MELODRAMA BECOMES COMEDY
Every race gets a nickname in America. A Frenchman is a "frog,"a negro a "coon" and a Welshman a "goat." All the schoolboys who were not Welsh delighted in teasing us by applying the uncomplimentary nickname. This once resulted at the Sharon operahouse, in turning a dramatic episode into a howling farce.
I was acting as a super in the sensational drama She, by H.
Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local stage, we penetrated into the land of the wall-eyed cannibals.
The cannibals captured me and prepared to eat me in full view of the audience while the Englishmen behind the trees looked on in horror. The cannibals, who were also supers led by an actor of the "troupe," set up a hot pot to boil my bones in. I was bound hand and foot, while the cannibals, armed with spears, danced around me in a heathen ceremony, chanting a voodoo chant and reciting a rigmarole by which cannibals are supposed to make their human feast on a sacred rite. As they danced about me in a circle, they sang:
"Is it an ox? Him-yah, him-yah." And they jabbed their spears into me. Some of the supers jabbed me pretty hard, among them Babe Durgon, who delighted in tormenting me.
"Is it a sheep? Him-yah, him-yah." Again they jabbed me, and Iwas so mad I was cussing them under my breath.
"Is it a pig? Him-yah, him-yah."
The audience was breathless with tense excitement.
"Is it a goat?"
The entire gallery broke into a whirlwind roar: "Yes! yes! He's a goat."Laughter rocked the audience. They all knew I was Welsh and saw the joke. The horror and suspense had been so great that when it broke with comic relief the house was really hysterical. It stopped the show.
I played supernumerary parts in many shows that winter including Richard III and other Shakespearean plays. At the battle of Bosworth field where Richard cries: "A horse, a horse;my kingdom for a horse," the supers in the army were clattering their swords on the opposing shields in a great hubbub and shouting, "Hay, hay hay!" I was of a thrifty turn of mind, and said: "Hold on, boys. Don't order too much hay until we see whether he gets the horse or not."A hypnotist came to the opera-house and I volunteered to be hypnotized. He couldn't hypnotize me. I felt rather bad about it.
I was out of the show. Later I learned that all of the "Perfessor's" best subjects came with him under salary, and the local boys who made good were faking like the professionals. The whole thing was a cheat and I had not caught on. I was too serious-minded to think of faking. But several of the boys took to it naturally, and among them was Babe Durgon, the bully. He could be hypnotized and I couldn't. But several years later I had the satisfaction of "hypnotizing" him myself, as I told about in my first chapter.
Although I always regarded myself as a humorist, the impression I made on my comrades was that of a serious and religious fellow.
I quoted the Bible to them so often that they nicknamed me "the Welsh Parson." I was the general errand boy of the town.
Everybody knew me. And when there was a job of passing hand-bills for the operahouse, or ringing bells for auction sales, I always got the job. Every nickel that rolled loose in the town landed in my pocket and I took it home to mother. Mother was my idol and what she said was law. One night I heard the band playing and started down-town. Mother told me to be sure to be in bed by nine o'clock. I found that a minstrel show had been thrown out of its regular route by a flood and was playing our town unexpectedly.
The stage hands knew me and passed me in. I was seeing a high-priced show for nothing. But when it came nine o'clock, I went home. I told my mother that I had walked out of the most gorgeous minstrel show. She asked me why and I told her because she wanted me to be in bed by nine o'clock.
"Why, Jimmy," she said, "I wanted you to be in bed so you wouldn't be in bad company. It would have been all right for you to have stayed at the minstrel show. All I want to know is that you are in good company."I guess mother thought I was a bit soft, but I had seen the best part of the show, as in those days the curtain rose at seven forty-five.
Minstrel shows were the greatest delight of my youth. I learned to dance and could sing all the songs and get off the jokes.
Dupree & Benedict's were the first minstrels I ever saw. Imarched in their parade and carried the drum. George Evans (Honey Boy) was a life-long friend. We were born within three miles of each other in Wales and came to this country at about the same time.
