Nat Goodwin's Book

Closing the "Oliver Twist" season early in May I headed for California to superintend the development of my ranch at San Jacinto. Immediately on my arrival I began the laying out and planting of a hundred acres of oranges, lemons and grape fruit. It proved most fascinating work.

During the three months I put in at the ranch I lived in a big tent with a party of friends including Miss Moreland and her married sister. I was up with the birds and in bed by 9 o'clock every night. Employing as I was twenty men and ten six-horse teams, ten four-horse and three ten-horse, my job of supervision was necessarily a big one. I would go from one gang to another climbing hills which in a few days would be levelled! Oh it was big work – adjusting the miles of pipe lines and cement flumes which we manufactured ourselves during the process of grading, preparing the holes to receive the trees which were being prepared and nourished at the nursery of a Mr. Wilson of Hemet, two miles away, seeing that the hot ground was properly cooled by the water I had developed from a concealed spring in the mountains and doing the thousand and one other things necessary to insure the successful development of an orange grove.

I had previously given the work a great deal of thought and study. It requires a great deal. The average orange grower neglects the study of the planting and rearing of the trees and the result is more often failure than success. An orange tree will not nourish alone and neglected any more than a baby and it is in its early life, like the infant, that it must be watched. The young tree should first be carefully examined as to its vigor and stamina; next its foundation or roots must be well looked after and handled tenderly in its uprooting in the nursery; extreme care expressed in the removal and transplanting. It should be transported, if the weather be hot, during the early morning hours, packed in manure, well watered and the roots covered by canvas or burlap. The holes should be kept moist all the previous evening to cool the earth and in the planting all the roots should be carefully separated and spread out. Directly a row is planted it should be deluged with water for six to eight hours or longer. Once a week for ten years the ground should be cultivated and disturbed and every year, unless the soil is very rich, the trees should be fertilized. An orchard should be gone over at least every other day for three years when by that time it can take care of itself with a little attention and be made a most profitable investment. But it won't thrive on its own and you can't run an orange grove living three thousand miles away nor intrust it to the management of the average care taker. Go to it personally and it will prove a winner with a chance of clearing one thousand dollars an acre annually.

Faith is the harbor of the unwary into which the ship of ignorance tranquilly sails.

Chapter LXXXI

DAVID BELASCO

What an intellectual giant is David Belasco! The most conspicuous man associated with the American stage to-day. His accomplishments have been colossal. Even Irving, Pouissard, Charles Keane and many other artists of their day, who have devoted their lives to Art, bow in obeisance to the modern David.

Think what this gentleman has accomplished! He has given to the world David Warfield and made him a master; Blanche Bates, Mrs. Carter and many others of equal talent. Produced plays that will go down in history among the classics; modernized stagecraft to the extent that one never realizes they are in a theatre when privileged to witness one of the Belasco productions. Yet, with all his wondrous powers and attainments, he is never in evidence, only his handiwork. He has built the only playhouse worthy the name in America. It suggests the old Irving Lyceum in London, and one approaches the portals of the Belasco Theatre with awe and reverence.

I have known him for over thirty years, and he is as modest as he is clever: every angle of our Art at his finger tips. A gentleman, scholar and Artist! A Man, is David Belasco, Dean of the American Drama.

Chapter LXXXII

"AUTHOR – AUTHOR"

Not so long ago I was present at the first performance of a play, and during its presentation I was shocked beyond my power to describe by an incident at the same time disgusting and inconceivably vulgar. The play itself – a wearisome thing – was crude and altogether impossible.

At the end of the second act, a half dozen paid ushers applauded valiantly. Before they could become wearied by their difficult task, a huge, bulky man appeared before the curtain. He ambled slowly to the center of the stage where he stood still for perhaps fifteen seconds as if to enable the audience to contemplate him in repose.

Then this individual shifted his weight from one leg to the other, still keeping silent. There he stood, a sneer distorting his features, poised on one leg, the left foot pointing toward the right. He wore an ill-fitting evening suit with an abundance of shirt front, very much mussed, protruding from the confines of the waistcoat. His face, unwashed, suggested a cross between a Bill Sykes and a Caliban. Oblique, thin slits concealed a pair of green-white eyes. A strong, wide jaw that opened and shut like the snap of an alligator's was tilted forward and upward at the puzzled spectators.

Finally the person, the author of the drivel we had patiently listened to, leaned over the footlights and casting a look toward the woman for whom he had deserted home, wife and children, literally snarled at the audience.

"I wrote this play for the elect," he declared ferociously.

A perceptible shudder ran through the house. Many men and women rose from their seats and left the theatre, refusing to remain to hear the incoherent and egotistical remarks of this revolting person.

I have known this brute for twenty years, and in all that time I have never heard one human being speak anything except ill of him. Managers avoid him. Artists loathe him. Authors despise him. A moral and physical coward, this man without a friend, wanders from East to West, vulgarly attempting to foist upon a long-suffering and all-too-easily deceived public, the woman whose chief claim to public notice is the fact that she was named as co-respondent in the divorce action obtained by his wife.

He continues to write plays of the underworld with inspirations obtained in the sewers of humanity and founded on ideas purloined from departed authors or stolen from the living too weak to protect themselves.

His blustering, bullying tactics have enabled him to push his way upwards to some success – but no one envies him. All who know him "have his number."

I have often wondered how he has escaped bodily injury. No woman is safe from his insults. I know one young woman who went to him in search of an engagement. His first question was so dastardly as to cause her to burst into tears, and she ran from his presence in hysterics. When this young woman's uncle learned of it he loaded a revolver and started on this playwright's track. But the tears and entreaties of his wife and his niece stopped him.

Will the world ever be rid of this form of human parasite?

I wonder.

The antithesis of this person is another author equally despised. He is a little, pale person who writes problem plays and has met with much success. He never drinks or smokes. In fact he poses as a paragon of all the virtues.

He once wrote me an insulting letter accusing me of uttering profane remarks concerning a certain business transaction between us. I never answered it, but have it in my possession. It may prove useful some day.

This beauty, who also has a wife and children, came West some few years ago accompanied by a woman whom he introduced to many persons as his wife. I knew she was not, but kept my counsel. One day we were discussing a play which he had promised to write for me. I asked him why he did not divorce his wife or insist on her divorcing him. He blandly replied: "Great Scott, I've tried everything to induce her to do so, but she doesn't believe in divorce. Besides, she is a Christian."

Fancy this pious little man saying this.

He goes merrily on his way, living a dual life – the woman of his easy choice provided for far better than his wife and children. And he writes plays dealing with moral problems! He receives very large royalties and basks in the sunshine of his own hypocrisy.

And this individual has had the audacity to criticise my actions and elect himself the censor of my various attitudes.

Well, let him. I would not exchange my conscience for his for all his affluence. And yet, from his point of view, he is right. The world applauds his plays. No one seems to interfere with his private affairs. He is received by all his fellow club members with impersonal respect. The wide white way is always open to him and the woman. There no one ever pushes them aside. The legal wife and children are unknown to cruel, gay Broadway. The narrow paths of the meadows and lanes of the suburban retreat in which this successful author has his family housed are their only byways. Through them they slowly tread – to the little church and beyond it to the graveyard, towards which the wife and mother ever sets her gaze – as if in prayerful hope.

And the author of successful plays is content.

He knows his wife is a Christian.

What is he?

I wonder.

I would rather sell fresh eggs from the end of my private car in one-night stands – than barter impure ones on the stage of a leading New York playhouse.

An agnostic objects to salaries for draped preachers and to temples whose roofs prohibit thought from permeating the realm of inspiration.

Fact is the whiplash that scourges faith.

Chapter LXXXIII

MUSHROOM MANAGERS

The past year has been an appalling one for the mushroom producing manager. I mean those insolent young men nearing the thirties, who by accident or some unknown reason secure control of musical comedies written by some obscure author and after interesting friends to the extent of investing capital enough to enable them to produce the aforesaid comedies, they launch their productions and sometimes get them over.

They look about for the best available talent, establish salaries that make it prohibitive for legitimate producers to sustain, and calmly go on their way. If they fail they can assign the production to the storehouse and leave their artists in any town or city where they come a cropper. If they succeed with their first venture they at once organize two or three road companies and go through the country circusing their first accidental success. They establish themselves in expensive offices; engage a staff and go at once into the producing game seriously, seeking the best authors and composers and outbidding managers of standing, and endeavor to secure prevailing European successes, or produce original plays of their own. Naturally, their lack of training and experience is a handicap and their first success is seldom followed by another. Two or three successive failures soon put them on the shelf and they seek the Bankruptcy Court to avoid their creditors. Artists are left stranded with an inflated idea of their respective values and generally indulge in a well merited vacation.

They have no sense of honor and their idea of speculation is to invest a shoe string with an idea of securing a tannery.

One of these producers was standing in the lobby of a New York theatre, last season, on the eve of one of his $30,000.00 productions, when he was approached by one of the leading actors of the past winter, to whom he owed several thousand dollars back salary. The actor offered to compromise for a thousand. The manager looked at him and replied: "My boy, where could I get the thousand?" These are the methods that are destroying the theatrical game.

Irresponsible managers have only to enter the office of these syndicates, assure the gentleman in charge that they have a production ready costing many thousands of dollars, and the booking agent at once arranges a tour, throwing aside standard attractions who have not invested quite as much money as the new producer, and the older attraction must take what is given him or leave it alone. If he objects, he is told that the Mushroom Manager has invested from $20,000 to $50,000 in his enterprise and his capital must be protected and the terms made accordingly. In other words, the booking agents gamble with them and allow them a percentage of the gross receipts according to the amount of his investment. I consider this all wrong and one of the reasons of the unsuccessful theatres of the present day.

Men who have judgment and talent should be protected. If they draw the money, what matter to the booking agent what amount of money has been invested?

Three or four of these Mushroom Managers have gone into bankruptcy this season and they can be found every evening at present, tangoing on the various roof gardens, where they belong.

There is no denying the fact that as a nation we prate about patriotism that does not exist. Every foreign artist who visits our shores finds us ready to bow down and pay homage, be it the Mistress of a dethroned king, a bare-legged Countess or an anemic tragedian. I have no desire to be personal; but the adulation, attention and grovelling at the feet of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson is to me, as an American actor, simply disgusting; not that Sir John is not a good actor, or even a great actor, but I have memories of a departed actor named Edwin Booth, who lost a million dollars in an honest endeavor to perpetuate his art by erecting a playhouse which bore his name. Now, this foreigner who has done absolutely nothing to advance the art of acting, advertises his farewell to a public who are as fickle as they are undiscriminating and packs the theatres, giving his last performance in New York to receipts that dear Edwin Booth never dreamed of playing to; conspicuous citizens pay him tribute, and go forth proclaiming his performance of Hamlet superior to that of Booth. How we Americans forget and fawn. One of our best known and oldest comedians at present appearing before the public, had the extreme bad taste after witnessing the performance of Robertson's Hamlet, to enter the Players Club, which Edwin Booth presented to the profession, and pronounce Robertson's Hamlet superior to Booth's. As a boy I had the pleasure of witnessing Booth play Hamlet; I saw a prince to his finger tips looking the character of a philosopher of thirty, and playing it to perfection. Now an anemic old gentleman past sixty, with a supporting company of which Corse Payton would be ashamed, is packing the playhouses of America, bidding farewell to a public that has long since forgotten Edwin Booth and his supporting company, which included such actors as Edwin Adams, John McCullough, Milnes Levick and divers others of equal talents. One never heard of E. L. Davenport's farewell nor Edwin Forrest's, another actor who left a home for actors incapacitated for work; they are in the grave, forgotten. Actors are walking Broadway seeking employment, others are travelling seeking to earn a livelihood, while an anemic old gentleman is calmly gathering in the American dollars to build his English palace.

How unfortunate to grow up with one's Country! Far better to burst suddenly upon it – unknown – but heralded!

One failure in America will blot out the memory of a score of successes. Here art is sold by the yard.

To realize the unimportance of art, read the average critical review of it.