CHAPTER II
The actor-manager — The position of the theatre in the’90’s compared with its position to-day — The preparation of a play at the St. James’ — Alexander’s consideration for his company — His first production at the St. James’ Theatre: The Idler
IT IS DIFFICULT for a younger generation to understand the winds of acrimony which beat about the head of an actor-manager in the’90’s; and they were not blown up by a bellows. They rose from a genuine passion. The Theatre held a more important place then in the cultural life of the nation than it does to-day. The great characters of the Elizabethan dramatists, which demand at once the very deeps of emotion and a close intellectual analysis to control them, were more frequently seen upon the stage. The public was more familiar with the plays and took a greater interest in a comparison of the players. Criticism was more subtle. The coming change which was destined to confer upon the race more of Mr MacDougall’s mens sana in corpore sano had only shown itself as yet too faintly to affect the accustomed mode of life. Summer time was not yet invented. Golf courses were still sparse; Wimbledon was still more of a suburb than the playground of Europe. No one danced between the courses of dinner; there were no Night Clubs to which you took your wife; Bridge had not gagged the wits and the bores with an indiscriminate hand; and the cinema had not yet made its alluring appeal. The theatre was the entertainment. Nowadays at a dinnerparty you are more likely to hear the new film discussed than the new play. Then the platinum blonde had not bleached and plastered her locks; dogs were not yet horses; and the Great War lay hidden in the mists of the future. The play was the excitement and the relaxation. Now it is one of many.
The bubble boom which followed upon the war added its influence to the changes in the national way of life. Men whom accident rather than foresight had lifted for a brief while into an unexpected prosperity found a pleasant evasion from the Excess Profits Tax in backing plays. Theatre after theatre could have taken its device from the “In and Out” Club in Piccadilly; and still the aspiring backers stood in a queue. Under the stress of inflated rentals, salaries based upon the assumption that the run of the play would hardly outlast the period of rehearsals, plays chosen by men who had no gift to visualise them as they read them, and the narrow purse of the public, the position of the actor-manager became precarious. So precarious indeed that the gallant and able Gladys Cooper has no longer a theatre of her own. The actor-manager to-day is an oddity. But in the’90’s he was so prominent and debatable a personage that that stately periodical The Nineteenth Century opened its pages to a symposium as to whether he ought to exist or die. George Alexander, the young Marcellus of his craft, was invited by James Knowles, the editor and proprietor, to contribute his views, but he was then preparing for his migration from the Avenue Theatre to the St. James’ and had other work upon his hands. By one argument the actor-manager was a commercial figure and the bane of art. He was jealous; Edmund Kean would not act with Macready; Booth smashed Macready’s last American tour with a fatal riot. He chose plays with an eye only to the leading part; they satisfied his vanity, but they destroyed the prestige of the theatre. Thus one side. Mr John Galsworthy, at a later date, accepted the argument. He wrote to Sir George Alexander on April 14th, 1913:
You were, as you say, so very kind as to ask me to write for your theatre. I have received such requests from other leading actor-managers, but I cannot honestly believe that any play I have written would have been accepted on the condition that I might cast it as I thought it should be cast (without extravagance) to get out the essence of the play. Actor-managers, I take it, are nearly all in management as lovers of the theatre, and believers in themselves — some of them obviously magnetic and charming personalities rather than interpreters. Why should they put on plays in which the leading parts are cast as the author feels they should be cast?... You yourself are the attraction to half the public, and half the commercial value of the play. Whatever you may wish to do you have always that fact before you. What I have always before me is the essence of my play. How to reconcile the two factors I have not yet discovered.
It is true that less than two years afterwards he succeeded in making that reconciliation. For on February 7th, 1915, Mr Galsworthy did propose to Sir George Alexander that he should produce two plays of his, The Full Moon and The Little Man. But the earlier letter no doubt expressed his real view on the question which so troubled patrons of the theatre in 1890.
On the other side stand one or two arguments most difficult to answer. There is nothing more chancy than the choice of a play. It requires the trained vision of a man who can see it in his mind acted whilst he reads it, and that gift is most likely to be found in a man whose instinct and intelligence and experience, working together, have brought him to the topmost rank. For no one on earth can tell what the fate of a play may be until the curtain has fallen upon the final scene. Expected failures have run the season through; expected triumphs have been withdrawn within the week. And so it always has been. On page 143 of the first volume of Macready’s Reminiscences you can read his verdict:
From the many opportunities subsequently afforded me of testing the fallibility of opinion in these cases, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the most experienced judges cannot with certainty predict the effect in representation of plays which they may have read or even seen rehearsed. Some latent weakness, some deficient link in the chain of interest, imperceptible till in actual presence, will oftentimes balk hopes apparently based on the firmest principles and baffle judgments respected as oracular.
In actual presence are the vital words. The audience makes all the difference. It not only reveals errors, it discovers merits. It would hardly overshoot the truth to say that no play has been publicly given without the audience reacting in some totally unexpected way to a line, a piece of stage business, and even at times to a whole scene. The audience is, metaphorically speaking, a sleeping partner in the concern, and if the play be dull, literally one too. It becomes a kind of collaborator whose share neither actor nor author nor producer can foresee; a current passes from neighbour to neighbour in the seats, a fellowship is born, a play damned or made. It is a case of blind men on a road, but the one of them who has travelled the most roads and taken the fewest wrong turnings is the best guide. The actor-manager, too, has something else besides his financial prosperity to consider. He has his own good name. Herbert Tree, when he was asked what he thought of the prospects of Stephen Phillips’ play Ulysses, answered, “It will be a very good play to go bankrupt on”. Thus the other side.
But in truth, all these contentions for and against are a little beside the point. The argument that commerce is incompatible with art is false from top to bottom. The very great artists have never been averse to marketing their work to their best advantage. Great artists are full-blooded people who want all they can get out of life and want it with both hands. The more intense their concentration upon their art during the long days of labour, the more they seek that their rewards should be proportionately great. They may squander them or they may hoard them, but they want them first. I never heard that Cellini or Michael Angelo or Shakespeare were indifferent either to their fame or the weight of their pockets. The actor-manager is in the same case. The more complete the artist the more certainly he will want to be master and not man, to do things as he thinks they ought to be done, to control his theatre in the way which suits his mind. The more content he is to be a subordinate, the less likely he is to reach the heights. That he may exercise his gifts with that sort of spaciousness which is an attribute of great art he cannot afford to treat commerce with disdain. Indeed this compulsion of nature, for it is no less, is likely to be more urgent in the actor than in other artists; for merely to act in an age where a play may run a year means too thin a life for any man with the divine fire at his heart. Other artists have their days full. The recently published Life of Sir Gerald du Maurier by his daughter illustrates with a painful insight the disillusionment
which comes from empty days. The film industry is bringing to-day the actor into a closer line with other artists. But I am none the less sure that in the cycle of time the actor-manager will return.
§
It will be appropriate at this moment to give a first-hand account of the preparation of a play at the St. James’ Theatre. I had three plays produced by George Alexander; one a failure, Colonel Smith, one which made a moderate profit, Open Windows, and one which was a considerable success, The Witness for the Defence. I take that play from its inception. I was first asked to think out a subject. Alexander suggested to me that it might save trouble and disappointment if before I began to write it I talked it over with him. I had in my mind an idea which might crystallise if it was given time. For a year I kept it simmering, taking it out of the pot every now and then to have a look at it, and putting it back again since it was obviously not ready. In the spring of 1910 I had the theme, the characters, and the sequence of scenes clear enough for narration, and over luncheon at 17 Stratton Street, where I then lived, I talked it over with Alexander. He was hopeful, and during the summer I wrote it. I read it to Alexander towards the end of November at his house in Pont Street and he accepted it then and there. There was nothing exceptional in that acceptance. It was his belief that a decision ought to be taken after the play was first read; that a second judgment made up of hesitations and over-meditated doubts was much more likely to be wrong. He was in the position of an audience seeing the play for the first time; and for an author it is one of the virtues of an actor-manager that his play does not have to run the gauntlet of half a dozen counsellors. As far as I remember we discussed the cast at the same meeting. Miss Ethel Irving, an actress remarkable for a combination of delicacy and power, had then reached the high position which for some years had been her due. She had a curiously appealing personality; there was a natural gentleness, a pathos in her manner, and to use the jargon of the stage, she “came over the footlights” immediately. The part of Stella Ballantyne was probably the best in the play. It seemed to offer more of emotional opportunity than the hero’s part did to the man. It was in those days more audacious.
I had myself a belief that the two characters would be of equal worth to the players, but it was certain that Alexander’s would be the more difficult to sustain and would certainly not stand out more than the other. I dwell upon this because it is one of the many confutations which Alexander’s career provided of the creed that the actor-manager by the compulsion of his position must seek to overshadow every other character in the play. It was Alexander who suggested Miss Ethel Irving. For the other parts we secured Sydney Valentine, Alfred Bishop, Leslie Faber, Liston Lyle, and Marie Linden, and the play could not have been better cast.
A few weeks later I was called down in the morning to the St. James’ Theatre, and in the long board-room into which his dressing-room led I found a small toy stage with a set of draughtsmen labelled with the names of the different characters. For the better part of two days we arranged and marked in the script the various movements and positions of all the characters throughout the progress of the play. Alexander had analysed the dialogue sentence by sentence, and every now and then he would turn upon me with a quite disconcerting abruptness and say, “What did you mean by that?” — disconcerting because — and I had noticed it before — suddenly out of a pair of familiar and friendly eyes a complete and rather hostile stranger seemed to look at me. When the movements had been arranged, what is known as a stage cloth with the doors and entrances painted upon it was prepared. Thus, before a single rehearsal was called we had a complete plan to work upon, and anyone who has witnessed the medley which those producers, whose mental processes lie fallow until the company is gathered for the first time upon the stage, have to disentangle will realise how much time and discomfort were saved.
The rehearsals began at 11. The old-fashioned ten minutes’ grace was not conceded at the St. James’; they began punctually at 11 and ended at 2, for it was Alexander’s belief that after three hours of attentive rehearsal you had got all the good you were going to get out of your company for that session. He was particular to break off at that hour. The welfare of his company was always one of his first considerations. Many of the cast lived at a distance from the theatres, they were acting at night, and they would be all the better for some hours of rest in their own homes. The only people to whom he did not show this consideration were himself and Ethel Irving. For on coming to the theatre once or twice before the rehearsal was timed to begin, I found them both going quickly through the strenuous scenes which they were to act together, whilst he suggested to her such movements, such small pieces of business, and even such intonations of the voice as seemed to him helpful to establish the individual authority of her part. There was never the slightest jealousy, never the slightest effort to diminish her. The play was the thing, and, but for his determination that no one at his theatre should stand in the centre of the stage, every opportunity was given to her to act him into the wings if she could.
There were two scenes required, one a marquee and the other a drawing-room in a rural district of England. As to the marquee Alexander said to me, “You know about that. You had better go and get the genuine thing.” I discovered a firm close to London Bridge which made marquees for India. The manager of the firm said to me, “You don’t want a marquee, you want the lining of a marquee”, and that he provided and set. With regard to the second scene which, after the first act, stood for the rest of the play, Alexander said, “You can have a new scene if you like, but I’ve got one or two scenes in perfect condition which seem to me suitable. Each has been used once and some time ago. Come and look at the photographs, and if you like one of them I’ll have it set for you. If you want a new one, you can have it.” He showed me a photograph which represented the kind of room I wanted. He explained how he could throw back a certain portion of it to form a recess for the garden door; he had it set upon the stage, and after I hat! agreed that it would do perfectly well, he had it painted afresh. The result was that the scenery for The Witness for the Defence cost exactly £145: 6: 9. Alexander closed his theatre for four days before the first night, rehearsed morning and evening during those four days, had two dress-rehearsals, and raised the curtain on the first night exactly three weeks after the first rehearsal. Another instance of his consideration for his company is to be found in the order that no visitor should be admitted to the dressing-rooms of the theatre whilst the performance was going on. It was a rule very strictly kept, and the reason for its introduction was to prevent the cadging upon the members of his company by the many hangers-on who asked for loans which would never be repaid. His house was in order indeed. And letter after letter is to be found in his correspondence from actors and actresses who had served under his management thanking him for the courtesy and consideration which they had received. He had a staff proud of the theatre and devoted to him, as the following story shows. Amongst the leading ladies who made their name at his theatre there was one who at times indulged in a humour more splenetic than kindly. During a rehearsal this lady fainted, and Alexander, all sympathy, carried her from the stage to her dressing-room. A few days later she repeated the swooning process, and again Alexander responded. It happened, however, that the wardrobe mistress had noticed the lady wink as she was being carried off, and bubbling with indignation she took the information to her manager. Alexander said nothing, but when the lady fainted a third time he turned to his large and hefty stage carpenter and said, “Will you please remove this lady at once”. She was up on her feet and rehearsing her part before the carpenter could get near her.
§
On February 26th of the year 1891 the first new play produced under Alexander’s management had its opening night. It was a melodrama of the drawing-room, and we should find it, no doubt, a trifle musty to-day. It contained asides, unhelpful trimmings in the shape of an uxorious General and a sophisticated ingénue, and a trick to bring down a curtain straight
from the factory of Sardou. Would Lady Harding go or not go to Mark Cross’s bachelor rooms at 10 o’clock on the next night? The life of her husband was at stake and she adored him. If she would go, she must drop her bouquet. She must drop it before she left the party. Mark Cross, the man to whom she was to give the signal, was in the room. There was no reason why Lady Harding should not have consented with a nod, or refused with a shake of the head. There were others present, it is true, but she was never described as a fool. She could, without embarrassment, have crossed the room and in the course of conversation said “yes” or “no” with enough intention to show her meaning both to the audience and the character on the stage. But that would not do. No. She must drop her bouquet. So, when the suspense has been sufficiently prolonged, the bouquet is dropped and the curtain falls. It was a stage convention of the times that if an adoring husband found his wife’s fan in a man’s room, whatever of devotion and love she had up to that moment shown him, he must instantly conclude that she was that man’s mistress, heap her high with insults, and propose a duel. The duel, and the bouquet, and the fan were stock pieces of mechanism, and in The Idler Haddon Chambers employed them all. The play, however, had qualities of a higher kind. It contained one very pleasant and tender duologue between a mother and a son; a strenuous and closely written scene between three men, and in the case of the American, Simeon Strong, and of the Idler, characters less obvious than were usual. This play was received with enthusiasm by the general public, but a great diversity among the critics. William Archer, a writer of melodrama himself, endured with difficulty melodrama in others. He condemned the play out of hand. Minds more liberal and urbane, like those of H. D. Traill, Stephen Coleridge, Lady Martin, and Edmund Yates, found in it fresh and nervous dialogue, a good deal of human nature, and a very moving conclusion. There was general agreement that Alexander himself had played an extremely difficult part with a tact and force which strengthened his grip upon the playgoer.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 839