Background
Dillingham was born on May 30, 1868 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Edmund Bancroft and Josephine (Potter) Dillingham. His father had a newspaper advertising agency.
Dillingham was born on May 30, 1868 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Edmund Bancroft and Josephine (Potter) Dillingham. His father had a newspaper advertising agency.
Dillingham graduated from the Hartford schools and went to work for a newspaper in Hartford, which sent him to Washington D. C. as a correspondent.
For a time Dillingham was in the West. From there he went to Chicago, when he was about twenty-one, and worked on the Chicago Times. Later he drifted to New York, to find a position on the Sun at fifteen dollars a week. After a year or so the Sun made him dramatic critic, an assignment that gave him his first contact with the stage. In 1896 when he was twenty-eight, he wrote a play, Ten P. M. , which was produced in New York. Dillingham said afterward that it was the worst play he ever had anything to do with, but Charles Frohman saw it, and though it was poorly received, he sought out the young author and offered him a position as advertising agent, which the latter accepted. Their friendship continued until Frohman's death. Within two years, however, Dillingham left Frohman to become manager for Julia Marlowe, and thereafter he managed many eminent actors and actresses, including Maxine Elliott, Henry Miller, Margaret Anglin, Fritzi Scheff, Elsie Janis, Montgomery and Stone, Frank Daniels, Robert Loraine, Nance O'Neil, Kyrle Bellew, Julia Sanderson, Irene Castle, and Beatrice Lillie. Some of these appeared in America for the first time under his management.
Dillingham and Howard Gould built the Globe Theatre in New York, and it was opened on January 10, 1910, with Montgomery and Stone in The Old Town. Thereafter for more than two decades the Globe always housed a Dillingham production, and for twenty years he produced every play in which Fred Stone appeared - The Red Mill, The Old Town, The Lady of the Slipper, Chin-Chin, Jack O'Lantern, Stepping Stones, Criss-Cross, and others. Musical comedy and revue comprised his favorite field, and he was known therein for his lavish, tuneful, and clean productions, all of them studied pictures of beauty. He abhorred vulgarity and when he produced "legitimate" drama would have no gangster stories or morbidity. For years he was associated with Abraham L. Erlanger and Florenz Ziegfeld, the three being the chief officials of the A. L. Erlanger Amusement Enterprises, Inc. At the same time Dillingham also maintained his own business, the Dillingham Theatre Corporation. He produced many of the operettas of Victor Herbert such as The Red Mill (for which he installed the first moving electric sign seen in New York), Miss Dolly Dollars (with Lulu Glaser as star), The Madcap Duchess, Babette (with Fritzi Scheff), Mlle. Modiste (with Fritzi Scheff), The Lady of the Slipper (Montgomery and Stone), The Century Girl, and The Tattooed Man. His production of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman in 1905 is said to have been the first that brought the dramatist any considerable remuneration. Dillingham introduced the comedies of Frederick Lonsdale in America, producing The High Road, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (with Ina Claire), and Aren't We All? (with Cyril Maude). At the height of his prosperity he sometimes had half a dozen "hits" running in New York theatres at the same time.
In 1914 he took over the management of the Hippodrome, then the largest theatre in existence, and for nine years produced high vaudeville entertainments there under such genially meaningless titles as Happy Days and Better Times. These included a permanent troupe of trained elephants, skating and aquatic spectacles, sometimes circus-ring acts such as bareback riding. It was there that Anna Pavlowa first danced in America. There also Dillingham introduced the French comedienne, Gaby Deslys, to American audiences in Stop, Look and Listen; but a touch of the risque in the performance irked the producer, and he and Deslys parted company. He relinquished the management of the Hippodrome in 1923. Among the two hundred plays that he produced were also When Knighthood Was in Flower, Gypsy Love, The Candy Shop, The Hoyden, The Co-Ed, The Slim Princess, Sergeant Brue, The Office Boy, Over the River (with Eddie Foy), Watch Your Step (with Vernon and Irene Castle, then a noted dancing couple), Sunny, Uncle Sam, Miss Information, Betty, Apple Blossoms, The Half Moon, Madame Pompadour, Stepping Out, China Rose; also in the more dramatic line, A Bill of Divorcement, Bulldog Drummond, If Winter Comes, Josef Suss, Waterloo Bridge, Suspense, and That's the Woman.
In his latter years Dillingham lost his magic touch; The Big Show, which he produced in 1927 at a cost of $250, 000, was a failure. In 1932 a receiver was appointed for the Globe Theatre, and in 1933, Dillingham was forced into bankruptcy. His last production, New Faces, in the winter of 1933-1934, was not successful.
Dillingham died on August 30, 1934 at the Hotel Astor where he lived. He was buried in Hartford and was survived by his sister and her daughter.
Dillingham was considered a gentleman of the old school, good-natured, having a good sense of humor, well-dressed and always kept farce, vulgarity, exhibitionism and hints of impropriety out of his productions, befitting the son of a clergyman.
There have been various reports and rumors of Dillingham's homosexuality including a longtime relationship with Charles Frohman, with whom he lived for some time between his marriages.
Dillingham was married in 1896 to actress and singer Jennie Yeaman who was a former child star. She died in 1906. On May 5, 1913 in Purchase, New York he married Eileen Ann Kearney formerly of Stillwater, Minnesota. The new Mrs. Dillingham was part of the Alla Nazimova dance troupe and later was in several productions of Dillingham's.
There were no children. His second wife's family believed theirs to be a marriage of convenience.