The Human Lizard and the Human Frog.—Page [494].
The main disadvantage of the Western trip is the loss of a week going and one coming, as there is no vaudeville theatre between Omaha and San Francisco. To avoid the loss of a week on my return I contracted for two nights at the Salt Lake Theatre. My company consisted of four people all told, and my ammunition, suited to that calibre, was three one-act plays. To give the entire evening's entertainment at a first-class theatre, at the usual prices, with four people was a novel undertaking.
I finally determined to add to my mammoth aggregation a distinctly vaudeville feature, and while in San Francisco I engaged a young woman who was to fill in the intermissions with her song-and-dance specialty. Scorning painful effort to escape the conventional, I billed her as "The Queen of Vaudeville," whatever that may mean. We were caught in a tunnel fire at Summit and delayed thirty-six hours. I threatened the railroad officials with various and awful consequences, but the best I could do was to get them to drag my theatre-trunks around the tunnel by hand over a mile and a half of mountain trail, newly made, and get me into Salt Lake just in time to miss my opening night, with a big advance sale and the heart-rendings incident to money refunded. We were in time to play the second night, but my Queen, starting from 'Frisco on a later train, had shown no signs of appearing when the curtain rose. I made the usual apologies. The evening's entertainment was half over when a carriage came tearing up to the theatre and my Queen burst into the theatre without music, trunks, costumes, make-up, supper.
She borrowed a gown from my ingenue, which was much too small for her; a pair of slippers from my wife, which were much too big for her; make-up from both ladies, and went on. She leaned over, whispered the key to the leader of the orchestra and began to sing. The orchestra evolved a chord now and then, jiggled and wiggled, stalled, flew the track, crawled apologetically back, did its amiable best individually, but its amiable worst collectively. No mere man could have lived through it. But the young woman justified my billing. She ruled, she reigned, she triumphed. Pluck and good humor always win, and so did the Queen of Vaudeville.
When high-class musical artists and dramatic sketches were first introduced into vaudeville, I understand policemen had to be stationed in the galleries to compel respectful attention, but now these acts are the principal features of every bill, and if they have real merit the gallery-gods are the first to appreciate it. So it would seem that vaudeville has torpedoed the ancient superstition that the manager is always forced to give the public just what it wants. At first his efforts were not taken seriously either by the actor himself or the public, and many well-known artists failed to "make good," as the expression is, largely because they used "canned" or embalmed plays; that is, hastily and crudely condensed versions of well-known plays; but many succeeded, and the result has been a large increase in the number of good one-act farces and comedies, and a distinct elevation in the performance and the patronage of the vaudeville theatres. This has been a gain to everybody concerned.
It cannot be denied that the vaudeville "turn" is an experience for the actor. The intense activity everywhere, orderly and systematic though it is, is confusing. The proximity to the "educated donkey," and some not so educated; the variegated and motley samples of all strange things in man and beast; the fact that the curtain never falls, and the huge machine never stops to take breath until 10.30 at night; the being associated after the style of criminals with a number, having your name or number shot into a slot in the proscenium arch to introduce you to your audience; the shortness of your reign, and the consequent necessity of capturing your audience on sight—all this, and some other things, make the first plunge unique in the actor's experience.