The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh
cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from
the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a
Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of
business.
"Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate. Dear
me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express
that which is in his--ah--heart. But in the last year we've been swamped
with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know,
about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on
the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen
sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked
up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I'm not
demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could--that is--would
you--do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful
story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me.
Not pink, but not all grey either. Say--mauve." ...
That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink.
Which makes mauve.
Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great
firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard
of Josie Fifer.
There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A
statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special
writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce
courts--what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss
Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies
have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for
breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures
of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage
hands rewriting it--long before the opening night we know more about the
piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to
see it.
Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the
ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the
birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to
the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of
inanition, old age, or--as was sometimes the case--before it was born,
it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the
grave.
Her notification of its demise would come thus:
"Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the
phone).
"Well?"
"A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?"
"I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to
mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm
going to stand here wasting my--"
"All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake'
closes Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early."