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ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 133
question I asked was "How much per?" To be quite honest I did not get what I asked for but as I had made a very liberal allowance for "argument" I was more than satisfied with the salary fixed up. If I say that it was in the region of two hundred pounds per week I will not be very far wrong. This was an extraordinary jump from the seven or eight pounds a "turn" I was earning in London — and would have had to go back to, if the pantomime proved a failure ! So you may depend upon it I determined to leave nothing undone on my part to make "Aladdin" a triumphant success.
Which it was ! I think it ran for thirteen weeks and we played to packed houses. All Glasgow went mad about this pantomime; even the railway companies ran special trains from the districts so that the people could see Harry Lauder as Roderick McSwankey. The "book" was as good a pantomime story as has ever been put on the stage and Howard and Wyndham had got together a perfect combination of artistes for its presentation. There was Bessie Featherstone, one of the loveliest girls in the profession, as Aladdin, Dan Crowley as the Widow Twankey, Imro Fox as the Wicked Magician, Alice Russon as the Princess, and Jose Collins as the second girl. Poor Bessie Featherstone died in the middle of the run; Dan Crowley passed away several years later and Imro Fox is also dead. Alice Russon is, I believe, still alive and Jose Collins is today well-known as a musical comedy star both in this country and in America. Jose was only about sixteen years old and this Glasgow engagement was her first on leaving her convent school. She was an exceptionally pretty and vivacious girl but showed no promise at that time of becoming the beautiful singer she turned out to be in after years.
I had kept a "rod in pickle" for this pantomime in Glasgow. From the day I signed the contract some months previously I had been anxiously looking round for, and thinking over, ideas for a new song or two. I wanted something