At the Majestic Theater in Chicago they have a big, two-sided, electric sign upon which are displayed the names of the acts playing there. They place the names of two acts on each side and use no periods. One week the two sides read —
"CRESSY & DAYNE THE VAGRANTS."
and
"ELBERT HUBBARD NIGHT BIRDS."
Said the Actress to the Landlord,
"Want to see 'The Billboard,' Mister?"
Said the Landlord to the Actress,
"I'd rather see the board bill, Sister."
An English actor, just over, was playing at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York City. He was in love with America and wanted to see it all – quick. One night he came to me and said,
"I think I will take a run over to Buffalo Bill's place in the morning, before the matinée."
I told him I would; it would be a good run for him.
Buffalo Bill lives in North Platte, Nebraska.
One of the provincial music halls in England has the roof arranged like a roll-top desk, so that in hot weather it can be rolled back, thus making a sort of roof garden out of it. An American Song and Dance Team was making their first European appearance there; their act was a much bigger hit than they had anticipated; and when they came off at the end of their act one of them said delightedly to the other,
"Say, we just kicked the roof off of them, didn't we?"
"I beg pawdon, old chap," said the stage manager, overhearing him; "it rolls off, you know."
James Thornton and Fred Hallen were coming out of the Haymarket Theater in Chicago; Jim, who was ahead, let the door slam back against Fred.
"Oh, Good Lord," howled Fred, hanging on to his elbow; "right on the funny bone."
Jim looked at him, and in that ministerial way of his said,
"You haven't a funny bone in your body."
A young man asked me recently what spelled success on the stage. I told him the only way I had ever found of spelling it was W-O-R-K.
SOME HOTEL WHYS
Why are porters and bellboys always so much more anxious to help you out than in?
Why do so many hotel bathrooms have warm cold water and cold hot water?
Why is it that on the morning you are expecting company you can never find the chambermaid? And every other morning she tries your door every fifteen minutes regularly.
Why does a hotel clerk always try to give you some room different from the one you ask for?
Why does a hotel cashier always look at you pityingly?
Why does a bellboy always try to get two quarts of water into a quart pitcher?
Why do hotels feed actors cheaper than they do folks?
Why is a mistake in the bill always in the hotel's favor?
Why does the landlord's wife always have theatrical trunks?
Why do drummers always leave their doors open?
Why does my wife always try to get a corner table, and then put me in the chair facing the wall?
Why do "American" hotels always have French and Italian cooks?
Why does the fellow in the next room always get up earlier than I do?
Why does the elevator boy always go clear to the top floor and back when the man on the second floor rings for him?
Why is the news stand girl always so haughty?
Why does the night clerk always dress so much better than the day clerks?
Why do I think I know so much about running a hotel?
IT ISN'T THE COAT THAT MAKES THE MAN
A seedy-looking chap came up to Roy Barnes in Toronto and said in an ingratiating way:
"I don't know as you will remember me, Mr. Barnes, but I met you down at Coney Island last summer."
"Yes, sure, I remember you easy," said Barnes, grasping his hand in both his own. "I remember that overcoat you have on."
"I hardly think so," said the seedy party, trying to draw his hand away; "I did not own this overcoat then."
"No," said Barnes, "I know you didn't; but I did."
Grace Hazard has a washlady. Washlady has a thirteen-year-old son. Son became infected with the acting germ and ran away to go with Gertrude Hoffman's Company. His mother was telling Miss Hazard about it.
"'Deed, Mis' Hazard, yo' know 'tain't right for dat po' li'le innocent child to be pesterin' roun' dem theater houses dat er way. 'Twas jes' dis ver' mo'nin' dat he's Sunday-school teacher wuz sayin' to me: 'Dat boy has got too much – too much – intelligence to be in dat stage bus'ness nohow.'"
Hanging in each room of the Great Southern Hotel at Gulfport, Miss., is a small sign stating —
GUESTS CAN HAVE BATHS PREPARED
ON THEIR FLOOR BY APPLYING
TO THE MAID ON THEIR FLOOR
A friend of mine in St. Louis is a Police Captain. One day he went into a bank to get a check cashed. He was in citizen's clothes and the paying teller did not know him anyway; so he said,
"You will have to be identified, sir. Do you know anybody here in the bank?"
"I presume so," said the Captain cheerfully; "line 'em up and I'll look 'em over."
Seen from the car window: "Shuttz Hotel. Now open."
On Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo: "Organs and Sewing Machines tuned and repaired."
At the St. James Hotel, Philadelphia:
Mrs. Cressy. "Waiter, have you any snails today?"
Waiter. "No, mam."
Mrs. C. "What's the matter? Can't you catch them over here?"
ONE-NIGHT-STAND ORCHESTRAS
My idea of what not to be is Musical Director of a Musical Comedy playing one-night stands. This is the real thing in the Trouble line.
Max Faetkenheuer was musical director with an opera company that was playing through the South. They arrived in one town at four in the afternoon, and Max found the orchestra waiting at the theater. They looked doubtful; they sounded dreadful. Individually they were bad; collectively they were worse. During the first number the cornet only struck the right note once and that frightened him so he stopped playing. The clarinet player had been taking lessons from a banjo teacher for three years and had never made the same noise twice. There were six French horns, all Dutch. The trap drummer was blind and played by guess and by gorry.
Max labored and perspired and swore until 7:15; then he had to stop because the audience wanted to come in and didn't dare to while the riot was on.
"Now look, Mister Cornet Player," Max said; "I'll tell you what you do; you keep your mute in all through the show."
"Yes, well, I shan't be here myself, but I will speak to my 'sub' about it."
"What's the reason you won't be here?" asked Max.
"I play for a dance over to Masonic Hall."
"So do I," said the bass fiddler.
"We all do, but the drummer," said the flute player.
"You do? Then what the devil have you kept me here rehearsing you for three hours for?" demanded Max.
"Well," said the cornet player, "we knew this was a big show, and we presumed you would be a good director, and we thought the practice would do us good."
"It will," said Max.
On another occasion he struggled all the afternoon with a "Glee Club and Mandolin Serenaders'" orchestra. Finally, by cutting out all solos, playing all the accompaniments himself, and confining the "Glee Club" to "um-pahs," he got everything figured out except the cornet player; he was beyond pardon; so Max said to him,
"I am awful sorry, old man, but you won't do; so you just sit and watch the show to-night."
"Oh," said the Not-Jule-Levy, "then I don't play, eh?"
"You do not play," said Max.
"All right then; then there'll be no show."
"Why won't there be a show?" asked Max.
"Because I am the Mayor, and I will revoke your license."
He played.
At some Southern town we played once with "The Old Homestead"; the rehearsal was called for 4:30. At 4:30 all the musicians were there but the bass fiddler.
"Where is your bass fiddler?" asked our director.
"Well, he can't get here just yet," replied one of the other players.
"When will he be here?"
"Well, if it rains he is liable to be in any minute now; if it don't rain he can't get here until six o'clock."
"What has the rain got to do with it?"
"He drives the sprinkling cart."
The worst orchestra I ever heard was with an Uncle Tom's Cabin show playing East St. Louis. It consisted of two pieces; a clarinet and a bass fiddle, each worse than the other.
At North Goram, Maine, I once hired an entire brass band of twenty-two pieces to play for an entire evening of roller skating in the town hall, for three dollars. They were worth every dollar of it.
In one of my plays I issue a newspaper called The Wyoming Whoop. At the top of the first column are the words – "In Hoc Signo Vinces." One day one of the stage hands came to me with a copy of the paper in his hands, and pointing to this line, said,
"That means 'We Shoot to Kill,' don't it?"
My wife was in a hair-dressing parlor in Cleveland; the girl who was doing what ever she was doing to her, discovered that she was the Miss Dayne at Keith's Theater.
"Oh, say," she said, "I wish you would tell me something."
"Yes? what is it?" asked Miss D.
"Is that old man that plays on the stage with you as homely as he looks? His face is just like one of those soft rubber faces that the men sell on the street; the ones you pinch up into all sorts of shapes. He doesn't look as bad as that all the time, does he?"
Miss D. told her that there was not much choice.
Jim Thornton was playing his first engagement for Kohl & Castle in Chicago. As he came off from his first show, he stopped in the wings to watch the next act. A gentleman came along, touched him on the shoulder and said,
"You are not allowed to stand in the wings here."
Jim looked at him a moment, then said,
"And who are you?"
"Who am I? I am Kohl."
"You belong in the cellar," and Jim turned back to watch the show.
William Cahill was playing Paterson, N. J., and living at his home at the furthermost end of Brooklyn. Three hours and a half each way, twice a day. A friend meeting him on the ferry said,
"You are playing Paterson this week, aren't you, Bill?"
"A little," replied Bill, "but I am going and coming most of the time."
I met Fred Niblo on Broadway:
"Hello, Fred," I said; "I went by your house this morning, and – "
"Thank you, Bill," he said, grasping my hand and shaking it heartily.
Clifford & Burke were playing Shea's, Buffalo. There was also a bare-back riding act on the bill. There is a very old lady who comes around the theater every night selling laundry bags, money bags and such stuff to the actors. She had seen Clifford & Burke's act several times and knew that they finished up their act with a dance.
Friday night she was sitting in our dressing room; Clifford and Burke were on the stage when she came in but had finished their act and gone to their room, although the old lady didn't know this. The horse act was on and the old horse galloping around the stage "clickerty clack; clickerty clack; clickerty clack," when suddenly the old lady stops talking, pricks up her ears, listens a minute, then said,
"By garry, thim byes is doin' a long dance this night."
There was a German artist playing on the bill with us in Buffalo. He was a very polite chap, but his English was very Berlin. One night, after holding a rehearsal with a German acrobat, who was not much better off than he was as to the English language, he came over to my wife, and very slowly and laboriously he said,
"Goot evening, Madam Mees Dayne; eet iss colder than h – , don't it?"
Charlie Case was telling me how bad his teeth were:
"Why, Will," he said, "I have indigestion something awful. I can't chew a piece of meat to save my life. I just bite it hard enough to make sure it is dead, and swallow it."
Chick Sale comes from some one-night stand up in Illinois, I have forgotten the name of it; but there are two rival hose companies in the town. As fires are scarce, every once in a while they have a "contest." The two companies line up side by side, somebody counts three and away they go across the square to the watering trough. Upon arriving there they unreel their hose, stick one end into the watering trough, man the pumps, and the first one to get a stream on to the flag pole wins.
Last summer there came a real fire. As the fire was nearest to their engine house the Alerts got there, and got a stream on to the fire before the Reliables arrived. As they came panting and puffing up the hill the captain of the Reliables saw this, stopped, waved his hand back at his company and said,
"They have beat us, boys; you can go back."
There is one good thing about Des Moines, according to the advertisements they are running in the magazines. There are twenty railroads running out of it.
On 125th Street in New York City there is a piano dealer by the name of Wise. On every window of his store he has painted —
"What is home without a piano? Wise."
And he is correct.
One week in Omaha, Neb., the advertising in front of the Gaiety Theater read —
"The Midnight Maidens
15 to 75 cts."
A Montreal furrier advertises —
"Fur cap, $1.00.
Good Fur Cap, $1.25.
Real Fur Cap, $1.50."
"HEART INTEREST"
When you go into a Continuous Vaudeville show you expect to see all sorts of acrobatic marvels, trained animals, and funny people. You expect to hear sweet singers, talented musicians, and funny comedians. But once in awhile you see and hear some little gem of sincere, heart interest.
And so, just in order to give that little touch of the "heart interest," I am going to tell you of a couple of little incidents that came into our lives at different times.
One night several years ago we were playing in a little town way up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The night telegraph operator at the railroad station was an old schoolmate of mine. And so after the show was over I went over to the station to have a visit with him. It was a still cold night in the middle of winter and we sat around the little stove in his office, talking over our boyhood days back in New Hampshire.
Along about midnight the outer door opened and a poor, ragged, hungry-looking young chap of twenty-two or three stepped in and walked to the stove. After he had got his hands thawed out a little he came over to the window of the telegraph office and handed the operator a piece of paper. It was just a piece of common wrapping paper with a message written on it in lead pencil.
"How much will it cost me to send that message?" he asked.
The operator counted the words.
"Ten words; twenty-five cents."
The young fellow withdrew his closed hand from his pocket and emptied out exactly twenty-five cents in pennies and nickels, sighed and went out.
The operator sat down and sent the message. Then he sat looking at the paper for quite a few seconds; then he turned to me and said,
"Well, I have been jerking lightning quite a while now, but there is the biggest ten words I ever sent."
He handed me the message; it read —
"Kiss Mother good-by; I am too poor to come."
The second is just a letter which Miss Dayne received in Pittsburg, from a poor old mother who thought she recognized in Miss Dayne her erring daughter.
McKeesport, Pa., Mar. 5.
Dear Daughter Blanch.
i recognized your picture in one of the Pittsburg papers. Blanchie will you write me a few lines and releived my heart and mind. if it is concealment you dont want any one to know from me if you will only write me a few lines i am your mother how i have longed to see you my health is failing me the children often ask about you and wonder dont fail me dear child you are just the same to me as the rest love to you Blanchie from your heart broken mother
TOMMIE RYAN'S HORSE
Tommie Ryan and his wife (Mary Richfield) live in a very charming house at Sayville, Long Island. The Ryan horse lived in the barn. Although, if Mrs. Tommie had had her way, he would have lived in the parlor. For "Abner" was the pride of her heart.
Abner had been in the family so long he had become a habit. He had grown so old that Tommie had to go out at night and fold him up and put him to bed; then in the morning he would have to go out and pry him up on to his feet again.
When Mrs. Ryan wanted to go for a drive, Tommie had to go along on his bicycle, to push the horse up the hills and hold it back going down the hills.
Abner's teeth had grown so long that he looked like a wild boar. Tommie vows that he chewed all his hay for him for two years.
Finally Tommie got tired of acting as wet nurse to Abner and wanted to dispose of him some way; but Mrs. Ryan absolutely refused; she said Tommie had given her that horse "to keep" and she was going to keep him.
But finally, along towards fall, when it was time for them to start out on their winter's tour, Tommie evolved a deep, dark scheme. So he framed it up with the local livery stable man, that, as soon as they were gone, he was to dispose of Abner; sell him, if he could; if not, then give him away to some one who would treat him kindly and see that his last days were spent in peace and plenty. And, in order to cover up his duplicity, he left three letters with the livery stable man to be copied and mailed to him on stated dates.
Everything went off as planned; Abner was disposed of, and upon the first stated date the Ryans received the first letter; it stated that the distemper was rather prevalent among the best circles of Long Island Horse Society, but that as yet Abner was free from it.
Two weeks later a letter came to St. Louis stating that Abner was afflicted, but very slightly.
At Milwaukee a week later the third letter came, describing in detail the last sad rites attending the death and burial of Abner.
As the weeks passed by Mrs. Ryan grew resigned and Tommie grew happy. And then came their engagement at Buffalo. Upon arrival at the theater, Tommie found eleven letters; one was from the livery stable man at home; this one he slipped into his overcoat pocket for a private reading later on. While he was reading the other ten, his turn came to rehearse his music; he slipped the ten letters into the same pocket with the livery stable man's letter, and forgot all about the whole lot.
Arriving at the hotel, Mrs. Ryan asked him for the mail and he handed the whole lot over to her. The first one that she opened was the livery stable man's. It stated that the family he had given Abner to, according to Tom's directions, had just been arrested for beating and starving Abner.
I can't tell the rest; it is too sad; but to this day, every time Mrs. Ryan thinks of Abner, she looks at Tommie, and he goes out and sits in the Park.
"Thou Shalt Not Steal," said the sign in the car.
The conductor looked at it and laughed "ha ha."
And he pinched four dollars, and whistled the air,
"None but the brave deserve the fare."
After six weeks' travel the Harry Lauder Company had reached San Francisco; every night of that six weeks Hugo Morris had taken Lauder out to some restaurant to exhibit and feed him. On this first night in San Francisco, the show had been an uncommonly large success, and "Spendthrift Harry" was feeling generous. So he said to Hugo,
"Wull, Hugo, I bane thinkin'; every nicht sen we left New York you ha' taken me oot as your guest; you ha' entertained me grand; I ha' never seen anything like it in ma own country. An' I ha come to the conclusion tha' it is not richt for me to let yo' do a' the treatin'. An' so to-nicht I wi' toss yo' a penny to see who pays for the supper."
He did so, and Hugo got stuck.
Wouldn't Alan Dale feel at home in a "Pan"tages theater?
One morning in Chicago I received a pressing invitation to come over to the police station and bail out "A Fallen Star." Upon arriving there I found the aforesaid Star sitting on the edge of his bunk holding his head in his hands and wishing it had never happened.
Like all Good Samaritans I started in delivering a Frances Murphy to him; I told him how he was ruining his health, fortune and reputation; I was really making quite a hit – with myself. Suddenly a rat scampered along the corridor by the door. The Fallen Star saw it, started, glanced sharply at me, then regained his composure. I was going ahead with my temperance lecture, when he glanced up at me a second time and said sharply,
"I know what you think; you think I think I saw a rat – but I didn't."
One summer we took our Property Man up on the farm in New Hampshire with us; one day my wife was trying to describe a man that she wanted him to find over to the village:
"He is a rather stout man," she said; "has reddish hair, wears blue glasses and has locomotor ataxia."
"Oh, yes," interrupted the Property Man, "I seen it; he keeps it up in George Blodgett's barn; I see it every night when I go after the cow."
The manager of a little theater in Des Moines closed an act on a Thursday; I asked him what the matter was with the actor:
"Too officious, front and back."
B. F. Keith had two theaters in Philadelphia; one on Eighth Street and one on Chestnut Street. One week while we were appearing at the Chestnut Street house one of the papers had a picture of me. Not having space enough for the whole name of the theater, they cut it down so that the announcement read —
"WILL M. CRESSY. KEITH'S CHESTNUT."
The train had stopped at Reno for a few minutes; it was just at dusk and as the night was warm we got out and were walking up and down the platform. There was a billboard at the end of the station and the bill poster was pasting up some paper advertising the coming of "The Widow's Mite" Company. An old chap came along, stopped and looked at it, but, owing to the poor light could not quite make out what it was; so he said to the bill poster,
"What show is it, Bill?"
"The Widow's Mite."
The old fellow pondered on it for a moment, then as he turned away he said, half to himself,
"Might? They do."
One night in San Francisco, Bonnie Thornton woke up, heard a suspicious noise in the next room, and nudged Jim, her husband.
"What's the matter?" inquired Jim.
"There is a burglar in the other room," said Bonnie.
"How do you know?"
"I can hear him."
There was a pause, then she whispered excitedly,
"Jim, he is under the bed."
"No, he isn't," said Jim.
"How do you know he isn't?"
"Because I am under there."
Jack Wilson went into an auto supply store in New York and wanted to buy a pedometer for his car.
"A speedometer you mean, don't you?" said the clerk, smiling.
"No; I want a pedometer," said Jack.
"But," persisted the clerk, "a pedometer is for registering how far you have walked. You don't want that on your car."
"Humph," said Jack, "you don't know my car."
A Critic had criticized me rather severely, and then, not satisfied with that, had come around to see me and tell wherein I was wrong.
"See here," I said, "how is it that you, a newspaper man here in a small town; a man that never wrote a play; never produced a play; and never played a part in your life; how is it that you feel competent to give lessons to me, who have made a life's study of this line of work?"
"Well," he said slowly, "it is true that I never wrote, produced or took part in a play. Neither have I ever laid an egg. But I consider myself a better judge of an omelette than any hen that ever lived."
There was a kind of a R.S.V.P. in his tone but I did not have any answer to make right at the time.
It was at a little station way out on the plains of Nebraska. There were exactly sixteen houses in sight. Two men met just outside our window.
"Why, hello, Henry," said one; "what are you doin' down town?"