Charles Frohman: Manager and Man Part 43

_The various expressions of approval and disapproval that come from the spectators at a play are involuntary on the part of the spectators. They are hypnotized by the play and the acting. Who ever, on coming out of the theater after seeing a play that has pleased him, has felt a sense of happiness that his pleasure had also pleased the actor, or the author of the play, or the management of the production? Loyalty, generosity, and encouragement, as applied to audiences, are so many empty words.

Play-goers who apply them to themselves cheat themselves. Miss Maude Adams is the only stage personage within my experience who has a distinct public following, loyal and encouraging to her in whatever she does._

Audiences interested Frohman immensely. He liked to be a part of them.

He had a perfectly definite reason for sitting in the last row of the gallery on the first nights of his productions, which he once explained as follows:

"The best index to the probable career of any play is the back of the head of an auditor who does not know that he is being watched. The play-goer in an orchestra stall is always half-conscious that what he says or does may be observed. But the gallery G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses have never thought of anything except what is happening on the stage. They may yield the time before the rise of the curtain to watching the audience entering the theater, but once the lights are up and the stage is revealed they have no eyes or thoughts for anything except the life unfolded by the actors. These people in the upper part of the theater represent the ma.s.ses. They are worth watching, for they are the people who make stage successes."

Frohman had his own theories about audiences, too. Concerning them he declared:

"An American at the theater feels first and thinks afterward. A European at a play thinks first and feels afterward. In conversation a German discusses things sitting down; a Frenchman talks standing up. But the American discusses things walking about. Therefore each must have his play built accordingly."

Once Frohman made this discriminating difference between English and American audiences:

"In England the pit and the gallery of the audience come to the theater, turn in their hard-earned s.h.i.+llings, and demand much. Failing to get what they expect, the theater is filled with boos and cat-calls at the end of the play. This does not mean that the play has failed. It more nearly means that the less a man pays to get into a theater the more he demands of the play.

"An American audience is different, because it has a fine sense of humor. When an American pays his money through the box-office window he feels that it is gone forever. Anything he receives after that--the lights, the pictures on the walls, the music of the orchestra, the sight of a few or many smiling faces--is so much to the good. So keen is the American play-goer's sense of humor that often when a play is wretchedly bad it comes to the rescue, and the applause is terrifically loud. This does not mean that the play has succeeded. It means rather that the play will die, a victim of the deadliest of all possible criticisms--ridicule."

Nor was Frohman often deceived about a first-night verdict. He always said, "Wait for the box-office statement on the second night."

One of his characteristic epigrammatic statements about the failure of plays was this:

"In America the question with a failure is, 'How soon can we get it off the stage?' In London they say, 'How long will the play run even though it is a failure?'"

Indeed, Frohman's whole att.i.tude about openings was characteristic of his deep and generous philosophy about life. He summed up his whole creed as follows:

"A producer of plays, a.s.suming that he is a man of experience, never feels comfortable after a great reception has been given his play on a first night. He knows that the reception in the theater does not always correspond to the feelings of future audiences. Every thinking manager knows that his play, in order to succeed, must send its audience away possessed of some distinct feeling. A successful play is a play that _reflects_, whatever the feeling it reflects.

"The great successes of the stage are plays that are played outside of the theater: over the breakfast-table; in a man's office; to his business a.s.sociates; in a club, as one member tells the thrilling story of the previous night's experience to another. Great successes upon the stage are plays of such a sort that one audience can play them over to another prospective audience, and so make an endless chain of attendance at the theater.

"I have never in all my experience felt a success on the opening night.

I have only felt my failures.

"I invariably leave the theater after a first-night performance knowing full well that neither my friends nor I know anything at all as to the ultimate fortune of the play we have seen."

It is a matter of record that Frohman always viewed his first nights with great nervousness. Although he attached but little importance, save on very rare occasions, to tumultuous applause on first nights, he was sometimes deceived by the reception that was given his productions.

He never tired of telling of one experience. He had left the theater on the first night, as he expressed it, "with the other mourners." He returned to his office immediately to cast a new play for the company.

Yet he lived to see this play run successfully for a whole season. This led him to say:

"There's nothing more deluding to the player and the manager than enthusiastic applause. The fine, inspired work of a star actor often makes an audience enthusiastic to such a boisterous extent that one forgets that it is an individual and not the play that has succeeded."

Here, as elsewhere in the Frohman outlook on life and work, one finds clear-headed logic and reason behind the bubbling optimism.

XV

PLAYS AND PLAYERS

One day not long before he sailed on the voyage that was to take him to his death, Charles was talking with a celebrated English playwright in his office at the Empire Theater. The conversation suddenly turned to a discussion of life achievement.

"What do you consider the biggest thing that you have done?" asked the visitor.

Frohman rose and pointed with his stick at the rows of book-shelves about him that held the bound copies of the plays he had produced. Then he said with a smile:

"That is what I have done. Don't you think it is a pretty good life's work?"

He was not overstepping the mark when he pointed with pride at that army of plays. This list is the greatest monument, perhaps, to his boundless ambition and energy, for it contains the four hundred original productions he made in America, besides the one hundred and twenty-five plays he put on in London. That Charles should have produced so many plays is not surprising. He adored the theater; it was his very being.

To him, in truth, all the world was a stage.

Everything that he saw as he walked the streets or rode in a cab or viewed from a railway train he re-visualized and considered in the terms of the playhouse. If he saw an impressive bit of scenery he would say, "Wouldn't that make a fine background?" If he heard certain murmurs in the country or the tumult of a crowd on the highway, he instinctively said, "How fine it would be to reproduce that sound."

He only read books with a view of their adaptability to plays. Where other men found diversion and recreation in golfing, motoring, or walking, Charles sought entertainment in reading ma.n.u.scripts. He was never without a play; when he traveled he carried dozens.

In the matter of plays Frohman had what was little less than a contempt for the avowedly academic. He refused to be drawn into discussions of the so-called "high brow" drama. When some one asked him to name the greatest of English dramatists he replied, quick as a flash:

"The one who writes the last great play."

"Whom do you consider the greatest American dramatist?" was the question once put to him. His smiling answer was:

"The one whose play the greatest number of good Americans go to see."

On this same occasion he was asked, "What seat in the theater do you consider the best to view a drama or a musical comedy from?"

"The paid one," he retorted.

Back in Charles's mind was a definite and well-ordered policy about plays. His first production on any stage was a melodrama, and, though in later years he ran the whole range from grave to gay, he was always true to his first love. This is one reason why Sardou's "Diplomacy" was, in many respects, his ideal of a play. It has thrills, suspense, love interests, and emotion. He revived it again and again, and it never failed to give him a certain pleasure.

Once in London Frohman unbosomed himself about play requirements, and this is what he said:

"I start out by asking certain requirements of every piece. If it be a drama, it must have healthfulness and comedy as well as seriousness. We are a young people, but only in the sense of healthy-mindedness. There is no real taste among us for the erotic or the decadent. It is foreign to us because, as a people, we have not felt the corroding touch of decadence. Nor is life here all drab. Hence I expect lights as well as shadows in every play I accept.

"Naturally, I am also influenced by the fitness of the chief parts for my chief stars, but I often purchase the ma.n.u.script at once on learning its central idea. I commissioned Clyde Fitch and Cosmo Gordon-Lennox to go to work on 'Her Sister' after half an hour's account of the main idea. Ethel Barrymore's work in that play is the best instance that I can give of the artistic growth of that actress. The particular skill she had obtained--and this is the test of an actress worth remembering--is the art of acting scenes essentially melodramatic in an unmelodramatic manner. After all, what is melodrama? Life itself is melodrama, and life put upon the stage only seems untrue when it is acted melodramatically--that is, unnaturally."

The foremost quality that Frohman sought in his plays was human interest. His appraisal of a dramatic product was often influenced by his love for a single character or for certain sentimental or emotional speeches. He would almost invariably discuss these plays with his intimates. Often he would act out the whole piece in a vivid and graphic manner and enlarge upon the situations that appealed to his special interest.

Plays thus described by him were found to be extremely entertaining and diverting to his friends, but when presented on the stage to a dispa.s.sionate audience they did not always fare so well. A notable example was "The Hyphen." The big, patriotic speech of the old German-American in the third act made an immense impression on Frohman when he read the play. It led him to produce the piece in record time.

He recited it to every caller; he almost lost sight of the rest of the play in his admiration for the central effort. But the audience and the critics only saw this speech as part of a long play.

What Charles lacked in his study of plays in ma.n.u.script was the a.n.a.lytical quality. He could feel that certain scenes and speeches would have an emotional appeal, but he could not probe down beneath the surface for the why and the wherefore. For a.n.a.lysis, as for details, he had scant time. He accepted plays mainly for their general effect.

He was very susceptible to any charm that a play held out. If he found the characters sympathetic, attractive, and lovable, that would outweigh any objections made on technical grounds. When once he determined to produce a play, only a miracle could prevent him. The more his a.s.sociates argued to the contrary, the more dogged he became. He had superb confidence in his judgment; yet he invariably accepted failure with serenity and good spirit. He always a.s.sumed the responsibility. He listened sometimes to suggestions, but his views were seldom colored by them.

His a.s.sociation with men like J. M. Barrie, Haddon Chambers, Paul Potter, William Gillette, Arthur Wing Pinero, and Augustus Thomas gave him a loftier insight into the workings of the drama. He was quick to absorb ideas, and he had a strong and retentive memory for details.

Frohman loved to present farce. He enjoyed this type of play himself because it appealed to his immense sense of humor. He delighted in rehearsing the many complications and entanglements which arise in such plays. The enthusiasm with which French audiences greeted their native plays often misled him. He felt that American theater-goers would be equally uproarious. But often they failed him.