Charles Frohman

Within a year of Charles Frohman’s death aboard the Lusitania in May 1915, his brother Daniel and the journalist Isaac Marcosson had assembled this account of the producer’s life. They follow him from a boy of eight selling souvenir books of The Black Crook, through hard years on the road and a spell as a minstrel manager, to the Empire Theater, the Theatrical Syndicate, and a producing operation that reached both sides of the Atlantic. John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, and Maude Adams pass through, as does the friendship with J. M. Barrie that carried Peter Pan onto the stage. Barrie’s own appreciation opens the book and calls him the man who never broke his word. With Frohman’s letters and a full list of his productions appended, it stands as a primary source on how American theater was run.