William Hooker Gillette.
We sometimes speak and often hear of an instantaneous success, but in reality there is no such thing as success or failure being immediate. Every real achievement is the culmination of weeks and months, and even years, of earnest and unremitting toil. The popular actor and well-known author, William Hooker Gillette, furnishes a case in point. The structure of his reputation bids fair to last indefinitely, but it rests on foundations of preparatory work of which the public knows but little. He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, July 24, 1855, being the son of Francis G. (late United States senator from Connecticut), and Elizabeth Daggett (Hooker) Gillette. Graduating from the Hartford high school at the age of twenty, he afterward attended the New York university for two years. From a lad he had given evidence of his love for the stage. While at the university he obtained a minor position in one of the theaters. In 1876, becoming a student in the Boston university, he followed the same plan of studying by day and playing in small parts at night. In this way he made himself thoroughly acquainted with the “business” of the stage, as well as the first principles of acting. Mr. Gillette made his first palpable hit in the title rôle of A Private Secretary by playing a part which required a particular delicacy of treatment.