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The complete show ran at the Scala for thirteen weeks, but it did not actually make money though it covered expenses. As it happens I can give an actual date in this instance, for we reached the hundredth performance on my fiftieth birthday, March 19th, 1924. Then Stoll gave me a three weeks' contract to run the show without the film at the Coliseum for two hundred pounds a week. We all enjoyed that immensely. Then we travelled with it with the film to numbers of picture theatres throughout the country wherever there was a stage big enough to carry it, but that number was naturally limited.
At the Coliseum there was a rather particular stage-manager, unusual because he did not like bad language used in the theatre behind the scenes, whatever happened in front. Our set, of course, was permanently on a section of the revolving stage so we had nothing to do but to wait while it pulled round into position and then lit up. On one occasion the light fused and the electrician said 'Damn' under his breath. The manager said, 'Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, MISTER SMITH!' in accents of growing horror.
I remember the stage and all the dressing-rooms and everything about the place behind the curtain was immaculately clean, and that is not usual in a theatre. I liked that stage-manager, indeed all the personnel there were exceedingly nice, and we had a very good time. Once I was called round to the front of the house to try and pacify an old lady who 'was creating somefink awful.' When I got there I found her in indignant tears and she told me she had come up all the way from the country to see Alma Taylor in the flesh and had been put off with a coloured film. I tried hard to reassure her that she really had seen Alma, but she would not be convinced, so I took her round to the back and introduced her to the lady, and it was rather a compliment to the effectiveness of the illusion.
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