Evening star., 1933-02-19
Recalling Early Days of
Theater and Press Agents
Critic Tells of Desperate Efforts for Publicity
When Stage Vehicles Were Not Running
Smoothly-Mik Baths and Fake Suicides.
By Percy Hammond.

TN his memoirs, "Forty Years Of
Newspaper Nights" John Kelley,
the most famous of the police re-
Il porters, recalls that theatrical pub
licity in other days was not the
dignified art it Is at present. No device,
in the early part of the century, was
too fantastic, he says, to be employed
by managers in search of advertisement
for their wares. Editors, then, were
more guileless than they are now and
they welcomed to their news pages such
myths as Claiming Pollock's story of
Anna Helds milk bath and the theft Of
Lillian Russelps jewels. When George
C. Tyler persuaded the police force to
spread tanbark on the streets in front
OF Mrs. Patrick Campbell,s inn, because
her pup was ailing, the New York jour-
nsS printed the tale as important
tdn,gs. II, Mr.. Kelley meditates, a
press agent were to try to put over a
fake on the present generation of news
men he would be hissed out Of the local
rooms.
In this connection Mr.. Kelley tells Of
a joke your correspondent once en-
deavored to play on the city editors In
Chicago. Myself, q night police re-
porter, had also boyish interest In
the drama, having been hired by HAM
Inns Grand Opera House to be haison
officer between the Stage and the
Fourth Estate. As Wilton Lackaye re-
marked, was the paid piper of Ham
lin." Miss Blanche Bates was appear
ing In my theater at that time in 1.-THE
Darling of the Gods" a Broadway "hit"
which was doing none too well In Clark
street. Disconnected by its lack of
patronage was impelled to desperate
methods. There was scene In the play
dominated by towering Belasco effigy
OF the japanese war god, and since
Japan was then gripping the throat of
Russia 1t suggested to me an idea. So,
without confiding my plans to Miss
Bates and the members Of her company,
! persuaded an initiative Nipponese to
Jump out Of a box one night, and,
kneeling before the idol, to pretend to
commit hari-kari. This he did, greatly
to the confusion of the star and to that
OF George Arliss, who was impersonating
a Snaky prime minister. The curtain
was rung down and the semi-panic of
the audience was increased by the siren
whistles Of the riot squad, summoned BY
Miss Bates startled manager, the late
Token Worm.
They took my hero to the Central DO
lice station where, in his cell, he con-
tinued to babble patriotically. Excited
reporters swarmed in the corridors and
flashed the news to their Office that a
good story was at hand. was on the
brink OF a brilliant triumph, when Mr..
Kelley appeared as the representativ
OF Chicago newspaper. He looked
through the bars at the hysterical pris-
oner and identified him disastrously as
not q Japanese samuri, but as his own
drunken and prankish China boy cook.
Under Mr.. Kelleys cold scrutiny he ex-
posed my mountebankery, and the story
was not printed. "The Darling of the
Gods" closed its engagement soon after,
and Miss Bates and Mr.. Arliss have
never spoken to me since that pathetic
debacle.
Later, however, 7 managed to re-
establish myself in my confreres' esti-
nation by summoning all the chorus
girls in Babes in Toyland' to appear
before the Cook County Board of Revue
to show cause why they should not
pay q tax upon their pearls and dia-