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SHOWMAN
she shed one costume after another, Irish one moment, Scotch the next, French the next, layer by layer, with dances to match— quite a popular stunt in those times, even if it did make the poor girl go on stage wearing as many clothes as a Chinaman off for a two-months' sea voyage. She afterwards became the first Mrs. William A. Brady and the mother of Alice Brady.
My reasoning had its points, but "Nero" was a poor show at best and not even the lions could save it. I booked it round a couple of places with less and less success. Oscar Hammerstein was stuck for an attraction at his Harlem Opera House and guaranteed me $1500 for a week of "Nero," sight unseen. When he had a look at what he'd bought the night we opened, he came out into the lobby as the audience left and addressed them as follows:
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "This play is a fraud. I have it here for a week. I hope nobody will come to see it."
And in Holmes' Theater, Brooklyn, where we had another discouraging engagement, the liveliest of the lions got us an extremely dangerous reputation by coming within half an inch of jumping the barrier out into the audience. Add to that that I didn't get on well with Lackaye, the star, and you can see why I was willing to let "Nero" fold up on me. But there were the lions, such as they were, and I still figured them as a drawing-card of some sort. So to fill out an evening's running-time, I put Keller the magician on the same
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