“What does it say?” says Wolf after reading it.
“I’ll read it out to you,” says L. N. “It says, ‘Supreme Pictures is reported to have offered David Wallace twenty-five thousand dollars for the film rights to his novel Harridan. This book is the best seller of the spring season and its author has already been approached by Broadway theatrical managers who believe it could be successfully molded into play form. Which of Supreme’s stars it is wanted for is, apparently, a secret.’ ”
“Well,” said Wolf.
“Well!” Bauer hollers. “Is that all you got to say—‘Well’? I tell you we ain’t got any time to lose!”
“But explain what you mean,” says Wolf. “Supreme Pictures is offering somebody twenty-five thousand dollars for some book and they’re going to make it into a picture—what of it?”
“Didn’t you hear the name of the book?” says Bauer. “Harridan. Who could they want it for but Byrne?”
“Oh, I get you,” Wolf says.
“It’s about time you got me,” said Bauer, “and it’s about time we got a hold of this Wallace and nailed him down.”
“But listen,” says Wolf, “why not buy the book first and read it and see if it’s what we want?”
“There ain’t time to read it now,” said L. N. “While we’re reading it, Supreme goes ahead and buys the rights and we’re sunk. Besides, they’ve read it and they know it fits Byrne or they wouldn’t have made the offer. And if it fits Byrne, it fits Kavanaugh. So we’re suckers if we don’t sew it up.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Wolf. “There’s no use taking chances.”
So they spent that whole day trying to locate Wallace and raving because they couldn’t, but the next morning they did and he showed up in the office and they asked him what he’d take for the rights to his book.
“That depends,” he says. “I wouldn’t want my story changed and I’d want to see the picture before it was released. And I’d like to know if my name would be used.”
“You’re a pretty famous author, ain’t you?” says L. N., who hadn’t ever heard of him. “We’d be glad to use your name.”
“I’m not sure I want it used,” said Wallace. “But if you used the title Harridan, you’d pretty near have to use my name because everybody knows I wrote the book.”
“We’ll certainly use Harridan,” said Wolf.
“And what girl would play in it?” Wallace asked them.
“That will have to be a secret for the present,” says L. N.
Then they asked him again to name a price.
“I tell you I’m a little particular,” he says. “I take pride in my work and I don’t want to see it made ridiculous. Money isn’t everything.”
He was going on with his speech, but Bauer interrupted him.
“Well, we’ll give you fifty thousand dollars cash,” he said.
Wallace fainted and when he came to, his scruples were all gone.
L. N. and Wolf had put another one over on Supreme and they spent the rest of the morning holding hands and slapping each other on the back. L. N. sent me out to buy him a copy of Harridan and after he came back from lunch, he began to read it. But on the first page he crashed right into three great, big, long words, words like “beatific,” “solecism” and “torture.” And the book was over three hundred pages long. So he said he was going on a party that night and would I mind reading the book and giving him a synopsis of it the next day.
I don’t know if you read the book or not. It was about a family that the mother was dead and her two daughters and one son had idolized her and a year after she died, the father had gone abroad and pretty soon he cabled back that he had married a Mrs. Garrett. They didn’t know who she was, but some of their friends knew her by reputation; she was supposed to have been a kind of a loose woman and they said she was old besides and their father must have been drunk when he married her. They were sore anyway on account of him getting married again, so they were ready to treat her like dirt when he brought her home.
Well, she hadn’t been a nun by any means, but she wasn’t old and she was so pretty and so attractive and nice to them that they couldn’t help liking her. The son fell in love with her, but she told him to behave himself and stick to the nice little flapper he was engaged to. That’s about all there was to it.
So the next morning I told it to L. N. and after I got through, he looked kind of dumb. Then he asked me which part would suit Kavanaugh, the son or the father. I told him the father was a man fifty-five or sixty years old and the son’s part was so small that you could give it to an extra.
“Well, then,” he said, “who is ‘Harridan’?”
“That’s the second wife,” I told him.
So he said he thought her name was Garrett.
“ ‘Harridan’ isn’t a name,” I told him. “It’s just a word and in this book it’s used kind of sarcastically.”
Then he asked me what it meant.
“Well,” I said, “it means two or three different things.”
“Look it up and find out what it means,” he says.
So there was a little dictionary there in the office and I looked it up and read it off to him: “Formerly a loose woman; now commonly a vixen.” Or something like that.
“Well, what’s a vixen?” he asked me.
So I looked that up—“A female fox (obsolete); a cross, ill-tempered person, now used only of women; a jade.”
“Well,” he said, “it’s a cinch Kavanaugh couldn’t play a female fox or a grouchy woman. I guess we’ll have to write in a part for him.”
So I
