Al Woods wants to read all of my scripts;
Georgie Cohan speaks to me as an equal
And the office boy swings the gate without being asked.
I don't care if the manager's name is as large as the play's
Or if the critics are featured all over the ash cans.
I'm going to get mine and I'm going to live.
A Rolls-Royce for me and trips "up the road,"
Long Beach and pretty girls, big eats at the Ritz
And the ice pitcher for the fellows who snubbed me.
How the other reporters laughed
When I showed my first script and started to peddle!
"Stick to the steady job," they advised.
"Play writing is too big a gamble;
It will never keep your nose in the feed bag."
I wrote a trunkful of junk; did a play succeed,
I immediately copied the fashion;
Like a pilfering tailor I stole the new models.
Kind David Belasco, with his face in the gloom,
And mine brightly lighted, said ministerially:
"Rather crude yet, my boy, but the way to write a play
Is to write plays from sunrise to sunset
And rewrite them long after midnight.
Try, try, try, my boy, and God bless you."
Broke and disgusted, I became a play reader
And the "yessir man" to a manager.
I was a play doctor, too.
A few of my patients lived
And I learned about drama from them.
How we gutted the scripts!
Grabbing a wonderful line, a peach of a scene,
A gem of a finish
Out of the rubbish that struggling poor devils
Borrowed money to typewrite and mail to us.
It's like opening oysters looking for pearls,
But pearls are to be found and out of the shell heaps
Come jewels that, polished and set by a clever artificer,
Are a season's theatrical wonder.
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