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Chapter LXXIX
I "COME BACK"

Tyler's telegram contained an offer to play Fagin in an all-star production of "Oliver Twist" to be produced in February, 1912, on the occasion of the Dickens' centenary celebration. It had been a long time, the longest time in my entire stage career, that I had been without a successful characterization in New York – and the thought of giving my interpretation of the famous Jew appealed to me. I accepted.

The production was very good. The company was quite capable. Associated with me were Constance Collier, Lyn Harding, Marie Doro and other equally well-known and finished artists. Fuller Mellish's performance of Mr. Grimwig was one of the most delightful bits of character acting I ever saw.

We opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre to a capacity audience and tremendous business was the rule during the entire engagement. It was a fine playhouse in which to stage such a pretentious production as Tyler had given the play. There is little doubt that "Oliver Twist" might have remained at the New Amsterdam almost indefinitely had it not been that other, earlier bookings compelled us to move out. The demand for seats was so great, however, that Charles Frohman welcomed us at the Empire Theatre where, much to my surprise (for it is altogether too small and "intimate" a place for such a production as this), it continued to "turn 'em away."

The critics were all very enthusiastic. It amused me not a little to detect in several of the reviews expressions of surprise that I was able to portray Fagin to the reviewer's satisfaction. Of course I knew all along that the Rialto and Park Row were a unit in declaring that I could never "come back." I think perhaps the simple fact that I made Fagin a humorous old codger instead of the sinister object our very best tragedians have always painted him may account for the laudatory notices my work received.

But there can't be any question about Fagin. He was a comedian – positively! Think of his telling Charlie Bates he would give "dear little Oliver a treat" – by letting him sleep in that awful, awful bed of his! Oh yes, Fagin never stopped having silent laughs. And I liked him for it.

While we were playing to packed houses at every performance at the Empire Tyler sailed for Europe assuring us he would send us out on tour after the Empire Theatre engagement. He said we were to go to the Coast and continue the tour throughout the following season. As a result I turned down a very flattering offer to appear in New York that fall. Had he not failed to keep his promise I should have been spared a year of physical suffering!

But he did break his promise. A week after the Titanic disaster we received notice that the season was at an end so far as "Oliver Twist" was concerned.

And now, having "come back" I foolishly determined to go back – and I started for California once more. I've always thought Greeley's advice should have read, "Go West, old man!"

Chapter LXXX
I "GO BACK"

The summer of 1912 proved very eventful!

Closing the "Oliver Twist" season early in May I headed for California to superintend the development of my ranch at San Jacinto. Immediately on my arrival I began the laying out and planting of a hundred acres of oranges, lemons and grape fruit. It proved most fascinating work.

During the three months I put in at the ranch I lived in a big tent with a party of friends including Miss Moreland and her married sister. I was up with the birds and in bed by 9 o'clock every night. Employing as I was twenty men and ten six-horse teams, ten four-horse and three ten-horse, my job of supervision was necessarily a big one. I would go from one gang to another climbing hills which in a few days would be levelled! Oh it was big work – adjusting the miles of pipe lines and cement flumes which we manufactured ourselves during the process of grading, preparing the holes to receive the trees which were being prepared and nourished at the nursery of a Mr. Wilson of Hemet, two miles away, seeing that the hot ground was properly cooled by the water I had developed from a concealed spring in the mountains and doing the thousand and one other things necessary to insure the successful development of an orange grove.

I had previously given the work a great deal of thought and study. It requires a great deal. The average orange grower neglects the study of the planting and rearing of the trees and the result is more often failure than success. An orange tree will not nourish alone and neglected any more than a baby and it is in its early life, like the infant, that it must be watched. The young tree should first be carefully examined as to its vigor and stamina; next its foundation or roots must be well looked after and handled tenderly in its uprooting in the nursery; extreme care expressed in the removal and transplanting. It should be transported, if the weather be hot, during the early morning hours, packed in manure, well watered and the roots covered by canvas or burlap. The holes should be kept moist all the previous evening to cool the earth and in the planting all the roots should be carefully separated and spread out. Directly a row is planted it should be deluged with water for six to eight hours or longer. Once a week for ten years the ground should be cultivated and disturbed and every year, unless the soil is very rich, the trees should be fertilized. An orchard should be gone over at least every other day for three years when by that time it can take care of itself with a little attention and be made a most profitable investment. But it won't thrive on its own and you can't run an orange grove living three thousand miles away nor intrust it to the management of the average care taker. Go to it personally and it will prove a winner with a chance of clearing one thousand dollars an acre annually.

Faith is the harbor of the unwary into which the ship of ignorance tranquilly sails.

Chapter LXXXI
DAVID BELASCO

What an intellectual giant is David Belasco! The most conspicuous man associated with the American stage to-day. His accomplishments have been colossal. Even Irving, Pouissard, Charles Keane and many other artists of their day, who have devoted their lives to Art, bow in obeisance to the modern David.

Think what this gentleman has accomplished! He has given to the world David Warfield and made him a master; Blanche Bates, Mrs. Carter and many others of equal talent. Produced plays that will go down in history among the classics; modernized stagecraft to the extent that one never realizes they are in a theatre when privileged to witness one of the Belasco productions. Yet, with all his wondrous powers and attainments, he is never in evidence, only his handiwork. He has built the only playhouse worthy the name in America. It suggests the old Irving Lyceum in London, and one approaches the portals of the Belasco Theatre with awe and reverence.

I have known him for over thirty years, and he is as modest as he is clever: every angle of our Art at his finger tips. A gentleman, scholar and Artist! A Man, is David Belasco, Dean of the American Drama.

Chapter LXXXII
"AUTHOR – AUTHOR"

Not so long ago I was present at the first performance of a play, and during its presentation I was shocked beyond my power to describe by an incident at the same time disgusting and inconceivably vulgar. The play itself – a wearisome thing – was crude and altogether impossible.

At the end of the second act, a half dozen paid ushers applauded valiantly. Before they could become wearied by their difficult task, a huge, bulky man appeared before the curtain. He ambled slowly to the center of the stage where he stood still for perhaps fifteen seconds as if to enable the audience to contemplate him in repose.

Then this individual shifted his weight from one leg to the other, still keeping silent. There he stood, a sneer distorting his features, poised on one leg, the left foot pointing toward the right. He wore an ill-fitting evening suit with an abundance of shirt front, very much mussed, protruding from the confines of the waistcoat. His face, unwashed, suggested a cross between a Bill Sykes and a Caliban. Oblique, thin slits concealed a pair of green-white eyes. A strong, wide jaw that opened and shut like the snap of an alligator's was tilted forward and upward at the puzzled spectators.

Finally the person, the author of the drivel we had patiently listened to, leaned over the footlights and casting a look toward the woman for whom he had deserted home, wife and children, literally snarled at the audience.

"I wrote this play for the elect," he declared ferociously.

A perceptible shudder ran through the house. Many men and women rose from their seats and left the theatre, refusing to remain to hear the incoherent and egotistical remarks of this revolting person.

I have known this brute for twenty years, and in all that time I have never heard one human being speak anything except ill of him. Managers avoid him. Artists loathe him. Authors despise him. A moral and physical coward, this man without a friend, wanders from East to West, vulgarly attempting to foist upon a long-suffering and all-too-easily deceived public, the woman whose chief claim to public notice is the fact that she was named as co-respondent in the divorce action obtained by his wife.

He continues to write plays of the underworld with inspirations obtained in the sewers of humanity and founded on ideas purloined from departed authors or stolen from the living too weak to protect themselves.

His blustering, bullying tactics have enabled him to push his way upwards to some success – but no one envies him. All who know him "have his number."

I have often wondered how he has escaped bodily injury. No woman is safe from his insults. I know one young woman who went to him in search of an engagement. His first question was so dastardly as to cause her to burst into tears, and she ran from his presence in hysterics. When this young woman's uncle learned of it he loaded a revolver and started on this playwright's track. But the tears and entreaties of his wife and his niece stopped him.

Will the world ever be rid of this form of human parasite?

I wonder.

The antithesis of this person is another author equally despised. He is a little, pale person who writes problem plays and has met with much success. He never drinks or smokes. In fact he poses as a paragon of all the virtues.

He once wrote me an insulting letter accusing me of uttering profane remarks concerning a certain business transaction between us. I never answered it, but have it in my possession. It may prove useful some day.

This beauty, who also has a wife and children, came West some few years ago accompanied by a woman whom he introduced to many persons as his wife. I knew she was not, but kept my counsel. One day we were discussing a play which he had promised to write for me. I asked him why he did not divorce his wife or insist on her divorcing him. He blandly replied: "Great Scott, I've tried everything to induce her to do so, but she doesn't believe in divorce. Besides, she is a Christian."

Fancy this pious little man saying this.

He goes merrily on his way, living a dual life – the woman of his easy choice provided for far better than his wife and children. And he writes plays dealing with moral problems! He receives very large royalties and basks in the sunshine of his own hypocrisy.

And this individual has had the audacity to criticise my actions and elect himself the censor of my various attitudes.

Well, let him. I would not exchange my conscience for his for all his affluence. And yet, from his point of view, he is right. The world applauds his plays. No one seems to interfere with his private affairs. He is received by all his fellow club members with impersonal respect. The wide white way is always open to him and the woman. There no one ever pushes them aside. The legal wife and children are unknown to cruel, gay Broadway. The narrow paths of the meadows and lanes of the suburban retreat in which this successful author has his family housed are their only byways. Through them they slowly tread – to the little church and beyond it to the graveyard, towards which the wife and mother ever sets her gaze – as if in prayerful hope.

And the author of successful plays is content.

He knows his wife is a Christian.

What is he?

I wonder.

I would rather sell fresh eggs from the end of my private car in one-night stands – than barter impure ones on the stage of a leading New York playhouse.

An agnostic objects to salaries for draped preachers and to temples whose roofs prohibit thought from permeating the realm of inspiration.

Fact is the whiplash that scourges faith.

Chapter LXXXIII
MUSHROOM MANAGERS

The past year has been an appalling one for the mushroom producing manager. I mean those insolent young men nearing the thirties, who by accident or some unknown reason secure control of musical comedies written by some obscure author and after interesting friends to the extent of investing capital enough to enable them to produce the aforesaid comedies, they launch their productions and sometimes get them over.

They look about for the best available talent, establish salaries that make it prohibitive for legitimate producers to sustain, and calmly go on their way. If they fail they can assign the production to the storehouse and leave their artists in any town or city where they come a cropper. If they succeed with their first venture they at once organize two or three road companies and go through the country circusing their first accidental success. They establish themselves in expensive offices; engage a staff and go at once into the producing game seriously, seeking the best authors and composers and outbidding managers of standing, and endeavor to secure prevailing European successes, or produce original plays of their own. Naturally, their lack of training and experience is a handicap and their first success is seldom followed by another. Two or three successive failures soon put them on the shelf and they seek the Bankruptcy Court to avoid their creditors. Artists are left stranded with an inflated idea of their respective values and generally indulge in a well merited vacation.

They have no sense of honor and their idea of speculation is to invest a shoe string with an idea of securing a tannery.

One of these producers was standing in the lobby of a New York theatre, last season, on the eve of one of his $30,000.00 productions, when he was approached by one of the leading actors of the past winter, to whom he owed several thousand dollars back salary. The actor offered to compromise for a thousand. The manager looked at him and replied: "My boy, where could I get the thousand?" These are the methods that are destroying the theatrical game.

Irresponsible managers have only to enter the office of these syndicates, assure the gentleman in charge that they have a production ready costing many thousands of dollars, and the booking agent at once arranges a tour, throwing aside standard attractions who have not invested quite as much money as the new producer, and the older attraction must take what is given him or leave it alone. If he objects, he is told that the Mushroom Manager has invested from $20,000 to $50,000 in his enterprise and his capital must be protected and the terms made accordingly. In other words, the booking agents gamble with them and allow them a percentage of the gross receipts according to the amount of his investment. I consider this all wrong and one of the reasons of the unsuccessful theatres of the present day.

Men who have judgment and talent should be protected. If they draw the money, what matter to the booking agent what amount of money has been invested?

Three or four of these Mushroom Managers have gone into bankruptcy this season and they can be found every evening at present, tangoing on the various roof gardens, where they belong.

There is no denying the fact that as a nation we prate about patriotism that does not exist. Every foreign artist who visits our shores finds us ready to bow down and pay homage, be it the Mistress of a dethroned king, a bare-legged Countess or an anemic tragedian. I have no desire to be personal; but the adulation, attention and grovelling at the feet of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson is to me, as an American actor, simply disgusting; not that Sir John is not a good actor, or even a great actor, but I have memories of a departed actor named Edwin Booth, who lost a million dollars in an honest endeavor to perpetuate his art by erecting a playhouse which bore his name. Now, this foreigner who has done absolutely nothing to advance the art of acting, advertises his farewell to a public who are as fickle as they are undiscriminating and packs the theatres, giving his last performance in New York to receipts that dear Edwin Booth never dreamed of playing to; conspicuous citizens pay him tribute, and go forth proclaiming his performance of Hamlet superior to that of Booth. How we Americans forget and fawn. One of our best known and oldest comedians at present appearing before the public, had the extreme bad taste after witnessing the performance of Robertson's Hamlet, to enter the Players Club, which Edwin Booth presented to the profession, and pronounce Robertson's Hamlet superior to Booth's. As a boy I had the pleasure of witnessing Booth play Hamlet; I saw a prince to his finger tips looking the character of a philosopher of thirty, and playing it to perfection. Now an anemic old gentleman past sixty, with a supporting company of which Corse Payton would be ashamed, is packing the playhouses of America, bidding farewell to a public that has long since forgotten Edwin Booth and his supporting company, which included such actors as Edwin Adams, John McCullough, Milnes Levick and divers others of equal talents. One never heard of E. L. Davenport's farewell nor Edwin Forrest's, another actor who left a home for actors incapacitated for work; they are in the grave, forgotten. Actors are walking Broadway seeking employment, others are travelling seeking to earn a livelihood, while an anemic old gentleman is calmly gathering in the American dollars to build his English palace.

How unfortunate to grow up with one's Country! Far better to burst suddenly upon it – unknown – but heralded!

One failure in America will blot out the memory of a score of successes. Here art is sold by the yard.

To realize the unimportance of art, read the average critical review of it.

Acting is now a matter of geography.

America is the English actor's Mecca; England is our cemetery.

Chapter LXXXIV
"KEEP OFF THE GRASS"

I wonder if the average American citizen, particularly that type of long-haired reformer whom the middle west sends to Southern California, ever stops to seek the reason for the annual exodus abroad of so many of us. In these annual trips to Europe we leave millions of dollars earned in this country to add to the coffers of those who understand the broad principles and liberal ideas of government.

It is for freedom! Free thought! Free inclinations! Free expenditures! Masters of themselves, they go where they please, eat and drink what they desire at any hour, time and place. There they are not subservient to the prying eyes of long-haired men and short-haired women. There they find a patch of green for rest and recreation without a sign reading "Keep off the Grass."

The majority of the law-makers of our supposedly free country are not legislators. They are either school-teachers or policemen or hypocritical saints who eat cold food on Sunday and prate from their platform of platitudes their plenary inspirations with a desire that all mankind do likewise. If you fail to live up to their doctrines you are a heretic. If you desire to live among them with free instincts you write yourself down an anchorite. Personally, I would rather be a Hyperborean and subsist on icicles than be compelled to live subject to the insular municipal laws of this boasted free country. Were I personally denied the opportunity of visiting the various capitals of Europe at intervals and watching and enjoying results of modern civilization and really free government, I might be converted and agree with some of the ignorant and incompetent law-makers of our so-called free country.

Come, oh, come with me, some of you moralists who consider it a crime to take a cocktail on the Sabbath, and visit Berlin, the best governed city in the world, where life begins at midnight and continues for twenty-four hours. Then let us on to Paris and Vienna and St. Petersburg, with a stop at Rome. Gaze upon the many happy faces, a large per cent truant, free American citizens enjoying themselves like school children at recess, finding a respite from the puritanical laws of their own country. No arbitrary ordinances forbid their ordering wine, visiting the race courses, playing at baccarat, spending an evening at the opera, and there are no policemen to tell them "Keep off the grass."

And all this enjoyment on the Lord's Day! Fancy! How horrible! What blasphemy! Truly shocking! It is enough to make John Calvin ask his neighbor to turn over.

Does it ever occur to these psalm singers that people do this of their own volition? There are as many Cathedrals as there are restaurants, but there is no law that compels you to patronize either.

We are denied the sport of Kings – horse racing. In England racing is upheld by royalty and the House of Lords. Here it is decried by disloyalty and a house of cards.

It would be amusing to the native American who has travelled throughout the world and watched the growth of really free and sensible governments, were it not so humiliating, to regard this wave of morality that is sweeping the country like a forest fire.

That bewhiskered gentleman in New York, who wielded his scepter of cant from the governor's chair, confessed he had never attended a theatre or seen a horse race. I can well believe it. I presume when he was at college the pantry attracted him more than the foot ball field. He chooses to disfigure his face with a square cut beard. Therefore from his point of view barbers are unnecessary! Why didn't he shut up all the barber shops and revoke the Gillette Safety Razor patent? He has just as much authority, morally, to shut up all the restaurants and bars because he never tasted wine. A good tonsorial spree and a cocktail would benefit this disciple of John Knox, I am sure.

Fancy an ordinance in this free country forbidding wine at restaurants on Sundays unless a meal is ordered and that hot! Can you imagine anything more ludicrous than these psalm singers making arbitrary laws about the temperature of our food? No prize fights are allowed nor even pictures of the manly art of self-defense to be shown. What a rebuke to American manhood! What a future for our sons to contemplate!

Boys in time to come will settle their disputes crocheting and knitting instead of in a good stand up fight as in the days of old.

You won't take your son to witness the pictures of the Jeffries-Johnson fight, but you will accompany your daughter to view an amorous picture.

Gambling of every description is debarred and all the public parks feature "Keep off the Grass!" No wonder we are known as a nation of travellers. How different it is abroad. Frenchmen never leave France, Germans, Germany and the average Londoner seldom gets beyond the sound of Bow Bells. Yet true born Americans will go anywhere to escape the thraldom of the insular laws of this supposedly free country, only returning to gather enough shekels to enable them to buy more freedom.

I learn from a banker of Los Angeles that more than $700,000 was drawn from the city banks one summer in cheques and letters of credit on European houses. Imagine anyone leaving the gorgeous city of Los Angeles. And yet there is a reason – less climate, more freedom.

I predict ere long if the present conditions continue everyone who can afford it and who has red corpuscles flowing through his veins will spend his holidays abroad. Ten times $700,000 will be drawn from the banks of Los Angeles annually unless some live one is put at the helm of that grand ship – Los Angeles.

Contrast the seaside resorts of Ostend, Aix-les-Bains, Trouville and Dieppe with our Coney Island, Atlantic City and Ocean Park, California. At Ocean Park we have the same sunshine and sea as the Mediterranean, with a few mountains thrown in. God gave us the best of it – man the worst.

At the seashore in foreign countries are beautiful hotels, delightful promenades and a Casino where one is allowed to gamble. Fancy gambling by the sea and the government permitting it! And why not? Part of the revenue goes toward maintaining its charities and churches. The government realizes it is the duty of every municipality to enhance its treasury for the benefit of its institutions and the poor. Ten per cent of the revenues of the race tracks in France the government confiscates – and quite right. I would rather contribute to the church from my winnings, racing, than pay a like amount into the poor box listening to a stupid sermon in a poorly ventilated church.

One can be ten times more devout paying admission into Heaven with another fellow's money!

These far sighted foreigners have taken advantage of our insular laws with the result that they have attracted the rich of the universe who desire to spend their money as they wish. They prefer Casinos to shacks – people to peanuts.

Here are we in beautiful Los Angeles with laws as arbitrary as Salem a hundred years ago. No wines are served on the Sabbath; a race course is going to decay; wantons and women of the street are compelled to move on. In all the European cities the poor wanderers are protected by the laws and placed within the jurisdiction of the medical fraternity and housed instead of hounded. Necessary evils must be protected for the sake of humanity.

If we would only open the flood-gates of progress, batter down the doors of dogmatism, take off the lid that suffocates the rich and strangle the cant and hypocrisy of these modern reformers – the Magdalenes would have shelter; race tracks would be permitted to give enjoyment to those who appreciate the sport of Kings; prohibition would cease to make drunkards; freedom would run amuck; turnpikes would be established from coast to coast; the incense of orange blossoms would permeate to the Atlantic – and California become the rendezvous of the world.

A hypocrite is one who emerges from his own shadow and apologizes to the sun for asking it to shine.

Idle gossip is a busy bee.

The astronomers who almost opened the gate of heaven crucified the souls of those who held tickets of admission.