Lucille’s performance held Joe spellbound. “Brilliant,” Pop said softly. “I salute her.”
Lucille’s performance held Joe spellbound. “Brilliant,” Pop said softly. “I salute her.”
Lucille’s performance held Joe spellbound. “Brilliant,” Pop said softly. “I salute her.”
Joe flushed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bartell.”
“I understand.” A hand patted the boy’s shoulder. “From the experiences of thirty years of wisdom, permit me to cull you wisdom. When the bad breaks come, never lose your front.”
“You never lost yours, Mr. Bartell.”
“Had I lost that, Joe,” the old man said gravely, “I’d have lost everything. Are you remaining for theSue Davisshow?” Slim and straight, he strode toward the street. And in that moment Joe Carlin knew why front, for all its hollowness and sham, meant so much to show people. It was the hard stiffener when an actor’s precarious world was shaken; it was sanctuary and armor.
He ordered more coffee. “Will you please get FKIP?”
To-day theSue Davisshow rose to tense drama. The money Dick Davis brought home after selling his stamps was almost gone; without warning, tight-fisted Israel Tice offered $500 more for the widow’s property than he had offered before. Sue was weary of fighting a battle that seemed endless. Why not sell, she asked her son, and be done with heartache? Why not find peace? Dick wanted to hold the property, but he saw how the struggle was aging his mother and consented. She was to agree to the terms when Tice stopped in that evening. Dick, who did not want to be present at the meeting, went off into the mountains to search for wild grapes. He came upon a picnic party; departing, they left behind a newspaper published that morning at the State capital. The paper carried the story of a new super-highway and a map. The map showed the highway following the line of the unimproved county road that passed his mother’s home. Their dream of a tea-room would be realized. But Tice must have seen the story that morning; Tice knew what the mountain might not know until to-morrow. Dick had to get home before his mother signed the agreement to sell. Running down the mountainside, crashing through thickets, he reached the house as she lifted the pen. He stuck the newspaper under Israel Tice’s nose, and a thwarted skinflint departed.
It was hokum. Joe knew it for hokum. But it was good hokum, and it had built up a terrific suspense. The kind of suspense a Curt Lake script could give a show. Or had it been Sonny Baker’s acting?
Next day Joe walked Royal Street. Saturday was a poor day to make the rounds, but when you were desperate for a part every day counted. FKIP’s John Dennis sat in a deserted casting office staring at the ceiling.
“Come in, Joe. You’re just the man I’ve been thinking about. If I call you in to audition a show that will go on at 4:15, will you be available?”
Joe understood. Dennis wanted to know if he was out of theSue Davisprogram that went on at 4:30.
“What show?” he asked.
“Were revivingMr. America. There’s a new part being written in that should fit you like a glove. We put the show on last March and had three sponsor nibbles before it went off in June. This time we think we’ll sell it.”
Joe rememberedMr. America. A five-a-week sustaining. Front demanded that he tell Gillis he was uncertain, that he might decide not to return to theSue Daviscast. Dennis would probably know he was lying, but that was the way front was played. He cast front aside.
“I don’t know, Mr. Dennis. Right this minute, I’m in the dark. I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll have to know by Wednesday. Unless there’s a switch, we’ll start to audition Thursday and cut the platter Saturday.”
“I’ll know definitely by Wednesday,” said Joe. He had vowed Vic would have to send for him. All that was changed. He’d have to go to Vic for a showdown.
Waiting for the elevator, unconsciously listening to an FKIP loudspeaker, Joe felt that the future held a grim, mirthless humor. If he went on theMr. Americaprogram, he’d still be in radio. He’d still be on a five-a-week. Both shows would come out of the same station, fifteen minutes apart. But theSue Davissponsored show had been paying him twenty-five dollars a week, while the unsponsoredMr. Americawould pay him only in experience. Show business!
John Dennis’ secretary came running along the corridor. “Mr. Carlin! I wasn’t sure I could catch you. Mr. Wylie’s office called. You’re wanted over there.”
Vic Wylie had sent for him at last!
“Will you phone back and tell them I’ll be there within an hour?” He’d been waiting for more than a week. Let Vic wait an hour.
He ate a sandwich at Munson’s, killed time, and finally walked into Vic Wylie Productions.
“I expect Mr. Wylie back in a few minutes,” Miss Robb said.
So he hadn’t kept Wylie waiting. The inner room still held memories. Memories softened him. Why wrap himself in cold aloofness and let Vic see he was sore? Vic would tell him to come back to the cast for the Monday show and he’d go on from there, forgetting how tough the last week had been, giving everything he had.
Wylie arrived without the usual accompaniment of fury and bustle. He closed the door and placed the brief-case upon the desk with what, for him, might pass for gentleness. He went around to his chair and, for a moment, seemed to give himself up to contemplation of some thought far away. He was gaunt and disheveled, apparently a little more tired than usual. He hadn’t shaved.
“Kid,” he said heavily, “I’m not up to the light touch. I can’t spar around with this. I’ve got to give it to you fast and quick. You’re out.”
The blood drained out of Joe. Never again to play Dick Davis.... He found his voice. “I’m out for good?”
“That’s the ticket.”
“Why?” This was some sort of wild dream or some mad joke. Only—Vic didn’t joke about things like this.
“You heard yesterday’s show? Yesterday wrote the answer. I like you—”
Joe’s lips moved. “You can skip that.”
“All right; you shouldn’t have to be told. I’ve been holding off. Amby Carver’s been telling things to Munson, Munson’s been riding Everts-Hall, Everts-Hall’s been putting pressure on me. I got it three ways; some of it was downstage, some from the prompter’s book, and some from the wings. I didn’t want Sonny unless he became a must. If he starts out again to put himself up in lights, he can ruin the show. If he gets under my skin and I blow my top, I ruin the show. I told you once I don’t run a friendship club. I might have an idea that cutting your throat would be tops as a way to enjoy an afternoon, but if you give me a show, I’ll toss the knife out the window. Yesterday Sonny gave me a show. He’s a must.”
“He had a script.”
“A stage has scenery, but it’s only an empty stage until the scenery’s set.”
Disappointment made Joe hoarse. “What did Sonny Baker do that I couldn’t have done with the same script?”
“Kid,” Wylie said with weary regret, “he can act.”
Joe Carlin was stiff and numb with shock. Was Wylie telling him at this late date that he was a flop? After auditioning him for weeks, fighting for him when Mrs. Munson wanted the Dick Davis part for a nephew, giving him the part when the show finally went on the air? Suddenly he was white with anger. Wylie had either fooled him at the beginning or was fooling him now. Either way, he had been betrayed.
“You told me I was tops.”
The producer’s hands made a weary sign. “I expected you to throw that at me, kid. I had a show coming up; I wanted a Dick Davis; I knew exactly how Dick Davis should sound. I couldn’t find a Dick Davis. Then I heard you auditioning at FKIP. You were my Dick Davis. For that part, your voice made you tops. You were tops until Sonny came along. When Mr. John Public turns on the radio all he gets is voices. Voices must build up the scene, the characters, the atmosphere in his imagination. The show doesn’t have the help of stage settings, lights, costumes, and make-up. You’ve got a million dollar radio voice, but that lets you out. You can’t do much with it. You feel, but you can’t give. It took me weeks to get you to give me one word, ‘Mother,’ the way I wanted it.”
Joe’s breath made a sound in his throat.
“You’re good, kid, but you’re not good enough. There’ll always be somebody better. That’s the curse of small-time radio. Thousands of kids working in radio all over the country, wild with ambition and dreaming of the pot of gold. They’re good, but not good enough. You’ve got to be better than good. Archie Munn was good; he’s out of radio. Stella’s good; she’s working as a part-time waitress. Lucille Borden was good, and she was selling stockings when she got the breaks. A part came up made to order for her just when she auditioned, or she’d still be selling stockings. Where will you be ten years from now? Exactly where you are to-day. You know small-time radio; do you want that all your life? Your voice gets you a couple of fat parts one season, and next season you get bits. Year after year you make the rounds. By and by John Public gets tired of your voice, or a new voice comes along. Then where are you? Television’s only around the corner. John Public’s going to see the setting, the action, and characters in costume; radio actors will really have to act. What will you do then? If you had dynamite on the ball I’d tell you to stick it out if you starved. You haven’t got it, kid, and there’s no percentage in starving for what you haven’t got. I knew a long time ago you didn’t have the stuff, but you were the best Dick Davis I could get. I told you when Mrs. Munson’s nephew auditioned you’d have been out had he been hot. I’ve never lied to you, kid. If you’d played forty weeks in theSue Davisshow you’d be hooked for life. The bug would bite so deeply there’d be no cure. But you were only on the air a few weeks—that shouldn’t be fatal. You can make your exit while there’s still time.”
The indictment struck Joe with a paralyzing shock. He didn’t want to believe. He couldn’t believe that this was true.
“I’m not getting out, Vic. I’m writing New York for an audition.”
The producer brooded. “That’s up to you.”
“A producer told Ezra Stone—”
“I know. A producer told him to go home and forget acting. That gets a big play. But you don’t hear a word about the hundreds of times producers tell the same thing to kids and are right. It’s a waste of time to try to give the low-down to a stage-struck kid. Doesn’t he want to act? He doesn’t know the difference between wanting to act and being able to act.” The producer’s hand went up and ran through his hair; the arms fell heavily. “Kid, what have I got to say to make you believe me?” The sunken eyes burned.
Joe felt the first thin edge of doubt. He fought it off wildly. “Why should you care what I believe?”
“Kid, do you have to ask that?”
A lump, quick and unbidden, formed in the boy’s throat. “I—I know you think....”
“Think?” Vic Wylie cried harshly. “I don’t have to think about show business; I know. Tough? There isn’t any game in the world that’s tougher. I’ve seen it around the country: stage-struck kids working in crummy night clubs or picking up a few dollars from movie houses that run Saturday vaudeville. I’ve seen it at Hollywood: movie-crazy kids storming the Central Casting Bureau because they’ve won a two-bit beauty contest or have a straight nose. But at least, if you work at Hollywood, you get paid. There’s no such thing at Hollywood as a sustaining movie. Hollywood doesn’t fatten itself on gratis talent. Radio’s just a little tougher than any other part of show business. Don’t you know it? Don’t you use your eyes?”
Joe thought of bread-and-butter hunters making the rounds.
Wylie’s sunken cheeks were pale with intensity. “What do you think you’re going to do in New York—show me up for a mug? I’ll tell you what’ll happen in New York, kid. Maybe you’ll audition and a producer’ll say: ‘Ah, a voice of great promise.’ Maybe you’ll go back for a committee audition. Maybe the committee hears a voice of great promise. Then what? Do you think you’ll snatch a part like picking an oyster from a shell? You’ll be competing with the people who are tops. Who are you? What’ve you done? You become a card—a Joe Carlin card. You’ll go into a talent file. Do you know how many cards are in the N.B.C. file at WEAF? The last time I heard, more than two thousand. Many of them are troupers with years of stage experience, many of them have played big-time radio. When a producer casts a show, those are the people he picks. He knows what they’ll give him. Maybe a show comes up and the producer can’t get the people he wants; they’re tied up in other shows. Then he goes to the file. Maybe he’s forgotten Joe Carlin—some new cards go into that file every month. It’s a grab-bag. Figure the chances of the Joe Carlin card coming out. If you had great talent I’d tell you to stay with it if you were down to your last pair of socks, if you were mooching your meals and panhandling your friends. I’d help you. Great talent is rare. Kid, what makes you think you’ve got it?”
Looking at Wylie, intense and drawn, listening to his impassioned voice, Joe had to believe. Wylie had spent far more time on him than on any other member of the cast. That now became significant. Memory leaped at him with other scenes, all significant. Wylie talking to Tony Vaux about his voice—only about his voice. Wylie almost frantic because he couldn’t put something into the word “Mother” that the producer wanted put there. Wylie slaving over him through the long evening rehearsals. But he had dreamed a dream, and a dream always dies hard.
“Vic, why did you wait so long to tell me this?”
“Kid, I was on a spot. It didn’t take me long to learn you didn’t have the spark. You’d never lay them in the aisles. What could I do, toss you out? You were the best I could get for Dick Davis. Suppose you had no special training for a business job? Suppose you couldn’t land a job? Suppose radio was your only chance of nailing a dollar? Yesterday I began to check on you. You never told me anything about yourself. How was I to know your father owned that Carlin store on Royal Street? What’s the matter, doesn’t he want you there?”
“He’d be glad to have me there.”
“Then get wise. That’s where you belong.”
Sometimes, Joe thought wanly, it was hard to be wise. The easy companionship of show people, light-hearted despite its anxiety, the feeling that came over him every time he walked into a station, the hush that settled over a studio as the clock in the control-room crept toward the opening, the thrill as the show went on the air! He couldn’t give up all that.
“Vic,” he said, “I’m sorry. I still want show business.”
Wylie sat with his unshaven chin sunk down on his chest. “All right, kid. I’ve laid it on the line to you and I feel better. If you want show business, you want it. The acting door’s closed. Try the window.”
“What window?”
Wylie said: “Production.”
Joe was startled. A producer was an obscure figure in the background, never heard, never seen. A producer was part of show business, but— Oh, it wasn’t the same thing at all. He began to shake his head.
Wylie was the old Wylie, snarling. “I thought you wanted show business.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t. You want the spotlight and the fan mail. Look, kid.” Wylie came out of the chair and swung the boy about by the shoulders. “As a producer, you don’t interpret one part. You interpret all the parts. You set the tempo. You touch the strings and the cast vibrates. You take a script and make it live. You make the show, molding it and shaping it. You’re the show, all of it.”
Joe’s lips parted. Here was Wylie’s strange power to move him, to galvanize him. Production took on a color of possibility. Hadn’t he been trying to do something like this withThomas Carlin Presents?
“I’d have to break in, Vic. Where?”
“The Everts-Hall Agency. Tony Vaux. Tony saw you put a finger on what was wrong with Pop Bartell at aBush-League Larryaudition. You’re a possibility. You have an instinct. You put your finger on a badSue Daviscurtain. Production’s no bed of roses; it’s show business and all show business is tough. But you have a whole stage to play with. A show becomes your baby.”
Joe was no longer stiff and numb. A regret that he would never act lingered, but Wylie had cast a new light on production and had made it desirable and exhilarating.
“I’ll see Tony this afternoon, Vic.”
“I’ve already talked to him. He’s out of town to-day. You’ll be a glorified messenger-boy-office-boy-all-around-helper—”
“I haven’t the job yet.”
“Didn’t I say I talked to him? You go in Monday and hang up your hat.” Vic Wylie went back to his chair, jerked around abruptly, and shot out a thin, nervous hand as though it were a spear. “Do you know what you’re going to do, kid? You’re going to school and take a night course. Dramatics. When summer comes and radio’s dead, you’re taking a leave of absence. You’re going into summer stock. You’re joining some company playing in a cowbarn—”
“I thought I was through acting.”
“Did I say anything about acting?” Wiley rasped. “You’re going in as assistant stage manager. Maybe you’ll get some money and maybe you won’t. But you’re going to study stage business. You’re going to watch audiences and find out what makes them laugh and what makes them cry. You’re going to be a showman. Some day you’ll thank me.”
Joe said slowly: “I’m thanking you now.”
Worming through Royal Street he was feverish with the prospect of new horizons. A whole stage to play with. You built shows, molding them and shaping them. The picture grew in his mind, expanded in his excitement. If he was some day to be a full-fledged producer, it was time he finished his first show. It would be something to look back upon, a milestone. All that the plugs needed was more direct strength, the right touch. He ought to finish the script to-night. To-morrow he’d be able to show it to his father.
Kate Carlin called from the kitchen. “Aren’t you home early?”
“I smelled apple pie,” Joe said. He watched her take the brown, fragrant pies from the oven. “I’m through with acting.”
She almost dropped a pie. “Joe!”
“It’s all right. You and Dad never really liked the idea of my acting, anyway. I’m going into production. I start Monday with the Everts-Hall Agency.”
She followed him to the stairs. “Why, Joe?”
“Vic Wylie advised it. I was out of theSue Davisshow. He told me I was good, but that there’d always be somebody better. He said I’d never make big time. It was hard to take at first, but, well, Vic makes you believe him. You know he’s shooting straight.”
He went at once to the bureau. He’d wade into those plugs.... He took the script from the drawer, and hard concentration gathered between his eyes. He knew exactly how he had left the script and now the pages were turned about, reversed. The frown deepened.
“Mother, were you looking over some papers in my bureau?”
“I don’t recall any papers. What drawer were they in?”
“The small top drawer on the right.”
“The only drawer I opened was the large middle one. I put away your laun—Oh! I remember, Joe. Dad ran out of razor blades and went to your room for a fresh blade.”
“When was that?”
“Tuesday or Wednesday. Are some papers missing?”
“No,” said Joe, swallowing. “They’re here.”
Tuesday or Wednesday—three or four days ago. This wasn’t a finished script. It took a professional script-writer like Curt Lake to do a finished script. This show was a sample, an indication of what could be done. And his father hadn’t thought the script worth discussing.
All the fine fire of eagerness went out of him. Another egg. First he’d laid an acting egg and now a script egg. He tossed the script back among the razor blades and tie clasps, and closed the drawer.