Her father and mother were both in the profession. Her father, C. Leslie Allen, is acting yet, being with his daughter in "The Toast of the Town." He was doing the father—a specialty of his—in "Esmeralda" at the Madison Square Theater, when Annie Russell, the leading woman, fell ill.
Viola Allen was at that time barely sixteen—just the age of the character. She had been about the theater a good deal with her father, and in the sudden emergency it was suggested that she should play the part.
"They came to me with the proposition," said Miss Allen, in describing the incident, "and I was so absorbed in the story that I began with all eagerness to study the part, without seeming to realize all that it meant to play it. I shall never forget my sensations on that first night when I walked out on the stage in response to the cue, which, as it happens, was given to me by my own father.
"At rehearsals, of course, the auditorium had been dark and empty. Now it was a glow of light and a sea of faces. This is what I should have expected, but somehow I had failed to do so, and now, being confronted with the thing, my wits seemed to fail me.
"My lines went from my memory, but luckily I did not have to speak them until I was close to my father. He, realizing that I must have stage fright, whispered the words to me, and as soon as I heard them I was all right again. I plunged back into my absorption in the story I was helping to depict, and went through to the end without any further trouble."
With "Joe" Jefferson.
After her term in "Esmeralda," Miss Allen played Shakespeare leads with John McCullough and the elder Salvini, and then became first assistant to Joseph Jefferson in "The Rivals" and "The Heir at Law." From this she passed under the management of Charles Frohman, and helped lay the foundations of his fortunes, along with Henry Miller, in "Shenandoah," and from its second season and for many years thereafter these two were closely identified with the conspicuous position won for the stock company at the Empire, where Miss Allen's Rosamund in "Sowing the Wind" took the town by storm.
In this connection, it is an odd circumstance that the part Miss Allen most enjoyed playing in the whole Empire list was that of Audrie Lisden in Henry Arthus Jones's "Michael and his Lost Angel," a play that ran for only twelve nights in New York, and had been no more successful in London.
Miss Allen handed in her resignation from the company after the production of "The Conquerors," a play of which she wholly disapproved, and she was then starred by the Lieblers in "The Christian," the dramatizing of which was her own suggestion, and from which several people reaped fortunes. When, three years ago, she deliberately cut loose from the Hall Caine type of drama in order to follow her own personal inclinations and take up Shakespeare, she was looked upon almost as a martyr to the cause of art.