Variety (Dec 1905)

■ • What "Vaudeville—a place where a great many ha 1 actors go hefore they die." I don't know that this definition of this word has found its way into any of the dictionaries as yet. hut it certainly ought to. In the first place, I should never have 1 een asked to write ahout vaude- ville, hecause, for cue thing. I know very little ahout it nowadays, and, for an- other. I have got a grudge against, it. Vaudeville has robbed me of too many happy hours in the variety theatres to ever expect a hoom from me. I feel quite sure that 1 am not the only dra- matic critic who is free to confess that that there was once a time a good van ety show was the spice of his life. And why not? What could he more restful and soothing to a man tired out hy re viewing a long series of "new and orig- inal American plays," from more or less foreign sources, than to find a quiet afrerncon's intellectual fun in watching the nerformance of first-class acrobats, t »vn<Jite dogs, or listening to the dulcet strains of a first-class serio-comic. Now- adays if a dramatic critic goes to a vaudeville performance he finds the greater part of the headlines are made up of dramatic extinct volcanoes, names which in many instances have outlived their usefulness and cleverness on the legitimate hoards and now distended out of all proportion to their worth an* starred at the head of the performance. Some cf them have heen fortunate £iw*tr£h to secure these short plays; in that case they may he pardoned, hut even then it's altogether too much 1 iK*- work for a critic to sit down and enjoy their performance. I don't think I ex- aggerate the case at all when I say that, there are hundreds of true lovers of variety show who are kept away from trie performances hy the number of plays which are now infected into the hill Again, it takes a highly clever actor Don't Know About By AGTON DflVIES. to adapt himself to the new environment of a vaudeville. Between him and the legitimate variety performers there is a wide gulf fixe 1—one cf those gulfs which no suspension bridge can ever span. The actor, in nearly every instance, regards his dip into vaudeville as a vast con- descension on his part, and looks down on the legitimate variety actor as a be- ing belonging to an essentially lower orbit, a being of a distinctly crudei grade. The variety man meanwhile de- tests the interloping actor with all his soul. The fact that the star of the mo- ment draws just about three times as big a salary as he does is enough to madden him, but there are usually abundant other reasons as well. I have yet to meet an actor even among those few who have really scored big hits in vaudeville who have a good word to say for it. Of course, they near- ly always preface their denunciations with a request that they must not be quoted—probably because they might want to return to vaudeville some day —but that doesn't lessen the force of their roasts in the least. Even so hign salaried a vaudeville star as Miss Lillian Russell looked as elated as a child just out of school when I met her in the foyer of one of the Broadway playhouses on Monday night. T was astonished to se« her there, as I thought she was stilt drawing in three thousand dollars a week for singing four songs twice a day. so when I asked her "What does thl3 mean. Are you no longer a Proctoress?" she replied: "Thank heavens, no. Lit- tle Lillian has packed her little dinner pail away in lavender and is going to he a lady again until next March." From which remark I gathered that even in Miss Russell's exceptional case all that \audevilles is not Valenciennes. The whole method of the variety stage is so different to that of the regular hoards that T cannot see why the average actor should ever expect that he could score In it. Tabloid drama or comedy may be all very well in its way for those who like it, but it needs an exceptional ly strong and magnetic actor to hold a variety audience for eighteen or twenty minutes, the length of the average "turn." In a legitimate play this same actor would have secured important scenes strung through three or four acts. In vaudeville if he doesn't hit out straight from the shoulder at once he is lost. The variety performer has been brought to this line of work and scores accordingly: it is his business to do and to do quickly almost everything which an actor on the regular stage Is taught and schooled to avoid. To my mind there is infinitely more charms and orig- inality displayed among the variety actresses to-day tnan there is among the actors. I could name at least a score of variety performers who have gone into legitimate musical work in the last few years, but if you asked me at a moment's notice to name the actors and actresses who have established themselves as per- manent successes in vaudeville I am sure that I could count them off easily on the fingers of one hand. And here's another thing against vaudeville from my point of view. Variety actors may transfer to the regular stage and then return to vaudeville and prove just as clever as ever, but I have yet to see a single actor who having played in vaude- ville for any length of time returns to his stage as good an artist as when he left it. Almost invariably the vaude- ville rapid-fire methods of accentuation and playing for points tells against him when he reappears in a legitimate drama. That actors and actresses by their wholesale rushing into vaudeville have hurt their financial standing with the theatrical managers is undoubtedly true. One of the biggest managers in this country, who usually had from cn« hundred and fifty to two hundred actors on his salary list, whether they wens playing or not, said to me: "The acton are simply cutting their own throats hy rushing into this vaudeville business. • It's true that they draw a very large salary for a few weeks, but how lone does it last? And then thrown down and out in most cases. Take my own experience, for instance. This year out- side of the few really important artiste I have no actors under contract. I merely engage them for the run of a play, and thereby save myself a great deal of money. If the actors don't stand by the manager why should I stand hy' them? They don't hesitate to rush Into vaudeville for a few extra hundred dol- lars and cheapen their market value to me, but if they have any following at all they draw their clientele along witn them, leaving a yawning space in my balcony or gallery, as the case may be. And once having seen an actor for fifty cents it is against human nature to ex- pect that anyone is going to cheerfully pay $1.50 or $2.00 to see him again. It would be foolish for me not to admit that vaudeville has hit many of the reg- ular theatres hard during the past two or three years, because it has. It's cheap prices and the big attractions it fre- quently offers that have seriously af- fected our receipts, particularly in tha upper portions of the house, so for the future I am going to make it a rule not to employ actors who have figured la vaudeville unless I discover that I can- not possibly get along without them." Talk with any of the theatrical man- agers and you will find that their view* of the subject are very much along these lines. A good variety show is one of tbe finest tonics in the world, but vaudeville when for the most part it consists sf fallen stars in mediocre wishy washy one-act plays is one of the finest pro- ducers of mental dyspepsia that I know of. HOBBIES OF VAUDEVILLE MAN- AGERS. While the average vaudeville man- ager never stray very far from one* or the other of the houses under his direc- tion, h" invariably has some hobby or fad in which he seeks recreation and •-•lrcease from worry. Oscar Hammerstein steals away from the cares of the Victoria Theatre to write orchestral scores which are really played by real orchestras other than his own. F. F. Proctor spends his brief periods of rest in his automobile. -He belongs to the Larchmont Yacht Club, but 1?^is yacht racing to his son, F. F. Proctor, Jr. B. F. Keith quiets tired nerves bv using the long distance telephone. This acts like soothing syrup. At the head of his bed Is a long distance 'phone and when he feels insomnia hovering In the vicinity of his couch, he calls up Paila- phia and gets the statement of re- ceipts from his million-dollar house. Percy Williams finds relaxation and pleasure in writing lurid melodramas which he sends on the road under an alias—beg pardon, I mean a nom de plume—and incidentally makes money with them. 1. J. Murdock, head of the Western Hooking Association, goes in for ama- teur photography. He acquired this fad in a peculiar way. His wife (the Girl with the Auburn Hair) had been a camera fiend of long standing and like- wise the butt of her husband's humor on the subject. One day when they were ascending Mt. Low, in Los Angeles, Cali- fornia, she persuaded Mr. Murdock to press the button. The pictures came out finely and Mr. Murdock was doomed from the movement he looked upon the prints. The next day he bought a ten dollar camera. It worked. The day after h^ gave th" ten dollar camera f> •lis sister-in-law and bought a better one for thirty-five. The third day the maid al the theatre had (he ten dollar /am. ra sister had the thirty-five and J. J. was pressing the button on a sixty-five dollar article. George Castle runs trotting horses and fiocs from vaudeville worries to smoke peacefully on a Mississippi stern-wheel- er. E. F. Albee, of the Keith forces, amuses himself drawing up elaborate plans for new theatres. Tony Pastor, the veteran of them all, finds his resphe fruin business cares in running Elmhurst in the way it should go. Mr. Pastor is the only man in the variety business who takes an active, personal intercut in the Actors' Fund. His right hand man, Harry Sanderson, finds entertainment in running the fire departmet of the Jersey-suburb where he resides. Hurtlg and Seamon seek relaxation in building up a summer colony for vaude- ville actors in Arverne. M. Moyerfleld, Jr., head of the Orphe- um circuit, seeks relaxation and rest in traveling and is especially toud n* ocean voyages, while Mr. Beck, his right bower, takes infinite comfort, when his day's or rather night's work is done, in "roasting" the actors. There is nothing, from their ancestors to their acts, that escapes his rapid-fire, vivid criticism. Then in the morning he goes down to the office and books them all over again. DID HE QUIT OR WA3 HE FIRED? Billy Van, the minstrel man, who does his monologue in white face now, did not appear at Proctor's Twenty-third Street after last Monday, although booked for the week. At the theatre the information was that Van did not "make good" so was dropped after the evening performance. Along Broadway it has been said that being dissatisfied with his position or the bill "Billy" quit. It is a matter, of record that Van was number two on the programme. There is nothing further. You may accept cither version. ■ ■