The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-03
HONEST ABE'.
 THEATRICAL BOSS,
 WILL BE 5a TOMORROW.

Honest Abe'' his friends call him. What his enemies-and he has a choice bunch of them-call him is something g else again. And this is family news paper, so I will pass by that phase of the proposition. According to said enemies and business rivals, however, there is a theatrical trust in America, dramatic octopus that holds within it's tentacles a large proportion of the principal playhouseS of the United States and Canada, and has gained a foothold, or whatever hold an octopus gets, in England and Europe. And the Grand Supreme Boss of that all legged trust, they. say, is Abraham Lin coin Erlanger, who will tomorrow re- ceive the felicitations of his admirers on the occasion of the fifty-second anniversary of his arrival on earth via Buffalo, N. Y.
 The New York upstate metropolis gets slight mention in the program of MT. Erlangers career, for, while born there, he removed at an early age to Cleveland. It is in the Ohio city that the curtain raises on the Erlanger theatrical activities, and we behold our hero in charge of the cloak room of the old Academy of Music. Soon he became a general handy man about the theatre, able and willing to preside as chief usher or box office ticket sell
 
 manager or actor
 The late Mark Hanna, United States Senator from Ohio, was the ''angeP' who gave Honest Abe"-but which, as aforesaid, isn't what MT. Shubert calls him-his first boost up the thea Opera House in Cleveland was knock ed down to the highest bidder, and Marcus Alonzo Hanna was it. Maj. Lew Hanna, a cousin of the Ohio statesman, was made the manager. AS a theatrical magnate, Maj Lew was a first class soldier, and he real ized it, so he called upon young "Abe' Erlanger to do the actual managing. And Abe did. and so effectively that the playhouse, from a rank failure, became in a few months one of the most profitable theatres in the coun- try. MT. Erlanger's success. like so many others, was due to mixing brains with printers ink. There may be other recipes for success, but that is the one that has turned the trick" oftener than any other-and, by the way, it isn't patented.
 MT. Erlanger first essayed the role of producing manager thirty years ago, when he engineered a grand spectacle called 'The Battle of Att grounds of the Northern Ohio Fair Association in Cleveland. The Union General who had commanded the army in the real battle was secured by MT. Eirlanger to take charge of the mimic warfare, thus cleverly combining pa triotism and publicity. For five years Mr. Erlanger managed the tours of Joseph Jefferson in Rip Van winkle", and nearly doubled the profits accru- ing to the actor, over the $500 a week salary paid to young Erlanger
 It was more than sixteen years ago that MT. Erlanger, in partnership with Marcus Klaw, formed the famous sym dicate that is, according to many crit ics, the great obstacle to dramatic art and stage uplift In America. Even before the exchange was started Klaw & Erlanger had been associated for some years in an exchange which was the forerunner of the so-called trust" As provider of amusement for the we'll known tired business man., Mir. Erlanger easily leads the procession.