HYMN GOT WOODRUFF ON.
The Future "Brown of Harvard" Landed
His First Engagement by Singing
"Onward, Christian Soldiers."
It was his singing of the hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers" that obtained for Henry Woodruff, the star in "Brown of Harvard," his first engagement. The play was "H.M.S. Pinafore," by a juvenile company; the line, chorus work; and the pay, two dollars a week. This was back in 1879, and Harry was only nine years old at the time.
Just what led up to this decisive step I shall let Woodruff tell for himself in a memorandum he sent me some years ago in response to a request for information in regard to his start behind the footlights. The Park Theater mentioned was in New York, at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-Second Street (where Brooks Brothers now stands), and I saw it destroyed by fire, as did Mrs. Langtry, who was watching from a window of the Albemarle and wondering where she was going to make her American début, for it had been arranged that she should appear at that theater on that very night. Woodruff's memorandum is as follows:
"In 1879 'Baby' was given at the old Park Theater, with Edwin Thorne in the cast. It was preceded by 'Old Love-Letters,' performed by Mrs. Agnes Booth and Joseph Whitney. Doubtless neither the actors nor the audience knew that the night was to prove itself an important one in dramatic history, nor that the words which were spoken and listened to in the careless fashion of every-day life were to inspire a young heart with an ambition as boundless as it was sincere.