The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-07-13
Walter Prichard Eaton in the America

Magazine.
 TaHE chief cause for bad business on the road is the loss of public con-
 A fidenee in the theatre, and this loss of confidence is not due to motion pictures
 or hard times, but to the stupidity of managers. A storekeeper who sold first class goods one week and shoddy goods
 the next, at exactly the same price
 would go out of business very speedily
 Yet that is what the theatre managers
 have tried to do and expected to keep their customers
 The fault is sometimes with the local house managers, sometimes with the pro- ducers in New York. If the local house manager really knows his business and is honestly desirous of serving his public, he can pretty generally keep his theatre up to a standard, and so retain the con fidence of his community. In the first place, he must be a man who himself
 knows a good production from poor one Ca great many local theatre man. agers are not such mem. and he must
 be a man who knows which New York
 producers send out good companies and
 
 There are honest producers in New
 York, whose name behind play, whether the company be first or second or third, is a practical guarantee of efficiency A Belasco second company is as good as first. There are others like Charles F'rohman who seldom send out second companies at all. But a great many others are quite interruptions, or at any rate so ignorant of artistic values that they cannot realize the need of careful rehearsal and constant stage manage ment These are the men whose road companies have done the most to injure
 the theatre. to shake public confidence, to take away patronage from good and
 bad alike.
 A producing manager puts on a play in
 New York Cor, rather, he hires some body to put 1t on for him. since Belasco is almost the only manager capable of
 mounting and rehearsing a play himself). Half the time, being a "busihess man.
 and so looking for quick returns, he puts it on too hastily with insufficient re-
 hearsal, and thus 1t fails, and he pitch forks on another. But sometimes it suc- CcGuS. II II IS d DiS SuCCtSS, 1lt dl Olilc
 decides that he must "clean up" a lot
 of money with 1t, so he organizes sec ond company, sometimes a third and fourth and even fifth. CThere are to be five companies next season in Bought and Paid For.')
 Now. unfortunately, a goodly propor- ton of the success of any play is usually due to the skill of it's presentation, to the thoroughness of the stage manage ment, to the charm and distinction of the actors Usually it is impossible to afford actors of equal note for the sec ond third and fourth companies. If there is a star in the play. of course, he or she cannot be reproduced. How much more need is there, therefore, of careful stage direction in these secondary companies, since less skilled actors must be drilled to impaN the same charm.
 Yet skilled stage direction is just what they seldom get, and almost never after the play has finally left the rehearsal
 hall in New York and started on it's tour. There are. of course. many exceptions
 among the managers. And these excep- tional managers so far as the present
 writer has encountered them, by keeping
 public confidence have kept public pat | ronage. Their houses are oases of profits in the present desert of bad business. A
 manager in New England lost business for few weeks because of the wretched second company sent to him in Madame
 Sherry" But he recovered it again. and because the community realized that he was giving them the best he could. He has had, on the whole, very good sea son.
 In arranging his bookings, he has made many trips to New York and to other towns where companies he was consider
 ing were giving performances. He has reflected more plays than he has booked. He knows a good performance himself when he sees it, and he has tried to give
 his public their moneys worth. Therein lies his success.
 We thus see again what has been so often insisted on in this department that the quality of dramatic art and the amount of, theatrical pleasure offered in
 community depend no less upon the 1 quality of the business heads of the | playhouse than upon the quality of au- | thors and actors If you have lost conf- l dence in the theatre in your town the l first thing to inquire into is the character
 of the man who manages your local