The line now appearing on the programs at Fields's Theater, "Mr. Hackett, Sole Lessee and Manager," practically inaugurates in New York the policy that has so long been current in London—that of actor-managership. To be sure, it is not James K. Hackett's present intention to appear himself on the stage at Fields's, but it is not unlikely that before snow flies again he may have another house nearer the Broadway line and which will bear his name, as it is his plan to reserve Fields's for farces like "Mr. Hopkinson" and light musical offerings.
Speaking of his name over a theater recalls a remark he made to me something like half a score of years ago. We had been dining together at the Players and were riding up-town on a Broadway car in the direction of the Broadway Theater, where Hackett was then doing De Neipperg with Kathryn Kidder in "Madame Sans Gêne." The electric sign had recently come into existence, and as we were passing what is now the Princess's, but was then known as "Herrman's," the car was flooded with a glow from the brilliant lettering proclaiming that So-and-So (some star whose name now slips my memory) was appearing there.
Hackett clutched my arm.
"See that!" he exclaimed. "One day you will read my name in similar letters of fire!"
Then he aspired only to stardom, little recking that he was to become a manager as well. But he has a foundation, broad and deep, behind him. His father was the J.H. Hackett whose Falstaff was so inimitable that it came to be associated with him almost in the guise of a Christian name. His mother—and a more devoted parent never lived—was also once on the boards.
James K. was born amid the swirling waters of the St. Lawrence, on Wolfe Island, Ontario, his father being almost seventy at the time.
The late Recorder Hackett, of New York, was a half-brother of the present actor-manager. James has no recollection of his father, as he was scarcely two years old when he died. His mother has been his guardian angel since birth. She brought him up in New York City, with the idea that law should be his life vocation; but from the age of seven, when he recited Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in public, amateur theatricals played a big part in his aspirations. He was in the class of '91 of the College of the City of New York, and when he was about nineteen I remember seeing him at the Berkeley Lyceum, in a representation by the college dramatic club, as "Joseph Pickle, inclined to mischief," in "The Pink Mask."
It was his experience in performances like this that helped him to make his start when he finally decided—as such a throng have done before him—to abandon law in favor of the footlights. He began on March 28, 1892, in Philadelphia, with A.M. Palmer's company, then presenting "The Broken Seal." He had only six lines to speak, but the very next week J.H. Stoddart gave him an opening for something better, as he once gave Mansfield, though under altogether different circumstances.
Mrs. Stoddart died suddenly, and during his absence from the company his part of Jean Torquerie was entrusted to young Hackett, who acquitted himself so well therein that he was enabled to obtain a post with Lotta as her leading man. Lotta's retirement threw him on the market, from which he was removed by no less distinguished a manager than Augustin Daly.
At Daly's then he appeared as Master Wilford in "The Hunchback," with Ada Rehan as Julia, Isabel Irving (whom Hackett has since starred in "The Crisis") as Helen, and Arthur Bourchier (now a leading actor-manager of London, and who created the part Hackett played here in "The Walls of Jericho") as Sir Thomas Clifford.