Part 72

"Of course," said Collier, and that ended it.

The next Saturday when Collier got his pay-envelope he found inside a very charming letter from Frohman, which said:

I'm sorry that I overlooked the expiration of our agreement. I hope that you will find a little increase in your salary satisfactory.

There was an advance of one hundred dollars a week.

Frohman literally loved the word "star," and he delighted in the so-called "all-star casts." He had great respect for the big names of the profession; for those who had achieved success. He liked to do business with them.

In speaking about "all-star casts," he once said to his brother:

"I have to look after so many enterprises that I have no time to conduct a theatrical kindergarten in developing actors or playwrights save where the play of the unknown author or the exceptional talents of the unknown actor or actress appeal to me strongly. There is an element of safety in considering work by experts, because the theaters I represent need quick results."

In reply to the oft-repeated question as to why he took his American stars to London when they could play to larger audiences and make more money at home, he said:

"In the first place, such exchanges constitute the finest medium for the development of actress or actor and the liberalizing of the public. Face to face with an English audience the American actress finds herself confronted by new tastes, new appreciations, new demands. She must meet them all or fail. What does this result in? Versatility, flexibility, and, in the end, a firmer and more comprehensive hold upon her art."

When Frohman was asked to define success in theatrical management he made this answer:

"The terms of success in the theater seem to me to be the co-operating abilities of playwright and actor with the principal burden on the actor. In other words, the play is not altogether 'the thing.' The right player in the right play is the thing."

The shaping of William Gillette's career is a good example of Frohman's definition of a successful theatrical manager, whose best skill and talents are employed largely in the matter of manipulating a hard-minded person to mutual advantage.

The relationship between stars and audiences is of necessity a very close one. The Frohman philosophy, however, was not the generally accepted theory that audiences make stars.

On one of those very rare occasions in his life when he wrote for publication, he made the following illuminating statement:

No star or manager should feel grateful to any audience for the success of a play in which he has figured. A play succeeds because it is a living, vital thing--and that is why it has got upon the stage at all. There is life in it and it does not, and will not, die. It keeps itself alive until the opportunity comes along. Often a kind of instinct makes the opportunity.

It is instinct also that prompts an audience to applaud when it is pleased, laugh when it is amused, weep when it is moved, hiss when it is dissatisfied. No actor should feel indebted to an audience for the recognition of good work, because that same audience that appears to be so friendly, at another time, when one character or play does not please it, will resent both actor and play. This is as it should be. The loyalty of English audiences to their old favorites is fine, but it is bad for the old favorites. It is stagnating.

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 gods and goddesses 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 masses. 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 shillings, 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 attitude about openings was characteristic of his deep and generous philosophy about life. He summed up his whole creed as follows: