"Where's Cressy?" he asked briskly.
"Right here," I answered in the same manner.
"I want a sketch."
"All right."
"What do you charge?"
"Five hundred dollars."
"Gee Zip!"
And he was out the door and gone.
At the Minneapolis Orpheum a chap with a jag came weaving his way out from the auditorium and over to the box-office window.
"Shay," he said thickly; "wha' do you want to hire such bad acters for? They're rotten."
The ticket seller asked which ones he objected to.
"Why, tha' ol' Rube, and that gal in there; they're rotten."
"What are you talking about?" said the ticket seller; "that is Cressy and Dayne; they are the Headliners; they are fine."
The man looked at him a moment, as if to see if he really meant it; then he asked earnestly,
"Hones'ly?"
"Certainly."
For another moment he studied, then as he turned away, he shook his head sadly and said,
"I shall never go to another vaudeville show as long as I live."
IT'S HARD TO MAKE THE OLD FOLKS BELIEVE IT
We may be Actors and Actresses (with capital "A's") to the public; we may have our names in big letters on the billboards and in the programs; but to The Old Folks At Home we are just the same no-account boys and girls we always were. We may be Headliners in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco, but back home we are still just Jimmie and Johnnie and Charlie that "went on the stage."
Charlie Smith, of Smith & Campbell, in his younger days used to drive a delivery wagon for his father's fish market. But tiring of the fish business he started out to be "a Acter." At the end of five years he had reached a point where the team commanded (and sometimes got) a salary of eighty dollars a week. As driver of the fish wagon he had received eight. And he determined to go home and "show them." Dressing the part properly for his "grand entre" put a fearful dent in his "roll"; so much so that he had to change what remained into one and two dollar bills in order to "make a flash."
But when he struck the old home town he was "a lily of the valley"; he had a Prince Albert coat, a silk hat, patent-leather shoes, an almost-gold watch and chain, a pretty-near diamond stud and ring and the roll of ones and twos, with a twenty on the outside.
After supper, sitting around the fire, he started in telling them what a success he was; he told them of all the big theaters he had appeared in; how good the newspapers said he was; what a large salary he received, etc., etc.
All seemed highly impressed; all except Father; finally, after a couple of hours of it, he could contain himself no longer, and burst out —
"Say, when are you going to stop this dumb fool business and come back and go to driving that wagon again?"
Ed Grey, "the Tall Story Teller," went from a small country town on to the stage. It was ten years before he ever came back to play the home town. When he did the whole town turned out en masse; the Grey family ditto; after the show the family was seated around the dining-room table, talking it over. Mother sat beside her big boy, proud and happy. The others were discussing the show.
"That Mister Brown was awful good."
"Oh, but I liked that Blink & Blunk the best."
"That Miss Smith was awful sweet."
But not a word did any one have to say about "Eddie." Finally he burst out —
"Well, how was I?"
There was an ominous pause, and then Mother, reaching over and patting his knee lovingly, said,
"Now, don't you care, Eddie, as long as you get your money."
Cliff Gordon's father doesn't believe it yet. Cliff was playing in New York and stopping at home.
"Vere you go next veek, Morris?" asked Father.
"Orpheum, Brooklyn," replied Cliff.
"How mooch vages do you get dere?"
"Three fifty."
"Tree huntret unt fifty tollars?"
"Uh huh."
Father nodded his head, sighed deeply, thought a minute, then —
"Then vere do you go?"
"Alhambra, New York."
"How mooch?"
"Three fifty."
"Then vere?"
"Keith's, Philadelphia."
"How mooch you get ofer dere?"
"Just the same; three fifty."
Father sighed again, thought deeply for a few minutes, then, with another sigh, said, half to himself,
"Dey can't all be crazy."
Tim McMahon (McMahon & Chapelle) had a mother who did not believe theaters were proper and Tim had a hard time getting her to come to see him at all. But finally she came to see her "Timmite" act. It was a big show, ten acts, and Tim was on number nine. After the show was over Tim went around in front of the house to meet her; she came out so indignant she could hardly speak.
"Why, what's the matter? Wasn't I good?" asked Tim.
"Yis, sor, you was; you was as good as iny of them; you was better than any of thim; and they had no right to let thim other eight acts on foreninst ye: You ought to have come on first, Timmie."
The first time Josephine Sabel's father and mother saw her on the stage she was in the chorus of a comic opera company and was wearing tights. Mother ran out of the theater and Father tried to climb up over the footlights to get at Josephine and got put out.
Charlie Case had been on the stage for years before he ever got a chance to play his home town; then he came in with a minstrel show; he had a special lithograph, showing him standing beside an Incubator, which was hatching out new jokes every minute.
The house was crowded and Charlie was even more nervous than usual. Everybody else in the show got big receptions; Charlie walked out to absolute silence. He talked five minutes to just as absolute silence; then, discouraged, he stopped to take a breath; the instant he stopped the house was in a pandemonium; they really thought he was great, but hadn't wanted to interrupt him. After that he would tell a joke and then wait; he was a knockout.
Later he was talking it over at home:
"Why, that awful silence had me rattled," he said; "I couldn't even remember my act; I left out a lot of it."
"Yes," said his father; "we noticed you forgot to bring on your Incubator."
UNION LABOR
A Song and Dance Team (recently graduated from a Salt Lake City picture house) got eight weeks booking on the Cort Circuit out through the Northwest. The first show told the story. They were bad: awfully bad. But they had an ironclad, pay-or-play contract and as the management couldn't fire them, it was determined to freeze them out. The manager started in giving them two, three and four hundred mile jumps every week, hoping that they would quit. But no matter how long or crooked he made the jumps they always showed up bright and smiling every Monday morning.
Finally they came to their last stand: and it happened that the manager, who had booked them originally, was there and saw them again. He could hardly believe his eyes, for, owing to the fact that they had been doing from six to sixteen shows a day for the past eight weeks, they now had a pretty good act. As they were getting about as near nothing a week as anybody could get and not owe money to the manager, he wanted to keep them along. He was fearful the memories of those jumps he had been giving them would queer the deal, but he determined to see what a little