Writing for Vaudeville Part 19

2. Themes to fit Certain Players

It is not at all uncommon for a playlet writer to be asked to fit some legitimate star, about to enter vaudeville, with a playlet that shall have for its hero or its heroine the particular character in which the star has had marked success. [1] And often a man and wife who have achieved a reputation in vaudeville together will order a new playlet that shall have characters modeled on the lines of those in the old playlet. Or, indeed, as I have know in many instances, three performers will order a playlet in which there must be characters to fit them all. When a writer receives such an order it would seem that at least a part of his task is already done for him; but this is not the case, he still must seek that most important things--a story.

[1] In precisely the same way writers of the full-evening play for the legitimate stage are forever fas.h.i.+oning vehicles for famous stars. The fact that the chief consideration is the star and that the play is considered merely as a "vehicle" is one of the reasons why our plays are not always of the best. Where you consider a personality greater than a story, the story is likely to suffer.

Can you name more than one or two recent plays so fas.h.i.+oned that have won more than a season's run?

3. Themes Born in the Mind of the Writer

The beginner, fortunately, is not brought face to face with this problem; he is foot-free to wander wherever his fancy leads. And yet he may find in his thoughts a character or two who beg to serve him so earnestly that he cannot deny them. So he takes them, knowing them so well that he is sure he can make them live--and he constructs a story around them.

Or there may first pop into his mind a story in its entirety, full fledged, with beginning, middle and ending--that is; thoroughly motivated in every part and equipped with characters that live and breathe. Unhappily this most fortunate of occurrences usually happens only in the middle of the night, when one must wake up next morning and sadly realize it was but a dream.

4. The Newspaper as a Source of Ideas.

A playwright, let us say, reads in the newspapers of some striking characters, or of an event that appeals to him as funny or as having a deep dramatic import. There may be only a few bald lines telling the news. features of the story in one sentence, or there may be an entire column, discussing the case from every angle.

Whatever it is, the bit of news appeals to him, and maybe of all men to him only, so he starts _thinking_ about the possibilities it offers for a playlet.

5. Happenings of which the Playwright is Told or Which Occur under his Notice

Some striking incident rises out of the life about the playwright and he sees it or hears about it, and straightway comes the thought: This is a playlet idea. A large number of playlets have been germinated so.

6. Experiences that Happen to the Playwright

Some personal experience which wakens in the mind of the playwright the thought, Here's something that'll make a good playlet, is one of the fruitful sources of playlet-germs.

But however the germ idea comes to him--whether as a complete story, or merely as one striking incident, or just a situation that recommends itself to him as worth while fitting with a story--he begins by turning it over in his mind and casting it into dramatic form.

III. A SUPPOSIt.i.tIOUS EXAMPLE OF GERM-DEVELOPMENT

For the purpose of ill.u.s.tration, let us suppose that Taylor Granville, who conceived the idea of "The System," had read in the New York newspapers about the Becker case and the startling expose of the alleged police "system" that grew out of the Rosenthal murder, here is how his mind, trained to vaudeville and dramatic conventions, might have evolved that excellent melodramatic playleet.

[1]

[1] As a matter of fact, Mr. Granville had the first draft of the playlet in his trunk many months before the Rosenthal murder occurred, and Mr. MacCree and Mr. Clark were helping him with the final revisions when the fatal shot was fired.

In this connection it should be emphasized that the Becker case did not make The System a great playlet; the investigation of the New York Police Department only gave it the added attraction of timeliness and, therefore, drew particular attention to it. Dozens of other playlets and many long plays that followed The System on the wave of the same timely interest failed. Precisely as Within the Law, Bayard Veiller's great play, so successful for the Selwyn Company, was given a striking timeliness by the Rosenthal murder, The System reaped merely the br.i.m.m.i.n.g harvest of lucky accident.

And like Within the Law, this great playlet would be as successful today as it was then--because it is "big" in itself. [end footnote]

The incidents of "the Becker Case" were these: Herman Rosenthal, a gambler of notorious reputation, one day went to District Attorney Whitman with the story that he was being hounded by the police--at the command of a certain Police Lieutenant. Rosenthal a.s.serted that he had a story to tell which would shake up the New York Police Department. He was about to be called to testify to his alleged story when he was shot to death in front of the Metropole Hotel on Forty-third Street and the murderer or murderers escaped in an automobile. Several notorious underworld characters were arrested, charged with complicity in the murder, and some, in the hope, it has been said, of receiving immunity, confessed and implicated Police Lieutenant Becker, who was arrested on the charge of being the instigator of the crime. [1] These are the bare facts as every newspaper in New York City told them in glaring headlines at the time. Merely as incidents of a striking story, Mr. Granville would, it is likely, have turned them over in his mind with these thoughts:

[1] Becker's subsequent trial, conviction, sentence to death and execution occurred many months later and could not have entered into the playwright's material, therefore they are not recounted here.

"If I take these incidents as they stand, I'll have a grewsome ending that'll 'go great' for a while--if the authorities let me play it--and then the playlet will die with the waning interest.

There isn't much that's dramatic in a gambler shown in the District Attorney's Office planning to 'squeal,' and then getting shot for it, even though the police in the playlet were made to instigate the murder. It'd make a great 'movie,' perhaps, but there isn't enough time in vaudeville to go through all the motions: I've got to recast it into drama.

"I must 'forget' the b.l.o.o.d.y ending, too--it may be great drama, but it isn't good vaudeville. The two-a-day wants the happy ending, if it can get it.

"And even if the Becker story's true in every detail, Rosenthal isn't a character with whom vaudeville can sympathize--I'll have to get a lesser offender, to win sympathy--a 'dip's' about right-- 'The Eel.'

"There isn't any love-interest, either--where's the girl that sticks to him through thick and thin? I'll add his sweetheart, Goldie. And I'll give The Eel more sympathy by making Dugan's motive the attempt to win her.

"Then there's got to be the square Copper--the public knows that the Police force is fundamentally honest--so the Department has got to clean itself up, in my playlet; fine, there's McCarthy, the honest Inspector."

Here we have a little more, perhaps, than a bare germ idea, but it is probably the sort of thing that came into Mr. Granville's mind with the very first thought of "The System." Even more might have come during the first consideration of his new playlet, and--as we are dealing now not with a germ idea only but primarily with how a playwright's mind works--let us follow his supposit.i.tious reasoning further:

"All right; now, there's got to be an incident that'll give Dugan his chance to 'railroad' The Eel, and a money-society turn is always good, so we have Mrs. Worthington and the necklace, with Goldie, the suspected maid, who casts suspicion on The Eel. Dugan 'plants' it all, gets the necklace himself, tries to lay it to The Eel, and win Goldie besides--but a dictograph shows him up. Now a man-to-man struggle between Dugan and The Eel for good old melodrama. The Eel is losing, in comes the Inspector and saves him--Dugan caught--triumph of the honest police--and Goldie and The Eel free to start life anew together. That's about it--for a starter, anyway.

"Re-read these dramatic incidents carefully, compare them with the incidents of the suggestive case as the newspapers reported them, and you will see not only where a playwright may get a germ idea, but how his mind works in casting it into stage form.

The first thing that strikes you is the dissimilarity of the two stories; the second, the greater dramatic effectiveness of the plot the playlet-writer's mind has evolved; third, that needless incidents have been cut away; fourth, that the very premise of the story, and all the succeeding incidents, lead you to recognize them in the light of the denouement as the logical first step and succeeding steps of which the final scene is inevitably the last; fifth, however many doubts may hover around the story of the suggesting incident, there is no cloud of doubt about the perfect justice of the stage story; and, sixth, that while you greet the ending of the suggesting story with a feeling of repugnance, the final scene of the stage story makes the whole clearly, happily and pleasantly true--truer than life itself, to human hearts which forever aspire after what we sometimes sadly call "poetic justice."

Now, in a few short paragraphs, we may sum up the answer to the question which opens this chapter, and answer the other two questions as well. A playlet writer may get the germ of a playlet idea: from half-ideas suggested by the necessity of fitting certain players; directly from his own imagination; from the newspapers; from what someone tells him, or from his observation of incidents that come under his personal notice; from experiences that happen to him--in fact, from anywhere.

IV. HOW A PLAYLET WRITER RECOGNIZES A PLAYLET IDEA

A playlet writer recognizes that the character or characters, the incident or incidents, possess a funny, serious or tragic _grip_, and the fact that he, himself, is gripped, is evidence that a playlet is "_there_," if--IF--he can trust his own dramatic instinct.

A playlet writer recognizes an idea as a playlet idea, because he is able so to recognize such an idea; there is no escape from this: YOU MUST POSSESS DRAMATIC INSTINCT [1] to recognize playlet ideas and write playlets.

[1] See the following chapter on "The Dramatic--the Vital Element of Plot."

V. HOW MUCH OF THE PLAYLET IS ACHIEVED WITH THE IDEA

No two persons in this world act alike, and certainly no two persons think alike. How much of a playlet is achieved when the germ idea is found and recognized, depends somewhat upon the idea--whether it is of characters that must be fitted with a story, a series of incidents, or one incident only--but more upon the writer. I have known playlets which were the results of ideas that originated in the concepts of clever final situations, the last two minutes of the playlet serving as the incentive to the construction of the story that led inevitably up to the climax. I have also known playlets whose big scenes were the original ideas--the opening and finish being fitted to them. One or two writers have told me of playlets which came almost entirely organized and motivated into their minds with the first appearance of the germ idea. And others have told me of the hours of careful thinking through which they saw, in divers half-purposes of doubt, the action and the characters emerge into a definite, purposeful whole.

What one writer considers a full-fledged germ idea, may be to another but the first faint evidence that an idea may possibly be there. The skilled playlet-writer will certainly grasp a germ idea, and appraise its worth quicker than the novice can. In the eager acceptance of half-formed ideas that speciously glitter, lies the pitfall which entraps many a beginner. Therefore, engrave on the tablets of your resolution this determination and single standard:

Never accept a subject as a germ idea and begin to write a playlet until you have turned its theme over in your mind a sufficient length of time to establish its worth beyond question. Consider it from every angle in the light of the suggestions in this chapter, and make its characters and its action as familiar to you as is the location of every article in your own room. Then, when your instinct for the dramatic tells you there is no doubt that here is the germ idea of a playlet, state it in one short sentence, and consider that statement as a problem that must be solved logically, clearly and conclusively, within the requirements of the playlet form.

With the germ idea the entire playlet may flood into the writer's mind, or come in little waves that rise continually, like the ever advancing tide, to the flood that touches high-water mark. But, however complete the germ idea may be, it depends upon the writer alone whether he struggles like a novice to keep his dramatic head above water, or strikes out with the bold, free strokes of the practised swimmer.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DRAMATIC--THE VITAL ELEMENT OF PLOT

What the dramatic is--no matter whether it be serious or comic in tone--requires some consideration in a volume such as this, even though but a brief discussion is possible and only a line of thought may be pointed out.

This discussion is placed here in the sequence of chapters, because it first begins to trouble the novice after he has accepted his germ idea, and before he has succeeded in casting it into a stage story. Indeed, at that moment even the most self-sure becomes conscious of the demands of the dramatic. Yet this chapter will be found to overlap some that precede it and some that follow--particularly the chapter on plot structure, of which this discussion may be considered an integral part--as is the case in every attempt to put into formal words, principles separate in theory, but inseparable in application.

In the previous chapter, the conscious thought that precedes even the acceptance of a germ idea was insisted on--it was "played up,"

as the stage phrase terms a scene in which the emotional key is pitched high--with the purpose of forcing upon your attention the prime necessity of thinking out--not yet writing--the playlet.

Emphasis was also laid on the necessity for the possession of dramatic instinct--a gift far different from the ability to think--by anyone who would win success in writing this most difficult of dramatic forms. But now I wish to lay an added stress--to pitch even higher the key of emphasis--on one fundamental, this vital necessity: Anyone who would write a playlet must possess in himself, as an instinct--something that cannot be taught and cannot be acquired--the ability to recognize and grasp the dramatic.

No matter if you master the technic by which the great dramatists have built their plays, you cannot achieve success in writing the playlet if you do not possess an innate sense of what is dramatic.

For, just as a man who is tone-deaf [1] might produce musical ma.n.u.scripts which while technically faultless would play inharmoniously, so the man who is drama-blind might produce "perfect" playlet ma.n.u.scripts that would play in dramatic discords.

[1] Not organically defective, as were the ears of the great composer, Beethoven, but tone-deaf, as a person may be color-blind.