In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

In the autumn of 92, an opportunity arose for the Castles to gain some public notice. In September, producer Charles Dillingham signed Vernon to appear in The Lady of the Slipper, a musical comedy retelling of Cinderella . Twenty-three-year-old rising star Elsie Janis was cast in the leading role, with the comedy team of Montgomery and Stone backing her up. Janis, who described herself as “an ambitious puppy, striving to please but with one eye on the thickness of my part,” was accompanied everywhere, including auditions and rehearsals, by her notorious stage mother. Vernon was handed a nice little role, not too demanding, with a lot of dancing. Irene, on the other hand, was not happy. Dillingham had written her into the show on Vernon’s insistence (and also because Irene’s star was beginning to rise). But it could hardly be called a role. Aside from one second-act dance with Vernon, she was to introduce acts and scenes, dressed as a harlequin. Enter one side, prettily display a title card, then off. It “could have been played by a robot,” she complained. Worse still, their combined salaries hardly paid enough for rent and clothes, let alone making up for what they’d lose by staying with The Lady of the Slipper; the Castles would have to give up their highly paid private parties and lessons; only the midnight gig at the Café de l’Opera would still be a possibility. Vernon, who never cared much about money and was happy to be back onstage, didn’t mind. But Irene was determined to get out of the show—how to do so, though, without breaking her Dillingham contract and risking a lawsuit? Irene’s solution was typical of her daring and singlemindedness . She simply got herself fired. Elsie Janis recalled the bombshell arrival and departure of the Castles, who “looked like two adolescent palm trees.”At a dress rehearsal in Philadelphia , Janis recalled, Irene entered in a modern Paris hobble-skirted “TWO ADOLESCENT PALM TREES” CHAPTER ELEVEN  CHAPTER ELEVEN 59 gown and “suddenly pulled up her skirts like a naughty little girl, showing her ‘complete understanding.’ . . . Mother’s gasp of dismay must have been heard in Trenton!” Irene shamelessly recalled herself “skipping all over the stage with my bare legs showing, then I dropped the train and modestly wiggled off.” Elsie Janis and her mother, Charles Dillingham, Victor Herbert (the show’s composer), the director, and the authors all descended on Irene, as Vernon casually leaned back and kept out of the way. They raged, they pleaded, they tried to reason: but Irene, as a “dance specialty,” had contracted approval of her costume and insisted that adding chiffon or panels would ruin the line and ruin her dance. So the dance, and Irene, were removed from the show, with no financial penalty. “The joke was decidedly on us,” said the show-businesswise Janis. The Lady of the Slipper opened at the Globe Theater (now the LuntFontanne ) at Forty-sixth and Broadway on October 28, 92, with Vernon and without Irene. Vernon stayed with the show till shortly after the New York opening, commuting from Philadelphia (about two hours,) then hurrying from the Globe to the Café de l’Opera in time for their midnight performance. Meanwhile, Charles Frohman was producing a musical called The Sunshine Girl at the KnickerbockerTheater on Broadway andThirty-eighth Street. Frohman (who would become, in 95, one of the more famous casualties of the Lusitania sinking) was one of the few really well-liked theatrical producers in New York. A froglike man of great humor and goodwill , he was known as a star maker, ushering Maude Adams, Billie Burke, Ethel Barrymore, and others to the top of the heap. Elisabeth Marbury convinced him to cast Vernon in a sizeable supporting role,as “Lord Bicester , known as Bingo, a young stockbroker.”The show starred the peachesand -cream blonde Julia Sanderson,already a minor star (she would become a major star the next year in The Girl from Utah).Vernon scored first billing on the program, as his was the first character onstage; he performed five numbers in this show. In act , Vernon sang “Josephine” with a passel of chorus girls and a duet with the star, Sanderson, called “Ladies.” In act 2, he sang (and, of course, danced) to “Little Girl, Mind How You Go,” “Who’s the Boss?” and “In Your Defense.” At the insistence of Elisabeth Marbury and...

Share