Newsgroups: soc.history,ne.general,misc.rural,sci.econ,sci.chem,rec.arts.theatre
Path: utkcs2!shuford
Organization: University of Tennessee, Knoxville--Dept. of Computer Science
Summary: convalescence inspires novel idea for business, determination succeeds
Keywords: comedy, soap, Pine Tree, chemistry, New Hampshire, health, business
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.045917.19016@cs.utk.edu>
Distribution: na
Expires: 30 May 91 23:15:10 GMT
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 91 04:59:17 GMT
Sender: shuford@-cs.utk.edu
From: shuford@-cs.utk.edu (Richard Shuford)
Subject: Comedian scents soap (long)
Lines: 201

The text of the following biographical sketch is taken verbatim from 

   \New Hampshire:  Resources, Attractions, and Its People--A History/
   by Hobart Pillsbury.  New York:  The Lewis Historical Publishing
   Co., Inc., 1928.  (Volume V, pp. 42-44.)

The saga is so marvelous it cried out to be posted to Usenet.  :-)

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Billy B. Van

The story of how Billy B. Van cheated death and came back to be the leading
comedian in one of Shubert's big revues, "The Great Temptations," and, incid-
entally, to be the manufacturer and sales manager of the soap and kindred
articles manufactured by the concern of his founding, the Pine Tree Products
Company, of Newport, New Hampshire, furnishes a most absorbing sidelight on
the career of one of America's favorite stage stars, and adopted popular son
of the Granite State, where he regained his health and has centered his
business interests. 

Billy B. Van, as his name now is and for some time has been legally known,
was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, August 3, 1870, son of George W. and
Henrietta (Detwiler) Van de Grift.  His father, born in Amsterdam, Holland,
died in Philadelphia, in 1912, aged eighty-six years, was a railroad engineer
who later became a dairy expert.  His parents thought to give him the
advantages of a finished education, and so he was sent to the Philadelphia
schools, the family having removed to that city from Pottstown.  On a fateful
day, his mother, having read a newspaper advertisement asking for juveniles
for the chorus of a children's production of "H.M.S. Pinafore," accompanied
our comedian-manufacturer in embryo to the North Broad Street Theater, in the
Quaker City, to see if he would fill the bill.  Manager S. J. Stewart gave
his word that the promising young five-year-old would, and he was engaged at
once at a salary of three dollars a week. 

Thta was the occasion on which "William Webster Van de Grift" ceased to exist
as such, and, after he had passed through several evolutionary changes, he
became Billy B. Van.  First, the theater manager put him down on the program
as "Master Willie Van."  As the years passed, "Willie" became the more
dignified "William," and eventually fell back to the happy and euphonious
nickname "Billy," which stuck.  Billy himself put the "B" in for luck and
business, for it stands for "Business," he declared.  But reverting to those
early days of the "Pinafore" assignment, an epidemic of measles struck the
troupe, and Billy was one of the fortunates not laid low.  As a result he was
promoted to the part of Dick Deadeye, which had been played by one of the
boys stricken with the disease.  That was the time when Billy became
inoculated with the actor germ.

His father, an intensely practical man, being a locomotive engineer, was
thoroughly alarmed and sought a remedy for the stage-stricken son.  He sent
him to a job, at the age of fourteen, in the J. G. Brill Car Company's shop
in Philadelphia.  But all the four years he was employed there, his spare
time was given up to amusing his fellow-employees with singing and dancing. 
He developed his "art" in amateur comedies and "suped" on the legitimate
stage.  He played for benefit performances, giving his services for sand-
wiches and coffee.  And so his talent for comedy found expression in those
plastic years.  When his four years' apprenticeship at the Brill plant was
ended, and he was pronounced a finished car-builder, his father was conscious
of a great and deep feeling of relief; but not for long was the fond parent
to rejoice in his son's rise to the status of journeyman car-builder.  His
hopes were dashed when Billy without further ado, bade goodbye to the shop
and obtained a job in the theater as property boy.  His pranks played on the
players sometimes nearly upset the performance and often jeopardized his job. 
Then he and another boy in the same theater teamed up and went out on the
road in a blackface act.  They played in Atlantic City at a boat dock for ten
dollars a week apiece and their board.  Years afterward, Billy came back to
Atlantic City in an act for which he received one thousand dollars a week. 

From that early Atlantic City boat dock stunt, Billy went on tour with the
California Minstrels.  Then he joined the Flying La Mars of trapeze per-
formers in a circus for twelve dollars a week.  At twenty he had passed up
through burlesque and vaudeville and was playing comedy parts with a stock
company in Washington, District of Columbia.  It was during his Washington
connection that he made a wretched failure once, when he essayed a serious
part as the villain.  The audience simply would not receive him as such; to
them he was their "favorite comedian only," and as a comedian he, from that
time henceforth, determined to be. 

For twelve years Billy B. Van went on with his comedy before his people with
cumulative success.  Then one tragic day he was informed by the doctor that
he had developed lung trouble, and Arizona air was recommended.  But Billy
had not the money with which to take such a cure, so he remained in the East
and continued with his acting.  One night, while playing in Boston, he could
hardly finish his part in the performance.  He was removed to the Quincy
House, and the verdict was to the effect that he was done with theatrical
work for that season, at least.

Now, what proved to be a very important turn of events, came within the orbit
of Billy B. Van's movements.  The doctor who was attending him at the Quincy
House was also attending Oscar Barron, the proprietor of the hotel, who had
been very ill.  Through the medium of the physician, Billy and the boniface
became "companions in convalescence," and the latter told the former about
the fine properties of New Hampshire air for tubercular patients, as Billy
had been pronounced one.  The upshot of the acquaintance was that the sick
stage star found himself one fine day alighting from a train at a little
village on Lake Sunapee, and later buying a decrepit old dwelling, among the
pines and hemlocks of the life-giving, health-renewing Granite State. 

It was while he was lying there, breathing new life into his fevered body,
that he picked out two futures for himself; one to be a good comedian, the
other to be a soap manufacturer.  He already had conceived the idea that he
could incorporate the scent of the pine trees into a cake of soap and thus
send it to hundreds and thousands of folks who could not enjoy it on the
original premises as he was doing. Reinvigorated in body and mind, he started
to realize on his future.  He became so "serious" about his comedy that he
became professionally more successful than he had ever been.  But with suc-
cess there came the disillusionizing knowledge that success as an actor was
only ephemeral; he must have something else more substantial, enduring on
which to depend.  In his Pine Tree soap he visualized that permanent feature
of which he dreamed.  He labored earnestly and almost incessantly, in dres-
sing-rooms and before pooh-poohing chemists to whom he revealed his plans
while seeking a formula, to put his ideas across. 

Then, seizing the recalcitrant animal by the horns, he took up the study of
chemistry, and when he considered himself far enough along in the knowledge
of its mysteries to make experiments, he bought a brass kettle and alcohol
lamp, and went about brewing his concoctions, never ceasing to hope that he
would evolve a cake of soap in which the odor the pine tree would be so
readily detected as to give right to the use of the legend.  For fifteen 
years he expermented with that kettle, off and on, and disappointment was 
always staring him in the face.

Fortune again smiled upon him with another of those happy sick days, this
time while playing in Kansas City.  It so happened that the physician who
answered his call for aid was Dr. Samuel C. James, retired from the pro- 
fession, who was the dean of the Kansas City Medical College.  The doctor
introduced him to the head of the department of chemistry of the college,
and as soon as he was feeling fit, he was invited to the college laboratory,
a real one with real authority in charge.  These two men, the doctor and the
professor, steered him in the way of reading authoritative chemistry, which
he pursued faithfully, returning at the end of his season to spend two months
of the summer at the Kansas City Medical Colege laboratory under the instruc-
tion of Dr. James. 

Back on the road again went Billy in the autumn with his funny stuff, but he
was never more serious about his soap problem.  One day a near-accident to
the automobile in which he was riding gave him "Idea No. 2," as he calls it. 
The brakes had saved them, and like a flash there came the thought that he
needed a "retarder" to keep his pine oil from cutting his soap into a
valueless mess.  One night at his hotel, he found three kinds of running
water--hot, cold, and ice-water--he poured out the contents of his faithful
old kettle into a bowlful of ice-water, "and the stuff solidified." He had
his formula and he had his cake of Pine Tree soap.  Then he waited on a large
chemical concern in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his newly-discovered formula.
A. G. Schwartz, the president, and Professor Dock, the head chemist of the
company, gave him every assistance possible, including valuable suggestions
as to how to improve the formula.  Having no capital, his advisers recom-
mended that he engage in the business of manufacturing his perfected product. 
With characteristic promptitude, he put across an ambitious publicity program
over the radio on Boston, using question contests and other literary means to
enlist the interest of his public.  Prizes were offered, and among them were
boxes of Pine Tree soap to the more successful, and cakes of the soap to the
less fortunate.  His good will was drawn from about fifteen million people
for whom he played, and at every performance he was getting acquainted with
over a thousand more.  "By the end of my first year in business," said Billy,
"I'd sold a million cakes of soap, and my product was being carried by more
than ten thousand stores."

Nor did Billy B. Van give up his stage career.  During that year that he was
establishing his Pine Tree Products Company, he played forty-four weeks, and
spent seven weeks rehearsing.  Between performances he worked the territory
in the interest his soap business, and thus found that he was developing into
a first-class salesman.  "If I ever get too old to caper around on the
stage," said Billy one day, "I'll live up at my headquarters in Newport, New
hampshire.  I have a sort of model farm up there and a herd of pedigreed
cows.  I claim they're the only laughing cows in the world.  With their kind
assistance, I furnish certified milk for all the youngsters in town--including
my own two."  Mr. Van confesses to a weakness for Newport, since that was the
place he went to when he sought to get back on his feet as a healthy man, and
it was there that he imbibed the idea of becoming a soap manufacturer that
would bring the odor of the pine trees to the people of the country through
the medium of the products of his concern. 

Mr. Van has made Newport his headquarters for a quarter of a century, and
maintains there a beautiful estate, which, as stated above, he calls his
"model farm."  His registered Guernsey cows have more than a local reputation
as milk producers, and he takes a pardonable pride in his herd and in
everything else that pertains to a well-regulated farm.  Thus it will be seen
at a glance that as a farmer, as president of the Pine Tree Products Company,
and as a nationally-popular comedian, Mr. Van is displaying a versatility far
beyond that of most men.  And the best part of it is that he is getting the
fullness of enjoyment, reinvigoration, and a goodly monetary return from his
three-cornered interests; more than all that even, he is happy in the service
he is enabled to render to his public through these various channels.

Billy B. Van married, in 1922, Grace Visger Walsh, of Syracuse, New York,
daughter of Professor Thomas and Mary (Visger) Walsh.  They are the parents
of three children:  Mary Ann, Billy B. Van, Jr., and Bonnie Grace.

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[I have confirmation from a reliable source that Billy B. Van really did
 own a dairy farm in Newport, New Hampshire, although I can't independently
 verify the other parts of the story.  The narrative style employed in the
 text was chosen by Hobart Pillsbury; I don't write like that.
 .....RSS
]
-- 
....Richard S. Shuford  | "Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke
....shuford@-cs.utk.edu |  a wise man and he will love you. Instruct a wise
....BIX: richard        |  man and he will be wiser still."  Proverbs 9:7