Charles immediately said, "The company shall be worthy of you and the name it bears."
Lester Wallack agreed to rehearse the company and to permit his name to be used in connection with it. After Charles left, Lester Wallack said to his son:
"Watch that young man, Arthur. He is going to make his mark."
Arthur Wallack was about to take a trip to England, and Charles commissioned him to engage the leading people. He therefore engaged Sophie Eyre, who had been leading woman at the Drury Lane Theater, and W. H. Denny.
Charles himself selected the remaining members of the company, who were Newton Gotthold; C. B. Wells; Charles Wheatleigh; Max Freeman; Rowland Buckstone; Henry Talbot; Sam Dubois; George Clarke; Fred Corbett; Louise Dillon, who had been with him in the precarious Stoddart Comedy days; Kate Denin Wilson; Agnes Elliot; and Grace Wilson.
At the time he engaged the Wallack Theater Company Charles had no office. He was then living at the Coleman House on Broadway, just opposite the then celebrated Gilsey House. Most of the engagements were made as he sat in a big leather chair in the lobby, with one foot thrown over an arm of it.
The principal capital that Charles had for this venture was five thousand dollars put up by Daniel J. Bernstein, who became treasurer of the company. Alf Hayman, whom Frohman had met in Philadelphia, was engaged as advance-agent.
It was a courageous undertaking even for a seasoned and well-financed theatrical veteran. Although Lester Wallack was well known, his theater and its successes were not familiar to the great mass of people outside New York. In those days theatrical publicity was not as widespread as now. No wonder, then, that the daring of a young manager of twenty-five in taking out a company whose weekly salary list was nearly thirteen hundred dollars was commented on.
Charles called his aggregation the Wallack Theater Company. The repertoire consisted mainly of "Victor Durand," a play by Henry Guy Carleton which had been produced at Wallack's on December 13, 1884. Subsequently the company also played "Moths," "Lady Clare," "Diplomacy," and Belasco's "La Belle Russe."
This tour, which was to write itself indelibly on the career of Charles Frohman, began in Chicago and was continued through the South to New Orleans, where a stay of six weeks was made at the St. Charles Theater. Belasco joined them here for a week to put on "The World," which had been produced at Wallack's a short time before.