Part 55

"What's the matter with the torrent?" called Belasco, while Cigarette and her horse stood on the slope.

"It doesn't look like water at all," said Frohman.

Just then the horse plunged his nose into the torrent and licked it furiously. Criticism was silenced. The play was a big, popular success, and with it Blanche Bates arrived as star.

One day, a year later, Frohman remarked to Potter in Paris, "What do you say to paying Ouida a visit in Florence?"

He and Belasco had paid her considerable royalties. He thought she would be gratified by a friendly call. Frohman and Potter obtained letters of introduction from bankers, consuls, and Florentine notables, and sent them in advance to Ouida. The landlord of the inn gave them a resplendent two-horse carriage, with a liveried coachman and a footman. Frohman objected to the footman as undemocratic. The landlord insisted that it was Florentine etiquette, and shrugged his shoulders when they departed, seeming to think that they were bound on a perilous journey.

Through the perfumed, flower-laden hills they climbed, the Arno gleaming below. The footman took in their cards to the villa of Mlle. de la Ramée. He promptly returned.

"The signora is indisposed," he remarked.

The visitors sent him back to ask if they might come some other day. Again he returned.

"The signora is indisposed," was the only answer he could get.

Potter and Frohman drove away. Frohman was hurt. He did not try to conceal it.

"That's the first author," he said, "who ever turned me down. Anyway, the pancakes at lunch were delicious." He met rebuff--as he met loss--with infinite humor.

* * *

Stars now crowded quick and fast into the Frohman firmament. Next came Virginia Harned. Daniel Frohman had seen her in a traveling company at the Fourteenth Street Theater and engaged her to support E. H. Sothern. She later came under Charles's control, and he presented her as star in "Alice of Old Vincennes," "Iris," and "The Light that Lies in Woman's Eyes."

Effie Shannon and Herbert Kelcey followed. Their first venture with him, "Manon Lescaut," was a direful failure, but it was followed up with "My Lady Dainty," which was a success.

Charles Frohman had various formulas for making stars. Some he discovered outright, others he developed. Here is an example of his Christopher Columbus proclivities:

One day he heard that there was a very brilliant young Hungarian actor playing a small part down at the Irving Place German Theater in New York City. He went to see him, was very much impressed with his ability, sent for him, and said:

"If you will study English I will agree to take care of you on the English-speaking stage."

The man assented, and Frohman paid him a salary all the while he was studying English. Before many years he was a well-known star. His name was Leo Ditrichstein.

Frohman now got Ditrichstein to adapt "Are You a Mason?" from the German, put it on at Wallack's Theater, and it was a huge success. Besides Ditrichstein, this cast, which was a very notable one, included John C. Rice, Thomas W. Wise, May Robson, Arnold Daly, Cecil De Mille, and Sallie Cohen, who had played Topsy in the stranded "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Company, whose advance fortunes Frohman had piloted in his precarious days on the road.

Just as Frohman led the American invasion in England, so did he now bring about the English invasion of America. He had inaugurated it with Olga Nethersole. He now introduced to American theater-goers such artists as Charles Hawtrey, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Charles Warner, Sir Charles Wyndham, Mary Moore, Marie Tempest, and Fay Davis, in whose career he was enormously interested. He starred Miss Davis in a group of plays ranging from "Lady Rose's Daughter" to "The House of Mirth."

In connection with Mrs. Campbell's first tour occurred another one of the famous Frohman examples of quick retort. He was rehearsing this highly temperamental lady, and made a constructive criticism which nettled her very much. She became indignant, called him to the footlights, and said:

"I want you to know that I am an artist?"

Frohman, with solemn face, instantly replied:

"Madam, I will keep your secret."

One of the early English importations revealed Frohman's utterly uncommercialized attitude toward the theater. He was greatly taken with the miracle play "Everyman," and brought over Edith Wynne Mathison and Charles Rann Kennedy to do it. He was unable to get a theater, so he put them in Mendelssohn Hall.

"You'll make no money with them there," said a friend to him.

"I don't expect to make any," replied Frohman, "but I want the American people to see this fine and worthy thing."

The play drew small audiences for some time. Then, becoming the talk of the town, it went on tour and repaid him with a profit on his early loss.