famous manager through his passion
for putting himself in the way of being ruined."

In many respects Frohman's feeling about money was almost childlike. He
left all financial details to his subordinates. All he wanted to do was
to produce plays and be let alone. Yet he had an infinite respect for
the man to whom he had to pay a large sum. He felt that the actor or
author who could command it was invested with peculiar significance.
Upon himself he spent little. He once said:

"All I want is a good meal, a good cigar, good clothes, a good bed to
sleep in, and freedom to produce whatever plays I like."

He was a magnificent loser. Failure never disturbed him. When he saw
that a piece was doomed he indulged in no obituary talk. "Let's go to
the next," he said, and on he went.

He lost in the same princely way that he spent. The case of "Thermidor"
will illustrate. He spent not less than thirty thousand dollars on this
production. Yet the moment the curtain went down he realized it was a
failure. He stood at one side of the wings and Miss Marbury, who had
induced him to put the play on, was at the other. With the fall of the
curtain Frohman moved smilingly among his actors with no trace of
disappointment on his face. But when he met Miss Marbury on the other
side of the stage he said:

"Well, I suppose we have got a magnificent frost. We'll just write this
off and forget it."

* * *

Frohman played with the theater as if it were a huge game. Like life
itself, it was a great adventure. In the parlance of Wall Street, he was
a "bull," for he was always raising salaries and royalties. Somebody
once said of him:

"What a shame that Frohman works so hard! He never had a day's fun in
his life."

"You are very much mistaken," said one of his friends. "His whole life
is full of it. He gets his chief fun out of his work." Indeed, work and
humor were in reality the great things with him.

One of the best epigrams ever made about Frohman's extravagance was
this:

"Give Charles Frohman a check-book and he will lose money on any
production."

To say that his word was his bond is to repeat one of the trite tributes
to him. But it was nevertheless very true. Often in discussing a
business arrangement with his representatives he would say:

"Did I say that?" On being told that he did, he would invariably reply,
"Then it must stand at that."

On one of these occasions he said:

"I have only one thing of value to me, an