Nora

“Mr. Hazlett, shake hands with Jerry Morris and Frank Moon. I guess you’ve heard of the both of them.”

The speaker was Louie Brock, producer of musical shows, who had cleared over half a million dollars in two years through the popularity of Jersey Jane, tunes by Morris and lyrics by Moon.

They were in Brock’s inner office, the walls of which were adorned with autographed pictures of six or seven of the more celebrated musical comedy stars and a too-perfect likeness of Brock’s wife, whom he had evidently married in a dense fog.

“Mr. Hazlett,” continued Brock, “has got a book which he wrote as a straight play, but it struck me right off that it was great material for a musical, especially with you two fellas to do the numbers. It’s a brand-new idear, entirely opposite from most of these here musical comedy books that’s all the same thing and the public must be getting sick of them by this time. Don’t you think so, Jerry?”

“I certainly do,” the tunesmith replied. “Give us a good novelty story, and with what I and Frank can throw in there to jazz it up, we’ll run till the theatre falls down.”

“Well, Mr. Hazlett,” said Brock, “suppose you read us the book and we’ll see what the boys thinks of it.”

Hazlett was quite nervous in spite of Brock’s approval of his work and the fact that friends to whom he had shown it had given it high praise and congratulated him on his good fortune in getting a chance to collaborate with Morris and Moon⁠—Morris, who had set a new style in melodies and rhythms and whose tunes made up sixty percent of all dance programs, and Moon, the ideal lyricist who could fit Jerry’s fast triplets with such cute-sounding three-syllable rhymes that no one ever went to the considerable trouble of trying to find out what they meant.

“I’ve tried to stay away from the stereotyped Cinderella theme,” said Hazlett. “In my story, the girl starts out just moderately well off and winds up poor. She sacrifices everything for love and the end finds her alone with her lover, impoverished but happy. She⁠—”

“Let’s hear the book,” said the producer.

Hazlett, with trembling fingers, opened to the first page of his script.

“Well,” he began, “the title is Nora and the first scene⁠—”

“Excuse me a minute,” Morris interrupted. “I promised a fella that I’d come over and look at a big secondhand Trinidad Twelve. Only eight grand and a bargain if there ever was one, hey, Frank?”

“I’ll say it’s a bargain,” Moon agreed.

“The fella is going to hold it for me till half-past three and its nearly three o’clock now. So if you don’t mind, Mr. Hazlett, I wish that instead of reading the book clear through, you’d kind of give us a kind of a synopsis and it will save time and we can tell just as good, hey, Frank?”

“Just as good,” said Moon.

“All right, Mr. Hazlett,” Brock put in. “Suppose you tell the story in your own way, with just the main idear and the situations.”

“Well,” said Hazlett, “of course, as a straight play, I wrote it in three acts, but when Mr. Brock suggested that I make a musical show out of it, I cut it to two. To start with, the old man, the girl’s uncle, is an Irishman who came to this country when he was about twenty years old. He worked hard and he was thrifty and finally he got into the building business for himself. He’s pretty well-to-do, but he’s avaricious and not satisfied with the three or four hundred thousand he’s saved up. He meets another Irish immigrant about his own age, a politician who has a lot to say about the letting of big city building contracts. This man, Collins, had a handsome young son, John, twenty-three or twenty-four.

“The old man, the girl’s uncle⁠—their name is Crowley⁠—he tries his hardest to get in strong with old Collins so Collins will land him some of the city contracts, but Collins, though he’s very friendly all the while, he doesn’t do Crowley a bit of good in a business way.

“Well, Crowley gives a party at his house for a crowd of his Irish friends in New York, young people and people his own age, and during the party young John Collins sees a picture of Crowley’s beautiful niece, Nora. She’s still in Ireland and has never been to this country. Young Collins asks Crowley who it is and he tells him and young Collins says she is the only girl he will ever marry.

“Crowley then figures to himself that if he can connect up with the Collinses by having his niece marry young John, he can land just about all the good contracts there are. So he cables for Nora to come over and pay him a visit. She comes and things happen just as Crowley planned⁠—John and Nora fall in love.

“Now there’s a big dinner and dance in honor of the Mayor and one of the guests is Dick Percival, a transplanted Englishman who has made fifty million dollars in the sugar business. He also falls in love with Nora and confesses it to her uncle. Old Crowley has always hated Englishmen, but his avarice is so strong that he decides Nora must get rid of John and marry Dick. Nora refuses to do this, saying John is ‘her man’ and that she will marry him or nobody.

“Crowley forbids her to see John, but she meets him whenever she can get out. The uncle and niece had a long, stubborn battle of wills, neither yielding an inch. Finally John’s father, old Collins, is caught red-handed in a big bribery scandal and sent to the penitentiary. It is also found out that he has gambled away all his money and John is left without a dime.

“Crowley, of course, thinks this settles the argument, that Nora won’t have anything more to do with a man whose father is a crook and broke besides, and he gets up a party to announce the engagement between her and Dick. Nora doesn’t interfere at all, but insists that young John Collins be invited. When the announcement is made, Nora says her uncle has got the name of her fiancé wrong; she has been engaged to John Collins since the first day she came to the United States, and if he will still have her, she is his. Then she and John walk out alone into the world, leaving Dick disappointed and Crowley in a good old-fashioned Irish rage.”

“Well, boys,” said Brock, after a pause, “what do you think of it?”

The “boys” were silent.

“You see,” said Brock, “for natural ensembles, you got the first party at What’s-his-name’s, the scene on the pier when the gal lands from Ireland, the Mayor’s party at some hotel maybe, and another party at What’s-his-name’s, only this time it’s outdoors at his country place. You can have the boy sing a love-song to the picture before he ever sees the gal; you can make that the melody you want to carry clear through. You can have love duets between she and the boy and she and the Englishman. You can write a song like ‘East Side, West Side’ for the Mayor’s party.

“You can write a corking good number for the pier scene, where the people of all nationalities are meeting their relatives and friends. And you can run wild with all the good Irish tunes in the world.”

“Where’s your comic?” inquired Morris.

“Mr. Hazlett forgot to mention the comic,” Brock said. “He’s an old Irishman, a pal of What’s-his-name’s, a kind of a Jiggs.”

“People don’t want an Irish comic these days,” said Morris. “Can’t you make him a Wop or a Heeb?”

“I’d have to rewrite the part,” said Hazlett.

“No you wouldn’t,” said Morris. “Give him the same lines with a different twist to them.”

“It really would be better,” Brock put in, “if you could change him to a Heeb or even a Dutchman. I’ve got to have a spot for Joe Stein and he’d be a terrible flop as a Turkey.”

“And listen,” said Morris. “What are you going to do with Enriqueta?”

“Gosh! I’d forgot her entirely!” said Brock. “Of course we’ll have to make room for her.”

“Who is she?” Hazlett inquired.

“The best gal in Spain,” said Brock. “I brought her over here and I’m paying her two thousand dollars every week, with nothing for her to do. You’ll have to write in a part for her.”

“Write in a part!” exclaimed Morris. “She’ll play the lead or she won’t play.”

“But how is a Spanish girl going to play Nora Crowley?” asked Hazlett.

“Why does your dame have to be Nora Crowley?” Morris retorted. “Why does she have to be Irish at all?”

“Because her uncle is Irish.”

“Make him a Spaniard, too.”

“Yes, and listen,” said Moon. “While you’re making the gal and her uncle Spaniards, make your boy a wop. If you do that, I and Jerry have got a number that’ll put your troupe over with a bang! Play it for them, Jerry.”

Morris went to the piano and played some introductory chords.

“This is a great break of luck,” said Moon, “to have a number already written that fits right into the picture. Of course, I’ll polish the lyric up a little more and I want to explain that the boy sings part of the lines, the gal the rest. But here’s about how it is. Let’s go, Jerry!”

Morris repeated his introduction and Moon began to sing:

Somewhere in the old world
You and I belong.
It will be a gold world,
Full of light and song.
Why not let’s divide our time
Between your native land and mine?
Move from Italy to Spain,
Then back to Italy again?

In sunny Italy,
My Spanish queen,
You’ll fit so prettily
In that glorious scene.
You will sing me “La Paloma”;
I will sing you “Cara Roma”;
We will build a little home, a
Bungalow serene.
Then in the Pyrenees,
Somewhere in Spain,
We’ll rest our weary knees
Down in Lovers’ Lane,
And when the breakers roll a-
Cross the azure sea,
Espanola, Gorgonzola;
Spain and Italy.

“A wow!” cried Brock. “Congratulations, Jerry! You, too, Frank! What do you think of that one, Mr. Hazlett?”

“Very nice,” said Hazlett. “The tune sounds like ‘Sole Mio’ and ‘La Paloma.’ ”

“It sounds like them both and it’s better than either,” said the composer.

“That one number makes our troupe, Jerry,” said Brock. “You don’t need anything else.”

“But we’ve got something else, hey, Frank?”

“You mean ‘Montgomery’?” said Moon.

“Yeh.”

“Let’s hear it,” requested Brock.

“It’ll take a dinge comic to sing it.”

“Well, Joe Stein can do a dinge.”

“I’ll say he can! I like him best in blackface. And he’s just the boy to put over a number like this.”

Morris played another introduction, strains that Hazlett was sure he had heard a hundred times before, and Moon was off again:

I want to go to Alabam’.
That’s where my lovin’ sweetheart am,
And won’t she shout and dance for joy
To see once more her lovin’ boy!
I’ve got enough saved up, I guess,
To buy her shoes and a bran’-new dress.
She’s black as coal, and yet I think
When I walk in, she’ll be tickled pink.

Take me to Montgomery
Where it’s always summery.
New York’s just a mummery.
Give me life that’s real.
New York fields are rotten fields.
Give me those forgotten fields;
I mean those there cotton fields,
Selma and Mobile.
I done been away so long;
Never thought I’d stay so long.
Train, you’d better race along
To my honey lamb.
Train, you make it snappy till
(’Cause I won’t be happy till)
I am in the capital,
Montgomery, Alabam’.

“Another knockout!” said Brock enthusiastically. “Boys, either one of those numbers are better than anything in Jersey Jane. Either one of them will put our troupe over. And the two of them together in one show! Well, it’s in!”

Hazlett mustered all his courage.

“They’re a couple of mighty good songs,” he said. “But I don’t exactly see how they’ll fit.”

“Mr. Hazlett,” said Jerry Morris. “I understand this is your first experience with a musical comedy. I’ve had five successes in four years and could have had five more if I wanted to work that hard. I know the game backwards and I hope you won’t take offense if I tell you a little something about it.”

“I’m always glad to learn,” said Hazlett.

“Well, then,” said Morris, “you’ve got a great book there, with a good novelty idear, but it won’t go without a few changes, changes that you can make in a half-hour and not detract anything from the novelty. In fact, they will add to it. While you were telling your story, I was thinking of it from the practical angle, the angle of show business, and I believe I can put my finger right on the spots that have got to be fixed.

“In the first place, as Louie has told you, he’s got a contract with Enriqueta and she won’t play any secondary parts. That means your heroine must be Spanish. Well, why not make her uncle her father and have him a Spaniard, running a Spanish restaurant somewhere downtown? It’s a small restaurant and he just gets by. He has to use her as cashier and she sits in the window where the people going past can see her.

“One day the boy, who is really an Italian count⁠—we’ll call him Count Pizzola⁠—he is riding alone in a taxi and he happens to look in the window and see the gal. He falls in love with her at first sight, orders the driver to stop and gets out and goes in the restaurant. He sits down and has his lunch, and while he is eating we can put in a novelty dance number with the boys and gals from the offices that are also lunching in this place.

“When the number is over, I’d have a comedy scene between Stein, who plays a dinge waiter, and, say, a German customer who isn’t satisfied with the food or the check or something. Louie, who would you suggest for that part?”

“How about Charlie Williams?” said Brock.

“Great!” said Morris. “Well, they have this argument and the dinge throws the waiter out. The scrap amuses Pizzola and the gal, too, and they both laugh and that brings them together. He doesn’t tell her he is a count, but she likes him pretty near as well as he likes her. They gab a while and then go into the Spanish number I just played for you.

“Now, in your story, you’ve got a boat scene where the gal is landing from Ireland. You’d better forget that scene. There was a boat scene in Sunny and a boat scene in Hit the Deck, and a lot of other troupes. We don’t wan’t anything that isn’t our own. But Pizzola is anxious to take the gal out somewhere and let’s see⁠—Frank, where can he take her?”

“Why not a yacht?” suggested Moon.

“Great! He invites her out on a yacht, but he’s got to pretend it isn’t his own yacht. He borrowed it from a friend. She refuses at first, saying she hasn’t anything to wear. She’s poor, see? So he tells her his sister has got some sport clothes that will fit her. He gets the clothes for her and then we have a scene in her room where she is putting them on with a bunch of girlfriends helping her. We’ll write a number for that.

“Now the clothes he gave her are really his sister’s clothes and the sister has carelessly left a beautiful brooch pinned in them. We go to the yacht and the Spanish dame knocks everybody dead. They put on an amateur show. That will give Enriqueta a chance for a couple more numbers. She and Pizzola are getting more and more stuck on each other and they repeat the Spanish song on the yacht, in the moonlight.

“There’s a Frenchman along on the party who is greatly attracted by Enriqueta’s looks. The Frenchman hates Pizzola. He has found out in some way that Enriqueta is wearing Pizzola’s sister’s clothes and he notices the diamond brooch. He figures that if he can steal it off of her, why, suspicion will be cast on the gal herself on account of her being poor, and Pizzola, thinking her a thief, won’t have anything more to do with her and he, the Frenchman, can have her. So, during a dance, he manages to steal the brooch and he puts it in his pocket.

“Of course Pizzola’s sister is also on the yachting party. All of a sudden she misses her brooch. She recalls having left it in the clothes she lent to Enriqueta. She goes to Enriqueta and asks her for it and the poor Spanish dame can’t find it. Then Pizzola’s sister calls her a thief and Pizzola himself can’t help thinking she is one.

“They demand that she be searched, but rather than submit to that indignity, she bribes a sailor to take her off the yacht in a small launch and the last we see of her she’s climbing overboard to get into the launch while the rest of the party are all abusing her. That’s your first act curtain.

“I’d open the second act with a paddock scene at the Saratoga racetrack. We’ll write a jockey number and have about eight boys and maybe twenty-four gals in jockey suits. Enriqueta’s father has gone broke in the restaurant business and he’s up here looking for a job as assistant trainer or something. He used to train horses for the bullfights in Spain.

“The gal is along with him and they run into the Frenchman that stole the brooch. The Frenchman tries to make love to the gal, but she won’t have anything to do with him. While they are talking, who should come up but Pizzola! He is willing to make up with Enriqueta even though he still thinks her a thief. She won’t meet his advances.

“He asks the Frenchman for a light. The Frenchman has a patent lighter and in pulling it out of his pocket, he pulls the brooch out, too. Then Pizzola realizes what an injustice he has done the gal and he pretty near goes down on his knees to her, but she has been badly hurt and won’t forgive him yet.

“Now we have a scene in the café in the clubhouse and Stein is one of the waiters there. He sings the Montgomery number with a chorus of waiters and lunchers and at the end of the number he and the Spanish gal are alone on the stage.

“She asks him if he is really going to Montgomery and he says yes, and she says she and her father will go with him. She is anxious to go some place where there is no danger of running into the Frenchman or Pizzola.

“The third scene in the second act ought to be a plantation in Alabama. Stein is working there and the negroes are having a celebration or revival of some kind. Louie, you can get a male quartet to sing us some spirituals.

“Enriqueta’s father has landed a job as cook at the plantation and she is helping with the housework. Pizzola and his sister follow her to Montgomery and come out to see her at the plantation.

“They are about to go up on the porch and inquire for her when they hear her singing the Spanish number. This proves to Pizzola that she still loves him and he finally gets his sister to plead with her for forgiveness. She forgives him. He tells her who he really is and how much dough he’s got. And that pretty near washes us up.”

“But how about our Japanese number?” said Moon.

“That’s right,” Morris said. “We’ll have to send them to Japan before we end it. I’ve got a cherry-blossom number that must have the right setting. But that’s easy to fix. You make these few changes I’ve suggested, Mr. Hazlett, and I feel that we’ve got a hit.

“And I want to say that your book is a whole lot better than most of the books they hand us. About the fella falling in love with the gal’s picture⁠—that’s a novelty idear.”

Hazlett said goodbye to his producer and collaborators, went home by taxi and called up his bootlegger.

“Harry,” he said, “what kind of whiskey have you got?”

“Well, Mr. Hazlett, I can sell you some good Scotch, but I ain’t so sure of the rye. In fact, I’m kind of scared of it.”

“How soon can you bring me a case?”

“Right off quick. It’s the Scotch you want, ain’t it?”

“No,” said Hazlett. “I want the rye.”