Part 83

"Ah, Mr. Hopkins, I can't say that I remember your name or your face, but your manner is familiar."

* * *

When Edna May married Oscar Lewisohn she gave a reception on her return from the honeymoon. She sent Charles one of the conventional engraved cards that read:

"At home Thursday from four to six."

Frohman immediately sent back the card, on which he had written, "So am I."

* * *

Once when Frohman and Dillingham were crossing to Europe on the Oceanic they had as fellow-passenger a mutual friend, Henry Dazian, the theatrical costumer, on whom Charles delighted to play pranks. On the first day out Dillingham came rushing back to Frohman with this exclamation:

"There are a couple of card-sharks on board and Dazian is playing with them. Don't you think we had better warn him?"

"No," replied Frohman. "Warn the sharks."

* * *

Some years ago Frohman sent a young actor named John Brennan out on the road in the South in "Too Much Johnson." Brennan was a Southerner, and he believed that he could do a big business in his home country. Frohman then went to London, and, when playing hearts at the Savoy one night with Dillingham, a page brought a cablegram. It was from Brennan, saying:

Unless I get two hundred dollars by next Saturday night I can't close.

Whereupon Frohman wired him:

Keep going.

Frohman delighted to play jokes on his close friends. In 1900, Dillingham opened the New Jersey Academy of Music with Julia Marlowe, and it was a big event. This was before the day of the tubes under the Hudson connecting New Jersey and New York. When Dillingham went down to the ferry to cross over for the opening night he found a basket of flowers from Frohman marked, "Bon voyage."

* * *

Nor could Frohman be lacking in the graceful reply. During a return engagement of "The Man from Mexico," in the Garrick Theater, William Collier became very ill with erysipelas and had to go to a hospital. The day the engagement was resumed happened to be Frohman's birthday, and Collier sent him the following cablegram:

Many happy returns from all your box offices.

He received the following answer from Frohman:

My happiest return is your return to the Garrick.

Behind all of Frohman's jest and humor was a serious outlook on life. It was mixed with big philosophy, too, as this incident will show:

He was visiting Sir George Alexander at his country house in Kent. Alexander, who is a great dog fancier, asked Frohman to accompany him while he chained up his animals. Frohman watched the performance with great interest. Then he turned to the actor-manager and said:

"I have got a lot of dogs out at my country place in America, but I never tie them up."

"Why?" asked Alexander.

"Let other people tie up the dogs. You let them out and they will always like you."

* * *

Frohman was known to his friends as a master of epigram. Some of his distinctive sayings are these:

"The best seat at a theater is the paid one."