William Gillette Actor And Playwright

Kindle version of vintage magazine article originally published in 1900. Contains lots of great info and illustrations seldom seen in the last 110 years.

Read excerpt -

"My greatest disadvantage in those days was my height. I was so tall beside the average actor they couldn't place me. I got frightfully discouraged after a while and I wrote a vaudeville sketch for myself in the belief that I would have to quit the legiti-mate. The very first part I played was an Indian. It was in a play Oliver Doud Byron brought to the St. Charles. Two years later in Cincinnati, when I was in Macauley's Stock Company, he came there in the same play. Some other infernally tall man had the Indian then. I chaffed Byron about his playing the same old part while I had made some progress in two years.

"But directly after I left New Orleans I came to New York and got 'foreman of the jury,' in John T. Raymond's run of 'Col. Sellers,' at the Park Theatre. The part consisted of the lines, "We have,' and 'Not guilty.' I said them a whole season and got ten dollars a week for doing it. At the same time I was taking a scientific course at the University of New York."

The next season Gillette did much better. He got the "District Attorney" in the Union Square run of "Col. Sellers." The part gave him opportunities of which he profited. People began to know he was on the stage. After that he went to the Globe Theatre in Boston, where he played numerous small roles and character 'bits.' He spent his spare time in taking a special course at the Institute of Technology. His next jump was to Macauley's Stock Company at Cincinnati, and here after two years of drudgery he got that chance for which every actor and actress not yet arrived hopes and prays for with every breath drawn. It is to have a full house, a fat part, and to grip both. Every eye in the audience rivets on your every expression, move and gesture. Every ear is strained to catch your lines. Every line you say takes, and when the scene comes—the great scene that is yours—you hold them in your power fascinated. Then you free them to clap, to stamp, to shout, to whistle maniacally, which is their gratitude for the anguish you have laid on their hearts. Gillette's moment came entirely by accident.

"Macauley himself played the part," he said, referring to that night, "but he fell ill and it was given to me. The play was from the French, and I believe was called ‘The Mother's Secret.' The piece was being done at the same time at the Union Square in New York. The part was a good one and just in my line. The people seemed to like the way I did it, and from the after-developments, it looked as though I had made my first real hit.