Joe Carlin “hung up his hat” in the radio department of the Everts-Hall
Agency.
“Joe,” Tony Vaux said jovially, “I hope you won’t find the job dull.
Over here we try to stay sane.”
Joe read this as a good-natured crack at Vic Wylie.
“How is Vic?” Tony boomed. “Still carrying fifty pounds of steam? They
tell me a Vic Wylie rehearsal’s an endurance contest.”
Joe grinned in affectionate remembrance.
“I wonder how long Vic would keep that up if he had to pay rehearsal
time?”
Joe had an idea that Vic, with a passion for perfection, would still
seek perfection. “No producer around here pays rehearsal time,” he
pointed out.
Tony chuckled. “Vic should be glad of that; he’d go broke. Besides,
Vic’s a free agent; we’re salaried employees. We have just so many hours
to spend on a show. If Vic doesn’t like a show he won’t touch it; over
here, all we can do is try to steer a client away from a bad egg. If he
still wants the egg, we have to produce it. If we were right and it
turns out to be a bad egg, he insists that it’s our fault, that we gave
him a bad show. You’ll get to know all about eggs over here, Joe; we
walk on them all day long. We try to smooth the sponsor, we try to
smooth Everts-Hall, we try to smooth the script-writer and the cast.
Sometimes it takes some doing.”
“The most miles to the gallon of pleasant gas,” said Joe.
Tony glanced at him sharply. “You might call it that. Did you know Mrs.
Munson helped Amby Carver to hook himself a job with her husband?”
“Did Amby get it?” This was news to Joe. “Is that a warning?”
“Now, now, Joe.” Tony spread placating hands. “We have to remember that
he has Munson’s ear. Temporarily, anyway. Munson doesn’t really want
him, and, some fine day, Munson’ll toss him out. But while he’s there,
he’s there. Hold down the fort and remember your eggs. When in doubt,
tread softly. I’ll be at FKIP until eleven.”
A literary agent arrived with a platter, and another platter came by
express. “The show radio’s been waiting for,” the agent assured Joe
earnestly. “Tell Tony to move fast if he wants an option.” A boy laid
mail on Tony’s desk, and in the mail were three scripts. The scripts
were accompanied by letters; each letter claimed that here was the show
for which radio had been panting. The platters would have to be indexed
and auditioned, the scripts would have to be indexed and read. An
Everts-Hall account executive demanded to know when Tony would return.
Joe began to understand why the ruddy, genial producer could give only
so much time, and no more, to a show.
Curt Lake brought in a week’s run of _Sue Davis_ script.
“I thought you gave these to Vic,” Joe said.
“Carbons. Reading copies. Everybody reads—agency, sponsor, producer.
Sometimes I think they call in a traffic cop. Anybody may throw a red
flag and then you may have to rewrite. Munson never used to bother with
script, but now he has a public relations radio counsel—Mr. Carver. When
Vic goes into rehearsal, he’s using script with a production O.K.”
“Do you do much rewriting?” Joe was thinking of a _Thomas Carlin
Presents_ script that would never be rewritten.
“Some,” Curt said dryly.
Ten minutes later the telephone rang. “Mr. Carver,” said the girl
outside.
Amby had blossomed. His cane gleamed with a brilliant polish and his
spidery mustache had taken on the elegance of waxed, pin-point tips.
“Joe, my boy, congratulations.” The little man was bursting with
effusive cordiality, but his eyes were shifty and apprehensive. “I’m
delighted. Absolutely. I had the word a week ago you were slated to come
in here with Tony.”
Joe took that with an inward hoot.
“Tony and I are great pals, Joe—like that.” Two of Amby’s fingers hooked
together to indicate a close relationship. “Did you get a boost? Amby
Carver’s telling you you did. Didn’t I bring you into radio? Didn’t I
get you your start? I went down the line, all the way.”
Amby was an open book. A future producer might some day prove valuable.
But Joe had been given his cue. In this shop you smoothed everybody.
“Thanks, Amby. That was nice of you.”
“Does Amby Carver ever forget a pal? Didn’t I tell you you’d some day
know you had me wrong?” Mr. Munson’s public relations radio counsel was
no longer apprehensive. “I’ve brought back some _Sue Davis_ script,” he
said pompously, “without my approval. Get a load of how I’m changing
this show, Joe. Sue gets typhoid. She doesn’t feel so good, but she’s
around. While she’s alone and getting delirious, she signs for Tice. She
doesn’t know what she’s doing. Will she lose the house? Suspense. Will
she get better? Big suspense. Dick has to fight Tice in court to get the
property back. More suspense. It’s colossal.”
“Where’s Dick getting the money for a lawyer?” Joe asked.
“That’s a detail for Curt to handle,” Amby said loftily. “He writes the
show. I want to see new script by Friday.” He added, as he left: “We
must have lunch together some day.”
Tony Vaux’s voice boomed in the reception-room, and his step volleyed in
the corridor.
“Anything stirring, Joe?”
“Amby Carver changing _Sue Davis_.”
Tony chuckled. “Yeah? Wait until Curt hears that.” He picked the script
from the desk and, as he read, he began to choke. “Typhoid? The
fat-headed lug! Can’t you see it coming, Joe? He’ll have a doctor fall
in love with Sue.” Tony held his sides and howled. “Typhoid! It’s a
four-star final; it’s a panic. What wouldn’t I give to show this to
Curt?”
“Won’t you?”
“Curt?” Tony pulled out a handkerchief and mopped a face that had begun
to mottle. “He’d run out without his hat and try to pull Amby through a
key-hole. No, no, Joe. This is where we do a smooth job with our eggs.”
He called Amby at the Munson store.
Joe heard the rasp of a briskly important voice: “Good morning. This is
the public-relations-radio office. Mr. Carver speaking.”
Tony boomed genially. “Hello, Amby. Boy, how do you think of them? Good?
It’s a natural. How _do_ you think of them? You ought to be writing
script. You come up with ideas in each hand and every idea’s a honey.
But look, Amby. Isn’t this too good to waste? I mean, if it’s used now—
Sure; that’s the point. We should build up to it; set the stage for a
big smash. You were thinking of that? You’re absolutely right, Amby.
Your idea, then, is to put it on ice for two or three weeks? Great.
Couldn’t be better.” Tony put down the telephone.
“What do we do when he starts looking for typhoid?” Joe asked.
“In three weeks,” Tony chuckled, “he’ll think up a new brilliant and
forget this one.”
The account executive came back seeking data for an Everts-Hall client,
a soap manufacturer, who might make a cautious test of radio advertising
in this area. “He doesn’t want to spend any too much, Tony.”
“They never do,” Tony boomed and brought out platters. Joe listened to
show after show until it seemed that the world must be full of unsold
radio shows.
“How about a spot?” the executive asked.
“FKIP’s open at 4:15.” Tony brought out the Crosley ratings and there
was absorbed discussion of the competition the 4:15 spot faced and of
the ratings of the competing shows.
Joe ate a hurried sandwich at a drug-store counter. This was the part of
show business hidden from the public. Show business behind the scenes,
the inside stuff.
An actress and an actor named Mander were in the office with Tony when
Joe got back. Mander told a story and told it well. Tony threw back his
head and roared.
“Folks,” he said, “here’s where I move along.” The actress went out with
him. Their voices drifted back from the corridor.
Mander waited until they were gone. “Got a half-dollar that isn’t
working, Joe?” he asked quietly.
Joe dug into his pocket. The bread-and-butter hunt had followed him to
the Everts-Hall Agency.
“Dennis is making another _Mr. America_ show,” Mander said. “He’s
calling me in. They expect to sell the show.”
Joe thought: “They’re always expecting to sell a show—to-morrow.” The
day ran on, and in the late afternoon he tuned Tony’s radio for
_Bush-League Larry_.
Sonny Baker, as a brash, hot-headed young man beginning to make his mark
in professional baseball, gave a good, clear-cut performance. But what,
Joe asked himself in dismay, had happened to Pop Bartell? When Tony had
been putting the show together for the He people Pop had been
superb—mellowly in character. To-day he was jerky and uncertain as
though he were having trouble with his lines. What was it, the old
trouble? Was Pop still trying to maintain a false front of youth and
refusing to wear glasses?
Tony was beaming when he returned from FFOM. _Bush-League Larry_ was
clicking; he’d been told the _Journal_ was giving the show a nice notice
to-morrow. Joe, ready to start for home, lingered.
“Is this a regular stop on the rounds, Tony?” He had never made any of
the agencies a stop.
“A small stop,” said Tony. “If we have a show coming up, we become a big
stop.”
“That 4:15 spot—Dennis is cutting a platter.”
“That’s off, Joe. He’s filling with studio music.”
So Mander would not be called in. Why, Joe wondered as he walked toward
the bus line, should the thought of Mander stay with him? He’d handed
out money to show people before. And as for Pop, he was probably all wet
on that. Hadn’t Tony said the show was clicking? Pop, reading with him,
had sounded swell; Pop coming out of a speaker sounded corny. Perhaps
there was no difference at all. Perhaps you merely heard the same
performance from different angles.
As the days passed, the range of Tony Vaux’s activities amazed him. The
booming, jovial producer had a Thursday night quiz show, _Time To
Remember_, a Sunday night musical-variety with guest stars, _Bush-League
Larry_ three times a week, and the _Sue Davis_ five-a-week which had to
be watched. And then there were agency clients who might go on the air
if they could find the right show, and clients the agency thought should
go on the air—and the spot announcements. This week there were
seventy-eight spots. A girl sat before a radio in a small room off
Tony’s office and checked a sheet as she tuned from station to station
and caught the spots. “Worth, the House of Watches, brings you the
correct time. It is now—” or it might be “Young’s, where your foot
always meets a friendly shoe—” The skill with which these spots were
shuffled, juggled, spaced through the day was almost uncanny. But it all
took care, and thought, and time, which was another reason why Tony was
limited on how much he could give a show.
“How’s the job going?” Tom Carlin asked.
“I like it,” said Joe. To-morrow they’d be playing platters for three
different clients. Tony Vaux called it “trotting out the drama.”
It was mad, this business of trotting out the drama—as mad and as
unpredictable as a Vic Wylie rehearsal. Perhaps the client wanted
comedy, and you played him every comedy platter you had. Then he decided
he didn’t want comedy after all: how about romance and heart throb? Or
perhaps you took out a forgotten turkey that had been gathering dust for
two years, and the client became rapt. That didn’t mean the show was
sold. For every show sold you had thirty you figured would sell, or
hoped would sell, or slowly gave up hope of selling. Sometimes a client
heard a platter and brought back officials of his company and kept
bringing them back. Finally he’d go out shouting a rave, and you’d think
the show was a sure sell for to-morrow morning—and that was the last you
ever heard about it. And sometimes a client heard a platter, and liked
it, and bought it. Actually bought it at once.
That’s what happened with the soap manufacturer. He heard three platters
and the third was _Poisoned Fangs_. Next day he returned with a
delegation, and the platter was played four times. The following morning
the contract was signed.
“Joe,” Tony said genially, “I was ready to ship that platter back. We
never know.”
“Nobody?” Joe demanded. Radio was a mad turmoil, but somebody ought to
know.
“Who?” Tony chuckled. “The boys in big time? We guess and they guess.
Amos ’n’ Andy were on sustaining. The station decided the show wasn’t
getting a tumble and took it off. Then came a flood of telephone calls
and letters. On the strength of listener response Amos ’n’ Andy went
back and found a sponsor. They’ve had a sponsor ever since.”
Another platter came in and Joe put it away. Platters and scripts, casts
and producers, sustaining shows and sponsored shows, the
bread-and-butter hunt—it was all mad. When a show came in to be sold,
you never knew what you’d sell. Vic Wylie, with a live cast, had sold
Munson what radio calls “a package”—production, script, and cast. The
whole show. But on _Poisoned Fangs_ the sponsor was buying only script.
Tony would select a new cast and make his own production.
“My first agency show from the beginning,” Joe told himself, and was on
fire to see production start.
No announcement of a new show was made; no hint of a new show appeared
in the radio column of the _Journal_. But almost overnight show people
made Tony’s office a big stop on the rounds.
Laughter, bursts of gaiety, lightened the heavy boom of Tony’s voice.
Show people strolled in leisurely, singly and in pairs. Nobody was in a
hurry, nobody asked about the new show, nobody spoke about a part. This
might have been John Dennis’ office at FKIP the first day Joe had made
the rounds. Bright, sparkling gags. This was a sponsored show; this show
was going to pay money. Sometimes the laughter was a little too eager
and too high.
Joe laughed with them. These gatherings of show people were grand if—he
tried not to look at an actress who kept moistening her rouged lips—if
you could forget that you’d been through it, if you could forget the
courage often required to maintain a front, if you could forget the raw
anxiety behind the mask of gay drollery. Laughter began to hurt.
Mander cocked his hat to one side, did an intricate little step, and
departed alone. But at the door he paused and, glancing back, caught
Joe’s eye significantly. Joe, exploring a pocket for a half-dollar,
joined him.
Mander wasn’t thinking of money. “What show is this?” he asked
hurriedly.
Joe thought: “I’m a kid in this game; he doesn’t think it necessary to
front me.” He said: “Drama. _Poisoned Fangs._ Four characters.”
“Any comedy?”
“A pop-off. Comedy relief.”
“Thanks, Joe; thanks a million.” Somebody else was coming out and Mander
went quickly toward the elevators.
Next day there was another parade of light-hearted gaiety, a new stock
of bright gags. “Did you hear this one, Tony—” But to-day tension was
tighter; it would be tighter to-morrow and still tighter the day after
that. There would be more and more laughter.
Laughter, Joe thought bitterly, was tragedy, a fake. The closer they
came to the hour the call would go out to audition, the more gaily
they’d laugh, the more spectacularly they’d wear a front of cheerful
vivacity. Tony had to be out for an hour in the afternoon, and he met
them alone. His smile, answering theirs, became fixed, wooden. When Tony
came back he disappeared into the little room where a girl checked spot
announcements.
“They seem to be awfully happy,” the girl said enviously.
“They seem to be,” Joe agreed.
He knew better. And suddenly he knew why Mander, borrowing fifty cents,
had given him a wrench, and why making the rounds after he was out of
_Sue Davis_ had depressed him. All the glamour was worn thin, and now
the tarnish showed. He couldn’t take it. Not this way. Not through the
peep-hole on show business that was called a producer’s office. He knew
why that was, too.
Making the rounds, he had had only fleeting glimpses. He had been a part
of the tide, meeting it as it passed and meeting it in fragments. But
here the whole tide came at him at once and overwhelmed him. The
laughter and the gay talk became vapor. All he could see was the
feverishness of hope, the sharp thorns of anxiety and uncertainty. And
they were such fine people, so buoyant and so brave on so little.
Small-time radio! Dreaming a dream that could never come true. Or, if it
did come true, it would be for only a few.
“Joe,” Tony boomed. He had to go out. “The blue slip,” said Tony, and
handed him script. The blue slip was the Everts-Hall rejection slip.
Mander sauntered in, his hat on the back of his head and his shoulders
swaying. “Tony, wait until you get this. I’m in a restaurant for a spot
of lunch and there’s an I Am boy at the next table. I’ll give him to
you.” Without make-up or props, Mander gave an impersonation of a
pop-off. He made it a cameo, a sharply-etched portrait of a living
character. He was good.
Tony looked at him thoughtfully.
Joe thought: “He must have rehearsed that for hours.” The
bread-and-butter hunt!
Next day was _Bush-League Larry_ day. With Tony producing the show at
FFOM, Joe again had to meet the gay crowd alone. He tried to rise to it,
to meet them smile for smile. He knew some stories, too. But Tony wasn’t
there, and the fever of anxiety made them restless. They didn’t stay
long. “Tell Tony I was in, Joe, will you?” Joe had a stock reply. “Too
bad you can’t wait.” He knew they wouldn’t wait and spend unprofitable
time with him. He wasn’t Tony; he wasn’t casting this show. He saw the
last of the crowd leave and felt tired, weary.
“All gone?” Tony boomed on his arrival. “I thought they’d still be
waiting. What a day! Thank God we don’t have a new show come up every
month.” He took a cigar from his pocket and studied the boy. “You don’t
like it, Joe, do you?”
“No,” said Joe.
Tony’s voice had changed. “You get used to it. It’s the system; it’s
show business. Will they feel any better if we slam the door on them and
lock them out? Anyway, we’re not guilty of sustaining. When we put on a
show we have a paid cast.”
Joe said slowly: “How long before you’re used to it?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said in that same changed voice. “I’ve been here
only five years.” He went to his desk, wrote for a while, and swung
around with a paper in his hands. “Last year I laid out more than four
hundred dollars in small loans. Most of it’s gone for good. How are they
going to pay back? Where are they going to get it?” He held out the
paper. “Call these people in, Joe. We’ll start to audition.”
Joe, sitting at a telephone, went down the list of calls. Mander at ten
to-morrow morning, somebody else at eleven, somebody else at noon. The
list ran two and one-half days. Fourteen actors and actresses coming
in—and only four parts. Waiting for a number to answer, he thought of
Tony with a stir of emotion. This Tony who boomed and glad-handed wasn’t
the real Tony at all. The boom and the glad hand were front. The real
Tony was as soft-hearted as brooding Vic Wylie.
Mander arrived next morning at ten sharp. Joe thought: “He’s dressed for
the part.” Mander wore a shriekingly loud tie, an exaggerated high
collar, and shoes glaringly yellow. Did this trick of dressing like a
small-town wise guy add anything to a reading? Joe wondered.
“Greetings,” Tony boomed. “Waiting for you.”
“Considering what you’re going to get,” Mander popped off, “you should
have stayed awake all night.” He looked toward Joe and made a blithe
motion with one hand. “A little music, Professor.”
Tony, chewing a cigar, mumbled cues, and Mander read.
And, while the reading went on, the elevators were bringing show people
to the reception-room, and the girl at the desk was telling them that
Tony was busy. That was all they had to be told—they went away. Soon the
news would spread up and down Royal Street that the Tony Vaux show was
cast. By late afternoon the Everts-Hall Agency would no longer be a big
stop.
The reading ended. Tony lit a fresh cigar.
“Let me hear it again, Frank.”
A fine dew of sweat appeared on Mander’s forehead.
“A little too much steam,” Tony said when the second reading was
finished. “Now, now.” Fat hands spread out in a placating gesture. “Not
bad; not bad at all, Frank. But I’m thinking of the other characters.
They’re tense with drama. If you give me high comedy I get too much
contrast. No belly laughs, just chuckles. Take it from ‘I don’t mean I’m
the best in the world—’ Page four.”
There was only a hair-line of change in Mander’s reading, but the part
shaded into an entirely different part. This was what Wylie meant by a
producer touching the strings and producing vibrations. But to give
these vibrations, an actor had to be an actor.
Tony beamed; Tony’s cigar moved from one side of his mouth to the other.
“A nice reading,” he said genially. “It’s your part, Frank.”
The dew was gone from Mander’s forehead. “How about a twenty-five dollar
advance, Tony? I’m in to my landlady for six weeks. The old girl’s
getting peeved.”
Tony chewed the cigar. “The office is starting to get tough on advances.
Can’t you tell her you’re working?”
“I’m afraid,” Mander said lightly, “she’s heard that one before.”
Tony wrote an order on the cashier. Mander, passing out, was a new man.
Pop Bartell had been a new man on two borrowed dollars.
One by one actors and actresses came in to read. Joe found this harder
to bear than the parade of show people making the rounds. On the rounds
they accepted the possibility of long, idle periods, but now everything
was crystallized into a single effort. A part in a sponsored show that
paid real money was won or lost in a single hour, perhaps in the reading
of a single line. They laughed and jested, but the smiles trembled under
the heightened tension of nervousness and strain.
Joe found escape in the little room of spot announcements.
The girl tuned a station, checked her list, and tuned another station.
“I’d love to be out there listening, Joe.”
“I guess I’ve gone sour,” said Joe. He hadn’t meant to say that. He was
startled.
The afternoon brought quiet. Tony was at FFOM and the last of the
_Poisoned Fangs_ auditions would be held to-morrow. It seemed to Joe
that it was weeks since he had heard _Bush-League Larry_. With the
office echoing with laughter and gag the radio had not been touched. He
tuned in FFOM and waited for the show to come on.
His mind wandered. Archie Munn and Lucille Borden. He never heard Lu’s
show any more. Amby Carver and Sonny Baker. He hadn’t seen Sonny since
the afternoon of Lu’s premier. Tony rehearsed at the studio and paid off
at the studio; the cast never came to the office. Amby had fawned, but
Sonny would have remained unchanged. Sonny would always be the whole
world to Sonny. Vic Wylie telling him he couldn’t act....
He stiffened. _Bush-League Larry_ was on. Good Lord, could that be Pop
Bartell?
It was Pop. But this was a Pop who murdered lines, who fumbled, who
didn’t seem to know what to say or how to say it. Character? There was
no character. Any ham could have read the part better. Joe shuddered and
turned a knob quickly. The office was silent. What, he wondered bleakly,
had become of the grand old trouper who needed only a word of suggestion
to tinge a part with a new color and new harmonies?
Tony Vaux came back from FFOM an hour past his usual time. To-day no
booming greeting to the girl at the reception-desk announced his
arrival. “I thought you’d be gone, Joe.” He took some papers from his
pocket and, preoccupied, tapped them against the other hand.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Joe said. “I heard the show—part of it. Why
don’t you make Pop wear glasses?”
“It’s not glasses, Joe. He’s been wearing glasses before the mike since
the show went on the air.”
“What is it then?”
“Sonny’s pulling his old trick of stealing the show. Pop follows script
faithfully. Sonny reads a cue line and Pop starts to come in. But Sonny
ad libs an extra line or two and Pop is left floundering. He never knows
whether to come in or to wait. Years ago he’d have handled Sonny, but
now he’s too old for that kind of rough-and-tumble. He’s cracking wide
open. He’s lost. He’s shot.”
Joe trembled. “Are you standing for that, Tony?”
“I’m not Vic Wylie,” Tony said with bitter regret. “Vic answers to
nobody but himself. If he wanted to give Sonny the hook, he’d give it to
him. I’m a salaried employee. They give me a script; they expect a
production. Pop’s a stooge in this show; Sonny’s the star. Suppose I go
after Sonny the way Vic did? How long will I have a show? How long
before they’ll have me on the carpet inside? Am I a producer? Then
what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I produce? That’s the only question they
ask. Why don’t I produce a show?”
Stenographers and office clerks were on their way home; an orchestra of
feet shuffled and tapped along the corridor leading to the elevators.
“This can’t go on,” Joe cried in protest.
“It isn’t going to go on. The He people caught me at FFOM; I had to get
over there at once.” He opened a drawer of his desk and dropped in the
paper he had been tapping against his hand. “Pop’s out,” he said
roughly.
Joe couldn’t speak.
“Curt must write in a new character and thin Pop’s lines. Thinner and
thinner. Friday week he’ll be out of the show. Finished. Call him in for
two o’clock to-morrow.”
A one-word hammer beat against Joe’s mind. Even small-time radio would
have no place for a veteran who murdered a part. Finished!
He dreaded to-morrow, but to-morrow came. He dreaded the passing of the
morning hours, but they passed. Out in the city the noon whistles blew.
After that, time was a racing despair.
Youthfully slim and gallant, Pop Bartell was with them. “Good afternoon,
Tony. Good afternoon, Joe. A beautiful day.”
Tony did not try to beam. “Pop, I’m afraid I have bad news. The He
people want the _Larry_ show jazzed. They think the action’s too slow
and want more bang-bang.”
The old trouper took the news without blinking. “Is that definite,
Tony?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“And you think that’s bad news? Tony, my boy, you’re doing me a favor.”
Pop coughed. “A very great favor.”
Joe thought dismally: “Front. He knew this was coming.” The boy’s throat
was in a vise.
“Something else will turn up, Pop,” Tony said. “As a matter of fact, we
have a platter—”
Joe knew there wasn’t a platter in the cabinet that had a possible
old-man part.
“Tut, tut, Tony. Something has turned up.” Pop was actually twinkling.
“As a matter of fact, this relieves me from a distressing predicament. I
was going to ask you for my release if you could let me go without
putting the show in a hole. I have friends in Cleveland and there’s a
part coming up. To be exact, it has come up. A character part that’s a
lead. Something of a tear-jerker—_Sunset of Life_. The part’s waiting
for me. How soon could I be released?”
“Friday week.”
“This is providential, Tony. They’d like me to be at Cleveland Saturday
week. Actually providential.”
Joe’s heart lifted. This couldn’t be front. This was too real, too
sincere.
Tony had his hat and coat; Tony was booming again. “Then everything’s
jake, Pop? I’m auditioning a specialty for the Sunday night variety. If
I’m not back by five, Joe, run along. I’ll be seeing you, Pop.” Tony was
gone.
The lift in Joe’s heart became song. “Mr. Bartell, that’s swell.”
“All but the ride to Cleveland,” Pop Bartell said whimsically. “I had
ten years of one-night stands, Joe; I could live happily without ever
seeing a railroad. In case I don’t get over this way again”—his hand
made a sweep—“_au revoir_, Joe, and lots of good luck.”
“Send me your notices,” Joe said eagerly.
“From what I’ve been told, Joe, this new show should get some nice
notices. Some very nice notices.” Youthful and light of step the veteran
walked out of the office.
Joe Carlin’s lips were parted in breathless exultation. Kicked out of
one show and stepping right into another. Oh, but this was grand! This
was one of those moments that paid for the heartache of the
bread-and-butter hunt. Without warning the strain of the day took its
toll and his nerves were limp and ragged. He went to the cooler, but
water was flat. What he needed was a quick pick-up, coffee hot and
strong. He went along the corridor through which Tony and Pop had
preceded him and paused at the reception-desk. “I’ll be back in five
min—” His voice went dead.
Pop Bartell stood near the elevators staring into vacancy.
The mouth of the girl at the desk opened to ask a question and Joe
touched her arm for silence.
Abruptly Pop roused from his abstraction and stepped toward the
elevators. There was no change in his jaunty, youthful stride. He
touched a button. A down light flashed and he moved over toward the
indicated door. And then, in the interval of waiting, a quick, sick
change took place in him. Suddenly he seemed to shrink and to sag. His
coat wrinkled like an old coat across the shoulders, and his head
drooped as though there was no longer strength to hold it upright. An
elevator stopped, and he entered it with a faltering, uncertain step.
All in an instant he was a beaten, broken, hopeless old man.
“What did you say, Mr. Carlin?” the girl asked.
“Nothing,” Joe said hoarsely.
He went back to Tony’s office. So it had been front, the pathetically
brave front of show business. Poor old Pop! A languidly contemptuous
climber had thrust him aside as a relic, and this is what he came to
after forty years of gallant trouping. This was show business. And
making the rounds was show business, and washing out your only shirt and
hanging it to dry overnight was show business, and Lucille Borden eating
out her heart behind a Munson counter was show business. Radio
small-time! Hunger and uncertainty!
He sat at Tony’s desk and thought of the day Vic Wylie had told him he’d
see things that would make him want to cry. The telephone rang fitfully
and he made note of the calls on Tony’s desk pad. A clock whirred the
five o’clock signal and Tony had not returned.
Slowly, his lips stiff, Joe took a pen from his pocket, wrote a note,
and left it on the desk:
Dear Tony: Pop was fronting; he cracked after he left here.
You’ve been swell to me, but this isn’t my game. I’ll be through
next Saturday. I’m sorry.
Joe
He pushed back the chair and stood in thought beside the desk. As slowly
as he had taken the pen from his pocket he reached for the telephone and
called Vic Wylie’s office.
“Will you give Vic a message for me, Miss Robb? We’ve been auditioning a
cast and—I guess I can’t take it. Tell him Pop Bartell’s been dropped
from the _Larry_ show. I’m throwing up my job.”
Miss Robb was dumfounded. “Tony told us he was pleased with you....”
“I know,” Joe said wearily. “Vic’ll understand.”
Office buildings were emptying, and Royal Street was a packed,
shuffling, slow-moving canyon. Joe moved along with the mass until he
came to the Thomas Carlin store. It was almost the closing hour, and a
lone customer waited for a clerk to wrap a purchase. The lights were on
and facets of radiance gleamed from the polished glass of show-cases and
the polished wood of shelves. To-day Joe saw the scene with a vision
that had been cleaned and washed—its bright cleanliness, its subdued
brilliance of display, its subtle breath of pride and courtesy and
alertness. The faces of all the clerks—strange that he had never noticed
them before: friendly faces that were not merely a friendly front. The
lone customer left. “Hi, Joe.” The clerks grinned at him. “Hi, boys.” He
grinned at them.
“Some new books came in to-day, Joe,” Mr. Fairchild announced.
“Not now,” said Joe. He added an explanation. “Something on my mind.”
“No!” Mr. Fairchild prodded his ribs. “They’ll toss you out of the
Jitterbug Union for that.”
It wasn’t a brilliant gag. As a gag, it would have been scorned by any
actor making the rounds. But it was good; it was homey.
The store closed, and Joe walked with his father to the parking lot. The
man pushed the key into the ignition lock and reached his foot for the
starter button.
“What is it, Joe? Trouble?”
“Not exactly.” Joe was still thinking of Pop Bartell. “I’m through at
the agency. I’d like to come into the store.”
Tom Carlin’s foot did not touch the button. Horns honked and cars backed
out of symmetrical lines as an attendant directed parking-lot traffic.
Silence, brittle and strange, lingered in the Carlin sedan.
“I—I thought you’d be glad,” Joe said uncertainly.
“Is that your reason for telling me?”
The boy was startled. “Don’t you want me?”
Tom Carlin stepped on the button. The attendant waved an arm and he
shook his head. The motor idled, warming.
“When you told me you wanted to be an actor,” the man said as though he
debated each word, “I let you have your fling. Was there anything else
for me to do? I was afraid of making you a round peg in a square hole.
You failed as an actor. But you still stayed in show business and turned
to production. That’s the rub, Joe.”
“What?” Joe demanded.
“Let me put it this way: After you’d failed—don’t get the idea I’m
rubbing that in; as I told you, I made a miserable failure of my first
job—had you come to me after that first failure, I’d have welcomed you
instantly. A lot of persons change their first desires. I couldn’t ask
for a better man than Fairchild; he started out to be a mechanical
engineer. But you made show business both your first and second choices.
You’ve made the store a very bad third choice. You leave the impression
that you’re coming to me now because there’s no place else to go. That
doesn’t set so well, Joe.”
Joe’s nerves were raw from a day of chafing, and this disappointment was
crushing. “You mean I needn’t come around?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ll have to think this over. I’m trying to see the
situation from your angle as well as from my own. What will it benefit
you in the long run to use the business as a door of escape? If you come
to the store as a place of last resort, you’re still a round peg in a
square hole. It might be better for you to get a job on your own and try
yourself out in somebody else’s business. For a while, anyway.”
Disappointment and raw nerves united to make the boy stiff with anger.
“All right, Dad, if that’s how you want it.”
“That isn’t how I want it,” Tom Carlin said. “That’s how it seems to
be.”
They said little more to each other on the ride out to the Northend. But
they were talking as they entered the house, and talk was a lively
stream around the dinner table. Front, Joe thought, wasn’t confined to
show business; you could wear a front at home. The meal over, he found
that morning’s _Journal_ and went to his room.
Something that was part of this house worked its spell. His jagged
nerves relaxed and anger died in him. He began to see his father’s point
of view. He hadn’t been absolutely denied the store; it was simply that
his father questioned the wisdom of having him come in now. After all,
there was a lot to what his father had said. He _had_ made the store a
third choice. He must look like an irresponsible madcap, a harum-scarum
who didn’t know his own mind. Well, he’d have to prove himself. He could
do that. He’d find an outside job and make good at it. Then, after a
year or two ... but a year or two seemed so long.
He opened the _Journal_ and studied the _Help Wanted_ columns. Christmas
was approaching and all the large stores along Royal Street were
clamoring for packers, sales people, delivery men, and cashiers. He
could probably get a seasonal job at half a dozen places; certainly, if
you rolled up your sleeves and pitched in, temporary employment might
become permanent employment. But he couldn’t, he thought with a fresh
pang, get a job with his own father.
There was a tap on the door and Tom Carlin walked in. “Joe, Mother
thinks I may have been hasty. Her reactions are usually right. You’ve
heard what I have to say, but I haven’t heard your side. Do you mind
telling me why you were fired?”
Joe stared. “Fired? I wasn’t fired. What gave you that idea? I quit.”
The man reached for a chair, took a pipe from his pocket, and sat down
slowly. “Why did you quit?”
Joe tried to tell him. The story used up a great many words, and he felt
that he was telling it badly.
“I might have made a good producer. Vic thought I would and Tony told
Vic I was doing well. But if I became a producer I’d always be meeting
the sordid side of show business. All I’d see would be men and women
wearing an artificial front. They’d make me a big stop when I had a show
coming up. They’d stay awake nights planning to catch my attention as
Mander caught Tony’s. They’d audition and try to hide how much a part
meant to them. I don’t mean there isn’t struggle and uncertainty in
every other line, but—oh, show business is different. I’d know too much
about small time. I’d see too much: little corners of shabbiness, things
that were mean and grubby, fine people trying to hide worry and
apprehension behind a front. You get so you hate a front. I’d know they
were getting hard knocks to-day and would get the same hard knocks
to-morrow. I’d know that probably only one in a thousand would ever make
the big time, just as I couldn’t make it and for the same reason.
They’re good, but not good enough. Good enough for small time, and
sustaining shows that pay no salaries, but only good enough for that. It
got under my skin and did something to me. I used to turn on a radio,
and listen to a show, and think it was all glamorous; there’s very
little glamour in show business when you get behind the scenes. You see
too many of the wounds.”
Tom Carlin filled his pipe.
“And then, to-day, Pop Bartell. That finished me. Sooner or later I’d
have been finished, anyway. Vic says I feel too much. Maybe he’s right.
I’m not sorry I tried show business. If I hadn’t, I’d probably always
feel I’d thrown away a chance to see my name up in lights.”
Smoke was a thick cloud around Tom Carlin’s head. “Joe, I apologize for
what I said in the car. I didn’t understand.”
“Does what I told you make a difference?”
“All the difference in the world. Instead of being up in lights, your
name will some day be on a store window.”
“You mean I’m going into the store—now?”
“Any time you’re ready.”
Joe had never known it was possible to feel so good. “I’ll be ready
Monday.”
Tom Carlin knocked ashes from his pipe and refilled the bowl. “I found a
script in your bureau, Joe,” he said serenely.
Joe sat up straight.
“I had copies made and brought the script back. I saw no use talking to
you until I had something to talk about. I wrote to five publishers—four
in New York and one in Boston. Three are willing to pay a fair share of
the cost on a dramatization of their books. One is doubtful, and one is
definitely unfavorable.”
Joe’s voice was eager. “Are we going on the air?”
The man caught that “we.” “I’m more than half convinced we’ll have a
Carlin show next September.”
Joe went hot and cold. Not because this was radio, but because it was
_Thomas Carlin Presents_.
Tom Carlin puffed his contentment. “Every day we have customers who
telephone and ask to have some purchase delivered at once. That forces
me to take a clerk from behind the counter and send him out. I’ve been
thinking of hiring somebody to take care of some light work and make
these deliveries. This Pop Bartell. Do you think he could fit into that
job after forty years of show business?”
Joe was hot and cold again. “After what happened to-day, Dad, he’d think
somebody had given him a piece of Heaven.”
“Send him in to see me.”
“Perhaps,” said Joe, “I’ll run over a little later to where he lives.
He’ll sleep better to-night.”
After that they sat together in understanding silence.
A light step sounded in the hall and the door was pushed open timidly.
Kate Carlin stood on the threshold. Her eyes, clouded with concern, went
from her husband to her son and back to her husband again.
“Come in, Kate.”
Suddenly her eyes were clear. She smiled. “This is a night you’ve looked
forward to, Tom, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” He held out his hand to her. “Come in, Kate, and sit with us.
Carlin and Son are in conference.”