a week's run at Ye Liberty Theatre, Oakland, California, and I was to play the ingénue.
One little experience added to another little experience fortified me with sufficient courage to call on managers of visiting Eastern road companies who traveled short of "maids," "special guests at the ball," and "spectators at the races." New York was already beckoning, and without funds for a railroad ticket the only way to get there was to join a company traveling that way.
A summing up of previous experiences showed a recital at Sherman and Clay Hall and two weeks on tour in Richard Walton Tully's University of California's Junior farce "James Wobberts, Freshman."
In the company were Mr. Tully and his then wife, Eleanor Gates, the author; Emil Kreuske, for some years now "Bill Nigh," the motion picture director; Milton Schwartz, who took to law and now practices in Hollywood; Dick Tully and his wife Olive Vail. Elmer Harris of the original college company did not go. Elmer is now partner to Frank E. Woods along with Thompson Buchanan in Mr. Wood's new producing company.
The recital at Sherman and Clay Hall on Sutter Street was a most ambitious effort. My job-hunting pal, Harriet Quimby, a girl I had met prowling about the theaters, concluded we were getting nowhere and time was fleeting. So we hit on a plan to give a recital in San Francisco's Carnegie Hall, and invite the dramatic critics hoping they would come and give us good notices.
The Homer Henley Quartette which we engaged would charge twenty dollars. The rent of the hall was twenty. We should have had in hand forty dollars, and between us we didn't own forty cents.
