by Moss Hart
On that crucial Saturday morning, Mr. Pitou instructed me to meet him after the second act of Abie’s Irish Rose and bring with me the telegrams of the grosses of the matinées of our shows on the road. At four thirty, I was waiting in the lobby of the theatre with the telegrams in hand as Mr. and Mrs. Pitou emerged from the auditorium. I stood beside them as Mr. Pitou read through the telegrams, and when he had finished, Mrs. Pitou, who had stood silently by, suddenly spoke up sharply and, with an involuted feminine logic that was unanswerable, said, “Gus, if you put five thousand dollars into this terrible play, don’t you ever dare say no to me when I want a new dress or a new fur coat for the rest of my life.” I like to think of that heartfelt and thoroughly justified sentence as one of the most expensive remarks in theatrical history, for Mr. Pitou did not buy that half-interest in Abie’s Irish Rose for $5,000, and Anne Nichols enjoyed her millions alone. She deserved them, for she sold her house, pawned her jewelry and steadfastly refused to write anything else until her faith in that nonsensical bit of dramaturgy was thoroughly justified. It is extremely foolish, as Mr. Mencken so sagely pointed out, ever to underestimate the low taste of the American public.
Mr. Pitou finally faced up to the inevitable. New writers were engaged to grind out the next season’s output, and the plays were launched on Labor Day as usual—not, I might add, with overpoweringly good results. The Nichols touch, such as it was, was a tried and true one, and the merchandise of this new season ranged from indifferent to just passable. There was one play among them, however, that even the good citizens of Butte, Montana, could not stomach. It starred a young Irish tenor named Joseph Regan—whom Mr. Pitou was grooming to follow in the footsteps of Fiske O’Hara—and was, in a word, unforgivable. It is hard to imagine that out in the vastnesses of the hinterland a play’s reputation would precede it so damningly that it could not get in and out of a town in one night without the inhabitants’ knowing how terrible it was beforehand. Yet know it they did, whether advised by thoughtful friends from neighboring towns who had had the misfortune to have seen it, or through that plain sixth sense which somehow tells good folk to stay away from the theatre—but stay away from it they did in successively greater numbers.
By the time the company had wended its noisome way through Illinois, the receipts were so alarming that Mr. Pitou considered the situation desperate enough to ask me to take plays home with me to read, in the hope of uncovering a new script he could finish out the season with. It was under these circumstances and after reading batch after batch of manuscripts, one more footling and foolish than the other, that the terrible idea occurred to me that was to prove my undoing.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I remember it well. The moment was not accompanied by any such sensible thought as, “Why, I could write a better play than any of these myself.” I was simply bored to distraction by the trash I had been thumbing through all day, and without thinking too much about it, I simply sat down at a battered typewriter that I had rescued from the ash-heap of a Brooklyn relative’s largesse and wrote on a piece of paper, “Act One. Scene One.” By twelve o’clock that night Act One was completed and the next morning I took it into the office with me. Some demon of mischief was already at work, however, for on the title page I did not put my own name, but instead strung together the first three names of some of the boys on the block and listed as the author of the play “Robert Arnold Conrad.” Candor compels me to reveal that the title was The Beloved Bandit, a secret I have arranged to keep rather well through the years. But I do not believe the demands of candor decree that I reveal any more of the play than that.
The next morning I handed the act to Mr. Pitou, and with a proper edge of the casual in my voice said, “I read an act of a play last night that I think is very good. You ought to read it.”
“Who wrote it?” asked Mr. Pitou.
“A fellow named Robert Arnold Conrad,” I replied. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“All right, I’ll read it this evening. Put it in my briefcase,” he said. And that was that.
I do not believe I gave it even a passing thought during the rest of that day or evening. I’m certain to this day that I meant it to be no more than a mild joke between us to enliven the drudgery we were going through in the search for the new vehicle. But I was utterly unprepared for what happened the following morning when Mr. Pitou entered the office. With his hat still on his head, he slapped the act down on the desk, turned to me triumphantly and said, “We found it. Don’t have to look any further. This is it. If the second and third acts hold up anything like as well, we’re home. When can I get the second act?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I replied, too stunned to know what I was saying.
“Great,” said Mr. Pitou. “Take a letter to Mr. Conrad—will you be seeing him tonight?”
“I guess so,” I replied, truthfully enough I suppose.
“Well, if you don’t,” said Mr. Pitou, still under the spell of being out of the woods at last, “mail it special delivery so that he gets it first thing in the morning. I want to point out a few things he ought to do in the second act.”
Still stunned, I sat down at the typewriter and solemnly took the long letter to Robert Arnold Conrad that Mr. Pitou poured forth. Why I did not tell Mr. Pitou the truth then and there escapes me even now. Perhaps I was too startled by his completely unexpected enthusiasm to puncture the bubble so quickly, or it may be I was suddenly titillated by the idea of carrying the joke through to the end; but whatever it was that possessed me to keep silent in those first few minutes set in motion a chain of events that I was powerless afterward to stop. By the time he signed the letter and handed it over to me, I knew I was doomed to go on.
That night I went home and wrote Act II. It took me until almost five o’clock in the morning to do it, but unbelievable as it may sound, I finished it that night. Bleary-eyed, I handed it to Mr. Pitou the next morning. He promptly turned off the telephone and read it at once. This time his enthusiasm was even greater.
“Mouse,” he said, “telephone your friend and ask him to come and see me this afternoon, or give me his number—I’d like to speak to him myself.”
Panic-stricken, I managed to blurt out, “Oh, he’s very seldom in his office, Mr. Pitou. He’s in court most of the day. He’s a lawyer.” Quick thinking and an unholy gift of invention seem to spring to the aid of all liars at moments like these.
“Well, ask him to come in and see me tomorrow,” said Mr. Pitou after a moment. “And when do you think he’ll have the third act finished? Did he say anything to you about it?”
“No, he didn’t,” I replied a little haltingly, “but I guess he could have it for you by tomorrow.”
“Fine, fine,” said Mr. Pitou. “He writes fast, just what we need right now. Better take a letter and give it to him tonight in case you can’t get him on the phone.”
And there poured forth under my panic-frozen fingers another four-page single-spaced letter from Mr. Pitou. Glassy-eyed, I watched him sign it, and in a moment of sweet clarity the thought flashed through my mind: “You’ve got to tell him now.” But before I could screw up sufficient courage to speak, Mr. Pitou spoke instead.
“You know, Mouse,” he said, a satisfied smile on his lips, “I don’t often go around giving myself pats on the back, but I think my letter helped Mr. Conrad. I wish I had kept a copy of it. As a matter of fact, I wish you’d make a copy of this one right now. I’d like to take it home and show it to Mrs. Pitou tonight. I’ve been telling the family how you discovered this young fellow just in the nick of time.”
That did it, of course. To confess to Mr. Pitou that he had been writing these wonderful letters to his office boy was bad enough; but to make him out an utter fool in the eyes of his family was something I could not face. Any kind of delay would give me time to think—something was bound to happen to make that terrible moment of confession a little less awful than it seemed to me just then.
That night I went home and tackled t
he third act. Alas, third acts are notoriously tough even for hardened veterans, and Robert Arnold Conrad, a tired and sorry spectacle by this time, did not finish the act that night. The next day another and still longer letter was tolled off to Mr. Conrad—longer, I believe, because Mr. Pitou was daily growing more proud of his new-found prowess as a teacher of play-writing, the while I sat there miserably taking it all down. During the day there was again the same insistence on Mr. Pitou’s part of wanting to see Mr. Conrad or at least talk to him on the telephone, and I fended this off as best I could by muttering, “He’s on a case—in court—he’ll be finished in a couple of days.” I was almost too tired to care. All I wanted was to finish the third act, tell Mr. Pitou the truth, and have it over with. All I cared about now was not losing my wonderful job as a consequence of this miserable joke. I silently prayed for a propitious moment for telling him. If only I could get that act finished quickly, so that there need be no more letters, each one of which, of course, could only make him feel more foolish as he remembered sitting there and dictating them to me, all might not be lost.
That night I went to sleep after dinner and slept until midnight. Then I got up, sat down at the typewriter, and did not get up until I had typed “The curtain falls.” It was eight o’clock in the morning. Now that it was done and I could tell Mr. Pitou at last, I felt strangely awake and refreshed. I could hardly wait to get down to the office and face him with the truth at last. When I walked in at nine o’clock Mr. Pitou was already there. I was surprised to see him there so early, for he usually arrived at the office between ten and ten thirty and he looked immensely pleased with himself into the bargain. Oh, God, not another letter! I thought. I must tell him immediately. He spoke while I was still in the doorway.
“Got that third act?” he said. I nodded and handed it to him.
“Mr. Pitou,” I began—but I got no further than that.
“Get your friend on the phone right away,” he interrupted, “the damnedest thing has happened. I showed these two acts to Mrs. Henry B. Harris last night, and you know what? She says this play is too good for the road—she wants to co-produce it with me and do it on Broadway. I’m going to bring the company back to New York, rehearse the play here, open in Rochester, play Chicago for four weeks, and then we’ll bring it in. It will be my first New York production, so get your friend on the phone right away and tell him to come up here and sign the contract—I’m going downstairs to the booking office to book the time.”
I stared numbly after him as he passed me in the doorway. After a moment, I sat down in a chair and tried hard to think, but I could not think; I could only keep looking around the office as though I were seeing it for the last time. I was still sitting there transfixed in the chair when Mr. Pitou returned from the booking office.
“What time is Mr. Conrad coming in?” he asked. “The theatres are all set. What time is he coming in?”
“Two o’clock,” I replied, promptly and automatically, as though somebody else were using my voice.
“Fine,” said Mr. Pitou, “let’s get going—we’ve got a lot to do before lunch and I want to read that third act before he gets here.”
The enormity of what I had done settled over me like a suit of mail. It is bad enough to make a man look foolish within the confines of his family, but quite another thing to make him a figure of ridicule outside, for I had no doubt that he had told Mrs. Harris the whole story and had showed her his letters to Robert Arnold Conrad as well. I stared so hard at Mr. Pitou that he finally became aware of it and said, “What is it? Were you going to say something?” I shook my head. There are certain moments when the process of thinking is frozen, when the ability to act, speak or move is completely and totally paralyzed. I could no more have told Mr. Pitou the truth right then, or even have given him the correct time had he asked me to, if my life had depended on it. I took down the telegrams, went through the morning’s mail, and did the various other office chores without speaking and actually without quite knowing what I was doing.
When Mr. Pitou went out for lunch, taking the third act with him, I again sat down in the chair and stared unseeingly around the office. I was still sitting there when Mr. Pitou returned from lunch a little before two o’clock.
“It’s just right,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “He certainly read my letters carefully.” He looked at his watch. “You said he was coming in at two o’clock, didn’t you?” I nodded. “I’m kind of anxious to meet him now,” he said, as he picked up the Railway Guide and settled back to wait.
I sat silently in the chair and watched the moments drag by. Finally he put the Railway Guide back on the desk and looked at his watch unbelievingly. “Why, it’s three o’clock,” he said. “Where is he?”
This time I had to speak—tell the last lie to fend off approaching doom if only for a little while longer. “He must have been held up in court, Mr. Pitou. Sometimes they don’t recess until four o’clock,” I said, pulling out a legal term from God knows where.
For the first time Mr. Pitou looked hard at me. He had, of course, no suspicion of the truth, but he sensed something was wrong. He rose from the desk and reached for his hat and coat. “Get your coat, Mouse,” he said, “we’ll go down to his office and wait for him, if we have to wait there all day. I’m bringing a company back from Omaha and I’ve got Rochester and Chicago booked. I’ve got to have those contracts signed. What’s the matter with him, anyway? Come on, let’s go.” This last was added rather sharply, for I still sat there immobilized.
Somehow I put on my hat and coat and followed him to the elevator. I knew that I must tell him before we reached the lobby; I realized the terrible moment had come at last—for if we got to the street and he asked me for the address of the office where Robert Arnold Conrad worked, what in the world would I say? The moment had arrived—there could be no more delay. I was trapped and I knew it. We got into the elevator and it started down. I made my revelation between the eighth and fifth floors as the elevator shot downward, and I remember every word I spoke, for the two short declarative sentences I managed to get out had an enviable economy and a dramatic brevity that I was not able to appreciate fully until long afterward.
“Mr. Pitou,” I began, “I have a confession to make.”
Mr. Pitou turned and looked at me a little wonderingly, as well he might have, for my voice had gone at least two octaves higher and seemed even to my own ears to be coming through an echo chamber some great distance away. I swallowed and got the rest of it out.
“Mr. Pitou,” I said, “I am Robert Arnold Conrad.”
The elevator doors opened and we both stepped out into the lobby. In silence we walked the length of the lobby and out into 42nd Street. Only then did Mr. Pitou give any indication that he had heard me.
“Mouse,” he said at last, “I don’t know whether you know it or not, but when an author writes his first play he doesn’t get the regular royalties.”
I could hardly believe my ears. “You mean—it’s all right, Mr. Pitou?” I faltered.
“Certainly it’s all right,” he replied, “as long as you understand that a new author doesn’t get the regular royalties. We’ll have to make out new contracts. I guess I’d better go over and see Mrs. Harris and tell her the good news.”
He patted me on the shoulder paternally, smiled down at me, and started off briskly toward 44th Street. I stood stock-still for a moment, and my first emotion, if such it may be called, was one of hunger. Suddenly I seemed to be literally starving. I could not remember having eaten anything at all for the last three days. I walked to the Nedick’s orange-juice stand on the corner and ate one frankfurter after another, until all my money except the subway fare I needed to get home ran out. I must have eaten at least ten frankfurters, for the counterman finally said, “You’ll be sick, buddy—better knock off.”
He was right. I just managed to get back to the office and into the bathroom in time. My debut as a playwright was a portent for the futu
re: I have been sick in the men’s room every opening night of a play of mine in theatres all over the country.
* * *
The next day I was officially presented to Mrs. Harris, and my dual career as office boy and built-in playwright swung into full gear. It did not seem at all extraordinary to me that I should go about my duties as office boy in the morning, emerge as playwright in the afternoon, then revert to the role of office boy again at the end of the day: closing the windows, emptying the wastebaskets, stamping the mail and then taking it to the post office on my way to the subway. Neither Mr. Pitou nor I myself, for that matter, seemed to feel that any great change of status had taken place, which was exactly what I had prayed for. My relief that I still retained my job was so great that had Mr. Pitou asked me, he could easily have had the play for no royalties at all.
By the same token, the news at home that I had written a play was received with hardly a lift of an eyebrow. I think that my mother and father, utterly unaware of the ways of the theatre, simply concluded it was some sort of homework I had done in the evenings that I had not finished during the day at the office.
Only Mrs. Henry B. Harris seemed to gather a secret amusement from the situation, and she treated me from our first meeting on with a grave outward courtesy that was belied only by the twinkle in her eye. Mrs. Harris was rich, racy, colorful and of infinite good humor. She was a survivor of the Titanic disaster. Her husband, Henry B. Harris, the producer of such famous plays as The Lion and the Mouse, having perished in that tragedy, she now owned the Hudson Theatre on 44th Street, a yacht and a stable of horses. She mentioned to Mr. Pitou at our first meeting, I remember, that she had just turned down an offer of one million dollars for the Hudson Theatre, and I thought of this moment years later, when I heard that Mrs. Harris had come upon hard times.
Her inordinate liking for The Beloved Bandit was something I could not fathom then, nor can I understand it now, for she was theatrically shrewd and by no means a fool about plays in general—another proof, as though one were needed, that quite sensible people make fools of themselves about plays, with a relentless inevitability that fills half the theatres in New York each season with pure rubbish. In fact, her faith in The Beloved Bandit imbued us all with a foolish optimism and a ridiculous impatience to see the curtain rise as quickly as possible. Every afternoon we met in the large, beautifully appointed office above the Hudson Theatre, and once the director had been engaged, casting proceeded at a furious pace.