Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/208

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN They can go to the movies or stay home and play charades, as far as the show business is concerned.

When the producer is reproached for this indifference he laments that most good actors no longer will leave Broadway and that railroad rates are prohibitive. It is true that a great many actors and actresses no longer can be pried loose from Broadway. Their homes, their clubs, their friends are there, and train whistles are just a noise to their ears. But the producer's tears are glycerin. Railroad rates are up, but so are theater tickets, and as for the actor, the producer is doing exactly what he blames the actor for.

He used to burst into the office at ten in the morning, yelling a demand to know how much the show played to last night in Little Rock, and whether Monroe, Louisiana, would not answer for that open date between Texarkana and Shreveport.

To-day he is working for a long run on Broadway, big profits or no profits. If the show fails on Broadway, scrap it and try another. When he gets a winner for a Broadway run of a year or more, he makes around a quarter of a million dollars, sends the show to Boston, Philadelphia