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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
yet it was to Wylie’s office that the boy found himself irresistibly
drawn.
Miss Robb typed in a deserted room. Somebody coughed in the
inner room and Joe looked in the door. Archie Munn sat at a portable
typewriter surrounded by newspapers.
“You are witnessing,” the actor announced gravely, “the finish of
one who might have been a brilliant news commentator.” He took a
page of script from the typewriter and tore it in half. “FWWO’s filled
the spot. One of the Journal’s reporters. It’s not bad publicity for the
Journal and FWWO gets a free news broadcast.” He looked at his
watch. “Well, somebody was thoughtful enough to die. I get a
funeral to-night.”
Joe stared.
“Pall-bearer,” Archie said, matter-of-factly. “You have to own a tux.
Three dollars for an afternoon funeral service and five dollars for an
evening service.”
Joe was profoundly shocked. Why, Archie was one of local radio’s
stars. He said uncertainly, “You mean—you have to?”
The actor tapped a cigarette against the desk. “Stella gets two
nights a week as a waitress in an all-night restaurant. Lucille thought
she was all set to go into a night club as a cigarette girl. The club
folded up.” A match flamed and touched the cigarette. “I don’t have
to do it, Joe. I love funerals. Didn’t you know?”
In two sentences Archie had painted a picture. Once Joe would
have said lightly: “That’s show business.” Now he couldn’t be
flippant. He knew it was show business—their show business.
Rehearsals for hours, cutting platters that probably never sold,
perhaps playing a rôle in a sustaining show day after day! And
nobody paid you a dollar. Going hungry, perhaps; washing out your
single shirt, as Pop Bartell did, and hanging it to dry while you slept.
You dug up a job so that you could eat, but it had to be a skimpy,
part-time job that permitted you to keep body and soul together, and
you lavished that body and soul on radio. You lived on a sustaining
hope, a feverish, burning hope, that some day all the mean, petty
economies of small time would be behind you and you’d know the
glory of the fame of big time.
Joe said doggedly: “It won’t be that way with me.” In Wylie’s
book, he had top billing. If he was good enough for Wylie, he was
good enough for any of them. Time would do it. He had made the
rounds to-day and had found nothing. But to-morrow....
To-morrow became another yesterday, and then another
yesterday. A week passed. And still he had nothing. Once John
Dennis said an automatic “Have a good summer?” as though
forgetting this was not his first visit.
That was the day the sway of Joe’s shoulders lost easy naturalness
and became front. The bread-and-butter tide had dwindled. Those
no longer making the rounds were working. Perhaps not getting any
money, but at least rehearsing and auditioning. Archie Munn had
caught on with a sponsored Sunday show. Soon the commercials
would all be cast. After that there would be only occasional bits in
shows like I Want Work, or the sustaining shows, originating in the
studios, that paid only in experience. And actors and actresses that
the producers had thus far discarded would still make the rounds,
and smile a smile that was becoming fixed and mechanical, and pray
for a chance at even these starvation crumbs.
In show business, Joe told himself, you had to get the breaks. The
breaks hadn’t yet come. They would. Either Wylie had judgment or
he hadn’t. The boy was sure he had. He believed in Wylie. And yet,
to-day when he reached the building that housed Vic Wylie
Productions, he could not go in. With the red-headed, dynamic
producer present the office was magnetized; with Wylie absent, the
place was only four barren walls. He couldn’t stand barrenness—too
many other things were barren. Undecided, he kept walking and
approached his father’s store. He thought with surprise, “I always
seem to end up here when show business gets tough.”
The display in the immaculate cases down the center of the room
had been changed once more. Black lettering on a card said simply:
SCHOOL DAYS. The cases held fountain pens, typewriters, leather
brief-cases, book-ends, and desk sets. Joe thought: “Dad certainly is
up to the minute.” But it was toward the book department that he
went at once.
Mr. Fairchild was taking some books from the shelves and placing
them on the reduced-price table. “Joe,” he said, “don’t ask me if
we’re selling any books. The subject is painful.”
The jackets of books made exciting, vivid splashes of color along
the shelves. Titles paraded in rows, quickening, challenging, and
mysterious. Books and radio again began to tumble about in Joe’s
mind as they had tumbled before. Thomas Carlin Presents To-day’s
Book.... But his father had said that the cost of a once-a-week would
be prohibitive. And yet, if there was a way to tell people about a
grand book.... But how could you tell them so that they’d want to
read the book?
The door of his father’s office was closed. Shadows moved upon
the glass.
“Who’s in with Dad, Mr. Fairchild?”
“We’re carrying a new typewriter. An official of the company’s
down to talk advertising appropriation with your father.”
“If we advertise the typewriter, the company’ll pay part of the
cost.”
“It’s their typewriter, isn’t it?”
Joe stared at the shelves. Books and radio were doing another
tumble through his mind. His breath quickened.
Clerks covered the cases with dusters at the closing hour and
came back to the rear.
“Are you on the air, Joe?”
“What program? I keep tuning, but I don’t get you.”
“What happens in radio, Joe?”
Sitting on a table in the book department Joe described
rehearsals, sponsor auditions, the cutting of a platter. He told them
about Vic Wylie and Tony Vaux. But he did not tell them that this
was all small time and that show people in small time radio had to
piece out their incomes as pallbearers, and as night-shift waitresses,
and as cigarette girls in night clubs.
The advertising discussion in his father’s office ended. Tom Carlin
came upon a rapt group in the book department.
“Trying to lure my boys into radio, Joe?” he asked dryly.
One of the men laughed. “It sounds exciting, Mr. Carlin, but I
prefer my own job.”
Whatever Tom Carlin started to say was bitten back. Father and
son left to get the car.
“Dad, you said a show would cost too much....”
Tom Carlin laughed. “When you get your teeth in, you hang on,
don’t you?”
“How much would it cost?”
“I don’t know. I learned what radio time would cost. I stopped
right there.”
“Suppose you plugged a book. Would the publisher go in with
you? It’s their book.”
“Assume,” his father said at last, “that I wrote to a publisher. He’d
want to know what kind of show. Well, what kind?”
Joe had no answer.
After supper he turned on the radio. He swung from station to
station, recognizing the cast of every local show. The old hunger was
on him. How close had he come to getting any of these parts, or had
he been considered at all?
“Joe,” his mother said gently, “you look done in.”
Not done in, he told himself; discouraged. He couldn’t shake off a
sense of shock. Archie Munn picking up a few stray dollars as a
pallbearer!
The telephone rang.
“Joe,” Tony Vaux said jovially, “I’m calling you and Pop in for a
reading. The He people are warming up. Early. About nine-thirty.”
 Joe was no longer discouraged. “An audition,” he called back over
his shoulder.
The bell rang again.
This time Lucille Borden’s voice sang over the telephone. “Joe, I’m
rushed; only a minute. N.B.C.’s called me to New York for a
committee audition. Wish me luck.”
Joe didn’t know what a committee audition was. But whatever it
was, it was good. The people Wylie picked were beginning to get the
breaks. They were going places.
The morning brought one of those dark days of lowering skies and
gray gloom. Pop Bartell was already at the Everts-Hall Agency, his
one shirt spotless.
“Hear about Lucille?” Tony Vaux boomed. “The first local artist to
get a committee audition in three years.”
“What is a committee audition?” Joe asked.
“The real thing, Joe. One producer hears your first reading at
N.B.C. If he turns you down, you can’t go back for a year. If he
passes you along, you’re called before a committee of five
producers. Usually you’re called back in a week. Somebody must
have slipped on Lu.”
Joe thought with envy: “Five producers; big time.” His heart lifted.
Good luck, Lucille!
Ceiling lights burned in the room, and the misty day, dark and
damp, pressed against the windows. Pop was as slim and straight,
as sprightly and spry, as a stripling. Joe scanned the Bush-League
Larry script:

Sound—Train Coming on Mike and Stopping at Station

Conductor (above escaping steam): Ticeville. Here’s where
you get off, young fellow. All a-a-aboard.
Sound—Train Panting Leaves Station. Fade to
Ike: Looking for somebody, stranger?
Larry: I’m looking for Bud Wilson.
 Ike: If you’re a salesman trying to sell Bud some baseball
equipment, you’re wasting your time. Bud’s Ticeville team
ain’t been doing so good. When a team in these parts don’t
win—

Tony said with a chuckle: “All right, folks. Take me out to the ball
game.” He made sound effects of a sort and Pop Bartell came in on
his cue:

Looking for somebody, stranger?

Joe was surprised by the character richness of the old man’s voice.
He thought: “Pop, this is going to be swell.” He spoke his own line:

I’m looking for Bud Wilson.

Pop was on the mike again:

If you’re a salesman trying to sell Bud some base—ball e—

equipment, you’re waste—you’re wasting your time. Bud’s
Tice—ville team ain’t—been going so good—

All the smooth, rich flow was gone. Pop, stumbling, sounded like a
novice with stage fright. Tony Vaux’s red face had become a mottled
red.
“What’s the matter with you, Pop? Can’t you read your lines?”
Pop drew himself up. “I can always read my lines. A slight
indisposition. I assure you I shall be myself directly.”
“Are you sick?”
“Tony!” Joe’s voice was impulsive. “Give him more light.”
Red-faced, Tony looked at the boy and then at the dark day grown
darker. He crossed the room and brought back a standing lamp.
“Try it again.”
Somebody came into the room. Pop’s voice, enriched by forty
years of acting, rolled out the lines once more, gave them a tang
and a flavor. And yet there came to Joe, as the reading went on, a
sense of something missed, of something that did not quite touch.
He made his last speech.
Vic Wylie, rumpled and tense, was in the room. Tony Vaux
scratched his chin.
“What do you think of it, Vic?”
Wylie was abrupt. “I never poke a finger in another man’s show.
You know that.”
Tony took a fat cigar from his bulging vest and chewed off the
end. “What’s wrong with it?” He raised plump hands toward Joe and
Pop. “Now, now, folks. I don’t mean it’s a bad show. It’s like one of
these salads that need a pinch more of this or a pinch less of that.”
He puffed on the cigar.
 “Now, now, folks,” Tony Vaux said. “I don’t mean it’s
a bad show.”

Joe began a hesitant: “Perhaps—”

“Again, Joe?” Tony chuckled. “What is it this time?”
 “Perhaps Mr. Bartell comes in too fast. He’s supposed to be a
retired old man with no worries except baseball. Sits around in the
shade and enjoys life. Never in a hurry—that’s what I mean. Doesn’t
Pop come in too crisply? You sort of lose the mellow, unhurried old
man. If he came in leisurely, a little drawly....”
Joe knew that Vic Wylie was watching him intently. Had he been
too free with his opinion? Tony rolled the cigar across his lips.
“Give it a go, Pop.”
Joe was amazed at the changed shading, the difference in timing,
that Pop gave his lines. He didn’t have to wonder if this were better.
Vic Wylie would still have struggled for greater perfection; but Tony
Vaux, rocking back and forth on his heels, exuded a bluff, red-faced
pleasure.
“Folks,” he said heartily, “that’s a show. If the He people don’t cool
off, we’ll lay them in the aisles.”
Joe thought: “That’s always the trouble with show business—the
if.” You had to sell a sponsor while he was hot; next day or next
week he began to wonder if the show was as good as he had
thought. That was the sticker with Sue Davis Against the World. Too
much time had passed since the audition. And these two shows
were the only hopes he had.
Pop Bartell departed. Joe had a shrewd idea the old actor would
have nothing to do with eye-glasses. Glasses would take from his
front of lingering, gallant youth.
The door closed slowly as Joe followed Pop. Vic Wylie’s rasp of
irritation was audible:
“You’ve heard One Man’s Family, Tony? A honey of a script, but
what a cast. Without a cast, what have you? I’m standing pat.
Munson’s option on Sue Davis runs out Monday. Monday I’m
throwing the show open.”
The door closed with a soft click and Tony’s reply was lost. But to
Joe the dark day was no longer dark. There was still hope. This was
Tuesday. Six more days to Monday.
 Pop Bartell waited outside the building in the street. “Joe, I
happen to find myself in a little difficulty. Momentarily, you
understand; only momentarily. A mere trifle. I expect to be called for
a part. Could you—” The old man coughed. “Only until I’m called for
the part, of course. Do you—” Again the cough. “Do you happen to
have a spare dollar?”
This, Joe thought with a pang, was what a good trouper came to
after forty years. “Make it two dollars, Mr. Bartell.”
“Joe, you place me eternally in your debt. As soon as I’m working
—” Pop Bartell went off through Royal Street, his stride youthful.
Again on Wednesday, Joe made the rounds in vain. There was no
word from Tony Vaux. Thursday was also barren. He counted days.
Four more days left of the Munson option.
Thursday Lucille Borden returned from her N.B.C. audition in New
York looking tired and pale. Make-up could not completely hide her
pallor.
“One of the producers liked my work,” she said. “He held me over
another day for a sponsor audition.”
That meant big time. Joe asked eagerly: “Did it go?”
“Infant,” Lucille drawled, “a sponsor audition gives you a beautiful
view of a lot of frozen faces.”
Joe knew. He had had one sponsor audition.
Then it was Friday. The days of hope had dwindled to three. The
searching bread-and-butter hunters had developed a stock question.
Joe heard it on Royal Street and in the elevators. “Anything yet?”
And there was a stock reply that fooled nobody, that was part of the
front. “No, but I’m expecting a part next week.” Pop Bartell expected
a part next week. Joe knew it was all hollow and unreal.
John Dennis was not at his office at FKIP. His secretary said: “Mr.
Dennis has you down for something.”
“I’ll be back,” Joe told her. Perhaps, he thought in growing
disillusionment, Dennis wanted to ask him had he had a good
summer. He went on to FFOM and from there to FWWO.
 Gillis said: “Two o’clock to-morrow, Carlin. We have an open spot
that must be filled in a hurry.”
A sustaining show that would pay no salary. And yet Joe walked
out going hot and cold by turns. His first call from a station since the
I Want Work platter. True, one of the smallest stations in the city, but
a call. Now, if there was something at FKIP.... Not wanting to miss
Dennis again he called from a booth in the lower hall.
“Joe,” said John Dennis, “I have a part I want to hear you read.”
Joe’s hand was hot on the receiver. “To-day?”
“To-morrow at two.”
Joe sighed. “I’m auditioning at two to-morrow.” He came out of
the booth. What should he have done, called off the FWWO audition
and gone over to the more important FKIP? Or did you cancel once
you’d told a station you’d be in?
Saturday he was at FWWO at a quarter to two. The Munson time
had shrunk to two days. There were four people in Gillis’ office,
three actresses and an actor. Joe had met them all, on and off, at
Wylie’s during the summer.
The clock moved around to 2:30. Gillis did not appear.
“Is this another FWWO over-ripe tangerine?” a voice asked.
At three o’clock Gillis walked into the office. “Sorry,” he said
gruffly. “I had an idea for a swell show.”
“Is it off, Gil?” one of the actresses asked. Her voice was dead.
“Upstairs changed its mind and gave it the hot foot.”
The cast filed out. Joe was torn with helpless resentment and
aching disappointment. His first call. And he had turned down FKIP—
for this.
A morbid curiosity sent him to the FKIP Building. Dennis was
rehearsing in Studio B. One look through the glass-walled gallery,
and the boy’s sense of loss grew. Archie Munn was in the cast, and
Stella Joyce, and Lucille Borden. When you had a chance with a cast
like that....
 Presently the rehearsal was over. Dennis gathered up script and
went out through the empty control-room. Joe walked to the door
through which Archie and the others would come to the gallery.
The door opened before he reached it. Archie Munn hurried
through the gallery, disappeared into the reception-room, and
hurried back in a few moments with a glass of water. Studio B
received him.
Mystified, Joe looked in through the glass. Lucille sat in a chair
and Stella stood beside her. Lucille drank the water slowly, looked up
at Stella, and tried to smile. Archie came out into the gallery.
“Anything wrong?” Joe asked.
“Lu said she felt faint.” Preoccupied, the actor took a cigarette
from his pocket, held it unlighted in his hand, and seemed to talk to
himself. “That New York audition took an extra day. She had to go to
a hotel. She was probably down to some loose silver when she got
back.”
Joe was still mystified.
“There’s not much nourishment in a roll and a cup of coffee,”
Archie Munn said bitterly.
The sun touched one side of Royal Street, and the Saturday
shopping crowds moved leisurely. Joe, his head bent, moved numbly
with the crowd. Stanch, warm-hearted Lucille Borden! She hadn’t
worked since June, and the night club had gone into bankruptcy,
and the Years of Danger show hadn’t gone back on the air. He bit his
lips.
Lights burned behind the glass door that said: VIC WYLIE
PRODUCTIONS. The producer, in the inner room, was at the
telephone.
“Miss Robb’s on her way over with an envelop, Arch. Take Lu to a
restaurant. Give her the envelop and send her home in a cab.”
Joe was motionless, silent. Wylie put down the telephone.
“Arch tells me you were there, kid.”
“Yes.”
 The producer sat with his head in his hands. “She’s a type,” he
said harshly in the silence. “She hasn’t much range. But give her a
type part she fits and they don’t come any better. You hear that, kid?
They don’t come any better. Look what happens to her. You think
that’s rare? You don’t know the stories small-time radio can tell. Why
do they stay in it? Oh, I know. The big time. It’s a dream; it’s like a
drug. Not one in a thousand ever cracks the big time. I’m sick of
watching them trying to live on crumbs. I’m fed up. But I can’t get
out. My father and my mother were show people; I was born in a
theatrical boarding-house. I toddled across a stage when I was five
years old.” His head snapped up fiercely. “What else do I know?”
The telephone rang.
Joe stumbled out. He bumped into a chair and pushed it aside. His
throat was choked. He was waiting at the elevators when Wylie’s
entrance door swung open.
“Kid, come back here. Come back.”
Joe went back.
Wylie grabbed him by the shoulders. “That was Tony, kid.
Munson’s signed. It’s in the bag and the string’s tied. A thirteen-
week try-out.”
Joe had often tried to imagine what this moment would be like.
His first contract; his first show. Now that the moment had come, he
could not rise to what the moment demanded. He was thinking of
Lucille.
“We go on the air Monday week. Rehearsals start to-morrow. All
day. We’ll give them a show, kid, that’ll rock the town.”
Gone was the black depression. Wylie’s eyes blazed with
excitement. He began to laugh as though Lucille Borden did not
exist.
But Joe knew better. Somebody had once told him that Wylie took
care of his people. Lucille was one of Wylie’s people, and,
spontaneously, his hand had gone into his pocket for her. Another
page was filled in the boy’s book of understanding and experience.
Day after day you witnessed contradictions. You marveled at
outbursts of temperament, mercurial and erratic. You watched an old
trouper stride along Royal Street owning the world because he had
two dollars. You soared in the clouds and you plunged down into the
depths. You were in show business.
 CHAPTER 8

Joe Carlin thought he knew the harsh exactitude of Vic Wylie’s

demands. Hadn’t he already rehearsed for Wylie? But those
rehearsals had been for the Sue Davis show at a time when it might
never reach a sponsor audition. This was the prelude to a Sue Davis
show actually going on the air. In the past Wylie had been an
unremitting slave driver. Now he became a sarcastic, sneering,
insulting monster. Each hour he seemed to find words that made the
last hour’s ordeal seem tame.
“After a season with Vic,” Stella Joyce fluttered, “your skin is gone.
You turn to leather.”
You had to be tough, Joe thought, to take it. That first rehearsal
was held in an office building quiet with the Sunday hush. Only one
elevator was in service. But the suite of Vic Wylie Productions was
articulate with the heart-rending echo of the producer’s suffering
and anguish.
Beginning at nine o’clock the rehearsal ran, with a few scattered
rest periods, until early in the afternoon. Sometimes they spent half
an hour on a dozen lines. “No, no,” Wylie moaned. “You’re driving
me to murder. I could get away with it, too—nobody’d ever miss
you. And if they did discover the bodies I’d get a public vote of
thanks. Why do you give me da-da-da-das? I want blood in it. I want
it human. I want it to have feeling and life.” Once he took Stella’s
part and read a scene. He was a man, and his voice was grotesque
in a mother’s rôle, but he managed to throw a ray of illumination on
the part. Every line he spoke took on unexpected possibilities. And
once he stormed out and slammed the door, and sulked in the outer
office for ten minutes.
 The whole cast was assembled—Stella, Joe, an actor named Bert
Farr who played the heavy, and two minor characters. Previously,
Joe had read from three scattered scripts; to-day he began to get
the Sue Davis story. A widow, after the death of her husband, comes
with her son to her sole inheritance, a run-down cottage in a small,
hidden, mountain village. But plenty of land goes with the cottage,
and the dead husband had a passionate faith in its future. Some day
a highway would come over the mountain and run past the door.
Some day that land, cleared and level, would be the spot for a
profitable gas-station tea-room tourist-cabin business. And so the
widow and her son struggle to keep the little that is theirs and
dream of the day when that little may be great. But a local skinflint,
Israel Tice, played by Bert Farr, also knows the potential value of the
property and schemes to secure the ownership. That was as far as
Curt Lake, the script-writer, had gone.
“What happens later?” Joe asked during one of the rest periods.
“Does Sue open a tea-room?”
Wylie snarled: “Worry about the script you’re reading.”
They stopped for lunch and were working again within an hour.
The respite seemed to soothe Wylie into amiability. For fifteen or
twenty minutes the rehearsal was unruffled and serene. With Joe
reading, the producer all at once became a hair-tearing maniac.
“Mo—ther!” His stinging burlesque had just enough of truth to be
perfect. “Do we have to have that again? Do you think you’re cast as
a babe in arms? Do you want Stella to rock you and lullaby you to
sleep? How often do I have to tell you?” A bony forefinger was a
spike in Joe’s face. “Give me the ‘Mother’ I want.”
Joe gave it.
At half-past ten they stopped. Circles had formed under Stella’s
eyes. Joe’s head was light.
“And I have to go through this for thirteen weeks,” Wylie moaned.
“I’m buying coffee and sandwiches. Who’s coming?”
They all went with him. In the restaurant he took a script from the
brief-case and pored over it. “Ah!” He was on fire as though this
were the beginning of the day. “Suppose we play it this way?” He
read a scene, interpreting all the characters and etching the lines
with a changed sense of value. But, brain-fagged, they could only
goggle at him.
“Don’t ask us to go back,” Bert Farr pleaded. “We’ve been going
for almost twelve hours.”
Wylie, smoldering, stuffed the script back into the case. “Nine to-
morrow morning.”
“Vic!” Stella protested.
Wylie glared at her.
Stella’s laugh was resigned. “All right, Vic; nine to-morrow.”
Waiting with Joe for a bus she said: “This period’s the hardest. After
the show’s on a week or two it shakes down and the cast falls into a
rhythm.”
Rehearsals became a nightmare. Joe got so he dreamed
rehearsals. Rehearsals in the morning until Wylie had to rush off for
the first of his two shows; rehearsals after the second show until,
sometime in the night, weariness halted them.
Tuesday Curt Lake, the script writer, brought in more script. “How
is it going, Vic?”
The producer held his head. “It reeks. I’m afraid to open the
windows for fear the city’ll back in a garbage truck.”
Then, on Saturday, Vic Wylie ceased to be a fiend. The rehearsal
shifted to Studio B at FKIP, and a sound engineer joined the cast to
give the show its sound effects. The producer knew he had molded
them as far as they could be molded. What he had now was what he
would get Monday. Monday he wanted them easy and relaxed. And
so, as they read the opening script three times, he was mild, almost
gentle. On Sunday they ran through the script only once.
Joe Carlin no longer stalked the broadcasting stations for a part.
The early days of a Wylie show left you time only for Wylie. The
need to hunt bread and butter at FKIP was past. He was on an FKIP
commercial; he had the station’s attention. Later, he’d call in once a
week at FFOM and FWWO. Munson might drop the show after
thirteen weeks, and it was wise to make the rounds and keep in
touch.
Monday the walls of the Carlin house pressed in upon him and
suffocated him. He watched the clock, he kept roaming upstairs and
down, he turned the radio on and off. Vic’s two o’clock show was on
at FFOM, his four o’clock at FKIP. Sue Davis went on the air at four-
thirty. But Wylie would have to walk only from one FKIP studio to
another.
How would it go? The house became unbearable. He called: “You
won’t forget to listen, Mother?” and was gone. Afterward he was
never able to remember whether the day had been clear or drab.
Stella Joyce was in Wylie’s inner office reading script.
“Here’s yours, Joe. Vic’s incoherent. He timed the show for a
minute opening announcement, but the agency changed to a two-
minute Munson plug. Curt Lake had to rewrite script.”
Joe was scared. If Vic tried to jam them through a last minute
rehearsal just before they went on....
“No new business,” Stella said. “Curt had to drop lines.”
Joe was relieved. After that he waited with growing impatience.
Stella picked up a magazine from Wylie’s desk and turned the pages
idly. There was an awful emptiness in the boy’s stomach. Was she
watching the time? Presently the actress put the magazine down.
“Joe,” she said impulsively, “I’m glad you’re playing this. If Sonny
Baker were in town, Amby would probably have sold him to Munson.
Vic would have auditioned him. He might have walked off with it.”
“I followed him in City Boy last season,” Joe said soberly. Against
his three months of radio experience, Sonny could show two years.
“I thought he was good. Is he?”
Stella nodded. “Quite upstage, but good. Lucille despises him. He’s
a show stealer.”
“He won’t steal this one,” said Joe and followed the girl out.
 Studio B was dark. Stella turned on lights. The sound engineer’s
equipment was already in place. A clock in the control-room told
them they had an hour to wait. Bert Farr arrived and was followed
by two minor characters.
A page opened the door from the gallery. “Mr. Wylie wants a cast
report.”
“All ready,” said Stella.
The afternoon they had given the Munson audition, with listeners
in chairs along the walls, chairs and people had seemed to hem
them in closely. This afternoon, with only the cast of five present,
Studio B was a yawning cavern. Joe felt swallowed up, shrunken,
and small. Had the clock stopped? Nervous, he took script from his
pocket.
“Don’t do that,” Stella warned. “You’re perfect in the part. You’ll
confuse yourself.”
Bert Farr said: “Four o’clock. Vic’s other show’s on.”
Half an hour more! In reception-hall, corridors, elevators, and
lobby the Vic Wylie show was coming out of FKIP speakers. Here
there was only silence.
The sound engineer arrived. An announcer strolled in and walked
about, looking bored.
“The other show’s off,” said Farr.
The tips of Joe’s fingers were ice. If the other show was off, where
was Vic?
The control-room began to fill as it fills for an opening. The
technician who would regulate volume came in first. Munson arrived
with the President and the Vice-President of FKIP. John Dennis was
there next with Curt Lake. People gathered in the gallery and stared
in through the glass.
Then a storm burst upon them, and the storm was Wylie. His face
was lined with strain. “Everybody got the new script?”
Everybody had.
 “Watch the control-room. Come in on my signs. Don’t start too
fast. You’ll be in the groove in half a minute.”
Wylie was gone, to appear next in the control-room. And now, in
the deeper, significant silence, Farr cleared his throat.
A minute to go. To Joe, that became the longest minute he had
lived. The cast gathered at the mike. There was a moment when he
thought he was choking.
Suddenly the silence was broken. The announcer was reading:
“To-night Munson brings you the opening chapter of Curt Lake’s
radio drama, Sue Davis Against the World, the story of a widowed
mother’s struggle—”
An incredulous voice cried out in Joe: “You’re on the air!”
It became unbelievable. Actually on the air! And then everything
became unreal. Vic Wylie, glaring through the glass panels of the
control-room, became a distorted Vic Wylie; the announcer’s voice
hung lingeringly in space. Wylie’s commanding finger took on a
dreamy haziness. The finger wavered away from the announcer and
indicated Stella. Joe’s eyes were wide open and staring as though he
were in a trance. In a queer sort of drugged fog he thought: “My
cue’s coming.” The finger, as though moving leisurely in a timeless
arc, wavered toward him.
He began to read his part. There was no nervousness nor anxiety.
There was only that hypnotic sense of unreality:
Mother, don’t shake your head at me like that. You must listen—
He did not know that he had become an automaton. He did not
know that he was suffering a form of mike fright that afflicts the
young radio performer with an emotional paralysis. But Wylie had
pounded at him, rehearsal after rehearsal, until a pattern had been
carved deep in his mind. Subconsciously, his mind reproduced that
pattern as though it were a platter. He read as Wylie had insisted
that he read.
By and by all the dream-world voices were gone, and there was
silence. People began to leave the control-room. Joe drew a breath
and reality came rushing back upon him. Why, it was over. He’d been
on the air—and it was over. All he could remember was fog and
haze.
A wise, knowing Vic Wylie, who could be as tender as a woman,
was in the studio. “All right now, kid?”
“What—what happened to me?”
“Something that happens to most of them. You came through, and
it’ll never happen again.”
Joe wanted to ask a question and didn’t dare.
Wylie didn’t have to be asked. “You were tops, kid.” He smiled at
the cast, and his haggard face was lighted. “You were all tops. Get
something to eat and report at six.”
“How about all eating together?” Stella asked.
“In a minute,” Joe told her. It was still all unbelievable. He
squeezed into a telephone-booth. How could you be tops when you
didn’t know what it had all been about? He dialed a number.
“How was it, Mother?”
“Joe!” That was all Kate Carlin could say for a moment.
“Did you like it?”
“It was splendid. Dad wants to speak to you.”
Tom Carlin said gruffly: “Until to-night, Joe, I thought you were
making a mistake.”
Joe knew the end of doubt. Then it had been good! Glowing, he
pushed back the door. Little Ambrose Carver waited for him ten feet
from the booth.
“Congratulations, Joe.”
“Thanks, Amby.” He hadn’t expected this. The glow deepened.
“Does Amby know how to pick them? I’m asking you if I’m a
picker.”
“You certainly are.” If Amby wanted to be friends, why not? Joe
was in a mood to give friendship to all the world.
 “Didn’t I predict you’d go up in lights?” The Carver cane gave a
jaunty wriggle. “Don’t forget to tell the Everts-Hall Agency I have a
ten per cent piece of you, Joe.”
Joe was deflated. Amby’s wait had been a money wait; Amby
might really think he’d laid an egg. It didn’t matter. Nothing
mattered but Vic, and Vic said he was tops.
An hour and a half later this same Vic Wylie was savagely, brutally
rehearsing the next day’s show and wailing his torment.
“Studio B to-morrow morning for the dress,” he told them finally
and dropped into a chair. “You need three more hours of rehearsal.
You’re not ready for a dress. What can I do about it? I can’t give you
all my time; I have two other shows.” His eyes closed.
“Did you eat?” Stella asked.
The producer’s eyes opened vaguely. “Did I? I forget. Don’t bother
me.”
Joe went out and brought back coffee and sandwiches.
“Leave them there,” said Wylie. He had whipped himself back to
work and was reading script.
“Eat them now,” Joe insisted. “The coffee’ll get cold.”
“Another one who thinks I need looking after,” Wylie snarled. But
he ate. “Kid, don’t pay much attention to me when I blow my top.
Everybody in show business is nuts.”
If being nuts was the price of show business success, Joe was
willing to be nuts. There was no second attack of mike fright. He
came to know a certain tension just before the show and during the
broadcast, but that was a quickening excitement that filled him with
fire. Studio B became easy, familiar ground, and he was on terms of
intimacy with every announcer, and every studio producer in the city.
Life took on a deep, satisfying richness. The radio columns of the
Journal gave him attention. He began to get fan mail. Royal Street
was paved with gold, and the FKIP Building was a gleaming tower.
But there were others who still walked Royal Street looking for
parts; there were actors and actresses who would always be walking
Royal Street. Archie Munn had picked up a few bits, in addition to his
Sunday show, and was getting by. Lucille Borden, a type player, had
found nothing. No station had a show that needed her type.
“Mamma,” she announced casually after Sue Davis had been on a
week, “is going to sell hosiery for Mr. Munson. Until a part turns up.
Main floor, section twelve—in case you want to buy silk stockings,
Joe.”
And Wylie had said she was one of the best. N.B.C. had approved
her at a committee audition. Joe blurted: “If I were a producer,
you’d be working.”
“Infant,” Lucille said softly, “don’t let it get in your hair. This won’t
be the first time I’ve crawled out on a life-line.” She bit her lip. “It
probably won’t be the last.”
Joe threw off a wave of bleakness. You couldn’t do anything about
it—it was show business. But after that, though each day brought its
zest, its rush of wonder, his exhilaration over being on the air was
tempered and subdued.
The Sue Davis show clicked. The Everts-Hall Agency compiled
figures: the show had caught the public. Munson’s accountants
compiled more figures: the show was selling merchandise. A show
that clicked both ways might be good for forty weeks.
Joe Carlin became seasoned, seasoned and smooth. At least, he
told himself confidently he was becoming smooth. But gradually the
restless feet of show people had dulled the bright gold of Royal
Street. What had been gold to him, he saw, was merely cold stone
pavement to many others. Actors, always glib about the part they
expected next week, began to buttonhole him in the corridors of the
broadcasting company buildings and lead him into quiet corners. He
lent them money. For a week he bought Pop Bartell’s lunch.
“Any day now,” Pop would say, gallant and optimistic, “Tony’ll be
calling us into audition for the He people.”
Joe always agreed. He didn’t believe it. Bush-League Larry had
been on the fire too long.
 October crept toward its end and Indian summer lingered in the
city. The afternoon broadcast, the evening rehearsal, the morning
dress, fan mail and occasional calls at FFOM and FWWO filled Joe’s
day completely. Fan mail was a late development. At first he had
answered the letters himself, proud and thrilled. But his mail had
grown, and now it was handled from the Everts-Hall Agency on
Munson stationery. He hadn’t visited his father’s store in weeks.
Show business engrossed him completely. If he thought at all of
books and how his father might sell more books the thought was a
shadow, gone as quickly as it had come.
Early in November the cast finished a Monday broadcast and was
gathering up hats and coats when Wylie walked into Studio B.
Usually, the appearance of the producer immediately after a show
ended meant that something had gone wrong. The cast waited for
the storm.
There was no storm. Wylie said: “Tony tells me Munson’s signing
the show for another twenty-six weeks.”
The new contract would carry the show into June. Eight months of
freedom from the bread-and-butter hunt! Bert Farr and Stella
jitterbugged up and down the studio. Joe pranced to the piano
shoved into a corner and banged out a one-finger melody. People
gathered in the gallery. But they were used to people gaping in
through the glass; they forgot they were there.
A page opened the studio door. “Telephone, Mr. Wylie. Your office.”
Wylie left them. After that the celebration died down. Joe was
slipping into a top-coat when a voice, cracked and high-pitched,
swung him around.
“Kid!” Wylie was wild-eyed. “Munson’s closes in ten minutes. Get a
message to Lucille. N.B.C. wants her. A contract. She’s hit the
jackpot.”
“Vic!” Stella cried.
Joe was already on his way. Lucille Borden without a part in small-
time radio; Lucille Borden, hungry; Lucille Borden behind a counter
selling stockings. And then, when nobody expected it, Lucille Borden
in the big time. Show business! The down elevator stopped at every
floor and passengers took their time getting on and off. Joe stewed.
The Munson store was only half a block away but, reaching the
street, he ran.
Lucille Borden, arranging boxes of hosiery, smiled at him.
“Stockings, Infant? Don’t tell me you have a sweetie?”
Words poured from Joe. “N.B.C. wants you. They called Vic’s
office.”
The smile was gone. “Another audition?”
“A part. The show sold. You’re in, Lu.”
Lucille Borden’s hands gripped the edge of the counter; the
knuckles turned white. She said slowly: “At last.”
As though in celebration of Lucille’s triumph, the morrow dawned
in golden splendor; but as Joe rode downtown the day became
clouded and gray. The dress rehearsal at Studio B went off without a
hitch.
“Kid,” Wylie said, “Lu leaves on the three o’clock.”
Joe stopped at the Everts-Hall Agency to sign the fan mail replies.
Lucille Borden on a coast-to-coast! One of Wylie’s people. If you
were good enough for Wylie.... The pen that wrote “Joe Carlin”
wasn’t steady. He was one of Wylie’s people.
Walking into Wylie’s office and finding Lucille, Stella, and Archie
Munn already there brought back the long, idle days of the summer
when they had always been together. In the rush of eager talk
yesterday’s hard road was forgotten; nobody thought of lunch.
Stella, called for an audition at FFOM, was the first to leave; Archie,
with a bit on a two o’clock FWWO show, soon followed. Joe carried
Lucille’s bags to the station.
“I’ll be listening,” he said. “Not only the opening—every day.”
“Infant,” Lucille said with a catch in her voice, “I’m going to miss
my old gang.”
A mist was falling when Joe came out of the station. Then, while
he was still two blocks from the FKIP Building, the skies opened and
the mist became a torrent of rain. Royal Street broke into confusion
with everybody running and getting in everybody else’s way. A river
poured down upon him. Wet and cold, he reached Studio B.
The studio was warm. He would, Joe decided, jump home when
the show ended, change, and hurry back for the evening rehearsal;
but by the time Sue Davis Against the World signed off his chill had
passed and he went to supper with Stella. For once the evening
rehearsal was short. The cast sat around for an hour, and Vic sat
with them, and they talked of Lucille Borden and the big time. Joe’s
clothing had dried.
He awakened to a new day with the early sun in his eyes. He said
aloud: “I’m hungry enough to eat—” The words died away, and he
lay rigid. Had that hoarse rasp come from him? He said again: “I’m
hungry enough—” His body broke out in a sweat. At nine o’clock,
worried and shaken, he walked into Wylie’s office.
“Vic.” His voice was down to a whisper.
Vic Wylie’s face paled. “You got wet yesterday,” he croaked, and
then he went into a frenzy. “Miss Robb! Dr. Zinn—twelfth floor. I’m
coming right up.” He dragged Joe toward the hall. Twenty minutes
later he was back, a wild-eyed lunatic. “Get Curt Lake.”
The stenographer made the call. “No answer,” she reported.
The producer pounded her desk. “Find him; find him.”
Miss Robb “found” him. Curt Lake arrived out of breath.
“Laryngitis,” the producer croaked. “The house sold out and the
kid gets laryngitis. The part’s got to be dropped. I’ve got to have
new script. You see what time it is?”
The script-writer whipped out of his coat. “Two o’clock, Vic?”
“With the show going on at four-thirty? Can I send them on cold?
I want script at noon.”
“Noon? Do you think I pick ideas out of the air? You’ll want
another script to-night for to-morrow.”
“Do I get script or do I get an alibi?” Wylie screamed.
 Radio’s absolute master, the clock, was goading them with
pressure and tension. Come high water or low, storm or calm,
sickness or health, at four-thirty the Munson show had to go on.
Miss Robb appeared and closed the inner office door. Joe thought
with useless regret: “If I hadn’t gone to the train....” Curt Lake was
scowling and Wylie was glaring.
Suddenly Wylie was halfway across the desk. “How is this, Curt?
In the story you’ve had this son soaking stamps off discarded
envelopes, pasting them in an album—”
The script-writer swung around eagerly. “That’s it, Vic. Last night
we left them in a bad way. Almost broke, and the guy that wants the
property putting on the pressure. The son’s desperate. He decides to
take his stamp collection to a dealer in the city, two hundred miles
away. He’s already gone when the script opens—”
“A kid without money? How you going to get him there? Pullman?”
“Can’t he hike? Can’t he thumb rides?”
“Are you nuts? Don’t you know hitch-hiking’s in bad? Do you want
the Woman’s Club and the P.T.A. on our necks?”
“Do you want a script?” Curt Lake shouted. “Put him on a bus and
he’s there to-day and home to-morrow. How long is Joe’s throat
going to keep him out? How many miles does a hitch-hiker make?
It’s all luck, isn’t it—who picks him up and how far they’re going. We
can string it along as far as you need it. If Joe’s throat takes a week
he’s away a week. He sends back post cards to his mother. He’s off
stage, but we keep the spot on him.”
“What’s your curtain?”
“Rain. Some swell sound effects. Night and mother alone. She
opens the door and listens to the rain. Buckets of rain. You get it,
Vic? ‘Where is my wandering boy to-night?’”
“I get it,” Wylie snarled. “The last script-writer who used it was
shot. He deserved it.” He clawed for his hat, clawed for his coat,
clawed for the half-open, bulging brief-case. “It’s corny,” he groaned
from the door, “but it’s a script.”
 Curt Lake stormed out to Miss Robb. “Does he expect me to give
him an Orson Welles show in an hour and fifty minutes?”
“You’ll give him a script, won’t you, Mr. Lake?”
“Vic?” The man was amazed at the question. “I’d give him my
right arm.”
It was madly unbelievable, fantastic and unreal—and yet so very
real. It was show business.
Curt Lake paced the inner office. He sat before the typewriter,
pecked at the keys, paced restlessly once more. He ripped off his tie.
He drummed on the window, swore fervently, and opened his shirt.
Suddenly he was back at the machine and talking to himself. His
fingers began to pound. When he finished, shortly before noon, he
had a pile of manuscript.
Joe asked in a hoarse whisper: “Script finished?”
“Script?” Curt Lake’s voice was thick with scorn. “It’s tripe.”
Listening to the Sue Davis show come out of Vic Wylie’s radio that
afternoon, Joe suffered. It was tripe. There was no spice, no spirit,
no punch. Lines and speeches that went on and on until they had
gone on for thirteen and a half minutes. Then they stopped. Vic was
right; the curtain was corny. He shut off the radio and went home.
Kate Carlin brought him a glass of hot milk. “Throat pain much,
Joe?”
He shook his head. There was no pain. That was the maddening
phase.
“Did I imagine the show was bad to-day?”
“It was very bad.” Talk was an effort. “They had to build a new
script in a hurry. To-morrow’ll be better.”
To-morrow was no better. He sat in on the dress, and it was
torture not to be at the mike reading the Dick Davis part. It was
torture to listen to dialogue that had become lifeless and spiritless.
Vic Wylie’s eyes seemed sunken.
“Five minutes after we signed off last night,” Stella Joyce fluttered,
“Amby Carver was around wanting to know what had happened. He
knew the script had been fluffed up with an egg-beater.”
“Amby’s worried about his ten per cent,” Joe whispered bitterly.
Amby, his agent, hadn’t bothered to phone him.
Wylie, strained, came from the control-room and drew him aside.
“Kid, stay away. I know how you feel, but worry won’t get you
anything. The script’s blue, the cast’s blue, and your face’s as long
as four Sundays. Forget radio until you clear up. Interest yourself in
something else. Read a book, steal a car, make a mud pie. Do
anything so long as it isn’t radio. See me Saturday.”
Vic had said to read a book. Books flashed a picture before Joe of
his father’s business. He tried to force his mind to dwell on how the
Thomas Carlin store could sell more books. Fifty thousand listeners!
What could you say that would make them book-hungry? Thomas
Carlin Presents To-day’s Book. Curt Lake had been right, too. You
couldn’t snip an idea out of the air; you couldn’t deliberately dig up
an idea as you would a garden bulb. Thomas Carlin Presents.... The
effort died in failure. His mind refused to freshen, to come alive.
A mound of letters awaited him at the Everts-Hall Agency. He
signed them and rode dully out to the Northend.
That afternoon’s broadcast was worse than the dress. The
continuity of the show had been broken, and weak, forced, hack-
toiled scripts had demoralized the cast. Stella Joyce sank with the
others.
“Vic doesn’t want me to come to the rehearsals until I’m better,”
Joe said at supper in a hoarse whisper.
“Isn’t that wise?” Kate Carlin asked.
“Joe!” Tom Carlin picked his words carefully. “Is there any chance
of another actor being called in for the part?”
Joe didn’t want to think of that.
Lying in bed, wakeful, he had to think of it. He tried to think of it
coldly and calmly, as though he weren’t thinking about Joe Carlin at
all but about somebody else. They’d have to get a juvenile for the
part. What man could play the part of a young high-school boy? A
man’s voice, deepened and matured, would be a give-away; the
mother-son illusion would be shattered. Certainly they couldn’t find a
juvenile in this city. Amby had told him once that local radio was
strangely shy of juveniles who were tops, and he had since found
this to be true. Last season Sonny Baker had been here and Sonny
had skimmed the cream. This season it was Joe Carlin. He’d have
had the lead in Bush-League Larry had the show sold. He was
playing opposite Stella Joyce in Sue Davis. Who else was there?
The answer was plain—nobody. Would they bring somebody down
from New York? But what juvenile, with a chance to make the big
time, would come here to play in a five-dollar-a-day show? And
again the answer was—nobody.
Joe Carlin thought: “I’m in luck. They’ll have to wait for my voice
to come back.”
Friday’s show was so painful he could not bear to hear it to the
end.
“When do you see the doctor again?” his mother asked.
“To-morrow.”
He was at Dr. Zinn’s door before the door was open. He sat in a
darkened room and a beam of light illuminated his throat.
“Better,” the doctor pronounced cheerfully. “Much better. Very
much better.”
“My voice isn’t any better,” Joe whispered.
“Sometimes these attacks prove stubborn. Once the voice begins
to regain its strength improvement is rapid. You must give it time.”
“How much time?”
“Another week—perhaps ten days. Nature does her own healing;
she can’t be rushed.”
Ten more days meant ten more scripts in which Curt Lake held the
broken threads of a show and tried to patch with the wrong colors.
“Can’t you rush this a little, Doctor?”
“Now, my boy, you mustn’t be impatient,” the doctor answered
tolerantly.
 Joe wondered what Dr. Zinn would think of patience if he were a
radio actor out of a show that was going to pieces. Vic Wylie’s office
was locked. The boy went to the Everts-Hall Agency. There were
only three letters to be signed.
“Tony wants to see you,” the publicity department told him.
Genial Tony Vaux was no longer the hail-fellow-well-met who
boomed jovially. He was quiet and thoughtful, almost reserved.
“How’s the throat coming, Joe?”
Joe shook his head.
“The He people have finally come around to it. They want an
audition Monday.”
“I can’t give a good show Monday, Tony. You know what I can do
when my voice is right.”
Tony scratched his chin. “The He people don’t.”
“But they won’t go on the air for another couple of weeks.”
Tony continued to scratch his chin. “When a sponsor buys a show,
he buys what he hears. You can’t sell him a package by telling how
good it will be in two weeks. Why isn’t it good to-day?”
“What time Monday, Tony? I might—” There was no need to finish.
Tony seemed to have withdrawn into some further reserve.
“I’ll give you a call, Joe.”
Joe thought: “You may have to.” When Wylie told a man he was
tops, he was tops. Where would they find another juvenile who was
tops?
This time the knob on the door of Vic Wylie Productions turned.
Miss Robb’s desk was closed. The inner office door was open and
Joe heard voices. With a shock of amazement he recognized his own
voice, Stella’s voice, Bert Farr’s voice. Recognition widened and
amazement grew. This was one of the early scripts of the Sue Davis
show. What—? He walked to the door.
Wylie, his chin sunk in the palm of one hand, glumly listened to
the playing of a platter. Two minutes, three minutes passed and the
script reached its curtain. The shut-off clicked and the platter ceased
to revolve.
“Kid, what did the doctor say?” Wylie had not moved.
Joe whispered: “A week or ten days. What’s that?”
“Wylie insurance.” The producer was harsh. “I can’t afford to leave
myself out on a limb. Suppose some member of the cast falls under
a truck. Can I bring in a new actor and tell him I want him to read
like So-and-so? Perhaps he’s never heard So-and-so. I give him So-
and-so. Every once in a while I cut a platter. The cast never knows
it’s being cut. When I have to recast, the new member of the cast
gets a platter diet. Again and again, hour after hour. That’s his part;
that’s the voice the audience associates with the part. When he goes
on the air, not one in a thousand suspects a new voice.”
Joe’s breathing was rapid and shallow.
Wylie brooded. “Kid, Munson’s dishing out the ice. He says the
show’s slipping. It is. It’s doing a nose dive. Five thousand radios
have tuned us out in the last three days. When they start to yawn
and tune in another station, it’s almost time to ring down the
curtain. I don’t like to hand this to you, kid, but you got to get it
straight. Show business pays off to the winner. You can’t have bacon
and eggs without the bacon. You can’t have a mother-and-son
without the son. Munson bought a mother-and-son show. He’s not
getting it.”
Joe stared at the platter and was cold. Tony, and now Vic! If he
lost the Dick Davis part he’d be making the rounds again, haunting
the offices of casting directors, putting on a nice new front every
morning.
“Who are you getting, Vic?”
Wylie took his hand away from his chair. “No Baltimore nephew,
anyway,” he snarled.
Joe was no longer cold. He had figured the set-up, and he had
figured it correctly. Vic had nobody in mind. Tony might fish around
and be content to do the best he could with a part, but not Vic. Vic
never compromised. You were tops or you wouldn’t do. Where was
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