Clyde Fitch read "The Climbers" to me many years before Henry Harris decided to produce it. Almost every manager in New York had turned it down. The excellent acting of that play saved it. From the cast sprang such stars as Robert Edeson, Clara Bloodgood, Amelia Bingham and Minnie Dupree.
The average author and manager of to-day are prone to advertise themselves as conspicuously as the play (as if the public cared a snap who wrote the play or who "presents"!). I doubt if five per cent of the public know who wrote "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "In Mizzoura" or "Richelieu," but they know their stage favorites.
I wonder how many mantels are adorned with pictures of the successful dramatist and those who "present" and how many there are on which appear Maude Adams, Dave Warfield, Billie Burke, John Drew, Bernhardt, Duse and hundreds of other distinguished players.
No matter how hard you may strive to strangle the successful star player, Messrs. Author and Manager, you won't succeed. You may succeed in fostering a few more plays without a star but the clouds will surely come and, when they disburse, the accidents that caused them will give way before intelligence. The stars will twinkle again more resplendent than ever and light you once more to the road that leads to permanent success. You may trade and barter but you will finally be made to understand that ours is a profession in which sentiment plays a most important part and when you insist on robbing the public of its favorite player, the disappointment will be as bitter as when the little boy is told there is no such thing as Santa Claus.
Now I'll take the commercial side of the question. I'll venture the opinion that Dave Warfield and Maude Adams play each season to double the receipts any play without a star ever earned. The Cincinnati Festival, composed only of stars, in one week played to more than one hundred thousand dollars. Booth and Barrett cleared over six hundred thousand dollars net in one season. Henry Irving took away from America in one season three hundred thousand, Bernhardt averages a quarter of a million net on every farewell tour. The average successful star up to five years ago (before the influx of the so-called producers, the authors who feature themselves and those who "present") counted it a bad year if his profits failed to reach a hundred thousand dollars.
I wonder how much Charles Frohman has made with his stars!
And now let us face a fact that is indisputable—business is very bad.
Ten years ago a ten thousand dollar week was considered only a good one. To-day it is an event. Even poor little I played to over fifteen thousand and no fuss was made about it. Let me hear the name of a single successful play without a star of to-day that averages eight thousand per week.
I wonder if people go to see clever George Cohan or George Cohan's play?