Charles Frohman: Manager and Man

by Isaac Frederick Marcosson; Daniel Frohman

The Frohmans settled in a little frame house on Lawrence Street that stood apart from the dusty road. It did not even have a porch. Unpretentious as it was, it became a center of artistic life in Sandusky.

Henry Frohman had always aspired to be an actor. One of the first things he did after settling in Sandusky was to organize an amateur theatrical company, composed entirely of people of German birth or descent. The performances were given in the Turner Hall, in the German tongue, on a makeshift stage with improvised scenery. Frohman became the directing force in the production of Schiller's and other classic German plays, comic as well as tragic.

Nor was he half-hearted in his histrionic work. One night he died so realistically on the stage that his eldest son, who sat in the audience, became so terrified that he screamed out in terror, and would not be pacified until his parent appeared smilingly before the curtain and assured him that he was still very much alive.

Frohman's business prospered. He began to build up trade in the adjoining country. With a load of samples strapped behind his buggy, he traveled about. He usually took one of his older sons along. While he drove, the boy often held a prompt-book and the father would rehearse his parts. Out across those quiet Ohio fields would come the thrilling words of "The Robbers," "Ingomar," "Love and Intrigue," or any of the many plays that the amateur company performed in Sandusky.

He even mixed the drama with business. Frequently after selling a bill of goods he would be requested by a customer, who knew of his ability, to recite or declaim a speech from one of the well-known German plays.

It was on his return from one of these expeditions that Henry Frohman was greeted with the tidings that a third son had come to bear his name. When he entered that little frame house the infantile Charles had made his first entrance on the stage of life. It was June 17, 1860, a time fateful in the history of the country, for already the storm-clouds of the Civil War were brooding. It was pregnant with meaning for the American theater, too, because this lusty baby was to become its Napoleon.

Almost before Charles was able to walk his wise and far-seeing mother, with a pride and responsibility that maintained the best traditions of the mothers in Israel, began to realize the restrictions and limitations of the Sandusky life.

"These boys of ours," she said to the husband, "have no future here. They must be educated in New York. Their careers lie there."

Strong-willed and resolute, she sent the two older sons, one at a time, on to the great city to be educated and make their way. The eldest, Daniel, went first, soon followed by Gustave. In 1864, and largely due to her insistent urging, the remainder of the family, which included the youthful Charles, packed up their belongings and, with the proceeds of the sale of the cigar factory, started on their eventful journey to New York.

They first settled in one of the original tenement houses of New York, on Rivington Street, subsequently moving to Eighth Street and Avenue D. Before long they moved over to Third Street, while their fourth residence was almost within the shadow of some of the best-known city theaters.