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14
Screen Mirror
For June
by
frank
wbifbeck
• I knew him when . . . and loo\ t him now!
About 1904 . . . maybe a year earlier . . or later . . . there was a tough punk as errand boy in the office of Sullivan, Harris and Woods. His name was Harold Franklin, and hfe was poison for actors, managers, and advance agents . . . getting past him and into the office of Martin Herman took four red apples and a pack of chewing gum . . . besides promises, threats, and not a little cursing.
Show business ... to that kid . . . was the blood to his heart ... air to his lungs ... it was meat and strong drink . . . it was his life. If he had known what it was to have a passion for anything . . . then the world of the melodrama ... of fifty-cent theatres and
thirty-five-dollar-a-week actors
would have been his passion — because,
well, he loved it . . . every minute of it . . . even tho he didn’t understand it or know what it was all about.
Can’t keep that kind of a punk down.
When Sam Harris pulled away from Tim Sullivan and A1 Woods to go into business with George M. Cohan . . . he took with him the good wishes of his late partners . . . and the office boy.
Franklin’s position in the show world had advanced now ... he was out ot the class of “Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl” and “King of the White
Slaves,” because the Cohan and Harris shows were going to play theatres that charged a dollar — one of these turkey troupes was “Little Johnny Jones.” The kid must have learned something in that office — there. . . because the next step . . . he’s a vaudeville booker. Yes, sir . . . handling the business affairs of actors. He’s got a lot of actors . . . but no theatres to play them in. Here’s where his brother, John J. Franklin, comes in. John promoted a theatre in Norwalk, Conn., just so he could play Harold’s actors. It would have been great . . . but Harold’s actors must have been hams — the theatre went broke . . .
• Next . . . highbrow, this time. Associated with the Educational Alliance and the Berkeley Lyceum at Fiftyeighth street and Broadway, and . . . Harold Brooks Franklin has turned actor .. . he is the star of a home-made production of “The Bells” and of “Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” John Franklin is the manager now . . . but John must have been a bum manager . . . the show went broke.
But . . . you can’t stop a guy fromi trying . . .
Paul Scott was a good guy; sweet promoter, too. Paul tipped Harold to. dramatic stock company locations ancS
A
• Back *n the days when the Educational Alliance and the Berkeley Lyceum were the highbrow stages of Broadway. Harold Brooks Franklin trod their boards in the play, “ Facing, the Music.”