Cheerful - By Request

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Cheerful - By Request

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Title: Cheerful--By Request
Author: Edna Ferber
Release Date: March 1, 2004 [EBook #11395]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST ***

Produced by Janet Kegg and PG Distributed Proofreaders

CHEERFUL BY REQUEST
By

EDNA FERBER
AUTHOR OF "DAWN O'HARA," "BUTTERED SIDE DOWN"
"ROAST BEEF MEDIUM," "FANNY HERSELF"
1918

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST II. THE GAY OLD DOG III. THE
TOUGH GUY IV. THE ELDEST V. THAT'S MARRIAGE VI. THE
WOMAN WHO TRIED TO BE GOOD VII. THE GIRL WHO WENT
RIGHT VIII. THE HOOKER-UP-THE-BACK IX. THE GUIDING
MISS GOWD X. SOPHY-AS-SHE-MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN XI. THE
THREE OF THEM XII. SHORE LEAVE

CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST

I
CHEERFUL--BY REQUEST
The editor paid for the lunch (as editors do). He lighted his seventh
cigarette and leaned back. The conversation, which had zigzagged from
the war to Zuloaga, and from Rasputin the Monk to the number of
miles a Darrow would go on a gallon, narrowed down to the thin,
straight line of business.
"Now don't misunderstand. Please! We're not presuming to dictate.
Dear me, no! We have always felt that the writer should be free to
express that which is in his--ah--heart. But in the last year we've been
swamped with these drab, realistic stories. Strong, relentless things,

you know, about dishwashers, with a lot of fine detail about the fuzz of
grease on the rim of the pan. And then those drear and hopeless ones
about fallen sisters who end it all in the East River. The East River
must be choked up with 'em. Now, I know that life is real, life is earnest,
and I'm not demanding a happy ending, exactly. But if you could--that
is--would you--do you see your way at all clear to giving us a fairly
cheerful story? Not necessarily Glad, but not so darned Russian, if you
get me. Not pink, but not all grey either. Say--mauve." ...
That was Josie Fifer's existence. Mostly grey, with a dash of pink.
Which makes mauve.
Unless you are connected (which you probably are not) with the great
firm of Hahn & Lohman, theatrical producers, you never will have
heard of Josie Fifer.
There are things about the theatre that the public does not know. A
statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special
writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce
courts--what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss
Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the
movies have offered her; what she wears, reads, says, thinks, and eats
for breakfast. Snapshots of author writing play at place on Hudson;
pictures of the play in rehearsal; of the director directing it; of the stage
hands rewriting it--long before the opening night we know more about
the piece than does the playwright himself, and are ten times less eager
to see it.
Josie Fifer's knowledge surpassed even this. For she was keeper of the
ghosts of the firm of Hahn & Lohman. Not only was she present at the
birth of a play; she officiated at its funeral. She carried the keys to the
closets that housed the skeletons of the firm. When a play died of
inanition, old age, or--as was sometimes the case--before it was born, it
was Josie Fifer who laid out its remains and followed it to the grave.
Her notification of its demise would come thus:
"Hello, Fifer! This is McCabe" (the property man of H. & L. at the

phone).
"Well?"
"A little waspish this morning, aren't you, Josephine?"
"I've got twenty-five bathing suits for the No. 2 'Ataboy' company to
mend and clean and press before five this afternoon. If you think I'm
going to stand here wasting my--"
"All right, all right! I just wanted to tell you that 'My Mistake' closes
Saturday. The stuff'll be up Monday morning early."
A sardonic laugh from Josie. "And yet they say 'What's in a name!'"
The unfortunate play had been all that its title implies. Its purpose was
to star an actress who hadn't a glint. Her second-act costume alone had
cost $700, but even Russian sable bands can't carry a bad play. The
critics had pounced on it with the savagery of their kind and hacked it,
limb from limb, leaving its carcass to rot under the pitiless white