Baltimore Evening Sun (16 February 1912): 6.

Behind the eternal conflict between the dramatic and the theatre manager (which conflict I have discussed, in amiable and soothing terms, a number of times lately) you will always find an immovable fact, an indissoluble bone of contention, and that is the fact (or bone) that, as things go at present in our so-called first-class theatres, a sentinel is needed to warn theatregoers against false representations, open or tacit, in managerial guarantees.

In other words, it is no longer possible for the theatregoer to trust the manager, as he could trust him in times gone by, and so he turns to a disinterested third party. That third party is the critic. He is a fellow sent to first nights, not merely to express artistic judgments upon the fare offered, but also to report upon its bona fides. In brief, he must chronically deal, not only with questions of opinion, but also with questions of fact--and it is over these questions of fact that he and the manager commonly come to their most exciting grapples. When he reports that a given play violates his private canons of art, the manager, though always outraged, sometimes bears it in silence. But when he reports, as he must now and then, that a given play is a downright fraud, that its performance in a so-called first-class theatre is an insult to ticketholders, that its badness is unmitigated by any honest striving for merit, as merit is commonly understood by civilized theatregoers--then the manager howls like a hyena.

Let me give a few examples. There is, in this town, a playhouse which carries the words “The leading theatre of Baltimore” upon the cover of its programs--and ordinarily, it must be said., it offers attractions supporting that boast. On one occasion, with a great emission of press-agent rumble-bumble, it announced a “grand” performance by a troupe of “art” dancers--a performance advertised as something extraordinary, and for the merit of which the good repute of the house was pledged. But when the first night came it turned out that the whole thing, save for one or two features, was frankly fourth rate. Not only were there no dances not already familiar to most theatregoers, but the old ones that were actually given were done, in the main, very badly. The sounds made by the orchestra were excruciating; the stage management was abominable; the first-night audience, having paid $2 a head to see a 50-cent show, left in high dudgeon.

Next morning, in the paper for which I then worked, I reported all of these facts--the tinsel cheapness of the “art” dancing, the appalling inefficiency of the orchestra, the obvious disgust of the audience. And how did the manager of the theatre receive this report? Did he admit its truth frankly, and apologize to his patrons for victimizing them unconsciously? Did he explain to them that he took the promises of the traveling manager and the booking agent, and so pledged his word in good faith? Did he promptly end the engagement of the company or halt it until proper rehearsals could be had, or reduce his prices? Not at all. What he did do, if I retmember rightly, was to call me (not, of course, in my hearing) a libeler and a rascal--and vow to run me out of my job. Not a word of excuse or explanation to his patrons–but a lot of abuse of the man who warned them away from his dollar-trap.

Another time, at another theatre, the performance of a new play, for the first time on any stage, was announced. The usual press-agenting preceded it. Theatregoers were assured that something extra-fine was ahead of them, that the “best play of the season” was in prospect. But what did the hundreds find who went to the first performance? They found, in brief, a melodrama so crude that it made them laugh, enacted by a company so bad, with one exception, that it made them laugh still more--a melodrama perfectly worthy of support at the Holliday Street Theatre, by simple folks and at 50 cents, but as grotesquely insulting and incongruous at a first-class theatre as “Why Working Gifts Leave Home” or “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” But when I reported these facts, what did the manager do? Did he deny them? He couldn’t. Did he admit them–and apologize to his first-night victims? He wouldn’t. What he actually did was to denounce me for destroying his “property”–i. e., his interest in a scheme of deception.

Don’t get the notion that I here accuse theatre managers of deliberate chicanery, that I charge them with being less honest than other men. As a matter of fact, my dealings with them convince me that, as commercial morals go, their own code is pretty exacting. All I want to do is to show that the conditions of their trade, as determined by the syndicate booking system, constantly put them in the position of recommending things of whi,h they actually know little or nothing, and that they are prone to resent it when the error in such a recommendation is pointed out. In brief,t the current booking system has augmented their virtuosity as press agents at the expense of their reliability as judges of plays and performers. And like all other press agents, they are often convinced by their own eloquence and outraged by any cold-blooded examination of the facts.

In the old days a theatre manager was the sole judge of the attractions admitted to his theatre. If he thought that a given play was not worthy of his patrons he simply refused to book it, and there was an end to the matter. And ifm booking a new and unknown play on the pledge of the traveling manager or of any one else, he found, at the first performance, that he had been deceived and his patrons victimized, he was at liberty to close the engagement at once and substitute something else. But the present booking system greatly obstructs and conditions that old autonomy. Once he has agreed to accept the bookings of one or other of the so-called trusts, the theater manager finds it extremely difficult to guard against imposition. The trust magnates, desiring to test a questionable novelty, to try something dubious on the dog, may give him a bad week whenever they please, and so hopelessly outrage and alienase many of his regular patrons.

Facing this difficulty, he naturally seeks the easiest route out of it. To protest to the syndicate is possible, but not always effective, for, after all, the manager can’t do business without the syndicate, and the syndicate knows it. There remains the more practicable device of soothing his outraged patrons. He does it on the one hand by flooding them with eloquence–by seeking to press-agent them into doubts of their own unfavorable judgment–and, on the other band, by attacking and flabbergasting those professional informers who support and hearten them in that judgment.

Such is the the theatrical business in this year of grace 1912. My own sympathy goes out, in the first place, to the theatragoer who is inveigled into paying 2 to see “To Serve the Cross,” or “New York,” or “In the Mountains,” or any other such abominable rubbish, and in the second place, to the manager who is obilged to exhibit that rubbish in his so-called “first-class” theatre, and to face the ensuing rage of his victims. The only character in the whole comedy who deserves no sympathy is the critic. He has little or nothing to lose. So long as he holds his job his salary goes on, and if, perchance, some manager has him fired then he can always go back to bartending.