The Strange Adventures of the Man who Wrote a Play

by Irvin S. Cobb

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE MAN WHO WROTE A PLAY

BY IRVIN S. COBB

ILLUSTRATED BY HORACE TAYLOR

IN the beginning I wrote a play. I claim no especial distinction on this account, however, because I am a newspaper man, and every newspaper man I know has written at least one play. Some newspaper men have written so many that there isn't room for the manuscripts in their trunks.

So, as above stated, I wrote a play. It was a comedy. It didn't start out to be a comedy. It started out to be a strong problem play of modern life, full of terse epigram and gripping satire, with touches of comedy deftly interspersed here and there, like the onion in a hamburger. But after I had the whole thing blocked out, and had got to work on "Act I, Scene I—The Anteroom of a City Law-Office," I discovered, to my surprise and at first to my chagrin, that my characters absolutely refused to stand for any problem business.

I remember that I wrestled for hours and days with my principal character, trying to show him how necessary and vital it was for him to be a part of a play that would send the audience forth into the night at the conclusion of the first performance, saying to one another: "Well, Ibsen may be dead, but—" But, no, he wouldn't have it that way, my leading man character wouldn't. He was so self-willed! Later he developed into a sunny-tempered, middle-aged barrister with a strong vein of humor and a heart so full of warm, human sympathy that there was hardly room for the customary supply of cockles that always go with that sort of a heart; but at the time I am speaking of now he was very resolute and self-willed.

I couldn't do anything with him, and the other characters were almost as bad. I wish I might make the reader understand how I thrashed around and swapped "strangle holts" and "half nelsons" with that obstinate crowd until my typewriter was as limp as a rag. Human endurance has its limit, which is the main reason why collectors of bad bills can make a living: and so at length my patience wore itself down to a thin fringe, and, feeling that I was honorably overcome by superior numbers, I surrendered and told them to go ahead and have their own way.

They had their own way, and I wrote a comedy. Though I say it who shouldn't, it was a great comedy. Between them the low-comedy characters and the eccentric types kept me in a constant roar with their whimsical doings and their apt sayings. The landlady of the New York boarding-house where I lived used to come to my door and listen to the rollicking outbursts of laughter that filtered through the keyhole for hours at a time. Then she would go back down-stairs and tell the other boarders that while she was not certain, she thought I must be one of those secret drinkers who keep a bottle in their room.

AN ABODE OF LITERARY GENIUS

I think the other boarders mostly understood. In the main, they were literary persons themselves. Like me, they had come to New York to be near the great centers of literary supply and demand. There was one young man—a true Bohemian, but with the shucks still on—who belonged to the leading Bohemian set of Michigan City, Indiana. He had the room just over mine. He was writing one of the great novels of the decade. He said himself that it was the great novel of the decade. All that winter I used to hear him, overhead, walking back and forth, back and forth. I supposed for a while that he was walking for inspiration; but later I decided that he was trying to nerve himself to take a bath. He conquered the baser impulse, however, and remained a true Bohemian until spring.

After dinner we used to sit in the parlor of the boarding-house until the landlady's daughter's beau came, telling one another what we were doing, and dissecting the works of various persons who had somehow or other won a transient distinction in the realms of literature and the drama. If the ears of Augustus Thomas or Edith Wharton ever burned of an evening during the winter of 1905-1906, this is to let them know the reason.

Then we would scatter each to his or her or their room and add a chapter to the book, or a scene to the play, or a verse to the epic poem, as the case might be. So for months I went along, guiding the sprightly currents of my comedy over rippling reefs of laughter, through splashing cascades of chuckles, and past the dimpling eddies where quiet smiles lurked in the shadows, until all was blended in the splendid, reverberating Minnehaha of my third act.

In due season the play was finished. But at the very last I had to do it all over again, practically. It occurred to me to count up the words in it. There were forty-six thousand and some odd hundreds of them. Figuring fifteen thousand words to the average comedy, mine would run about three nights and a Saturday matinée. I felt that I should have to do some pruning. I hated to do it—it was like chopping slices out of a Rembrandt to make it fit a frame, but I realized that I must condense the play into the space of one evening, or else antagonize the critics.

I went to work and cut and slashed with a brave hand, although sometimes, when a particularly strong passage had to be trimmed, I felt as if I were amputating my own legs. Finally I had my comedy reduced to the conventional limits, and I set out to do what I had thought would be the easiest detail of the undertaking—placing it.

I took it first to a prominent producer, whom I will call Mr. Charles Slowman to distinguish him from his brother Daniel. I didn't see Mr. Slowman personally; he was detained, it seemed, by pressing business somewhere in an inner office of his suite. I saw one of his readers, a slender young man with a high forehead and a preoccupied manner. In delivering the manuscript to this young man I could not forbear sketching out for him some of the main situations. At several points I was unable to restrain my amusement, and guffawed heartily; but he was evidently a person with a false sense of dignity, and he continued throughout to manifest an air of composure which must have been feigned. When I was through he took the manuscript from my hand, tossed it upon a pile of similar manuscripts, told me I would hear from Mr. Slowman in due time, and said "Good-by" several times in a rapid and hurried manner.

In due time I did hear from Mr. Slowman. In returning my play to me, he had gone to the trouble of having a neat little printed slip struck off on my account. The slip said it was a very good play, but owing to Mr. Slowman being stocked up with stuff by Clyde Fitch and George Ade and Henry Arthur Jones, it was unavailable at this time. He didn't exactly mention Fitch and those others by name, but the inference was plain. At the bottom of the printed matter, Mr. Slowman had added a note—in his own handwriting, I felt sure—saying that there was one serious flaw in my play—a flaw which he pointed out briefly.

THE BLINDNESS OF THE MANAGERS

I didn't like to quarrel with an experienced producer, but I felt bound to do justice both to myself and to the play. I reflected that from time to time Slowman had brought out failures, and that he had been guilty of other errors of judgment; so I made no attempt to remedy what he had been pleased to call a flaw. In the first place, looking at it from any angle, I couldn't see how it could fairly be considered as a flaw; and in the second place, I couldn't touch it without changing the whole play. I felt that my nerves couldn't stand the strain of another struggle with those characters. Besides, time was passing, and the season for putting out new plays was rapidly approaching. I decided to pass up Slowman and let some other manager have a chance.

So I took it to one whom I will call Mr. Lee Flobert. He liked it very much, he said—or, rather, his secretary said so for him; but there was a certain flaw which made it impossible for the Flobert interests to produce my play just then. Strangely enough, Mr. Flobert's flaw was in the first act, whereas the one which Mr. Slowman thought he had discovered was in the second act. I said to myself that there appeared to be a conspiracy against me somewhere; and, besides, what was the use of fussing around with managers who were looking for flaws instead of plays? So I marked the name of Flobert off the list, and went to Mr. Grady.

Mr. Grady was greatly pleased with the comedy, so his stenographer reported, hut there was a flaw in it—in the last act, this time. Hamdilly's file-clerk bore me an almost similar message on behalf of his employer; Slaw & Clawhanger's head office-boy said practically the same thing, and so did the man who swept out for Wagonfuls & Tempter, except that each one of these flushed his particular covey of flaws at a different point from the others.

To sum up, I will simply state that this play is still in my possession. I am holding it for a purpose. Some day there will be a demand for a play made up of flaws—not a play with a mere incidental flaw flecked in here and there, but a play that is composed of one strong flaw superimposed on another, and that on another, and so on. Then I shall take my comedy out from the bottom tray of my trunk, where it now lies under a dress-suit which my waist-measure has outgrown. I shall brush the moth-crystals off it, hold it aloft, and say:

"Gentlemen, here are the goods!"

In case you should happen to see it, I will mention its name here. It is called "The Sure Return."

A PLUNGE INTO MUSICAL COMEDY

I had spent five months writing a comedy and six months trying to place it, and I have it yet. Now comes the second part of my unvarnished story, in which it will be shown that sometimes the race is to the swift.

One day I got a message from a manager whose specialty is producing musical comedies and comic operas—they being musical comedies if made in America, and comic operas if imported from England and done over here for home consumption. This gentleman invited me to call on a matter of business.

I had always felt that I would sit down some morning after breakfast and write a really good musical show—a feeling which is shared, I am convinced, by nearly everybody who sees such entertainments. I was at the manager's office promptly on time. He took me up-town to a storage- warehouse, and showed me an outfit of scenery, a large number of costumes, and an ample supply of theatrical properties. These articles, he explained, had been used in a musical show which he produced the year before, and which failed because of a number of unforeseen circumstances and adverse conditions for which he could in no wise be held to blame. The scenery and costumes and things had never been seen in New York, he said, and were as good as new; what he wanted me to do was to write a bright musical comedy around them. He had already engaged a capable musician to do the score, and so I wouldn't have to worry about that. I was glad to hear this, because, although gifted and attractive in many ways, I am not a musician.

I felt flattered. The manager asked me how long I thought it ought to take me to write the book and the lyrics. There would have to be some extra lyrics, he said, because it always happened that they threw out a lot of numbers during rehearsals.

I made a rapid mental calculation, and told him that in my opinion about three months, or maybe four, should be allowed for the work, if done properly. His manner became almost violent.

"Mushiful Evans!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter—got creeping paralysis of the intellect, or something like that? Why, man alive, you've got your scenery and your props and your costumes and all that. All you've got to do is just to write to 'em. George Hobart, or one of those fellows, wouldn't want more than a day, or a day and a half at the outside, for a little job like that. Still, of course, we've got to figure that you are a little bit new at the game, and give you plenty of time. There'll have to be three acts, because we've got three sets of scenery. Let's see now—this is Tuesday; suppose you give me the first act day after to-morrow, so I can see what the parts are going to be like and get the company signed up. You must give me the last two acts by next Saturday night, because I've got the chorus called for rehearsals on Monday morning. And say, let it all be good, bright, new stuff, will you—none of that old junk they've all been pulling?"

I wouldn't like to say that I worked like a Trojan, because I don't know how hard a Trojan can work. I do know the Trojans have a large annual output of linen collars and laundry-machinery and Republican politicians to their credit, so I assume that they are earnest workers; but if anybody in Troy ever worked any harder than I did that week, his union will probably take his card away from him for violating the eight-hour law, should the true facts become known. I ate little and slept less, but when Saturday night came the third act was ready.

HIS MAJESTY THE STAGE-MANAGER

No time was lost. On Sunday I was called upon to read the completed work to the gentleman who had been chosen for stage-manager. He was a stout, impressive person, whose figure sloped outward and downward in a series of overlapping layers. When he stood up sideways he made you think of a pagoda.

He shook hands with me, and then, remarking that he had been up late the night before, he settled down in his chair and dropped off almost instantly. However, he must have been a light sleeper, for several times when I paused to get my breath he roused up and told me to go on. When I was through reading he waked up slowly, took possession of the manuscript, and said (yawn) that it read all right (gape), and he had no doubt (long, double yawn) that he'd be able to lick it into shape and make something out of it. He then passed somnambulantly out into the twilight.

The next time I saw him he was not to be likened to a pagoda. He had become a human volcano in an active state of eruption, pouring out live ashes, molten lava, powdered pumice, and the hot tar of inspired invective. It was in a hall, and he was conducting a rehearsal. He had his coat off, and was busier than a boss canvasman when the show-train has been delayed by a washout.

He was having things his own way. The principals, haughty enough on the street, were as dumb, driven cattle. The abashed chorus-girls and the sad chorus-men—and a chorus-man at a rehearsal is probably the saddest sight ever presented to the moistened eye of pity—they also were his. body and soul, to do with as he chose. He was their sole proprietor, their Simon Legree, their Great White Father. From time to time, however, he gave them a moment's peace while he rent to further fragments that frayed and frazzled wisp of a thing which had been the book.

It was with the utmost difficulty that I recognized the wraith of my brain-child. Once, and once only, in the still, small voice of the oft-trodden-on-and-seldom-turning worm, I went so far as to protest against the brutal massacre of one of my best scenes. Never shall I forget what followed. He charged down on me the length of the long hall, and before an interested audience of his white slaves he informed me, in the voice of a squeaky lead-pencil rasping across an exposed nerve in a neuralgic lower jaw—providing such a combination would have such a voice—that I was merely the inconsequential, futile-faced dub that wrote the piece, and that my wishes in the matter didn't amount to a hyphenated, double-cleft, asterisked, Billy-be-accursed blank space with him. He then ordered me to begone.

So I be-went. In the hallway, where I paused to think up a perfectly splendid retort that would have just suited the emergency if I had only thought of it three minutes sooner. I heard muffled sobs. The man who had done the musical numbers was leaning up against a janitor, sobbing in baffled rage mixed with poignant sorrow. Together we fared forth into the pitiless night—joint parents of a murdered offspring.

THE POWER OF STAGE TRADITIONS

Days passed before I dared venture back to the scene of the crime. Somehow things had progressed. Stranger still, there were places where you could still detect traces of the plot, and spots where the skilled ear might recognize scraps of the original music. The stage-manager had not become an extinct crater, by any means, but he now seethed more mildly. The principals had begun to perk up. The chorus-girls were getting almost cocky. Even the chorus-men no longer flinched when spoken to.

It was at this period that I learned something of the traditions of the musical-comedy stage. I didn't think there were any ethics to be followed in musical-comedy-producing, but just the same there are—oodles of them. For example, we had a scene where a group of chorus-men were made up as sailors. They came in, ye-heaving and ye-hoing, and lifting up first one leg and then the other by yanking on their waistbands.

Having gained heart, I ventured to ask the stage-manager why this should be so.

"There's nothing in the play, so far as I know, that says these sailor- boys have the white swelling," was my remark. "Why, then, should they make their entrance in this way?"

"Why?" he repeated,"Why? Why, because they always have. and that's all there is to it!"

Which, indeed, was all there was to it. In the merry, merry world of musical comedies, the terriers of the craft may worry the poor rat of a book to death—and they do; they may gnaw the vitals of the musical score with their merciless teeth—and they do; they may bite off the feet of the songs—and they do; but the traditions endure and are unafraid, for no impious hand dare lay the weight of an unhallowed finger upon them. All proper stage sailors must look as if they had hip-disease, just as all comic-opera banditti must apparently suffer from sore legs and wrap them from the knees to the ankles in buff bandages with criss-cross tapes.

But to revert to the main issue. The play went on at a Broadway theater. I had my dream. I saw my name in print on the program—wigs by Jones, costumes by Brown, shoes by Robinson, piano loaned by Green, book by Me. My friends congratulated me; they said I was discovered. I shall pass over the miseries of the first night; the audience is said to have suffered, but I suffered more severely. I stayed up to get the first copies of the morning papers and read what the critics said. Then I knew that my friends were wrong. They thought I was going to be discovered, whereas I had merely been exposed.

And that's the way to write a play. Sometimes a play succeeds and sometimes it fails.

Mine failed.