Inspiration from the Muse
Holy Bible began too slow and after another powder Booth dived into Heart Throbs, only to be confronted by the complete text of “Home, Sweet Home.” Now out in the town where Booth’s family was spending the summer the natives had pointed with pride to the house where Mr. Payne, who wrote this famous lyric, used to live. If the natives had ever read the whole thing, they probably would have burned the house instead of pointing to it.
Turning over a few pages, however, Booth came across a poem that soon had him fighting to keep back the tears. It told about a mother who often cried at the memory of the good times she used to have, before she was married and gave birth to a little one, but who felt all right again when the little one reminded her of her present blessings by climbing on her knee—
And she says and twists a curl:
“I am Mamma’s baby dirl!”
And the while I bless my lot
Whispers: “Mamma had fordot!”
And another whose first stanza ran:
When you see a man in woe,
Walk right up and say, “Hello!”
Say, “Hello!” and “How d’ye do?
How’s the world been using you?”
Slap the fellow on his back,
Bring your hand down with a whack;
Waltz straight up and don’t go slow,
Shake his hand and say, “Hullo!”
For a brief moment Booth considered dressing again, engaging a taxi, driving to Chambers’ house, waltzing straight up to Chambers’ room, bringing his hand down with a whack on Chambers’ shoulder and saying, “Hullo, and how d’ye do, and how’s your second-act curtain?” But he hadn’t had enough powders.
While the waiter was removing the tray, he took another one and looked across at the opposite room. Strangely, the shade was down.
Booth lay on his bed, with glass and bottle beside him, for half an hour. Inspiration came to him. The second act should end with a song. But he’d better call up Chambers and get his approval.
“It’s Got to Be Funny”
“Why, sure,” said Chambers. “Only it’s got to be damn funny.”
“Have you had any ideas yourself?”
“Not yet. I’ve been reading. You realize, of course, that a line or a piece of business would be better than a song unless the song’s damn funny.”
“But I can’t think of a line or a piece of business.”
“Then go ahead with your song, and be sure it’s damn funny.”
Booth hung up and took a drink. In a room devoid of musical instruments he had to compose a song that would be a curtain, would make an audience laugh, would be damn funny.
He looked across the court and saw the light in the girl’s room flash on and then off.
He pictured her as a buyer from St. Louis or Cincinnati. She worked hard all day while he attended rehearsals, or while he sat there in his own room and attempted to think up lines dumb audiences would laugh at, as substitutes for lines that they wouldn’t. He wondered whether she was dumb.
In the evening she came back to her $4.00 cell, and perhaps changed her clothes and went to a picture, or sat in the grill or on the roof and dined alone and wished there were someone for her to dance with when the orchestra played “Here Am I.”
After her solitary dinner or the pictures, she probably went to bed and read the confessions of John Gilbert and Rudy Vallée until she fell asleep.
It was a shame, thought Booth, that the conventions and his arduous work kept him from calling her up and perhaps taking her to dinner or a show, or merely carrying on friendly conversations with her so she would not be quite so homesick.
Wasted Sympathy
He fell asleep and was awakened by the telephone at half past two.
“Listen,” said the voice of Mr. Rose, “we’ve got a show if we find a curtain for that second act. They liked everything but that tonight. You fellas have got to dig up a curtain by tomorrow.”
“I think I’ve got an idea.”
“Well, I hope it’s good.”
Booth began to hum different people’s tunes to himself. Tunes lots of times suggest words; it’s customary and much more satisfactory to get the tune first—
He looked across the court once more. The lights were on, only the thin shade was down, and he could see a man in shirt sleeves standing in the middle of the room.
“Well,” thought Booth, “she’s married and I’ve been wasting all my sympathy. A girl that’s married may not be having a good time, but at least she isn’t alone.”
For some reason, however, he felt resentful and the drink he took was three times as big as its predecessors. So, she was married—
Suddenly there flashed into his head one of the prettiest tunes he had ever heard. He grabbed a piece of music manuscript paper and wrote a lead sheet of half the refrain.
“It will be all the better,” he thought, “if I can get some silly, incongruous words to such a pretty melody as this.”
He set down what he considered an amusing line and was at work on a second when the telephone rang again.
“This is Rose. I was thinking maybe you’d better tell me something about your idea for a curtain.”
“It’s a song. I’ve got it half done.”
“You might just as well quit working on it. We can’t drop on a song. It’s got to be a gag.”
“But suppose the song is a gag—”
“No, I tell you we can’t ring down on a song. We’ve got too many of them. This is no musical. Just forget that idea and work on another.”
Booth tried to answer, but Mr. Rose had hung up.
“Whether we ring down on it or not,” Booth said to the bottle, “we can use it somewhere.”
But in the middle of the third line
