Book Read Free

Act One

Page 46

by Moss Hart


  Miss Dixon promptly broke out in hives, Miss Byington grew waspish, Hugh O’Connell sulked, and Grant Mills could not remember a line. Mr. Kaufman, with a real crisis at hand, was instantly all patience again and at his most winning and understanding; but even he could not save the evening rehearsal from the depressing and unmistakable walk-through that it was. I rode home with the uncomfortable knowledge that tomorrow’s rehearsal, though it would take place on the stage of the Music Box, might not be very much better. Everything was obviously proceeding according to schedule. Frenzy had arrived on time. The next step, according to the timetable, was anguish. There was evidently going to be plenty of it around, or enough, it seemed to me, to justify those foolish plays and movies about the theatre that I would never laugh at so easily again.

  * * *

  On the day before a New York opening, a company moves within a solar system of its own. It is a planet in outer space, detached from the moon and stars, and its orbit is the stairway from the dressing rooms to the stage. Each actor sits at his make-up table, staring into the brilliantly lit mirror at his own image, making the proscribed movements that will detach him still further from the world of reality and allow him to achieve the anonymity of complete disguise. The more he becomes at one with the part he is to play, the less of himself that peeps through it, the further he sinks into the atmosphere of make-believe and unreality, the safer he feels. He is seeking a judgment from the real world, not of himself but of the hidden image he carries within him that is both his goal and his refuge. The general conception that all actors are born exhibitionists is far from the truth. They are quite the opposite. They are shy, frightened people in hiding from themselves—people who have found a way of concealing their secret by footlights, make-up and the parts they play. Their own self-rejection is what has made most of them actors. What better way to solve the problem or to evade it than to be someone other than the self one has rejected, and to be accepted and applauded for it every night. They have solved the problem, but not its torment. It is what makes every opening night so painful an experience. Little wonder that on the day before an opening the atmosphere backstage reflects each actor’s anxiety at meeting the test anew, for the judgment does not lessen but is compounded by the years, and it is always agonizing no matter how many times an actor has walked out onto the stage to meet it.

  It was just as well that I had reconciled myself to a bad rehearsal, for the proceedings on the stage of the Music Box were more like a series of nervous explosions than anything else. Hats and dresses that had fit perfectly well in Philadelphia seemed to have come back from the cleaners a size too small. Entrances were missed or exits bungled, and doors that had opened with ease and props that handled without difficulty before, now presented mysterious problems each time one was opened or picked up. Mr. Kaufman rode out the storm like a pilot searching out the eye of a hurricane—unruffled, detached and ready to report back to the weather bureau that the storm was not a dangerous one. But by the end of the afternoon rehearsal I was in no such state of calm. If the final run-through tonight emerged looking anything like this one, I doubted my capacity to sit through it, or perhaps even to live through it. Mr. Kaufman’s composure would have to do for both of us. I intended to hijack Max Siegel and make him walk the streets with me at the first flash of thunder.

  There is no need to try to understand the eternal perverseness of the theatre, or to attempt to explain why an afternoon rehearsal can be a shambles and an evening rehearsal on the same day be orderly, smooth and perfect in every detail. Like a good deal of the theatre’s disorderliness, it defies explanation. It is simpler to say that the evening run-through of Once in a Lifetime was flawless. Every mistake of the afternoon had corrected itself; every error in light cues, every blunder in props, every imperfection in costume had vanished. The rehearsal was faultless except in one particular: the acting was completely hollow. Its emptiness may have been due to the difficulty of playing comedy in an empty theatre, for a preview audience the night before an opening was the exception, not the rule, in those days. But granting this difficulty and making all allowances for it, it was hard not to be aware of the falsity of the playing. Not one performance carried conviction. Each actor seemed to lack fluidity, bounce or humor, and in consequence the play very soon took on the patina of its acting. By the time the final curtain fell, the play seemed to me to be as brittle and humorless as the performance. I walked up the aisle and stood a little away from where Mr. Kaufman and Sam Harris were talking, not eager to have my judgment corroborated. I was more than willing to attribute my feelings about the play to my own unsteady nerves. It would be small comfort to know that they were steadier than I gave them credit for being and that the play was as frail as it looked.

  Mr. Kaufman started backstage with his notes for the cast, and Sam Harris was about to follow him when his eye fell upon me. He walked over to where I stood and peered at me closely before he spoke. “I think you need a drink, kid,” he said. “Come on up to the office.” I followed him meekly, though I did not want or need a drink, and had it been anyone other than Sam Harris I would have refused. What I wanted was to crawl into the subway and get home as fast as possible. I hated the play and every actor in it, and my mood was far too truculent to chance talking to anybody, Mr. Kaufman included. I did not, as it turned out, utter a word for the next four hours. Mr. Harris’ intentions were kindly and I have no doubt that the color of my face must have seemed ashen even in the semidarkness of the theatre, but it was very soon apparent that Mr. Harris’ invitation was not altogether altruistic. Mr. Harris badly needed a drink himself for his own reasons. He wanted someone to have it with him, and what was more to the point, he had evidently been having a few drinks on his own all through the evening.

  It occurred to me that he walked up the stairs a little strangely, and now he seemed to be having considerable trouble finding the ice and the glasses. As I watched the amount of liquor he was pouring into each glass I realized he was determined to find a happy oblivion for these next few hours and that it was to consist largely of his self-conceived mission of cheering me up. Though his movements were uncertain, his sense of dedication was not. He plunged immediately into the task at hand. “You worried about this play, kid?” he asked.

  I nodded, deciding that the quicker I let him cheer me up the sooner I would be on the subway. Unfortunately, there is almost no protection against being cheered up and I have always been sadly unfitted for dealing with people who have had a drop too much. My nodded agreement to his question was unwise. He mistook my silence for emotion too deep to be expressed and changed his tactics accordingly. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he felt that stronger medicine was going to be needed, and with the first spoonful I knew I was going to get the full dose.

  “Did I ever tell you about George M. Cohan and the first play he ever wrote?” he began. “Felt just the way you do now, kid. He was just about your age, I think, and I was still managing Terry McGovern, the prize fighter. The theatre was easier in those days, but the people got just as scared. Let me tell you first how George Cohan and I happened to meet…”

  He settled back comfortably in the large chair behind the desk, clinked the ice merrily against the glass for a moment, and told the tale with loving attention to detail. The theatre may have been easier in those days, but everything apparently took a great deal longer, for by the time Mr. Harris reached George M. Cohan’s first play and Mr. Cohan’s triumph over his fears, a good hour had gone by, two or three more drinks had been consumed by Mr. Harris in the telling, and we were only just approaching the beginnings of the famous partnership of Cohan and Harris, which I could sense I was going to receive a full account of. I dared not look at my watch or appear to be restive, for Mr. Harris’ mind was completely unclouded and his eye, like the eye of most deaf people, was an inordinately keen one. Obviously, the only attitude to assume was to indicate that some of Mr. Harris’ cheerfulness had communicated itself to me and tha
t I was no longer so much in need of his ministrations.

  It was a second fatal error! Like my silence, my sudden cheerfulness again decided him on a new tactic. He stopped the Cohan and Harris saga abruptly, mixed himself another drink, and sat down next to me on the sofa. He fixed his eyes rather sternly on mine and said, “All of this stuff I’ve been telling you was just to take your mind off things so you could listen to what I really wanted to say.” He cleared his throat importantly and paused before he continued. “Now, I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t worry too much about this play, kid.”

  I returned his gaze hopefully and for a few moments it seemed that we would be leaving the office very shortly, for after a preamble on why most dress rehearsals are bound to be disappointing to the author, he stopped as if to marshal his thoughts. I was so certain that this would be his final few words of wisdom and cheer, I was already calculating whether or not I had missed the last express to Brooklyn and would have to take the long ride by local.

  To my amazement he rose from the sofa, planted himself in front of me, and announced firmly, “The reason you shouldn’t worry about this play, kid, is because it’s got a good story. Let me tell it to you…”

  I stared helplessly up at him, convinced that I must now say something even at the risk of hurting his feelings, but he had already moved away to the center of the room and was launched into telling me the full story of Once in a Lifetime. He was not a man to skimp, and liquor seemed to sharpen his memory rather than curtail it. He started with the rise of the first curtain, described the set and the lighting meticulously, and then proceeded to act out each part with every bit of stage business intact. Where he did not remember the exact line, he ad libbed his own interpretation of it, and since he was his own audience and enjoying his own performance immensely, he laughed loudly at all the appropriate places. I sank back into the sofa, horror-struck, as it dawned on me that nothing could prevent him from going through the entire play, scene by scene and line by line, and that I would sit here trapped until the final curtain. At the end of the first act he took an intermission by mixing himself another drink and describing why the audience would like what they had seen up until then, and after a refreshing swallow he placed the glass on the desk and said, “Second act. Now, listen to what happens now!”

  There was little else to do but listen with awe-struck attention. In spite of the fact that my eyes occasionally closed, it was somehow fascinating to watch Sam Harris pretending to be Jean Dixon and George Kaufman, mimicking their readings and even falling into a good facsimile of Miss Dixon’s slouching walk and Mr. Kaufman’s grim leer over the tops of his eyeglasses. His performance was giving him such unalloyed pleasure that at another time I might actually have enjoyed watching him, for all of the sweetness of his nature shone through his innocent enjoyment of himself.

  By the time he approached the end of the second act, however, I could keep awake only with enormous effort. I dared not lean back on the sofa, for I would have gone promptly to sleep, and though I shifted my position constantly, my head kept dropping down onto my chest. Only the fact that one of my feet kept going to sleep, sending shooting pains up and down my leg, saved me from drifting off. I roused myself for the intermission, and while Mr. Harris explained why the audience was still liking it, I stood up and stretched discreetly. It helped a little, but not enough. As I watched him fill his glass and get ready for the third act, his enthusiasm and vitality not one bit abated, I was overcome anew with sleepiness. I gave a terrible shudder and so loud a sigh when he announced, “Third act; here’s what happens now,” that he looked at me sharply and asked, “Not getting a chill, are you, kid?”

  I shook my head and went back to my seat. I sat on the very edge of the sofa this time, planted my elbows firmly on my knees and placed one hand at each temple for the double purpose of keeping my head upright and holding my eyelids open with my fingertips. I could do nothing about the enormous yawns that were issuing from my mouth, one after the other; but Sam Harris was so deeply immersed in his attempt to do full justice to the third act that he seemed not to notice or even to be aware of my presence.

  He was in full swing again, roaring through the train scene with tremendous verve and gusto, and that last drink seemed to have unleashed a hitherto unrealized athletic capacity for playing comedy. He bounced from one chair to the other as he switched parts, and finally, to illustrate Hugh O’Connell’s moment of triumph just before the final curtain, he leaped onto a stool in front of the fireplace with the agility of a mountain goat. I had noticed that the light was changing through the curtained windows behind the desk, and now I saw the first faint streaks of daylight beginning to filter through them. There was silence suddenly and the silence startled me into wakefulness. Sam Harris was standing in front of me, placing his straw hat on his head.

  “Go on home and get a good night’s sleep, kid,” he said. “I think you’ll sleep better now.”

  I got up stiffly from the sofa and followed him out of the office and down the stairs. As we came into the street, he stopped dead and blinked with surprise at the daylight. “What the hell time is it?” he asked.

  I glanced at my watch. It was just a few minutes short of five o’clock. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Harris,” I said. “I wouldn’t have slept much tonight anyway.”

  He shook his head ruefully and laughed. “That play still needs cutting. That’s all I can say, kid,” he said and we started toward Broadway.

  Even in my close to sleepwalking state I could see we were going to have a fine day for the opening. The morning sky was cloudless and there was a hint in the air that the day would be warm but not too hot. It was pleasant to know that much about tonight anyway. We stood silently at the corner of 45th Street, waiting for a taxi to appear. It was strange to look up and down a Broadway whose every square foot I thought I knew and find it looking completely different. The long ugly thoroughfare looked clean and friendly. I thought I had seen Broadway in all of its various guises, but I had never seen it like this. It looked, of all things, sleepy and innocent. The tawdriness and the glitter were gone. It seemed to stand hushed and waiting—as if eager to welcome all the new actors and playwrights struggling to reach it.

  “Well, you can’t go home now, kid,” said Mr. Harris, breaking the silence. “By the time you get to Brooklyn you’ll just have time to turn around and get back to rehearsal. What time did George call rehearsal for?”

  “Eleven o’clock,” I replied.

  “There you are,” he said, “no use going home. Better go to a hotel.”

  “No,” I said, “I’d better go home.”

  “What for, kid?” he persisted. “What’s wrong with going to a hotel? You’ll get a few hours’ sleep, anyway.”

  “I’d rather go home, Mr. Harris,” I replied carefully and with emphasis, and stepped away from him to signal a taxi I saw in the distance. I could feel him looking at me, and as the taxi drew up he came toward me and held out his hand.

  “So long, kid,” he said, “see you at rehearsal,” and stepped quickly into the cab.

  I looked down at my hand and stared at what he had slipped into it. It was a one-hundred-dollar bill! He had, it appeared, gathered the reason for my insistence on going home. I stared down at the lovely banknote in my hand for a long moment before I made my decision. After tomorrow night, I might well be able to afford to stay at the best hotel in town; but then again, I might not. After tomorrow night—or rather tonight, I suddenly realized as the dawn grew brighter—it might be a very long time before I even saw a hundred-dollar bill again. Now was the time to live richly and fully, if only for a few hours, and not waste this lovely windfall of fate on a small side-street hotel. It might actually be an excellent omen for the opening if I had the good sense to make full use of it.

  I crossed the street and walked up the steps into the Astor Hotel. There was no question that I had chosen the right omen the moment I entered the lobby. I felt better in every stiff joint.
The night clerk looked at me suspiciously, but I was ready for him.

  “I want a suite on the Forty-fifth Street side—just until tomorrow morning. My play is opening tomorrow night at the Music Box and I’ve got a rehearsal at eleven—we had a longer dress rehearsal than I expected. By the way,” I added, with the proper touch of casualness, “could you change this for me? I seem to have nothing small to give the bellboy.” I handed the hundred-dollar bill to him across the desk.

  His attitude made a quick turnabout from the suspicious to the reverential. He pushed the register card toward me respectfully and held the pen out deferentially.

  “Would you like to leave a call and your breakfast order with me, sir?” he asked as he brought me the change.

  “Yes,” I replied. “And is there a masseur in the hotel, by the way?” He nodded. “Have him come in at nine o’clock and wake me up for a massage, and I want a barber and a manicurist at a quarter of ten. I’ll have breakfast at ten thirty—orange juice, toast, coffee, bacon and eggs. I think that will be all.”

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, and pressed a buzzer under the desk. “Take Mr. Hart to ten-fourteen,” he said as he handed a key to the bellboy, “and wait and find out if the suite is satisfactory. I think you’ll like it, sir—it’s one of our best. If not, the bellboy will show you another. Good night, sir. I’ll take care of all of this for you.” We bowed slightly to each other and I followed the bellboy toward the elevator.

 

‹ Prev