+Sydney Porter+.
P. S. If you want a more formal assignment of the rights of the
story, send on the papers and I will sign ’em.
Tyler then sent for Paul Armstrong, a wise old artisan of the theatre,
who could be counted on to turn the story into a play without spilling
anything, and who could also be expected to do it quickly, as he too
was probably without funds. Armstrong read the story, agreed to try his
hand at it, and vanished. It turned out later that he had been locked
up in a room at the Hotel Algonquin, but for a week there was no signal
from him and it was upon an impresario fuming with impatience and
uneasiness that he sauntered nonchalantly in at the end of that week.
Tyler launched at once on a burning speech in which he gave his opinion
of Broadway as a habitat for men who thought they were playwrights,
his opinion of the faithless and the irresponsible denizens of that
territory, and his opinion of his own bitter and thankless job, which
he said, he was minded to forsake then and there in favor of farming.
Which oration Armstrong interrupted by producing from his ulster the
completed four act manuscript of a melodrama, the first of the crook
plays, “Alias Jimmy Valentine”. The next day they were all on their
way to Chicago and eleven days later the piece was produced there.
Within three weeks, therefore, after Tyler first read “A Retrieved
Reformation”, its dramatization began a run which was to make
reputations for some people and fortunes for others; which was to tweak
and tantalize playgoers all over America, England, France, Spain and
South Africa; and which was to breed a very epidemic of plays in which
no self-respecting protagonist would think of approaching the first
act without a neat murder or at least a bank robbery to his credit.
I often think how much it adds to a playgoer’s interest in a piece to
know something of the manner in which it came to be written, something
of the source of its incident and its viewpoint, something, that is,
of its own biography. Consider those first nighters in Chicago who
encountered Jimmy Valentine in the Sing Sing scene, met with him the
sorry procession of prison types and finally followed him in his
precarious flight into respectability. How they would have gaped had
they known (and probably not more than one or two of them even guessed)
that this, in a sense, was O. Henry’s own story, that he too had been
a convicted felon, that he had come to know the original of Jimmy
Valentine when they were both in prison together in Ohio, and that at
that very time he, like Jimmy, was building with his own hands a new
identity in a new world.
If this missing chapter ever does find its way into the O. Henry
biography, there ought, I suppose, to be a footnote about the actress
picked up out of space to play the leading feminine rôle. For “Alias
Jimmy Valentine”, that company of Warner’s out in Chicago would do well
enough. But the cast of the play required a new leading woman. Someone
mentioned casually that there was a promising newcomer to be seen
that very afternoon in a special matinée somewhere on Broadway. Tyler
dropped in, took one look, and engaged her forthwith--a lovely, droll,
wide eyed young actress who had just come in out of the provinces and
who was already footsore from her weary rounds of the managers’ offices
in an effort to persuade someone that she knew how to act. Her name was
Laurette Taylor.
But that is a footnote. And “Alias Jimmy Valentine” itself is important
in the story of O. Henry as a playwright only because it yielded Paul
Armstrong something like $100,000 while it yielded O. Henry, whose
idea it had been, nothing like that at all. He made just $500 out of
it. This painful discrepancy was something which the guileful Tyler
meant that O. Henry should not be allowed to forget. Every week, when
the official copy of the box office statement went through the mails
to Armstrong as a matter of routine, a duplicate copy was mailed to
O. Henry. It was, of course, a lean time in which Armstrong did not
receive each week more for writing the play than O. Henry received all
told for having invented it. After a little succession of such weekly
reminders, the wear and tear upon O. Henry’s spirits became visible.
Witness this letter which arrived in New York early in 1910:
Asheville, N. C.
Monday
+My dear Mr. Tyler+,
I had expected to be in N. Y. before this but I am not. I have been
putting in all my time getting in good shape for future campaigns,
and doing practically no work at all. Have entirely recovered my
health and feel fine and fit. I have done barely enough writing
to keep the possum from the door since I’ve been down here, but I
think I have gained greatly thereby.
Got a little proposition to make to you.
If you’ll advance me $500, I’ll come at once to N. Y., establish
myself in some quiet rural spot of the metropolis known only to
yourself and your emissaries and get to work and finish a play. I
will not let my whereabouts or even the fact that I am in the city
be known to anyone but you; and I will give all my time and energy
to the play.
As collateral, I can only make over to you the dramatic rights of
all my stories until the work is done. The new play “Alias J. V.”
has inspired me to believe I can do something for both of us.
If you will do this, let me know immediately and I will come.
Of course if you don’t care to do it, it won’t affect our future
relations. But I want to get in the game, and I’ll stick to you
_exclusively_ until we try it out.