Yes,
Charles Frohman has returned
From o’er the briny deep;
And
while in good old London town
He hasn’t been asleep.
He’d
hied him through poetic lanes
And literary ways;
He’s
here again, his steamer trunk
Chock full of English plays.
The
Yankee literary walks
Are shunned by such as he;
They
most all go abroad to find
Good farce or tragedy.
And
so the English playwright makes
Each year his goodly “spec”;
He
gets it in the pocketbook,
The Yankee in the neck.
July
24, ‘09
Charles
Frohman (July
15, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American theatrical producer. Frohman was
producing plays by 1889 and acquired his first Broadway theatre by
1892. He discovered and promoted many stars of the American theatre.
In 1896,
Frohman co-founded the Theatrical Syndicate, which grew to exert monopoly
control over the U.S. theatre industry for nearly two decades. He also leased
the Duke of York's Theatre in London, promoting such playwrights as J.
M. Barrie, producing Barrie's Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, which
he debuted at the Duke of York's in December 1904 and opened in the U.S. in
January 1905. The American opening starred a Frohman favorite, Maude Adams.
He partnered with English producers, including Seymour Hicks, with whom he
produced a string of London hits prior to 1910, including Quality Street, The
Admirable Crichton, The Catch of the Season, The Beauty of Bath, and A
Waltz Dream. Many of his London successes also enjoyed runs in New York.
Frohman produced over
700 shows. At the height of his career, he died in the 1915 sinking of the RMS
Lusitania.
Frohman
made his annual trip to Europe in May 1915 to oversee his London and Paris
“play markets”, sailing on the Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania. Songwriter Jerome
Kern was meant to accompany him on the voyage, but overslept after being
kept up late playing requests at a party. William Gillette* was also to
have accompanied him, but was forced to fulfill a contracted appearance in
Philadelphia.
Frohman's
rheumatic knee, from a fall three years earlier, had been ailing for most of
the voyage, but he was feeling better on the morning of May 7, a bright, sunny
day. He entertained guests in his suite and later at his table. He was regaling
them with tales of his life in the theater when, at 2:10 in the afternoon,
within fourteen miles of the Old Head of Kinsale, with the coast of Ireland
in sight, a torpedo from the German U-boat U-20 struck the Lusitania on
the starboard side. Within a minute, there was a second explosion, followed by
several smaller ones.
As
passengers began to panic, Frohman stood on the promenade deck, chatting with
friends and smoking a cigar. He calmly remarked, “This is going to be a close
call." Frohman, with a disabled leg and walking with a cane, could
not have jumped from the deck into a lifeboat, so he was trapped. Instead, he
and millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt tied lifejackets to “Moses baskets”
containing infants who had been asleep in the nursery when the torpedo struck.
Frohman then went out onto the deck, where he was joined by actress Rita
Jolivet, her brother-in-law George Vernon and Captain Alick Scott. In the final
moments, they clasped hands and Frohman paraphrased his greatest hit, Peter
Pan: “Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives
us." Jolivet, the only survivor of Frohman's party, was standing with
Frohman as the ship sank. She later said, “with a tremendous roar a great wave
swept along the deck. We were all divided in a moment, and I have not seen any
of those brave men alive since."
Frohman
died a month and a week short of his fifty-ninth birthday. His body was later
washed ashore below the Old Head of Kinsale, and it was later determined that
he was killed by a heavy object falling on him, rather than by drowning.
* William
Gillette, the actor who created the classic personification of Sherlock Holmes
(hat and pipe), built his home, ‘Gillette’s Castle’ in East Haddam, CT. the
town of Joe Cone’s youth. It is now a state park.
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