Background
Charles Frohman was born on June 17, 1860, at Sandusky, Ohio. His father, Henry Frohman, native of a suburb of Darmstadt, Germany, emigrated to the United States at the age of eighteen.
After some experience as peddler in New York State, he established a cigar factory in Sandusky. Here he married Barbara Strauss, also a native of the Darmstadt vicinity. Charles was the youngest of three sons. The other two were Daniel and Gustave.
Gustave was the first of the Frohmans to enter the theatrical business; he subsequently brought his two brothers into it, and all became conspicuously identified with dramatic production.
Career
Early environment and a strong natural impulse helped to shape Charles Frohman’s career. His father aspired to be an actor and directed many amateur performances of German classics in Sandusky. When Daniel was in his teens it was decided to educate the boys in New York, and the elder Frohman established a retail cigar business on lower Broadway, in the heart of what was then the Rialto.
Into the shop came some of the most famous actors of the time, and their talk and work influenced Charles, who from boyhood had an indomitable ambition to be a factor in the theatre. His first contact with the theatre in a business way was made at the age of eight, selling souvenir copies of The Black Crook, which was then running at Niblo’s Garden.
When he was nine, he made his only appearance on any stage as actor, taking the part of an extra page in the extravaganza, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, at the New York Theatre. His initial employment in the play-house was as ticket-seller at Hooley’s Theatre in Brooklyn, which his brother Gustave had rented for a summer minstrel season.
Charles was then fourteen, and during the daytime worked in the office of the Daily Graphic. He subsequently served his apprenticeship as advance agent to road companies, including Haverly’s minstrels The “Haverly Mastodons” and the Madison Square Theatre troupes which toured the country after their New York runs.
At the Madison Square the three Frohmans were associated under the same managerial roof for the first time. In 1883, Charles Frohman first became an independent manager, taking the famous Wallack Theatre Company on tour.
Subsequently, he opened a booking office in New York and laid the foundation of what later became the powerful Theatrical Syndicate. His first great success as independent manager was the production of Bronson Howard’s Shenandoah in 1889, at the Star Theatre in New York. When originally produced in Boston, the play was a failure.
Frohman had faith in it and induced the author to make several changes. The result was a triumph which gave future stars like Henry Miller, Viola Allen, Wilton Lackaye, Effie Shannon, John E. Kellard, and Nannette Comstock a Broadway appearance.
In 1892, Charles Frohman engaged John Drew, who became the nucleus of the Empire Stock Company. This organization developed into the greatest of all American theatrical star factories. Out of it emerged such distinguished figures as Maude Adams, William Faversham, Arnold Daly, Ethel Barrymore, Margaret Anglin, Arthur Byron, Ida Conquest, Edna Wallace, W. J. Ferguson, Elsie De Wolfe, and many others.
The Empire Stock Company marked an epoch in Frohman’s life because it sponsored successes like The Girl I Left Behind Me, which established a theatrical tradition.
His career henceforth was on the expanding scale that was his boyhood dream. He became star-maker and play-arbiter, in the words of the press, ‘‘the Napoleon of the drama. ” He was the first to encourage Clyde Fitch and Au gustus Thomas.
Among the other playwrights whose works he produced were Sir James M. Barrie, David Belasco, Paul Potter, Bronson Howard, Henry Arthur Jones, Henry de Mille, Haddon Chambers, Charles Klein, Somerset Maugham, William Gillette, Alfred Sutro, Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, Louis N. Parker, Michael Morton, Anthony Hope, and Granville Barker.
In April 1915, he put on a war play entitled The Hyphen, which marked his last personal direction. On the following May 1st, he sailed on the Lusitania. Six days later the vessel was torpedoed by a German submarine eight miles off the Head of Kinsale, within sight of the Irish coast. Frohman was one of a hundred Americans who went to their death.
Funeral services for him were held at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, and memorial services, at the instigation of various Frohman stars, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tacoma, Providence, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London.
Views
Having strong individuality himself, Frohman believed in capitalizing distinctive personal appeal in others.
Quotations:
“Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure of life. ”
Personality
Charles Frohman’s relation with Sir James M. Barrie deserves a paragraph all its own. They represented two extremes.
Barrie was silent, dour, and aloof, while Frohman was the bubbling impresario who lived in a blaze of action and publicity. Yet they got on famously.
Frohman was distinguished by two traits. One was his reckless disregard of the value of money. He produced unmindful of expense. The other was the sacredness of his pledged word. He never made a written contract with his stars or authors. What he promised to do became the proverbial bond.
His exit from life was as dramatic as any production he ever staged.
