It was during this time I wrote my first play for Sam Harris, then a member of the firm of Sullivan, Harris and Woods, and started a friendship that has lasted ever since. A little later Al Woods sent for me and told me he was leaving the firm and was about to set up for himself. Our interview ended in the drawing of the most remarkable contract ever made between a manager and an author. By its terms Woods was to produce not less than four new plays, and after the first year, four old ones each season for five years. During that time I could not write for any other manager and he could not produce a play written by any other author. During the five years Mr. Woods produced fifty odd plays of mine but we both of us cheated shamefully on the other part of our agreement. We produced a number of plays by the late Theodore Kramer and I sneaked a few over with other popular-priced managers of the day. Woods was, and is, a remarkable man, a great showman and a man of humorous and philosophic nature. His outstanding characteristic is, to me, that if he loves a play he knows how to produce it. If he tries to do a play he doesn’t love he knows nothing about it and cares less. He has but two opinions of a play when he reads it, “Swell” or “It don’t appeal to me,” and when he plays his hunch he’s very apt to succeed. This instinctive feel for values is one of the greatest assets in the equipment of the theatrical manager and Al Woods and William A. Brady have more of it than any other men of my time. It is a pure instinct, quite apart from any critical faculty and is emotional rather than the result of any reasoning. David Belasco, a great showman, always seemed to me to see in a play manuscript the thing it would develop into under his guidance, but Woods and Brady sense an audience’s response to certain sorts of melodramatic situations and when they play their instinct and not their judgment they usually are right. The first play under my contract with Woods was THE CONFESSIONS OF A WIFE, which really wasn’t nearly so dreadful as it sounds. The second was THE GAMBLER OF THE WEST, probably the best popular-priced melodrama produced during these years. Then came CONVICT 999, CHINATOWN CHARLIE and the famous NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL.