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SHOWMAN
back when. I made a business of keeping a supply on hand and was known in consequence as "Manuscript Bill." I still have a number of these ratty old scripts, some in print, some copied off secretly in longhand, and I still find it occasionally useful to have been "Manuscript Bill." Just last year a big radio-hour, wanting to put on a compressed version of "Monte Cristo," came to me after they'd looked everywhere else for a good acting version— and sure enough, down in the middle of the heap was a longhand copy of "Monte Cristo" just as Charles Fechter had played it. They offered me $50 for the use of it. Not on your life, I said— but I'll take a thousand and play Edmond Dantes for you myself. So I did and I must confess that, as I was getting off those grand old lines, I sounded so much like James O'Neill I startled myself. Nobody else in the studio had ever heard O'Neill do it, so I could keep my illusions undisturbed.
My break into managing on my own had a good deal to do with the old-time tradition of piracy and plagiarism. During that tour with Morrison's company, when I went east with a broken heart, leaving Portland and my girl behind me, I saved the life of the company by persuading Morrison to put on a version of "Faust," after Shakespeare failed him, building a set for the big Brocken scene that was an exact imitation of the set Henry Irving had used in London. All I had to go by was a picture of the scene and a pirated version of "Faust," but it was enough. Morrison shook the theater
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