Radio lay in its cocoon of summer coma. Most of the chain serials and
most of the local dramatic programs were off the air until September,
and no new shows, chain or local, stepped into the vacated spots. The
blight hit actors, singers, and musicians. It also hit auditions: FKIP,
FFOM and FWWO would not hear eager, aspiring talent again until the
fall. Heat baked the city, and a torpid world of radio counted the weeks
until September.
For Joe Carlin, life had changed: the dusty McCoy Building and the
stage-effect microphone in Ambrose Carver’s office became something that
had happened in the past. His days were now spent in Vic Wylie’s office.
If Wylie, in the agony of putting together six shows for the fall, could
give him only half an hour, that half-hour became something to look back
upon. If the disheveled, wild-haired producer could give him no time at
all, there was always the possibility of a half-hour to-morrow. And even
if he caught only fleeting glimpses of Wylie for two or three days at a
stretch, every moment of those days he was living and breathing the
atmosphere of real, exciting show business.
Radio people were at liberty, and “at liberty” meant, bluntly, out of
work. Suddenly Vic Wylie’s office became a gathering place for idle
actors and actresses, a sort of unofficial club. Some passed into the
inner office to audition for parts in the six shows coming up; others,
slanting constant glances toward the closed door, lounged in the outer
office and chatted with a gay light-heartedness that seemed to Joe to
fill the place with magic. The entrancing gossip of show business was
all about him.
“I understand FKIP’s auditioned the _I Want Work_ platter a dozen times
and can’t hook a sponsor.”
“I don’t put much faith in novelty shows. They’re too big a gamble.”
“What isn’t a gamble in radio?”
“Who ever dreamed the quiz shows would get four stars?”
“Anybody hear that He, Inc., may put on a show?” He, Inc., were
outfitters for men and boys.
“I heard that, too. Yesterday, at FFOM.”
There was quick interest in the room.
“Who’s got it?”
“Probably the Everts-Hall Agency. They’ve always had the He account.”
A woman powdered her nose. “That means Tony Vaux will be the producer.
Good old Tony! He used me twice last season. I might drop in on Tony and
give him my best smile.”
A man said: “No chance, child. This show will go stag.” “Stag” meant an
all-male cast.
Joe drank it in. He came to know them all—the fortunate few who passed
into the inner office and the idle group that was very often
thoughtlessly in Miss Robb’s way. They gave Joe a rich sense of warmth
and comradeship. Spontaneously he was Joe and the others became Barbara,
or Jane, or Bill, or Jim. The free-and-easy familiarity filled him with
a glow. Once, hearing these persons on the air, he had looked upon them
in envy as beings miraculously set apart, and now he was one of them,
accepted. Archie Munn had pointed out Tony Vaux and he had been awed;
but now, when the red-faced agency producer breezed toward the inner
office with a boisterous “Howdy, folks?” his voice lifted freely with
the others. “Hi, Tony.” He was in show business. He belonged.
But easy familiarity faltered at two places. Something about the
brooding Vic Wylie.... Everybody else said “Vic,” but the “Vic” stuck in
Joe’s throat. And there was a gentle old trouper the group hailed as
Pop. The Pop also stuck. To Joe, these men were Mr. Wylie and Mr.
Bartell.
Pop Bartell came in every morning, always wearing the same blue suit
with the white pin stripe, always with his linen immaculate. Often he
would walk into the office so quietly that Miss Robb would not know he
was there until he spoke. From the rear his slim, straight back gave him
an appearance of youth. But his voice, the way it broke on a word,
stamped him. Pop was old.
“Good morning, Miss Robb.” His greeting, courtly and deferential, never
varied. “Is there a letter this morning? A telephone message? I’m
expecting a call—there’s a fat part coming up. No? Thank you. To-morrow,
perhaps,” Miss Robb would agree.
If the old man was ever disappointed, he gave no sign. Bright-eyed, he
would give the room a gallant greeting.
The day came when anger mounted in Joe. The morning loungers had trouped
out and taken away their gay, bright gossip; he and Archie, Lucille and
Stella Joyce remained, as they remained each day, for the moment when
driving, demanding Vic Wylie might need them. At one o’clock they went
out to eat at a thirty-five-cent restaurant.
Pop Bartell was on Joe’s mind. “If somebody’s promised to write or
telephone, why don’t they do it?”
Pity lay in Lucille Borden’s eyes. “Don’t you understand?”
“What’s there to understand? Somebody’s promised him a part. Why do they
keep him hanging on a hook? It’s cruel.”
“Pop doesn’t expect a call,” Lucille said. “Walking into a producer’s
office and asking about a call gives Pop a chance to keep up a front. He
can pretend he’s not a washed-up has-been.”
Joe was shocked. “You mean—”
Archie Munn tapped a fork against the table. “It’s tough, Joe, but it’s
show business. Pop’s an old timer. He’s been through it all—medicine
shows, street carnivals, burlesque, road companies. After forty years of
it, one-night stands took it out of him. He turned to radio; after all,
show business is all he knows. Vic’s been able to throw him a few bits.”
Joe was still shocked. “You mean he doesn’t get much work?”
“You’ve heard his voice. How many radio shows have old-man parts?”
Compassion tied a knot in Joe’s throat. To come to this after forty
years must be bitterly hard. But were they sure about the forty years?
It didn’t seem possible. There wasn’t a gray hair on Pop’s head.
Stella Joyce seemed to read his thoughts. “You’ve heard of hair dye,
Joe? If Pop were in a bread line, his shoulders would be back. It’s all
front.”
“Everything’s front in show business,” Archie Munn said roughly.
Lucille Borden’s voice was quiet. “A brush can keep one suit going a
long time. An actor with one shirt washes it every night and hangs it to
dry while he sleeps.”
So that was how it was! Joe, his throat still tight, ate food that was
tasteless. They went back to the office.
Vic Wylie, impatient, awaited them. “Stella! You, kid! We have about an
hour.” Hours were measured in this office in precious minutes. The door
to the inner office closed.
“Something new, Vic?” Stella Joyce asked.
“The same _Davis_ show.” Wylie mauled among the papers on his desk.
“Tony thinks Munson may be ripe for an audition. This is one of the
scripts we’ll give him.”
Joe tried to rise to the occasion, to feel the old thrill of rehearsing
for Vic Wylie. But to-day the typed words were meaningless. He thought:
“This is about the fifteenth time we’ve run through this script. Last
time Mr. Wylie rubbed his hands and said he was satisfied.” He should
have known better. Wylie was never satisfied. And gentle Pop Bartell
would come in to-morrow....
Stella was reading. Joe thought in desperation: “I’ve got to forget
Pop.” He’d have to pick up the story in a moment. Wylie’s outstretched
finger wavered, waited for Stella’s last word, and then swung toward
him.
Joe, as Dick Davis, began to give the identical passage he had read for
the producer his first day in this office:
Dick: Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must
listen to me. I’m not trying to duck out of high school. I can
get through at night. I can get college at night. Oh, I know
fellows talk about night study and never get to it. But—
“Stop!” Wylie’s flat palms pounded the desk. “I’m only human. I can
stand only so much.”
Stella gave attention to a button on her blouse.
“I’ve coached you, kid. I sweated blood over you. Last week I said to
myself: ‘The kid improves with every performance.’ And what do you do?
What do you give me to-day? To-day you give me a performance that
reeks.”
The room on the ninth floor was so quiet they could all hear the purr of
automobile traffic from the street.
Abruptly Wylie turned around and pointed a clawing finger at Stella.
The girl, giving no sign that she had witnessed a typical Wylie
rehearsal storm, began again at the beginning. Joe tried to whip himself
to pitch. His moment came:
Dick: Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must
listen—
Wylie’s face stopped him.
“Are you alive?” the producer whispered hoarsely. “Let me feel your arm.
You are alive? Then why don’t you pour life into it? You’re not talking
to a broom. This is a scene between two human beings, mother and son.
You’re not Charlie McCarthy; you’re Dick Davis.”
Joe knew he was wooden. He tried to take the knot out of his throat,
tried and tried.... They ran through the scene, again and again. Sweat
wilted the boy’s collar and he pulled off his tie. He no longer knew
whether he was good or bad.
And then suddenly Wylie was smiling, Wylie was chuckling, Wylie was
beaming. “Kid, that was the knockout. Now you’re giving it to me. I knew
we’d pull the cork. Carry it on.”
Stella Joyce, as unruffled as though she had just begun to read, carried
on the script.
“Pretty.” The wild Mr. Wylie was actually jovial. “But—not quite. A
little more hokum. Just a little, Stella.”
Stella gave the script a shade more heart throb. Wylie closed his eyes
and became beatific. Joe waited for his cue. He began to read:
Dick: We’re in this fight together, Mother. We’re partners. At
least we’re supposed to be. But we can’t be partners when you
carry all the load and I just ride along. I—
“Please!” Wylie wailed. “Don’t you get this scene at all? Your mother’s
fighting the world to keep her little home together and you want to
help. Do you have to read it as though you’re arguing to put one more
pickle in the picnic lunch?” A beaming face was transformed to fury. “Do
you have to insult me with such a performance?”
Joe laid down the script “I can’t read to-day, Mr. Wylie.”
“What?” Wylie seemed to freeze with horror.
“I’m not in the humor.”
Wylie’s moan was that of a man whose soul was in agony. “He’s not in the
humor! An actor, and he must be in the humor. Do you think an actor is
somebody who can read his lines only when the wind’s in the east?
Suppose Munson were listening and this was an audition? Suppose this
script were on the air? Suppose—”
“Vic,” said Stella.
Wylie glared. “Would you like to produce this show?”
“He heard something to-day that hit him hard.”
“We all hear things that hit us hard.”
Stella said: “He got the truth about Pop Bartell.”
“I see,” Vic Wylie said slowly. Madness went out of him. He picked up
Joe’s discarded script, folded it once, and ran a fingernail along the
crease. When he spoke his voice was quiet. “That’s all.”
Joe was bleak. Show business had a code, a stern, rigid code. “The show
must go on.” Generations of actors had lived that code, but he had
failed. Stella was walking toward the outer office. Wylie’s voice halted
him.
“Come back, kid.”
Joe went back.
Vic Wylie’s deep-set eyes brooded. “Kid, you have imagination. You feel
deeply. That’s a blessing and a curse. You’re the kind’ll run into
things in show business that’ll make you feel sick inside. It isn’t all
music and lights and twinkling toes. That’s the mask. Every so often the
mask slips, and you see behind it, and that’s when you’ll get sick
inside. The old Pop Bartells make you want to cry. How about the young
Pop Bartells? You had a bit in the _I Want Work_ platter. That was about
the best cast you could assemble in this city. The best, kid. There
isn’t one of them averages more than twenty-two dollars a week for the
year. Some earn less than that. If they have a family, then there’s
somebody to take care of them when they get sick. If they’re holed up in
some shabby furnished room, they end up in the charity ward of a
hospital.”
Joe thought of the gay, light-hearted gathering in the producer’s outer
office. His lips were stiff. “But they’re so—so—”
“Sure. The grandest people in the world. Many of them are artists, real
artists. That’s what makes it all the tougher.” The hand of this new Vic
Wylie was on Joe’s shoulder. “Don’t let it tear you apart, kid. You
can’t change it. It’s show business.”
[Illustration: Vic Wylie said, “Don’t let it tear you apart, kid. You
can’t change it. It’s show business.”]
But show business had changed for Joe Carlin. Pop Bartell’s appearance
at Miss Robb’s desk to ask for mail or telephone calls became poignant
with pathos. And the loungers were no longer a happy-go-lucky group of
care-free Bohemians, snapping their fingers at to-morrow and laughing at
to-day. Knowledge had come to the boy, and with knowledge had come,
also, a stark understanding. The bright chatter was all at once a little
too bright and brittle, and the gaiety was tarnished. Listening and
watching, he caught the hidden nervous tension, the moments when smiles
faltered, the meaning of those swift glances to the closed door behind
which Vic Wylie had shows in the making and parts to be given out. He
knew now how unsure were all their to-morrows, how precarious, how
uncertain. All the light-hearted magic of their easy fellowship was gone
and they were stripped of their masks, of what Archie Munn called “a
front.” They were ordinary human beings, men and women beset by the
everyday worries of getting a job and never knowing how long the job
would last.
Joe thought, with the knot back in his throat, “Oh, but they’re brave!”
That was what hit him hardest—their unquenchable optimism, their
unbreakable hope. To-morrow they might crash the big time. It was always
to-morrow. Hadn’t it taken Frank Bacon thirty years to reach Broadway
with _Lightnin’_? Pop Bartell had been the first to tell him about Frank
Bacon; remembering the day, he could also remember the wistfulness, the
yearning in Pop’s eyes. Brave, gallant people who, forever living in
uncertainty and doubt, could nevertheless put on a mask each day and
live out each day with a smile.
Panic touched Joe Carlin. He didn’t want to live like that. The gallant
heart of show people, yes; but not the constant uncertainty. He wanted
the feeling of security, if there was such a miracle as security in
radio. He couldn’t go on forever talking of a mythical to-morrow and
never having an actual to-day. He couldn’t go on loafing in an outer
office and having his father leave money each week on his bedroom
dresser. He couldn’t let somebody else support him.
Then what was he doing all day, every day, at Vic Wylie’s? There were a
few other independent producers, there were radio stations, there were
advertising agencies with accounts that bought shows and radio time.
Wasn’t it common sense to make the rounds? Why didn’t all those gay,
idle show people make the rounds? He asked Archie Munn.
“You don’t make a dash for the 5:30 train at 4:30,” Archie told him.
“Radio’s dead until the end of August. If something breaks suddenly, the
producers know where to find the people they want.”
“How many producers know me?” Joe asked, anxious.
Archie Munn said: “Vic takes care of his people. Leave it to Vic.”
Joe was lulled, but after that the shadow of uncertainty was never very
far away. A milk company signed one of the six shows, and the inner
office knew the fever of refining one production. Joe fretted idly in
the outer room, went out to the thirty-five-cent restaurant with Arch,
Lucille, and Stella, and fretted away the hours of the afternoon. Wylie
now had time for only the one signed show.
Stella Joyce’s fingers, lately, always had to be nervously busy with
something. “I thought Tony said he had Munson about ready for a _Sue
Davis_ audition.”
Joe caught the thin thread of strain in her voice.
Lucille Borden stood up suddenly. “You had a ten-trip ticket to New
York, Archie. Any of it left?”
“Three rides.”
“I had a letter this morning. N.B.C. wants me in for an audition
to-morrow.”
Archie Munn took the ticket from his pocket. “Lucky gal,” he said.
Lucille said: “Perhaps.” Joe weighed a tone, an almost imperceptible
breathlessness.
Next day Lucille Borden was gone. Why, Joe asked himself, three rides
left on a ticket? Why a ten-trip ticket? Had Archie Munn tried to crash
the big time in New York and flopped? The same crowd, the same merry
voices filled the outer office; the same veiled, hungry eyes watched Vic
Wylie’s door. Noon came, and then one o’clock. And then it was 1:15.
“Aren’t we eating to-day?” Joe asked.
“I’m not particularly hungry,” Stella Joyce said slowly.
Archie Munn’s deep voice was casual. “Suppose we have a bite in here?
Crackers, cheese and a container of coffee. Fifteen cents apiece ought
to do it.”
Joe made the purchases. Archie took cups from one of Wylie’s filing
cabinets and they spread the food on the sill of an office window.
“Mmmm!” Stella said appreciatively. “Good.”
And she had said she wasn’t hungry! The truth dawned on Joe. A
thirty-five-cent lunch yesterday; a fifteen-cent lunch to-day; perhaps a
ten-cent lunch next week. And Lucille borrowing a railroad ticket
because she couldn’t afford to pay train fare. Show business!
Panic had him again. Vic Wylie had said: “The best cast in the city.”
What would they do if their money ran out? Where would he be but for
help from his father? He thought of Pop Bartell.
The urge to do something, anything, became imperative. Anything that
wouldn’t let the hours pass as they were passing. Agencies, radio
stations, producers—but where should he start? What would he say? And,
if this was not the accepted time to look for parts, what sort of figure
would he cut? Unable to make up his mind, he sat through the afternoon
in the outer office.
Next day Lucille was back. How had it gone? She shrugged. New York put
on a lot of dog. Uniformed attendants, a fortune spent on lavish
furnishings, studios that were the last word in luxury. But the net
result had been the same: “Thank you, Miss Borden.” New York might have
been FKIP.
Then, all at once, Stella Joyce was gone.
“Summer stock,” said Archie Munn. “The Pasture Players. Forty miles up
in the mountains; a vacation colony. A theater that was once a barn.”
Days of stress followed with Vic Wylie looking hollow-eyed and wilder.
Three more of the Wylie shows were auditioned, but sponsors were coy.
Suppose the _Sue Davis_ show failed to book Munson? The thought stayed
with Joe. And yet, bringing in a one o’clock lunch of coffee and
sandwiches—a single sandwich for each—he put on a front.
“The Ritz,” he announced, “à-la-Wylie.”
Lucille, sipping coffee, said: “Sonny’s coming back.”
Joe was staggered. Sonny Baker? Why, Sonny had had the lead in _City
Boy_ last season over at FKIP. Sonny had gone into summer stock on the
coast with a company near Hollywood. The _Journal_ had had an item on
the radio page....
“What about the story that the movies were keeping an eye on Sonny?” Joe
asked.
“If they were,” Lucille said coolly, “they saw all they wanted to see.
Sonny’s been getting urgent letters. Those letters are bringing him
back.”
Joe, pouring second cups of coffee, suddenly put the container down.
“Who’s been writing those letters?”
Archie Munn gave him a glance. “The boy’s fast on the catch.”
“Amby Carver?”
Nobody answered.
There was a cold feeling in Joe’s insides that hot coffee couldn’t warm.
He had met Ambrose Carver twice since coming over to Vic Wylie, and the
agent had been effusive. But Joe knew now that the little, dapper man
with the trick mustache had not forgiven him. Six weeks ago Amby had
told him in effect that last season Sonny had been the only adequate
juvenile—the programs had had to use him. “Next season,” Amby had
boasted, “when Sonny auditions for a part, he’ll find Joe Carlin
auditioning for the same part.” The stage was the same, but Amby had
shifted the scenery. Joe Carlin, auditioning a part, would find Sonny
Baker competing, reading the same part.
Lucille held out her cup. “I always figured Amby as a sort of tramp.”
That, Joe told himself, didn’t change matters. When a juvenile part came
up, it could be played by only one actor. The agent had, undoubtedly,
made some arrangement with Sonny. Certainly not a fifty-fifty
arrangement. Sonny would be too wise; Sonny had been around. But
whatever the arrangement might be, Amby had brought more trouble into an
uncertain profession already loaded with plenty of trouble.
Wylie popped out of the inner office as though he were on wires. “Kid!
Tony Vaux’ll be here at three o’clock. Come in with him.”
What did this mean—the _Sue Davis_ show at last? Tony Vaux was the
Everts-Hall Agency, and the agency had the Munson account.... The hope
in Joe died—the quick hope that the show might be sold before Sonny’s
return. They couldn’t audition without Stella Joyce, and to-day Stella
was probably playing a matinée forty miles away.
Tony Vaux arrived boisterously. “Howdy, folks; howdy.” Joe went in with
him. Wylie had a script ready.
“That one passage, kid.”
It was the _Sue Davis_ show. It was the speech over which Wylie had made
him slave and toil. He disciplined his mind and forced himself to forget
Sonny Baker and Amby. The show must go on! To-day it seemed that all the
coaching the fiery, temperamental Vic Wylie had pounded into him flowed
out in fulfilment. He felt a sense of mastery as he read the familiar
lines:
Dick: Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must
listen to me. I’m not trying to duck out of high school. I can
get through at night. I can—
To-day he was Dick Davis. He finished the speech and looked at Wylie.
Wylie, dark circles under his eyes, spoke a single word to Tony Vaux.
“Voice.”
Tony spoke another word. “Character.” He reached for the telephone.
“Will you get me my office, Miss Robb?” The call came through. Tony said
to somebody: “What are my appointments for to-morrow?” The telephone
gave out metallic sounds; the man put it down. “Think you could find
your way over to the agency at noon to-morrow?”
Joe knew the question must be for him. He still looked at Wylie.
“Tony wants you to read a part,” Vic said.
Another show? Joe Carlin’s world became a world of exultation. That gave
him a chance at two parts. Later he remembered that neither Wylie nor
Tony Vaux had said anything about his reading, about the quality he had
given the lines. They had spoken only about his voice. It didn’t seem
important at the moment.
With a noon appointment at the Everts-Hall Agency, there was nothing to
take him to Wylie’s office next morning. And yet the never-failing
excitement of a roomful of actors and actresses, the vitality of their
crisp conversation, was a potent lure. He arrived early to find Stella
Joyce at a window looking down at the street.
“Anything wrong?” Joe asked. The girl had expected to stay in summer
stock until Labor Day.
Stella made one of her quick, bird-like gestures. “Nothing that hasn’t
happened before. Rain; poor business. If I want to eat beans out of a
can there are lots of beans down here; I don’t have to play in cowbarn
drama.”
Joe didn’t understand.
Stella said: “The ghost had bunions.” She gave a wry smile that trembled
at the corners.
Joe understood that. In show business the ghost walks or the ghost
doesn’t walk. A walking ghost is a paying ghost. When the ghost doesn’t
walk, there’s no money.
“The cast hasn’t been paid in three weeks,” Stella added without rancor.
Joe was learning—the mask, the off-hand casualness, the front. “Well,”
he said, “that’s show business.” His mouth held a bitter taste.
Noon found him at the agency. The Everts-Hall people had an entire floor
in a downtown building. The reception-room was a wide, fan-shaped space
of floor facing the elevators. The reception clerk telephoned inside.
“Mr. Carlin to see Mr. Vaux.” A boy led him to Tony’s room.
The room was vast. There were eight windows, an immense rug, stacks of
scripts, shelves of books, some of which might later be dramatized for
radio, and a great table of magazines. And there was red-faced Tony Vaux
in a vivid pepper-and-salt suit.
“Howdy, Joe. Right on the minute; never keep a curtain waiting.” The
inevitable script appeared. “This is a show for the He crowd. A Curt
Lake script.”
Joe experienced a sense of confidence, as though he had walked into a
room with uncertainty and had found it peopled with friends. _Sue Davis_
was also a Curt Lake script.
“The He crowd want a show that’ll have a man-and-boy pull. There it is.
_Bush League Larry_. A baseball script with two principal characters.
Larry Logan, coming off a farm to pitch for a team in an alfalfa county
league and old Ike Totten, who lives alone and has one interest in
life—baseball. The He crowd may go on the air early in September with a
three-a-week. Capitalize right at the start on the growing interest of a
coming World Series. In the script we have Larry catch the eye of a
scout and be signed for a spring try-out. We’ll run Larry and Ike
through the winter on a string of adventure. Larry loses a finger in a
hunting accident. Will he be able to pitch with three fingers? There’s
your suspense. The script opens with Larry’s arrival at the alfalfa
town. I’ll be Ike.”
A man came in with some advertising lay-outs and talked to Tony. Joe had
a chance to scan the script:
Sound—Train Coming on to Mike and Stopping at Station
Conductor (above escaping steam): Ticeville. Here’s where you
get off, young fellow. All a-a-aboard.
Sound—Train Panting Leaves Station. Fades
Ike: Looking for somebody, stranger?
Larry: I’m looking for Bud Wilson.
Ike: If you’re a salesman trying to sell Bud some baseball
goods, you’re wasting your time. Bud’s Ticeville team ain’t been
going so good. When a team in these parts don’t win, folks stay
away.
Larry: I’m to meet Bud Wilson at the ball park. Is it far?
Ike (eagerly): You a ball player?
Larry: I hope so.
Ike (in rising excitement): A pitcher? Tell me quick. You got a
fast ball?
Larry: Back home they call it the ‘There it ain’t’ ball.
Ike: Son, if you’ve got a smoke ball and you don’t need a
surveying party to show you where the plate is—
The man with the advertising lay-outs left.
“All right, Joe.” Tony Vaux chuckled jovially. “Let’s you and me play
some baseball.” He mumbled Ike Totten’s opening lines, feeding them
merely as careless cues.
Joe picked up the part. Wylie, hearing him read the first time, had
ripped his first sentence apart with a fiery tongue. Tony, offering no
criticism, kept mumbling dialogue. The audition went on to the script’s
end, one person doing no more than making sounds, the other trying to
breathe character and atmosphere and feeling into words.
“You almost make me feel you’re a green rookie,” Tony chuckled. “But not
a scared rookie. Get the point, Joe? You’ve never been off the farm.
You’re a big, husky, corn-fed kid; you’re scared and you’re homesick.
You’re not going to let anybody see you’re scared. You play tough. Not
too tough. Some of the scare peeping through the toughness. Let’s try it
that way.”
They went through the script again.
“Better, Joe. You pick up fast. Now, a little more uncertainty in the
toughness. Remember your first audition? FKIP, wasn’t it? I’ll lay a bet
you were a lost pup. Well, Joe, this time it’s baseball, not radio. Once
more.”
They read the script five times. Tony was always a bland, kindly mentor
sugaring his criticism with a chuckle. There was no hair-tearing, no
stricken horror, no mortal agony. The telephone tinkled. Tony said: “Ask
him to wait,” and mumbled Ike Totten’s lines for the sixth time. Joe
began to vision two systems. Tony Vaux got results, too. But no Tony
Vaux show, he suspected, would have the passionate perfection of minor
details, the small refinements of a Vic Wylie show.
“That’s reading,” Tony pronounced mellowly. “You get it over.” He shook
hands.
Joe thought with a quick, tingling lift of the heart: “This part’s
mine.” It would be the beginning. He’d be on the air. He reached the
fan-shaped reception-room; and there, all in a moment, the tingling
uplift oozed out of him.
Ambrose Carver stood with his back to the room, intently studying a
painting on the wall.
So Amby was the person Tony had asked to wait! Then the agent knew about
the He show and was going to bat for Sonny Baker. Sonny would come
speeding east. Perhaps Sonny would fly east and be in town to-morrow.
Perhaps Amby would have him in Tony’s office reading the Larry Logan
part to-morrow afternoon.
Joe had only one thought—to get out of there before the agent faced
about. He didn’t want to look at a little trick mustache; he didn’t want
to listen to what the brisk Amby might have to say. He pressed a down
button and a door slid open. As he stepped into the car a startled voice
called his name. The door closed and the elevator plunged toward the
main floor.
A clock in the lobby gave the time as one-thirty. Archie Munn would have
gone out for coffee and sandwiches; a Ritz à-la-Wylie lunch would be
over. He debated about food without interest and ended by going to the
thirty-five-cent restaurant. He ordered, but he scarcely touched what
the waitress brought. He was afraid. Sonny could bring to a part two or
three years of experience. Summer stock and radio experience. And all he
had behind him was two auditions and a bit part in an FKIP platter.
At three o’clock he returned to Vic Wylie’s office.
“Joe!” Miss Robb cried. “Where have you been? I’ve telephoned every
place. They’re auditioning the _Sue Davis_ show.”
Joe was instantly breathless. “Where?”
“FKIP. Studio D. Mr. Wylie’s frantic.”
“What time?”
“Four o’clock.”
Joe bolted.
He had plenty of time—a whole hour. And yet he went along narrow,
crowded Royal Street as though a gale were at his back. Sonny might
audition for Tony Vaux to-morrow, but to-day the field was clear.
Loudspeakers blared in the FKIP building. He rode to the fourth-floor
reception-room of blue leather. Stella Joyce and three others of the
_Sue Davis_ cast were grouped at the window-seats. With them were Archie
Munn and Lucille Borden.
“There’s Joe,” Stella called, as though she had been watching the
elevators.
Archie Munn hastened toward the glass-walled studios to the right.
A loudspeaker in the reception-room hammered out FKIP’S program,
baseball play by play.
Archie Munn was back. “That’s one worry off Vic’s mind. You had him four
miles in the air, Joe. He was flying kites.”
The elevator brought up Tony Vaux and a party of men and women. Tony led
them toward the studios.
Joe could feel himself tightening. The clamor of the loudspeaker got on
his nerves. Who cared about baseball to-day? How would the audition go?
Couldn’t they shut that speaker off?
Wylie, rumpled and wild, burst into the reception-room, stopped
abruptly, stared with unseeing eyes at his cast, swung about and went
back toward the studios. Almost instantly he was again in the
reception-room, this time lugging the brief-case. An elevator carried
him down; five minutes later another elevator brought him back. He was
talking to himself as he made for the studios.
Joe’s right knee began to tremble. He shifted his weight to the other
leg, but the tremor grew worse. His hands were clammy. Was he going to
get mike fright? He had to keep up a front. Maybe he ought to talk.
Talking might help. He said: “Does it always affect Mr. Wylie that way?”
“Sponsor audition?” Archie Munn’s voice was bitter. “You don’t know the
strain, Joe. The uncertainty. Munson won’t come in with a few of his
store executives and the Everts-Hall people. He’ll bring in his uncles,
and his cousins, and his aunts. He’s likely to drag in a couple of his
office stenographers and a taxi driver. What do they know about whether
a show’s good or bad? Somebody says: ‘I just don’t like it,’ and Munson
gets cold feet. Isn’t this show for the public, and isn’t this somebody
who doesn’t like it one of the public? Perhaps the show really isn’t
good. You can’t blame a sponsor for being careful. A coast-to-coast
hookup may cost $250,000. Even a single-station, local show is
expensive. The sponsor has to pay for script, production, cast, radio
time, perhaps music. It runs into money. But if a sponsor wants advice,
why doesn’t he rely upon people who know? You see what Vic’s up against?
He spends weeks and weeks whipping a show into shape, and then any
little nit-wit can throw in a monkey wrench. Or the sponsor may throw
the wrench.”
Joe was sorry Archie had told him. His left knee began to tremble.
“Radio has a name for it,” Stella said. “Sponsor trouble.”
Jovial Tony Vaux appeared suddenly. “All right, folks; we’re ready for
you.”
The cast filed into the glass-walled corridor between the glass-walled
studios. Blue lettering outside Studio D announced the rehearsal. The
tremble in Joe’s nerves became a hard, uncontrollable jerking. The
microphone was an unreal upright looming through an unreal light across
miles of unreal studio floor. The control-room was crowded. He saw
Munson, Wylie, Tony Vaux, Curt Lake, the script-writer, a woman.... The
studio itself sheltered another audience. Perhaps the uncles and aunts,
the cousins, the stenographers, and the taxi driver. They sat in a long
row along one wall. They looked, to Joe, like a row of stuffed, sardonic
owls—blank, expressionless, motionless, lifeless, staring. Couldn’t one
of them so much as cough?
Somebody passed out script. Stella’s hand was on his arm.
“Nervous?” the girl whispered.
The front failed. Joe was pinched and wan.
But Stella’s hand was warm, human. “Forget them, Joe. When you’re on the
air you’re talking to thousands. They’re only a handful of stooges.”
She heartened him; he hoped she’d keep her hand on his arm. Wylie was
speaking from the control-room over the two-way mike. They’d give the
first three scripts; then they’d give the tenth script to show the
program after it had run for a while.
The cast was clustered at the mike. They watched the control-room.
Wylie’s hand was in the air. It descended in an arc, and a finger
pointed at Stella.
The girl began to read. The finger hovered and pointed at Joe. The
finger went back to Stella again. So Vic Wylie timed and paced his
shows.
Stella’s hand was gone, but her encouraging smile flashed to Joe with
every cue. His tongue loosened, and the cords of his throat were free.
All at once he was rid of the ghosts of sponsor trouble and the chill of
the silent listeners in the chairs. They no longer existed. Nothing
existed but the script.
And then there was no longer a script. The script was life—the life of
Dick Davis and his mother. This, then, was what Wylie’s plea to “live
it” meant. The cast fused, blended, and became like a mighty, moving
chord from an organ. Time ceased to be studio time; time was time in the
life of the Davis family. They were playing the tenth script. Joe poured
words that should have been old by now, but which to-day were new, into
the microphone:
Dick: Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must
listen—
Stella Joyce spoke the curtain line of the script. There was a brooding
hush, as though the world was held in a spell.
Wylie’s voice, hoarse with feeling, broke the stillness. “Thank you.
That’s from my heart.”
The studio echoed with the confusion of an audience breaking up. Chairs
scraped, people gathered in groups, voices made a blurred buzz of sound.
Stella said: “The woman with Munson is his wife.”
Wylie appeared to be in violent argument with somebody in the
control-room. But then, Joe thought, Wylie was always having a violent
moment about something.
He left with Stella. When would they know? Mingling with the listeners,
they passed along the glass-walled corridor. Men and women stared at
them curiously.
The ball game was still on. They got a part of the ninth inning in the
elevator. Out in Royal Street they heard the last play of the game.
“Well?” Joe demanded.
Stella’s head made a quick, bird-like movement. “We gave them a show.”
They waited. Vic Wylie might come out in a few minutes and tell them
something. But when the producer appeared, he was with Munson, Mrs.
Munson, and Tony Vaux. All four entered a taxi. Wylie appeared to be
still engrossed in argument.
“There it goes,” said Stella. “Yes or no. We have a job or we haven’t.”
Archie Munn and Lucille Borden came out of the FKIP building. Archie,
seeing them, made a writing motion in the air with his right hand.
“Munson’s signing the show,” Stella cried.
“I caught Vic for a moment,” Archie reported. “He said the audition was
a honey. Munson fell hard.”
“You’re sure?” Joe demanded.
“They’ve gone over to the Everts-Hall Agency to put through the
contract.”
Then, Joe decided, it was true. Hadn’t he watched the taxi leave?
“Look!” he said, happily reckless. “I have four dollars.”
“Infant,” Lucille drawled, “you don’t know how much wealth four dollars
is until you need four dollars. Hold on to it.”
“I’m buying the dinners. We celebrate. Do you know where we can get a
good seventy-five-cent dinner, Arch?”
“Mr. Carlin,” Archie’s deep voice pronounced gravely, “I know them all,
from swanky hotel dining-rooms down to the joints where you eat for a
dime.”
Oh, but they were gay. Gay as only show people can be gay when luck is
running. Archie brought them to a table for four in an Italian basement
restaurant. The food was good. But the talk, Joe thought, was better.
Archie, Stella, and Lucille were all at their best. There was a bright
play of drollery and a great deal of laughter. This, too, was show
business.
A happy Joe Carlin, still chuckling over some of Archie’s quips, rode
out to Northend. To-morrow Ambrose Carver might steer Sonny Baker into
the He show, but the Munson show was his. Once, the time FKIP had cut
the _I Want Work_ platter, he had hurried home with a false alarm. What
he would have to tell his folks to-night would be real.
Inside the house the telephone rang as he reached the porch. He heard
his mother’s voice:
“I’m sorry; he’s not here now. If you’ll leave your num—Just a moment. I
think I hear him on the porch. Joe!”
“Who is it?” Joe called.
His mother met him in the hall. “That Carver person.”
Joe thought: “What can he want?” He went to the telephone.
Amby’s voice was briskly, softly effusive. “Still stringing along with
Wylie, Joe?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t know. After to-day’s sponsor trouble—”
“What trouble? Mr. Wylie sold the Munson show.”
“I know that, but—didn’t you hear about Mrs. Munson? You haven’t heard?”
The agent made a clucking sound. “I’m sorry I have to be the one to
break the bad news, Joe; Wylie should have told you. You’re sure you
didn’t hear anything about Mrs. Munson’s nephew? The actor?”
Joe’s hand gripped the telephone.
“A favorite nephew. You know how some women go daffy over a favorite
nephew? This kid plays with an amateur group at Baltimore. Mrs. Munson
thinks he’s tops.”
Joe had a sudden, vivid recollection of Wylie arguing violently with
somebody in the control-room. The knuckles of the hand that gripped the
telephone were white. “If you’re trying to tell me something, Amby—”
The agent’s voice grew softer. “I’m telling you it’s time you dropped
Wylie and came back to popper. Mrs. Munson declared herself. Sponsors do
that sometimes. You’re out of the cast and the favorite nephew’s in.”