Charles Frohman: Manager and ManMarcosson, Isaac Frederick
General
Charles Frohman: Manager and Man
Marcosson, Isaac Frederick
Frohman, Charles, 1860-1915; Theater -- United States
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."
[Illustration: _JULIA MARLOWE_]
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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