"That man Frohman offered me the part of a nigger, Uncle Rufus, in that play. I was born in the South, and I will not play a nigger. I would rather starve."
Cahn said, "You will play it, and your salary will be forty dollars a week."
The young man reluctantly accepted the engagement and proved to be not only a satisfactory actor, but a man gifted with a marvelous instinct as stage-director. His name was Joseph Humphreys, and he became in a few years the general stage-director for Charles Frohman, the most distinguished position of its kind in the country, which he held until his death.
About this time Charles Frohman renewed his acquaintance with Augustus Thomas. Thomas walked into the office one day and Rockwood said to him:
"You are the very man we want to play in 'Held by the Enemy.'"
Thomas immediately went in to see Frohman, who offered him the position of General Stamburg, but Thomas had an engagement in his own play, "The Burglar," which was the expanded "Editha's Burglar," and could not accept. Before he left, however, Frohman, whose mind was always full of projects for the future, renewed the offer made in New Orleans, for he said:
"Thomas, I still want you to write that play for me."
With "Held by the Enemy" Charles Frohman seemed to have found a magic touchstone. It was both patriotic and profitable, for it was nothing less than the American flag. Having raised it in one production, he now turned to the enterprise which unfurled his success to the winds in brilliant and stirring fashion.
Early in 1889 R. M. Field put on a new military play called "Shenandoah," by Bronson Howard, at the Boston Museum. Howard was then the most important writer in the dramatic profession. He had three big successes, "Young Mrs. Winthrop," "Saratoga," and "The Banker's Daughter," to his credit, and he had put an immense amount of work and hope into the stirring military drama that was to have such an important bearing on the career of Charles Frohman. The story of Frohman's connection with this play is one of the most picturesque and romantic in the whole history of modern theatrical successes. He found it a Cinderella of the stage; he proved to be its Prince Charming.
Oddly enough, "Shenandoah" was a failure in Boston. Three eminent managers, A. M. Palmer, T. Henry French, and Henry E. Abbey, in succession had had options on the play, and they were a unit in believing that it would not go.