"I don't know what it is, but I know that it belongs on the mantelpiece." And it did.
Many of Frohman's rehearsals were held out of town. He was particularly fond of "pointing up" a production in a strange environment. Then the stage-director would ask the local manager for an absolutely empty theater—"a clear auditorium."
"Peter Pan" was to be "finished off" at Washington. The call was issued, the company assembled—everybody was present except Frohman. "Strange," was the thought in all minds, for he was usually so prompt. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed until the stage-manager left the theater in search of the manager. He was found at the front entrance of the theater, unsuccessfully arguing with a German door-tender who, not knowing him and immensely amused at the idea that he was pretending to be Charles Frohman, refused to admit him until reassured by the company stage-manager. Later, when the man came to apologize, Frohman's only comment was:
"Oh! I forgot that an hour ago."
Few people knew the Frohman of rehearsals so well as William Seymour, for many years his general stage-director. His illuminating picture of the Little Chief he served so long is as follows:
"At rehearsals Charles Frohman was completely wrapped up in the play and the players. His mind, however, traveled faster than we did. He often stopped me to make a change in a line or in the business which to me was not at all clear. You could not always grasp, at once, just what he was aiming at. But once understood, the idea became illuminative, and extended into the next, or even to succeeding acts of the play. He could detect a weak spot quicker than any one I ever knew, and could remedy or straighten it out just as quickly.
"After the rehearsal of a new play he would think of it probably all the evening and night, and the next morning he had the solutions of the several vague points at his fingers' ends. He was also very positive and firm in what he wanted done, and how he thought it should be done. But what he thought was right, he believed to be right, and he soon made you see it that way.
"I confess to having had many differences of opinion and arguments, sometimes even disagreements, with him. In some instances he came round to my way of thinking, but he often said:
"'I believe you are right—I am sure you are right—but I intend doing it my way.'
"It was his great and wonderful self-confidence, and it was rarely overestimated.