One Scene From Ned Wayburn’s “Demi-Tasse Revue.”
To the trouper, a town is a “stand.” A week’s showing in a place is spoken of as a “week stand”; the first and last half of the week is each a “three-day stand,” or “four-day stand,” or the “first” or “last-half.” Then there is a “two-day stand” and a “one-night stand,” which are self-explanatory. A “run” is a greater period than a “week stand,” and you hear of a “two-week run,” an “eight-week run,” “six months run,” and “one year run,” etc.
There is a solid season, a theatrical year of forty weeks, of travel, experience and development, beginning about Labor Day and ending about Decoration Day, and a summer season beginning about the first Monday in June and ending about the last Saturday in August. Your work and progress is being watched unknown to you at every performance. The manager back home finally knows all about your work through “reports” which are kept in the main booking office and to which he and all other managers on his particular circuit have access.
Now you are ready to try for something bigger and better, ready for “big time” vaudeville, perhaps in your own act; if not that, then in someone else’s act. Your second year’s advancement is based on the weekly report that has been sent to headquarters regarding your reception by the public and the way in which your act has got over. Big time may mean Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and any or all the larger cities on the various “circuits.” It may include the Keith-Albee Palace Theatre in New York, the Mecca of all vaudeville artists. It is at the Palace that you know you and your act are seen by every revue, musical comedy, or dramatic manager, casting director whose business it is to pick and engage artists.
There is no school like vaudeville for the dancer, singer, actor or actress in any line of musical work. Most of the brightest stars in the theatrical firmament have graduated from vaudeville into greater things, and many of them return to the vaudeville stage for a flier now and then. It is there that you come in contact with different wise audiences in different cities and learn how to handle them. You watch your fellows in their various acts, note the bills as they change every week, or usually twice weekly, and your audience with them. You are in two, three or four shows a day in your short time, and learning how to get over better at every show. The vaudeville audience knows what’s what. You can’t fool them. You’ve got to do your best for them all the time—and you will, or you will not remain in vaudeville, where you have to “make good” every performance. It is an invaluable experience, your first stage years, and you will gather lasting benefit from your active vaudeville appearances. You must not complain of the number of shows you are required to give daily—the more you give the more practice you get before a paid audience, and remember you are gaining experience while being paid for it.
You may follow a season of this with a road show over your former territory another year, and you will find your old friends in the audience ready to boost you. You are on the right road to the “making of a name,” which after all is what you are after. For although they will not remember your name yet, if you really pleased them they will remember your offering; about your third trip around they will learn your name and never forget it—provided you “make good.” If you fail, the audience will forget you; but not the manager. Once you fail in his opinion, he will never forget or forgive it. He will never give anyone who fails a second chance. That is “show business.”
Your fourth year should find you in a New York production in some good company. For New York is always the objective point, since the best and most opportunities are always there. There follows naturally a year on the road in the same company, as the show abandons New York for a tour of the larger cities. Always make the road trip in order to create territory for yourself, to establish a following, to make a still bigger name and demand for you, which means a larger salary eventually. You are sufficiently established now, after five successful years, to be able to expect another New York engagement, under the same management in all likelihood but with a new vehicle. This New York engagement and another year on tour with the same play puts you seven years along the way to a name in the big lights, and your name has been growing day by day, until it is now known in good territory, and consequently, through wise exploitation—publicity—it has become a magnet and attracts patronage.
When the time comes that your name is to go up in front of the theatre, choose to be featured at first rather than starred. If anything must fail, let it be the show, and not you. Don’t risk failing to “draw business” to the box office.
There will come a time somewhere along in your progress to fame when you will need a business manager or an agent versed in all matters of a theatrical nature, favorably known to all the large producing managers, and able to advance your fortunes materially by protecting and looking after your interests. He is entitled to receive ten percent of your earnings from whatever source, and the services he can render you are well worth it.
Nearly every successful actor and actress has a manager. Stage celebrities have not the time, let alone the experience and ability, to promote their own business interests, watch for opportunities to secure the choice engagements, and attend to the very necessary publicity and negotiations for contracts for the future. The reputable agent or artist’s manager is always on the ground and in touch with the best managements and things theatrical daily. But no such representative worth while will bother with you until you have made good.
The best artist managers or agents know in advance what is being planned for the coming theatrical season. They are in close contact with the very high-ups in the theatrical world, men whose contracts you hope to sign on the dotted line soon. A good agent may save you several years’ time in advancing to a stellar position. He knows the value of publicity, which often is half the battle in getting yourself before the public. You must have publicity, whether or not you secure a representative to attend to it for you. Interesting newsy stories about you, with effective art studies of yourself in costume accompanying them, are gladly accepted by many newspapers and magazines. The rotogravure sections of Sunday papers contain many pictures of theatrical folks. A beautiful picture will usually carry a story, and you are wise to get a few good ones rather than many cheap prints. Every first-class theatre has its own press agent, and every production of any size its own press representative. Both are glad to coöperate with you if you have real ability, and help you with the preparation of your stories and photographs and getting them into the daily newspaper. There are also many publicity concerns who make it a business to keep your name and picture in the public eye at a moderate charge. But you must be able to make good first. Neither publicity nor anything else will avail to establish a permanent name for you unless you are prepared to deliver the goods. Duds and dumb ones never make a big noise in the world. There is no star name awaiting the inferior person in this profession. All the front-page publicity in christendom won’t do the trick if you haven’t back of you real talent and something the public is clamoring for. And you cannot hope to fool the wary producer by any false representation or exaggerated claims.
You are not wasting your time while on the way to the bigger things. Seven years may seem a long time to wait, but you are not starving on the way, and you are really not “waiting” at all. You start with a reasonable salary that advances from year to year and engagement to engagement, as you deserve it. You must build all the way on solid rock, then the structure that you finally rear, because of its firm foundation will endure forever.
Build up a public interest in yourself if you expect any producing manager to pay you what you are worth. Perhaps he will never pay you what you think you are worth, but if you bring money into the house he knows he must pay you well in his own interest. And believe me, he knows whether you are an asset or a liability to his show. You have simply got to prove to the box office that you are producing—not stage money—but the real stuff.
There is such a thing in stage lingo as an “overnight hit.” Someone suddenly “stops the show” in a town; that is, gets an unusual number of recalls. But wait a while before you decide that you are ready to star on the strength of that. Your next audience or the audience in the next town may not be so enthusiastic over your act. An “overnight hit” is seldom continued beyond the single performance. It is pleasant while it lasts, but it doesn’t last long. You must perform consistently and “make a hit” at every performance, with every audience.
Be patient, you who would star and see your name go up in the bright lights on the Great White Way. Do not get discouraged. You will meet with obstacles on the route to fame undoubtedly, as others have done, and, like the others who have finally arrived, you must overcome them one at a time as they appear, by sheer force of willpower, determination, pluck or whatever you desire to call it. If you are a weakling and lack strength of character do not ever take up a stage career, for you will get many a bump; so be prepared to stand it. For only those who are determined to succeed will ever reach the top, where there is plenty of room always.