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SHOWMAN
bution to dramatic art by Maurice Barrymore, father of all the Barrymores in general. I'd got to know him well through his close friendship with Corbett— that arose out of Barrymore's being a fine amateur boxer as well as a brilliant actor. His one rival at boxing in the Lambs Club was a fellow named Robert Hilliard. The pair of them finally got so bitter over the question of who was the better man that they fought it out to a savage finish one night in front of the Park Theater in Boston with Barrymore the winner by several miles. He was good— he really could stand up and spar with Corbett and come off very prettily so long as Jim remembered not to put on too much pressure.
One evening when the three of us were loafing round, Barrymore dragged me up to his room to read me a play he'd written which was a sure-fire winner. It was called "Roaring Dick and Company" and Barrymore read it in a fashion that threatened to tear down the lighting fixtures and rip up the boards in the floor —a performance that got me mesmerized in no time. During the third act he cried so hard that you could hardly hear the words— great big, fat tears. Well, thought I, if just reading it through makes this veteran actor blubber like this, what will it do to an audience?—a line of reasoning which prompted me to buy it on the spot and get it into production immediately.
The night we opened, a fellow in the lobby asked me what terms I'd made with Barrymore.
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