Actorviews (1923)

298 Actorviews thought I had it in me, but I — I don’t remember ever saying to myself, ‘Some time I’ll show ’em!’ No, I was satisfied to be one of the also-rans. I liked the work; I was satisfied. I don’t think I’m any happier today. The only difference, as I said to my wife the other day, ‘the only difference, “mother,” is that when the bell rings I don’t have to ask you to go to the door to see who it is.’ ” “Mrs. Bacon always had faith in you?” “Well, most of the time. She even had faith in this play when I was peddling it from manager to manager and they were all telling me the public wasn’t interested in the character of an old man and a failure to boot. But after ‘mother’ saw the first night at Atlantic City, where we played in too big a house, all she said, as we rode along the walk in a wheel chair, was: ‘Well, Frank, is this what we’ve been building on these last three years?’ . . . You know, anyway, she likes comedy a little more high-toned than ‘Lightnin’.” “Mrs. Bacon doesn’t say Bill Jones is the best you’ve ever done!” “Not by a long shot! She’d rather see me in ‘The Professor’s Love Story.’ She didn’t believe the first night of ‘Lightnin’ ’ had set New York afire — neither did everybody else, and I was one of ’em. You know our company, with the exception of Miss Oaker and one or two others, was all raw western material that had never seen Broadway before. They didn’t know anything about a rehearsed first-night audience, brought in on passes and instructed when to let go. But I told ’em not to let the laughter and applause go to their heads. I was wise. And when Mr. Golden, after the performance, asked me to come to the office to-morrow morning and get a few passes for friends