Cheerful, By Request
by
I
CHEERFUL–BY REQUEST
The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of miles a Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin, straight line of business.
“Now don’t misunderstand. Please! We’re not presuming to dictate. Dear me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to express that which is in his–ah–heart. But in the last year we’ve been swamped with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things, you know, about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of grease on the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones about fallen sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River must be choked up with ’em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest, and I’m not demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could–that is–would you–do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly cheerful story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you get me. Not pink, but not all grey either. Say–mauve.” …
That was Josie Fifer’s existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink. Which makes mauve.
Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have heard of Josie Fifer.
There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce courts–what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats for breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson; pictures of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage hands rewriting it–long before the opening night we know more about the piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager to see it.
Josie Fifer’s knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to the closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of inanition, old age, or–as was sometimes the case–before it was born, it was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the grave.
Her notification of its demise would come thus:
“Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe” (the property man of H. & L. at the phone).
“Well?”
“A little waspish this morning, aren’t you, Josephine?”
“I’ve got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 ‘Ataboy’ company to mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I’m going to stand here wasting my–“
“All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that ‘My Mistake’ closes Saturday. The stuff’ll be up Monday morning early.”
A sardonic laugh from Josie. “And yet they say ‘What’s in a name!'”
The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose was to star an actress who hadn’t a glint. Her second-act costume alone had cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can’t carry a bad play. The critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it, limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white glare of Broadway. The dress with the Russian sable bands went the way of all Hahn & Lohman tragedies. Josie Fifer received it, if not reverently, still appreciatively.
“I should think Sid Hahn would know by this time,” she observed sniffily, as her expert fingers shook out the silken folds and smoothed the fabulous fur, “that auburn hair and a gurgle and a Lucille dress don’t make a play. Besides, Fritzi Kirke wears the biggest shoe of any actress I ever saw. A woman with feet like that”–she picked up a satin slipper, size 7-1/2 C–“hasn’t any business on the stage. She ought to travel with a circus. Here, Etta. Hang this away in D, next to the amethyst blue velvet, and be sure and lock the door.”