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SHOWMAN
had him signed to a five-year contract, running over a year in George Broadhurst's "The Man of the Hour" and then teamed with Tom Wise in "The Gentleman from Mississippi." Audiences were taking to him immensely. It was the old matinee-idol racket all over again, except that Fairbanks was a much more virile type than the run of old-fashioned matinee-idols. His list of telephone numbers would have been forty feet long if he'd ever bothered to compile it.
There were some stormy aspects in the handling of Mr. Fairbanks. On one occasion I tore up his contract in front of him. On another his attractiveness to ladies gummed up our arrangements. During the run of "The Man of the Hour" he fell in love with the daughter of the contemporary cotton-king. It's easy to be anonymous about that, since there was a new cotton-king every few months back then when you could corner cotton—it's impossible now. They never lasted long in that game. Well, it was a nice match, but the old gentleman would consent to his daughter's marrying an actor only if he quit the stage and went into a respectable business—the old gentleman to finance and specify the business. I argued that with Fairbanks till I was black in the face, along the lines of the old and thoroughly sound theory that, once you get grease-paint on your face, you have no business anywhere but the theater— particularly when you're going great guns. But Doug was willing to do anything to get the girl, so we parted. I reminded him that, so long as he stayed out of the
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