Channing Pollock

“ That a wounded man's first thought should be to care for the wound is not remarkable, but that his first thought should be of his cigar suggests pluck and intrepidity which the spectators were quick to appreciate. Frequently, however, author and actors experiment for months before finding the thing that makes or mars a desired effect.
The play-goer who believes himself a free agent does not understand the art of the theater. That art being perfect, he restrains his laughter and waits with his applause until the precise moment when the stage director wants him to laugh or applaud. ”

“ One of the first theatrical stories I ever heard concerned a woman who put sand between the pages of her rolled manuscript and found it there still when the piece came back to her. Nowadays, when the demand for material so far exceeds the supply as to have become almost frantic, it is true not only that every play is looked into, but that almost every play is looked into by every manager. Round and round the circle they go, being judged from a hundred viewpoints by a hundred men who know that a lucky strike means a fortune, and who are eager in proportion. ”

“ John Albaugh, Jr., an actor inferior to both of them, felt sure of the inherent goodness of Carlyle, and so made possible the success of a piece that could not have succeeded without universal sympathy for its hero.
Well, we've ridden a long way astride of a hobby. Let's get back, and admit that we like sugar on our strawberries, which is to say art with our nature. For, after all, a generous admixture of skill is required in the expression of instinct, just as the peach-bloomiest complexion, displayed in the high light of the theater, must have rouge upon it to seem what it really is. ”

“ Hotel dining-rooms are deserted, chairs piled upon the tables, and sleepy waiters leaning disconsolately against the walls. Lowered curtains betray the tardiness of the people whose duty it is to open the offices of agents, play-brokers, and managers. Even the theater lobbies are vacant. Ten o'clock brings prosperous-looking men, hustling to and fro; and eleven sees the beginning of the actors' parade. By noon Broadway is a river of humanity, flowing steadily to the sea of Ambition. ”

“ The manager who successfully pilots a stock company through the shoals and shallows of forty weeks must have uncommon perspicacity. Not alone must he secure players who are likely to become popular, but, more important still, he must select plays that will appeal to all of his patrons all of the time. Too much tragedy and he is quite sure to lose the men in his gallery; too much comedy and the girls in the orchestra begin to thin out. ”

“ How gladly Charles Frohman or Henry W. Savage would trade his surfeited first night audience for one of those which requires only an heroic speech to wear out its individual hands in frenzied applause!
They are a queer, child-like lot—the people who compose the clientele of the Murray Hill and the Third Avenue. Intermissions have to be made short for them, because they have not the patience to wait for setting scenery, and he would be an intrepid dramatist who would put sufficient faith in the intensity of a situation to trust to its keeping them quiet in the dark. ”

“ We have absorbed the radiance of May Irwin's good humor, we have felt unbidden the piquancy of Marie Tempest, we have laughed at a look from Bert Williams, and we have been awed when William Gillette, walking on as though there was nothing in the wind, has portentously and with sinister purpose flicked the ashes from the tip of his cigar.
No, friends and fellow dramatic critics, this is not acting. The art and experience of acting may go into it, but acting can not be held to account for what happens before a man begins to act. ”

“ There are many points of similarity between a performance and a painting, which must create an impression without reminding the spectator of the brush-strokes which made that impression possible. The preparation of a play is a succession of details. It is astonishing how small a thing can cause the success or failure, if not of the whole work, at least of an incident or an episode. ”

“ James Forbes has embodied the minds of these girls in his Patricia O'Brien in "The Chorus Lady." What wonder that they try to escape the sordid commonplaces of their poor lives for the glory of the theater, and delight to strut their "brief hour" in a palace, even if that palace be of canvas and scantling? The prospect of diamonds and automobiles cannot exert a stronger appeal to the men and women who dwell in dreary drudgery than does the hope of becoming somebody, of enjoying even a temporary illumination of their obscurity. ”

“ Vaudeville addresses itself to amusement seekers incapable of giving, or unwilling to give, concentrated and continuous attention. This kind of entertainment calls for orderliness of mind no more than does the newspaper headline. There is no sequence of thought to be preserved, no logical procession of ideas to be kept in line; the impression of the moment is sufficient and supreme. Naturally, such a performance is attractive to undisciplined brains, to empty brains, and to lazy brains. You need bring to a vaudeville theater nothing but the price of admission.... ”

“ Then the hundreds of queer-looking signs you have seen through the day suddenly take on light and life; burning blue birds fly "for happiness", glittering chariot-horses race beneath illuminative memoranda of the virtues of table waters, sparkling wine pours itself iridescently into a glowing glass; [Pg 219] millions of little electric jewels flash in the darkness; whole buildings burst into premeditated flame; facades blaze like giant fireworks ignited for a festival; and Broadway becomes in truth The Great White Way. ”

“ If genius is the quality of doing by instinct, without great thought or labor, obeying the commands of a something outside of one's self, Eugene Walter is certainly a genius. If it is, as some philosopher has said, "an infinite capacity for taking pains", he is nothing of the sort. He works by fits and starts, idling unconscionably for months at a time, and then completing a play in a fortnight. ”

“ A dress rehearsal is supposed to be an ordinary performance without an audience. But it isn't. There is no excitement, no enthusiasm, no inspiration. Speeches fall flat, dialogue seems inordinately long and wearisome, bits of "business" that have appeared all right before look wholly different in changed surroundings. The actors, finding themselves for the first time in the setting to be used, are utterly lost. By-play with small articles, rehearsed twenty times, is blundered over when the player finds the "prop" actually in his hands. ”

“ Whatever else happens in the society play, there always is a dance at which the juvenile lovers flirt, and the serious people discuss such tragic things as ruin and sudden death, while an orchestra "off at R." fiddles through "Love's Dream After the Ball." Next to elopements, ruin and sudden death are the chief necessities of the society play. Whenever a gentleman gets on the wrong side of the market, or has the misfortune to possess a wife whose lover is the hero of the piece, instead of the villain, he promptly kills himself. ”

“ The press agent knows that his business is the dissemination of falsehood, and he is proud of it. Go up to any member of the craft you find on Broadway and say to him: "You are a liar!"; you will see a smile of satisfaction spread itself over his happy face, and his horny hand will grasp yours in earnest gratitude. ”

“ The same thing is true of painters and sculptors and novelists—"For," said Walter Bagehot, "we know that authors don't keep tame steam engines to write their books"—and how much more likely is it to be true of the artist who is himself the expression of his art. In the footlight trough of a burlesque theater in the Bowery, invisible to the audience but staring the performers in the face, is the legend: "Smile, ladies, smile!" Yet these ladies, thus, perpetually reminded, never spread the contagion of merriment and good humor for which a Puritan community would have quarantined Blanche Ring. ”

“ The long-haired man behind him whom you notice because of his deep-set eyes, his tapering fingers and his important bearing is not the great genius that you may suppose him, but an ambitious provincial come to town to market his first comedy. Sybilla Grant, whose real name is Carrie O'Brien, and who gets eighteen dollars per week for wearing a five hundred dollar gown conspicuously in the chorus at the Casino, drives to the door of Rector's, while the most prosperous and profitable woman star in America walks quietly down Broadway, a demure little figure in a gray tailor-made gown. ”

“ The producer who "dresses" a stage today buys precisely as though he had a commission to "dress" the home of a wealthy and intelligent client. Under these circumstances, it is particularly fortunate that the comedy of manners and the drama of the drawing room have come to stay. Cultured people are pleasant companions in everyday life, and doubly pleasant when they have been idealized and super-refined for library or theater. We may be glad of the evident fact that plays may [Pg 436] come and plays may go, but the society play goes on forever. ”

“ Regardless of the fact that theatrical companies are made up nowadays almost entirely by the process of sending for the players who are wanted, thousands of men and women in search of work begin their annual promenade late in June. They wait patiently, hour after hour, in outer offices, where the men usually find seats and the women generally stand. The matinee idol who last season nightly shouldered the blame for a great crime in order to shield the brother of the girl he loved, pushes past scores of girls somebody loves in order to be first before the desk of the manager. ”

“ A new play cannot possibly be rehearsed in a week. This is a misfortune to the company, which must develop its best talent in unhackneyed vehicles; a misfortune to the public, which must tire of seeing second-handed comedies and tragedies; and most of all a misfortune to the inner circle of theatrical folk, to whom the stock organization should offer unrivalled opportunities for the quick and inexpensive testing of untried manuscripts. ”

“ So many of the stories invented by theatrical Munchausens possess the qualification first mentioned that it is by no means unusual for the inventor to take the newspaper man into his confidence. Of course, before doing this he wants to feel sure of his newspaper and of his man. Dailies there be that prefer fact to fiction, however prosaic the former; that treat the stage in so dignified a manner that, if the Empire Theater burned to the ground, they probably would print the information under a head reading "The Drama"; that scorn the press agent and have only contempt for his handiwork. ”

“ There are queer little boxes on either side of the stage, which slopes perceptibly and has in its middle a prompter's hood—survival of the days when parts were so long, and so many had to be learned each week, that no actor could be trusted out of sight of the man with the manuscript. The Thalia is a theatrical anachronism, dilapidated, decayed and degraded. ”

“ The ordinary play is notable only for its crudity, its artificiality, its lack of color, and its hopeless failure to rise above the conventional and the commonplace. Dramatists follow each other like sheep, and the smaller the dramatist happens to be the more closely he follows. Thus it is that whenever somebody produces a piece with a situation that creates comment, every second manuscript one reads from that time on contains exactly the same situation. ”

“ Disorder in the pit may not even have been caused by the poorness of a production; persistent enthusiasm on the part of a claque or the appearance of a foreign star often provoke it. I shall never forget how near several patriotic Americans, myself among them, were to provoking a riot against Nat Goodwin at the opening of "The Cowboy and the Lady" in the Duke of York's Theater.
New York, which never commits itself with a "Boo!" or a "Bis!", which never hisses and somewhat rarely applauds, provides the most terrible ordeal in the world for author, actor and manager. ”

“ The populace of The Great White Way is not more sharply individual in its mentality than in its personality. You could not possibly mistake the types that congregate on street corners or shuttle to and fro on business bent. The stoutish, smooth-shaven, commonplace-looking young fellow who passes you with a stride is a well-known dramatic author whose latest play is in its third month at a near-by theater. ”

“ Drama is the Greek word for action, and so, in a play, what the people do is even more important than what they say. Practically every motion made on the stage, except that of walking, comes under the head of what is known technically as "business." Laymen who believe that mummers act on their own initiative, even "making up" lines as they go along, will be surprised to learn that the manuscript of a workmanlike play contains more "business" than dialogue. ”

“ Everyone of us has something of Lizzie Brown in his or her make-up. The same instinct that moves us to marry our daughter to the Prince of This or the Duke of That causes us to remember "East Lynne" when we have forgotten "Hazel Kirke."
Most of us outside the charmed circle have ideas of good society quite as exaggerated as the Biblical idea of Paradise. We may not fancy that fashionables go about with crowns of light and golden harps, but we do insist that on the stage they behave as little as possible like ordinary human beings. ”

“ Then the manager's secretary sends for the fortunate Thespian. This system is undeniably hard, and perhaps unjust to the beginner, but such sentiment as gets into the theater comes in manuscripts, and, in these days of severe critical judgment, the investor in drama has the fullest right to minimize his risk.
Out of every hundred tyros who come to town in search of an engagement ten may secure the coveted prize, and not more than one person out of that ten makes a decent living from his or her adopted profession. It is too much to say that one aspirant in a thousand achieves real success. ”

“ The cigarette is still the hero of the society drama, and it is still true on the stage that the happy conclusion of the love affair between the juvenile and the ingenue usually is coincident with the conclusion of the love affair between the leading man and the leading woman. We begin to have heroes who are not too angelically good, however, and villains who have motives more human than the mere desire to be beastly and draw a hundred and fifty dollars a week for it. ”

“ Matinee idols achieve popularity, not according to their own deserts, but according to the heroism of the folk they impersonate in the course of a season. It might be estimated safely that one opportunity at Sydney Carton, one at Armand Duval, and one at Romeo would establish the least prepossessing of leading men in the marshmallowy affections of the stock company matinee girl. These young women and their neighbors have singularly distorted ideas of good acting, and their partizanship makes them blind to the imperfections of their favorite players. ”