Charles Frohman: Manager and ManMarcosson, Isaac Frederick
General
Charles Frohman: Manager and Man
Marcosson, Isaac Frederick
Frohman, Charles, 1860-1915; Theater -- United States
"You had better hold on the rail and save your strength."
The ship's list became greater; huge waves rolled up, carrying wreckage
and bodies on their crest. Then, with all the terror of destruction
about him, Frohman said to his associates, with the serene smile still
on his face:
"Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life."
Instinctively the four people moved closer together, they joined hands
by a common impulse, and stood awaiting the end.
The ship gave a sudden lurch; once more a mighty green cliff of water
came rushing up, bearing its tide of dead and debris; again Frohman
started to say the speech that was to be his valedictory. He had hardly
repeated the first three words--"Why fear death?"--when the group was
engulfed and all sank beneath the surface of the sea.
No situation of the thousands that he had created in the theater was so
vividly or so unaffectedly dramatic as the great manager's own exit from
the stage of life. Smilingly he had made his way through innumerable
difficulties; smilingly and with the highest heroism he met his fate.
The only survivor of the quartet that stood hand in hand on those
death-cluttered decks was Miss Jolivet, and it was she who told the
story of those last thrilling minutes.
Charles Frohman's body was recovered the next day and brought to
Queenstown. A fortnight later it reached New York. On the casket was the
American flag that the dead man had loved so well. Though princes of
capital, famous playwrights, and international authorities on law and
art went down with him, the loss of Frohman overshadowed all others. In
the eyes of the world, the loss of the _Lusitania_ was the loss of
Charles Frohman.
His noble and eloquent final words, so rich with courageous philosophy,
not only joined the category of the great farewells of all time, but
wherever read or uttered will give humanity a fresher faith with which
to meet the inevitable. In a supreme moment of the most colossal drama
that human passion ever staged, fate literally hurled him into the
universal lime-light to enact a part that gave him an undying glory.
The shyest of men became the world's observed.
The last tribute to Charles Frohman was the most remarkable
demonstration of sorrow in the history of the theater. The one-time
barefoot boy of Sandusky, Ohio, who had projected so many people into
eminence and who had himself hidden behind the rampart of his own
activities, was widely mourned.
The principal funeral services were held at the Temple Emanu-El in New
York. Here gathered a notable assemblage that took reverent toll of all
callings and creeds. It was proud to do honor to the man who had
achieved so much and who had died so heroically.
At the bier Augustus Thomas delivered an eloquent address that fittingly
summed up the life and purpose of the greatest force that the
English-speaking theater has yet known. Among other things he said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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