by Moss Hart
It was a long walk to where Aunt Kate lay buried and I lost my way several times. I rather enjoyed it. The cemetery did not seem an unpleasant place to be after the subway. It was almost a spring-like day for the middle of winter, and though the trees were leafless, the well-kept lawns around the graves were a sparkling green. I came to the end of a little path and there in front of me was the grave of my aunt, some of the funeral greens still upon it. Next to it was the grave of my grandfather.
I stood there not knowing quite what to do. I had been impelled to come here by some force within me of terrible urgency, but now that I was here I did not know what to do. I could think only that here were the two people whose lives had meant the most to mine and what a pitiful waste their lives had been to themselves. They were both better, I knew, than life had allowed them to be; and standing there I thought of them more clearly than I ever had before. Fleeting words and moments with both of them came back to me with startling clarity and I suddenly realized how much of their hopes had been unconsciously pinned on me. I had been their bulwark against complete defeat. Far from feeling sorrow or self-pity, I began to shake with an uncontrollable rage. To take a job as shipping clerk or errand boy was no worse than hundreds of boys my own age and circumstances were doing every day of the week. But standing by the graves of my aunt and my grandfather, I was damned if I would. For all that they had been to me, I owed it to them not to; and out of my rage I resolved that come what may, I was sticking to the theatre and I would never turn back. And the truth of the matter is that from that actual moment on, I never did.
There are certain great disadvantages to the truth—one of them is that the truth sometimes emerges as hopelessly cliché. It would be a brave writer indeed or an extremely foolish one who would contrive a scene such as I have just described without the inescapable feeling that it was perhaps a little too pat. Yet life often imitates very bad plays or movies with a minimum of effort and a disquieting ease, and the only plausible explanation I can offer for this is an aphorism from Pascal I came across years afterward. He said: “The heart has reasons which the reason knows not of.” I think that was true of me on this particular day. I think that it is true, too, that men are sometimes willing to die for the very same things they make fools of themselves over, so that when the truth comes out cliché there is nothing to do but set it down.
I made my way back to the subway, and I knew that I was getting off at Times Square and no place else from then on.
As the 14th Street subway station flashed by I made a sudden decision. Now was as good a time as any for me to try to be an actor. I would never have less to lose. I got off the train, threw the copy of the Times, with the marked want ads in it, onto the subway tracks and walked toward the steps that led up to Times Square.
I had an advantage now that I had not had two years before. I was no longer a theatrical innocent. I knew where theatrical offices were, what the lingo was, and I knew too how haphazardly most of the smaller parts were cast. All I needed was “beginner’s luck.” I straightened my tie, fixed the handkerchief in my breast pocket at a more jaunty angle and stole a glance at myself in the mirror of a chewing-gum machine. It seemed to me I already looked different. I had felt like a shipping clerk or an errand boy riding downtown on the subway this morning, but now I felt like an actor and it seemed to me I looked like one. I knew the look well. The too eager, too bright smile, the glint in the eye serving notice to the steely office boy of the implacable desire to wait, if need be, all afternoon; the knowing air of being conscious of some secret casting going on that the others in the already crowded office did not share. I practiced the look in the mirror for a moment and was satisfied with it. I had one other advantage as well, I reminded myself. I had, until very recently, been a theatrical office boy myself, and for a little while, at least, I thought I could count on my acquaintance among the enemy to get me in to see a casting director first.
Cannily, I chose an office boy who I knew had had the same difficulty saying “no” to actors that I had had and who also knew something of my ambitions to be an actor. Irving Morrison, George Tyler’s office boy, was a kind and good-hearted fellow, and if I had to put a toe into the icy waters that actors daily swam in, Irving Morrison was by far the warmest way of making the plunge. It was a wise choice. He showed only a mild surprise at the news that I had turned actor, and though I suspected he knew I had been fired, he had the grace not to mention it and asked me to wait until he could get me in to see Mr. Tyler. There was nothing much going on, he informed me, but at least I could meet Mr. Tyler.
I turned around and tried to find an inconspicuous place among the others who were already waiting, and while I waited I listened to the easy bantering talk that flowed so effortlessly among them. Not enough has been said or written about the way actors talk among themselves. It is delicious, dim-witted and valiant talk, and since the bulk of it is based upon harmless little falsehoods which everyone accepts nonchalantly, it is also gay, sardonic and very often sprinkled with a nice edge of malice. It is valiant talk because part of an actor’s equipment is a gallantry he must carry along daily like a shield; whatever despair he may feel as he faces himself in the mirror in the morning before he sets out on the daily round, he must learn to dissemble completely as he stands waiting in the outer office—not only must he look his best, but he must give no hint to the competitors who wait along with him to be interviewed for the same part, of how desperately he may need it or how slim the pickings have been up to now.
It is not always easy to look one’s best on a meager breakfast and the knowledge that lunch must be skipped, or to chat lightly while one stands against the light so that the shine on the suit pressed too often does not show. But there is a quality of childlike innocence in most actors that manages somehow to suspend reality until tomorrow and along with it a politesse de coeur toward their fellow actors that I do not think exists in other professions.
One of the actors in the office turned to me now and asked politely, “What have you been doing lately?”
I knew the lingo well enough to shrug my shoulders and answer, “Nothing on Broadway,” and let my voice trail off.
It was no doubt obvious to them all that I had never set foot on a stage but they included me in their chatter as though I were a veteran. I listened intently, for running through the conversation, hidden among the boasts and the lies that fooled nobody, were little nuggets of valuable information about what was going on in nearly every theatrical office in New York. When the bright-eyed girl in the freshly washed cotton gloves loftily announced that she had refused a part in the new Avery Hopwood play because the character did not appear until the third act, two other ingénues on the edge of the crowd left shortly afterward. It was as apparent to everyone in the office that the two ingénues were making a beeline for the A. H. Woods office as it was that the bright-eyed girl had applied for the part and been turned down cold, but the information that a part might still be open in the new Hopwood play was well worth a morning’s wait.
The grapevine was apt to be hung with highly colored fruit of pure imagination, but to the initiate the leads it conveyed of what was going on were usually accurate. Another man was talking now and I pricked up my ears. “I don’t know how they think they’re going to cast it,” he sniffed, “but they’re offering twenty-five dollars for someone to play Smithers in a revival of The Emperor Jones over at the Mayfair Theatre. It’s non-Equity, of course,” he added contemptuously.
“Who’s doing it?” someone asked.
“I didn’t even bother to ask,” the first man answered, and as a little chorus of appropriate laughter rewarded him for his sally, I got up and quietly made my way out. If they were having trouble casting it, this might be the beginner’s luck I had been hoping for. And non-Equity or not, twenty-five dollars a week was ten dollars more than I had ever earned in my life. I motioned to Irving Morrison that I would be back and made my way to the Mayfair Theatre on 44th Street in no time
flat. There was another hungry-looking actor in the Tyler office who had seemed about to make his way to the door just as I had.
The Mayfair Theatre was a tiny little affair of no more than two hundred seats that has long since been turned into a bus terminal, but it seemed big enough to me as I climbed the stairs to the manager’s office. It was owned or leased, I never quite knew which, by two gentlemen whose connection with things theatrical seemed to hang by the proverbial shoestring; and one of the gentlemen was sitting in the office now, puffing contentedly on a cigar. A little breathlessly I told him what I had come for. He pushed a copy of the printed play across the desk toward me and said, “Read it.”
It did not occur to me to hesitate or to be in the least nervous. I opened the book and plunged in. I had not seen the original production of the play at the Provincetown Playhouse five years before, but I had read it, and my English ancestry now stood me in good stead. The part of Smithers is that of a dissolute cockney trader and I could simulate the accent passably well. I had only to recall my father’s accent, which was still pure Whitechapel, to make the words ring true, and my ear was a good one. The fact that I was eighteen years old and Smithers was supposed to be a drunken and battered sixty did not faze me at all nor did it seem to bother the man behind the desk. In some ways the theatre is marvelous—nothing is too preposterous not to at least be given a hearing. I finished the scene and handed the book back to him. The man behind the desk looked at me and relit his cigar before he spoke.
“It’s not Equity and the salary is twenty dollars a week.” He looked at me inquiringly, waiting for an answer.
“I thought the part paid twenty-five,” I said hesitantly, and only because I was afraid of seeming too anxious—I suppose I would have taken twenty dollars or even fifteen!
“Well, if we’re stuck, I guess it does,” he answered pleasantly, and then added somewhat surprisingly, “Do you happen to know what time it is right now?”
“It’s about one thirty,” I replied.
“Good,” he said. “Go downstairs and tell Gilpin you’re Smithers They’re rehearsing on the stage. I promised him I’d have a Smithers by two o’clock. If he says anything, tell him you’re the best we can do for the money. Wait a minute,” he called after me, for I was already out the door, “take this copy of the play down with you. I think we only bought two copies.”
I grabbed the book and raced down the stairs. I was an actor on Broadway! I knew enough to know that the management and the production would probably be as shoddy and threadbare as it was possible to be, but what did it matter? What mattered was that I had had the unique experience of outwitting life, and it was a victory that would not diminish with the years. I would remember it long afterward when I needed to.
My first glimpse of Charles Gilpin, the great Negro actor, was a fairly typical one. He was not quite sober and he was in a smoldering rage. He was directing this revival of the play himself, for he had played the Emperor Jones over a thousand times. I waited until there was a pause in the rehearsal and presented myself to him. He did not seem surprised that Smithers was going to be played by a youth of eighteen—there was a timeless resignation and disenchantment about everything he did or said. He looked at me with a pair of somber eyes, which seemed to be burned into his face, and sighed softly. “All right,” he said quietly, “wait.”
I wandered over to a dark corner of the stage and watched him rehearse the others. He was walking through his own part, but every so often he would flash out and act for an isolated moment or two. The effect was shattering. He had an inner violence and a maniacal power that engulfed the spectator, and he and the Emperor Jones were a classic example of actor and part meeting to perfection.
Eugene O’Neill once said that Gilpin was the only actor in any of his plays that realized fully O’Neill’s inner image of what the performance should be, and he was probably correct. Charles Gilpin was the greatest actor of his race. He was limited not by his own range as an actor, but by the limitations of the part the Negro could play in the theatre. Had he not been a Negro, there is no doubt that he would have been one of the great actors of his time, but other than the Emperor Jones, there were no parts of any stature that ever came his way. Not unnaturally, his success in The Emperor Jones and the probability that he would never play anything else worthy of his talent embittered an already violent and hostile nature, and he took what refuge and solace he could find in alcohol.
He signaled me now to come over—that he was ready to mark out the first act. Smithers is the only other speaking part in the play, and the entire first act is played by the Emperor and Smithers alone on the stage. I began to shake with nerves. All the bravado I had displayed in the office upstairs deserted me completely and I shook and stammered and constantly lost my place. Gilpin seemed to pay no attention whatever to the agony I was going through or to the fact that even to my own ears I sounded hollow and fake and incredibly young.
Stolidly and wearily he plodded on—mechanically he marked out the movement—“You stand there … now I come over to you … now I go back and sit on the throne … now you come over to me … when the drums start you walk to the door and listen … then you come back … no, no … just go back to where you were before.”
Finally it was over. He looked at me and sighed. “Did they tell you when we open?” he asked. I shook my head. “Day after tomorrow—you better learn the words fast,” he said and started to leave the stage.
I managed to gather up enough courage to go after him and tug at his sleeve. “Could you tell me how you want it played?” I stammered. For the first time he smiled. “You ain’t as bad as you think you are.” He chuckled. “You learn the words tonight and we’ll have a hassle with it tomorrow.” And he was on his way to his dressing room and the always-waiting bottle.
There was considerably less astonishment than I would have believed possible when I announced the news at home that evening that I was an actor. Perhaps everything else was overshadowed by the relief that though I had lost one job, I already had another at ten dollars more a week. There was not too much time for discussion, for I explained that I had to commit the part to memory that night, and once again my mother construed this to mean some sort of “homework” I had neglected during the day that might cost me the job tomorrow. Everyone was shooed away, just as years later, long after I had become an established playwright, she would say, “Don’t go into the room now—he’s doing homework,” her tone implying that I was writing “I won’t do it again” on the blackboard. My mother never quite believed that any work one could do at home was quite honest, and I think she remained firmly convinced that all the writing I did at home was some sort of well-merited punishment for neglecting my duties on the outside.
The part of Smithers is not a long one and I learned it with ease, and the next day, as he had promised, Mr. Gilpin gave me a “hassle” with it. He was not a good director, but he had one great virtue—he let an actor act and did not waste endless time in discussing motivation and inner orientation or indulge himself in any of the meaningless patois and sophistry that pass so often for the directorial touch. He was impatient, intolerant and somewhat inarticulate about what he wanted—but being a first-rate actor himself, he knew the folly of giving lessons in acting to anyone, and he did not permit himself the self-indulgence of showing off to impress the rest of the company, as well he might have done in my case.
I imagine he had made up his mind the day before that I could do it, and he talked to me now in a kind of shorthand—swift, unadorned and, when I could interpret him correctly, wonderfully precise and helpful, for like everything else connected with the theatre, where life moves only in long, arid stretches or sudden acute crises, my debut as an actor was being made under the pressure of a dress rehearsal that evening and an opening on the following night.
I had very little time for alarm as to how good or bad I might be, for my chief concern all through the afternoon was the fact that I did not know how t
o put make-up on my face and was too ashamed to admit it to anyone in the company. I solved this ignominious admission of my inexperience by hanging around the counter at Gray’s drug store during the dinner hour until another actor came along to purchase some make-up for himself, and under the guise of being puzzled as to just how to get the effect I wanted, I let him suggest the proper crepe hair, the glue or spirit gum, the right shade of powder, and all the rest of the paraphernalia I needed to look the part of the disreputable Smithers.
He must have given me good advice, for I was a little staggered as I looked at myself in the dressing-room mirror later on that evening. The blacked-out teeth, the rusty gray stubble, the heavy dissipated drooping eyelids, the thin-lipped sneer that curled and aged the mouth into something evil and craven were decidedly right. I understood for the first time why it was more or less classic for young actors to start out in the theatre by playing old men, and I perceived how completely make-up depersonalizes the actor. I was so delighted with the effect I had produced that I sailed through the dress rehearsal absolutely nerveless, nor can I truthfully record the traditional case of stage fright the following evening when the play opened. I had a mild flutter of nerves as I stood in the wings waiting for the curtain to go up, for mine was the first entrance in the play; but I think I was rescued from anything approximating stage fright by a sudden image that flashed through my mind as the curtain hit the top. “Well, I’m not wrapping packages or delivering telegrams for Western Union,” I thought happily as I heard a polite spatter of applause greet the set—and on I went.
Gilpin, who came on shortly afterward, received what I suppose was a thunderous reception in terms of the tiny Mayfair Theatre, and with nothing more than a pleasurable sense of excitement I played the rest of the act with him as though I had been playing it for months.
After the first act I did not come on again until the final few moments of the play and I took the opportunity of watching Gilpin play out the role in full from the side of the stage. At his best, which he was that night and not very often afterward, he was a spectacular and memorable Emperor Jones. Even on the wrong side of the proscenium, and pushed out of the way every so often by the stage manager, I was caught up and held by the majesty and grandeur of his performance.