
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 15, 1939.
This Greg-Jim adventure is from Gregory Clark’s book, “Which We Did,” published by Reginald Saunders, Toronto.
“I have been invited,” said Jimmie, “to act as adjudicator in connection with some amateur theatricals.”
“What the heck,” I begged, “is adjudicator?”
“It means judge,” said Jim.
“Then why not say it?” I inquired.
“Ah,” said Jimmie, “that’s the drama of it. In the drama, it is how you say things; not what you say.”
“As a matter of fact.” I agreed, “there really isn’t very much to say in life, is there?”
“Drama,” said Jim, “is the memorable saying of things about which there is very little to say. Now you take Shakespeare. Take Romeo and Juliet. A couple of kids fall for each other. But it turns out that their families have been pulling some raw business deals on one another and aren’t on speaking terms. It’s a very common situation. You’ll find it in every town and village. Especially villages. So, these kids try to get together secretly, but everything turns out against them. You could tell the whole story in about two paragraphs in a newspaper. But Shakespeare takes five acts.”
“How different,” I confessed, “from the newspaper business. There it doesn’t matter how you say it. It’s what you say that is all important. The news. The facts. Get it across quick.”
“And how different,” said Jim, “from the movies. In the movies, it is what you do, not what you say, that counts.”
“This is the age of action,” I pointed out. “Doing is more attractive to us nowadays than saying.”
“The movie business,” said Jim, “hasn’t yet got over the discovery of the movie camera. You’d think they would get used to the idea sooner or later. But no. The guy with the camera is really the boss. There he sits, demanding that everybody move. And the director obeys, and makes them all move. It’s like on a fishing trip, when you take a bunch of the boys with the little amateur movie camera. They all feel they have got to wave their arms and lift the strings of fish up and down, to prove it is a movie. You can go to the movies for a whole year and never hear an intelligent remark or conversation that lingers an hour in your memory. Why? Because the conversation in the movies is nothing but part of the sound effects. They still make the movies the way they did back 20 years ago. All movement, with sound effects.”
Two Kinds of Everything
“I can’t say,” I confessed, “that I could I stand for movies consisting of just two people sitting a half hour at a time quietly chatting, the way it used to be in the stage drama. Or even soliloquy. Do you remember soliloquy, where the actor used to stand all alone on the stage talking to himself out loud?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Jimmie. “I can still remember, as if it was only yesterday, the scene in ‘Liliom’ where Joseph Schildkraut1, as Liliom, debated with an old crook the question of God. You could put that on the movies. Just the two of them, sitting in a dirty old back yard. Because what they were saying was fascinating. W. C. Fields2 talking to himself is one of the greatest features of the modern movies. Yet they cut him short, and hustle him into movement again. The trouble with the movies is, they are camera struck.”
“Like everything else,” I suggested, “the public will probably get weary of seeing nothing but action and begin to yearn in time to hear some words of beauty or wisdom.”
“No,” disagreed Jim. “There’s no hope in that direction. The great mass of the public have only the one sense, visual. Their only power of appreciation of beauty is optical. It is their weekly two bits, or twice-weekly two bits, that make up the vast fortunes of the movie industry.”
“Then,” I surmised, “the stage drama is going to survive after all?”
“What I think,” said Jim, “is, there are. two kinds of everything. Two kinds of cars, cheap and dear. Two kinds of clothes, houses, churches, schools, fishing rods. In a little while, there will be two kinds of movie theatres. The big cheap ones where the same old whang-doodle goes on for ever and ever. And small, expensive movie theatres where the true artists, the real dramatists, actors, stage-craftsmen, will perform for a minority who are eager to pay the cost. We are all at the vaudeville stage of the movies now.”
“But,” I disagreed, “there will still be wandering minstrels. There will still be actors and actresses forlornly travelling the wide world, making personal appearances in small hotels, conservatories and church basements.”
“Ah,” agreed Jim. “And there will still be amateur theatricals.”
“That’s a thing,” I said, “I never had any yen for when I was young, amateur theatricals.”
“No, because you had sport,” said Jim. “You dramatized yourself with gun and rod and canoe. You ranged the rocks and hills, imagining yourself a mighty hunter before the Lord. For one deer you have ever really shot, you have, in a thousand dramas of your own invention, shot ten thousand wild and fierce creatures.”
“How do you know that?” I asked in astonishment.
“We’re all alike,” said Jim. “Drama is a word that comes to us straight from the ancient Geeks. It means to perform. Every living being loves to perform. It is the very spirit of life itself. One minute, we are nothing. Then we are alive, for a few brief minutes. Then we are nothing again, forever. But during those few minutes that we are alive, the one great yearning in us, between those two dreadful darknesses, is to perform, to move, to act, to do something, however strange.”
Pretend They’re Other People
“And amateur theatricals?” I asked.
“Most people who go in for amateur theatricals,” explained Jimmie, “are bank clerks, accountants, oppressed, repressed individuals who dare not venture, even in the imagination, away from the ledgers, the desks, the hard realities of their lives. Church people go in for amateur theatricals. Church people are publicly trying to lead a good life. Therefore, even in the secret of the night, or in the shadow of their own hearts, they dare not go gallivanting in any dreams. And dreams are drama. Ah, the uncounted billions of unwritten dramas of humanity!”
“Who are these people you are going to adjudicate?” I asked.
“Oh, just a neighborhood drama league,” said Jim. “A couple of churches, a men’s club and a community association of some kind. I guess they will be pretty dreadful.”
“I remember one time,” I said, “I got into a movie theatre on a juvenile amateur night. I never suffered so much for 37 cents in all my life.”
“It will probably be fun, though,” said Jim. “I am to attend a dress rehearsal of this play, some sort of a drama of family life. Each season, before they present a play, they call in a critic or adjudicator, not, a professional, you understand, but some prominent citizen like me, who is asked to decide if the characters are properly apportioned, if the players are suited to their parts, and if the drama, as so presented, is suitable for a stage offering in the community hall.”
“It’s a nice idea,” I admitted, “I’d like to go with you.”
“Come along,” cried Jim. “They’ll be delighted to have you.”
So, the night of the rehearsal, Jim telephoned to remind me, and called for me in his car.
“You’re late,” I said. “It’s 8.25.”
“I phoned them,” said Jim, “and they said they would start and we could come in after the fuss of getting going was over.”
“We the only audience?” I asked.
“Just us,” said Jim.
We arrived at our destination, a handsome big home. It was all in darkness. We rang the bell; but there was no response.
“That’s funny,” said Jim. “They said 102.”
“Maybe it is 120,” I said. “You’re not very good at figures.”
“They said 102, I am sure,” said Jim, as we walked down to the pavement. We strolled east. Down a few doors, there were several cars parked in front and an air of activity in a brightly lighted house.
“That’s 112,” I said. “You got it wrong by one.”
Number 112 was the house, all right. The shadows of people moving on the blinds, the sounds of voices, of voices raised in mock passion.
We rang the bell.
“They’re going good,” said Jim, as we heard a woman’s voice rise in tearful entreaty.
We rang the bell again.
“I guess,” said Jim, trying the door knob and finding the door open, “they can’t hear the bell for the racket they’re making.”
A crowd was assembled in the living-room, so Jim and I quietly tip-toed in and hung our coats and hats on the crowded rack. Through the hall curtains, we could see the drama going on, full bang. Around the living room, seated crowded on chesterfields and chairs and standing leaning against the walls, were the players, four or five middle-aged or elderly men and women and about seven or eight younger persons. In the middle of the room, the centre of all eyes, were two of the company, a middle-aged woman a middle-aged man. As we slipped in by the curtains and took our stand against the wall, the action was not interrupted, and a few of the players threw brief glances and smiles.
“For 40 years of my life,” the woman was saying, in a deep. tremulous voice, and I was impressed to see very real looking tears on her face, “I have been a faithful daughter to him, devoting my life to him. I denied myself marriage…”
“Ha, ha,” laughed the man who was standing with her, undoubtedly the villain, though an elderly villain. “Denied yourself marriage, you say?”
“Yes,” cried the woman, in a hoarse, broken voice that was most dramatic, “denied myself marriage.”
“Heh, heh, heh,” laughed the villain, and all the other players around the room smiled at his humor, “I tell you, Lizzie, you have been the joke of the family all your life for the desperate efforts you have made to capture a man. Why, even the little boys of the neighborhood make jokes about your next attempt.”
“You brute,” gasped the woman, staring tragically around at us, “you filthy brute. To think, a brother should ever speak to a sister in such words! Why, even as a little girl, who was it stayed home with Daddie while you others went your ways? When he had the typhoid fever, who was it nursed him? Where were you when he had the typhoid fever, I ask you?”
The male villain was now standing over against the mantel, with his arm resting on it, in the approved attitude.
“Lizzie,” he said, “we all see through you. There isn’t one of us in this room, young or old, that could not testify in a court of law that you had deliberately prevented us, time after time, from doing acts of kindness to Daddie. Eleanor, there…”
The pretty girl cried out –
“I tried to take Granddaddie for motor rides.”
“Hah,” cried Lizzie, the lady standing up, “let a rattle brain like you take a nervous old man driving? You who’s been in three dreadful accidents, all your own fault?”
“Lizzie,” said the villain, pointing a lean finger at her, “you can’t face it. No court of law would uphold you. Every member of this family will testify that you usurped the old man’s love; that you poisoned his mind against us all; that you misrepresented us all to him; that you frustrated us in all our attempts to show him a natural family affection.”
“Affection?” screamed Lizzie, whirling about the middle of the room to stare at us all most tragically, “Affection? Why half of you, didn’t come to his funeral. You were too busy playing golf or grubbing your filthy money.”
“Filthy money?” sneered the villain, “Heh, heh, heh! I tell you, my dear sister, unless you voluntarily divide up Daddie’s estate among us, his proper heirs, we’ll take you for a ride through the court of this country that will take every cent he left you, make you a public character, and make you wish you had never been born.”
Lizzie, standing there in the midst, burst suddenly into tears. It was magnificent acting. Real tears cascaded through the fingers of her hands as she covered her face.
“Oh, oh,” she wailed, in an entreaty to Fate more moving than any words could be.
Jimmie stepped forward.
“Ladies and gentlemen, he said, smiling, and even Lizzie stopped crying and everybody stared.
“My dear friends,” said Jim, “as adjudicator, I think I might interrupt at this stage of the proceedings to say that the acting of the villains the way he leans on the mantel, the way he sneers so and points his finger, is a little too melodramatic. In real life he would be cold, soft-speaking, insinuating and threatening. My dear sir, you will forgive me, but I think you bluster too much.”
There was an instantaneous outburst of mutter and murmur and chatter.
“Who,” demanded the villain, advancing on Jim, “are you?”
“I’m the adjudicator,” smiled Jim.
“The what?” cried the villain.
“The adjudicator,” said Jim. “Didn’t you invite me here to act as critic of your little drama?”
“Drama?” said the villain. “I thought you two were her lawyers.”
Dazed Triumph
There was a sudden burst of excitement and everybody stood up and crowded around.
“I thought,” said Lizzie, “they were your lawyers. Who are you two gentlemen, please?”
Jim and I stood side by side.
“Pardon us,” I said, for Jimmie was temporarily at sea, “but we are just a couple of newspapermen, who were invited by a local amateur theat…”
“Newspapermen,” muttered the villain, looking fearfully around. “Newspapermen,” the others all muttered, starting for the hall. Men, women and young folk, they all seemed like children when the fire bell rings, so eagerly did they bump into one another on their way to the hall, grabbing their coats and hats. “Newspapermen,” they all mumbled and muttered and gasped, with sideway glances. And the sound of engines starting up and cars departing in gear filled the night while Jim and I still stood bewildered, and there was nobody left but Lizzie and us two.
“But,” said Jim, apologetically, to that lady who stood with a look of dazed triumph on her face, “we thought this was where the neighborhood drama league was rehearsing. We were invited.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Lizzie. “God sent you.”
“No ma’am, we just mistook the house number,” confessed Jim.
“Mistook?” sighed the lady, like Jane Cowl3. “Mistook? My dear friends, those were my brothers and sisters and their children, come to rob me of my rights, a poor woman who has devoted her whole life to a dear old neglected man. And you come in, two newspapermen, and are witnesses of the whole dreadful thing…”
“Ma’am,” said Jim, deeply, “we are dreadful sorry. Never a word of it would either of us ever breathe.”
“You won’t need to,” laughed the lady almost hysterically, seizing our arms. “You won’t need to not if I know my brothers and sisters. I’ll never even hear of them again.”
And laughing and crying, she threw herself on a chesterfield and laughed and cried, while Jimmie and I got into our coats and hats and said good-by 12 different ways and times, and went out and shut the front door, with her still sobbing and laughing.
And we never did find those amateur theatricals.
Editor’s Notes: As indicated at the start of the story, this was originally published in Which We Did (1936).
- Joseph Schildkraut, an Austrian-American actor, played the title role in the first American stage production of Liliom, the play that eventually became the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. ↩︎
- W. C. Fields was an American actor and comedian. ↩︎
- Jane Cowl was an American film and stage actress and playwright. ↩︎