The doors of New York managers, however, were closely guarded, even in the comparatively far-off days of which I am writing, and in the season of 1910 the best I could manage to do, aside from my usual flock of road shows and my growing list of plays popular with the stock companies at that time successfully scattered all over the country, was to secure a couple of matinée performances. As a matter of fact, a matinée performance of the play of a new author is simply a public announcement by the manager of his lack of faith and neither of these efforts of mine came to much. The first of these, THE WISHING RING, was produced by Lee Shubert at Daly’s with Marguerite Clark and a supporting company thrown together from the cast of a musical play at that time current in the theater. Marguerite Clark was charming in the part and later made use of the play on the road and produced it for a short run in Chicago. THE WISHING RING was directed by Cecil De Mille and was, I think, the last thing he did before he left New York and threw in his lot with the picture people.
The second of these half-hearted matinée productions was made for me by Daniel Frohman at the Lyceum and gave Laurette Taylor one of her first chances to show her very extraordinary talent. This play, LOLA, was a queer sort of fish, part crude melodrama and part a very real and very fine example of good play writing, but it was one of those plays of which one must say it is either great or absurd. My shady reputation and the hasty and careless production made only one answer probable. In fact, it was many years before the name of Owen Davis was much of a help to a play, and it would probably have taken me at least a thousand to establish a trade-mark as a serious dramatist had the public known that aside from the crimes committed under the name of Owen Davis I must also answer to many others. I had fallen into the playful habit of inventing other names to hide my evil deeds. At one time I used so many assumed names that the mere invention of them became a task and Al Woods used to help me out by calmly borrowing the name of one of his clerks or stenographers and writing it down as author of my latest thriller.
When CONVICT 999 was first produced in Pittsburgh, the dramatic critic of the largest of the morning papers said in his review of the play: “Here at last is a fine melodrama and heaven be praised. Here, in the person of John Oliver, a new writer, we have at last found a man who knows more about how to write a play of this kind than the irrepressible Owen Davis ever knew.”
William A. Brady was the first to give me a regular Broadway production with a first class company and in doing so, although he little knew it at the time, he started an association that lasted for many years. Mr. Brady is a strong man and had he been able to foresee what was in store for him the day on which we signed our first contract, it is highly probable these confessions would never have been written. With great confidence, however, Mr. Brady commanded me to write him a big melodrama and as a result Doris Keane and William Courtney appeared in a direful thing called MAKING GOOD. The title of this play turned out to be a god-send to the New York critics and if I had put as much wit into my play as they put into their slaughter of it, Mr. Brady and I would have been happier even if they had been deprived of a great pleasure. As a matter of fact, I should be a very popular man with the critics. Several of them owe their standing as humorists almost entirely to me and at least one of the finest of them, Frank O’Malley, won his place in the ranks of humorists over my dead body.
In later years Mr. O’Malley confided to me that he often journeyed miles to get to a play of mine, a compliment that at the time I quite failed to value at its true worth.
Twenty-four hours after the first New York production of MAKING GOOD I was safely hidden in the country with my still loyal wife and two small sons, luckily at the time too young to know their shame. At once I started out, quite undismayed, to write another. One old habit that still clings to me: if I have a failure, to sit down at my desk before I have so much as slept on it, and write at least part of the next one; as a matter of fact, most of the good plays I have written have been started at such a time. Here then, in the wilds of Westchester, I stuck to it until I finished THE FAMILY CUPBOARD, much the best thing I had done up to then, and a play that might very well be a success if produced to-day. The manuscript of this play I sent at once to a play-broker with instructions to offer it for production with no author’s name on the manuscript. A few days later the broker called me up with the startling information that he had sold my play to William A. Brady—rather dread news as, following what the New York critics had said about MAKING GOOD, Mr. Brady had thrown me out of his office and practically forbidden me its sacred ground.
It seemed, so my broker said, that Mr. Brady had paid good money for an option on the play and was very curious as to the identity of the modest author. When he learned it, he had something very like a stroke, but in time he forgave me.
All the years I worked with Mr. Brady were punctuated by terrible fights between us that always ended in a renewal of friendship and affection. He is by far the most colorful figure in the American theater and even when one disagrees with him, which is apt to be rather often, his strength and his complete belief in his own opinion cause his opponents awful moments of doubt. If Mr. Brady really set out to convince me that a red apple was a yellow one, I should at once go and order a new pair of glasses.
Mr. Brady, David Belasco and Daniel Frohman are the last of the old guard and, each in his different way, has written his name boldly on the pages of our drama. Different as these three men are they have one thing in common: a great and abiding love of the theater and its people.
Mr. Brady and I together did THE FAMILY CUPBOARD, SINNERS, FOREVER AFTER, AT 9.45 and many others. FOREVER AFTER was Alice Brady’s first big part; partly owing to its simple, straightforward love story and partly to her fine performance, it turned out to be one of the best money-makers I have ever had. These plays were at the moment my idea of one step up from the NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL of the Al Woods days.