1915-01-31-New York Sun-The Girl Who Picks Winners for the Stage

The Girl Who Picks Winners for the Stage

The New York Sun, 31 January 1915, page 11

Miss Helen Tyler Selected "Within the Law," Which Has Earned More Money Than Any Other Play of Recent Years

"Under Cover," "The Dummy" and "Polygamy" Were Her Choice, So Now She Is in the Field of Play Producing

JIMMY FORBES, author of "The Show Shop," standing with a group of friends in the lobby of the Hudson Theatre the other evening, bowed to a brown haired young woman in sealskins and spangled evening gown floating along with a gay party of theatregoers, She smiled back a quizzical smile that included Jimmy and the crowd come to see his show.

Well wisher?" asked one of Jimmy's friends.

"You bet"' said Jimmy. "She's the girl who picks winners. She picked my show. Picked 'Within the Law" and 'The Dummy' and 'Under Cover' and 'Polygamy'--you want to watch the plays she picks. That's THE Miss Tyler.'"

"The Miss Tyler" has succeeded in keeping her name out of the papers to a great extent, and her personality out of public knowledge, up to the present time, except so far as it appears on the stationery of the American Play Company. "Helen Tyler. General Manager" and on the checks of the Play Producing Company. Modern Play Company, &c., behind which names she has been running the winners she picked. For this young woman of the New York theatre industry, with her peculiar faculty for "picking winners" in the bitterest gambling game in the universe, has not only helped net her firm, the Selwyns, a big business and an established place among the great producers of New York, but has won her own place in a field of fame with her own plays and her own New York theatre.

In the blaze of glory along the Great White Way that proclaims this the centre of play making for the Western continent it is interesting to know that some of those signals of success were lighted by a girl who came to New York scarcely more than a decade ago to earn her living as a stenographer, and who today has four of the biggest productions of recent years to her credit, the lease of a New York theatre, a silent partnership in one of the most important producing firms in the United States and holdings in half a dozen other theatrical productions.

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"And 'Polygamy'?"

Miss Tyler laughed. "I suppose you mean me to confess. Yes, I hold the largest share of stock. I put on the play. I sign the checks. I leased the Park Theatie. 'Polygamy' is the biggest thing I have done, and I consider it an important thing to have saved this play to a long New York run, in spite of the most adverse conditions.

"The authors of 'The Dummy' had written this drama, which they first called 'A Celestial Marriage' and had taken it the rounds of the producers unsuccessfully. Several of the managers declared it was tho most gripping drama they had come across, but they would not dare to put it on. That whoever put it on invited disaster. I had talked with former Senator Frank J. Cannon of Utah, who aided the authors in the psychology of the Mormon people, and with Mrs. Cannon, whose family is still living in Salt Lake City under the conditions of the Mormon kingdom. There was no question in my mind, from the effect the play had on me and from the effect the play had on the Cannons, who had been inside of the Mormon home and the Mormon Church, that it was both good drama and a real cross section of a strange phase of American life. The propaganda side does not concern me, but the drama does. I believed that the play as a play was a great play--one whose underlying theme of the sanctity of marriage was of the greatest possible appeal to all classes, irrespective of the Mormon side of the question.

"So I formed a stock company and we took the play to Washington to 'try out,' brought it to New York and opened at the Playhouse. We expected trouble and we were not disappointed. We were informed that Senator Reed Smoot had come to town to see the play and find out what he could about it. We have no proof of it, nor of other rumors of what the Mormons were going to do to us that reached us. But trouble came from an unexpected quarter. Our friend William A. Brady, who had come to Washington to see the play and had offered us the Playhouse, suddenly and without warning lost faith in 'Polygamy' in its first week, countermanded our first Sunday advertising following the opening of the play without notifying us and quite frankly admitted that 'Polygamy' was a failure! The newspapers were justified in thinking we were down and out, and the gossip of the street said so, but the audiences kept on Increasing and business showed that even If Mr. Brady did not believe in us we could survive it. Other plays had. So we hired the Park Theatre, available through the bankruptcy of the Lieblers and the closing of 'The Garden of Paradise,' organized and installed a house staff, moved our play uptown, and 'Polygamy' has been playing there since its third week, with business still growing."

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