by Moss Hart
“Are you going downtown?” he asked as he pressed the elevator button. I nodded. “Good,” he said, “you can drop me.”
In the elevator going down, walking through the lobby, and inside the taxicab into which he leaped as we left the hotel, he continued to talk with the same soaring agility and quick brilliance that sent each sentence blazing vividly into the next. He had a wonderful trick of locution which he used with great effect. No matter how grandiloquent the words, the delivery of them was almost whispered. Whatever he gave utterance to was spoken so quietly, with such deliberate softness, that one leaned forward to catch what he was saying with the most intense concentration.
He was talking still when the taxicab came to a stop in front of the Morosco Theatre on 45th Street. He called out a good-bye over his shoulder and leaped out of the cab. I watched him disappear down the stage alleyway, a little stunned and somehow curiously fatigued. This singular, intensely alive man created so compelling an effect by the sheer dynamic force of his presence, that when it was removed, the remarkable exhilaration and excitement he induced were replaced by a sudden and complete weariness.
I sat in the back of the cab for a long moment after he was out of sight, not yet in full possession of my everyday self, until the taxi driver called over his shoulder, “Where to, buddy?” Only then did it occur to me that Mr. Harris had left me to pay for the cab, and I remembered as I paid off the driver that I had watched Jed Harris put everything else in his pocket but money. I walked toward my more native habitat, the subway, musing on the strange ways of the celebrated and trying to sort out in my mind exactly what this astonishing interview had meant in terms of Once in a Lifetime.
In the massive flow of words I had listened to, I could fix on none which expressed his outright desire to produce the play, nor could I fasten on any which showed a complete lack of interest in it. I was at a loss as to what to do next, for having at last met the great man, I was convinced that no such simple procedure as a telephone call or letter would suffice to pin down the slippery and formidable gentleman who had received me in the nude and allowed me to pay his cab fare. I decided to let matters remain as they were for a while and do nothing. It seemed to me that a strategy of silence would have a greater effect on Mr. Harris than almost anything else.
* * *
The discussions during the next two or three days on whether or not this was the right thing to do were loud, violent and opposite. The stage-struck group in Newark maintained that as long as contact had been made, it was foolish not to push the advantage; and my own astringent group in Rudley’s Restaurant, led by Lester Sweyd at his most intractable, insisted that I withdraw the script immediately and submit it at once to other managers. One of the grave dangers inherent in the various stages of any theatrical career—whether it be budding, quiescent or diminishing—is the advice of friends.
The frivolity with which all theatrical activity is conducted has one consoling feature—there are no rules of behavior that apply regularly to any part of the theatre. There is nothing that one can say about acting, writing, producing or directing that cannot be revoked in the next breath. Nothing is immutable. The logic of one year is a folly of the next.
Probably the saving grace of the theatre as opposed to motion pictures and television is that unlike those lunatic worlds, repetition in the theatre usually breeds failure. There exists in the theatre, perhaps to a greater degree than in any other art form, a kind of rough justice in that its practitioners receive, if they stay in it long enough, just about exactly what they deserve—no more and no less. It is what makes the theatre the most dangerous of all public forums, but also the most satisfactory—and a field of endeavor where advice, however well intentioned, can never take the place of one’s own judgment, good or bad. Every time I have departed from my own values and substituted those of others, I have suffered the inevitable consequences.
I listened to everything that was said by both groups, not always without an inward wavering and uncertainty, but in the end I did exactly what I had intended to do in the first place, which was nothing. I was greatly surprised some two weeks later when Lester Sweyd awakened me one morning with the news that Sam Harris had read the play and that I had an appointment to meet with his general manager, Max Siegel, that afternoon at the Music Box Theatre. The voice on the telephone raced on with such headlong speed that at first and in my still sleepy state I could make no sense at all of what he was saying. When I put the pieces together finally, it was too late to be angry; it had been dim-witted of me to have expected that the copy of Once in a Lifetime, which I had dutifully given Lester to read, would lie fallow in his hands.
What he had done was to turn over the play without my knowledge to one of the newer play agents that he “believed” in, a Miss Frieda Fishbein. Miss Fishbein, a season or two before, had succeeded in selling Elmer Rice’s Street Scene to William A. Brady, after other agents had been unable to dispose of it. And since Street Scene had turned into a major success, all theatrical doors now were open at Miss Fishbein’s approach and a good deal of red carpet was unrolled for her coming and going. Whatever plays she submitted, good or bad, were read with promptness and alacrity, on the basic and unsound theatrical assumption that where one hit came from another hit must surely lie in wait. Lester had simply disagreed with my strategy of waiting for Jed Harris and had gone ahead on his own.
Far from excusing the fait accompli he was presenting to me, he was loud in praise of himself and as loudly insistent that I get into town as soon as possible for a meeting with Miss Fishbein before the afternoon meeting with Max Siegel.
It was not, of course, an unhappy quandary for an unproduced playwright to be in. Though nothing but silence had ensued since my meeting with Jed Harris, my heart was still set on his producing the play. Nevertheless, Sam Harris was a distinguished producer in his own right, and if his interest in Once in a Lifetime was a genuine one and not just play-agent’s talk, it might serve to heighten Jed Harris’ interest or even push him into a decision.
Miss Fishbein, a large lady with a mass of red hair and many rings and necklaces, was given little chance by Lester to do much talking while we lunched, appropriately enough, at Rudley’s. But I gathered that she agreed with him that Jed Harris was given to expressing a deep interest in plays he had no intention of doing and took an active pleasure in torturing writers with the promise and lure of a Jed Harris production without ever actually committing himself, thereby keeping the play off the market and out of the hands of other managers. I nodded agreeably, but I had no thought of passing up the possibility of a Jed Harris production if Jed Harris decided to lure me, false promises or no.
We stood outside the Music Box Theatre, a little early for our two o’clock appointment, and with broad grins told one another that of course this was where Once in a Lifetime would open. We were not being more than ordinarily fanciful. The Music Box is everybody’s dream of a theatre. If there is such a thing as a theatre’s making a subtle contribution to the play being given on its stage, the Music Box is that theatre. Except for the Haymarket Theatre in London, I know of no other that possesses so strong an atmosphere of its own, as living and as personal, as the Music Box. Even in broad daylight, as we stepped inside its doors and into the darkened auditorium, there was an indefinable sense that here the theatre was always at its best.
We walked up the stairway to the mezzanine and were shown at once into Sam Harris’ office, where Max Siegel was waiting. I looked around me with deep satisfaction. Sam Harris’ office was exactly what a distinguished theatrical producer’s office should be, but more often is not. There is a vast difference in a producer’s office when it is situated in a theatre instead of being contained in a series of chromium and steel cubicles of an ordinary office building. The theatre loses something when its business is conducted in the atmosphere of ordinary trade. Its people are not at their best on the forty-first floor of Radio City or in the high reaches of the Paramount Building, for
although it tries very hard to seem so, and every now and then rigorously pretends that it is, the theatre, strictly speaking, is not a business at all, but a collection of individualized chaos that operates best when it is allowed to flower in its proper medley of disorder, derangement, irregularity and confusion. Its want of method, its untidiness and its discord are not the totality of anarchy it so often seems to be, but the natural progression of its own strange patterns, which sometimes arrange themselves into a wonderful symmetry that is inexplicable to the bewildered outsider.
Most of the furniture in Mr. Harris’ office had quite obviously been reclaimed from various unremembered failures. Nothing could otherwise sensibly explain the stiff Italian Renaissance chair that stood behind the French Empire desk, or the early American benches that served as end tables for lamps and ashtrays. Even the sofa and easy chairs were a strange conglomeration of Georgian and modern, with wildly contrasting coverings; but the over-all effect of this unholy mixture was somehow wonderfully theatrical and cozy. No stage designer could have contrived a set of such marvelous theatricality and correctness, or one that so instantly told the exact function of the room.
Max Siegel, Sam Harris’ general manager, was himself a smiling and cozy fellow, who put me at my ease right off. He was cheerful and congratulatory about the play, and explained that after reading it he had sent it off to California to Sam Harris, who was visiting in Hollywood with Irving Berlin, and he had a telegram from Mr. Harris which he wanted me to read. He picked up the telegram from the desk and read it: “‘Like play. Ask the young author if he would be willing to make a musical of it with Irving Berlin. Sam Harris.’”
I was silent for a moment after he finished reading and then I looked at Lester and Miss Fishbein. To my surprise they were smiling delightedly. Without hesitation I rose from my seat and spoke directly to Max Siegel. When I think of the conceit, the self-importance and the pomposity of the words I used, I blush a little still, but I said them then, loud and clear.
“I do not write musical comedies, Mr. Siegel,” I said, “I’m a playwright. I write plays—only plays.” I looked sternly and directly at Lester and Miss Fishbein, then turned toward the door. They stared at me aghast, as well they might have, and since they made no move to get up, I started out.
“Wait a minute,” said Max Siegel sharply. He laughed—and his laugh somehow saved the day. “You don’t have to write musical comedies if you don’t want to,” he said. “Let me send Mr. Harris another telegram.” He picked up a pencil and wrote hurriedly on a piece of paper. “How’s this?” he asked, reading aloud what he had written. “‘Young author says he is playwright and does not write musical comedies. Are you interested in play as play and not as a musical.’ What about that,” he inquired, “does that say it plainly enough?”
“Yes,” I replied, and added boldly, “But another producer is interested in the play just as it is without songs and dances, so he’d better make up his mind.”
Miss Fishbein and Lester were shooting deadly looks in my direction, but their annoyance was lost on Max Siegel. “Mr. Harris is a quick decider.” He chuckled. “You may have an answer tomorrow morning.” He held out his hand. “It’s interesting to meet someone who turns down Sam Harris and Irving Berlin in the same breath,” he said. “It doesn’t happen every day in the week, but I happen to think you’re right.”
It was my turn now to grin at my furious and still silent companions. I shook hands with Max Siegel and marched out of the office, trailing behind me a cloud of artistic integrity that lasted all the way down the stairs and into the street outside, where Lester and Miss Fishbein found their voices in full and resonant volume. I shrugged my shoulders and remained blandly adamant. The truth was, I suppose, that I still held high hopes that at any moment a message would be forthcoming from Jed Harris, and my courage, if it can be called courage and not unmitigated gall, in so airily dismissing one of the masters of American music, was based largely upon the secret illusion I cherished that Jed Harris would finally decide in favor of Hart instead of Chekhov.
* * *
When they move at all, things move with the speed of light in the theatre. There was a message to call Max Siegel waiting for me when I awoke the next morning. “I have a telegram from Sam Harris,” said the voice on the phone. “It says, ‘Tell young author I will produce his play if George Kaufman likes it and agrees to collaborate. Is he willing to collaborate with Kaufman? Am sending play air mail to Kaufman direct.’”
“Do you mind reading that to me again, Mr. Siegel,” I said. I knew very well what the telegram said, but I was sparring for a moment of time to make up my mind, and a moment was all that I needed. “Tell him yes,” I said, almost before he had finished reading it again. “When will I know whether Mr. Kaufman likes it or not?” I asked.
“He usually reads a play the day he gets it,” replied Max Siegel, “and I’ll call you right away. He ought to have it by day after tomorrow, so I should think you’d have an answer by about Thursday. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered.
“I’m going to draw up the contracts now,” he said. “That’s how sure I am that he’s going to like it. Don’t write any musical comedies in the meantime!” His laugh came merrily over the phone. “Goodbye, playwright,” he added, and the connection at the other end clicked off.
I could hardly wait for four o’clock that afternoon to break the news of what I had done to the group at Rudley’s and most particularly to Lester. I thought I knew pretty well what their reaction would be, and if I was right it was the better part of valor, I thought, to brave Lester’s wrath among the safety of numbers. I was correct on all counts. Lester’s wrath was great, and if the argument about my tactics with Jed Harris had been loud and vehement, the debate on my willingness to collaborate with George Kaufman was now outraged and violent.
“It will be his play!” “No one will ever know your name is on the program!” “You might just as well say ‘By George S. Kaufman’ and leave it at that!” “He’ll get all the credit!” “They won’t even know you had anything to do with it!” “A first play is what you establish your reputation with!” “You’re just handing your play over to Kaufman and saying good-bye to yourself!”
The voices around the table grew so loud that the manager, accustomed though he was to loud talk from that corner of the room, came over and asked us to quiet down or to leave. It did me no good to protest that I knew very well that all or a good part of what they were saying might more than likely be true, but that what I was seizing was the main chance—the golden opportunity of working with the Herr Professor himself. There would be other plays to write, I argued, and if I emerged with little personal recognition from this one, the apprenticeship was well worth it. My arguments had as little effect on them as theirs did on me. I finally took a cowardly refuge by stating flatly that all this bellowing was largely academic. George Kaufman might be thoroughly uninterested in Once in a Lifetime, and even if he was interested, I had not yet signed any contracts; when the moment came for that, there would still be time to reconsider.
This bit of subterfuge fooled nobody, of course, Lester least of all, and I carefully remained absent from Rudley’s for the next three days. My mind was made up, and though I had every intention of sticking to my decision, I well knew that continued argument carried with it the danger of making the half-truth seem valid. Eddie in particular was a most convincing and persuasive talker, who could brilliantly pervert any discussion to his own ends, sometimes purely for the pleasure of winning the debate. I did not wish to be shaken, for the more I thought of it, the more certain I became that a chance to work in collaboration with George Kaufman would be of greater value to me in the end than even a production as sole author of the play, by Jed Harris or anyone else.
It seemed imperative that I acquaint Jed Harris with this fact as soon as possible, for so far as he was concerned, he must still believe he held the right to produce the play if he chose to do so. Nevert
heless, I let two full days go by before I could summon up enough courage to put through a call to the Madison Hotel. Having seen him plain like Shelley—plainer, perhaps, than ever Shelley was seen—I was aware that his reception of the news that I was withdrawing the play might range anywhere from magnanimity to cold fury, with a likelihood of something fairly bloodcurdling in between. I called the hotel at the unlikely hour of nine o’clock in the morning in the hope that he could not be disturbed and I could leave a message, but to my horror the call was put through immediately.
The low but intensely alive voice of Jed Harris came over the wire with the same vibrant urgency and excitement that any kind of contact with him immediately generated. Even on the telephone that quiet voice contained all the power of his presence. Stumblingly, I blurted out my story. There was nothing but silence from the other end of the phone, while I awkwardly backed and filled and explained and excused, and I finally ground to a halt and waited. I gave thanks to Alexander Graham Bell for an invention that could put this much distance between me and the silence at the other end of the phone.
When he spoke at last, the tone was as hushed as ever, the voice even softer and more silken. “I think you’re doing exactly the right thing,” he said. “I’m going to do Uncle Vanya as my first production of the season. Chekhov has never been produced well in this country, don’t you agree?” The question was asked respectfully, in the manner of one expert on the Russian theatre consulting another expert on a point beyond the comprehension of the mere layman. My relief was so great that I could do nothing more than grunt some sort of acknowledgment in reply.