An equally simple story, used almost simultaneously, came near being less inexpensive. Henry Miller was about to produce "Grierson's Way" at the Princess Theater, and, rehearsals not progressing to his satisfaction, he determined to postpone the scheduled date of opening. This determination we resolved upon turning to our own account. We advertised widely that Mr. Miller had lost the only existing manuscript of the play, without which the performance could not be given, and that he would pay $500 reward for its restoration. Two days afterward Mr. Miller called me up on the telephone. "An awful thing has happened!" he said. "I've actually lost a manuscript of 'Grierson's Way.'"
"What of it!" echoed Mr. Miller. "Supposing somebody brings the 'script to me and demands that $500?"
Fortunately, "Grierson's Way" was found by a stage hand who was satisfied with a small bill and an explanation.
It seems hardly probable that anyone will recall how a barber once delayed the beginning of a performance of "Taps" until half past eight o'clock, yet that tale was one of the most successful of simple stories. The only preparation required was posting the chosen tonsorialist and holding the curtain at the Lyric. Herbert Kelcey, according to the explanation given out, had been shaved when he discovered that he did not have the usual fee about him. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he had remarked. "I'm Herbert Kelcey."
"Herbert Kelcey nuttin'!" his creditor had replied. "Dat gag don't go! You stay here until you get dat fifteen cents!"
A messenger, hastily summoned, was said to have released the actor shortly after the hour for "ringing up." The idea that a barber could keep a thousand people waiting for their entertainment was both novel and humorous, and, in the vernacular, our story "landed hard." The strike of the Helen May Butler Military Band at the Woman's Exhibition was arranged with equal ease and proved equally good. That exhibition was wonderfully fruitful. Almost anything the women did seemed amusing, and the show itself was so extraordinary that its smallest features were interesting.
As elaborate a tale as, for example, the famous Anna Held milk bath story, to which I have referred, requires more plotting and arranging than would the founding of a revolutionary society in Russia. One may spend weeks of work and hundreds of dollars on such a "fake," only to trace its subsequent failure to some trifling flaw in the chain of circumstance. Widely though a successful story of this sort may be chronicled, the reward is absolutely incommensurate with the labor involved, and I think few press agents would ever attempt one were it not for a gambler's love of excitement.