Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/98

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN living from it. Had he possessed a rudder, Goodwin might have become the American Gilbert. Gilbert himself never excelled Goodwin's "The Man with an Elephant on His Hands" song in "Wang", but lacking that rudder Goodwin is forgotten.

"Panjandrum", purposely so named to force the public to accustom itself to asking for seats for Hopper rather than seats for the play, followed "Wang", and when Delia Fox graduated to stardom in 1896, Edna Wallace became my leading woman in "El Capitan" by John Philip Sousa and Charles Klein, and later my wife,—the same lady who now is playing vaudeville very successfully billed as The Sixty-Two-Year-Old Flapper. I saw her in Philadelphia when we both chanced to be playing that city last summer and she looked as young and charming as the night we opened in "El Capitan" at the Tremont Theater, Boston, May 13, 1896.

Both authors had protested against such an ominous opening date, and each declined to come near the theater when after much argument we overruled their objections. But they were both of them in the house the second night, when the opera's success was assured. It ran for two seasons.