Blue-grass and Broadway
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Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original.
BLUE-GRASS
AND
BROADWAY
BLUE-GRASS
AND
BROADWAY
BY
MARIA THOMPSON DAVIESS
Author of "THE MELTING OF MOLLY," "THE GOLDEN BIRD,"
"THE TINDER BOX," etc.
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1919
Copyright, 1919, by
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1918, by
INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY (HARPER'S BAZAR)
_Published, April, 1919_
BLUE-GRASS
AND
BROADWAY
BLUE-GRASS
AND
BROADWAY
CHAPTER I
The need of a large sum of money in a great hurry is the root of many
noble ambitions, in whose branches roost strange companies of birds,
pecking away for dollars that grow--or do not--on bushes. And it was in
such a quest that Miss Patricia Adair of Adairville, Kentucky, lit upon
a limb of life beside Mr. Godfrey Vandeford of Broadway, New York. Their
joint endeavors made a great adventure.
"There's nothing to it, Pop; either pony girls will have to grow four
legs to cut new capers, somebody will have to write a play entitled
'When Courtship Was in Flower,' requiring flowered skirts ten yards wide
with a punch in each furbelow, or we go out of the theatrical business,"
said Mr. Vandeford, as he shuffled a faint, violet-tinted letter out of
a pile of advertising posters emblazoned with dancing girls and men,
several personal bills, two from a theatrical storage house and one from
an electrical expert, leaned back in his chair, and prepared to open the
violet communication. "We dropped twenty thousand cool on 'Miss Cut-up,'
and those sixteen pairs of legs cost us fifteen hundred a week. We might
be in danger of starving right here on Broadway, if we hadn't picked a
sure-fire hit in 'The Rosie Posie Girl.'"
"Ain't it the truth," answered Mr. Adolph Meyers, as he glanced up from
his typewriter with a twinkle in his big black eyes that were like gems
in a round, very sedate, even sad, Hebrew face. "Bare legs and 'cut-ups'
is already old now, Mr. Vandeford. It is that we must have now a play
with a punch."
"The law won't let us take anything more off the chorus, so we'll have
to swing back and put a lot on. Costumes that cost a million will be the
next drag, mark me, Pop," Mr. Godfrey Vandeford declaimed with a gloomy
brow, as he still further delayed exploring the violet missive.
"A hundred thousand it will take for costuming 'The Rosie Posie Girl,'"
agreed Pop dolefully, from above the letter he was slowly pecking out of
the machine.
"For furnishing chiffon belts, you mean, not costumes, if we go by
Corbett's clothes ideas," growled the pessimistic, prospective producer
of the possible next season's hit in the girl-show line.
"You have it right," answered Pop, sympathetically.
"If I hadn't promised to let old Denny in on my Violet Hawtry show for
the fall I'd be tempted to throw back everything, even 'The Rosie Posie
Girl' and go gunning for potatoes or onions up on a Connecticut farm;
but the show bug has bit Denny hard and I'll have to be the one to
shear him and not leave it to any of the others. I'll be more merciful
to his millions; but asking him to put up half of a cool hundred and
fifty thousand is a bit raw. Wish I had a nice little glad play with an
under twenty cast for him to cut his teeth on instead of the 'Rosie
Posie.'"
"It's six plays on the shelf now for reading," reminded Mr. Meyers,
eagerly, for to him fell the task of weeding all plays sent into the
office of Godfrey Vandeford, Theatrical Producer, and his optimistic
soul suffered when he discovered a gem and found himself unable to get
Mr. Vandeford to read so much as the first act unless he caught him in
just such a mood as the one in which he now labored. "Now, I want that
you take just a peep, Mr. Vandeford, at that new Hinkle comedy for which
I have written already five times to delay--"
"Can't do it now, Pop! Don't you see that I have got to read this purple
letter and that is all the business I can attend to for this morning?"
answered Mr. Vandeford, as he pushed a slim paper cutter along the top
edge of the purple missive.
"But, Mr. Vandeford, it is that I have--"
"Express. Sign here!" was the interruption that put an end to Mr.
Meyers's immediate supplication. The parcel that he deposited upon his
chief's desk with forceful meekness was a play manuscript.
"Great guns, Pops; I'm seeing purple!" exclaimed Mr. Vandeford, as he
let the violet letter fall upon the violet wrappings in which the
express intrusion was incased. "Exact match! This looks like some sort
of a hunch. Open it, Pops, and run through the layout while I tackle the
violet letter and see if anything happens." And with great interest both
grown men plunged into the excitement of the chase of the hunch.
Mr. Vandeford's letter contained the following, delivered in bold words
and script:
HIGHCLIFF.
_My dear Van:_
This is to remind you that it is now July fifth, and my contract
sets September twenty-third as the last date for my opening on
Broadway in a new play under your management. "The Rosie Posie
Girl" will be a huge undertaking and worthy of my every effort, but
I do not feel that you are up to producing it properly. I regret
your losses in "Miss Cut-up," but I did my best with a vehicle that
was not worthy of my ability. The success of "Dear Geraldine" was
entirely due to the comedy bits I wrote in to suit myself, and I
had to be costumer and producer and the whole show. In justice to
myself I feel that I ought to pass under the management of a more
forceful person than yourself. And anyway I don't think you would
be able to get a theater to open on Broadway in September. Remember
that over a hundred good shows died on the road waiting to get into
Broadway last winter, and _I_ won't play anywhere else. Now Weiner
wants to buy "The Rosie Posie Girl" from you and open his New
Carnival Theatre with me in it on October first. You must sell it
to him. He will make you a good offer. You can't use it without me,
and I want him to produce it. Please see him immediately. You know
that you owe your reputation as a producer to me, and don't be
selfish. I'll expect you up on the evening train to talk over the
final arrangements. I'll meet you in the runabout and we can go
out to the Beach Inn for dinner. Bring me some brandied marrons, a
large bottle of rose oil and a stick of lip rouge from Celeste's.
Hurriedly,
VIOLET.
July fifth.
P. S. Of course you are to go on loving me just as usual. I
couldn't do without that. How much money have I in the
Knickerbocker Trust?
After Godfrey Vandeford had read the last violent purple line on violet,
he dropped the letter on his desk and looked out of his office window
with serious eyes that gazed without seeing, down the long canyon of
Broadway, up and down which rushed traffic composed of green cars shaped
like torpedoes, honking, darting motors, skulking trucks and jostling,
tangled people. Flamboyant signs, waving flags, and gilt-lettered window
panes made a Persian glow in a belt space up from the seething sidewalks
to the sky line, and above it all the roar and din rose to high heaven.
But Godfrey Vandeford was blind to it all and deaf, as he sat and
brooded above the furious landscape. His blue eyes, set deep back under
their black, gray-splashed brows, failed to take in the lurid spectacle,
and his narrow, lean face was flushed under the bronze it had acquired
for keeps from the suns of many climes. His lean, powerful body seemed
fairly crouched in thought. Once he shifted one leg across the other,
and as he settled back in his chair he tossed the violet letter over to
Mr. Meyers without seeming to know that he did so. Then he plunged back
into his absorption without seeing his henchman read rapidly through the
missive, look at him once with a gem-like keenness, and again begin to
read the purple-covered manuscript.
"And we picked her out of a vaudeville gutter over beyond Weehawken just
five years ago, Pop," Mr. Vandeford finally interrupted the flip of the
manuscript pages to say, with a deep musing in his flexible, sympathetic
voice.
"You taught her to eat with the knife and the fork," growled Mr. Meyers
from behind his violet barricade as he ripped over another page.
"Mick!"
"Oh, not as bad as that, Pop," laughed Mr. Vandeford, with a glance of
affection at the young Hebrew delving in the corner for a jewel for him.
"She's just--oh, well, they are all children--and have to be spanked.
She wants to sell me out to Weiner after I've spent five nice, good
years in building her into a little twinkle star, but I don't think it
will be good for her to let her do it. I'll have to use the slipper on
her, I'm afraid. I believe in hunches and I believe I'll just use that
purple manuscript you're chewing to let her set her teeth in. She needs
one good failure to tone her up. What's the name of the effusion in
ribbons?"
"The Renunciation of Rosalind," murmured Mr. Meyers, as he bent once
more to the pages which he had been reading with eagerness when
interrupted by his chief.
"We could call it 'The Purple Slipper.' About what will the cast
figure?"
"Three thousand per week if you use Gerald Height at five hundred as per
contract with him. But, Mr. Vandeford, sir, I would say for a play this
is--"
"That's not much money to waste on a purple hunch. A nice, judicious,
little second-hand staging out of the warehouse and a few weeks' road
try-out for the failure will cost about ten thousand. I'll let Denny
have five thousand worth of fun mussing around with it to cut his eye
teeth, and then we'll clap Violet into 'The Rosie Posie Girl,' weeping
with gratitude to have her face saved after being slapped first. Get the
parts out to-morrow and you and Chambers begin to cast it. I'll see
actors here from three to five Friday. I'll open it September tenth. Now
I've got to go and chase those confounded marrons. The last I took were
put up in maraschino and were not welcomed. I'll be in the office--"
"And about the author, Mr. Vandeford, and the contracts?" questioned Mr.
Meyers, with both dismay and energy in his voice.
"Oh, I forgot about the author. She won't amount to much. A woman, I
judge, from the ribbons. Offer the usual five, rising to seven and a
half royalties, and explain carefully that you mean five per cent. on
the box office receipts under five thousand, and seven and a half on all
over that. Also go into the moving picture rights and second companies
with your usual honesty, but offer her only a two hundred and fifty
advance to cover a two years' option. She won't know that it ought to be
five hundred for six months, and what she doesn't know won't hurt her.
Besides, it will all be over for her and her play before October."
"She says in the letter which was pinned to the first page of the play,
that the article about you in the 'Times Magazine' made her know that
you were the one producer to whom she could trust her play," said Mr.
Meyers, reading from a neat little cream-white note in his hand.
"Sweet child!" murmured Mr. Vandeford, as he took up his hat and stick.
"Don't encourage her in any way in your letter, Pop. We don't want her