HACKETT'S EARLY DREAM.
It Came True When He Saw His
Name in Letters of Fire in Front
of a Broadway Theater.
The line now appearing on the programs at Fields's Theater, "Mr. Hackett, Sole Lessee and Manager," practically inaugurates in New York the policy that has so long been current in London—that of actor-managership. To be sure, it is not James K. Hackett's present intention to appear himself on the stage at Fields's, but it is not unlikely that before snow flies again he may have another house nearer the Broadway line and which will bear his name, as it is his plan to reserve Fields's for farces like "Mr. Hopkinson" and light musical offerings.
Speaking of his name over a theater recalls a remark he made to me something like half a score of years ago. We had been dining together at the Players and were riding up-town on a Broadway car in the direction of the Broadway Theater, where Hackett was then doing De Neipperg with Kathryn Kidder in "Madame Sans Gêne." The electric sign had recently come into existence, and as we were passing what is now the Princess's, but was then known as "Herrman's," the car was flooded with a glow from the brilliant lettering proclaiming that So-and-So (some star whose name now slips my memory) was appearing there.
Hackett clutched my arm.
"See that!" he exclaimed. "One day you will read my name in similar letters of fire!"
Then he aspired only to stardom, little recking that he was to become a manager as well. But he has a foundation, broad and deep, behind him. His father was the J.H. Hackett whose Falstaff was so inimitable that it came to be associated with him almost in the guise of a Christian name. His mother—and a more devoted parent never lived—was also once on the boards.
James K. was born amid the swirling waters of the St. Lawrence, on Wolfe Island, Ontario, his father being almost seventy at the time.
The late Recorder Hackett, of New York, was a half-brother of the present actor-manager. James has no recollection of his father, as he was scarcely two years old when he died. His mother has been his guardian angel since birth. She brought him up in New York City, with the idea that law should be his life vocation; but from the age of seven, when he recited Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in public, amateur theatricals played a big part in his aspirations. He was in the class of '91 of the College of the City of New York, and when he was about nineteen I remember seeing him at the Berkeley Lyceum, in a representation by the college dramatic club, as "Joseph Pickle, inclined to mischief," in "The Pink Mask."
It was his experience in performances like this that helped him to make his start when he finally decided—as such a throng have done before him—to abandon law in favor of the footlights. He began on March 28, 1892, in Philadelphia, with A.M. Palmer's company, then presenting "The Broken Seal." He had only six lines to speak, but the very next week J.H. Stoddart gave him an opening for something better, as he once gave Mansfield, though under altogether different circumstances.
Mrs. Stoddart died suddenly, and during his absence from the company his part of Jean Torquerie was entrusted to young Hackett, who acquitted himself so well therein that he was enabled to obtain a post with Lotta as her leading man. Lotta's retirement threw him on the market, from which he was removed by no less distinguished a manager than Augustin Daly.
At Daly's then he appeared as Master Wilford in "The Hunchback," with Ada Rehan as Julia, Isabel Irving (whom Hackett has since starred in "The Crisis") as Helen, and Arthur Bourchier (now a leading actor-manager of London, and who created the part Hackett played here in "The Walls of Jericho") as Sir Thomas Clifford.
From Daly's he passed to the road under the management of Arthur Rehan as leading man in successes from Daly's, which led to his becoming a star in the same modest orbit in a repertoire of old-timers such as "Mixed Pickles" (on which his amateur venture, "The Pink Mask," had been based), "The Arabian Nights," and "The Private Secretary."
He was lifted into the prominence imparted by a Broadway run through the agency of "Madame Sans Gêne," in which Dan Frohman saw him, with the result that in November, 1895, he appeared with the old Lyceum stock company as a character next in importance to Herbert Kelcey, then leading man of the troupe. The play was a serious one, "The Home Secretary," by R.C. Carton, who had not then taken such wild farcical flights as "Mr. Hopkinson."
It was just at this time that Mr. Frohman decided to try rather an odd experiment. As had been his custom, E.H. Sothern had opened the autumn season at the Lyceum, and this year with even more than his wonted success, for he had appeared in the first transfer to the stage of "The Prisoner of Zenda." Previous bookings compelled his relegation to the road in the very height of the New York hit, and in mid-winter, after sizing up his new acquisition to the stock forces, Mr. Frohman decided to duplicate the outfittings of "The Prisoner of Zenda" and put it on at the Lyceum with Hackett in the dual part of Rassendyll and the king.
What Kelcey thought of this arrangement has never been made public. But he was temperamentally unsuited to romantic rôles, and did admirable work in the heavier part of Black Michael, with the explanatory line "by special arrangement" beneath his name on the program.
This was Hackett's opportunity, and he availed himself of it to the full, winning the Lyceum clientage for his firm adherents, so that when Kelcey went starring the next autumn with Effie Shannon he stepped into the shoes of the leading man of the house. In the opening bill, "The Courtship of Leonie," he met for the first time the new leading woman, Mary Mannering, who in due course became his wife.
It was two years later that Mr. Frohman launched Hackett as a star in the "Prisoner of Zenda's" sequel, "Rupert of Hentzau," which had no Broadway showing. Its successor, "The Pride of Jennico," made up for this by setting Hackett on a pedestal so firmly rooted in public favor that in a year or so he became his own manager, and his youthful dream was fulfilled.