GILLETTE DESERTED LAW.
Abetted by Mark Twain, the Future Playwright
and Star Took to "The Road,"
Which He Found a Thorny One.
William Gillette may be said to have reached the stage on the run, for he ran away from home in order to gratify his ambition to become an actor. His family were staid citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, where his father once ran for Governor of the State.
The idea was to make a lawyer of William, but after he got over a taste for mechanics, which led him to construct secretly a steam-engine in his bedroom, he conceived for the stage a craze that refused to be snuffed out by parental opposition.
Mark Twain, a neighbor in Hartford, was on the boy's side. His "Gilded Age" was being dramatized, and the author lent his influence to get young Gillette a place in the cast as foreman of the jury in the company of which John T. Raymond was the head. In this rôle he was entrusted with the onerous task of saying these four words in response to the question of the judge: "We have. Not guilty."
Gillette was barely nineteen at the time, and after the run of "The Gilded Age" was over he found himself in New Orleans without another engagement or the chance of obtaining one. Finally he secured an opening on these magnificent terms—agreeing to play without salary and to furnish his own costumes.
The post was that of leading utility man for a New Orleans stock company, and when, after serving for a while under these humiliating conditions for the sake of the experience it would bring, Gillette mildly suggested that he be paid a small honorarium, he was told there was one alternative that was always open to him—he could leave, which he did.
Thereupon ensued a rough and tumble period of existence for the young actor, who did not arrive at pleasant pastures again until he took to writing plays himself. And yet his first production to reach the footlights was by no means an overwhelming success. This was "The Professor," produced at the Madison Square Theater, with himself in the leading part, when that house was managed by an Episcopal clergyman and his brother.
Success Follows Failure.
It is such a superhuman task to secure a manager's attention for a play that the new playwright is prone to feel that the Rubicon has been passed once the manuscript has been accepted. But in reality this is only a halting-place on the roadside where he may tarry to obtain his second wind. And young Gillette needed all the recuperative powers possible, for when "The Professor" was brought to public attention the critics hurled at it their keenest shafts.