Here was another revelation of the Barrymore versatility, for she invested this strange, weird expression of Ibsen"s genius with a range of feeling and touch of character that made a deep impression.
Charles now secured the ma.n.u.script of "Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire." He was immensely taken with this play, not only because it was by his friend Barrie, but because he saw in it large possibilities. Miss Barrymore was with him in London at this time. Frohman told her the story of the play in his rooms at the Savoy, acting it out as he always did with his plays. There were two important women characters: the mother, played in London by Ellen Terry, who philosophically accepts the verdict of the years, and the daughter, played by the popular leading woman Irene Vanbrugh, who steps into her place.
"Would you like to play in "Alice"?" asked Frohman.
"Yes," said Miss Barrymore.
"Which part?"
"I would rather have you say," said Miss Barrymore.
Just then the telephone-bell rang. Barrie had called up Frohman to find out if he had cast the play.
"I was just talking it over with Miss Barrymore," he replied.
Then there was a pause. Suddenly Frohman turned from the telephone and said:
"Barrie wants you to play the mother."
"Fine!" said Miss Barrymore. "That is just the part I wanted to do."
In "Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire" Miss Barrymore did a very daring thing. Here was an exquisite young woman who was perfectly willing to play the part of the mother of a boy of eighteen rather than the younger role, and she did it with such artistic distinction that Barrie afterward said of her:
"I knew I was right when I wanted her to play the mother. I felt that she would understand the part."
"Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire" was done as a double bill with "Pantaloon," in which Miss Barrymore"s brother, John Barrymore, who was now coming to be recognized as a very gifted young actor, scored a big success. Later another brother, Lionel, himself a brilliant son of his father, appeared with her.
The theater-going world was now beginning to look upon Ethel Barrymore as one of the really charming fixtures of the stage. What impressed every one, most of all Charles Frohman, was the extraordinary ease with which she fairly leaped from lightsome comedy to deep and haunting pathos. Her work in "The Silver Box," by John Galsworthy, was a conspicuous example of this talent. Frohman gave the ma.n.u.script of the play to Miss Barrymore to read and she was deeply moved by it.
"Can"t we do it?" she said.
"It is very tragic," said Frohman.
"I don"t mind," said Miss Barrymore. "I want to do it so much!"
In "The Silver Box" she took the part of a charwoman whose life moves in piteous tragedy. It registered what, up to that time, was the most poignant note that this gifted young woman had uttered. Yet the very next season she turned to a typical Clyde Fitch play, "Her Sister," and disported herself in charming frocks and smart drawing-room conversation.
Miss Barrymore"s career justified every confidence that Charles had felt for her. It remained, however, for Pinero"s superb if darksome play "Midchannel" to give her her largest opportunity.
When Frohman told her about this play he said: "Ethel, I have a big play, but it is dark and sad. I don"t think you want to do it."
After she had heard the story she said, impulsively: "You are wrong. I want to play this part very much."
"All right," said Frohman. "Go ahead."
[Ill.u.s.tration: _ETHEL BARRYMORE_]
As _Zoe Blundell_ she had a triumph. In this character she was artistically reborn. The sweetness and girlishness now stood aside in the presence of a somber and haunting tragedy that was real. Miss Barrymore literally made the critics sit up. It recorded a distinct epoch in her career, and, as in other instances with a Pinero play, the American success far exceeded its English popularity.
When Miss Barrymore did "The Twelve-Pound Look," by Barrie, the following year, she only added to the conviction that she was in many respects the most versatile and gifted of the younger American actresses. Frohman loved "The Twelve-Pound Look" as he loved few plays.
Its only rival in his regard was "Peter Pan." He went to every rehearsal, he saw it at every possible opportunity. Like most others, he realized that into this one act of intense life was crowded all the human drama, all the human tragedy.
Miss Barrymore now sped from grave to gay. When the time came for her to rehea.r.s.e Barrie"s fascinating skit, "A Slice of Life," Frohman was ill at the Knickerbocker Hotel. He was very much interested in this little play, so the rehearsals were held in his rooms at the hotel. There were only three people in the cast--Miss Barrymore, her brother John, and Hattie Williams. It was so excruciatingly funny that Frohman would often call up the Empire and say:
"Send Ethel over to rehea.r.s.e. I want to forget my pains."
Charles Frohman lived to see his great expectations of Ethel Barrymore realized. He found her the winsome slip of a fascinating girl; he last beheld her in the full flower of her maturing art. He was very much interested in her transition from the seriousness of "The Shadow" into the wholesome humor and womanliness of "Our Mrs. McChesney," a part he had planned for her before his final departure. It was one of the many swift changes that Miss Barrymore has made, and had he lived he would have found still another cause for infinite satisfaction with her.
Another star now swam into the Frohman ken. This was the way of it:
Paul Potter was making a periodical visit to New York in 1901. David Belasco came to see him at the Holland House.
"Paul," said he, "C. F. and I want you to make us a version of Ouida"s "Under Two Flags" for Blanche Bates."
"I never read the novel," said Potter.
"You can dramatize it without reading it," remarked Belasco, and in a month he was sitting in Frohman"s rooms at Sherry"s and Potter was reading to them his dramatization of "Under Two Flags," throwing in, for good measure, a ride from "Mazeppa" and a snow-storm from "The Queen of Sheba."
"I like all but the last scene," said Frohman. "When _Cigarette_ rides up those mountains with her lover"s pardon, the pardon is, to all intents and purposes, delivered. The actual delivery is an anti-climax.
What the audience want to see is a return to the garret where the lovers lived and were happy."
As they walked home that night Belasco said to Potter:
"That was a great point which C. F. made. What remarkable intuition he has!"
Frohman and Potter used to watch Belasco at work, teaching the actors to act, the singers to sing, the dancers to dance.
Then came a hitch.
"Gros, our scene-painter," said Frohman, "maintains that _Cigarette_ couldn"t ride up any mountains near the Algerian coast, for the nearest mountains are the Atlas Mountains, eight hundred miles away."
He undertook to convert Mr. Gros. Fortunately for him the author of the play stood in the Garden Theater while Belasco was rehearsing a dance.
"Oh," said he, "if it"s a comic opera you can have all the mountains you please. I thought it was a serious drama."
Then Frohman ventured to criticize the mountain torrent.
"What"s the matter with the torrent?" called Belasco, while _Cigarette_ and her horse stood on the slope.
"It doesn"t look like water at all," said Frohman.
Just then the horse plunged his nose into the torrent and licked it furiously. Criticism was silenced. The play was a big, popular success, and with it Blanche Bates arrived as star.
One day, a year later, Frohman remarked to Potter in Paris, "What do you say to paying Ouida a visit in Florence?"