II
She disliked "The Girl from Kankakee" even more than
she had expected. It narrated the success of a farm-lassie in
clearing her brother of a charge of forgery. She became secretary
to a New York millionaire and social counselor to his
wife; and after a well-conceived speech on the discomfort of
having money, she married his son.
There was also a humorous office-boy.
Carol discerned that both Juanita Haydock and Ella
Stowbody wanted the lead. She let Juanita have it. Juanita kissed
her and in the exuberant manner of a new star presented to
the executive committee her theory, "What we want in a play
is humor and pep. There's where American playwrights put it
all over these darn old European glooms."
As selected by Carol and confirmed by the committee, the
persons of the play were:
- John Grimm, a millionaire. . . . Guy Pollock
- His wife . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Vida Sherwin
- His son. . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Harvey Dillon
- His business rival . . . . . . . Raymond T. Wutherspoon
- Friend of Mrs. Grimm . . . . . . Miss Ella Stowbody
- The girl from Kankakee . . . . . . . . Mrs. Harold C. Haydock
- Her brother. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dr. Terence Gould
- Her mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. David Dyer
- Stenographer . . . . . . . . . . Miss Rita Simons
- Office-boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Myrtle Cass
- Maid in the Grimms' home . . . . Mrs. W. P. Kennicott
- Direction of Mrs. Kennicott
Among the minor lamentations was Maud Dyer's "Well of
course I suppose I look old enough to be Juanita's mother,
even if Juanita is eight months older than I am, but I don't
know as I care to have everybody noticing it and—"
Carol pleaded, "Oh, my dear! You two look
exactly the
same age. I chose you because you have such a darling
complexion, and you know with powder and a white wig, anybody
looks twice her age, and I want the mother to be sweet, no
matter who else is."
Ella Stowbody, the professional, perceiving that it was
because of a conspiracy of jealousy that she had been given a
small part, alternated between lofty amusement and Christian
patience.
Carol hinted that the play would be improved by cutting,
but as every actor except Vida and Guy and herself wailed
at the loss of a single line, she was defeated. She told herself
that, after all, a great deal could be done with direction and
settings.
Sam Clark had boastfully written about the dramatic
association to his schoolmate, Percy Bresnahan, president of the
Velvet Motor Company of Boston. Bresnahan sent a check
for a hundred dollars; Sam added twenty-five and brought the
fund to Carol, fondly crying, "There! That'll give you a
start for putting the thing across swell!"
She rented the second floor of the city hall for two months.
All through the spring the association thrilled to its own talent
in that dismal room. They cleared out the bunting,
ballot-boxes, handbills, legless chairs. They attacked the stage.
It was a simple-minded stage. It was raised above the floor,
and it did have a movable curtain, painted with the
advertisement of a druggist dead these ten years, but otherwise it
might not have been recognized as a stage. There were two
dressing-rooms, one for men, one for women, on either side.
The dressing-room doors were also the stage-entrances, opening
from the house, and many a citizen of Gopher Prairie had for
his first glimpse of romance the bare shoulders of the leading
woman.
There were three sets of scenery: a woodland, a Poor
Interior, and a Rich Interior, the last also useful for railway
stations, offices, and as a background for the Swedish Quartette
from Chicago. There were three gradations of lighting: full
on, half on, and entirely off.
This was the only theater in Gopher Prairie. It was known
as the "op'ra house." Once, strolling companies had used
it for performances of "The Two Orphans," and "Nellie the
Beautiful Cloak Model," and "Othello" with specialties
between acts, but now the motion-pictures had ousted the gipsy
drama.
Carol intended to be furiously modern in constructing the
office-set, the drawing-room for Mr. Grimm, and the Humble
Home near Kankakee. It was the first time that any one in
Gopher Prairie had been so revolutionary as to use enclosed
scenes with continuous side-walls. The rooms in the op'ra house
sets had separate wing-pieces for sides, which simplified
dramaturgy, as the villain could always get out of the hero's way by
walking out through the wall.
The inhabitants of the Humble Home were supposed to be
amiable and intelligent. Carol planned for them a simple set
with warm color. She could see the beginning of the play:
all dark save the high settles and the solid wooden table
between them, which were to be illuminated by a ray from
offstage. The high light was a polished copper pot filled with
primroses. Less clearly she sketched the Grimm drawing-room
as a series of cool high white arches.
As to how she was to produce these effects she had no
notion.
She discovered that, despite the enthusiastic young writers,
the drama was not half so native and close to the soil as motor
cars and telephones. She discovered that simple arts require
sophisticated training. She discovered that to produce one
perfect stage-picture would be as difficult as to turn all of
Gopher Prairie into a Georgian garden.
She read all she could find regarding staging, she bought
paint and light wood; she borrowed furniture and drapes
unscrupulously; she made Kennicott turn carpenter. She
collided with the problem of lighting. Against the protest of
Kennicott and Vida she mortgaged the association by sending
to Minneapolis for a baby spotlight, a strip light, a dimming
device, and blue and amber bulbs; and with the gloating
rapture of a born painter first turned loose among colors, she
spent absorbed evenings in grouping, dimming-painting with
lights.
Only Kennicott, Guy, and Vida helped her. They speculated
as to how flats could be lashed together to form a wall; they
hung crocus-yellow curtains at the windows; they blacked the
sheet-iron stove; they put on aprons and swept. The rest
of the association dropped into the theater every evening, and
were literary and superior. They had borrowed Carol's
manuals of play-production and had become extremely stagey
in vocabulary.
Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons, and Raymie Wutherspoon
sat on a sawhorse, watching Carol try to get the right position
for a picture on the wall in the first scene.
"I don't want to hand myself anything but I believe I'll
give a swell performance in this first act," confided Juanita.
"I wish Carol wasn't so bossy though. She doesn't understand
clothes. I want to wear, oh, a dandy dress I have—
all scarlet—and I said to her, `When I enter wouldn't it
knock their eyes out if I just stood there at the door in this
straight scarlet thing?' But she wouldn't let me."
Young Rita agreed, "She's so much taken up with her old
details and carpentering and everything that she can't see the
picture as a whole. Now I thought it would be lovely if we
had an office-scene like the one in `Little, But Oh My!'
Because I saw that, in Duluth. But she simply
wouldn't listen
at all."
Juanita sighed, "I wanted to give one speech like Ethel
Barrymore would, if she was in a play like this. (Harry
and I heard her one time in Minneapolis—we had dandy seats,
in the orchestra—I just know I could imitate her.) Carol
didn't pay any attention to my suggestion. I don't want to
criticize but I guess Ethel knows more about acting than
Carol does!"
"Say, do you think Carol has the right dope about using a
strip light behind the fireplace in the second act? I told
her I thought we ought to use a bunch," offered Raymie.
"And I suggested it would be lovely if we used a cyclorama
outside the window in the first act, and what do you think
she said? `Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora
Duse play the lead,' she said, `and aside from the fact that
it's evening in the first act, you're a great technician,' she
said. I must say I think she was pretty sarcastic. I've been
reading up, and I know I could build a cyclorama, if she didn't
want to run everything."
"Yes, and another thing, I think the entrance in the first
act ought to be L. U. E., not L. 3 E.," from Juanita.
"And why does she just use plain white tormenters?"
"What's a tormenter?" blurted Rita Simons.
The savants stared at her ignorance.
