Blue-grass and Broadway

by Maria Thompson Daviess

And while Miss Adair sat under the spell of Mr. Rooney, Mr. Vandeford sat in his big chair in his office and fought a battle for "The Purple Slipper" that resulted in a draw that filled him with anxiety.

"I can find only one open booking in New York for October first, Mr. Vandeford, sir," Mr. Meyers was saying, with trouble settled in a cloud upon his broad brow. "I have it fairly good for the road for 'The Purple Slipper' until October first, and then it is a jump to Toronto or Minneapolis, which is into the grave."

"I suppose that one opening on Broadway is Weiner's New Carnival Theater," Mr. Vandeford asked as though the question were useless.

"You have it right," answered Mr. Meyers. "Still, Mr. Vandeford, sir, it is always failures that leave Broadway openings into which road shows can jump."

"Until last year, yes, Pops, but now New York is so full of people with munition and war-contract money in their pockets that any show, no matter how rotten, that gets in a Broadway theater plays to capacity and stays. They'd go to 'The Old District Skule' because the doors were open and there is no other place to go. What are we going to do?"

"I advise that you see Mr. Breit and trust to some very big failure to give you a place. It is that he will always give you a preference," answered Mr. Meyers with little hope, but determination.

"Yes, Breit will let me in if there is a squeezing chance, but Breit doesn't own a theater, nor do I, or you, Pops; and I don't blame the fellows who do own them for filling them with their own cheap companies and plays so as to get their buckets under the whole golden stream. Why give money away to any independent producer?"

"Mr. Breit said that he had news that Mr. Weiner would open that New Carnival with a Hilliard show, name not given," Mr. Meyers added to the information already prepared for Mr. Vandeford.

"I'll see goose-grease frying out of him in Inferno before he gets it," said Mr. Vandeford, coolly. "I know that is his game, but I'll put across this 'Purple Slipper' with Hawtry and keep my 'Rosie Posie Girl' until I get good and ready to let her play it. Then I'll produce it to the tune of a half-million dollars and not Mr. Weiner. I've never been squeezed, and I'm not going to have this rotten game beat me. I'll go over and see Breit and he'll jockey me a corner on Broadway, somehow. Back at three." And Mr. Vandeford walked out of his office as coolly as though not sizzling inwardly with anxiety.

"I've got you next on the booking of about four-fifths of the theaters on Broadway, Van," said Mr. Breit, the booking king, as he and Mr. Vandeford smoked leisurely cigars in his big, cool office. "You should worry! E. and K. and S. and Z. are bound to pick some flivvers and in you go. Loaf on the road and lose money like a little man."