“Afterward I went to Augustin Daly and proposed that he should dramatize ‘Trilby,’ have Miss Rehan play the character, and let me do Svengali. It would have revolutionized things at Daly’s. But he pooh-poohed me, and wouldn’t listen to the idea. Instead, he put on ‘A Bundle of Lies,’ where I had a fifteen-line part. The play was a fearful frost.”
Takes Dark View of Future.
Just previous to the death of Stuart Robson, Dixey made a big success as David Garrick in the play “Oliver Goldsmith,” which Augustus Thomas wrote for Robson; then, by way of striking variety, Dixey went to London in a Casino review, “The Whirl of the Town,” which failed to please England.
A few years later, when Charles Frohman imported Barrie’s “Little Mary” to the Empire, puzzling New York by the play written around the stomach, Dixey was the Earl of Carlton.
Dixey, by the by, does not believe in stock companies, and is rather pessimistic as to the future of our stage, in the way of the supply of actors.
“Where are they coming from?” he said to me the other night, in the course of his chat about his own start in the business. “What training do they get under the present system to fit them for any work out of a set groove into which chance and the powers that be happen to drop them? Suppose, for example, you are a young man who has done good work in amateur theatricals, and with a ‘pull’ in the shape of a letter of introduction to a big New York manager. You are also straight and tall and would make a presentable appearance on the stage.
“Well, you have your interview with the big manager of to-day. He looks you over, presses a button, and to the obsequious underling who answers the summons, he says: ‘Put this gentleman in the juvenile part in Number Three company of “Mrs. Prettytoes’ Shoestrings.”’
“You are elated at first at getting a job, but you find later on that ‘Mrs. Prettytoes’ Shoestrings’ has long since exhausted its drawing powers in the big cities, and is billed for six months through the one-night stands of Texas and Arkansas. You play the same part for all that period, and the next season maybe you will receive a rôle exactly on the same lines when, if you are lucky, week stands may replace the single night stops.
Where Are Actors to Come From?
“And so it goes. Because you look the character you are assigned to it, and you never have an opportunity to show what you can do in the way of versatility, and consequently you never grow. Again I repeat, Where are the big actors in the next generation to come from?