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CHAPTER II ◆ SELLING THE FIRST ONE
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Although I am rambling about a little ahead of my story the reader will have observed that by this time I had crossed the Rubicon and had sold my first play and was steaming ahead at full speed. Very few weeks pass during which I am not asked “how to sell a first play” and for the benefit of all would-be dramatists I propose to pause here and answer this question for all time by giving a brief description of how I sold mine.
I had no money at all and absolutely no idea of who the managers were or how to approach them, but I had a play, or at least I had an amazing number of perfectly good words neatly set down on paper, and I started boldly out on my quest. This quest proved as it almost always does an unbelievably long and difficult one. Luck favored me by bringing about a chance meeting on Broadway with an old friend, the captain of the Harvard varsity football team on which I had been a substitute, and through him I managed to land the job of coaching the football squad of a New York prep school at a salary of fifty dollars a month. So the food and shelter problem was solved for the next few months. But all good things, even football seasons, come to an end, and before I had discovered, first, that no one would read my play, and, second, that it was absolutely not worth reading anyway, I had some hard knocks and some rather dire experiences. At length I made up my mind that possibly the reason I couldn’t sell my play was because it was a bad one and I started another, but stern necessity was knocking hard and loud and in a moment of discouragement I made up my mind to again become an actor. A kind Providence, however, saved me from this fate, although at the moment I was tempted to doubt its kindness.
I wrote a letter to the late James O’Neill, who as usual was rehearsing his company at his home in New London; some mention of my experience at Harvard caught O’Neill’s eye and he wrote me to join the company at New London, but he evidently did not think it necessary to enclose transportation to a worthy Harvard graduate. I arrived in New London one beautiful August day in 1898 or thereabouts with a capital of ninety cents, and was asked by Mr. O’Neill to memorize six parts in the various plays he was to do that season, and to read one of them, the part of the juvenile lead in VIRGINIOS to him the following morning. To this day when things are breaking very badly for me I am haunted by some of these terrible lines: “Spread the news in every corner of the city, and let no man who calls himself a son of Rome stand aside when tyranny assails its fairest daughter.” O’Neill listened to my reading of the part and swallowed hard and remarked that “I still needed a little work,” and then made me the princely offer of twenty dollars a week for the season if I would buy seven hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of costumes for the parts. At that it was my turn to swallow hard as my ninety cents had shrunk considerably during the last twenty-four hours, but I managed to stammer out that I’d think it over and let him know.
“O’Neill listened to my reading of the part.”
(A caricature by Fornaro. From the Messmore Kendall Collection)
Edwin Booth as Richelieu
(From the Messmore Kendall Collection)
Mr. O’Neill went into town to spend the evening leaving me seated on a rock busy with a mathematical problem, and as I never was a great mathematician I sat there on that rock until twelve o’clock that night trying to figure out how to expand the remains of my ninety cents to cover seven hundred and fifty dollars for costumes and enough over to live on for five weeks before my salary was to start. It was a difficult problem, but I still think if I had been given a little more time I would have solved it. I was interrupted, however, by the sound of voices approaching in the night. Mr. O’Neill’s home was in a secluded spot. On one side of it ran the raised tracks of the New Haven railroad. In the house at that moment young Eugene O’Neill was sleeping in his crib. At the sound of voices I looked up, my problem still unsolved. Its solution came very suddenly. Mr. O’Neill, returning along the raised railroad tracks, stubbed his toe and fell through an open culvert and landed at my feet with both his legs broken. I left New London the next day. I have often been back since that night, but my watch is still there.