Edward L. Bernays

“ But all this time
There are six hundred separate souls
The playwright's puppet has to woo,
To win, to humor, or to cajole,
Until, with master stroke
Of Devil knowledge,
Or old Adam's,
He crushes in his manful arms
The languid heroine
And forcing back her golden head
Implants the kiss.
And then against his heaving breast
The hero feels the beatings of six hundred hearts
In mighty unison,
And on his lips there is the pulse
Of that one lingering kiss
Returned six-hundred fold. ”

“ And she laughed from the red lips outward, the laugh of the brave who die,
But a ghost in her laughter murmured, "I lie—I lie!"
She pressed the glass to her lips as one presses the lips of love,
And I said: "Are you always merry, and what is the art thereof?" ”

“ By gleefully agreeing in that sage Broadway saying:
"Oh, what an awful oil can that piece turned out to be!"
It's hard when the Chanters of Death-House Blues
Have to turn to each other and reluctantly murmur:
"I'm afraid it's a hit—the poor fish is lucky."
First-nighters are the theatre's forty-niners,
Making the early rush to new dramatic gold fields,
And usually finding them barren.
Often must it madden the playwright to offer his ideals
To an audience whose personnel would for the most part
Regard an ideal as a symptom of sickness ”

“ When all that the first-nighters ask is plain entertainment.
How much of the great, wholesome public, hard-working and normal,
To whom the final appeal must be made
Frequents our first nights on Broadway?
Costumers, friends of the author, and critics,
Scene painters, all of the tradesmen concerned,
Kinsfolk of mummers even to the third generation,
Wine agents, hot-house ladies, unemployed players,
Hearty laughers or ready weepers "planted."
Most of them there prepare for a funeral ”

“ At a Broadway theatre, with electric lights, and transient crowds
That would save it—
Was the universal verdict.
During the first week there was a tremendous fight
Between the two factions for the
Distribution of credit, and some critics said
The League of Public Spirited Women was responsible
For bringing the play back, because they had bulletined it,
And others said it was the astute manager.
But no audience came to the play after the second week.
And it went to the storehouse.
No one fought any longer for
The distribution of credit. ”

“ Capable of everything, he has worked
With the ease of a master, giving the public
Marvelous detail, unfailing sensation and poses pictorial;
Preferring the certain success to arduous striving
For the more excellent things of the future.
Like David his forebear, a king but no prophet,
Amazingly wise in his own generation. ”

“ No jewels nor any merchantry?"
And then Abdullah:
"True, Allah's precious son,
We trade in naught men feed their bellies on
But we have wares to thrill brave men,
To make your youth see what use bodies are,
To make your women blush
That they have no such men." ”

“ I kept getting better.
I got so's I could follow any act at all
And get my laughs.
And he who getteth his laughs
Is greater than he who taketh a city.
At last the Palace Theatre sent for me
And I signed up for a week.
They kept me two.
I am a headliner;
I stand at the corner of Forty-seventh Street
And Little Old Broadway ”

“ The type-choosing manager.
GEORGE M. COHAN
Blessed be Providence
That gave us our Cohan;
Irreverent,
Resourceful, prolific, steady-advancing
George M.
Nothing in life
Better becomes him
Than his earliest choice
Of Jerry and Helen
For father and mother;
Bred in the wings and the dressing room,
The theatre alley his playground,
Hotels his home and his schoolhouse,
Blessed with a wonderful sister,
And in love with a violin. ”

“ Keeping ideals and ideas well in the background.
Like Gautier, these things delight him:
Gold, marble and purple; brilliance, solidity, color.
He can stage Tiffany's jewels but not Maeterlinck's bees. ”

“ And that no manager will cast me for anything else.
Curses on my hit in "'Way Down East"
That handcuffs me forever to yokels,
And me a better character actor than Corse Payton!
That's how it is they're stuck on types,
And the wise guy who plays anything
Isn't given a look-in.
Listen to me, young feller, and don't ever
Let 'em tab you for keeps as a type.
It's curtains for a career as sure as you're born.
Why, there's actors sentenced to comedy dog parts,
To Chinks, to Wops, to Frenchmen and fluffs.
There ain't no release for them. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But the melodious notes the critics have praised are changed.
There is a raucous, strident tone in the voice;
It sounds like the rasping bark of the harpies.
"How dare you use those terrible photographs?
"What do you mean by insulting my beauty?"
There is a slam down of the telephone receiver,—
I turn to my work of writing an advertisement about the prima donna's voice.
SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN THE THEATRE SCRUBWOMAN DREAMS A DREAM
When morning mingles with the gloom
On empty stage and twilit aisle,
She comes with rag and pan and broom
To work—and dream awhile. ”

“ I painstakingly pick out words on the typewriter,
By fits and starts, thinking up a story about the great Metropolitan tenor.
The typewriter keys now hold no rhythmic tingle.
But the local manager in Iowa wants the story.
He has engaged the great tenor for a date next March
When the Tuesday musicale ladies give their annual benefit for the Shriners. ”