IT PAYS TO ENTERTAIN.

Shannon News, 8 May 1925, Page 4

IT PAYS TO ENTERTAIN.

SOME LEAVES FROM MY LOG. (By Sir Benjamin Fuller, in the Melbourne Herald. In this article, specially written for the “Herald” by Sir Benjamin Fuller, the millionaire theatre owner tells of some of the extraordinary steps by which he rose to his present position. Uneducated, except in the university of life, Sir Benjamin finds in that handicap his greatest deprivation, ana for that reason has done so much- for the cause of education in New South Wales.

There are few jobs I would not rather do than sit down to write a story of my life. It always seems to me as if there were only two excuses for starting such a thing: one, that a man feels he is so successful that it would be a pity to leave the world in ignorance of what has made him what he is; the other, that he feels .liimself near the grave, and never having written anything before is determined to have one last fling before he departs. Neither of these reasons applies to me, for I am just about to reach my half century, and am not just yet thinking of “last words,” nor have I the vanity that makes me want to be a beacon to others’ feet. Call my reason pure cussedness, if you like. About the year 1890 my father, John Fuller, came to this country. He was in the show business and many people will remember him 36 years ago connected with the old St George’s Hall when Hiscock’s Minstrels were so popular. I was left in England eai-ning my living. I suppose the blood of showmen was in my veins, for when I was a youngster I had great ideas of becoming a musician and was billed as a boy performer on the piano, the saxeliorn, the English concertina and the doublebass. Of my musical proficiency all I now retain is a curious ability to tell any note that I hear played. It was as steward that I made my first appearance in Australia. I stepped on shore at Port Melbourne and decided that Australia would do me. From that time it was a united Fuller family that faced the world and decided that it was an oyster well worth opening. 1 was 20 when I joined my family, and was put to help my father in the show business. He was organising popular concerts, and decided that New Zealand offered a better chance than Melbourne, which we thought over-catered for. I well remember my arrogance as a London boy that thought himself a citizen of the finest city on earth. When I first saw Melbourne and Sydney. Melbourne I thought a very one-horse town, and Sydney little better, but when I got to Auckland, where the foundations ,of my fortune were to be made, I thought it was the last place God ever made.

Most people would think that my equipment for oyster hunting was very 1 small. I had had no • schooling and 1 my up-bringing in a slum did not improve matters. On the credit side. 1 however, I had a remarkable father, who was one of the straightest men ’ I ever knew, and a wonderful mother, who, though she could not write her own name, had such an extraordinary grasp both of business detail and of the way to live life that I feel it is ! to her I owe must of my success. The Fuller purse was very flat and empty when we landed in Auckland 30 years ago. When we had paid for the hall and our bills for printing, there was not a shot in the lockei left. It was hit or miss with us. Fortunately things turned out all right. The crowd turned up, and we were launched. Then there begun for us all a series of adventures which would make any other kind of life lofok humdrum. Many a time we seemed to be down and out, but always the right card turned up, and we went steadily on. *My own fob was anything that came handy. I used to post up bills, shift scenery, carry baggage, do advance work, manage the “back of the house.” take' tickets, chuck out, and the hundred miscellaneous duties that belong to a travelling theatrical life. There were amusing- episodes, whose sting has long departed. I remember at Milton, a little town in New Zealand, that in order to get out of the town by daylight in time to get on to the next and do some advance work' I took my bills and a pot of paste and put in a strenuous time throughout the night covering (dead walls with announcements of the visit of world-renowned artists. It was a bitter cold night, and I nearly perished before the job was done. Try three hours of dabbling with frozen paste on rough brick walls, and you will know what I felt like. However, it was done. And as the sun was rising I went to the station to take the train to my next port of call. Imagine my feelings as I saw the same rising sun melt the paste; one by one the posters peeled off the thawing walls, and fell down. These wonjs days of great joys, great expectations, and great anxieties. I had quickly cottoned on to the show business and flatter myself I taught my father a few new wrinkles. We were getting on, and about this time we bought our firbt theatre, the City Hall, in Dunedin. It is twenty-years since that day, and we have just sold that very theatre. It seems strange to look back on that time of struggle and to think that now we have eight theatres in New Zealand and many more in Australia. When we engage an actor in London he is committed I to travelling over the biggest theatrical circuit in the world. By the time he gets home he has travelled over 35,000 miles. I remember with horror taking a company to a little place, in New Zealand called Puhoi. We had advertised the show, and as the time for starting grew near we felt a little alarmed because no one seemed to be coming. Time went on and no one but a caretaker was in the house. We made inquiries, and found that a showman has got to keep abreast of x-eligious prejudices, for the solution of the mystery was that it was a strong Roman Catholic community

and the season was Lent. Lent! We were sold.

Whenever I have seen people congregated together I have studied them and wondered what their mentality was like. I remember sitting as a young man with Harry Rickards, one of the greatest showmen in this country, in a box at the Bijou theatre, which is mine to-day. The Rickards show had been moved there, while the present Opera House was being built I looked around at the crowd and thought to myself “if they’ll come upstairs for you, my boy, they will for me.” It took me twelve years to buy the Bijou theatre, but I was a .ways determined to possess it. Some day, at no distant date, we are going to re-build that theatre and give Melbourne something to be proud of. It always has seemed to me that the building of a theatre or other fine architectural building is a perpetual ornament to the man who builds it, making his name remembered when his ordinary life is forgotten. It gives me a peculiar thrill to create a lasting memorial of this kind. My brother Johnny, when he first came to this country, used to be callboy at the Princess Thmatre. Do you think it is not a tremendous source of prido to him to look now at the boards over which he used to hurry on his many messages, for a call-boy is everybody’s servant, and compare iimse cays with the present, when the theatre, far finer than in his youth, is now partly his own property? Since a turn of Fortune’s wheel is a romance of business. I think the term “Fortune’s Wheel" is wrongly chosen, for it was not luck, but dogged purpose which brought about the result. And in that you have the real reason for such an article as this. Every man's success from small beginnings ought to be an inspiration to others. When things go wrong considerable tact is necessary to keep an audience in a good humour. Oh one occasion, at a place called Helensville, my brother Johnny and I were running a lantern show when the gas tank exploded suddenly and ruined the whole programme. It could not be mended and we were billed'further on up the coast and stood to lose considerable money by cancelling our fixtures. Johnny rushed to Auckland for a new tank and told me to carry on and open in the next town. He said he would be sure to tuim up. Things went wrong, and he was unable to get a train as he expected, being forced to come up by a sailing vessel. I had a big audience packed into the hall and no entertainment to give them. They howled and they stamped and they raved. I kept telling them that Johnny would be there. I felt like Wellington at Waterloo, except that night had come, and Blucher, I mean Johnny, had not. I was at the end of my resources, and could sea nothing but letting the crowd stampede the box-office when Johnny sprang from aboard the lugger, clasping, his tank to his bosom. The situation and the money were saved. Once we had a strike called on us by the audience. I think this is a pretty unique sort of strike, and though I am not a revengeful man, I have often thought I should, like to get even with that crowd. It was in a mining district, and the population was composed of very hard-doers indeed. We had advertised a fight picture, and the miners thought the prices were too high. They came to the hall all right, but could not be induced to “step up and pay us.” A delegation put it to me with a wealth of adjectives that the pqrices mvdt be reduced before they Would come in. I had no strike-breakers handy, so was forced to give ini I used to live in hopes of going back to that town, collecting a big audience ojf miners, billing a wonderful programme, watching the mouths of the audience water for a time, and then announcing that there would be no performance. I may do it yet, if aeroplanes are improved. There was nothing particularly dramatic in our gradual success. My father’s watchword was “Keep faith.” It was a simple motto, but I never knew him prove false to it, .