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SHOWMAN
an old-fashioned whalebone umbrella and put me out of commission for a whole day.
That bit of doggerel went all over the country. As publicity it was invaluable. Publicity brings money into the box-office— the women stormed the place— and Adonis though Montague was, it was impossible not to suspect that his management had something to do with stimulating the excitement. The kind of tactic used was invented by the great Commodore Joseph H. Tooker when he decided to bring over an English actor, also egregiously good-looking, named Charles Rignold, to play ''Henry V" in competition with Montague's romantic roles.
Tooker was, to my mind, the great American showman—a combination of P. T. Barnum and Morris Gest. He was the man who put over "The Black Crook," the spectacular production which introduced the American theatrical public to females wearing tights, a costume which had previously been confined to the burlesque stage. You've undoubtedly heard of "The Black Crook," but you may not know that about three-quarters of the furor it caused, both approving and disapproving, was cooked up by Tooker himself and not by the public at all. He deluged the press with anonymous letters, raving indignantly against the moral degeneracy of the show, defending it vigorously as a beautiful tribute to the female form divine, wrote sermons for ministers to deliver consigning it to the bottomless pit, got prominent people to answer them— in general, invented the
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