by Julie Klam
The NATIONAL SERVICE BUREAU was organized primarily to secure and develop dramatic material of the highest standard for Federal Theatre Projects throughout the country. The BUREAU now offers a similar service to Little Theatre groups, community and school theatres and amateur and professional drama organizations.
Among its varied functions will be found the following:
Publication of lists of outstanding ROYALTY and NON-ROYALTY PLAYS for all occasions. These lists of recommended plays contain complete analyses, source information, important director’s notes and suggestions for production:
Among the published lists which contain a wealth of highly recommended plays are:
Anti-War Plays, Catholic Plays, Children’s Plays, Christmas Plays, Easter Plays, Historical Plays, Irish Plays, Jewish Plays, Marionette Plays, Musical Plays, Negro Plays, New One-Act Plays, Religious Plays, Thanksgiving Plays, Vaudeville Sketches.
It sounded like the script of a radio announcer from the era.
What had been sent to me was a photocopy of Ruth’s one-act play. I loved looking at the typewritten pages—all fourteen of them, single-spaced, the lines not perfectly straight, the punctuation thick. Affidavit is about a dastardly doctor who tries to get a union member to stop participating in a community hospital fund (like health insurance) because the doctor claims those “community types” are trying to steal this worker’s money from his paycheck for nothing. Then the good community doctor enters the action and says the worker is free to do what he wants, but the little money he puts into the fund will save him money if he or his family ever needs to go to a hospital. The bad doctor then tries to get the worker to sign an affidavit, but the worker can’t read, which gives the good doctor the chance to explain why the bad doctor is really trying to sabotage him. The laborer says he needs the money now and can’t put it toward a future emergency, when suddenly there is a crash outside. A truck has hit a little girl, and the little girl turns out to be the laborer’s daughter. In the bad doctor’s hospital, taking care of his possibly crippled little girl would cost the laborer $500, but since he’s been paying for this community hospital, his daughter’s treatment is free. And scene.
The play, though short, has a lot of stage directions like “shame facedly” and “eyeing him suspiciously,” the characters’ faces “hardening” and “softening” and “betraying wrath.” I loved it and would’ve read twenty more of Ruth’s plays if she had written that many and if they were available.
I thought again about the family story that Ruth had written the script for High Button Shoes and that a producer had stolen it from her. It was a popular Broadway musical in the 1940s and was later produced on TV. The comedy was based on a book by Stephen Longstreet (whose real name was Chauncey Weiner, possibly the greatest name ever).
It didn’t make sense to me that a script by Ruth would’ve been stolen from a work based on a novel that she didn’t write. The book was called The Sisters Liked Them Handsome. I bought a copy of the novel from a used book dealer, and it didn’t take me long to realize that High Button Shoes was not the work that had been stolen from Ruth Morris. I did additional research of theater notices for Ruth Morris from 1930 to 1945 and found two different news items in The New York Times.
NEWS OF THE STAGE
October 26, 1936
Ruth Morris has written one called “the Lowells Talk Only To God”; all about the introduction of the factory system in this country. “Behemoth” also by Miss Morris is in circulation again after having been held by Alex Yokel and James R. Ullman. . . .
(Alex Yokel and James R. Ullman were successful theater producers in the 1930s.)
NEWS OF THE STAGE
September 7, 1937
Without any immediate presentation in sight, The Actor’s Repertory Theatre nevertheless is pondering a few items for production when and if. For instance, John O’Shaughnessy and Fred Stewart are dramatizing “Washington Jitters” the Dalton Trumbo novel which Moss Hart was once supposed to be adapting. Ruth Morris has submitted her comedy, “The Lowells Talk Only To God” (which, however, needs rewriting), and other items under consideration are a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Straw” and a one-acter named “The Homeless.” These are in addition to the already noted plan for a commercial production, in association with John Houseman and Orson Welles, of “The Cradle Will Rock.”
The names of Ruth’s plays helped me get to the root of the High Button Shoes saga.
From what I was able to piece together, in 1956, Ruth saw a notice in The New York Times for a televised production of a play called Bloomer Girl (confusing bloomers and high button shoes totally makes sense to me). It was being televised by NBC. She filed a lawsuit, claiming that her work had been stolen by the producers of Bloomer Girl. It took until 1960 for the suit to go to trial in the Southern District of New York, and Ruth appeared pro se (legalese for defending herself).
I tracked down the judgment and had to read it several times before I understood it.
The alleged offending work is a musical play, “Bloomer Girl,” which was performed from September 1944 through June 1947, in the United States and Canada and was a box office success. It was based on “Evalina,” a play by Dan and Lilith James, written in 1943.
The defendants herein are Fred Saidy, one of the librettists of “Bloomer Girl,” who adapted it from “Evalina,” E.Y. Harburg, the lyricist of the musical compositions of “Bloomer Girl,” John C. Wilson, one of the producers of the musical, and the National Broadcasting Company, Inc., which televised an abbreviated version of it in May 1956. Dan and Lilith James, named as defendants, were not served. However, all individual defendants, whether appearing herein or not, have denied under oath that they knew or ever heard of the plaintiff or her play until the commencement of this suit, almost thirteen years after the original presentation of “Bloomer Girl.”
Plaintiff herself does not claim that she ever met any of the defendants or delivered her play to any of them. She does, however, contend that her play was purloined by one of them and that “Evalina,” on which “Bloomer Girl” is based, “bears resemblance to my play The Lowells * * *, while the said libretto and lyrics [of “Bloomer Girl”] parody and burlesque, and copy the entire substance of my said drama, * * * that the great bulk of the copying from my said work—scene by scene, sequence by sequence and line by line—was done by said librettists and lyricist.”
The plaintiff, since she appears pro se, was permitted to testify in narrative form in support of her charges, and also to meet the defense of laches.
The plaintiff acknowledges that she has no direct evidence of access to her play by any of the defendants. She relies upon what she terms circumstantial evidence, and reasons as follows: In August 1942, after her play had been rejected for production by the Erwin Piscator Theatre Group in New York City, plaintiff left a copy with a young lady on the Group staff, whose name then was, and still is, unknown to her, who stated that she would try to have the play produced at Smith College or some other women’s college. Shortly thereafter, in December of that year, a play by Dan James was produced by the same Group. According to plaintiff, playwrights tend to “hang around” studios or theatres while their plays are in rehearsal. From this premise she infers that James followed custom and was around the studio during rehearsals of his play. She then makes the flat charge that on such an occasion James picked up the copy of “The Lowells,” which she had left with the unknown staff member of the workshop. Thus, without foundation of established fact, inference is built upon inference to reach the conclusion of access. The charge of the theft of the copy of her play by the defendant James is most implausible and fails for lack of proof.
To support her charge, the plaintiff submitted upon the trial a 371-page exhibit entitled “Annotation,” wherein is set forth in one column selected portions of her play, in the second parallel column, alleged similarities an
d identities in “Bloomer Girl” and in the third column, historical references to Mrs. Amelia Bloomer and Bloomerism.
I have studied the Annotation with its alleged pinpointing of copying of plaintiff’s play, and have also read the scripts of plaintiff’s play and “Bloomer Girl.” The plays are wholly dissimilar in plot, theme, incident, language and characters. The dissimilarity is so marked that there is no real basis for comparison. A great many of the alleged similarities or identities which plaintiff purports to find and which are paralleled in the Annotation are strained, forced or nonexistent.
“The Lowells,” as described by the plaintiff, is a serious historical drama of a sociological nature. It is a story of New England factory labor, as well as the beginnings of the feminist movement. Indeed, it is significant that nowhere in the extended Annotation is there a single instance of a copying of a sentence or a paragraph, despite the fact that such is one of her charges.
Finally, great stress is placed upon alleged similarities in environmental factors. Thus, plaintiff points out that her play takes place in Lowell, Massachusetts, a New England industrial town, and the “Bloomer Girl” in an eastern industrial town; that demonstrations or flare-ups occur on the town green in each and that the rather proper boarding house in “The Lowells” is parodied by the former bordello in “Bloomer Girl.” The extremes which mark plaintiff’s attack are evident from one item, typical of many others, which she contends gives substance to her charges. In her play she describes a bedroom in the company-owned boarding house which has colored woodcuts of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” Raphael’s “Madonna” and “The Last Supper,” and then charges as a similarity that “nude pictures play an important part in the wall decor” of the former bordello in which The Lily, the newspaper, is published by Dolly Bloomer.
Purported similarities of a like nature, in support of her charges of access and appropriation, are set forth ad infinitum in the Annotation, but no purpose would be served by a discussion of each. Suffice to say they do not sustain the charges.
The plaintiff has subjected “Bloomer Girl” to a microscopic dissection, but even this labored effort has failed to justify her extravagant charges. The two plays just bear no resemblance—at least not to this average reader. They are so unlike that it is difficult to understand how she could persuade herself that the one was borrowed from the other. Particularly appropriate to the instant case is a statement by our Court of Appeals in an earlier case:
“In order to suppose that these * * * authors should have found in the plaintiff’s play cues for the farfetched similarities which she discovers, one must be obsessed, as apparently unsuccessful playwrights are commonly obsessed, with the inalterable conviction that no situation, no character, no detail of construction in their own plays can find even a remote analogue except as the result of piracy. ‘Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proof of holy writ.’ ”
The Court concludes that upon all the evidence the plaintiff has failed to sustain her burden of proof and that the defendant is entitled to judgment of dismissal upon the merits.
The foregoing shall constitute the Court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law. Morris v. Wilson, 189 F. Supp. 565, (S.D.N.Y. 1960).
Imagine how much time Ruth spent creating an annotated 371-page exhibit and filing the lawsuit. I tried to find the actual documents of the suit but could not. I’m sure it would have made for interesting reading, yet it was clear she had no case.
Again it struck me that the Morris women did things that women weren’t known for doing. They witnessed their mother be institutionalized and concluded that their father was a weak man who had destroyed their family. They forged their own paths and refused to let society dictate what they could and couldn’t do. They went out into the world and pushed for themselves in a society dominated by men, and by many measures they succeeded. Even when they didn’t, their failures were because they had forged their own paths.
Nineteen
Last Wills and Testaments
When Alison, my researcher, was working with me, we tried to track down the sisters’ wills. We learned that if you mailed a request to the county records office, it could take months to get an answer, but if you went in person, you could get the documents you wanted right away. It was a tactic several genealogists had suggested, so I asked Alison if she wanted to come with me to Riverhead, Long Island, where the Suffolk County records are kept, to help me track down the Morris sisters’ wills. She agreed.
A day before we were to go, my child got sick and I had to stay home and be the ministering angel. Alison said she had an uncle she would like to see in the area so she went by herself. Several hours later she texted me that she had gotten copies of Marcella’s, Malvina’s, and Selma’s wills, but that Suffolk County did not have a copy of Ruth’s.
Of course, I was completely unsurprised. Nothing about the Morris sisters’ story was ever nicely packaged and simple. To my amazement, I was less upset about this than I might have been had I known what I was looking for in the wills.
Several days later, a huge package from Alison arrived at my apartment with the wills inside. I flipped through them quickly and then set them aside with other piles of research that had overtaken my desk (and by desk, I mean the living room coffee table). As the months went by, I moved the package from place to place, and then one day I was talking to my friend Ann about trying to figure out how to get the sisters’ death certificates. Ann suggested I contact the Reddit genealogy group, as someone on it might have ideas on how to do that. I had already posted a few questions I couldn’t find answers for on Reddit and had gotten some replies, but nothing that made it seem I’d missed something I should have known, which was the worry that plagued me throughout this process.
When I posted my query about how I might track down the sisters’ death certificates, one responder said, “Too bad you don’t have the wills.”
That was when I became the emoji with the bulging eyes.
I opened the wills and behind the first page of each of them were Marcella’s, Malvina’s, and Selma’s death certificates. And that was when I knew it was bad that Ruth’s wasn’t available.
Selma died in 1991 at age ninety-seven from cardiac asystole after years of coronary artery disease. Malvina died in 1994 at the age of ninety-four of myocardial infarction after years of arteriosclerotic heart disease (she also had emphysema). And Marcella died in 1997 at the age of ninety-five of respiratory arrest and metastatic cancer. Pretty ripe old ages for all of their chain-smoking and eating what they wanted for more than seventy years.
The death certificates also listed their last jobs. Selma sold washing machines at Famous-Barr department store in St. Louis, which had been a very long time ago, before she moved back to New York, but this must have been what Marcella and Malvina remembered. Malvina’s last job was as a bookkeeper at Wanamaker’s department store in New York City, while Marcella’s had been as a self-employed commodities broker.
Selma’s will was pretty thin, and like her two sisters, she specified that she wanted her remains to be cremated. Why had they chosen to be cremated? Cremation wasn’t really done in Judaism at the time, though it is more common today. Was it because none of them had husbands or children or many close relatives or friends? If you don’t think anyone will visit your grave, it might feel pointless or even humiliating to have one. I kept thinking about the Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol when Scrooge sees his grave: A haunting, desperate feeling always comes over me. Then I remembered Clara’s and Guerson’s graves in St. Louis, and all of the graves we saw in Romania, how little attention future generations paid to them and how lonely they seemed. Maybe the sisters had a point.
* * *
• • •
Malvina made her last will a few years before Marcella did, but the wills were nearly identical. They left all of their money to a few family members (
none of whom was me) and the rest of the will was a detailed list of financial holdings. These were the pages that made my eyes glaze over. I really had no idea what I was looking at, and then I realized the last columns were the value of each holding at each sister’s death. When I tried to look at them more carefully, the numbers made me freeze. There were so many aspects of the Morris sisters and their lives that impressed me, and Marcella’s genius with numbers was right at the top of my list. When I was a kid in the 1970s, girls were not encouraged in the areas of science or math or even business. Marcella had been a kid sixty years before I was, when no one was encouraging girls to do anything but get married and have children. Her excelling in the world of high finance—in commodities and investments—could not have been easy. I realized that despite all of the research I’d done about her, I still wasn’t sure of the exact path Marcella took, or the ups and downs she experienced. But looking at her finances at the time of her death showed very clearly one truth: that she was as successful as everyone always said.
Translated into today’s dollars, and after expenses were taken out, Marcella left an estate valued at close to $10 million.
Twenty
Saying Goodbye
When I was a kid, I would pray at night. It had nothing to do with being Jewish or our family’s religiousness, it had to do with seeing kids praying at night on TV. They would kneel by their beds and pray for something really heartbreaking—to get adopted by their foster parents or for the family dog’s cancer to be healed. They never prayed for a trip to Disneyland or anything crass. Being the savvy kid that I was, I figured that I should start praying before I needed something, otherwise I would come across to the Almighty as a sycophantic opportunist.