The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPeggy Plays Off-BroadwayThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Peggy Plays Off-BroadwayAuthor: Virginia HughesIllustrator: Sergio LeoneRelease date: October 26, 2017 [eBook #55815]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEGGY PLAYS OFF-BROADWAY ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Peggy Plays Off-BroadwayAuthor: Virginia HughesIllustrator: Sergio LeoneRelease date: October 26, 2017 [eBook #55815]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Peggy Plays Off-Broadway
Author: Virginia HughesIllustrator: Sergio Leone
Author: Virginia Hughes
Illustrator: Sergio Leone
Release date: October 26, 2017 [eBook #55815]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEGGY PLAYS OFF-BROADWAY ***
“I know,” Peggy said excitedly. “But which airline?”
“I know,” Peggy said excitedly. “But which airline?”
PEGGY LANE THEATER STORIESPeggy Plays Off-BroadwayBy VIRGINIA HUGHESIllustrated bySergio LeoneGROSSET & DUNLAPPublishersNEW YORK
PEGGY LANE THEATER STORIES
By VIRGINIA HUGHES
Illustrated bySergio Leone
GROSSET & DUNLAPPublishersNEW YORK
©GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC., 1962ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PEGGY PLAYS OFF-BROADWAY
“First casting calls are so difficult,” Peggy Lane said, looking ruefully at the fifty or more actresses and actors who milled about nervously, chatting with one another, or sat on the few folding chairs trying to read.
“With only nine roles to be filled,” she continued, “it doesn’t matter how good these people are; most of them just haven’t got a chance. I can’t help feeling sorry for them—for all of us, I mean. After all, I’m trying for a part, too.”
Peggy’s friend and housemate, Amy Preston, smiled in agreement and said, “It’s not an easy business, honey, is it? But the ones I feel sorriest for right now are Mal and Randy. After all, they have the unpleasant job of choosing and refusing, and a lot of these folks are their friends. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.”
Peggy nodded thoughtfully, and reflected that it must, indeed, be more wearing on the boys. Mallory Seton, director of the new play, had been an upper-class student at the Academy when Peggy had started there, and he was a good friend of hers. She had worked with him before, as a general assistant, when they had discovered a theater. It would not be easy for him to consider Peggy for an acting role, and to do so completely without bias. It would not be a question of playing favorites, Peggy knew, but quite the reverse. Mal’s sense of fair play would make him bend over backward to keep from giving favors to his friends. If she was to get a role in this new production, she would really have to work for it.
And if it was difficult for Mal, she thought, it was more so for Randy Brewster, the author of the play, for her friendship with him was of a different sort than with Mal. Mal was just a friend—a good one, to be sure—but with Randy Brewster, somehow, things were different. There was nothing “serious,” she assured herself, but they had gone on dates together with a regularity that was a little more than casual and, whatever his feelings were for her, she was sure that they were more complicated than Mal’s.
“Do you think they’ll ever get through all these people?” Amy asked, interrupting her thoughts. “How can they hope to hear so many actors read for them in just one afternoon?”
“Oh, they won’t be doing readings today,” Peggy replied, glad to turn her attention from what was becoming a difficult subject for thought. “This is just a first cast call. All they want to do today is pick people for type. They’ll select all the possible ones, send the impossible ones away, and then go into elimination readings later.”
“But what if the people they pick for looks can’t act?” Amy asked. “And what if some of the rejects are wonderful actors?”
“They won’t go back to the rejects,” Peggy explained, “because they both have a pretty good idea of what the characters in the play should look like. And if the people they pick aren’t good enough actors, then they hold another cast call and try again. Mal says that sometimes certain parts are so hard to cast that they have to go through a dozen calls just to find one actor.”
“It seems kind of unfair, doesn’t it, to be eliminated just because you’re not the right physical type,” Amy said, “but I can understand it. They have to start somewhere, and I guess that’s as good a place as any.” Then she smiled and added, “I guess I’m just feeling sorry for myself, because Mal told me there was no sense in my trying out at all, because I didn’t look or sound right for any part in the play. If I don’t get rid of this Southern accent of mine, I may never get a part at all, except in a Tennessee Williams play!”
Peggy nodded sympathetically. “But it wasn’t just your accent, Amy,” she said. “It’s your looks, too. At least for this play. Mal and Randy told you that you’re just too pretty for any of the parts that fit your age, and that’s nothing to feel bad about. If anybody ought to feel insulted, it’s me, because they asked me to try out!”
“Oh, they were just sweet-talking me,” Amy replied. “And as for you, you know you don’t have to worry about your looks. You have a wonderful face! You can look beautiful, or comic, or pathetic, or cute or anything. I’m stuck with just being a South’n Belle, blond and helpless, po’ li’l ol’ me, lookin’ sad and sweet through those ol’ magnolia blossoms!” She broadened her slight, soft accent until it sounded like something you could spread on hot cornbread, and both girls broke into laughter that sounded odd in the strained atmosphere of the bare rehearsal studio.
It was at this point that Mal and Randy came in, with pleasant, if somewhat brisk, nods to the assembled actors and actresses, and a special smile for Amy and Peggy. In a businesslike manner, they settled themselves at a table near the windows, spread out scripts and pads and pencils, and prepared for the chore that faced them. Amy, who was there to help the boys by acting as secretary for the occasion, wished Peggy good luck, and joined the boys at the table. Her job was to take names and addresses, and to jot down any facts about each actor that Randy and Mal wanted to be sure to remember.
Mal started the proceedings by introducing himself and Randy. Then, estimating the crowd, he said, “Since there are fewer men here, and also fewer male roles to cast, we’re going to do them first. I hope that you ladies won’t mind. We won’t keep you waiting long, but if we worked with you first, we’d have these gentlemen waiting most of the day. Shall we get started?” After a brief glance at his notes, he called out, “First, I’d like to see businessman types, young forties. How many have we?”
Four men separated themselves from the crowd and approached the table. Peggy watched with interest as Mal and Randy looked them over, murmured to Amy to take notes, and asked questions. After a few minutes, the men left, two of them looking happy, two resigned. Then Mal stood and called for leading man types, late twenties or early thirties, tall and athletic. As six tall, athletic, handsome young men came forward, Peggy felt that she just couldn’t stand watching the casting interviews any longer. It reminded her too much of the livestock shows she had attended as a youngster in her home town of Rockport, Wisconsin. Necessary though it was, she felt it was hardly a way to have to deal with human beings.
Slipping back through the crowd of waiting actors, she joined the actresses in the rear of the room, and found an empty seat next to a young girl.
“Hi,” she said. “What’s the matter, can’t you watch it either?”
The girl smiled in understanding. “It always upsets me,” she replied, “but it’s something we simply have to learn to live with. At least until we get well-known, or get agents to do this sort of thing for us.”
“It sounds as if you’ve been in a few of these before,” Peggy said.
“I have. But not here in the East,” the girl replied. “I’m from California, and I’ve been in a few little-theater things there, but nobody seems to pay much attention to them. I heard that off-Broadway theater in New York attracts a lot of critics, and I thought that I’d do better here. Have you had any luck?”
“Oh, I’m just beginning,” Peggy said. “I’m still studying at the New York Dramatic Academy. I hope I can get some kind of supporting role in this play, but I don’t think I’m ready for anything big yet. By the way, my name is Peggy Lane. What’s yours?”
“I’m Paula Andrews,” the girl answered, “and maybe I’m shooting too high, but I’m trying out for the female lead. I hope I have a chance for it.”
Peggy looked carefully at her new friend, at the somewhat uncertain smile that played about her well-formed, generous mouth and the intelligence that shone from her large, widely placed green eyes. Her rather long face was saved from severity by a soft halo of red-brown hair, the whole effect being an appealing combination of strength and feminine softness.
“I think you do have a chance,” Peggy said. “In fact, if you can act, I bet you’ll get the part. I’ve read the play, and I know the author and director, and unless I’m way off, you look just the way the lead should look. In fact, it’s almost uncanny. You look as if you just walked out of the script!”
“Oh, I hope you’re right!” Paula said with animation. “And I hope you get a part, too. I have a feeling that you’re going to bring me good luck!”
“The one who needs luck is me, I’m afraid,” Peggy said. “Being friendly with Randy and Mal isn’t going to help me in the least, and I’m going to have to be awfully good to get the part. And it’s really important to me, too, because I’m getting near the end of my trial year.”
“Trial year?” Paula asked curiously.
“Uh-huh. My parents agreed to let me come to New York to study acting and try for parts for a year, and I agreed that if I didn’t show signs of success before the year was up, I’d come home and go back to college. I’ve been here for eight months now, and I haven’t got anything to show my parents yet. The part I’m trying for now isn’t a big one, but it’s a good supporting role, and what’s more, we get paid. If I can show my mother and father that I can earn some money by acting, I’m sure that they’ll let me go on trying.”
“But do you expect to make enough to live on right away?” Paula asked.
“Oh, no! I’m not that naïve! But when my year is over at the Academy, I can always take a job as a typist or a secretary somewhere, while I look for parts. If you can type and take shorthand, you never have to worry about making a living.”
“I wish that I could do those things,” Paula said wistfully. “The only way I’ve been able to make ends meet is by working in department stores as a salesgirl, and that doesn’t pay much. Besides, the work is so unsteady.”
“My parents are very practical people,” Peggy said with a smile, “and they made sure that I learned routine office skills before they would let me think about other and more glamorous kinds of careers. Daddy owns the newspaper in our small town in Wisconsin, and I’ve worked with him as a typist and a reporter of sorts and as a proofreader, too. I’ll always be grateful that he made me learn all those things. I don’t think he has much faith in the acting business, but he’s been wonderful about giving me a chance. What do your parents think of your wanting to be an actress?”
Instead of answering, Paula suddenly stood up. “Let’s go see how they’re coming with the actors,” she said. “I think they’re almost finished.”
Not wanting to press Paula further, and feeling that perhaps she had asked too personal a question on such short acquaintance, Peggy reluctantly stood too, and joined Paula to watch the last of what she now could only think of as the livestock show.
As she drew closer to the table, she heard Mal saying, “I’m really sorry, Mr. Lang, but you’re just not the right type for the role. Perhaps some other....” and his voice trailed off in embarrassment.
Lang, a short, thin, unhappy young man, answered almost tearfully, “But, Mr. Seton, looks aren’t everything. I’m really a funny comedian. Honestly! If you would only give me a chance to read for you, I know that I could make you change your mind about the way this character should look!”
“I don’t doubt that you could,” Mal said gently, “but if you did, the play would suffer. I’m afraid the comedian we need for this must be a large, rather bluff-looking person, like these three gentlemen whom I have chosen to hear. The part calls for it. I’m sorry.”
Mr. Lang nodded sadly, mumbled, “I understand,” and walked off, his head hanging and his hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking less like a comedian than any man in the world. Peggy watched him go, not knowing whether to feel sorrier for him or for Mal.
“All right, gentlemen,” Mal called out. “That takes care of the male roles. All of you who are left will be given copies of the play to study, marked at the passages I want to hear. Be sure to read the whole play carefully, so that you understand the workings of the characters you have been selected to read. You have three days to look it over. We’ll meet at ten o’clock on Saturday morning at the Penthouse Theater to hear you. Thank you. And now for the ladies.”
The men left, after being given their scripts, and though they chatted amiably with one another, Peggy was sure that each was casting rather hostile looks toward others who were trying for the same parts. Keeping friendships in the theater was not an easy thing, she thought, particularly for people of similar physical types!
Mal’s first concern in reviewing the actresses was, of course, for the leading role. And, of course, it was for this role that he had the most applicants. More than twenty girls came forward when the announcement was made, and Peggy thought that she had never seen so many striking and beautiful faces and figures. It was not going to be easy for Mal to make a choice. As Paula, her new friend, went forward to join the others, Peggy whispered a word of encouragement, then stood to one side to watch.
Mal went down the line, regretfully dismissing one after the other of the girls, and occasionally asking one to step aside to try for another role. His tough-looking expression hardly varied as he spoke to each one, but Peggy thought she saw the ghost of a smile cross his face when he spoke to Paula Andrews. Another review of the remaining girls eliminated a few more. Finally, there were only four left, Paula among them. Mal thanked them, distributed scripts, and asked them to be at the Penthouse Theater on Saturday at noon.
Paula returned to Peggy with eyes shining. “Oh, Peggy! I think you were right! I just know I’m going to get the part! I know it!”
“Don’t count too much on it,” Peggy cautioned, “or you may be too bitterly disappointed if you don’t get it. But,” she added, enthusiastically violating her own rule of caution, “I’m sure, too! I’ll see you Saturday. Even if I don’t get a script, I’ll be there just to hear you read!”
Then, with a smile of farewell, Peggy turned her attention to the “career woman, early thirties” classification that Mal had called for next. Once that was out of the way, she knew it would be her turn.
This time, there were not so many applicants and Peggy remembered Randy telling her that this would be one of their most difficult roles to cast. Only four actresses came forward, and Mal, with difficulty, reviewed them all. Unable to eliminate by type, he gave them all scripts and asked them to come to the theater. Then he called for “character ingénues” and Peggy joined seven other girls in the “livestock show.”
Mal reviewed them carefully, managing to look at Peggy with complete lack of recognition. He gently eliminated three of them on the basis of hair coloring, height or general type. Another, curiously enough, was eliminated, like Amy, for a Southern accent, and a fifth, also like Amy, was too beautiful. “The part calls for a pretty girl,” Mal said with a rare smile, “but not for a girl so pretty that she’ll dominate the stage! It was a pleasure to look at you, but I’m afraid you’re not quite right for the part.”
When he was done, Peggy and two others were given scripts and told to come to the theater on Saturday. Feeling lightheaded and giddy, Peggy settled herself on one of the folding chairs that lined the back wall, and waited for Mal, Randy, and Amy to finish so she could join them for coffee.
Scarcely noticing the rest of the proceedings, she thought only about the coming readings. She was so familiar with the play that she knew she had an advantage, perhaps unfairly, over the other two girls. She had watched the script grow from its first rough draft to the finished text now in her hands, and had discussed it with Randy through each revision. She knew she could play the part; in fact, she suspected secretly that Randy had written it for her, and the thought made her blush. Still, it would not be easy, she knew. Mal’s sense of fairness and his absolute devotion to the play above everything else would keep him from making up his mind in advance.
But despite this knowledge, she could not help looking ahead—all the way ahead—to the restless stir of the opening-night audience out front, the last-minute preparations backstage, the bright, hot lights and the smell of make-up and scenery paint as she waited to go on in Act One, Scene One ofCome Closer, Randy Brewster’s brilliant new play in which Peggy Lane would be discovered!
The audience consisted of a handful of actors and actresses, and Randy Brewster and Mallory Seton. The stage lighting was a cold splash produced by two floodlights without color gels to soften them. The scenery was the brick back wall of the stage, two ladders, a table and two straight-backed chairs. Only the front row of house lights was on, and the back of the theater was dark, empty and gloomy, a shadowy wasteland of empty rows of seats like tombstones.
On the stage, a “businessman type” was reading his lines. Peggy knew, after the first few words, that he would not do. He had somehow completely missed the character of the man he was portraying, and was heavily overplaying. Mal, being perhaps more patient than Peggy, listened and watched with great care. Amy, who was acting as Mal’s assistant for the production, sat in a chair by the proscenium, reading her script by the light of a small lamp and feeding the actor cue lines. Mal followed the whole sequence with no visible sign of impatience and, when the actor was through, said, “Thank you. We’ll let you know our decision in a day or two.”
The next “businessman type” was better, but still not quite on target, Peggy thought. He seemed to be playing the part for laughs, and although there were some comic values to be extracted from the role, it was really far more a straight dramatic character. Still, he was clearly a better actor than the first, and with direction might do well.
Following his reading, Mal again repeated his polite, invariable formula, “Thank you. We’ll let you know our decision in a day or two,” and called for the next reading.
Peggy watched the remaining actors try for the role, and made mental notes of which ones were possible, which probable, and which stood no chance at all.
The same process was then followed for the leading men, and the same wide range of talent and understanding of the part was displayed. Some seemed to have no idea at all about the play or its meaning, and Peggy was sure that these men had read only the parts marked for them. Others had a clear understanding of the kind of character they were playing, and tried to create him in the brief time they had on stage. Others still were actors who had one rather inflexible way of playing, and used it for all kinds of parts. Their performances were uniform imitations of each other, and all were imitations of the early acting style of Marlon Brando. They seemed to forget, Peggy thought, that Brando’s style developed from the roles he had to play, and that as he got other roles, he showed other facets of a rounded talent. It made her angry that some actors thought they could get ahead in a creative field by being imitative.
Each actor, no matter how good or how bad, was treated with impersonal courtesy by Mal, and each left looking sure that the part was his. Peggy was glad that she would not have to see their faces when they learned that they had not been selected.
“The pity of it,” she whispered to Randy, “isn’t that there are so many bad ones, but that there are so many good ones, and that only one can be selected for each role. I wish there were some way of telling the good ones you can’t take that they were really good, but that you just couldn’t take everyone!”
“You can’t let yourself worry about that,” Randy replied. “The good ones know they’re good, and they’re not going to be discouraged by the loss of a role. And the bad ones think they’re good, too, and most of them have tremendous egos to protect them from ever finding out—or even thinking—otherwise!”
The door at the back of the theater opened quietly, and Peggy, turning around in her seat, saw a few of the actresses entering. They quietly found seats in the rear and settled down to await their turn.
“I think I’ll go back there with the girls,” Peggy whispered. “I’m looking for a girl I met at the casting call, and I’d like to chat with her for a few minutes when she comes. Do you mind if I don’t look at all this?”
Randy grinned. “Go ahead. I’d get out of here, too, if I could without getting Mal mad at me. This kind of thing always breaks my heart, too!”
As she went up the aisle as unobtrusively as possible, Peggy glanced at the actresses who had just come in. She recognized a few of their faces from the casting call of three days ago, but did not see her new friend among them. She decided to go out to the lobby to wait for her there. A new group of girls entered the theater as Peggy was leaving and, as she passed, one reached out and grabbed her arm.
Peggy turned in surprise to find herself greeted with a broad grin and a quick companionable kiss.
“Greta!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Come on out to the lobby, and I’ll tell you,” Greta Larsen said, with a toss of her head that made her thick blond braid spin around and settle over her shoulder.
“But I thought you were in New Haven, getting ready to openOver the Hill,” Peggy said, when they had reached the lobby. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’m afraid you don’t read yourVarietyvery carefully,” Greta said. “Over the Hillopened in New Haven to such bad notices that the producer decided to close out of town. At first we thought he’d call in a play doctor to try to fix things up, but he finally decided, and very sensibly, that it would be easier to just throw the whole thing out. I’m afraid he lost a lot of money, and he didn’t have any more left.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Peggy said. “And it was a real chance for you, wasn’t it?”
“Not really,” Greta said. “The part wasn’t too good, and I’d just as soon not be in a disaster. Anyway, it gave me a chance to work for a few weeks, and an agent saw me and said he thought I was good, so maybe I’m not any the worse for the experience.”
At that moment, Peggy saw Paula Andrews enter the lobby, and she motioned to her to join them. “Greta, this is Paula Andrews. She’s reading for the lead today, and I hope she gets it. Paula, I want you to meet Greta Larsen, one of my housemates.”
“Housemates?” Paula questioned, a little puzzled.
“Yes. There are about a dozen of us, more or less. We live in a place called the Gramercy Arms—a wonderful place—and we live like one big noisy family. The Arms is run just for young actresses, so we all have a lot in common. I haven’t seen Greta for weeks—she’s been out of town with a play—and I’m just getting over being stunned at seeing her now.”
“Peggy tactfully neglected to mention that the play flopped,” Greta laughed, “and now I’m back in town without a job. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”
“You mean you’re going to read for Mal?” Peggy asked excitedly.
“Uh-huh. I met him on the street an hour or so ago, and he told me he had a part he thought I should try out for, and that he was thinking of me for it all along, but assumed that I wouldn’t be available. Well, you can’t be more available than I am, so here I am!”
“Have you read the play?” Paula asked.
“I’m lucky there,” Greta replied. “I’ve seen it in three different drafts since it started. Peggy’s friendly with Randy Brewster, the boy who wrote it, and each time she brought a draft home, I got to read it. So I’m not at a disadvantage.”
“What do you think ofCome Closer, Paula?” asked Peggy.
“I think it’s wonderful! I hope more than ever that I get the part! Do you really think I have a chance?”
Greta nodded decisively. “If you can act, you’re made for it,” she said.
“That’s just what Peggy said!”
Peggy stole a glance through the doors to the theater. “I think we’re about ready to find out whether or not you can act,” she said. “They seem to be about through with the actors, and that means you’re on next!”
Wishing each other good luck, they entered the darkened part of the house and prepared for what Peggy could only think of as their ordeal.
Afterward, as Peggy, Amy, Paula, and Greta sat at a table in a nearby coffeehouse waiting for Mal and Randy to join them, each was sure that she had been terrible.
“Oh, no!” Peggy said. “You two were just marvelous! But I couldn’t have been worse. I know I read the part wrong. I thought I had the character clear in my mind, but I’m sure that the way it came out was a mile off!”
“You have a lot more talent than judgment,” Greta said mournfully. “You were perfect. And so was Paula. As for me....” Her voice trailed off in despair.
“I don’t know how you can say that, Greta,” Paula put in. “I know you were the best in your part, and nobody even came close to Peggy. But I’ve never felt so off in my life as I did reading that part. It’s a wonder any of you even want to be seen with me!”
Only when Amy started to laugh did the three others realize how much alike they had sounded. Then they joined in the laughter and couldn’t seem to stop. When they seemed at the point of dissolving helplessly into a permanent attack of the giggles, Randy and Mal joined them.
“If you’re laughing at the play,” Randy said gloomily, “I can hardly blame you. You never know just how badly you’ve written until someone gets up and starts to read your lines.”
All at the same time, the girls started to reassure him and tell him how good the play was, and how badly the actors, including themselves, had handled the lines, but this was so much like their last exchange of conversation that once more they broke up in helpless laughter.
When they got their breath back, and when coffee and pastry had been ordered, they tried to explain the cause of their hilarity to the boys.
“... so, you see,” Peggy concluded, “we were each explaining how good the others were and how bad we were, and when Randy started telling us how bad he had been as a writer, we just couldn’t stand it!”
It was Mal who got them back to sane ground. With his tough face, like a movie gangster’s or private detective’s, and his gentle, cultured English voice and assured manner, he calmly gave his opinion of the afternoon’s auditions.
“First of all, I think the dialogue plays remarkably well, Randy. It’s a good play, and I don’t think there’ll be too many changes to worry about. Secondly, you’re all right and you’re all wrong. I might as well tell you now that you each have the part you tried out for. I’m very pleased with you, and proud to have you in the cast.”
Peggy and Greta excitedly embraced each other, and when they turned to do the same to Paula, were dismayed to see that she was crying. “What’s wrong?” Peggy asked. “Is anything the matter?”
“Oh, no,” Paula wailed, trying to smile through her tears. “It’s just that I wanted this so much, and I’m so happy, and I started to laugh and it came out tears....” She rummaged for her pack of tissues, dabbed her eyes, and emerged with a radiant smile.
“There, that’s better,” Randy said.
“The tears were all right too,” Mal said. “I feel like doing the same thing when I’m really happy, but it wouldn’t go with my face. It looks great on yours!”
By the time the coffee and pastry arrived, Paula’s emotional storm had so far been put behind her that she fell on the cakes with the appetite of a lumberjack.
“A little restraint, please, madam,” Mal said, “or you’ll lose your part. We want a nice, slim leading lady, not a butterball! You’re in training now!”
“Let me take them,” Greta said. “I have a fat, round face to begin with, and you wouldn’t have picked me if you wanted a sylph for the part. You’ll never notice a few ounces more!”
“I’m sorry to tell you that we not only would notice it, but we’d mind it very much,” Mal said, “but nobody minds a fat director. So....” He reached for the cause of the debate.
“What I can’t understand,” Greta said, “is how you picked me for the part. Why did you want me to try for a thirtyish career girl role? I’m not really the physical type, and those other girls were. Will you tell me?”
“Just a hunch,” Mal said. “You’ll be the type with your hair out of that braid and put up, and with a little make-up to age you a few years. I felt that you had the kind of crisp delivery we wanted, and it looks as though I was right. As for Peggy, it’s as if the part were written for her.” This last he said with a sly side look at Randy, who reddened slightly. “And as for Paula, well....” He broke off and looked at her intently.
“I don’t know what it is, but the minute I saw you in cast call, I knew you were our girl. And when I heard you read, I knew that I hadn’t made a mistake. There’s something about you ... some quality that I seem to recognize ... I suppose it’s talent. But that’s enough of compliments. If we don’t get out of here, we’ll soon be writing long epic poems to each other’s genius.”
So, finishing their coffee with a toast to the success ofCome Closer, they said their good nights and parted outside the coffeehouse.
“Don’t forget,” Mal called after them, “rehearsal Monday night. See you then!” He walked off with Paula, and Randy escorted Peggy, Amy, and Greta back to the Gramercy Arms.
Peggy was at stage center, under a bright bank of floodlights. Amy entered from stage right, crossed down center and turned her back to the house to look upstage. She paused a moment before speaking.
Her position, back to the audience, would have been unforgivable if there had been an audience, and her lines, when she spoke them, were scarcely dramatic.
“You have paint on the side of your nose,” she said, “and there’s a rip in the seat of your jeans. Now where I come from, no lady....”
“The same to you,” Peggy grinned, looking around from the flat she was painting. “At least, the same to you as regards the paint on your nose. I can’t see the seat of your jeans from here!”
Amy put down the bucket of paint that she had brought with her and stepped back to the apron of the stage to get a better look at Peggy’s handiwork. It was a small wing flat that was to represent the corner of a frame house. A window frame had already been installed in it, and later the suggestion of a back porch would be added. Peggy was busy with the somewhat tedious work of painting clapboards on the flat canvas. Each was made with two lines of gray paint drawn across the white-painted surface; first a dark line, then a somewhat broader light-gray line. From working distance, it looked like nothing but striped canvas, but from a few feet away, the dimensional effect was surprisingly real. Peggy joined Amy at the edge of the stage to get a look at what she had been doing.
“It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” she asked.
Amy nodded. “Keep it up, honey child, and you may find a real niche for yourself in the theater!”
Laughing, the two friends worked together on the flat, each using one of the shades of gray. The work went much faster now, which pleased Peggy, because she didn’t want to leave the flat half-finished when it was time for her to stop and go to her section of the readings.
In the early part of working on a play, the stage is seldom used. First readings usually take place in small groups gathered in any convenient spot, and it is not until the actors are fairly familiar with their lines and with the way the director wants them read that the play begins to take form on the stage.Come Closerwas in the earliest days of rehearsal, and Mal was still in the first stages of familiarizing himself with his cast and them with the play.
The Penthouse Theater was ideally suited for the work they were doing. It was actually a very old theater which Peggy and Amy had discovered, under exciting and mysterious circumstances, when they had first come to New York and met Randy and Mal. The theater itself occupied the top floor of an old loft building, and when Randy and Mal had leased it, they had rented the whole building. Both the theater and the other floors below it had seen much alteration since, and it was now a unique actors’ workshop from top to bottom.
The boys had converted part of the loft space into compact apartments for themselves, and other rooms into living quarters for young actors whose rent, although low by city standards, was still enough to pay most of the costs of operating the building. The ground floor had been turned into a series of rehearsal studios, which, when not being used by Randy and Mal for a current play of their own, were rented to other groups. In its short time of operation, the Penthouse Theater had already become an off-Broadway institution.
For Randy and Mal it had proved to be the best thing that had ever happened to them. It not only gave them a theater in which they could stage their productions, but it gave them enough income so that they no longer had to work at other jobs while trying to pursue their careers in the theater world.
Before, Randy had worked in small night clubs as a song-and-dance man—a way of life for which he had the deepest contempt. Mal had been an actor in movies and television where, because of his tough face, he had been type-cast as a gangster. He not only didn’t like gangster roles, he found it hard to get them because of the cultured English accent that issued so surprisingly from that face. For both boys, the Penthouse Theater meant a new life and new opportunity, doing Randy’s plays, directed by Mal.
Peggy and Amy put the last touches on the clapboard wall, stepped back to review the work, and smiled with satisfaction.
“It looks perfect,” Peggy said. “Now I just hope that we stretched the canvas tight enough on the frame in the first place, so that it doesn’t flutter if somebody bumps into it. If anything looks terrible, it’s a clapboard wall that flutters!”
“I think it’s tight enough,” Amy said, “and besides, if it isn’t, it’s too late to think about it now.”
“You’re right,” Peggy agreed. “Not only that, but I think it’s too late to think about anything right now but my part. I’ve got to clean up and be downstairs for a reading in five minutes. Do you want to keep working here, or will you come down to hear us?”
“I’ve got to come to hear you,” Amy said, “whether I like it or not. Mal asked me to work out the first go-round with you and make notes on the script as we go. He’ll be in to hear you and the others in about an hour.”
“Like it or not!” Peggy said in mock indignation. “What makes you think there’s even a chance you won’t like it? I propose to be brilliant!”
Of course she knew better. Brilliance is not in the picture in these early readings. A half hour later, in Studio 3, having gone once through Act Two, Scene Two, she realized wryly just how far from brilliance they were!
The play, which Randy described as a fantasy, or a “modern morality play,” was not an easy one for the actors. The parts could, with too broad a reading, descend into farce or, with not just the right quality of the fantastic, slide off into dullness. The setting was a resort which was, in actuality, a sort of rest home for wealthy people who needed to get away from themselves for a while—or to find themselves. The point of the play, which gradually emerged, was that each of the characters had somehow led at least two distinct kinds of lives and had found both of them unsatisfactory. All the people in the play were trying, in whatever ways they could, to find some third or fourth kind of life that might be more pleasant and satisfying than the last; all of them were getting more confused every day they tried.
Peggy’s part, then, was not easy. She was playing the role of a young girl of twenty-one who had been a very successful child movie star, but who had not made a picture since she was twelve. Realizing that she was through with show business, she had tried to pretend that she was just an ordinary person who could live an ordinary life. She had gone through college and started work as a secretary, keeping secret the fact that she had been a movie star. But shortly before the play opens, she has suddenly come into the fortune which she had earned as a child, but which had been held in trust for her. The money confuses her, and the publicity she gets when the story of the money comes out makes it impossible for her to continue as a secretary.
The difficulty for Peggy was in making this character seem true and alive. This meant that the personalities of an ex-child movie star, a quiet, precise secretary, and a bewildered new heiress must all be combined in one believable whole.