The men gasped.
"Of course we knew him as a great manager, but we never knew he could sing."
"Oh yes," said Chambers. "He is a great singer."
He pointed out Frohman and hid behind a lifeboat to await the result. Soon he heard a sputter and a shriek of rage, and the two men came racing down the boat as if pursued by some terror. Up came Frohman, his face livid with rage.
"What do you think?" he said to Chambers, who stood innocently by. "Those men had the nerve to ask me to sing a coon song. I have never been so insulted in all my life."
He was so enraged that he wrote a letter to the steamship line about it and withdrew his patronage from the company for several years in consequence.
Here is another instance when the joke was on Frohman. No one viewed the manager's immense success with keener pride or pleasure than his father, Henry Frohman. As theater after theater came under the son's direction the parent could gratify his great passion for giving people free passes to its fullest extent. He would appear at the offices at the Empire Theater with his pockets bulging with home-made cigars. The men in the office always accepted the cigars, but never smoked them. But they gave him all the passes he wanted.
One day the father stopped in to see Charles. It was a raw spring day. Charles remarked that the overcoat Henry wore was too thin.
"Go to my tailor and get an overcoat," he said.
"Not much," said the father. "Your tailor is too expensive. He robs you. He wouldn't make one under seventy-five dollars, and I never pay more than twenty dollars."