THE ROAD TO "HAPPYLAND."
After Becoming Stage-Struck, Marguerite
Clark Began Her Professional Career
as a Singer in a Baltimore Park.
"Stage-struck" is the cause that sent to the boards Marguerite Clark, the little leading woman of the big comedian, De Wolf Hopper. A native of Boston, she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but had no stage acquaintances and no means of securing an opening.
One evening, however, she was singing at a friend's house, when there chanced to be among the guests the manager of an open-air resort in the neighborhood of Baltimore. It was, in brief, one of those parks at the end of a trolley line, which the street railway company promotes in order to boom traffic. Struck by Miss Clark's capabilities, and learning of her histrionic ambitions, he offered her an engagement for the summer, which she was only too glad to accept. In this rather humble way, then, she made her start, singing before such heterogeneous crowds as the trolley emptied into the park from all quarters of the Monumental City.
When frost set in there was, of course, an end to the engagement, but little Miss Clark had no thought of quitting the game. She came on to New York, and began a systematic tour of the agencies and the managers' offices, and finally she landed an engagement with the chorus of Sousa's opera, "The Bride-Elect." From this she passed to the Casino, when Irene Bentley was appearing there in "The Belle of Bohemia." She was now entrusted with her first part, which secured her an opening with Hopper in "Mr. Pickwick." In this she was Sam Weller's sweetheart Polly. One of the critics said of her:
"Marguerite Clark is a most cunning and comely little girl—pretty enough to rave about—and many amusing miles away from the Dickens picture."
"Mr. Pickwick," by the way, will probably turn out to be the last musical play that Charles Klein will write. Since the abounding success of "The Music Master" and "The Lion and the Mouse," the so-called legitimate field will doubtless claim all his time.
To return to Miss Clark, when Hopper revived "Wang," she was cast for Mataya on account of her size, but was so afraid to come into New York with it that for that period she went to Boston and appeared in "The Babes in the Wood."