From Daly's he passed to the road under the management of Arthur Rehan as leading man in successes from Daly's, which led to his becoming a star in the same modest orbit in a repertoire of old-timers such as "Mixed Pickles" (on which his amateur venture, "The Pink Mask," had been based), "The Arabian Nights," and "The Private Secretary."
He was lifted into the prominence imparted by a Broadway run through the agency of "Madame Sans Gêne," in which Dan Frohman saw him, with the result that in November, 1895, he appeared with the old Lyceum stock company as a character next in importance to Herbert Kelcey, then leading man of the troupe. The play was a serious one, "The Home Secretary," by R.C. Carton, who had not then taken such wild farcical flights as "Mr. Hopkinson."
It was just at this time that Mr. Frohman decided to try rather an odd experiment. As had been his custom, E.H. Sothern had opened the autumn season at the Lyceum, and this year with even more than his wonted success, for he had appeared in the first transfer to the stage of "The Prisoner of Zenda." Previous bookings compelled his relegation to the road in the very height of the New York hit, and in mid-winter, after sizing up his new acquisition to the stock forces, Mr. Frohman decided to duplicate the outfittings of "The Prisoner of Zenda" and put it on at the Lyceum with Hackett in the dual part of Rassendyll and the king.
What Kelcey thought of this arrangement has never been made public. But he was temperamentally unsuited to romantic rôles, and did admirable work in the heavier part of Black Michael, with the explanatory line "by special arrangement" beneath his name on the program.
This was Hackett's opportunity, and he availed himself of it to the full, winning the Lyceum clientage for his firm adherents, so that when Kelcey went starring the next autumn with Effie Shannon he stepped into the shoes of the leading man of the house. In the opening bill, "The Courtship of Leonie," he met for the first time the new leading woman, Mary Mannering, who in due course became his wife.
It was two years later that Mr. Frohman launched Hackett as a star in the "Prisoner of Zenda's" sequel, "Rupert of Hentzau," which had no Broadway showing. Its successor, "The Pride of Jennico," made up for this by setting Hackett on a pedestal so firmly rooted in public favor that in a year or so he became his own manager, and his youthful dream was fulfilled.
THE ROAD TO "HAPPYLAND."
After Becoming Stage-Struck, Marguerite
Clark Began Her Professional Career
as a Singer in a Baltimore Park.
"Stage-struck" is the cause that sent to the boards Marguerite Clark, the little leading woman of the big comedian, De Wolf Hopper. A native of Boston, she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but had no stage acquaintances and no means of securing an opening.
One evening, however, she was singing at a friend's house, when there chanced to be among the guests the manager of an open-air resort in the neighborhood of Baltimore. It was, in brief, one of those parks at the end of a trolley line, which the street railway company promotes in order to boom traffic. Struck by Miss Clark's capabilities, and learning of her histrionic ambitions, he offered her an engagement for the summer, which she was only too glad to accept. In this rather humble way, then, she made her start, singing before such heterogeneous crowds as the trolley emptied into the park from all quarters of the Monumental City.