He was very susceptible to any charm that a play held out. If he found the characters sympathetic, attractive, and lovable, that would outweigh any objections made on technical grounds. When once he determined to produce a play, only a miracle could prevent him. The more his associates argued to the contrary, the more dogged he became. He had superb confidence in his judgment; yet he invariably accepted failure with serenity and good spirit. He always assumed the responsibility. He listened sometimes to suggestions, but his views were seldom colored by them.
His association with men like J. M. Barrie, Haddon Chambers, Paul Potter, William Gillette, Arthur Wing Pinero, and Augustus Thomas gave him a loftier insight into the workings of the drama. He was quick to absorb ideas, and he had a strong and retentive memory for details.
Frohman loved to present farce. He enjoyed this type of play himself because it appealed to his immense sense of humor. He delighted in rehearsing the many complications and entanglements which arise in such plays. The enthusiasm with which French audiences greeted their native plays often misled him. He felt that American theater-goers would be equally uproarious. But often they failed him.
The same thing frequently happened with English plays. He would be swept off his feet by a British production; he was at once sure that it would be a success in New York. But New York, more than once, upset this belief. The reason was that Frohman saw these plays as an Englishman. He had the cosmopolitan point of view that the average play-goer in America lacked.
This leads to the interesting subject of "locality" in plays. Frohman once summed up this whole question:
"As I go back and forth, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic, the audiences on both sides seem more and more like one. Always, of course, each has his own particular viewpoint, according to the side of the Atlantic I happen to be on. But often they think the same, each from its own angle.
"You bring your English play to America. Nobody is at all disturbed by the mention of Park Lane or Piccadilly Circus. If there is drama in the play, if in itself it interests and holds the audience, nobody pays any attention to its locality or localisms.
"But an English audience sitting before an American play hears mention of West Twenty-third Street or Washington Square, and while it is wondering just where and what these localities are an important incident in the dramatic action slips by unnoticed. Not that English audiences are at all prejudiced against American plays. They take them in the same general way that Americans take English plays. Each public asks, 'What have you got?' As soon as it hears that the play is good it is interested.
"English audiences, for example, were quick to discover the fun in 'The Dictator' when Mr. Collier acted it in London, though it was full of the local color of New York, both in the central character and in the subject. Somehow the type and the speeches seemed to have a sort of universal humor. I tried it first on Barrie. He marked in the manuscript the places that he could understand. The piece never went better in America.
"On the other hand, one reason why 'Brewster's Millions' did not go well in London was because the severely logical British mind took it all as a business proposition. The problem was sedately figured out on the theory that the young man did not spend the inherited millions.