A visitor to his place at White Plains came away after spending a night there, and declared that the "real Charles Frohman had three dissipations—he smokes all day, he reads plays all night, and—" He stopped.
"What is it?" was the breathless query.
"He plays croquet."
Frohman had a rare gift for publicity. More than once he turned what seemed to be a complete failure into success. An experience with "Jane" will reveal this side of his versatility.
The bright little comedy hung fire for a while. One reason was that newspaper criticism in New York had been rather unfavorable. Conspicuous among the unfriendly notices was one in the Herald which was headed, "Jane Won't Go."
Frohman immediately capitalized this line. He had thousands of dodgers stuck up all over New York. They contained three sentences, which read:
"Jane won't go."
Of course not.
She's come to stay.
From that time on the piece grew in popularity and receipts and became a success.
In summing up the qualities that made Frohman great, one finds, in the last analysis, that he had two in common with J. P. Morgan and the other dynamic leaders of men. One was an incisive, almost uncanny, ability to probe into the hearts of men, strip away the superficial, and find the real substance.
His experience with Clyde Fitch emphasized this to a remarkable degree. Personally no two men could have been more opposite. One was the product of democracy, buoyant and self-made, while the other represented an intellectual, almost effeminate, aristocracy. Yet nearly from the start Frohman perceived the bigness of vision and the profound understanding that lurked behind Fitch's almost superficial exterior.