Act One

by Moss Hart

  Mr. Pitou, a notably slow-moving man, moved with remarkable swiftness in certain areas, and the area of his pocketbook was one that always galvanized him into immediate action. If the result of The Beloved Bandit was the loss of my job, what lay ahead for me? The fur vault again? I knew I would never go back to that; but I knew too, more surely than I had ever known before, how hard come by was the job of office boy in a theatrical office. The prospect of landing another was almost impossible and I did not delude myself on that score. The lucky ones who had the jobs, relatives or no, held on to them for dear life.

  It is noticeable, I think, that anyone who has tasted the heady wine of the theatre, even on its merest fringes or in the most menial of its jobs, is cut off from the outside world forever after. The world of the theatre is as closed a tribe and as removed from other civilian worlds as a Gypsy encampment, and those who enter it are spoiled for anything else and are tainted with its insidious lure for the rest of their lives. I could not or would not bring myself face to face with the fact that by this time next week I might well be a stockroom clerk or a messenger boy, and the world in which I had so fragile a toe hold would be closed to me once more—this time, for all I knew, for good and all.

  I walked up and down the alley, turning over and over in my mind every avenue and possibility of escape and refusing with a mixture of stubbornness and rage to accept the fact that there was none. At eleven o’clock I started back to the hotel. I knocked on the door of Mrs. Harris’ suite and walked in without waiting for an answer, for now there was no need to delay whatever might be in store for me.

  The setting and the atmosphere were identical with the first conference in Rochester, but Mrs. Harris, to her everlasting credit, was valiant in defeat—a defeat which even her optimistic spirit had to concede was final and absolute.

  “You just missed seeing me trying to eat my hat, Moss,” she called to me as I came in. She laughed and crossed to where Mr. Pitou was slumped down in the depths of the sofa. “Gus,” she said, “we guaranteed the theatre here for four weeks, didn’t we?” He nodded without looking up at her. “Four thousand a week, wasn’t it?” she asked. Again Mr. Pitou nodded, as though naming the actual amount would cause him acute physical pain.

  “Well, Gus,” she went on, “my suggestion is we pay the theatre off and close here tomorrow night. What would you say our total loss on the show would be, Gus? With the loss up to date and the guarantee and bringing the company back to New York and paying them off?”

  Mr. Pitou took an envelope and pencil out of his pocket and slowly covered the back of it with figures. He seemed to take a long time about it, and while he scribbled, no one spoke. When he had finished, he looked up and laid the envelope on the sofa beside him.

  “Well, how much is it, Gus?” Mrs. Harris asked a little impatiently.

  His reply was so faint that Mrs. Harris had to ask him to repeat it, and when he did, the words emerged jerkily like a sore tooth being yanked by an inept dentist. “Forty-five thousand dollars,” he said.

  I swallowed painfully. I had started it all in a kitchen in the Bronx on a quiet Sunday afternoon!

  “Can we leave the scenery here?” asked Mrs. Harris.

  “Nope,” said the company manager, speaking up for the first time. “We gotta cart it away from the theatre.”

  “Cart it away where?” asked Mrs. Harris.

  “To the city dump,” he replied. “Then you wait for a windy day on the dump and burn it. Gotta pay for that, too.”

  Mrs. Harris laughed. “Couldn’t we find out where Ashton Stevens lives and leave it on his doorstep?” she said. And as an afterthought, she added, “That set and a dramatic critic deserve each other.”

  Priestly Morrison crossed to where I was standing and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’d spare myself reading Ashton Stevens in the morning, Moss,” he said kindly. “Anyway, you’ll be coming back here with another one some day and make him eat his words, won’t he, Gus?”

  Mr. Pitou did not reply. He rose from the sofa and made his way slowly toward the door. His voice, when he finally spoke, was muted and forlorn. “Good night,” he said, “I’m going to bed.” He signaled to me from the doorway to follow him. I murmured a good night and closed the door after me.

  I stood beside him in silence as we waited for the elevator and in silence he walked down the corridor to the room I was to share with him. He’s waiting till we get inside, I thought, then he’ll tell me.

  Mr. Pitou unlocked the door and threw the key with something of a crash on the glass-top bureau; still in silence, he began to undress. There is something terribly disconcerting in seeing your employer, the man who holds your destiny in his hands, stand before you in long winter underwear. It is an article of apparel that can rob any situation of dignity and create an immediate atmosphere of absurdity. Fearful as I was of what he was about to say, I was suffused with so great an embarrassment that I did not catch the first few words of what he said when finally he spoke. To my surprise he was talking not about The Beloved Bandit but about the receipts of his other shows on the road.

  “May Robson played to under a thousand in Flint, Michigan, Saturday night; and Fiske O’Hara played to four hundred in Saginaw,” he was saying. “I don’t know what the hell is happening. This is the height of the season, they never played to those kinds of grosses before.” He went on to list the grosses of the other shows and the possible adverse conditions in each town, all of which he knew intimately, that might account for the alarming drop in receipts. But as he talked on, his bewilderment only grew greater, for there appeared to be no logical answer to the over-all slump.

  What was happening, of course, though neither of us knew it then and the final grim answer was not to be a certainty until a few years later, was that “the road”—that staple and necessary adjunct of the theatre’s lifeline in America—“the road” as the theatre knew it and counted on it at that time was disappearing with frightening swiftness. Talking pictures had not yet arrived, of course, but the silent movies and the magic of early radio were making enormous inroads on the cultural habits of theatregoing America. Also, the tremendous impact of the mass-produced automobile and the fact that communication between peoples in small towns was suddenly obtainable and with ease, all played a part, I suppose, in the hidden revolution that was to destroy both the road and that deeply entrenched kingpin of family entertainment, vaudeville. With their disappearance went a way of theatrical life and an irreplaceable training ground for young actors, for shoddy as some of the fare may have been, it provided a testing ground for actors that no school of acting, however high-minded its purpose, ever came close to. There is no such thing as a substitute for acting before an audience, no matter how grubby the conditions may be, and with the passing of the road and vaudeville, a large and invaluable audience disappeared forever, too.

  It occurred neither to Mr. Pitou nor apparently to anyone else in the theatre of that time that what they were witnessing was not a passing flurry of bad business but the end of an era, and the fearsome figures of A. L. Erlanger and E. F. Albee continued to rule over a domain that had already vanished.

  What occurred to me quite sharply, listening to Mr. Pitou talk on and on, was the fact that he was not mentioning either The Beloved Bandit or myself. It took a few minutes for the full import of this to sink in, and then a great weight seemed to lift from my chest. It could mean, of course, only one thing—I was safe! My precarious footing in the theatre was still intact. I made a solemn vow to myself never again to type the words “Act One” on a piece of white paper as long as I lived. And my relief was so enormous that involuntarily I gave a huge yawn right in Mr. Pitou’s face.

  He looked at his watch and sighed. “It’s almost four o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Let’s get to bed. I want to get the first train out of here tomorrow.”

  I slept soundly that night for the first time in a week.

  Mr. Pitou was not the most cheerful of companions on the jour
ney back to New York, but nothing could dampen my good spirits. Even Ashton Stevens’ notice of The Beloved Bandit, which I read surreptitiously in the men’s toilet on the train, failed to depress me unduly. He had not actually written a criticism of the play. He had run, instead, an obituary notice bordered in black, which began: “There died at the Adelphi Theatre last night…” and then went on to list the name of the play, the author and the actors. It was a cruel joke, of course, but I understood his irritation, which, I was forced to admit, was not entirely unmerited. Strangely enough, it didn’t seem to matter very much. Nothing about The Beloved Bandit seemed to matter much now as long as I still had my job.

  That foolish illusion was dispelled as the train roared into Grand Central. As the lights flicked on, Mr. Pitou, who had seemed to be dozing in his chair, opened his eyes and spoke.

  “The way things are, Mouse,” he said slowly, “with business on the road so bad and all, I’ll go back to sharing Miss Belle as secretary and have John, the elevator man, empty the wastepaper baskets and mail the letters.”

  I stared at him for a moment and then said, “Oh.”

  People were beginning to rise from their seats now, and the porter was between us getting the bags down from the racks overhead. I called across to Mr. Pitou, “Is it all right if I come up to see you once in a while—in case things change?”

  “Oh, sure,” he replied, “do that.” He gathered up his things and started toward the door. “I’m going to have to make a run for it as soon as the train stops,” he said over his shoulder. “I think I can just make my train to Bayside, so good-bye.”

  I watched him make his way toward the door. By the time I reached the platform he was lost in the swirl of people heading for the stairway. I stood for a few moments uncertainly, then I picked up my suitcase and headed for the stairway and the subway back to the Bronx.

  NEW YORK is not a city to return to in defeat. Its walls of granite and glass are not inclined to reassure the fearful or console the despairing. I love the city of my birth and I always return to it with a lift of the heart. When I am away from it for any stretch of time, I grow querulous and unhappy, and with the real ache of the homesick I long to get back to it. But on this, my first return, the city seemed forbidding and impregnable. For the first time I felt as so many must feel who come from the little towns and hamlets to challenge the city—I felt swallowed up by it, erased; and I felt for the first time a hopelessness, a wretched awareness that the best thing I could do was to forget the theatre and take the first job offered to me tomorrow morning.

  I think my deep and undying hatred of the New York subway stems from the ride home that night. I had always hated it, of course, as do most of its unfortunate straphangers; but it became to me that evening a symbol of all that I hated and a portent of the endless years stretching ahead of riding back at the end of each day to the Bronx. All the bitterness I felt seemed to be embodied in its noise, its filth, and etched indelibly in the lines of the faces of the close-packed people all around me. I walked down the steps of the subway station at Jackson Avenue, and as I started the three-block trudge home, I began to think with some degree of clarity for the first time since Mr. Pitou had revealed his stunning bit of news.

  I decided not to tell my father or mother that I was without a job. That could well wait until the end of the week when I might have some other job and the blow would be softened by the sight of another pay check. I had had enough of bad news for one day without bringing more of it home with me. I knew, too, that the fact that my mother and father would completely fail to understand how much the loss of my job meant to me, would only add to the sense of hopelessness within me that was already heavier than the suitcase I carried in my hand.

  Suddenly I stopped, astonished at the sight of my father sitting in the window of the small cigar store about a block from where we lived. It was a little hole-in-the-wall cigar store run by a Cuban man and his wife, and there was usually another little Cuban man sitting in the window from morning until late at night, endlessly cutting and rolling tobacco leaves into cheap cigars. It had been a grim family jest for my father to remark when things were particularly bad, “Well, if things get any worse, I’ll have to go to work in the window around the corner.” They had never quite come to that low pass, and I always shuddered a little at the prospect of that public humiliation. What could have happened in the two weeks that I had been away? The two boarders we were hanging onto for dear life must have left, or my mother or my brother must be ill. Doctor bills were an ever-present nightmare.

  I hurried past the window. My father did not see me; he was bent over the cigar board, his fingers deftly rolling the leaves, and my heart went out to him. I knew he must have been there since eight o’clock in the morning. I always used to see the little Cuban man sitting there on my way to the subway each day. Cigar makers of that sort were paid not by the day but by the number of cigars they turned out, and my father was working very late indeed.

  I would know what had happened soon enough—but why, oh why, I thought as I approached the house, did one disaster have to follow another, always in twos or threes? There was a very successful motion picture playing at that time called Over the Hill to the Poorhouse, and some sensible fellow was said to have remarked, “The poorhouse wasn’t tough enough—they had to put a hill in front of it!” I did not hear this witticism until long afterward, but as I walked up the four flights to our apartment my feelings were more or less the same. My mother opened the door, and behind her I immediately saw my brother and the two boarders sitting at the kitchen table. In the same quick look I noticed her eyes were red-rimmed with weeping.

  “What’s the matter, Ma—what’s happened?” I asked, still standing in the hallway. She pulled me gently in and shut the door behind us. Then she led me to the front room, which was my mother’s and father’s bedroom but which we disguised as the parlor with a series of throws and covers when company came. She sat down on the bed and motioned me to sit beside her.

  “Aunt Kate died while you were away,” she said and burst anew into quiet weeping. After a moment or two, she told me what little there was to tell. It had all happened in the space of a single night. They had been called to the hospital at two o’clock in the morning, and at four o’clock she had died as they sat beside her bed. It had been cancer but of the painless variety, and she had regained consciousness just a little before the end and had smiled at them and asked after me. My father, unforgiving while she had lived, had behaved with great gentleness and understanding with her death. She had not a penny of her own, of course, but he had insisted nevertheless on giving her the kind of funeral he knew she would have liked, and we were hopelessly in debt thereby. So that was why he sat in the window around the corner—he would sit there now day after day doing at last the one thing he feared and hated most, in order to see that a woman he had bitterly disliked was buried with decency and respect.

  The first thought that flashed through my mind as my mother spoke was: “I should have told her,” for I had not told Aunt Kate that a play of mine was to be produced. I had secretly nourished the fantasy of saying nothing until I escorted her to the theatre for the opening night in New York. Both the fantasy and Aunt Kate were gone now, but for the moment I could feel no sense of grief—I seemed to be drained of all emotion.

  “How much did the funeral cost?” I asked my mother.

  “Two hundred dollars,” she answered. “We have to pay it off at ten dollars a week. It was wonderful of them to trust us, wasn’t it?” I nodded. I must take the first job I could get tomorrow, I decided, without even shopping around. My mother stood up and wiped her eyes.

  “We’d better not talk any more now,” she said. “I was just starting to serve supper when you rang the bell. They’ve been very nice about everything”—she gestured toward the kitchen, indicating the boarders—“but we can’t afford to have them leave now, we need every single penny.”

  I went to the room that I shared wi
th my brother and unpacked my suitcase. There on the top lay the tattered and thumb-marked script of The Beloved Bandit, and carefully preserved between two shirts, was a clean program I had saved to show Aunt Kate. I tore it into little pieces and tossed the pieces out the window. Then I went to the bathroom and turned on the water taps full, so that no one might hear me crying.

  * * *

  The next morning I was in the subway by seven-thirty, marking out the want ads in the New York Times as I rode downtown. There were possibilities enough—none that I liked or wanted, of course, but I was not in a position to choose. Stockroom clerk, shipping-room packer, errand boy—it didn’t really matter now which one I got.

  I decided to start the rounds at 14th Street and work my way uptown, but at Times Square I got off the train. Almost before I knew what I was doing, I began to push my way to the door, but by the time I had wrenched my way out, I knew why I was getting off and what I was going to do. Before I settled down into drudgery, I was going out to the cemetery to make my own farewell.

  I changed to the Brooklyn train, and on the long ride out to Cypress Hills I felt a wonderful quietude and peace settle over me. There were several different funerals wending their way slowly through the cemetery when I arrived, but I did not find the sight a depressing one. The panoply of death has never held any sadness for me or even touched me very greatly. I have always experienced my grief privately, and then it was done. The funeral has always left me unmoved. Such rites as I have attended, I have attended unwillingly and only as a mark of respect to the living and not to the dead. I have said my good-byes unpublicly; the coolly organized trappings of the funeral chapel have always seemed to me an outmoded and unnecessary ordeal.