by Moss Hart
I stared at him silently, my mind racing back and forth over what he had said, an odd excitement beginning to take possession of me. He got out of the elevator at his own floor a little tipsily, but I was wide awake now. I took the elevator down again and began to walk. Far from clutching at straws, it seemed to me that Sam Harris in his own paradoxical fashion had put his finger straight on that unfathomable fault in the third act that had defied all our efforts. The more I thought of it, the more certain I became that he was correct, though I could not define why. A curious kind of interpenetration occurs when one watches a play night after night. Impressions are registered unconsciously that emerge as full-blown concepts—sometimes when a chance word or phrase is spoken by someone else. What Sam Harris felt, so closely matched some of my own unconscious thinking, though I had not been able to put it into words, that it had almost a quality of revelation about it.
I was much too stimulated now to think of going to sleep. It was a fine moonlit night and I kept walking. I tried to find my way toward the park, for the air in the streets was still stifling, but I stumbled instead upon a children’s playground. It looked a little weird in the moonlight, but it was an open space among the buildings and something approximating a breeze seemed to be blowing through it. I walked to a swing and sat down in it. I swung back and forth, and the higher and more wildly I made the swing go, the greater impression of coolness it created. I was a little apprehensive that a policeman might happen by and wonder what a grown man was doing in a child’s swing at four o’clock in the morning. I became absorbed in threading my way through the labyrinth of that third act, and with a shock of recognition I thought I saw clearly where we had gone wrong, and then, in a sudden flash of improvisation, exactly the right way to resolve it. I let the swing come to a full stop and sat there transfixed by the rightness of the idea, but a little staggered at the audacity of it, or at what it would entail.
It called for tossing the Pigeon’s Egg out of the show entirely—the specially constructed tables, feathered costumes and all—and bringing the part of the New York playwright, which Mr. Kaufman played and which disappeared from the play after the second act, back into the third act, for a quiet scene with Jean Dixon. The train scene of the first act, which had brought them all out to Hollywood, could be repeated and was the logical setting for it.
I began to examine it slowly and meticulously, fearful that like most four-o’clock-in-the-morning inspirations, it would explode in my face, but it did not. Its very simplicity was its virtue, for while at first glance it seemed like a deceptively simple idea—if tossing $20,000 worth of scenery into the alley may be termed simple—it was, like all simple ideas, startling in how much it would accomplish by its very simplicity. Everything clicked into place with an almost mathematical accuracy. New lines began tumbling into my mind faster than I could remember them, and the new scene on the train began to blossom and grow in a way that not only convinced me of its rightness, but made me itch to call Mr. Kaufman in New York and get him out of bed to tell it to him, but my audacity had limits and common sense told me to wait and present it to him face to face. It would be difficult enough even then, I suspected, to persuade him to make so drastic a change at this stage of the game; but it seemed so singularly right that I could barely wait for his return.
I WAS WAITING for Mr. Kaufman in his dressing room when he came back the next afternoon. He was late and the first act was almost over, but there was no time to waste and I talked quickly while he put on his make-up. It would have been better perhaps to wait until after the matinée and to be able to tell it to him less hastily, but if he agreed to do it, every moment was going to count. Simple idea or not, it still had to be written, and I had had time enough to realize that more work was involved than at first met the eye. He listened attentively, but I could tell he was rejecting it long before I had finished. Sensing his rejection, I presented the idea in the worst possible manner—it began to sound lame and foolish, even to my own ears.
“I see what you mean,” he said when I had come to the end, “and I see what Sam Harris meant, but it’s too risky. It’s too big a change to make with only three days left. Suppose we did it and it didn’t work? We could never go back to a third act we had so little faith in that we discarded it the last three days in Philadelphia, and ask the company to open with it in New York. We’ve unsettled this cast enough as it is. Whatever chance we’ve got is going to depend on how good a show the company gives on the opening night. I don’t think we dare take this kind of a gamble now. It’s too late.”
I had no ready answer, and even if I had been prepared to argue, the stage manager was already knocking at the door and calling out, “Second act, Mr. Kaufman.” I followed him down the stairs and went straight back to the hotel. It seemed to me doubtful that even if my very life depended upon it I could watch that third act again. At four o’clock in the morning I had seen a new third act playing brilliantly, and it was still lodged hopelessly in my mind.
I threw myself on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, turning over bit by bit everything Mr. Kaufman had said. I was no longer so certain of my own brilliance or that I had found an inspired way of snatching victory from defeat. In the excitement and enthusiasm of last night I had never stopped to consider the possibility of the idea’s not working and the consequences if it did not. There was no guarantee that it would, however right it seemed to me, and everything he had said was true, of course, but I was stubbornly sure that the consequence of not taking the gamble would be equally disastrous. I looked at my watch and decided to take a final gamble of my own. The matinée had been over for half an hour and Mr. Kaufman would be in his room. He was not an easy man to tackle once he had said no to anything, but there was little to be lost now in trying to make him change his mind. I was certain that unless we at least made the attempt, the fate of the play was already sealed.
I walked down the hall and knocked on his door. For a moment there was no answer, but then his voice called out, “Who is it?” and I called back, “It’s me.” “Come in—I’m in the tub,” his voice called again, and I walked through the suite to the bathroom. For once he looked beaten and exhausted, as though my old enemy, the heat, had finally claimed even him. He lay in the tub, his head resting on the back of it; his eyes were closed, and he barely opened them when I came in. They remained closed all the while I talked, a small boon for which I was grateful, for I could not judge how well or how badly I was succeeding, and I took my time. I went over the same ground I had covered in the dressing room, but I presented it well this time—so well, in fact, that I convinced myself all over again—and was making an impassioned plea for taking the gamble, in spite of everything, at the end.
When I had finished he did not move, but reached for his glasses on the edge of the tub and put them on; he seemed reluctant to stir even an arm from the coolness of the water. Now he regarded me silently over the rims of the glasses. “You have as much right to say yes to anything about this play as I have to say no,” he said slowly. “It may be that my timidity at making this big a change, in the time we’ve got left, is too great,” he went on. “You know what’s at stake as well as I do, but if you feel this strongly, why don’t you skip the show tonight and stay here and make a rough draft that we can work on when I get back. Maybe I’ll be able to see what you see—or at least see it more clearly than I’m able to see it now.” He sighed. “I’d like to play my part of the show tonight right from this tub. Might help business, too.” He closed his eyes wearily again.
* * *
I forgot about dinner and went right to work. When an idea is sound it writes easily, and I struck pay-dirt early. All the old stumbling blocks that we had uselessly battered our heads against seemed to resolve themselves smoothly and naturally once the Pigeon’s Egg had been pried loose from the play. The price we had paid for an audience’s momentary laughter and applause at a set had been enormous. Freed from the inflexibility of that scene, exposition that had lack
ed subtlety became manageable and scenes that had remained lumbering and clumsy seemed suddenly skillful. A play can be blackmailed by its scenery more often than anyone connected with it is likely to realize.
The rearrangement of the third act was too involved to do anything more than attempt the sketchiest of rough drafts, but by the time Mr. Kaufman returned from the theatre I had something ready to show him. A good deal of it had to be indicated in a kind of code, with arrows pointing from my own yellow sheets of paper to the manuscript, but he was reading it with more than just polite interest, and when he had finished he carried the yellow sheets and the manuscript with him toward the typewriter. “Well, here goes twenty thousand dollars’ worth of scenery,” he said and inserted a new piece of paper in the roller.
I sat staring at him, mesmerized. Instead of the elation I had expected to feel, I was seized by a sudden panic at the enormity of what I had started and of what we were about to do. “If this doesn’t work and we can’t go back to the old third act, Mr. Kaufman, what happens then?” I asked.
He looked at me quizzically over the glasses. “I sue you,” he replied. “Hand me that box of fudge and let’s get to work.”
* * *
I watched the rehearsal the next day with feelings not unlike, I suspected, those held by the company itself. The company received the news of the change in glum silence and went about the business of rehearsing it as though each new line brought them closer to a bog of quicksand. It was a messy job of restaging, and I admired more than ever Mr. Kaufman’s forbearance and patience, with time running against him and a reluctant and dissatisfied company to rehearse. The combination of old and new was confusing and there was no question but that the cast was seriously disturbed and its morale at a low ebb.
The morale of a company is one of a play’s hidden assets and sometimes its most valuable one. If it remains high in spite of a rocky time out of town, an electric opening-night performance in New York can cover a multitude of sins. A company with high morale, whose faith remains unshaken in its author and director, can accomplish incredible feats of memorizing new lines and business overnight, but it asks in return, and rightfully so, sufficient time afterward to perfect the performance. Nothing contributes more strongly to a company’s insecurity than desperate last-minute changes that rob them of the chance of being at their best on an opening night. Their faith in Mr. Kaufman did not waver, but their alarm at being asked to make so drastic a change, with a New York opening less than a week away, was quite evident. It made itself apparent in a dozen different ways, and I could not tell whether the new scheme had any real merit or was just a hodgepodge of the old and new that might play less well than what we were discarding.
The company’s unease seemed to fill the theatre and communicate itself even to the stage managers, who took forever placing the chairs for each new scene. It was a long rehearsal and rough on everyone, Mr. Kaufman included. He had to learn new lines himself, as well as redirect some of the old stuff, and stage the new train scene—and all of it had to be done for the evening’s performance. Everything had to be tried this night or not at all. The next day was Saturday matinée and the last performance but one in front of an audience before we opened in New York the following Wednesday night. I did not blame the actors for feeling that the old third act with all its faults was less hazardous for them than running the gantlet of a New York opening night with untried material. At least they had played the other and knew all of its pitfalls.
As the afternoon wore on I slumped farther and farther down in my seat, and finally I could sit still no longer. I made for my usual refuge, the stage alley, but after one grim look at the Pigeon’s Egg set stacked up against the wall waiting to be carted to the storehouse, I beat a hasty retreat back into the theatre. I had looked at the set triumphantly on my way into rehearsal this morning, happy to be seeing the last of it; but this morning’s courage seemed to be oozing out of my fingertips, and there was no Max Siegel this time to anesthetize me for these next few hours of waiting.
Along with Sam Harris he had been in New York for the last two days wrestling with the opening-night ticket list, for the laws by which the theatre is governed remain immutable. Hallowed by time they are not susceptible to change—and the two most inviolate are opening-night tickets and pictures in the lobby. However dire the straits a play may be in, they take precedence above all else, and although they seem almost purposely absurd, any appeal from their divinity is useless. A company is kept up until five or six in the morning during one day of the out-of-town tour—thereby making a rehearsal call, however urgent, impossible the following day—so that pictures may be had in time to fill the lobby frames on the opening night; and management and author alike must rid their minds—at this most vital time and no matter how critical the state of the play—of everything but the crucial dilemma of who shall be seated next to whom and where on the opening night. Since not one person out of a hundred ever bothers to look at the pictures in the lobby on opening night and almost no one at all is ever satisfied with his opening-night’s seats, it is difficult to understand why these rites remain undisputed, but they are as reverently preserved and as imperishable an idea as the Kingdom of Heaven.
I would have given much for a Max Siegel smile right then, no matter how illusory or mistaken, and Sam Harris’ presence would have halved the burden of guilt I was beginning to feel, since in a way he was as much to blame for that set sitting in the alley as I was, but they would not be back until curtain time, and then only with luck. I did not believe my taut nerves would stretch the distance until then, and I did the first two things that occurred to me. I telephoned Joe Hyman and asked him to get on the six o’clock train for Philadelphia, and I sneaked back to the hotel and ordered the largest dinner even I had ever had the gall to order. Terror, as always, had increased my appetite, and the amount of time it would take to consume that mass of food would fill in the waiting until it was necessary to go to the theatre and face what had to be faced.
I was almost comatose with food by eight o’clock. I walked to the theatre swaying slightly and hiccuping as though I were drunk. I stopped at a drug store and slowly sipped two glasses of plain soda water, but the spasms seemed to grow worse instead of better. I have since learned that a serious attack of hiccups can be caused by anxiety or fear, and this must have been true in my case, for by the time I reached the theatre I could barely talk. I wheezed a few words to Joe Hyman and Sam Harris, but the hiccups were coming with such intensity and with so few spaces to breathe in between that I fled gasping back to the drug store. I gulped some paregoric under instructions from the pharmacist and then held my breath while he pressed his fingers behind my ears, and even blew into a paper bag while I counted slowly up to one hundred—but to no avail. I had drawn an interested little group of bystanders during these experiments; an old lady at the drug counter offered the suggestion that the best way to cure hiccups was to scare the living daylights out of the victim, a method which had invariably worked, she insisted, when she was a little girl. Since I was not a little girl, and frightened enough already, it seemed to me, I left the drug store and returned to the theatre.
The first act was nearing its end by the time I arrived and not going too badly so far as I was able to make out, but each body-shaking hiccup I gave, no matter how hard I tried to strangle it before it emerged, echoed with such resonance in the emptiness of the theatre that it seemed to roll down the unfilled rows, across the footlights, and punctuate every other line the actors were speaking. To my horror, a few people in the audience began to laugh at the unearthly sound I was making, for by this time my wheezing and whistling must have sounded like a dog baying at the moon. I ran out of the theatre and walked around the corner to the stage alley. One look at the Pigeon’s Egg set, which had not yet been carted away, set me off again and I fled the alley to the street. I walked up and down, cursing the heat, the hiccups, Philadelphia, the food I had eaten, the Lyric Theatre, and anything else that
came into my mind. I was growing frantic that I might have to miss the new third act if the spasms did not subside, but they gave little sign of doing so and I dared not go back into the theatre. It seemed to me I was roaring like a calliope. Every few minutes I kept glancing at my watch, knowing by the time exactly what portion of the second act was being played, and finally I could bear it no longer. I walked in the balcony entrance and ran up the stairs.
The exit doors on each landing were dimly lit but I saw no sign of an usher anywhere, and I kept on going. I came out into what must have been the topmost gallery; there was not a soul in it, and it was so far from the stage that I could well believe that even my hurricane gusts would not echo down. I took a seat in the last row and watched the puppet-like creatures on the stage playing out the last scene of the second act. I knew by heart every line they were mouthing, of course, so it mattered little that I could not hear much of what they were saying—and if I could not hear them they probably could not hear me. Looking down from my aerie there seemed to be not more than twenty or thirty people in the orchestra. Actually there must have been a hundred or so, and we might well have jumped another eighty-five cents, but I was well past caring about the nightly receipts.
During the intermission I opened an exit door and walked back and forth along the platform of the iron stairway outside the gallery, taking deep breaths of air. I came back inside and sat down, hiccuping as noiselessly as I could, and waited for the house lights to dim. I was terrified when the fans stopped whirring and in the sudden silence I gave the loudest and longest series of hiccups I had given vent to all evening. But nothing, I was now determined, was going to get me out of the theatre. The audience must have been talking among themselves as they settled back into their seats after the intermission, for there was no sign that anyone had heard me, and I was thankful that in the new arrangement of the third act Mr. Kaufman was already safely backstage. The third act opened now, not with the Pigeon’s Egg, but in the Hollywood film studio, and the second scene of the third act was the new train scene with Mr. Kaufman and Jean Dixon. The first scene seemed to be playing better without the Pigeon’s Egg, but the train scene, of course, would tell the whole story.