The actor-playwright managed to survive, although his play didn't, and, failing to be discouraged, he went ahead with his work on "Esmeralda." This was a story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, in which the Mallorys of the theater had become interested, and the dramatization of which, in association with the author, they had entrusted to Gillette. This proved to be a big hit, with Annie Russell in the name-part, and ran to over three hundred performances.
Another adaptation success quickly followed—that of "The Private Secretary," in which Gillette also played. Meantime he was at work on another original piece, "Held by the Enemy," a war drama which almost beat "Shenandoah" on its own ground in the race for popularity.
Inspired by the success he had achieved, Gillette was not content to go ahead on the same lines. He ached to branch out, to astonish folks, to do something big, and with his record behind him he had little difficulty in persuading Charles Frohman to go halves in the production of "Ninety Days."
This was a melodrama of the most lurid type, but the Third Avenue edge of it was supposed to be taken off by the elaborate fashion in which it was staged and the care with which the mechanical effects were looked after. It failed completely, running a bare month, and carrying down all Gillette's savings in its collapse. The disappointment shattered his health, and he retired to a cabin in South Carolina, where, after a time, he set to work on some more adaptations—"Too Much Johnson," "All the Comforts of Home," and "Mr. Wilkinson's Widows."
These were all produced successfully, which could not be said of what eventually turned out to be his most famous work; for "Secret Service," called originally "The Secret Service," was looked upon coldly when it was launched in Philadelphia, with Maurice Barrymore in the lead.
Gillette gave the piece a thorough overhauling, and it was put on in the new form, and with the author as the hero, at the Garrick, New York, in 1896, and made the hit that was really the beginning of Gillette's career of fame as actor-playwright.
BELLEW WAS A SAILOR.
He Studied for the Ministry and Ran
Away to Sea Before He Got Into
the Spot-light.
Kyrle Bellew, soon to follow "Raffles" with "The Right of Way," is the son of an actor who bore the reputation of being the handsomest man in England. He married the daughter of a commodore, and left the stage to enter the church, becoming Bishop of Calcutta. Harold Kyrle (by which name Bellew was then known), being the eldest son, was destined to follow in his father's footsteps, and studied for holy orders at Oxford.
But he soon found that he had made a mistake. His flesh constantly warred against the confining life of the scholar, and at nineteen he ran away to sea, in the old-fashioned way of the story-books.