Frohman was as much interested in this one-act piece as if it had been a five-act drama. His absorption in it helped to divert his mind from the pain that had sadly reduced the once rotund body.
With "A Slice of Life" he introduced another one of the many innovations that he brought to the stage. The play was projected as a surprise. No announcement of title was made. The advertisements simply stated that Charles Frohman would present "A Novelty" at the Empire Theater at eight o'clock on a certain evening.
Frohman was unable to attend the opening performance, so he wrote a little speech which was spoken by William Seymour. The speech was rehearsed as carefully as the play. A dozen times the stage-director delivered it before his chief, who indicated the various phrases to be emphasized.
It was during the era of the New Theater when the so-called "advanced drama" was much exploited. Frohman had little patience with this sort of dramatic thing. The little speech conveys something of his satirical feeling about the millionaire-endowed theatrical project which was then agitating New York.
Here is the speech as Frohman wrote it:
Ladies and Gentlemen:—My appearance here to-night is by way of apology. I am here representing Mr. Charles Frohman—you may have heard of him—the manager of this theater, the Empire.
His idea in announcing a novelty in connection with Miss Barrymore's play, "Cousin Kate," was really for the purpose of getting you here once in time for the ringing up of the curtain. This will be a special performance of a play to be given by a few rising members of the School of Acting connected with this theater, the Empire, of which he is proud—very proud. It is not an old modern play, but what is called to-day "The Advanced Drama," made possible here to-night by the momentary holiday of the New Theater, and it is called "A Slice of Life."
During those desperate days when, like Heinrich Heine, he seemed to be lying in a "mattress grave," his dauntless humor never forsook him, as this little incident will show: Some years previous, Gillette suffered a breakdown from overwork. When the actor-playwright went to his home at Hartford to recuperate his sister remonstrated with him.
"You must stop work for a long while," she said. "That man Frohman is killing you." Gillette afterward told Frohman about it.
Frohman now lay on a bed of agony, and Gillette came to see him. The sick man remembered the episode of the long ago, and said, weakly, to his visitor: