Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 15, Number 25, DeMotte, Jasper County, 4 May 1945 — Country Cured [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Country Cured

by HOMER CROY

©W.N.U. SERVICE

THE STORY THUS PAR: Amo* Croy and hi* wll* settled on a (arm In Missouri, where Homer wa* born. Homer waa the flnt Croy to Bnlib high school and college. He went to New York, secured a position on a woman’s magazine, married, had two children, a boy and girl. His Srst novel was “Boone Stop." Having lost both his father and mother, he took his family to visit Europe. Paris, In fact Prance la general, did not appeal to him.. It was while on this trip that Homer it. took s|£denly 111 and died. Americans, strangerk all, cam* to his aid and helped In every way possible, proving that the country tie meant something. They returned to America disappointed with Europe.

CHAPTER XXII “Well, I suppose I could go to work at my regular Hollywood salary. But I would have to have my expenses." "I’d have to take that up with Chicago." “That’s the very least I could afford to do the job for," I said, once more the businessman. "You know, that’s working pretty cheap." * He nodded at the plight of the workingman. "I’ll Call Chicago and let you know." ' . -r fl The elevator and I floated down together. It wasn’t long before I was living in Chicago in the Stevens Hotel with all expenses paid. Oh boy! I went out on a tour of three states and found that a “dealer’’ was a filling station man. One day, “to get the feel of it,” I went out on an oil truck and helped deliver gasoline and fuel oil to farmers in Wisconsin, and finally I wrote the “training film." It was filmed In Hollywood under the title Stan, and was shown in the Midwestern states controlled by that company—the most ambitious training film that had ever been made. Then came the great—the wonder-ful-moment I put all the training film money carefully aside, some magazine stuff I had already written sold, so when I was through with the film I hurried home to Missouri as fast as I could go and went in to see the representative of the eastern insurance company. I asked him how things were. They were just plain bad, he said as only an insurance company representative can say it. And there was the situation on the Croy farm. His company had been riding him. He looked pretty disturbed. “Well,”-I said, “I suppose I had better pay that off.” He smiled pleasantly; one of my jokes. “Let’s figure up how much it Is,” I said and hauled out a check. “You mean all of it?” he gasped. “I might as well do it now as any time,” I said as if paying off a mortgage was a morning’s trifle. It wasn’t quite that easy, for you don't get shed of a mortgage so speedily. There was fine print, I found, which said that sum might be paid at a certaih time of the year, not before; meantime, of course, the mortgage would be drawing interest, for the company had thought of that. But that was all right. I had the mortgage down ■nd breathing heavily. I gave the insurance man a check for the full amount, so there would be no temptation on my part to let the money slip away, and by noon the matter was finished. I had paid off the mortgage on the farm, and if there is a finer, a more completely satisfying, pleasure than that I don't know what it is. I had seen the way that chance so

often determines the success of a book, and had thought about it bitterly. For instance, the success of “Good-bye, Mr. Chips” was due almost solely to the enthusiasm of .one man—Alexander Woollcott. In fact, James Hilton told me that, himself. I remembered an incident from my early days in New York. A mentally deranged man fired at Mayor Gaynor and wounded him. Mayor Gaynor had a novel in his pocket. In twenty-four hours the book was a best seller. Boyden Sparkes, the writer, once remarked that if a novel had been found by the “Pig Woman" in De Bussey’s Lane, in the famous Hall-Mills murder case in New Jersey, it would have made the author a rich man. Then I had a glimpse into a field that made book writing seem as dependable as a corner post. After I finished “Family Honeymoon,” which I consider my best comedy, I sat looking at it with paternal pride; maybe it would make a play. Then and there I condensed the plot into these lines: “A professor in the Middle West falls in love with a young and attractive widow who has four children. He proposes and is accepted. As the happy bride and groom are getting ready to leave they are forced, at the last moment, to take the children along on the honeymoon. Many strange things happen, but in the end all is well and happiness again reigns.” I sent this with a note to Owen Davis, and in no time at all he had me on the telephone. He was in the middle of a play of his own, he said, and had two commitments on his desk, but he liked the honeymoon idea, and would I send him the manuscript? I got it to 35 East 76th Street so fast that he must have thought the messenger was already downstairs. Forty-eight hours later Owen Davis telephoned that he had read it all in one night and that he was willing to drop everything and start the professor and his bride off on their honeymoon. I was delighted. The theater-wise Owen Davis! After a while, over the pounding of my heart, I heard him ask: “When can you come to the Hotel Astor and have lunch with me?" I said I could come today. He had, I discovered, a regular table in the Hunting Room. Some luncheons you never forget, and I’ll never forget that one. Not what we ate, but what we talked about, and the feeling of buoyancy and tremendous delight I had to be alive and a part of this fine world. As we built up the humorous situations, we laughed so delightedly that people turned and stared. But that was all right with me. Some day they’d be laughing at the play and paying us money for the privilege. After lunch we went to the office of Richard J. Madden, the play agent, and Owen Davis told him the terms he would give me. I was so pleased that Owen could have said that he would just give me a pass to the show and I would have been satisfied. A play on Broadway! “Come back tomorrow and I’ll have the contracts ready,” Madden said, and, when we went back, there they were, stacked as high as his desk lamp. We signed them, me very meticulously, but to Owen they were just another contract, for he had had two hundred and eighty plays produced. Richard J. Madden gave a news item to the New York Times: Never before in theatrical history had a novel been accepted for dramatiza-

tion before it had been published. Well, that was my speed. Owen started work at once and each morning would call me up and tell me how a scene had worked out. Owen has a way of holding a receiver across the room from him and whispering into it, but that was all right with me. It was about my own brain creation which would soon be pulling them in from the sidewalk. Those people in the Hunting Room who had stared! He finished the play in exactly twenty-one days, had it typed by the only woman in New York who can read his handwriting, and took a copy to Richard J. Madden. The next day Richard J. Madden called up and was so excited he asked us to lunch. “I’ll sell it in two weeks,” he said. He was pretty weak on his guessing, for it took two days more than

the time he’d promised. Owen called up and said, "Vinton Freedley wants it." It was actually happening to me! Why hadn’t I got into this theater business before? Two days later, Owen Davis was again whispering on the telephone. “Max Gordon wants it, too.” It was sure goin’ to be hard to go back to pecking where no one ever called up with exciting news. While I was still floating on these Broadway clouds, Owen called again. "Alfred de Liagre wants it, too.” I could hardly believe my ears and asked Owen again Just to make sure. "That’s right," he whispered. "And he’s one of the best producers in town." "Have we really got three managers who want to produce it?” I gasped. "That’s all so far," breathed Owen. Never in his life, he said, had he had so many managers, in such a short time, fighting to produce a play. "Well, that’s the way things go,” I said modestly. I continued to live in ,s fairy world that I had never known before existed. And now, under the excitement of it, I just about gave up my pecking. Me for the theater.

Vinton Freedley had been the first to accept it, so the play went to him. Owen called with more good news—the play would be tried out in the summer stock company theater in Skowhegan, Maine. The very theater that had tried out “Life With Father." This dazzling fairy world continued to swirl around me. Owen Davis Jr. called up and asked me if I would come down and see if I liked the four children he had talked to for the part. I floated down to the RKO Building where Vinton Freedley had his office. I hadn’t the slightest idea in the world whether they fitted the parts, or not. But no one suspected this by the way I studied and weighed and pondered, for I might be settling the very fate and fortune of those children. A day or two later I was called again. Would I come down and see what I thought of the colored woman who might be able to play the maid’s part? I went down and settled her fate and fortune, too. The wonderful, the glorious, the exciting, days went by and, at last, I found myself in Skowhegan, Maine, shaking hands with Herbert E. Swett, who-had built up this, the oldest stock company in America; and With Melville Burke, his director; and soon I was face to face with the players who were going to project my honeymoon idea across the footlights. And there were the four children, just as I had said they should be; and the colored maid, just as I had propounded. Up from New York had come bigwigs to see the play. But I let them see me first, strolling here and there on the lawn, so they could see with their own eyes what the author of the first unpublished-but-produced in-play-form novel looked like. They didn’t seem much impressed. In fact, they took it with immense calm. When the great evening came, my wife and I arranged to sit in different parts of the theater so that we would not influence each other, but Owen Davis and his wife were old hands at this and plunked down side by side. The curtain went up and there were the actors speaking my lines (out of Owen Davis) and projecting my thoughts (sired by Croy). Soon the audience was responding to the professor bewildered by his new family, and my heart started to beat again. That first laugh! At last the performance was over. Owen Davis, who has a peculiarly aloof point of view on his own plays, once they are on view, said: “I think that second act curtain, when the four children come and climb into Mamma’s bed, is the biggest laugh curtain I ever saw.” I said I thought well of it, too. Herbert E. Swett, who has seen so many shows that he can’t bear to sit at one more than ten minutes, said: “That’s about the funniest show I ever put on in this theater.” “I liked it from the first,” I said modestly. There had been the children were hard to direct and had been noisy, but the play idea was there, and the audience liked it. Vinton Freedley shook us by the hand and talked about when he would “open.” The next day he climbed into the plane and, full of enthusiasm, went back to New York. The children learned their places and the play got better; and it began to “build,” as we theatrical people call it Herbert E. Swett said: “I’d like to have a slice of that play. I turned down the opportunity on ‘Life With Father’ and I don’t want to do it again.” “I’ll see what I can do for you ” I said.

The play continued to draw. In fact, it broke a two years’ top and still, as I set these words on paper, has the record since Ethel Barrymore. I was growing more and more proud of myself . . why hadn’t I got into theatrical business long, long ago? The Maine papers reviewed it, and the Boston papers reviewed it. Very fine, indeedf\J couldn’t have done better myself. Then came the last night. Vinton Freedley was to be there to see the changes, and to sign the Broadway production contract. But there was a storm and he had to leave his plane in Boston, and didn’t get to our last night. Then, the next day, he went back to New York. But still everything was all right. Then came something I never dreamed of and I had my first glimpse of what chance does in the theater. Variety gave it a bad review. The local man had come from Portland and had seen it that first night. He hadn’t liked it and had said so. Never before had I realized the tremendous influence that Variety wields in its field, and now I saw there was indeed reason for it to be called The Bible of Broadway. Vinton Freedley lost enthusiasm for the play and decided, finally, to spend his time on musicals. When the agent took the play to other managers they said, “If it’s so good, why didn’t Freedley bring it to town?" A hard question to answer. And Hollywood said, “It failed, didn’t it?” The book catne out in due time, and got good reviews, but the play had a black eye and no beefsteak we could put on would do any good. After a time the excitement was over and I was again back at my pecking. I have always been interested in how an author gets that first idea. Some of mine have come from definite and concrete happenings, as I have already mentioned. But sometimes writers don’t remember where their ideas came from, or how they got them. In this connection I think of Howard Lindsay. I was invited to dinner with him and Dorothy Stickney, his wife. As we were talking before dinner, he said: “This afternoon I was reading to Dorothy a collection of stories by Clarence Day about his father. I told Dorothy I thought the stories might, somehow, be turned into a play.” He went on to say he know how it could be done, but that a central idea had come to him. And this was that the father and mother should clash all the way through the play, and that the father should be drawn as blustery and the mother soft and gentle—and that she should be the one to win out. One afternoon, after the play was running, I was in his dressing room and mentioned that I had seen him the very day he had had that first flash. But by now the central idea for the play was so well established in his mind and so much a part of him that he had forgotten how and when he’d first gotten it. (TO BE CONTINUED)

I studied and weighed and pondered.