by Moss Hart
When the elevator door opened, it would not have surprised me at all to see Marilyn Miller step out on the arm of Florenz Ziegfeld; but it was empty. I got in and managed to blurt out, “Eighth floor, please.” As the elevator shot upward I sniffed delightedly. I am not certain that it is so, but it has always seemed to me that theatres, both backstage and front, have a very special odor of their own. It is an odor as definite to my nostrils as the smell of a hospital or a ship. I have always been immediately conscious of it, and I was aware of it then.
When I got out at the eighth floor I hesitated. What in the world was I going to say to George? My sudden appearance would be certain to plunge him into a paroxysm of shyness. But I was determined to go through with it. I opened the door marked “Augustus Pitou, Theatrical Enterprises” and walked in. I recognized Aunt Belle immediately in the tiny outer office, just as George had described it. She sat typing fiercely, her head bent over the machine. Without looking up and before the door had even closed behind me, she barked out, “No casting today. Come back in two weeks.” She finished the letter, ripped it out of the roller, and as she inserted the envelope she spoke again, still without looking up. “Didn’t you hear me? No casting today.”
“May I speak to George, please?” I said.
“George isn’t here,” she answered, her fingers never stopping, her head still bent over the typewriter. It had never occurred to me that George might be out on some errand. If I left now, without even a glimpse of the office, I would have to start looking for a new job, and the chance would most certainly not occur soon again.
“Could I wait for him, please?” I pleaded.
“He won’t be here any more. He quit today.”
“He quit? You mean he gave up the job?” My voice must have had a note of such incredulity in it that Aunt Belle looked up for the first time.
“Who are you? A friend of George’s?”
I nodded. “We live next door to each other.”
“Well, he quit,” said Aunt Belle. “Try and do good for your relatives!”
She glared at me in annoyance, and as I still stood there staring at her, she said, “Well, good-bye. I’m busy. Maybe he’ll explain to you why he walked out of an easy job that pays fifteen dollars a week.” Her head bent over the machine again.
In a dazzling moment, I saw the finger of fate beckoning me on. I took a deep breath and plunged. “Miss Belle,” I said, “could I have the job? I just quit my old job today, too.”
The typewriter stopped and she looked at me again. “Sure, why not? Save putting an ad in the paper, and I got no more nephews, thank God. Go in and see Mr. Pitou and ask him if it’s all right if you’re the new office boy. Don’t tell him you’re a friend of George’s—make like you just came around looking for a job.”
I stood there immobilized.
“Go ahead,” she said irritably, “you want the job or don’t you?”
Did I want the job!
I walked past her and knocked on Mr. Pitou’s door. It seemed an unconscionable time until a voice said, “Come in.” Mr. Pitou was seated with his back to the door, his head bent over a long booking-route sheet, and like Aunt Belle, he did not look up. In fact, he did not so much as glance at me throughout the entire interview, if such it may be termed.
“What is it?” he said, after a long moment.
“Miss Belle sent me in to see you, Mr. Pitou,” I replied. “Is it all right for me to be the new office boy?” Again I waited. Mr. Pitou seemed not to have heard and I did not dare to speak again. Suppose he wanted someone who had worked in a theatrical office before; or suppose he had a nephew himself? My voice quavered a bit as I finally felt impelled to break the silence.
“I’m sure I could do it,” I said, “because I’m crazy about the theatre.” Fortunately this remark was lost on Mr. Pitou, for at that moment he seemed to be having trouble finding a paper on his desk.
“What?” he said.
He paused, and for a terrible moment I thought a waft of my unmistakable aroma had reached him. He lifted his head and seemed to be sniffing the air. I moved away and stood by the open window. He sneezed—and my heart stopped pounding. It started to pound again when he spoke.
“Fifteen dollars a week,” he said. “Could you start tomorrow morning?”
“I could start now, sir,” I said. I had difficulty not shouting it at him.
“That’s good,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Moss Hart,” I replied.
“Mouse?” he said, mispronouncing the name immediately. “Take this booking sheet down to George Tyler. He’s on the fourth floor. And take this note up to Goldie, Mr. Ziegfeld’s secretary—that’s on the floor above this. And wait for an answer in both places.”
He handed me the booking sheet and the letter without looking up, already lost in what I came to know as his daily bible, the Railway Guide.
I closed the door behind me. “I got it, Miss Belle!” This time I actually did shout. “I got it!”
She looked up, a little startled. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I got the job,” I said, waving the papers in my hand.
“Well, that’s good,” said Miss Belle. “You can run out first and get me a container of coffee and some aspirin. My head is splitting.”
I did not realize until much later how fitting it was, that I should make my entry into the theatre with a container of black coffee in one hand and an aspirin in the other, but the future has seldom held the same roseate glow as it did for me at that particular moment.
* * *
As it turned out, I couldn’t have contrived a better beginning in the theatre than to start as an office boy for Augustus Pitou. True, Mr. Pitou was not exactly a “Broadway” producer, but his was a theatrical office nonetheless, and it was in the New Amsterdam Theatre Building, smack among the great ones, to boot.
Augustus Pitou, Jr. (to give him his full name), and his father before him, was known as the “King of the One Night Stands.” Mr. Pitou, Sr., had long since passed on, but he had left to Augustus Pitou, Jr., a stable of stars, a map of the United States, the Official Railway Guide, and the route sheets. The stars were: Chauncey Olcott, Fiske O’Hara, May Robson, Elsa Ryan, Joseph Regan and Gerald Griffin. With the possible exception of Chauncey Olcott, Fiske O’Hara and May Robson, I doubt if the theatregoing public of New York had ever heard of them; but to the residents of Fond du Lac and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, their annual one-night stand was an event not to be missed.
Each year, beginning on Labor Day, six companies with six different stars spread out over the land, bearing the imprint “Augustus Pitou, Jr., presents…” and from Labor Day until the following June 30, they played engagements of one night each in hamlets scattered north, east, south and west. Occasionally, in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, they settled in for the luxury of a three-day or a week’s stand; but other than that, it was: “Tonight, Huron, Michigan … tomorrow night, Green Bay.”
They left for the railroad station as the curtain fell or on the six o’clock train out the next morning, rode all day, and got to the next theatre barely in time to slap on some make-up and take their places on the stage. When one considers that Fiske O’Hara invariably sang ten or twelve songs during the course of his performance each evening, and that May Robson—already nearly sixty—was duly expected, as the star of her production, never to leave the stage for more than a few moments, the conclusion that a more rugged breed of actors existed in those days is inescapable.
True, they complained a good deal, almost daily. A letter would arrive at the office from one star or another denouncing this season’s bookings; for Mr. Pitou, in spite of his wizardry with the Railway Guide, sometimes cut things awfully close to the knuckle. There would be a week now and then when the poor creatures would never get near a bed at all, but would sleep sitting up during the day on the train and exist on chocolate bars and apples. In spite of this, the office was always crowded with act
ors, eager to take the long tour—a further proof, if one is needed, that the profession was quite as lunatic then as it is now.
Nor can I ever recall an instance of May Robson’s or Fiske O’Hara’s missing a performance. And, of course, there was no such thing as an understudy. When the good folk of Butte, Montana, bought their tickets each year to see May Robson, it would have been a brave stage manager indeed who could have come out in front of the curtain to announce that the understudy was going on that night. Sick or well, exhausted or hungry, the curtain went up every night from September until the following June 30, and that was that.
More astonishing still was the fact that one single playwright wrote all the plays. Each separate star had a new vehicle tailored for him each season, and one person executed every one of them. Her name was Anne Nichols. It was a sad day, indeed—nay, a cataclysmic one—for Mr. Pitou when Abie’s Irish Rose miraculously turned into a success. It ruined him in more ways than one; and the triumph of that incredible play was to change my own fate considerably, too.
At this happy moment, however, Augustus Pitou was safely enthroned forever, or so it seemed, as King of the One Night Stands. Each evening as he left the office he would write on a small slip of paper his estimate of the evening’s receipts of each of the shows, fold it over and hand it to me. And sure enough, the following morning when I opened the telegrams sent in by the various company managers from all parts of the country, Mr. Pitou’s shrewd guess would be right almost to the very dollar. He even knew how much a hog-calling contest in Sheboygan would affect the receipts if the show played Sheboygan the same evening; or if a parade of the Sons of Erin in St. Louis would keep them outdoors too late to get them to the theatre to see Fiske O’Hara. He would smile happily at the telegrams, riffle through his mail, attend to such details as needed immediate attention, and then settle back contentedly behind the Railway Guide and the booking sheet.
It was the one and only thing he really enjoyed doing in a business that he hated. It took me a little time to realize this and at first I could not believe it. But Mr. Pitou loathed the theatre almost more than George did, if such a thing were possible. Indeed, the one thing that made it bearable for him at all was the fact that once the companies were launched on Labor Day, he need never lay eyes on another actor again for six whole months and could nestle down with the mosaic-like task of putting together next year’s bookings.
As June came on, and with it the approach of the returning companies, he grew increasingly nervous; and during July and August, the time of casting and rehearsing the next season’s output—which also meant dealing with the stars themselves—he was at his wits’ end. But by mid-September he was himself again. The white-covered Railway Guide appeared once more, and the voice of the turtle—and of May Robson and Fiske O’Hara—was heard throughout the land.
I have thought it necessary to describe at some length the particular kind of theatrical enterprise Mr. Pitou engaged in, for it illuminates how deeply the theatre has changed in a comparatively short period of time, and it makes quickly apparent the fact that I was still a somewhat far cry from being entangled with “Broadway.” Yet this first active attachment to the theatre, removed though it was from the larger world of Times Square, had the effect on me of that first stiff drink on a reformed alcoholic.
There may have been more efficient office boys than I was, but there was certainly not a happier one. Though I was not expected to open the office until nine o’clock each morning, I got there a full hour before—not through any sense of industry on my part, but simply because I delighted in just being there. Likewise, when Mr. Pitou left to take the 5:30 train to Bayside, Long Island, I was free to go also; but I seldom left the office before seven o’clock. Though I never learned in two and a half years how to stack skins correctly in their respective racks, I was able with ridiculous ease to use the complicated Railway Guide and lay out a booking route like a professional in no time at all. Even the dullest aspects of the job I found enjoyable.
There was one thing, however, that I could not seem to learn, try as I would, and it almost cost me my precious job. I could not for the life of me say, “No casting today. Come back in two weeks,” to the stream of actors that poured into the office. I had never actually seen an actor before, other than on the stage, and now that I was suddenly face to face with these wonderful beings, it seemed literally impossible for me to turn them away. Instead, I first asked them to sit down and wait for a while—perhaps Mr. Pitou could see them later. Then I discussed the various plays that Mr. Pitou would be doing and the possibilities of parts they might be suitable for, and while they blissfully waited we discussed everything they had done on the stage to date, from tentative beginnings clean through to minor triumphs and eventual hopes. It may be easily imagined what effect this unorthodox reception had on a people long used to being buffeted in and out of offices or summarily dismissed.
Within a few days the news was about that Mr. Pitou would see anyone and everyone, that he was about to invade Broadway (a rumor for which I was not entirely blameless), and that a fine array of choice parts and splendid salaries awaited even newcomers with little or no experience. The consequence was that the office was jammed throughout the entire day.
Mr. Pitou fought his way in in the morning, and what was worse still, he had to fight his way out every time he wanted to go to the bathroom, which was down the hall. Mr. Pitou, a slow-moving man, did not at first connect me with what he took to be a sudden, bewildering phenomenon or at the least a mistake on the part of the hapless actors; but quickly enough it dawned on him that I was the culprit. I was called in and sternly ordered to clear the outside office and keep it cleared. I did my best, but in spite of myself, the words, “No casting today, come back in two weeks,” somehow always seemed to emerge as an invitation to sit down and talk about the theatre.
Finally, one morning Miss Belle announced tartly, “Mr. Pitou says that if the office is not empty when he goes to the bathroom today, we get a new office boy.”
Thus ended forever, I should imagine, the last dim spark of gallantry among theatrical office boys. I managed under that dire threat to keep the office free of actors from then on, but I found it hard indeed to say “no” and turn them away. I still do.
Even now, by far the most difficult aspect of a production of mine which calls for a large cast is always the weeks of casting, and if it is a musical, the auditions. I still find it fairly agonizing to walk into a theatre or office jammed with actors and know that of the fifty and sometimes one hundred or so eagerly awaiting, no more than two or three at best will even get a chance to read for the part, though they must all be talked to or listened to and given some sort of reason for the rejection.
I know I have maddened the various producers I have worked with through the years by the amount of time I seem to take in saying “no” to actors who are obviously wrong for the part at first glance. Yet I persist in believing that the particular way one says “no” to an actor on a certain day, may very well give him the courage to go on in a hazardous and difficult profession.
It is equally true that after listening to a wearisome lot of people with no talent whatever for the theatre, men and women who would be better advised to marry at once or sell knitted ties in a haberdashery, I feel far sorrier for myself than I do for them. But there can be no denying the fact that offering one’s physical self for inspection, exposing one’s talent to the test of standing alone on a bare stage and speaking out into the void of a dark and empty auditorium, is a harsh and cruel way of pursuing one’s life work.
I have always marveled at how actors survive, year after year, this inhuman aspect of their profession. Of course, stars and established players are not usually asked to read for a part; but in the main, most actors accept the necessity for doing so. It is unfortunately a necessity, for most authors and directors, myself included, insist on a reading, sometimes even with leading players, before deciding definitely on the actor.
For the moment, nevertheless, I had to learn to say a brisk and authoritative “no” to all unfortunates who opened the office door, and once an open path to the bathroom down the hall was secured, I quickly became indispensable to Mr. Pitou. I am ashamed to relate that within six months’ time I displaced the formidable Miss Belle and became his secretary myself. This was not quite as ruthless as it may appear to be, since Miss Belle worked for two other entrepreneurs in the adjoining office as well as for Mr. Pitou, though I doubt she thought any the more kindly of me for taking over her job. I did not give too much thought to her feelings, however, for by this time a whole new life had opened for me.
I had early on joined the confederation of office boys who worked on 42nd Street, a sharp and knowing crew, the main by-product of whose jobs was the free tickets they dispensed to their bosses’ shows: Freddie Kohlmar, of A. H. Woods’ office; Jimmy, of the Selwyns’; Irving Morrison, of George Tyler’s; the famous Goldie, of the Ziegfeld office; and a score of others. I could offer them no free tickets on my own, since the closest our shows ever came to New York was Albany, but I managed little favors, nevertheless, and very soon I was wallowing in what was for me ambrosia. In the first six months of my tenure with Mr. Pitou, and for the next year and a half afterward, I went solemnly to the theatre every evening, with the exception of Saturday nights, when the free list was suspended even for the flops.