Part 27

"This money," said the lawyer, "is to be paid into the court. How about my fee?"

Frohman fumbled in his pocket and produced a ten-cent piece. He handed it to the lawyer, saying: "I will pay you later on. Here is your car-fare. Be sure to get to court before it opens."

Frohman and Dixey left. Frohman was much agitated. They walked around the block several times. When he heard the clock strike ten he said to Dixey:

"Now the lawyer is in the court-room and the matter is being settled." In his expansive relief he said: "I have credit at Browne's Chop House. Let us go over and have breakfast."

At the restaurant they ordered a modest meal. As Frohman looked up from his table he saw a man sitting directly opposite whose face was hid behind a newspaper. In front of him was a pile of wheat-cakes about a foot high.

"Gee whiz!" said Frohman. "I wish I had enough money to buy a stack of wheat-cakes that high."

As he said this to Dixey the man opposite happened to lower his paper and revealed himself to be the lawyer Frohman had just engaged. He was having a breakfast spree himself with the two dollars extracted from his two recent clients.

* * *

Business began to pick up with the new year. The first, and what afterward proved to be the most profitable, clients of the booking-office were the Baldwin and California theaters in San Francisco. They were dominated by Al Hayman, brother of Alf, a man who now came intimately into Charles Frohman's life and remained so until the end. He was a Philadelphian who had conducted various traveling theatrical enterprises in Australia and had met Frohman for the first time in London when the latter went over with the Haverly Mastodons. Hayman admired Frohman very much and soon made him general Eastern representative of all his extensive Pacific coast interests.

Hayman was developing into a magnate of importance. With his assistance Charles was able to book a company all the way from New York to San Francisco. Charles made himself responsible for the time between New York and Kansas City, while Hayman would guarantee the company's time from Kansas City or Omaha to the coast.

Frohman and Randall made a good team, and they soon acquired a chain of more than three hundred theaters, ranging from music-halls in small towns that booked the ten-twenty-thirty-cent dramas up to the palatial houses like Hooley's in Chicago, the Hollis in Boston, and the Baldwin in San Francisco.

It was a happy-go-lucky time. If Frohman had ten dollars in his pocket to spare he considered himself rich. Money then, as always, meant very little to him. It came and went easily.

* * *

While the booking business waxed in volume the production end of the establishment did not fare so well. Charles had this activity of the office as his particular domain, and with the instinct of the plunger now began to put on plays right and left.

Just before the association with Randall, Frohman had become manager of Neil Burgess, the actor, and had booked him for a tour in a play called "Vim." A disagreement followed, and Frohman turned him over to George W. Lederer, who took the play out to the coast.

A year after this episode came the first of the many opportunities for fortune that Charles Frohman turned down in the course of his eventful life. This is the way it happened:

Burgess, who was quite an inventive person, had patented the treadmill mechanism to represent horse-racing on the stage, a device which was afterward used with such great effect in "Ben-Hur." He was so much impressed with it that he had a play written around it called "The County Fair."

Burgess, who liked Frohman immensely, tried to get him to take charge of this piece, but Frohman would not listen to the proposition about the mechanical device. He was unhappy over his experience about "Vim," and whenever Burgess tried to talk "The County Fair" and its machine Frohman would put him off.

Burgess finally went elsewhere, and, as most people know, "The County Fair" almost rivaled "The Old Homestead" in money-making ability. The horse-racing scene became the most-talked-of episode on the stage at the time, and Burgess cleared more than a quarter of a million dollars out of the enterprise. Charles Frohman afterward admitted that his prejudice against Burgess and his machine had cost his office at least one hundred thousand dollars.

* * *

Frohman and Randall now launched an important venture. McKee Rankin, who was one of the best-known players of the time, induced them to become his managers in a piece called "The Golden Giant," by Clay M. Greene. Charles, however, agreed to the proposition on the condition that Rankin would put his wife, Kitty Blanchard, in the cast. They had been estranged, and Frohman, with his natural shrewdness, believed that the stage reunion of Mr. and Mrs. McKee Rankin would be a great drawing-card for the play. Rankin made the arrangements, and the Fifth Avenue Theater was booked for two weeks, commencing Easter Monday, 1886.

The theater was then under the management of John Stetson, of Boston, and both Frohman and Rankin looked forward to doing a great business. In this cast Robert Hilliard, who had been a clever amateur actor in Brooklyn, made his first professional appearance. Charles supervised the rehearsals and had rosy visions of a big success. At four o'clock, however, on the afternoon of the opening night, Charles went to the box-office and discovered the advance sale had been only one hundred dollars.

"I tell you what to do, Randall," quickly thought out Frohman, "if Stetson will stand for it we will paper the house to the doors. We must open to a capacity audience."

When Frohman put the matter before Stetson he said he did not believe in "second-hand reconciliations," but assented to the plan. Frohman gave Randall six hundred seats, and the latter put them into good hands. The première of "The Golden Giant," to all intents and purposes, took place before a crowded and paying house. In reality there was exactly two hundred and eighty-eight dollars in the box-office. Business picked up, however, and the two weeks' engagement proved prosperous. The play failed on the road, however, and the Frohman offices lost over five thousand dollars on the venture. Rankin had agreed to pay Frohman forty per cent. of the losses. That agreement remained in force all his life, for it was never paid.

In Charles's next venture he launched his first star. Curiously enough, the star was Tony Hart, a member of the famous Irish team of Harrigan and Hart, who had delighted the boyhood of Frohman when he used to slip away on Saturday nights and revel in a show.

Tony Hart, during the interim, had separated from Harrigan, and in some way Charles obtained the manuscript of a farce-comedy by William Gill called "A Toy Pistol."

Charles had never lost his admiration for Hart, and when he saw that the leading character had to impersonate an Italian, a young Hebrew, an Irishwoman, and a Chinaman, Frohman said, "Tony Hart was the very person."

Accordingly, he engaged Hart and a company which included J. B. Mackey, F. R. Jackson, T. J. Cronin, D. G. Longworth, Annie Adams, Annie Alliston, Mattie Ferguson, Bertie Amberg, Eva Grenville, Vera Wilson, Minnie Williams, and Lena Merville.