He was apologetic. Said it was due to a printer’s error, and that anyway it would be all right as regards my turn. But it wasn’t all right. On the contrary, it was all wrong. When I arrived at Hammerstein’s on my opening day, I was shown into a long bare dressing-room, where were about twenty other performers, all strangers to me. I set about getting ready in leisurely fashion, and was only half made up when I was astounded at hearing the call-boy cry out: “Your turn next, sir!”
Thinking that I had miscalculated the time I made a rush for it, but when I got on the stage I was surprised to see that there was hardly anybody in the building. Looking round I saw “No. 2” up, and it was then that I realised for the first time that I had been done once again by the slick Yanks.
They had played me a scurvy trick twice over. Not only had they not put me at the top of the bill, but they had given me the worst turn, and--I was to get only about half my usual salary.
Well, there was no help for it then, of course, but I made up my mind that I was going to get a bit of my own back. And I did. When I went on the stage there was practically nobody in the house, and I led off by congratulating the management at having brought me all the way from Europe at a big salary, and then putting me on when there was nobody there to listen to me.
This patter raised quite a big laugh from the small audience that was there. They, in fact, thoroughly appreciated the joke. Not so the management. Mr. Kessler, the manager, was furious.
“Cut that out,” he cried in a stage whisper. “Don’t pull that gol-durned stuff here.”
What I said in reply wouldn’t look well in print. In fact it nearly ended in my breaking my contract, and chucking the engagement there and then. And indeed I think I should have done so but for my wife, who strongly advised me not to do anything of the kind.
“After all,” she said, “what does it matter? You’ve got two years’ bookings in England to go back to. Don’t throw good money away.”
This, after all, was sound common sense, and I took her advice. But all the same I have no very pleasant recollections of Hammerstein’s, more especially as because I declined to give a touting advertisement canvasser an order for a page “ad.” in his paper--price one hundred dollars--his editor slated me badly, saying that I was a bad copy of half the variety artistes in the United States--performers whom for the most part I had never seen.