The box-office records that were broken by the company could only add to the burden of statistics. Suffice it to say, they were many. History was made: the sort of history that can be made again only by the next Sadler’s Wells tour.
Some idea of the magnitude of the transportation and railroading problems involved in an extended tour of this sort may be gathered from the fact that the “Sadler’s Wells Special” consisted of six Pullman sleeping cars, six baggage cars, and two dining cars, together with a club-bar-lounge car on long journeys.
I made it a point to be with the company at all the larger cities. I left them at Philadelphia, and awaited their arrival in Los Angeles. Neither I nor Los Angeles has ever seen anything like the opening night of their engagement at the enormous Shrine Auditorium, or like the entire engagement, as a matter of fact.
Because of a company rule that, on opening nights and in the case of parties of official or semi-official greeting nature, the entire personnel of the company and staff should attend in a body, an unfortunate situation arose in Los Angeles. A Beverly Hills group had announced a large party to which some of the company had been invited, without having cleared the matter in advance. The resultant situation was such that the advertised and publicized party was cancelled.
The sudden cancellation left the company without a party with which to relieve the strain of the long trek to the Pacific Coast, and the tense excitement of the first performance in the world’s film capital. As a consequence, I arranged to give a large party to the entire company and staff, in conjunction with Edwin Lester, the Director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Association, and the local sponsor of the engagement. The party took place at the Ambassador Hotel, where the entire company was housed during the engagement, with its city within a city, its palm-shaded swimming-pool.
As master of ceremonies and guest of honor, we invited Charles Chaplin, distinguished artist and famous Briton. Among the distinguished guests from the film world were, among many others, Ezio Pinza, Edward G. Robinson, Greer Garson, Barry Fitzgerald, Gene Tierney, Cyd Charisse, Joseph Cotton, Louis Hayward.
Chaplin was a unique master of ceremonies, urbane, gentle, witty. As judge of a ballroom dancing contest, Chaplin awarded the prize to Herbert Hughes, non-dancer and the company’s general manager.
At the end of this phenomenal engagement, the company bade au revoir to Los Angeles and the many friends they had made in the film colony, and entrained for San Francisco for an engagement at that finest of all American opera houses, the War Memorial. I have an especial fondness for San Francisco, its atmosphere, its spirit, its people, its food. Yet a curious fact remains: of all the larger American cities, it is coolest in its outward reception of all forms of art. Even with Sadler’s Wells, San Francisco followed its formal pattern. It was the more startling in contrast with its sister city in the south. The demonstrations there were such that they had to be cut off in order to permit the performances to continue and thus end before the small hours; the Los Angeles audiences seemed determined not to let the company go. By contrast, the San Francisco audiences were perfunctorily polite in their applause. I have never been able quite to understand it.
In the case of the Sadler’s Wells première at the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, the company was enchanted with the building: a real opera house, a good stage, a place in which to work in comfort. The opening night audience had been attracted not only by interest in the company, but as charity contributors to a home for unmarried mothers. The bulk of the stalls and boxes were socially minded. They arrived late, from dinners and parties. The Sleeping Beauty must start at the advertised time because of its length. It cannot wait for late-comers. There was an unconscionable confusion in the darkened opera house as the audience rattled down the aisles, chattering, greeting friends, and shattering the spell of the Prologue, disturbing those who had taken the trouble to arrive on time as much as they did the artists on the stage. My concern on this point is as much for the audience as for the dancers. A ballet, being a work of art, is conceived as an entity, from beginning to end, from the first notes of the overture, till the last one of the coda. The whole is the sum of its parts. The noisy and inconsiderate late-comers, by destroying parts, greatly damage the whole.
The War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, although a municipal property, has a divided executive in that its physical control is in the hands of the local chapter of the American Legion, which make the rules and regulations for its operation. I do not know of any theatre with more locked doors, more red tape and more annoying, hampering regulations.