"I tell you what to do, Randall," quickly thought out Frohman, "if Stetson will stand for it we will paper the house to the doors. We must open to a capacity audience."
When Frohman put the matter before Stetson he said he did not believe in "second-hand reconciliations," but assented to the plan. Frohman gave Randall six hundred seats, and the latter put them into good hands. The première of "The Golden Giant," to all intents and purposes, took place before a crowded and paying house. In reality there was exactly two hundred and eighty-eight dollars in the box-office. Business picked up, however, and the two weeks' engagement proved prosperous. The play failed on the road, however, and the Frohman offices lost over five thousand dollars on the venture. Rankin had agreed to pay Frohman forty per cent. of the losses. That agreement remained in force all his life, for it was never paid.
In Charles's next venture he launched his first star. Curiously enough, the star was Tony Hart, a member of the famous Irish team of Harrigan and Hart, who had delighted the boyhood of Frohman when he used to slip away on Saturday nights and revel in a show.
Tony Hart, during the interim, had separated from Harrigan, and in some way Charles obtained the manuscript of a farce-comedy by William Gill called "A Toy Pistol."
Charles had never lost his admiration for Hart, and when he saw that the leading character had to impersonate an Italian, a young Hebrew, an Irishwoman, and a Chinaman, Frohman said, "Tony Hart is the very person."
Accordingly, he engaged Hart and a company which included J. B. Mackey, F. R. Jackson, T. J. Cronin, D. G. Longworth, Annie Adams, Annie Alliston, Mattie Ferguson, Bertie Amberg, Eva Grenville, Vera Wilson, Minnie Williams, and Lena Merville.
This production had an influence on Charles Frohman's life far greater than the association with his first star, for Annie Adams now began a more or less continuous connection with Charles Frohman's companies. Her daughter, the little girl whom Charles had met casually years before, was now about to make her first New York appearance as member of a traveling company in "The Paymaster." Already the energetic mother was importuning Charles to engage the daughter. His answer was, "I'll give her a chance as soon as I can." He little dreamed that this wisp of a girl was to become in later years his most profitable and best-known star.
Charles was, of course, keenly interested in "A Toy Pistol." He conducted the rehearsals, and on February 20, 1886, produced it at what was then called the New York Comedy Theater. It failed, however. The New York Comedy Theater was originally a large billiard-hall in the Gilsey Building, on Broadway between Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth streets, and had been first named the San Francisco Minstrel Hall. It became successively Haverly's Comedy Theater and the New York Comedy Theater. Subsequently, it was known as Hermann's Theater, and was the scene of many of the earlier Charles Frohman productions.
Charles now became immersed in productions. About this time Archibald Clavering Gunter, who had scored a sensational success with his books, especially "Mr. Barnes of New York," had written a play called "A Wall Street Bandit," which had been produced with great success in San Francisco. Frohman booked it for four weeks at the old Standard Theater, afterward the Manhattan, on a very generous royalty basis, and plunged in his usual lavish style. He got together a magnificent cast, which included Georgia Cayvan, W. J. Ferguson, Robert McWade, Charles Bowser, Charles Wheatleigh, and Sadie Bigelow. The play opened to capacity and the indications were that the engagement would be a success; but it suddenly fizzled out. On Sunday morning, when Charles read the papers with their reviews of the week, he said to Randall, with his usual philosophy:
"We've got a magnificent frost, but it was worth doing."