The manner in which a good story may go wrong merits more extended description. While an extravaganza, yclept "The Babes and the Baron", was in town, I resolved upon a news event so complicated that I wonder now at my temerity in undertaking it. The idea was that some well known doctor should find on his doorstep one morning a young and pretty girl, fashionably dressed and intelligent-looking, but quite unable to recall her name or to give an account of herself. The doctor, naturally enough, would report the affair to the police, who, in turn, would give it to the reporters. These gentlemen, deceived by the fact that no possible advertising could be suspected in the case of a woman who looked untheatrical and who did not even know her own name, were expected to give untold space in the evening papers to the mystery. After the journals in question had been published, the girl was to be identified, so that her name and that of "The Babes and the Baron" might be printed in the morning.
It was necessary that, at this time, the victim should be able to give a good reason for her condition. The reason selected was as follows: During the performance of the extravaganza, some question had arisen as to the young woman's courage or cowardice. To prove the former, she had volunteered to hide in the Eden Musee and to remain all night in the "chamber of horrors." The terrible sights of this place had frightened her into hysteria; the porter, hearing her scream and believing her to be intoxicated, had ejected her; a kindly old gentleman had found her in the street and started to drive her to a hospital, when, becoming alarmed, he had decided instead to place her on the doorstep of a physician's house, ring the bell, and get away.
Anyone will tell you that the first essential to having roast goose for dinner is to get your goose. At least twenty chorus girls must have been interrogated before I found one willing and competent to try the experiment. Mabel Wilbur, afterward prima donna of "The Merry Widow", was chosen, and she spent eleven days being instructed in the symptoms of the mental disease known as asphasia. The officials of the Eden Musee, glad to share the advertising, carefully coached the porter in the story he was to tell. The stage manager of "The Babes and the Baron" was admitted into the secret and a bright journalist was engaged to hover about and superintend affairs. Of course, my appearance in the neighborhood of the sickroom would have been fatal to the "fake."
Miss Wilbur was left on the doctor's doorstep shortly after four o'clock one mild morning. From that time until night the scheme worked like a charm. Miss Wilbur, bravely enduring all sorts of physical and mental tests, passed the scrutiny of a dozen detectives and medical men. After vainly buying a dozen editions of the evening papers in an anxious effort to learn how matters were progressing, I suddenly found the journals filled with the affair. "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab—Pretty Girl Left on Doctor's Doorstep in Dying Condition" and "Police Have New Problem" were headlines that flared across front pages. Up to that point the story had been a huge success. There remained only the matter of identification to connect with the other story, like two ends of a tunnel meeting, and this promised to be a delicate matter. Say "chorus girl" to a newspaper man and he immediately becomes suspicious. Our hardest work was before us.
At nine o'clock the stage manager of "The Babes and the Baron" was sent around to recognize Miss Wilbur. It was he who had challenged her courage, and, alarmed at her failure to report for the performance, he had hastened to pick up the clue given him by the evening papers. Miss Wilbur's identity was established in the presence of a score of reporters and photographers, none of whom seemed to suspect anything. "At the hour of going to press" we all felt certain that we had "pulled off" the biggest theatrical "fake" known to history.
Every paper in town had the story the next morning—but it was the true story. A City News Association man had recognized my bright journalist, at that time passing himself off as a brother of Miss Wilbur, and the net result of our fortnight's toiling and moiling was some six columns of ridicule.
These confessions would be incomplete if I did not admit here and now that this story was the most ill-advised of my career. It brought discomfit and discredit to a dozen persons, it involved an attempt to deceive some of my best friends, and it put me in a bad light at the very time that the approaching premiere of a play from my pen made that most undesirable. A great many city editors have never forgiven me my part in this particular "fake," although the owner of an evening paper wrote me the next day: "I was fooled from first to last. You're a wonder. Congratulations."
Another bad mistake was my story regarding the willingness of the management to pay $50 a week for exceptionally beautiful chorus girls to appear in "Mexicana." The story was printed all over the world, but it caused critics to stamp as ugly one of the most attractive ensembles ever brought to New York. "If any of these girls," said The Sun, "gets $50 a week her employers are entitled to a rebate." I cannot place in the same catalogue Madame Bernhardt's appeal to the French Ambassador at Washington to protest against her exclusion from playhouses controlled by the so-called Theatrical Syndicate. Madame denied this over her own signature, but, from a press agent's point of view, it was an exceedingly creditable falsehood.
It is possible to discuss at endless length the real value of the "fake" and its place in theatrical advertising. Perhaps no one ever went to a theater merely because one of the performers at that theater was supposed to have bathed in milk or to have stopped a runaway horse. On the other hand, I am sure that no one ever went to a theater because he or she had seen the name of the play acted there posted conspicuously on a bill-board. The mission of the bill-board is to call attention to the fact that there is such-and-such an entertainment and that it may be seen at such-and-such a house. There is no question in my mind but that this much is done for a production by "fake" stories concerning it. In rare instances, where the story accentuates the importance of the presentation and its success, or awakens interest in some member of the presenting company, the service performed may be even greater. At all events, the average manager expects this kind of advertising from the publicity promoter to whom he pays a salary, and, naturally, the publicity promotor feels that it is "his not to reason why." The press agent realizes that to any failure on his part will always be attributed the misfortunes of the management with which he is connected. Productions do a good business because they are good productions, and a bad business because they have bad press agents.
Every theatrical newspaper man knows the anecdote of the German cornetist en tour with a minstrel company. The organization was toiling up a steep hill that lay between the railway station and the town. The cornetist was warm and he was tired. "The camel's back" broke when at last he stubbed his toe against a stone. Picking up the obstruction, he threw it as far away as he could. "Ach!" he exclaimed. "Ve got a fine advance agent!"