“Screw the lid on tightly, father,Darling ma has far to go;She must take the elevatorUp above or down below.“Screw the lid on tightly, father,Darling ma goes far to-night;To the banks of rolling Jordan,Or to realms of anthracite.“Screw the lid on tightly, father,Leave no chinks for heated air,For if ma is going one place,There's no fire insurance there.”
You can see by this how different the play could be made from month to month. Always full of sparkling wit and clean, wholesome humor—as fresh as Uneeda Biscuit, and as bright as a Loftis-on-credit diamond. Take the scene where the Princess of Pilliwink sailed away to Zululand as an example of the variety we were able to introduce. The first month she sailed away on a cake of Ivory Soap—it floats; the next month she sailed on an Ostermoor Felt Mattress—it floats; and then for a month she voyaged on the floating Wool Soap; and she travelled in steam motor-boats and electric motor-boats; by Cook's tours, and across the ice by automobile, by kite, and on the handle of a Bissell Carpet Sweeper, like an up-to-date witch. She used every known mode of locomotion, from skates to kites.
She was a grand actress. Her name was Bedelia O'Dale; and, whatever she was doing on the stage, she was charming. Whether she was taking a vapor bath in a $4.98 cabinet or polishing her front teeth with Sozodont, she was delightful. She had all the marks of a real lady, and gave tone to the whole opera. In fact, all the cast was good. Perkins spared no expense. He got the best artists he could find, regardless of the cost; and it paid. But we nearly lost them all. You remember when we put the play on first, in 1897,—the good old days when oatmeal and rolled wheat were still the only breakfast foods. We had a breakfast scene, where the whole troup ate oatmeal, and pretended they liked it. That scene went well enough until we began to get new ads. for it. The troup never complained, no matter how often he shifted them from oatmeal to rolled wheat and back again. They always came on the stage happy and smiling, and stuffed themselves with Pettijohns and Mothers' Oats, and carolled merrily.
But about the time the twentieth century dawned, the new patent breakfast foods began to boom; and we got after them hotfoot. First he got a contract from Grape-nuts, and the cast and chorus had to eat Grape-nuts and warble how good it was.
Perkins was working up the Pink Pellets then, and he turned the Princess of Pilliwink job over to me.
If Perkins had been getting the ads., all would still have been well; but new breakfast foods cropped up faster than one a month, and I couldn't bear to see them wait their turn for the breakfast scene. There were Malta-Vita and Force and Try-a-Bita and Cero-Fruto and Kapl-Flakes and Wheat-Meat, and a lot more; and I signed them all. It was thoughtless of me. I admit that now, but I was a little careless in those days. When our reviser revised the play to get all those breakfast foods in, he shook his head. He said the audience might like it, but he had his doubts about the cast. He said he did not believe any cast on earth could eat thirteen consecutive breakfast foods, and smile the smile that won't. He said it was easy enough for him to write thirteen distinct lyrics about breakfast foods, but that to him it seemed that by the time the chorus had downed breakfast food number twelve, it would be so full of oats, peas, beans, and barley that it couldn't gurgle.
I am sorry to say he was right. We had a pretty tough-stomached troup; and they might have been able to handle the thirteen breakfast foods, especially as most of the foods were already from one-half to three-quarters digested as they were sold, but we had a few other lunchibles in the play already.
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That year the ads. were running principally to automobiles, correspondence schools, and food stuffs; and we had to take in the food stuffs or not sell our space.
As I look back upon it, I cannot blame the cast, although I was angry enough at the time. When a high-bred actress has eaten two kinds of soup, a sugar-cured ham, self-rising flour, air-tight soda crackers, three infant foods, two patent jellies, fifty-seven varieties of pickles, clam chowder, devilled lobster, a salad dressing, and some beef extract, she is not apt to hanker for thirteen varieties of breakfast food. She is more likely to look upon them with cold disdain. Ho matter how good a breakfast food may be by itself and in the morning, it is somewhat unlovely at ten at night after devilled lobster and fifty-seven varieties of pickles. At the sight of it the star, instead of gaily carolling,—
“Joy! joy! isn't it niceTo eat Cook's Flaked Rice,”
is apt to gag. After about six breakfast foods, her epiglottis and thorax will shut up shop and begin to turn wrong side out with a sickly gurgle. The whole company struck. They very sensibly remarked that if the troup had to keep up that sort of thing and eat every new breakfast food that came out, the things needed were not men and women, but a herd of cows. They gave me notice that they one and all intended to leave at the end of the week, and that they positively refused to eat anything whatever on the stage.
I went to Perkins and told him the game was up—that it was good while it lasted, but that it was all over now. I said that the best thing we could do was to sell our lease on the theatre and cancel our ad. contracts.
But not for a moment did my illustrious partner hesitate. The moment I had finished, he slapped me on the shoulder and smiled.
“Great!” he cried, “why not thought of sooner?”
And, in truth, the solution of our difficulty was a master triumph of a master mind. It was simplicity itself. It made our theatre so popular that there were riots every night, so eager were the crowds to get in.
People long to meet celebrities. If they meet an actor, they are happy for days after. And after the theatre people crave something to eat. Perkins merely combined the two. We cut out the eating during the play, and after every performance our actors held a reception on the stage; and the entire audience was invited to step up and be introduced to Bedelia O'Dale and the others, and partake of free refreshments, in the form of sugar-cured ham, beef extract, fifty-seven varieties of pickles, and thirteen kinds of breakfast foods, and other choice viands.