Variety (December 1914)

VARIETY 17 "WILLIE" HAMMERSTEIN The usual crowd in Hammerstein's Victoria theatre lobby. Among them the late "Willie" Hammerstein, Hou- dini and "Doc" Steiner. .Houdini at that time was playing a Roof engage- ment there. He and Willie entered into an argument, Willie protesting it was utterly impossible to make him believe for an instant Houdini could release himself or any other man from any pair of handcuffs. Willie settled it by saying he^would wager Houdini $100 it could not be done, if Houdini would allow him to select the hand- cuffs and the man. The money was posted. Willie asked Steiner to be the man, and sent over to the 47th street police station for a pair of handcuffs. When "Doc" had been handcuffed to the radiator in the lobby, the entire crowd walked out, leaving him there. That was but one of the thousand of practical jokes William Hammerstein "framed" for his own amusement, and which more often amused those who shared them. When Willie had a differ- ence of opinion with his father (Oscar Hammerstein) and left the manage- ment of the Victoria for a few months, he joked from his home. One day a phone message came to the box office. Could Doc Steiner be located; Willie wanted him. Doc answered the phone. Willie said he was lonesome and all alone, wouldn't Doc come up for a while. Doc asked for the address, and Willie gave him the same number on 291st street that he lived at on 91st street. After narrowly escaping arrest for burglarious entrance into some house way uptown, when he insisted Mr. Hammerstein lived there and had sent for him, Doc returned to "the Corner" and got Willie on the phone once more. Willie abused him for neglecting to keep his appointment; said Doc must have misunderstood his directions, and asked him to come up immediately, giving the correct address the second time. When Doc entered the Hammerstein home, he found Willie seated in front of the fireplace, hold- ing a carving knife in his hand. Doc, alarmed, inquired the cause. "Well, Hoc," said Willie, "what's the use, the old man has thrown me out, my friends have turned me down, and there's nothing else to do. You're my only pal. Sit here with me a few min- utes, will you, until I cut my throat?" Doc sat with W'llie for four hours, pleading with him not to do anything rash, until some friends called on Wil- lie by appointment for a game of pinochle. Yet on the day last June, when "Willie" Hammerstein's funeral was held, the sobbing of Doc Steiner was so pathetic it affected every one at the services. Another side of William Hammer- stein was his brilliancy as a showman in every sense of that word. Perhaps all of it might be epitomized in what his father said, shortly after Willie's death, and when theatrical business in general was very slack. Some one asked Oscar Hammerstein how the Victoria was doing. "What could it do?" answered Mr. Hammerstein; "the only man who ever did business here has gone." It was literally true. When Ham- merstein's "did business," it was Wil- lie; when it did big business, it was Willie—everything about and around Hammerstein's Victoria theatre was "Willie," ever since the first day it played vaudeville, excepting for those few months referred to when he left. But business picked up again the very day he returned. Willie framed, schemed, fumed, fretted, planted and "got it over" so often show people on Broadway never doubted but that Hammerstein's would have something to draw, their only thought was what it would be and how Willie would go about it. No showman ever lived who appre- ciated the value of publicity for his the cables" (his favorite publicity trick) and when Miss Nesbit returned to New York, the day before she opened, her husband escaped from Matteawan. That wasn't enough pub- licity for Willie. He wanted Hammer- stein's in it, so he had Miss Nesbit guarded from possible assassination, with the result the Hammerstein at- traction received more newspaper no- tice at that time than Thaw, person- ally. * Each daily has a cable editor, and cables are given more attention, also more importance, than the usual rou- tine domestic news. Willie was well aware of this. Whenever he had an importation, the cables first {old of it. He started his publicity campaigns this way. Morris Gest went to Lu- zerne, located a Dutchman, his wife and daughter, dressed them as Arabs, paraded them to the Paris office of the New York Herald, and thus started Abdul Kader and His Three Wives, WILLIAM HAMMERSTEIN A snap shot, caught by one of the late Mr. Hammerstein's sons, and the only photograph ever taken of the famous showman. theatre more than Willie Hammer- stein, nor has there ever been a theat- rical manager in any branch of the profession who secured more of it than Mr. Hammerstein. His contem- poraries said, "It breaks right for Hammerstein's," but Willie was always ther6, before, at and after the break. Perhaps his engagement of Evelyn Nesbit is proof of that. The man- agers called Willie crazy to pay Miss Nesbit $3,000 weekly. The Park the- atre but a few weeks before she left for London had refused to pay $400 for her. Willie commenced to "work an act that headlined an entire sum- mer on Hammerstein's Roof at $125 a week. Carmencita had been dead ten years when Willie told Mr. Gest one night to find a Carmencita in Europe. Mr. Gest took the boat the next day, the cables told of his discovery, and the New York newspapers commented upon the wonderful youth retained by the dancer when she arrived over here, featuring the Hammerstein shows at $200 a week. "Sober Sue." a stupid negress without sufficient intelligence, to smile, was billed as "The girl who never laughed," and sufficed for an en- tire summer as the drawing attraction at Hammerstein's Roof at $20 a week. "The Girl From Coney Island" (Flos- sie Crane) was another Hammerstein headline, made by publicity, that Wil- lie paid $50 weekly for, and after she had finished her Roof run, Willie booked her in other vaudeville theatres at $500 weekly, pocketing the differ- ence, having had her under contract. Willie never spurned a "freak" at- traction that had been advertised. He took them as they came, if they were well enough known. Fighters, run- ners, infamous or famous women, they all meant to him only the box office. That Willie's judgment was right is probably best attested by the fact that Hammerstein's highest profit in one year was $250,000, and before "oppo- sition" and other things hit Times square, the house seldom fell below $185,000 annual profit, once it got started successfully under his manage- ment. The high mark on a week's net was ,$8,000 on the Roof during the run of "Salome." Between packing the house and joking, Willie found other recreation in playing the horses, shooting craps, playing poker or pinochle, with his own particular crowd, anything in the leisure hours up to 9:30 at night to momentarily remove the strain of han- dling the Victoria, and it was a heavy strain as his successors have discov- ered. But at 9:30 each night Willie Hammerstein left the theatre, driving directly home in his car. For 13 years he never saw but one act of a legiti- mate performance, that of "The Gin of the Golden. West" in the old Be- lasco theatre. Another joke played on Doc Steiner by Willie was taking him in his car at the leaving hour, driving through Central Park, having Doc get off in the darkest part to see if the tail light had gone out, then driving qff and leaving him there. Willie finisfc6d up this by bundling out the party in the car at Broadway and 99th street, tell' ing them to take the street car back to the theatre. Willie's sense of humor was razor* edged. One evening he saw Joe Ray- mond, something of a character around the "square," enter the Vic- toria with a young woman. After a while Willie sent for Joe, spoke to him in the lobby, meanwhile sending an- other fellow to ask the young woman if she wouldn't prefer an upper box. When Joe returned to the orchestra floor and found the girl gone, he nearly tore down the roof, but no one informed him about the upper box. Many applications were made in the lobby to Willie for "try-outs." He lis- tened to them, and often derived much fun thereby. One night he was ap- proached by an ordinary looking indi- vidual who said he had a stronger voice than Caruso's and would like to prove it to Mr. Hammerstein. Willie asked him how strong was his voice. The man replied he must have the opportunity — it couldn't be described verbally. Willie asked him if he could make himself heard across the street. The singer said he could make his voice carry three blocks. Willie told him to go over to the Times (Continued, on Page 64.)