"If you had your life to live over again would you be a theatrical manager?"
Quick as a flash Frohman replied:
"If I could be surrounded by the same actors and writers who have made me—yes. Otherwise, no."
This feeling led him to say once:
"I believe a manager's success does not come so much from the public as from his players. When they are ready to march with him without regard to results, then he has indeed succeeded. This is my success. My ambition frankly centers in the welfare of the actor. The day's work holds out to me no finer gratification than to see intelligent, earnest, deserving actors go into the fame and fortune of being stars."
Nothing could down his immense pride in his stars. Once he was making his annual visit to England with Dillingham. At that time Olga Nethersole, who had been playing "Carmen," was under his management. She was also on the boat. The passenger-list included many other celebrities, among them Madame Emma Calvé, the opera-singer, who had just made her great success in the opera "Carmen" at the Metropolitan Opera House. Naturally there was some rivalry between the two Carmens.
At the usual ship's concert both Nethersole and Calvé inscribed their names on programs which were auctioned off for the benefit of the disabled sailors' fund. Competition was brisk. The card that Calvé signed fetched nine hundred dollars. When Nethersole's program was put up Frohman led the bidding and drove it up to a thousand dollars, which he paid himself. It was all the money he had with him. Dillingham remonstrated for what seemed a foolish extravagance.
"I wanted my star to get the best of it, and she did," was the reply.
Frohman, as is well known, would never make a contract with his stars. When some one urged him to make written agreements, he said:
"No, I won't do it. I want them to be in a position so that if they ever become dissatisfied they know they are free to leave me."