Marjorie Morningstar (45 page)

The first noticeable feature of Guy Flamm was a pair of popping eyes, one of which
was red and streaming. He held a handkerchief to it. He stood up behind his desk,
a red-faced little man with thick well-groomed white hair, a trim white mustache,
a tan tweed jacket, a shirt with faint green lines in it, and a green bow tie. “Come
in, come in, my dear.” He gestured at a chair. Marjorie couldn’t help wondering what
he had been doing while she had waited. The office was absolutely empty except for
a desk, two chairs, and Guy Flamm. No telephone calls had gone through the switchboard.
There was nothing on the desk but an ashtray containing two dead cigars and some ashes.
On a shelf over Flamm’s head was a row of play volumes which looked as though they
had been undisturbed for some years. “Well, well, so you’re Dora Kimble’s favorite
pupil. And you’re going to set Broadway on fire. Sit down, sit down.”

Marjorie took the letter out of her purse and handed it to him. “Miss Kimble’s been
awfully sweet to me.”

“Wonderful girl, Dora. Never cut out for show business, but—” Mr. Flamm glanced at
the letter, mopping his bad eye. “You’ve done Eliza in
Pygmalion
, eh? Quite a challenge. Staged it yourself! Interesting.” He looked at her kindly.
“That’s a very pretty coat. Not many young actresses can afford a coat like that.
Aren’t you hot in it, though?”

Marjorie nodded and took off the coat. Since Mr. Flamm’s eyes popped anyway, she could
not be sure of the impact of the red dress. She thought the eyes popped a bit more.
“Marjorie Morningstar, eh? Very euphonious. Is that your real name, dear?”

“No. It’s Morgenstern.”

“Ah. Jewish?”

“Why—yes.”

Flamm nodded and mopped his eyes. “My first wife was Jewish. Lovely person. Where
do you live?”

Marjorie told him.

“Ah. With your parents?”

“Yes.”

“What does your father do?”

“He’s an importer.” Puzzlement crept into her tone.

Flamm smiled. “There’s method in my madness, dear. I’m watching everything you do
and say. You’d be surprised how you’ve characterized yourself already.” He fell silent,
staring at her. “Interesting.” He reached to the shelf, took down a book, blew the
dust off it, and held it out to Marjorie. “Are you a trouper? Right now, let’s hear
Julie Cavendish’s big speech in
The Royal Family
.”

Startled, Marjorie said, “Give me a couple of minutes.”

“All the time you want.” Flamm smoked and mopped his eye.

She read over the scene; stood, book in hand, collected herself, and burst forth into
the speech. Flamm’s eyes seemed to bulge further, and he stopped mopping. He began
to nod, slowly at first, then more emphatically.

When she sat, trembling, he nodded for a long time, his eyes on her. “My dear, this
is a little too good to be true. Girls just don’t walk out of college and read lines
like that.” He stood and turned his back to her, looking out of the window at a brick
wall. He whirled, smiling. “Look, I’m sorry, I should be more self-controlled, at
my age. It’s a one-in-a-billion shot. I’ve been looking for a Clarice for eight months,
and you’ve walked into my office, straight from Hunter and poor little old Dora Kimble.
It’s incredible, but—” He yanked open his top drawer and flung a script bound in red
on his desk. “
If
you can read Clarice the way you read Julie… Mind, it’s not the lead. It’s one smash
scene in the second act. I’ve had every girl in town read Clarice—What’s the matter,
dear?”

Marjorie was gasping, holding her hand over her pounding chest. “Mr. Flamm—is there
a part—a chance for a part?”

He thrust the script into her hands. “I don’t want to be cruel and say there’s even
a chance. Read the play, that’s all.” His voice was shaking a little. “This is the
theatre, so anything can happen, even a break like this. But I’m promising nothing.
You may be terrible as Clarice. Now this play, remember, isn’t Shaw. Forget about
your college dramatics, dear. This is Broadway, and this play is money, plain old
commercial money. How quick a study are you? Are you willing to come back tomorrow
and risk a reading? All or nothing, your one chance at Clarice? Tomorrow at this time?”

“Yes, yes! Oh, God, Mr. Flamm, I’ll be here.”

She stumbled out of the dank building into the sunshine with the script under her
arm. The feeling of unreality was as strong as it had been on the night of her uncle’s
death; but this was a dream as sweet and beautiful as that had been horrible. She
tried to read the first page on the sidewalk, but sunlight glaring on the white paper
blinded her. She ran to a sandwich shop across the street, ordered coffee and cake,
and began to read the play. The pages looked pink after the sun glare. It was hard
to concentrate at first, there was so much excitement in holding a professionally
typed and bound script, with its character names in upper-case letters. (
JOHN walks in. HE is a young man of thirty, dressed for tennis. HE crosses to the
mirror, L
.) The cover of the script was a peculiarly tough rippled paper, bright scarlet, bound
to the pages with brass fasteners. The title of the play was
Down Two Doubled
.

The first few pages made little sense. She could not get her mind calmed. Bolting
her coffee and cake, and lighting a cigarette, she read on. She had read perhaps forty
pages when she began to suspect that the fault might not lie in her agitation. The
play seemed to be unspeakably stupid trash. The dialogue was silly, the characters
vague, the action feebly meandering. She forced herself to read on, trying desperately
to concentrate. The further she read, the worse it got.

After a while she decided that it was simply not possible to read
Down Two Doubled
. It was worse than a legal document. She flipped the pages until she came to a stage
direction reading (
Enter CLARICE. SHE is a beautiful dark-haired girl aged 18. AMANDA and TONY jump up
from the couch in amazement at HER appearance
).

Clarice was as nebulous as the other characters. Her lines were weak facetious echoes
of a style of college slang ten years outmoded. The play was about two young couples,
rival tournament bridge teams, who went through complex bedroom intrigues in order
to get at each other’s bidding signals. Clarice was the younger sister of one of the
wives. She came from college for the weekend, exposed the intrigues, and outplayed
all the experts in a bridge game on stage. This was as much as Marjorie could extract
from the tangled fog of words called
Down Two Doubled
.

The disappointment was sickening. Had Guy Flamm decayed into a harmless old lunatic?
Yet she had seen his name in the
Times
theatre gossip quite recently. Had he written this gibberish himself? Or was her
judgment so worthless, so warped by collegiate idealism, that she couldn’t perceive
the possibilities in a commercial script? She had a frantic impulse to telephone Noel;
he could read this play in half an hour, and give her an unerring estimate. She went
to the phone booth, dropped in the nickel, and then balked. Her dear wish was to surprise
him, knock him over, with the news that she had a part in a Broadway play. She got
back the nickel, looked up the number of Hunter College, and called Miss Kimble.

The music teacher became almost hysterical when Marjorie said Flamm had given her
a script. Marjorie interrupted the foam of congratulations. “I’d like to see you about
it, right away, if I can.” Miss Kimble fluttered and stammered about all the work
she had to do, and finally told Marjorie to come at once by all means; she would put
everything else aside even if it meant losing her job.

It was queer to arrive at the college at eleven-thirty in the morning. Miss Kimble
fell on Marjorie’s neck, and kissed her, and blew her nose, and looked red-eyed, and
locked her door. She stared at the script with frightening eagerness. “Is that—is
that it?”

“I’d like you to read it. Not necessarily all of it. One act ought to be enough, Miss
Kimble. But right away—”

“Of course I will, Marjorie. I’m at your service, dear. I’m the stepping-stone, the
ladder, and proud of it. And call me Dora, for heaven’s sake, everybody in the theatre
does.” Her fingers worked toward the script. Marjorie hastily handed it to her. “
Down Two Doubled
. Exciting title. Oh, my! Isn’t Guy a dear? And he’s brilliant—”

“Miss—Dora, suppose I take a walk or something? I’ve got to have your opinion. Suppose
I come back in an hour?”

“Perfect. Perfect. Run along, dear.” Eyes agleam, Miss Kimble was already immersed
in the play.

When Marjorie returned, having smoked so many cigarettes and drunk so much drugstore
coffee that she was shaking, she found Miss Kimble less excited. “Sit down, dear,”
the teacher said, pursing her lips and smoothing her brown tweed skirt. The script
lay closed on her desk.

“How much did you read—Dora?”

“I finished it.”

“What do you think?”

“Well—it has definite possibilities.”

“Really? Is that your honest opinion?”

“Marjorie, Guy Flamm is an awfully shrewd man. He’s been in the theatre a long time.
If he likes a script it must have values—”

“But did
you
like it?”

“Well, frankly, it’s slightly confusing at a first reading, and of course I just raced
through it.”

“Dora, isn’t it utter and hopeless garbage?”

The music teacher looked offended. “Marjorie, the first thing you’ll have to learn
in the theatre is not to make snap judgments. It’s a commercial comedy. That kind
of script is full of hidden values, very often. Look at
Abie’s Irish Rose
. You can’t see them, and I can’t see them, but Guy Flamm sees them. Tell me, did
he remember me at all?”

“Oh yes. Spoke very highly of you.”

The music teacher blushed and fumbled at the glasses on her desk. “We had a lot of
fun that summer with
Blossom Time
—Well. What role is he considering you for?”

“Clarice.”

“Why, that’s the best part.”

“I can’t make head or tail of it, Dora. It’s just words. She has no character. She
doesn’t talk like a person. She’s just the result of some imbecile pecking at a typewriter
for a while. I’m sorry, Dora, that’s how it strikes me.”

Miss Kimble put on her glasses, and with them her classroom authority and severity.
“I think you lack a sense of proportion, possibly, a teeny bit, Marjorie. What did
you expect? You’ve been out of college one day. Did you expect to be cast as Juliet
or Candida today by the Theatre Guild?”

“No, but I—”

“Guy Flamm is offering you a chance to act. To walk out on a Broadway stage, for God’s
sake! You should go down on your knees in gratitude to him. And to me, although that
doesn’t matter in the least. If he gave you just a walk-on, just two lines as a maid
in a dismal flop—”

“Dora, I’m terribly grateful to you, it isn’t that—”

“You’ve had the most fantastic luck I’ve ever heard of.
Grab
it, you fool. You’re supposed to be an actress.
Make
something of Clarice, even if she is just a lot of words from a typewriter.
Get out on the stage
.”

Marjorie took the script from the desk. “Well, you’ve certainly made me feel like
a worm.”

Miss Kimble was upon her, hugging her, diffusing pine fragrance. “Marjorie, no. Don’t
take it to heart. Or rather, do! It was just a pep talk, but I mean it. Dear, it’s
a chance, don’t you see, it’s a
start
.”

Marjorie went home and studied the script all afternoon and all evening. She turned
out her bed lamp at midnight, and tossed for hours, with Clarice’s vapid lines tumbling
fragmented in her mind.

Flamm’s fat secretary, still drinking coffee and still chewing on a bun, greeted Marjorie
next morning with an astoundingly pleasant smile, and told her to go right in.

Another red script lay before Flamm on his desk. He was still mopping the eye, which
looked worse. Today he wore a blue checked shirt, a blue bow tie, and a blue sports
jacket. “Not a word,” he said, as Marjorie started to greet him. “Take off your coat.
Forget that Marjorie Morgenstern ever lived. You’re Clarice Talley.” She sat in the
chair, clutching her script. “One question. Do you think you understand the play?”

“I—yes, Mr. Flamm.”

“Which adjective would you say best describes it—sentimental, romantic, raffish, brittle,
gay?”

“Well—gay, and slightly raffish.”

Flamm’s eyes bulged like a lobster’s, and he smiled. Then, looking stern, he flipped
open the script. “Act 2, page 41,” he said. “Let’s go.”

It took twenty minutes to read through Clarice’s scene. Marjorie was damp with perspiration
when it was over. She could not tell whether she had read the drivelling lines well
or badly. She had tried to convey innocence and mischievous charm with her voice and
her face.

Flamm deliberately closed the script, turned his back on her, and looked out of the
window. Three or four minutes went by. He whirled as he had yesterday, his whole face
alight. “I’m sorry. I should send you home, let you stew for a few days—here it is,
between the eyes. I’m in business, after an eight-month search. You’re Clarice! Bless
your heart. We start rehearsals a week from Monday. We open in New Haven March 15.”

Marjorie broke down and cried. He stood over her, patting her shoulder. She said,
“I’m sorry, it’s silly—”

“Not at all, Marjorie. I feel like crying myself.” He gave her a cigarette and she
calmed. He talked a while about wonderfully exciting details: costumes, rehearsal
schedules, hotel rooms in New Haven. She could hardly follow, so stunned with delight
was she. She said, “Yes, yes, Mr. Flamm,” and kept nodding, thinking deliriously of
how she would break the news to her parents and to Noel.

Somehow, after ten minutes or so, Flamm was on the subject of his brother, a Colorado
mining engineer, for whom he had countersigned a note in connection with some mining
equipment. The story was extremely complicated, but the upshot of it was that he had
had to pay ten thousand dollars, which his brother would unquestionably repay in six
months, since his contract was with Anaconda Copper, a client more reliable than the
U. S. Government.