I BECOME A BARNSTORMER!
While I was at work on my ranch, disgusted with the methods of New York managers, I received a proposition from Oliver Morosco to appear in New York under his management in a new play which I was first to try out with one of his stock companies in Los Angeles. If that play proved a failure Morosco agreed to submit others to me until we finally succeeded in finding a success. Evidently my short season with the opposition stock company had given Morosco pause!
It looked like an advantageous offer and I accepted, consenting to appear in "Oliver Twist" in one of his stock houses—among other plays. We had just begun rehearsals of "Oliver Twist" when an accident laid me low.
Morosco, who was in New York at the time, sent two of his employees to my house within an hour after I had been carried in and from them and from him, by telegrams, I received repeated assurances that I need not worry, that the contract would continue in force indefinitely. As soon as I should be able to appear on the stage Morosco promised to carry out his part of the agreement to the letter.
I was sufficiently recovered in February, 1913, to appear as Fagin. The play ran three weeks at the stock house in Los Angeles and then I found myself wondering what was to become of me! The great Morosco was "back East" somewhere. No one seemed to be able to locate him or to get word to him. So I waited about four or five weeks on the pleasure of this magnate! Finally came word that we were to organize a company on the spot and make a tour of the Coast in "Oliver Twist," extending it to Canada and continuing in it for the remainder of the season.
I had heard of but had never known what "barnstorming" meant before.
I know now!
The production which Morosco sent out with me was the thrown-together junk which had been used in the stock production. It was never intended to last more than a few weeks or to be moved! It was quite the worst collection of moth-eaten scenery and "properties" I ever saw. The company, with a very few exceptions, was recruited from the members of the Morosco stock companies who chanced to be idle at the moment. Some of the men, driven desperate by the nature of the backwoods country through which our route lay, were thoroughly intoxicated (and not infrequently blind drunk!) most of the time—and I for one had no heart to reprove them!