Читать книгу I'd Like to Do It Again - Owen Davis - Страница 5

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At the time of my mother’s death some fifteen years ago, we found among her cherished possessions a soiled and tattered old manuscript written in a scrawling school-boy hand, and inscribed in her neat and graceful lettering—“Owen’s first play, when he was just nine years old.” This opus bore the somewhat violent title of DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND OR THE RIVAL DETECTIVES and upon reading it over I was struck by one marked originality—toward the end of the first act only one of the characters remained alive, and as the final curtain fell he committed suicide. I had reached some degree of success long before my mother’s death, and, once or twice, when some friend spoke of one of my plays as “the best thing I ever wrote,” I noticed a somewhat scornful smile on her sensitive lips. She had all of the reticence of the true Yankee and, secure in her possession of the only copy of DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND, she could afford to smile.

As a matter of truth, she smiled more frequently than one would expect of the mother of eight children, and her strong and dauntless ambition saw no limits at all to the future of her brood. To those who knew her there is no mystery in the fact that a boy of nine, born in a country town many years before the talking pictures had brought the drama to every hamlet in the world, should have been born with the trick of creating dramatic narrative and the fierce longing to create it.

Bangor, Maine, in the early 80’s knew little of the theater. I may have seen UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, Edwin Booth, Joe Jefferson and possibly one or two others, for in those days New York had no monopoly, our great actors played everywhere—but the theater meant less than nothing to my father and little more to any member of our community.

Owen Davis when he entered Harvard in 1889

I had been born, however, with the smell of the stage in my nostrils and was as stage-struck before I ever saw a stage as I am to-day after almost thirty-five years, during which I have seen very little else and have bitterly resented the few hours I have passed in any other atmosphere.

“Aside from being a fair football player and a very fast hundred-yard sprinter, I did little to distinguish myself.” Winning the 100-yard dash at Harvard in May, 1891.

This hunger for the glamorous and the romantic surely did not come to me from the staid New England farmers and lawyers whose lives had been devoted to the stern necessity of grubbing an existence out of the rather stubborn soil of Maine and Vermont; but, on my mother’s side there were certain bold Yanks who had sailed the seas on some of the clipper ships that in those days were built and manned along the coast of Maine. To my mother then, and through her to some adventurer of the deep, I owe the fact that I have never in my life wanted to do, and in truth I never have done, any of the practical, humdrum work of this extremely practical world, but have remained perfectly content to make faces at life and earn my living by drawing pictures on the wall.

If I am right in my opinion that these bad habits of mine came to me from my mother, I must absolve her from the blame of not handing me at the same time some of her own stern pains to repress them. Whatever her dreams had been, her realities were practical enough and she was one of the many victims of one of life’s modest ironies—a woman who gave so much of herself that the future of her eight children should be what she wanted it to be that she died, still fighting, instead of ever sharing in the success we owe so greatly to her.

Success in life is a difficult thing to estimate. My mother, I am afraid, had little of the thrill of romantic adventure that I knew her spirit craved. Indeed, so far as I know, she had no time and no desire to think of herself at all, and she died before she could be sure that her ambitions for her children would ever be satisfied. Yet I think she was a successful woman.

My recollections of these days, stimulated by this message in her faded handwriting, vaguely recall a long line of literary monstrosities of about the same date, and when my own boys, at about some such absurd age, showed symptoms of having been bitten by some wandering bacteria of the drama, I had an advantage over my father and at once recognized the symptoms. Like other dread diseases I knew this one to be incurable, the only treatment being to give the patient plenty of nourishing food, against the time when he will have difficulty in getting it for himself, keep him as cheerful as possible, and hope for the worst.

At the time of my first offense I was a member of a flourishing Dramatic Society and I have a very distinct memory of my rage when at length the worms turned and one of my fellow members arose at a meeting and firmly moved the chair that in future the club devote its energies to performing plays written by some one besides Owen Davis. This was my first experience of dramatic criticism; my second came some fifteen years later, fifteen years during which I am afraid I had drifted away from the worship of the drama and directed myself with equal enthusiasm to playing ball with such rare and occasional intervals of study as seemed necessary to preserve the peace.

The theater seemed very far away. My father at that time was the president of the Society of American Iron Manufacturers and had a small furnace at Kathodin Iron Works, a settlement in the Maine woods about fifty miles above Bangor; and after considerable conflict I was persuaded by my father that I had the makings in me of a great mining engineer. If I had not already stated that my sense of humor came to me from my mother’s side, this would be a good place to bring it in.

When I was about fifteen, my father’s business took him to the Cumberland Mountains in the southern part of Kentucky and he took my mother and the younger children with him, sending my elder brother to Massachusetts Tech and me to Harvard. In 1889 there was no School of the Drama in Harvard, but I can’t recall that there was any great yearning on my part for one. For some queer reason the memory of the years I spent there is vague and shadowy. I was not old enough at the time to get the benefits of a great university, and, aside from the fact of being a fair football player and a very fast hundred-yard sprinter, I did little to distinguish myself.

I was a wretched scholar; neither at that time nor at any other have I ever been able to do anything unless it happened to be the one thing I wanted to do, and I can’t recall that a high grade in any of my studies was at any time one of my ambitions. I went to the Boston theaters whenever I had money enough to get there and I saw all of the great plays and all of the actors of the day, but I worshiped them from a distance and had long ago ceased to hope that my life could in any way be devoted to anything aside from mining engineering. But as I have never been able to understand the simplest scientific problem and still retain a bland uncertainty as to how many times three goes in nine, I doubt if the engineering profession lost much when I later reverted to type.

My only adventure in the theater during these years was as a member of what was called “The Society of Arts” which was, I think, the very first art group to undertake to elevate the drama in America. For some reason I have a perfectly distinct recollection of this weighty and august group, although I can’t for the life of me remember what I was doing in it. The society was organized by Harvard professors and the distinguished group of men of letters who at that time brought glory to Cambridge and Boston.

A large sum of money was raised, a fine company of actors engaged, and a month’s rental of the Hollis Street Theatre, Boston, secured. We produced four plays, not written by ordinary playwrights but the product of real literary masters; one by William Dean Howells, one by Frank R. Stockton and the others by famous writers of equal standing. The company was headed by Maurice Barrymore and his wife, and everything was done to attract the “lovers of a better drama” in Boston. But the “lovers of a better drama” in Boston were as scarce in 1890 as they are to-day, and the venture was never a success.

GUS HILL

Champion Club Swinger

MAURICE BARRYMORE

(Photograph by Sarony. From the Messmore Kendall Collection)

It was a long time ago and my memory is vague as to the merits of our performances, but I do recall one passing comment. Toward the end of the third week the head usher came to me with the news that “all the ushers have quit, and I don’t know what we’ll do about showing people to their seats, if there are any people to show to their seats.” I asked him the reason for this sudden desertion on the part of our ushers and he informed me curtly that “they couldn’t stand the —— —— shows!”

I don’t remember that I greatly mourned the passing of America’s first art group in the theater and I loafed along pleasantly enough during my years in Cambridge, winning some glory on the running track and trying to make up for my lack of age and weight, both of which at that time told heavily against me on the football field. By some odd freak I took few of the courses in English and wrote nothing at all, my only advance in any of the fine arts being a training as a draw-poker player, an accomplishment I have never ceased to be grateful for to the great university where I secured so solid and lasting a technique.

I was tremendously influenced at this time by Phillips Brooks, who still stands in my memory as the greatest American I have ever known, and I grew so fond of Professor N. S. Shaler, a grand figure both as a man and a scientist, that I took every one of his courses in paleontology without ever gaining the most remote idea of what they were all about.

Quite without ambition and with no definite objective at all I drifted along until, in the summer of 1903, I found myself working for a coal mining company in which my father was interested, in the Cumberland Mountains. I was even a worse mining engineer than I had ever hoped to be and was extravagantly overpaid by my salary of forty dollars a month. I am sure that I, at the time, never considered myself worth any more, but I found it difficult to save out of that forty a month a sum of money large enough to gratify the first great ambition of my life. It came to me suddenly, the very day I went to work in the coal business and consisted of a deep determination to get out of it with the least possible delay.

Aside from the fact that the glamorous title of a mining engineer turned out to be just another name for a guy who dug holes in the ground, I simply detested the dirty little southern town in which I found myself. Also, as I happened to start my work on the very day the Debs strike started, I added fear for my life to my other reason for a prompt withdrawal. There I had to remain, however, all during the riots and shootings and murders of the great strike, and the town I lived in was sometimes held by the strikers, and sometimes by the Kentucky State Troops. On occasion both sides were forced to withdraw for a time, as this part of the mountains had long been reserved as a battleground by the Hatfield and McCoy factions, whose feud, arising out of the fact that some young lady of the generation before had looked funny in a hoop skirt, had resulted in the death, with their boots on, of many more worthy citizens than the entire population of the town in my day. Being even then of a strictly impersonal nature, I didn’t in the least care whether the McCoys killed the Hatfields or the strikers killed the state troops. It didn’t seem to be my party. All I wanted was a ticket to New York.

I knew that I could expect no help from my father. He had, for the moment, lost all of his money. It was his habit to make and lose considerable fortunes with the rapidity and nonchalance of a Wilkins Micawber, and this was one of the times when, like Micawber, he was waiting for something to turn up. My father was, I am sure, the sweetest and gentlest and one of the ablest men I have ever known—and I am equally sure he was the worst business man. I don’t know how many months it took me to save the railroad fare to New York, but I know that I arrived there in due time with exactly twelve dollars in my pocket and a firm determination to conquer the theater, either as a writer or as an actor.

I was indifferent. Let fate decide. Fate, however, had pretty well decided as I was never, as we say in Hollywood, “just the type” for romantic juveniles, having always been about the same distance around as I was up and down, and so I made a final decision to attack as a dramatist. And when I say that in the thirty odd years since then I have had more fun than any man in the world, I am prepared to defend my boast against doubters either on foot or on horseback. If life has taught me anything at all, it is that round pegs belong in round holes and that the one great happiness is to be doing the thing one loves to do.

Fanny Janauschek as Medea. “The last of the really great actors of the romantic school.”

(From the Messmore Kendall Collection)

Lawrence Barrett as Count Lanciotto in Francesca da Rimini

(From the Messmore Kendall Collection)

Twelve dollars is not a large capital for an unknown boy, quite without friends, thrown upon his own resources in New York, and I am willing to admit that at fifty-six I should scream with terror at what at twenty-two seemed to me to be a glorious adventure.

A. M. Palmer was at that time one of the leading New York managers and after many attempts I succeeded in persuading him to read a play I had written. Fortunately no copy of this drama remains in existence. It was, according to my vague memory, a very terrible affair. But Mr. Palmer, who was a sort of Christopher Columbus of his time, seemed to discover in it some germ of promise, and as in spite of some months of experience I still found it difficult to live without eating, he offered to make me an actor until such time as I was able to live by writing. He put me with an all-star cast supporting Madame Janauschek, the last of the really great tragic actors of the romantic school.

This company contained such well-known artists as Blanche Walsh, W. H. Thompson, Annie Yeamans, Fred Bond, Orin Johnstone, Joseph Whiting, George C. Boniface, Sr., and many others, and opened in rather a bad melodrama called THE GREAT DIAMOND ROBBERY, a vehicle quite unworthy of the really great talents of Janauschek who was, in some ways, the finest actress I have ever known. She had been a friend of the very great in Europe, and had come so near to being an actual queen that much of the manner of royalty still clung to her. When I knew her she was short and dumpy and old but in her presence one had the feeling of the latent power and fire of this remarkable woman and a sense of the pity and irony of her slow decay.

My duties as a member of her company had at least the spice of variety, as I played five parts in the play, was assistant stage manager and had the added privilege of sitting at the gallery door for an hour before each performance to count the number of persons who entered, as it was a playful custom of the day for the owner of the theater to sell about twice as many gallery tickets as were found in the box when the count was made. For these duties I was rewarded by the rather small salary of twelve dollars a week, and although twelve dollars went further in those days than they do now, they never seemed quite to reach from one Saturday night to the next one.

I played with this company for its run in New York and continued with it for a long road season. The road in those days took in all of the principal towns of the country and, as Janauschek was an established favorite, we did a good business everywhere. My twelve dollars a week that probably wouldn’t pay for a room to-day was with a little stretching enough for a decent living, although by the end of each week I was driven to borrowing the morning papers for the want of the two cents necessary to purchase them.

At that time one could live for a week at the second best hotel in any city for ten dollars and a half, room, bath and food. Ten dollars and a half, however, was far beyond me and I usually found possible enough accommodations for about eight dollars. The company made many night journeys, but, as I remember it, the expense of sleeping-car berths never worried me. I solved that problem by turning up the collar of my coat, resting my head on my shabby old suit case and stretching myself out on two seats of a smoking car. I had seen little of the country at that time and each new town we came to was a fresh adventure. I loved the life and from the first I never had a doubt but what it was to be mine for the rest of my life. I was sincere in my ambition to become a playwright and at the close of the season I struck out boldly toward that goal. The fact that I was inclined to decide upon play writing rather than acting may have been partly influenced by a parting scene I had with Madame Janauschek the last day of our season.

Janauschek had been extremely kind to me in her rather queeny way and summoned me to her presence at her apartments in one of the great Chicago hotels for a word of parting and advice. After a few formal words in her broken English she presented me with a small photograph of herself on which she had written a gracious message in her native German. She then led me to the door, kissed me firmly on the forehead and said: “Young man—neffer again be an actor,” and pushed me out into the hall and closed the door.

The closing of the season and some inward agreement with Madame’s verdict ended my attempts at acting except for one or two occasions when I was forced by some great emergency to jump into some part to save a performance and one dreadful time, of which I will speak later, when stern necessity seemed to be facing me. Two of the occasions when I had to become an actor or close a theater are fresh in my memory.

During its second season my play THROUGH THE BREAKERS was booked to open in Jersey City with a holiday matinée. Unfortunately the worst blizzard of twenty years had been raging and at matinée time several of the company had been unable to cross the river. I was the company manager and after switching the cast about as much as possible I found that the only way to give a performance at all was for me to go on and play the part of the rough and villainous sailor. Reluctantly I decided to go through with it, and did so to the best of my ability. By evening the storm was over and the company were all on hand and, during the extremely melodramatic second act I stood in the rear of the darkened theater and watched the performance. It was just at the height of the villainous sailor’s most villainous moment when the head usher, who happened to be beside me, whispered: “That ain’t the same man who played the old sailor this afternoon.” “No,” I answered, “it isn’t.” “I thought it wasn’t,” replied the usher, “seems to me he’s a damned sight better.”

SALLY COHEN, 1898

With Rice, one of the “favorite entertainers of vaudeville and musical comedy.”

(Courtesy of The Players)

The other occasion of which I wrote—and, come to think of it, my last appearance as an actor on any stage—was in a musical comedy I concocted about twenty-five years ago for John C. Rice and Sally Cohen, then and for many years afterwards favorite entertainers of vaudeville and musical comedy. Saturday night of the first week of the play John Rice came to me and in a hoarse whisper informed me he had completely lost his voice, a fact that was only too evident to any one who witnessed his distress in trying to speak above a whisper. The house was sold out and I owned a third of the show, so it required very little persuasion from the local theater manager to induce me to take a chance. Sally Cohen was, I think, the first to propose that I take her famous husband’s part, and I distinctly recall that the only thing that prevented John Rice from absolutely forbidding it was the fact that by that time he was quite incapable of making any sound at all and could only protest by frantic signs and facial contortions.

JOHN C. RICE, 1896

(Courtesy of The Players)

At first the fact that Rice was one of the greatest dancers living and that he had six songs to sing rather dampened my confidence, not only because I didn’t know either the songs or the dance steps, but because I never sang a song or danced a step in my life. Little obstacles, however, never troubled me in those days, and although I was three inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier than Rice I calmly arrayed myself in his opening costume and rang the curtain up. About all I remember of that night is that we got the money, although for years afterwards whenever I chanced to meet that local manager he fell into a violent fit of laughter, the cause of which he was never satisfactorily able to explain.