The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

By MATTHEW WHITE, Jr.

A Series of Papers That Will Be Continued From Month to Month and Include All the Most Prominent Players

MISS ADAMS'S INFANT ROLE.

Irritated by the Complaints of a Comedian, Her Thespian Mother Offered Her as a Substitute for a Property Baby.

The man who is responsible for Maude Adams's first appearance on the stage is now the prosperous proprietor of a wholesale liquor store in Salt Lake City. A jolly Englishman, his name is Phil Margetts, and at that time he was an actor, the popular comedian of the Salt Lake Theater, the biggest playhouse west of the Rockies, under the favored patronage of Brigham Young.

It was back in 1873, and Annie Adams was leading woman in the stock company maintained there. The daughter of one of the Utah pioneers, she had gone on the stage some eight years previous, and had not allowed her marriage to a business man, one James Kiskadden, to interfere with her career.

Maude was born on November 11, 1872, and as the family lived very close to the theater the child was practically brought up in the very odor of Thespianism.

On one occasion, according to John S. Lindsay in "The Mormons and the Theater," the regular bill of the evening was followed by the usual farce intended to send the people home in good humor. It was called "The Lost Child," and in it Margetts was cast for the father of the strayed or stolen infant. At the eleventh hour the comedian discovered to his disgust that he was expected to carry on the stage and fondle a rag doll instead of the real thing.

"But I thought you were going to provide me with a flesh-and-blood baby," he indignantly demanded of Millard, the property man.

"I tried to, Phil," replied this long-suffering individual, "but, honest, I couldn't get one. Nobody wanted to let her baby out of her arms, even for a minute."

"Ye gods!" exclaimed Margetts. "Not a baby to be had in the Mormon capital!"

Time was pressing, and he appealed to Mr. Caine, the stage manager. The two were still wrangling over the matter when Mrs. Kiskadden almost literally threw nine-months-old Maude into the breach.

It was in San Francisco, some five years later, that the little girl "walked" on for the first time. This was with J.K. Emmet, in the old Bush Street Theater, as Little Schneider in one of his "Fritz" plays. Her mother was a member of the company, but her father did not altogether approve of Maude's histrionic attempts. They were speaking of the matter at the dinner-table one day, and Mr. Kiskadden remarked to his wife:

"I won't have the child making a fool of herself."

Whereupon Maude, whom they had both supposed to be too busy with her knife and fork to be paying any attention to the talk, broke in with:

"I'll not make a fool of myself, papa."

She had her way, and continued to act at intervals in companies where her mother was employed, until she was sent to school, which she left to take up her career again around 1888, when she was in her middle 'teens.

One of her child engagements in San Francisco found her in a play called "Chums," at the Baldwin. This was the work of David Belasco, who had risen at the theater from call-boy to stage manager and dramatist. The piece, which afterward became famous under the name "Hearts of Oak," had in its cast at the time James O'Neill, Lewis Morrison, and James A. Herne. Belasco called the heroine Chrystal (a name used later by Herne for his own daughter, now leading woman with Arnold Daly), and Maude Adams was little Chrystal.

Miss Adams passed from schoolgirl to school mistress in a play, Hoyt's "A Midnight Bell," which was a great success at the Bijou Theater in New York. Here Charles Frohman saw her work, and liked it so much that he engaged her for the ingénue in his first stock company, then lodged at Proctor's Twenty-Third Street Theater.

This was in the autumn of 1890, and Miss Adams's first appearance under the Frohman régime was made in William Gillette's comedy-farce, "All the Comforts of Home," in which she was cast as Evangeline Bender, daughter of a retired produce dealer. Henry Miller led the list of players, which was facetiously headed "Who's In It?"

The same jocose spirit prompted the further elucidations of the details in the evening's entertainment on the house bill in this wise:

WHERE IS IT? Drawing-room of a private house in London. WHEN IS IT? Now. WHAT TIME IS IT? Act 1. A morning. Act 2. A few mornings later. Act 3. Another morning. Act 4. The same morning. (Good morning.)

Was Stronger Than the Play.

In the same year, 1890, Miss Adams appeared at the same theater, in what was styled its regular season, opening on October 21 as Dora Prescott, another ingénue rôle, in De Mille and Belasco's "Men and Women." This was followed in the fall of 1891, also at Proctor's, by De Mille's play from the German, "The Lost Paradise," in which Miss Adams was cast for the lame mill-girl, Nell.

This Henry C. De Mille, it may be remarked in passing, was the father of the W.C. De Mille who wrote "Strongheart" for Robert Edeson, and who is an instructor in the Empire School of Acting, sometimes known as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In the spring of 1892 John Drew left Daly's, whereupon Charles Frohman decided to make him his first star, and he chose Maude Adams to be his leading woman. It is now an old story—the hit she instantly made as the wife who assumes intoxication in a crisis of the Clyde Fitch comedy from the French, "The Masked Ball."

That it was the actress and not the part that triumphed was proved by the falling down of the piece when it was tried some few years since, under supposedly favorable auspices in London.

Miss Adams was at once established as a metropolitan favorite of the first water. The play ran as long as time could be secured for it at Wallack's (then known as Palmer's), and was removed to the Manhattan (then the Standard), where it finished out the season.

She continued with Drew for five years, and became a star in "The Little Minister" in the fall of 1897, with Robert Edeson for her first leading man.

HACKETT'S EARLY DREAM.

It Came True When He Saw His Name in Letters of Fire in Front of a Broadway Theater.

The line now appearing on the programs at Fields's Theater, "Mr. Hackett, Sole Lessee and Manager," practically inaugurates in New York the policy that has so long been current in London—that of actor-managership. To be sure, it is not James K. Hackett's present intention to appear himself on the stage at Fields's, but it is not unlikely that before snow flies again he may have another house nearer the Broadway line and which will bear his name, as it is his plan to reserve Fields's for farces like "Mr. Hopkinson" and light musical offerings.

Speaking of his name over a theater recalls a remark he made to me something like half a score of years ago. We had been dining together at the Players and were riding up-town on a Broadway car in the direction of the Broadway Theater, where Hackett was then doing De Neipperg with Kathryn Kidder in "Madame Sans Gêne." The electric sign had recently come into existence, and as we were passing what is now the Princess's, but was then known as "Herrman's," the car was flooded with a glow from the brilliant lettering proclaiming that So-and-So (some star whose name now slips my memory) was appearing there.

Hackett clutched my arm.

"See that!" he exclaimed. "One day you will read my name in similar letters of fire!"

Then he aspired only to stardom, little recking that he was to become a manager as well. But he has a foundation, broad and deep, behind him. His father was the J.H. Hackett whose Falstaff was so inimitable that it came to be associated with him almost in the guise of a Christian name. His mother—and a more devoted parent never lived—was also once on the boards.

James K. was born amid the swirling waters of the St. Lawrence, on Wolfe Island, Ontario, his father being almost seventy at the time.

The late Recorder Hackett, of New York, was a half-brother of the present actor-manager. James has no recollection of his father, as he was scarcely two years old when he died. His mother has been his guardian angel since birth. She brought him up in New York City, with the idea that law should be his life vocation; but from the age of seven, when he recited Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man" in public, amateur theatricals played a big part in his aspirations. He was in the class of '91 of the College of the City of New York, and when he was about nineteen I remember seeing him at the Berkeley Lyceum, in a representation by the college dramatic club, as "Joseph Pickle, inclined to mischief," in "The Pink Mask."

It was his experience in performances like this that helped him to make his start when he finally decided—as such a throng have done before him—to abandon law in favor of the footlights. He began on March 28, 1892, in Philadelphia, with A.M. Palmer's company, then presenting "The Broken Seal." He had only six lines to speak, but the very next week J.H. Stoddart gave him an opening for something better, as he once gave Mansfield, though under altogether different circumstances.

Mrs. Stoddart died suddenly, and during his absence from the company his part of Jean Torquerie was entrusted to young Hackett, who acquitted himself so well therein that he was enabled to obtain a post with Lotta as her leading man. Lotta's retirement threw him on the market, from which he was removed by no less distinguished a manager than Augustin Daly.

At Daly's then he appeared as Master Wilford in "The Hunchback," with Ada Rehan as Julia, Isabel Irving (whom Hackett has since starred in "The Crisis") as Helen, and Arthur Bourchier (now a leading actor-manager of London, and who created the part Hackett played here in "The Walls of Jericho") as Sir Thomas Clifford.

From Daly's he passed to the road under the management of Arthur Rehan as leading man in successes from Daly's, which led to his becoming a star in the same modest orbit in a repertoire of old-timers such as "Mixed Pickles" (on which his amateur venture, "The Pink Mask," had been based), "The Arabian Nights," and "The Private Secretary."

He was lifted into the prominence imparted by a Broadway run through the agency of "Madame Sans Gêne," in which Dan Frohman saw him, with the result that in November, 1895, he appeared with the old Lyceum stock company as a character next in importance to Herbert Kelcey, then leading man of the troupe. The play was a serious one, "The Home Secretary," by R.C. Carton, who had not then taken such wild farcical flights as "Mr. Hopkinson."

It was just at this time that Mr. Frohman decided to try rather an odd experiment. As had been his custom, E.H. Sothern had opened the autumn season at the Lyceum, and this year with even more than his wonted success, for he had appeared in the first transfer to the stage of "The Prisoner of Zenda." Previous bookings compelled his relegation to the road in the very height of the New York hit, and in mid-winter, after sizing up his new acquisition to the stock forces, Mr. Frohman decided to duplicate the outfittings of "The Prisoner of Zenda" and put it on at the Lyceum with Hackett in the dual part of Rassendyll and the king.

What Kelcey thought of this arrangement has never been made public. But he was temperamentally unsuited to romantic rôles, and did admirable work in the heavier part of Black Michael, with the explanatory line "by special arrangement" beneath his name on the program.

This was Hackett's opportunity, and he availed himself of it to the full, winning the Lyceum clientage for his firm adherents, so that when Kelcey went starring the next autumn with Effie Shannon he stepped into the shoes of the leading man of the house. In the opening bill, "The Courtship of Leonie," he met for the first time the new leading woman, Mary Mannering, who in due course became his wife.

It was two years later that Mr. Frohman launched Hackett as a star in the "Prisoner of Zenda's" sequel, "Rupert of Hentzau," which had no Broadway showing. Its successor, "The Pride of Jennico," made up for this by setting Hackett on a pedestal so firmly rooted in public favor that in a year or so he became his own manager, and his youthful dream was fulfilled.

THE ROAD TO "HAPPYLAND."

After Becoming Stage-Struck, Marguerite Clark Began Her Professional Career as a Singer in a Baltimore Park.

"Stage-struck" is the cause that sent to the boards Marguerite Clark, the little leading woman of the big comedian, De Wolf Hopper. A native of Boston, she studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but had no stage acquaintances and no means of securing an opening.

One evening, however, she was singing at a friend's house, when there chanced to be among the guests the manager of an open-air resort in the neighborhood of Baltimore. It was, in brief, one of those parks at the end of a trolley line, which the street railway company promotes in order to boom traffic. Struck by Miss Clark's capabilities, and learning of her histrionic ambitions, he offered her an engagement for the summer, which she was only too glad to accept. In this rather humble way, then, she made her start, singing before such heterogeneous crowds as the trolley emptied into the park from all quarters of the Monumental City.

When frost set in there was, of course, an end to the engagement, but little Miss Clark had no thought of quitting the game. She came on to New York, and began a systematic tour of the agencies and the managers' offices, and finally she landed an engagement with the chorus of Sousa's opera, "The Bride-Elect." From this she passed to the Casino, when Irene Bentley was appearing there in "The Belle of Bohemia." She was now entrusted with her first part, which secured her an opening with Hopper in "Mr. Pickwick." In this she was Sam Weller's sweetheart Polly. One of the critics said of her:

"Marguerite Clark is a most cunning and comely little girl—pretty enough to rave about—and many amusing miles away from the Dickens picture."

"Mr. Pickwick," by the way, will probably turn out to be the last musical play that Charles Klein will write. Since the abounding success of "The Music Master" and "The Lion and the Mouse," the so-called legitimate field will doubtless claim all his time.

To return to Miss Clark, when Hopper revived "Wang," she was cast for Mataya on account of her size, but was so afraid to come into New York with it that for that period she went to Boston and appeared in "The Babes in the Wood."

ORATORY STARTED CHAPIN.

The Prosy Addresses of Fourth-of-July Speakers Goaded Him On to the Study of Declamation.

"It was not because I happened to have long legs that I decided to put myself as Abraham Lincoln into a play."

So said Benjamin Chapin when I approached him with a request to talk a bit for the benefit of The Scrap Book readers.

And when I saw the man out of character I could not blame him for being a little ruffled at the persistent press talk about his doing the Lincoln play because he looked like the famous President. I had gone so far into this belief myself that I was distinctly amazed when the door opened to admit a young man, one not much more than thirty, I should say. The face is long, to be sure, and the frame loose-jointed, but Mr. Chapin's features blend into rather an attractive composite, and Mr. Lincoln, as everybody knows, never laid any claims to good looks.

"Why did I elect to do Lincoln, then?" Mr. Chapin went on. "Because it was the hardest thing of any to do. Any man with the proper amount of ambition in him likes to tackle and overcome difficulties, and in placing our first martyred President on the stage I realized to the full how carefully I must work to keep from falling into pits that would open up on every side of me. But you want to know how I came to go into this line of work at the very beginning, don't you?

"Let me see! I should say the foundations were laid when I was a small boy of ten—out in my native State of Ohio. I used to listen to the Fourth-of-July orators talk on in their prosy way, in a dull monotone, and on Sundays the preachers would speak in the same dismal manner.

"'Why don't they convince the people that they are in earnest?' I would say to myself"—and Mr. Chapin let out his voice in a fashion that made the rafters of the small room ring. "That's the way I felt about the power of the voice even at that early era.

"One summer we were having a picnic—I think it was a Sunday-school affair. Anyhow, there were to be speeches by the boys and girls out in the woods. I wouldn't rehearse mine. You see, I had made up my mine[** mind] to surprise folks. Nobody had ever heard me speak before, and here was the chance to live up to my own theories.

"What my selection was I cannot just recall. I think it was one of Will Carleton's descriptive ballads. Anyway, I let myself out on it in a fashion that made everybody gasp with wonder. And so the thing began. I knew then that my life-work must be something in which I could appeal to the public through the medium of the voice.

"I thought of law for a while, then had a hankering after politics. Finally I drifted into the line of impersonations through monologues.

"I have been working on the drama of 'Lincoln' for years. The version I am doing is by no means the only one I have written around the war-time President, but it seemed to be the one, all things considered, best adapted for the stage."

For the past half-dozen years Mr. Chapin has been all over the country on the lecture platform, but he has by no means confined himself to Lincoln. He has impersonated, among others, Rip Van Winkle and Cyrano de Bergerac. He has great ambitions in the direction of playwriting.

"I have discovered," he told me in this connection, "that if a play does not elicit from its audience over two hundred distinct expressions of approval, in the shape either of laughs, applause, or that almost imperceptible stir of expectancy, it is a failure."

WELFORD MIXED WRITS.

If the English Actor Had Been Less Careless as a Law Clerk, He Would Not Have Been "Mr. Hopkinson."

When the year 1906 began, American playgoers had never heard of an actor by the name of Dallas Welford. Before Easter all New York was applauding his work as the unconscionable little bounder in the title rôle of R.C. Carton's English farce, "Mr. Hopkinson."

In order to obtain for The Scrap Book some facts, at first hand, concerning his early life, I interviewed him in his dressing-room one afternoon after a matinée. And dressing, with him, is a very simple process, as he uses no make-up at all, and consequently does not have to give his face a bath of cold cream after the play in order to take the grease-paint off.

In fact, so simple are his preparations for the street that he once went out to dinner with a friend forgetting to remove the tiny false mustache which is all the concession to the mummer's mask he makes in fitting himself to the character of the Cockney tradesman who has come into money.

"How did I start?" he said, in answer to my query. "Well, you see, in one sense I did not need an introduction to the stage, or what you call 'pull,' because my mother was an actress, and as a kid I went on in the inevitable way as the Duke of York in 'Richard III,' besides being the perennial Little Willie in 'East Lynne.'

"I remember, too, that I was the child in your 'Danites' when it was done over on our side. But my mother did not want me to stick to the boards. She thought I wasn't adapted to make a success of it, and when I had had my bit of schooling she put me in a solicitor's office, or 'lawyer's,' as you call 'em over here.

"Well"—and he laughed at the recollection called up—"I lasted there just a week. You see, when I was sent out with writs to deliver, I used to serve the originals and keep the copies. You can believe there was some lively goings-on in that office when the boss found this out.

"He didn't enter any objections at all to my taking up a stage career—oh, no, not in the least! But my mother did, so I just went out and hunted up a job—any old thing, as a starter, so long as I once got my foot inside the stage door again.

"Where I landed finally was in a melodrama of 'The Glazier's Bride' type. I believe I was a luggage carrier, or some such modest adjunct to the proceedings. You see, it's easier to get your start in melodrama, because there are more people in a play like that, and there are sure to be parts for 'freshies' such as I was then. In comedy, the line I wanted, the least you can be is a butler or footman, and you know in some farces the butler comes pretty near being as important as the leading man.

"So while I was learning the ropes I stayed in the 'penny dreadful' kind of play, gradually working my way up. This lasted for about five years [Mr. Welford has been on the stage seventeen, being in the neighborhood of thirty], when finally I got my chance in comedy in a play from your side, 'My Friend the Prince,' done over here—some of the time by Willie Collier—as 'My Friend from India.' Yes, I was the chap disguised as the East Indian who does the trick with the mirror. I have stayed in comedy ever since."

In London, James Welch, the creator of Mr. Hopkinson, has been in quite hard luck since the long run ceased, two new ventures having turned out failures.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.—Thomas Paine.