwich is progress, but a rehearsal interrupted by a meal is delay."

Frohman's letters to his intimates were characteristic. He always wrote them with a blue pencil, and on whatever scrap of paper happened to be at hand. Often it was a sheet of yellow scratch-paper, sometimes the back of an envelope. He wrote as he talked, in quick, epigrammatic sentences. Like Barrie, he wrote one of the most indecipherable of hands. Frequently, instead of a note, he drew a picture to express a sentiment or convey an invitation. One reason for this was that the man saw all life in terms of the theater. It was a series of scenes.

With regard to home life, Frohman had none. He always dwelt in apartments in New York. The only two places where he really relaxed were at Marlow, in England, and at his country place near White Plains in Westchester County, New York. He shared the ownership of this establishment with Dillingham. It entered largely into his plans. Here his few intimates, like Paul Potter, Haddon Chambers, William Gillette, and Augustus Thomas, came and talked over plays and productions. Here, too, he kept vigil on the snowy night when London was to pass judgment on the first production of "Peter Pan" on any stage.

The way he came to acquire an interest in the White Plains house is typical of the man and his methods. Dillingham had bought the place. One day Frohman and Gillette lunched with him there. Frohman was immensely taken with the establishment. He liked the lawn, the garden, the trees, and the aloofness. The three men sat at a round table. Frohman beamed and said:

"This is the place for me. I want to sit at the head of this table." It was his way of saying that he wanted to acquire an ownership in it, and from that time on he was a co-proprietor.

With characteristic generosity he insisted upon paying two-thirds of the expenses. Then, in his usual lavish fashion, he had it remodeled. He wanted a porch built. Instead of engaging the village carpenter, who could have done it very well, he employed the most famous architects in the country and spent thirty thousand dollars. It was the Frohman way.

Out of the Frohman ownership of the White Plains house came one of the many Frohman jests. Its conduct was so expensive that Frohman one day said to Dillingham, "Let's rent a theater and make it pay for the maintenance of the house."

Frohman then leased the Garrick, but instead of making money on it he lost heavily.

The factotum at White Plains was the German Max, whom Dillingham had brought over from the Savoy in London, where he was a waiter. Max became the center of many amusing incidents. One has already been related.

One night Max secured some fine watermelons. As he came through the door with one of them he slipped and dropped it. He repeated this performance with the second melon. Frohman regarded it as a great joke, and roared with laughter. Just then Gillette was announced.

"Now," said Frohman, quietly, to Dillingham, "we will have Max bring in a watermelon, but I want him to drop it." In order to insure the success of the trick they stretched a string at the door so that Max would be sure to fall. Then they ordered the melon, and Max appeared, bearing it aloft. He fell, however, before he got to the string, and the joke was saved.

All this jest and joke was part of the game of life as Frohman played it. Whatever the cost, there is no doubt that the charming white-and-green cottage up in the Westchester valley gave him hours of relaxation and ease that were among the pleasantest of his life.

This house at White Plains was indirectly the means through which Dillingham branched out as an independent manager. At this time he was in Frohman's employ. One day he said to himself:

"This establishment is costing so much that I will have to send out some companies of my own."

He thereupon got "The Red Mill," acquired Montgomery and Stone, and thus began a new and brilliant managerial career. No one rejoiced over Dillingham's success more than Frohman. When Dillingham opened his Globe Theater in New York Frohman addressed a cable to "Charles Dillingham, Globe Theater, U. S. A."

It is a curious fact about Charles Frohman that though he had millions of dollars at stake, he was never a defendant in litigation. Yet through him foreign authors were enabled to protect their plays from the customary piracy by the memorization of parts. It used to be accepted that if a man went to a play and memorized its speeches he could produce it without paying royalty. N. S. Wood did this with a play called "The World," that Frohman produced. He took the matter to court as a test case and won.

Charles was not good at remembering people's names or their addresses. This is why he was much dependent upon his stenographers. His secretary in England, Miss Frances Slater, was so extraordinary in anticipating his words that he always called her "The Wonder." He used to say:

"Miss Slater, I want to write to the man around the corner," which turned out to be Arthur Bouclier, the manager of the Garrick Theater, which was not really around the corner; but when the subject of the letter came to be dictated, Miss Slater knew whom he meant. He would never express any surprise on these occasions when the letter handed him to sign contained the right name and address. He seemed to take it as a matter of course.

One day Frohman entered his London office and said to Lestocq:

"You would never guess where I have just come from. I have been to your Westminster Abbey."

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