My Brother Paul: the Musical Life of Paul Dresser

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MY BROTHER PAUL: THE MUSICAL LIFE OF PAUL DRESSER

A Play with Music

Book by Donald E. Baker Suggested by the Writings of Theodore Dreiser

Music and Lyrics by Paul Dresser Edited and with Additional Lyrics by Donald E. Baker

3M, 1W (doubling)

“Paul, the good son, the loving brother…. Jailbird, writer of pointless ballads, singer of trivial songs—even so, write his name large as one who loved his fellowmen!” Theodore Dreiser, Dawn

SYNOPSIS Paul Dresser, largely unknown today, was one of the most popular American song writers of the late nineteenth century. His younger brother, the novelist Theodore Dreiser, at the time was much less successful. There was both love and rivalry between them.

The play uses Paul’s songs and Theodore’s memoirs to explore that sibling rivalry as Paul escapes from his stifling Indiana childhood; becomes a wealthy and successful vaudeville comedian, character actor, song writer, and darling of the New York theater world.

It also explores his relationships with women, including his ever-forgiving mother; the bordello madam who was the love of his life; the burlesque queen who was the mother of his child; and the protégé to whom he loaned his last name.

Paul’s career declined rapidly ragtime eclipsed the romantic ballads that were his stock in trade. He gave away much of his wealth and died young, at age forty-seven.

PAUL DRESSER DESCRIPTION Paul Dresser was a warm, generous, and genuinely tender man, spirited and bubbly and emotional, but he could also be a bit vulgar in his storytelling and personal habits. He was attractive to women, despite tipping the scales at 300 pounds. And he was welcome anyplace people could laugh at a funny story or shed a tear over a sentimental song about home or mother or lost sweethearts.

PERMISSIONS The songs of Paul Dresser are in the public domain, but the use of material from the autobiographical writings of Theodore Dreiser requires special arrangements with the Dreiser Estate prior to performance:

Dramatic Permissions Curtis Brown Ltd. Ten Astor Place New York NY 10003

SETTING Theodore Dreiser’s study and his memory and imagination.

TIME 1919, evening, when memory steals from the shadows.

SET The play can be presented on a single set divided into three areas which can be lit independently, although the actors can move freely among them:

Theodore’s area suggests a writer’s study, 1919. There is a desk constructed to appear as though it had once been an old-time square piano, with a chair and telephone.

Paul’s and Max’s area includes a parlor spinet or upright piano with bench and a coat rack. Minor changes of clothing or accessories might be facilitated by a vaudevillian’s traveling trunk with the name “Dresser” stenciled on it and stickers for various cities.

The Actress’s area is furnished with a few pieces of generic middle-class Victorian furniture—a settee, a small desk/dressing table, etc.—so that it can suggest a boarding house parlor, a bordello sitting room, a vaudeville dressing room, and the outer office of a music company.

CHARACTERS Minimum 3M, 1W

PAUL DRESSER (Baritone): Age 47. Tin pan alley composer. Dresses in the fashion of a Broadway dandy ca. 1900. Lives only in his brother’s memory, having died thirteen years before the time of the play. Sings most of the songs. Performs some material in a German accent. If the actor is capable, could sometimes accompany himself and others at the piano.

THEODORE DREISER: Age 48. Paul’s brother, despite the different spelling of the last name. Important American novelist of the early twentieth century. Age about 48. Dialogue only, no songs except to participate in the envoi. Called “Thee,” with a “Th” as in “thistle.”

MAX HOFFMAN (Tenor): Age 30’s-40’s. Pianist and Paul’s music arranger. Accompanies the singers or appears to do so if an offstage accompanist is used. Also plays minor male characters.

AN ACTRESS (Soprano): Age 30+. Plays the women in Paul’s life, including: SARAH DREISER, Paul’s mother, gray-haired SALLY WALKER, Bordello madame, Paul’s lover, redhead MAY HOWARD, Burlesque queen, mother of Paul’s child, blonde ROSABEL (ROSE) MORRISON, Singer/actress LOUISE (KERLIN) DRESSER, Paul’s protégé, brunette

NOTE ON CASTING The female roles can be distributed among two or more actresses. If they are all played by the same actress, as indicated above, perhaps changes could be facilitated by having each wear the same neutral dress and indicate the different characters by wigs and accessories.

The voice-range specifications are flexible. The author has the score on the computer program MuseScore, so it would be relatively easy for him to transpose the keys of the songs to accommodate the singers who are actually cast.

MUSICAL NUMBERS Words and Music by Paul Dresser unless otherwise noted.

ACT ONE Act I Introduction (On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away) Paul She Went to the City Paul Liza Jane Paul Come Tell Me What’s Your Answer, Yes or No Paul You’re Going Far Away Lad / The Path That Leads the Other Way* Sarah Dreiser Your Mother Wants You Home, Boy Max The Old Flame Flickers, and I Wonder Why Sally Walker and Paul The Curse Paul The Letter That Never Came** May Howard The Curse (Reprise) Paul

ACT TWO Act II Introduction (The Curse) Instrumental One Night Stand*** Paul and Max Just Tell Them That You Saw Me Paul and Rose On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away Paul, Max, Rose The Town Where I Was Born Louise Dresser Back Home Again in Indiana**** Max Indiana Montage Paul and Max Where Are the Friends of Other Days? Paul My Gal Sal Louise Dresser Just Tell Them That You Saw Me/On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away (Reprise) Paul

MUSIC FOR BOWS & ENVOI Envoi* Entire Cast

*Additional lyrics by Donald E. Baker **Lyrics by Paul Dresser, music by Paul Dresser and/or Max Sturm ***By Donald E. Baker ****Lyrics by Ballard MacDonald, music by James F. Hanley

I - 1

ACT I

SETTING: Theodore Dreiser’s study and in his memory and imagination, as described in the preliminary material.

AT RISE: The stage is in darkness. A piano is heard.

(Song: “ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH” [Instrumental])

Music continues as lights come up to reveal THEODORE DREISER at work at his desk. He turns and reads what he has written, speaking over the piano underscore.

THEODORE I loved my brother Paul Dresser. But I envied— (He scratches it out) I was jealous of— (He scratches that out also) But I resented— Yes. That’s it. I loved my brother Paul Dresser. But I resented him too. My early novels brought me nothing but critical scorn. His music brought him public adulation. My books hardly earned a penny. His songs made him wealthy. I was just one more anonymous inhabitant of a backstreet in Brooklyn. My famous brother was the toast of Broadway.

Lights come up to reveal PAUL DRESSER, with MAX HOFFMAN at the piano. PAUL has available a glass of whiskey to sip on whenever he wishes. PAUL adds his voice to the piano.

(Song: “ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH)” PAUL (singing) OH, THE MOONLIGHT'S FAIR TONIGHT ALONG THE WABASH. FROM THE FIELDS THERE COMES THE BREATH OF NEW-MOWN HAY. THROUGH THE SYCAMORES THE CANDLE-LIGHT IS GLEAMING ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH FAR AWAY.

PAUL Ah the great author at work. Always writing books. One after another. O.k., Theodore Herman Dreiser, where’s my book? But before you answer that how about a hug for your older brother?

THEODORE Paul, it’s 1919. You’ve been dead thirteen years. Technically we’re the same age.

I - 2

PAUL Well you’ll always be my little brother. C’mere.

They embrace. PAUL is effusive; THEODORE is reluctant, stiff, and awkward.

PAUL (cont.) Do you know my accompanist and arranger, the late, great Max Hoffman?

MAX Evening, Mr. Dreiser. Nice place you got here.

THEODORE Uh, thank you.

PAUL I can’t believe you turned my piano into a desk, Thee.

THEODORE Those old square pianos never could stay in tune. It’s a better desk.

PAUL In tune or not I churned out a lot of songs on that piano. You don’t seem surprised to see me.

THEODORE Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about you, about your life and career. But your sudden appearance right this moment is very inconvenient. My publisher has given me a deadline to produce a book—any book—or else.

PAUL Or else what?

THEODORE Or else he’ll sue for the return of the advance payment which I have already spent.

PAUL A sea of troubles to be sure, troubles from which I am prepared to deliver you—just like the old days huh? On my deathbed you said my life would make a terrific book. You promised you’d write it. But you never did. That’s why I’ve been in your head and that’s why I’m back here now. To provoke your memory. Disturb your guilty conscience. Suggest a solution to your current difficulties.

I - 3

THEODORE I’m sure you have good intentions but I really haven’t got time for this. However speaking of memory—as I recall you used to be a somewhat more imposing presence— 300 pounds or more.

LOUISE DRESSER (off) When we met I thought, “I have never seen such a fat man.”

PAUL At this moment of eternity I am a mere ghost of my former self.

THEODORE Who’s the girl?

PAUL Our sister Louise.

THEODORE We didn’t have a sister Louise. She was one of your protégés. We had sisters enough without her.

PAUL Ten of us kids, five boys, five girls. Thirteen if you count the first three who died as infants.

THEODORE But as I say, among all our five sisters no Louise.

PAUL No “Sister Carrie” either.

THEODORE Well, no. She was the heroine of my first book.

PAUL Interesting heroine. In your book the attractive naïve Sister Carrie leaves her small town and goes off to the big city of Chicago.

MAX (reading from Sister Carrie) “She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of illusions. When a girl leaves her home, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse.”

PAUL Sister Carrie is led astray by a married man who gets her to run away with him to New York.

I - 4

THEODORE So you read it.

PAUL Yeah. Didn’t like it much though.

THEODORE Neither did the critics. They were shocked. Thought there was too much realism and too little art. Even my publishers hated the final draft so much I had to sue them to honor their contract to release it.

PAUL Did our sister Emma read it? Your fiction was her real life. And your second book, Jenny Gerhardt was it called? The destitute young heroine meets a well-to-do man and has his illegitimate child. That’s our sister Mame’s story.

THEODORE But you wrote about our sisters too. Admit it. We both mined our family for material.

PAUL Yeah but I did it in my own way. Less realism, more heart.

(Song: “SHE WENT TO THE CITY”) PAUL (singing) I SAUNTERED DOWN THE OLD LANE WHERE I USED TO ROAM ARM IN ARM WITH SWEETHEART NELL. AGAIN I MET THE OLD FOLKS AND ASKED ABOUT MY LOVE, BUT THIS WAS ALL THAT THEY WOULD TELL.

SHE WENT TO THE CITY, HER FAM’LY WOULD SAY, SHE WENT TO THE CITY, FAR, FAR AWAY. AND THEN I HEARD JUST THE FAINTEST SIGH FROM TWO HEARTS THAT YEARNED… SHE GREW KIND OF RESTLESS AND WANTED TO GO, SAID SHE’D BE BACK IN A FEW WEEKS OR SO. SHE WENT TO THE CITY WITH A TEAR IN HER EYE, BUT SHE NEVER RETURNED.

THEODORE In reality they always did return. The boys, too. Every time we thought we were rid of one of you, back you would come.

I - 5

PAUL Sounds pathetic but we missed our mother. The thought of her always drew us back. From wherever we’d gone. To wherever home was at the time.

THEODORE But be fair. I put myself in my books too.

PAUL Oh yeah, especially that real big one. What was it called?

THEODORE The Genius

PAUL Of course. So Emma got a book. Mame got a book. You got a real big book. Where’s my book, Thee?

THEODORE It’s not like I could write books about all nine of you. Ten children! That’s why my memories of growing up in Terre Haute have nothing to do with your idealized rural images. We moved from one crowded house to another whenever the landlords tired of late rent payments.

PAUL No one wants to sing a song about an over-sized family in a working-class house in some poor sorrowful neighborhood. I loved Indiana. If my memories are idealized, so be it.

THEODORE (increasing bitterness) And Indiana loved you. Not so your brother, the one who writes dirty books about fallen women. Hoosier readers prefer writers who glorify the state. Guys like James Whitcomb Riley. … Guys like you.

PAUL How we could grow up in the same house, breathe the same air, and yet become two such different people I’ll never understand.

THEODORE Mis-matched products of mis-matched parents.

PAUL Johann and Sarah.

THEODORE Our father was born in Alsace and trained in woolen manufacturing. Passing through Ohio he encountered a young Mennonite girl. She was nearly sixteen and full of schoolgirl fantasies of chivalrous knights rescuing fair damsels.

I - 6

Lights come up on the SARAH DREISER in the actress’s area

SARAH I dreamed that a Lancelot or a Lochinvar would come and carry me away—and suddenly there he was! An exotic foreigner with a charming German accent. And a Catholic! I ran away with him and married into his church. The costumes, the statues, the incense, the music, the language. After a childhood of Mennonite simplicity it all seemed so gorgeous.

THEODORE Johann Dreiser worked, ate, slept and dreamed the strictest Roman Catholicism. It was all real to him—heaven for the righteous, purgatory for the salvageable, and never-ending tortures of hell for the sinners. Among those sinners was every one of his wayward children.

PAUL But for Mama her children could do no wrong—at least no wrong that couldn’t be forgiven.

SARAH Well, my parents never forgave me. If they’d only known how I was punished for that act of rebellion. There’s a reason fairy tales always end at the wedding. There’s no happily ever after when Prince Charming turns out to be a tyrant. And no rest for the weary when I had ten children pulling me every which way. Daughters with wandering eyes. Sons with restless feet.

PAUL I came along in 1858.

SARAH After losing three sickly babies here you were, chubby and pink with good healthy lungs. When I picked you up your blue eyes would look into mine and you’d grin and gurgle with all the pleasure of being alive. We named you Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr., after your father.

Lights fade on SARAH DREISER

THEODORE But we always called you Paul.

PAUL Bigger I got—bigger in every way—less sense it made to call me “little Johann.” Thirteen years and six kids later we welcomed to the family—you. Theodore Herman…

I - 7

THEODORE Enough with the “Herman.” But what a family! I smile to think of them, with their illusions, vanities, quarrels, shames…

PAUL Just like most families I imagine.

THEODORE All the while we kids were coming along in unbroken line, Father was sinking into disaster and defeat. He built a woolen mill in Sullivan, south of Terre Haute. The family seemed on the brink of prosperity. But the mill burned to the ground one night. There were investors. There were farmers who supplied the wool and not been paid. There were vendors who had bills owed them. He swore he would pay them all back every cent.

PAUL You have to admire that sense of ethics and obligation.

THEODORE You mean that German stubbornness. Whatever he earned went first to his church, second to his creditors. The little that was left barely kept his family out of the poorhouse.

PAUL But before all that, Sullivan was a great place for a kid like me. In good weather we boys would swim in the creek and play ball in the schoolyard. In winter I went to school— when the teacher could catch me. I was easily distracted.

THEODORE What distractions? Mother dragged us youngest kids back to Sullivan years later. I don’t remember there was anything much to do.

PAUL There was plenty! All kinds of traveling shows came through. Medicine-show wagons. Wild West shows. Third-rate theater troupes. Circuses with young ladies appearing in public in flesh-colored tights—distraction indeed for a young lad!

Sometimes we got small-time vaudeville acts. The next day I’d rope my school-chums into reenacting the jokes and the skits. (Beat) Mr. Max! Mr. Max!

Heighten comic pace and delivery vaudeville style until the beat after the punchline.

MAX Mr. Paul! What’re you so excited about.

PAUL There was a fire at your mother-in-law’s house!

I - 8

MAX A fire at my mother-in-law’s house?!

PAUL Yes, sir. It burned up all the way down to the ground.

MAX Oh, Lord, oh, Lord. This is terrible. Just terrible! What am I going to do?

PAUL Gee, Mr. Max, I didn’t know you love your mother-in-law so much.

MAX Love her? I hate the very air she breathes. And now the old battleax’ll probably have to move in with me! (Beat) I don’t suppose there’s a chance she perished in the conflagration?

PAUL Oh, no, Mr. Max. She’s just fine. Thanks to me.

MAX What do you mean, thanks to you??

PAUL When I got there she was leaning out the second floor window of the burning house screaming her head off.

MAX Screaming her head off is just her natural tone of voice.

PAUL Oh, no, Mr. Max. She was screaming save me, save me! So I found a ladder and I climbed up to that second-story window and I picked up your mother-in-law and I carried her back down to safety.

MAX (skeptically) You picked up my mother-in-law.

PAUL I surely did.

MAX And carried her down a ladder.

PAUL I bet they’ll give me a medal for hero-ism or something.

I - 9

MAX Mr. Paul. My mother-in-law weighs over three hundred pounds. You couldn’t carry her six feet on level ground let alone down a ladder from a second-floor window.

PAUL Well I did it.

MAX Alright then, just how did you manage to carry a three-hundred pound woman down a two-story ladder?

PAUL Easy. … I made three trips. (Beat) And there were the minstrel shows, white men with their faces smeared with burnt cork, telling jokes and funny stories and singing and dancing and strutting ‘round the stage with their cocky attitudes and their gaudy outfits. I tell you it made an impression. It surely did.

The purpose of the following song is to demonstrate PAUL’s talent. He should sell it with all the strut and swagger he can muster.

(Song: “LIZA JANE”) PAUL (singing) OH THE WINTER IS UPON US AND THE DAYS ARE COLD AND DREAR, STILL I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, LIZA JANE! BUT NO MATTER WHAT THE SEASON I WILL HOLD YOU CLOSE, MY DEAR, ‘CAUSE I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, LIZA JANE!

I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT YOU! PLEASE SAY YOU’LL BE MY WIFE, FOR I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, LIZA JANE! IF YOU MARRY ME, I PROMISE WE WILL HAVE A HAPPY LIFE, ‘CAUSE I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, LIZA JANE!

LIZA, LIZA, LIZA JANE, I LOVE YOU, MY DARLING LIZA JANE! BY THE SHINING STARS ABOVE YOU I DO SWEAR I’LL ALWAYS LOVE YOU! SAY YOU LOVE ME, SAY YOU LOVE ME, LIZA JANE!

PAUL performs a vigorous dance inspired by the classic African-American cakewalk. Big finish.

I - 10

PAUL (singing, cont.) SAY YOU LOVE ME, SAY YOU LOVE ME, LIZA JANE!

PAUL finishes down on one knee, arms outspread in the style of Al Jolson. He is stuck there and motions to THEODORE and MAX, who help hoist him to his feet. He gets out a large handkerchief and wipes his brow.

PAUL It’s strange when you think about it. White people didn’t like colored folks in person but they certainly liked them up on stage.]

THEODORE As long as the colored folks on stage weren’t really colored, just white men darkened up for the amusement of the white audience.

PAUL The way of the world, Thee. For days after those shows came through I dreamed about what a great life it would be traveling around seeing places I never even heard of. The costumes, the applause, the laughter—

MAX —the girls.

PAUL Especially the girls. But about the time my pre-adolescent mind was boiling over with those tempting images Papa decided to offer me up to God—at age twelve—to become a priest.

THEODORE A sacrifice of the first-born. A human tithe of his ten surviving children. He stuck you in St. Meinrad’s Seminary, isolated in the hills of deepest darkest southern Indiana.

PAUL Stuck is right. I stuck it out for two years but I wasn’t cut out for the religious life. Girls in flesh-colored tights never entertained at the Abbey.

THEODORE Father must have been very angry and very disappointed.

I - 11

PAUL I couldn’t face the storm that was sure to greet me if I returned home. Mama arranged sanctuary for me on the farm of the Rector family, cousins of ours. I was two counties away from Papa and that suited me just fine.

THEODORE (sarcastically) When you did finally come home surely Father welcomed the prodigal son with open arms? No doubt he would have killed the fatted calf if we had one.

PAUL Actually I brought the fatted calf with me kind of. The Rectors sent me home with a couple of sides of beef. Also some clothes, some firewood, and fifty dollars. Papa’s reaction was, “Iss dat all vot you got?”

THEODORE Typical. Good imitation by the way.

PAUL Thanks. I was always able to do dialects— PAUL renders each of the following in cheesy vaudeville dialect. Our household German, javol. Or you want an Italian organ-grinder: Ay, paisan, you want hear Funiculi, Funicula? Just put a coin in the monkey’s cup and I play for you, si? Or I could do a Jewish tailor: Oy vey, vat a long inseam you got. I should introduce you to my daughter, nu? Or a drunken Irishman: Faith and begorrah! Whiskeys all around! A toast to St. Patrick! May he chase the British snakes from Ireland! Erin go bragh! Useful talent for a young actor. But it was the German accent directors always seemed to want me to do. My career was a three-legged stool: Papa’s voice, Mama’s inspiration, and my own skills such as they were.

THEODORE On stage you exaggerated our father into an object of fun.

PAUL My business was making people laugh. But I never intended it to be mean-spirited. Audiences would have sensed that. The jokes would have fell flat. (Beat) So I was back with the family, back in Terre Haute. Papa took my fifty dollars and sent me out to find work. For a while I was what they used to call a train butcher on the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad. You remember. They’d hire boys to go up and down the cars selling stuff to the passengers.

MAX (chanting the sales pitch) Newspapers, Candy, Cigarettes, Cigars! Paper, mister?

I - 12

PAUL It was a good job for a kid. Thomas Edison got his start that way you know.

THEODORE If you had stayed with it you might have invented the light bulb.

PAUL My only regret about working so much was I never finished school. And I only managed a few piano lessons. If I heard a song once I could play it by ear. But I never did learn to read sheet music.

THEODORE Then how were you able to compose? As you say you churned out a lot of songs.

PAUL Ended up publishing a hundred and fifty more or less. But a whole lot of Tin Pan Alley songwriters can barely read music. That’s why they have arrangers. Max here was one of the best. If you’ve written down at least a melody line you give it to somebody like him and show him how it should go. Or maybe you just sing it to him and he writes it down. Then he makes a nice neat copy with your lyrics written under the right notes and everything. You pay the guy a little.

MAX Very little.

PAUL Then you send off the nice neat copy to a music publishing company in New York or Chicago. Maybe you sell it outright. You only get twenty-five dollars or so but it’s money in your pocket. But maybe you agree to a royalty. Maybe every time they sell a copy of the sheet music for a nickel you collect a penny or two. It’s a gamble. If the song sits on the shelf you get almost nothing. But if it’s a hit then you’re rich, at least until the song stops selling. You’re wearing fancy clothes. Drinking high-class liquor. Sneaking beautiful women into your hotel room. And that my boy is how you write a song when you can’t read music.

THEODORE Good lord. That’s like an illiterate novelist producing a best seller.

PAUL Have you read some of the latest novels, Thee? Apparently it’s not as difficult as you make it out to be.

THEODORE (insulted) Really.

I - 13

MAX To get the real impact of Paul’s songs you had to see him playing the piano and singing the song himself. He wasn’t a good pianist or a great singer but he knew how to do the stuff and get everything out of it.

PAUL The secret is to be able to sell a song to the audience. Don’t hold anything back and they’ll overlook the deficiencies.

THEODORE So you were back in Terre Haute working a lot and bringing some money home, which made Father happy, and getting in with a bad crowd, which angered him greatly.

PAUL (using his father’s accent) What company you keep! Loafers! Good-for-nothings! Shame you bring on me—and on your Mama who loves you. I try to put your feet on the road to righteousness. But no, you want to go down the path that leads the other way. You always dream of seeing the big wide world? Then go. Go to jail. Go to the grave. Go to the devil. It is all the same to me. I wash my hands of you. (Continues as himself) I threw what clothes I had into my suitcase and set out for parts unknown. Made it as far as a street corner downtown. Just stood there, tears running down my face into the gutter. But then Charley Kelley came along. Itinerant banjo player and patent medicine salesman. Didn’t even have a wagon. Just sold the bottles of magic elixir out of his backpack.

THEODORE Obviously a solid respectable businessman with whom a boy might have a secure future.

PAUL You talk like I had a choice. Charley and me, we’d walk from town to town. He’d draw a crowd with his banjo and then I’d sing to the people while he sold the “medicine” and took their money. Some days we’d make as much as seven dollars. Then one night I was singing my program of minstrel songs and sentimental tunes. I was paying a good deal of attention to a young lady in the front row. Winking and smiling and acting like every song was just about the two of us you know.

PAUL makes eye contact with a female member of the audience and sings directly to her.

(Song: “COME TELL ME WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER, YES OR NO”) PAUL (singing) WHEN I PLACE MY ARMS AROUND YOU, SWEETHEART, WHEN I TELL TO YOU MY TALE OF LOVE, OF THE FUTURE WHICH NOW LIES BEFORE US, FAR BRIGHTER THAN THE SKIES ABOVE, (more)

I - 14

PAUL (con.t) (singing) DO NOT THINK IT JUST AN IDLE FANCY, FOR ALL THE WORLD A LOVER LOVES, YOU KNOW. ‘TIS TRUE MANKIND IS FICKLE, STILL I LOVE YOU, COME TELL ME WHAT’S YOUR ANSWER, YES OR NO?

PAUL (cont.) That girl she’d smile back and blush quite prettily. I could hardly take my eyes off her. When I did finally look up Charley was gone, medicine, backpack, banjo, and all. No sign of him. Or the seventy-eight dollars we’d managed to accumulate walking up and down half the state of Indiana. I was alone, friendless, and broke, but home was not an option. So I decided to set off for the big city of limitless opportunity. Indianapolis. Only had to walk a hundred miles or so to get there. Slogged all that first day through an icy drizzle. Wet, cold and starving. Totally miserable.

When it got dark I started knocking on cabin doors. All I wanted was to sleep warm in somebody’s barn and then be gone in the morning. They sic’d their dogs on me, Thee! One guy came after me with a pitchfork!

But just when I thought I couldn’t go another step I found a couple of real Good Samaritans. Farmer and his wife took me in. Fed me. Gave me a bed. A real bed! Gave my clothes back to me the next morning. Clean. Dry. And when the farmer’s back was turned the wife dug her hand into an old tin can over the stove and slipped me a quarter. Wanted to be sure I could buy myself something to eat when I got hungry.

I learned a great lesson from those people, Thee, a great lesson. How much difference you can make in a person’s life if you just show them a little kindness when they need it. Finally I found myself sitting on the steps of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Indianapolis wondering what I was going to do next. When the priest came out he looked down at me and said, “Isn’t this Paul Dreiser?” Turned out he’d been our priest back in the Sullivan days. Now here he was pastoring a big new church in Indianapolis.

THEODORE God works in mysterious ways.

PAUL Or possibly Mama. I think she wrote to every priest she and Papa knew asking them to keep an eye out for me. He took me in, cleaned me up and bought me a train ticket. Told me I needed to go home and reconcile with my father. He tried to smooth the way.

(Continues in his father’s accent) From the priest in Indianapolis a letter I got. He says to you I should give another chance. He says you have changed. Well we will see about that. Show me for once you can contribute to the welfare of this family. Show me that you can obey Gott im Himmel and bring honor to your parents instead of disgrace.

(more)

I - 15

PAUL (con’t) (Continues as himself) I tried, Thee. I really did. But I was right back where I was before I ever left. Living in Papa’s house. Handing over whatever money I earned. Listening to his constant refrain about what a bad influence I was on my brothers and sisters. I started drinking pretty heavy.

THEODORE Late one night when you were nicely drunk you visited two of your favorite saloons. Unfortunately they were closed at the time.

MAX (as JUDGE) (Raps on the piano) We will now hear the case of the State of Indiana versus Johann Paul Dreiser, Jr. Mr. Dreiser you are charged with breaking and entering. How do you plead?

PAUL Not guilty your honor. I entered o.k. but I never broke anything. I found a key and accidently noticed it fitted the saloon door.

MAX (as JUDGE) Don’t try to be amusing, Mr. Dreiser. This is not some second-rate minstrel show. You are also charged with theft—several bottles of liquor and some blank checks. I am told your father is a faithful communicant of the Roman Catholic Church. He must be very disappointed in you. I understand he refused to post bail for you in this matter.

PAUL It was three hundred dollars your honor. Our family doesn’t have that kind of money. He couldn’t have paid it if he wanted to.

MAX (as JUDGE) But he didn’t want to, isn’t that right?

PAUL No your honor he didn’t. He said maybe cooling my heels in jail would help me see the error of my ways.

MAX (as JUDGE) I agree with him. You have already spent ten weeks as a guest of the county awaiting trial. I sentence you to an additional thirty days. I suggest you use that time to give deep consideration to the direction your life’s path is leading you.

THEODORE I remember when you got out. I found you hiding in the outhouse.

I - 16

PAUL I was dirty. Smelled awful. Hadn’t had a bath or a change of clothes in a month. I couldn’t just walk into Mama’s clean house. Besides, Papa might be home. Didn’t want to face him in that condition.

THEODORE You had me go find mother and tell her where you were.

PAUL She came out and hugged me, Thee! Despite the heartache I caused her. In spite of the reek! She burned my clothes, put me in the bathtub, and scrubbed me clean. Then she put her arms around me and we cried. I was an eighteen-year-old man and she held me like I was her baby boy again. I sobbed like a baby too. All the time begging her to forgive me for what I put her through. I was so ashamed.

THEODORE And she did forgive you. Our mother always forgave us. Not so our father of course. In rejecting his version of morality you were rejecting him and all he stood for.

PAUL It was unbearable. Then the Lemon Brothers Minstrel and Medicine Show arrived needing an organist and lead singer. They had a wagon and everything. I was for sure on that wagon when it left town. I had Mama’s blessing. Made sure of that. We shed more tears but she knew I couldn’t survive in Terre Haute, not under Papa’s roof.

Lights come up on SARAH DREISER in the actress’s area.

(Medley: “YOU’RE GOING FAR AWAY LAD”/“THE PATH THAT LEADS THE OTHER WAY”) SARAH (singing) YOU’RE GOING FAR AWAY LAD, IN DISTANT LANDS TO ROAM. YOU LEAVE BEHIND YOUR MOTHER AND THE OLD, OLD HOME. NO MATTER WHAT BEFALLS YOU, WHAT SNARES THE WORLD MAY SET, MY DARLING BOY THE LESSONS OF YOUR MOTHER DON’T FORGET.

BUT SHOULD YOU WANDER DOWN THE PATH THAT LEADS THE OTHER WAY, AND FIND YOU’VE DRIFTED FROM THE FOLD POOR LAD AND GONE ASTRAY I PRAY THAT GOD MAY FIND YOU

(more)

I - 17

SARAH (con’t.) (singing) AND BRING YOU BACK SOME DAY FROM WANDERING DOWN THE PATH THAT LEADS THE OTHER WAY.

THE DARK AND WINDING PATH THAT LEADS THE OTHER WAY.

THEODORE When you left, the rest of us were so envious of your break for freedom. And so angry. You were our protection. Our parents spent so much time fighting over you they pretty much ignored the rest of us. With you gone, who were they going to turn on next? I was devastated. I felt abandoned. That was always my greatest fear.

SARAH begins putting on her shawl and bonnet, picks up a small traveling case.

SARAH That’s it! I’ve had all I can take of you disobedient children. Maybe if I go somewhere else I can find children who will love me enough to do what I tell them.

THEODORE Mama don’t go! We’ll be good Mama. Don’t leave us. Please Mama. Please Mama.

SARAH Well … Do you promise to be good and do your chores when I ask you to and say your prayers every night with no complaining?

THEODORE Yes, Mama. We love you, Mama. Please stay, Mama!

SARAH Then I suppose I can give you all one more chance.

Lights fade on SARAH

THEODORE Long after she died I still dreamed of her leaving me and I’d wake up in tears. Yes she drew us to her with ribbons of unconditional love. Just like the mothers in your songs. But also, through many artful ways, she bound us to her with hooks of steel.

I - 18

PAUL I’m sorry you felt I deserted you. But I was only thinking of my present freedom and future fame. I went here, there, and everywhere. All those faraway places I dreamed about. Not with the Lemon Brothers. They went broke pretty quick. But I had real experience now. Made my way to Chicago and got on with the biggest patent medicine operation in the country.

(MAX holds up bottle and declaims in full huckster mode)

MAX Hamlin’s Wizard Oil! Guaranteed to cure every ache and pain in man or beast! Relieves rheumatism. Loosens your lame back! Headache, toothache, earache? Gone in minutes after one glass of Wizard Oil. Likewise your sore throat, diphtheria, catarrh, neuralgia. Not to mention inflammation of the kidneys, ulcers, fever sores, and cholera morbus! In short, ladies and gentlemen, Wizard Oil will relieve every affliction, from any cause or origin, whatsoever! Who will be the first to step up and buy this marvelous elixir? After only one bottle, your step will lighten. Your outlook will improve. You will feel like a person half your age!

THEODORE Your outlook will improve? I should hope so. Did you ever read what was in that magic nostrum? (Takes bottle from MAX, reads label) Camphor, ammonia, chloroform, sassafras, cloves. Turpentine! All blended together with copious amounts of alcohol. If that wouldn’t make you feel like a frisky twenty-year-old, nothing would.

PAUL Whatever it had in it Hamlin sold vats and vats of it. He had seventy troupes—seventy— canvassing the country from one end to the other. Every one had a driver, a lecturer to extol the virtues of the product and a male quartet to loosen up the crowd with songs and skits. Out of the wardrobe trunk came our silk top hats, our stylish frock coats, our sharply creased pinstripe pants, our patent leather shoes, and our bright-colored spats. Oh we were the picture of good-looking, vigorous, healthy young men.

THEODORE Thanks of course to regular swigs of Wizard Oil.

PAUL takes bottle of Wizard Oil from THEODORE, pours some in his glass before passing the bottle back to MAX

PAUL We could sing and dance our way right into your hearts.

THEODORE And into your pocket-books.

I - 19

PAUL It was a great opportunity. That’s when I started writing my own songs. The Hamlin managers let me sing them in the shows and even packaged some of them into a booklet called “The Paul Dresser Songster.” Sold real well and I got half. I was now a professional songwriter no less. Fourteen dollars a week salary. Plus as much as six to ten more from my share of the songster. Thought to myself maybe I actually have a future in this business.

THEODORE Your path was leading upward all right. On the other hand those you left behind were continuing our slide downward. It got so bad, as little as I was I had to pick up coal along the railroad tracks to keep the furnace going. Once Mother sent me to the store to buy cornmeal. She gave me fifty cents and somehow I lost it. It was her last fifty cents. Losing it was a calamity.

Finally they decided the only way to keep the family afloat was to split us up. The older girls would stay in Terre Haute under Father’s all-seeing eye. They’d get jobs and maybe keep out of trouble.

Mother moved back to Sullivan and opened a boarding house for railroad workers and coal miners. We youngest kids went with her.

The plan was bound to fail. Mother had no head for business. The boarders ate more than she could afford. They paid late or else skipped out in the middle of the night.

We lived on corn-meal mush. Mother was bent over a wash tub hour after hour, washing clothes for half the town to try to make ends meet. She was on the verge of collapse from the toil and the worry.

PAUL I knew it. I got the strongest feeling she was in trouble. I was traveling all over the country but I couldn’t shake the feeling I needed to be home.

During the following song, THEODORE helps PAUL put on a long fur overcoat and a tall silk hat and gives him a gold-headed walking stick, making him the image of newfound success.

(Song: “YOUR MOTHER WANTS YOU HOME, BOY”) MAX (singing) A DESP’RATE MOTHER PRAYS FOR ONE WHO’S MISSING FROM THE FOLD. THE LAMP IN HER HEART NEVER FAILS TO BURN. AND IN SOME FAR DISTANT CITY DOES A WOND’RER HEAR A VOICE? THE VOICE OF MOTHER BIDDING HIM RETURN? (more) Copyright © 2018 by Donald E. Baker. All rights reserved.

I - 20

MAX (con’t) (singing) AND WHEN THE NIGHTS ARE STORMY AND WHEN THE COLD WINDS BLOW, SHE STANDS THERE BY THE WINDOW WITH AN ACHING HEART I KNOW.

SHE LOOKS INTO THE DARKNESS WITH FACE SO PALE AND SAD, YOUR MOTHER WANTS YOU HOME, BOY, AND SHE WANTS YOU MIGHTY BAD. YOUR MOTHER WANTS YOU HOME, BOY, AND SHE WANTS YOU MIGHTY BAD.

Piano continues. Lights come up on SARAH, sitting on a settee in the actress’s area. As THEODORE looks on, PAUL knocks on the piano as though on a cabin door. SARAH rises from her settee and walks toward PAUL.

SARAH Yes? Who is it? … Paul!? Oh, Paul! Thank God you’re here!

Piano still continues as they embrace. PAUL walks SARAH to her settee and sits with her a few moments. He kisses her cheek and reluctantly returns to his place near the piano, replacing the coat, hat, and cane the hat rack. Lights fade on SARAH as the piano finishes.

THEODORE And so the hero appears at the last possible moment and rescues the distressed woman and her hungry little children. A scenario worthy of the most tear-jerking melodrama!

PAUL Or a book, Thee. It’d make a great book, don’t you agree?

THEODORE You brought light and laughter and hope into our lives. You gave Mother the money in your pocket and told her she would never have to wash anyone else’s clothes ever again. And you kept that promise, Paul. You kept it till she died.

PAUL It was little enough after all she did for me. Anyway I was coming up in the world. In Evansville Indiana on the banks of the Ohio far away the managers of a theater asked me to headline their resident troupe of entertainers. I opened to great reviews.

MAX (reading newspaper) “With his humorous songs Paul Dresser literally took the house by storm.”

I - 21

PAUL That’s when I finally started calling myself “Paul Dresser” full time. Americans can’t pronounce German names. Kept calling me Dreezer. Nice thing, whenever the theater was closed I could still do dates in other cities—places I could get to by train instead of wagon.

MAX (as TRAIN CONDUCTOR) All aboard for New York City! Next stop New York City! Ladies and gentlemen, you have arrived!

PAUL September 1881. Never forget it. H.C. Miner’s Theatre on the Bowery.

MAX (as himself) The first appearance at this theatre of the Eccentric Comic, Paul Dresser!

PAUL I was so proud of myself. Here I was twenty-three years old playing New York. Not Broadway no, but New York nonetheless. The usual vaudeville program. Fourteen acts— dialect comics, girl singers, jig dancers, even a comic Irish drill team. Nine performances a week, six nights and three matinees.

Loved every minute. You learn a lot from watching other performers, and I worked with a lot of them. Good acts. Bad acts. Dog acts--I’ve been upstaged by plenty of those. Cat acts even. How the heck do you train a cat? I was just headed back to Evansville coming off that—

MAX Triumphant!

PAUL —tour when I found you all in Sullivan.

THEODORE I remember after you left you sent us a box of some of your old clothes for mother to make over for me.

PAUL At least there was plenty of material.

THEODORE Also a dress and slippers for Mother. A complete First Communion ensemble for our youngest sister. And groceries! We hadn’t eaten that well in a year. What a difference you made in our miserable lives. Then there was the visit from the mysterious stranger.

I - 22

PAUL Sally Walker, the love of my life.

Lights come up on SALLY WALKER in the actress’s area, which is now a bordello sitting-room..

THEODORE I remember a handsome woman sitting in our parlor beaming at mother. You constantly wrote about young maidenhood aglow with sweet innocence. But really you liked your real-life women a little on the savage side. Miss Walker was shall we say, a working woman.

PAUL (with pride) My Sally owned and operated Evansville’s most successful bordello. For a house of ill repute it had an excellent reputation. But she had a good heart. She insisted we had to bring you all to Evansville where I could watch over you properly. We found a nice little cottage. Sally bought the furnishings and I took on paying the rent.

THEODORE I can still picture mother the first time she saw it, crying tears of happiness. You standing behind her patting her shoulder. Sally herself was absent of course.

PAUL She thought if she kept a little aloof Mama need never find out what she did for a living. (Pause as he enters SALLY’S area) But you knew about Sally, didn’t you Sport?

THEODORE In all innocence Mother sent me, at just eleven years old, to take Sally a basket of homemade preserves, to thank her for all her kindness. (As he crosses toward SALLY’S area, MAX hands him a basket filled with jars of home-canned preserves) I finally found the place. A Negro servant ushered me upstairs, down a long hallway. Suddenly I was in a lovely suite of rooms with a grand view of the Ohio River. There was Sally, in an elaborate dressing gown. And you, buttoning your vest.

SALLY Well, what have we here. I think you may be a little too young, kid. Come back when you’re older.

PAUL (Momentarily confused to see THEODORE in that place) Sally, maybe you remember my little brother Theodore. What’s up, Thee? Is Mama o.k.?

Eleven-year-old THEODORE is a little tongue-tied with wonder and confusion, staring wide-eyed at the two of them

I - 23

THEODORE She, she’s fine.

PAUL What you got in the basket?

THEODORE Uh, preserves.

PAUL Preserves.

THEODORE (Pause as he recovers somewhat) Uh, Mother sent them for Miss Walker. You know, to thank her for her help with the house.

SALLY (Softening, she takes the basket) That’s very nice, kid. It’ll be a real treat. My girls will love it. Thank your mother for me.

PAUL C’mon, Sport, I’ll show you out. (As he ushers him out, PAUL hands THEODORE some coins) Here. Get yourself something at the candy store on your way home. You know, it might be better not to tell Mama every detail of your visit.

THEODORE (Breathless with pre-adolescent excitement) Paul! When I was coming down the hall, I passed an open bedroom door. Paul, there was blond woman in there. She was putting on makeup. Her robe was open and I saw her breast. All of it!

PAUL Good for you. But that’s the kind of detail Mama doesn’t need to hear about. Let it just be your own private daydream.

THEODORE moves toward his area. PAUL turns toward SALLY

SALLY You know, one of these days that kid will be back. Here or someplace like it. And it won’t be to deliver no jars of preserves.

PAUL When the time comes, I’ll make sure he knows what to do.

PAUL moves back to his area.

I - 24

THEODORE And you were as good as your word. Later in New York, we passed some women on the street. They smiled like they knew you. You commented they were “French” ladies. I said, I always wanted to learn French. You paid for one of them to give me an hour of her time. Till I got there I didn’t know you were talking about the French tongue and not the French language. (Beat) Sally was your longest romantic relationship, I think. And the break-up was spectacular.

PAUL She was always jealous, even though she knew I saw other women. We’d fight now and then, but given her position, she could hardly insist on fidelity from me.

SALLY Yeah, but when I found him with one of my girls, that was the last straw. I didn’t expect undying love, but I did demand respect. I threw them both out.

PAUL By that time I was ready to move on anyhow. Evansville had served its purpose.

SALLY So had I, apparently.

PAUL But I did love you, Sally. No matter how many other women there were—and there were a lot of them—I could never forget you.

SALLY And for me there were a lot of other men. Still, there was always you. Always.

(Song: “THE OLD FLAME FLICKERS…”) SALLY (singing) I LOVED YOU YES, THAT I’LL CONFESS, WHEN EVENING TIME DRAWS NIGH,

PAUL (singing) THAT SAME SWEET FACE IN EV’RY PLACE, I SEE AND WONDER WHY.

PAUL & SALLY (singing) STILL THE OLD FLAME FLICKERS, AND I WONDER WHY, FOR WE HAVE NOT MET IN MANY YEARS. NOW AND AGAIN THERE COMES A PAIN, A FEELING I SOMETIMES FELT WHEN IN TEARS. WE’RE STRANGERS NOW, NO BINDING VOW, FORGET THE PAST I TRY. (more)

I - 25

PAUL & SALLY (con’t) (singing) WHEN DAY IS DONE, AND I’M ALL ALONE

SALLY (singing) THE OLD FLAME FLICKERS…

PAUL (singing) THE OLD FLAME FLICKERS…

BOTH (singing) THE OLD FLAME FLICKERS, AND I WONDER WHY.

Lights down on SALLY.

THEODORE Evansville was the best place we’d ever lived. And we were so proud of you. Your picture was on fences and billboards all over town. And you were generous. You’d show up at the house with watermelon or ice cream. Toys at Christmas. Firecrackers on Fourth of July. You’d play ball with us in the yard. Well, you’d bat fungos at us.

PAUL Running my increasing bulk around the bases was not an attractive prospect. I sweated enough just standing at home plate swinging the bat.

THEODORE You were always neat and clean and perfectly dressed. Your suits were well-tailored. Always the latest style.

PAUL Never wanted to look like a slob. If your clothes are immaculate and fit well, you don’t look fat. You look prosperous.

THEODORE Father stayed in Terre Haute, but he’d come down for the occasional weekend. And he made certain we were properly enrolled in a Catholic school where “professors” from Germany attempted to teach us by force.

PAUL Papa forgave me everything when he saw I was employed and supporting the family.

THEODORE How many “mother” songs did you write, anyway?

PAUL At least forty. Maybe more. Why?

I - 26

THEODORE But not one father song. No fathers waiting by the window. No fathers with tears in their eyes as they send their sons out into the world.

PAUL The Good Book doesn’t say we have to honor our mothers and fathers the same way. The way I found to honor Papa, I went to church. Such a simple thing. Religion was the most important thing to him. You could either reject it, as you did—

THEODORE Absolutely. Categorically.

PAUL Even though your very name, Theodore, the name Papa gave you, means “God-Given.” Or you could choose to believe, like I do. Maybe not in the terrors, but maybe in the comforts and the promises. I practiced that faith as best I could.

THEODORE By that time three of our sisters were working in Chicago. After you and Sally broke up, they found a nice apartment for Mother and us kids up there. We thought you were going back on the road, but you disappeared for a while.

PAUL I had a sick baby to take care of.

THEODORE Baby? How’d you get a baby?

PAUL The usual way, Thee. When I was on the rebound from Sally, I met May Howard. Queen of the burlesque circuit. Beauty. Talent. And very enthusiastic when it came to, well, you know.

THEODORE Hence the baby.

PAUL One thing led to another. We soon go our separate ways. But then I get a telegram saying she’s “with child” and it has to be mine. She had to stop performing, of course, before she started to show. I dropped everything and went to be with her.

THEODORE You married her?

I - 27

PAUL Course not. You know I’m not the marrying kind. May was, though.

Lights come up on MAY HOWARD touching up her makeup. She turns toward the audience.

MAY I liked getting married so much I did it four times. Just never to Paul. Marriage is easy. But pregnancy was hard. When the baby finally came, the midwife said, you better prepare yourself. She’s a beautiful little girl, but she’s so weak and sickly, she can’t possibly live very long. I barely survived the birth. I couldn’t face the death. As soon as I could stuff my body back into my stage costumes, I got on a train back to my old life.

PAUL You left me to see our daughter into her grave all by myself. I was the one who barely survived. I was crazy with grief. I couldn’t think of anything but the tortures and suffering you deserved, leaving us like that.

(Song: “THE CURSE”) PAUL (singing angrily) ‘TIS ENDED, SHE’S GONE. FORGIVE HER, NO NEVER. GONE TO THE DEVIL, FOREVER, FOREVER. THE CURSE OF THE AGES SHALL FOLLOW HER ON ‘TIL DOWN IN THE EARTH SHALL SHE GROVEL, A MIS’RABLE WRETCH IN A POTTER’S FIELD GRAVE TO THE REQUIEM CLANG OF THE SHOVEL.

THEODORE You tried to rhyme “grovel” and “shovel”?

PAUL Not my best work, I admit. But it sure felt good to get it out.

Lights fade on MAY

PAUL (con’t.) After May left, I sunk down into gloom and unhappiness. Don’t know what I’d have done if Fatty Stewart hadn’t come knocking. Fatty was, as you’d guess, another performer of extravagant girth. He wrote a farce called “The Two Johns” about a couple of brothers who were really fat. Dialogue was one fat joke after another. Only thing thin about it was the plot. Soon as I got back on stage the clouds lifted. After two years of blocked inspiration out came a terrific song. I was just finishing it up when I hear from a music arranger named Max Sturm.

MAX Not me. Another Max entirely.

I - 28

PAUL Sturm says to me (using a New York accent), Dresser, I just got married. My wife’s a great performer, but her act needs a signature song. You got anything? (Drop accent) And I says, maybe. Requires just the right singer, though. Who is this girl?

Lights come up on MAY HOWARD, who stands and prepares for her entrance.

MAX (as STAGE MANAGER) Cue Miss Howard! May Howard back to the stage, please.

MAY enters PAUL’S area

THEODORE You have to be joking. May, you didn’t waste any time replacing my brother in your affections.

MAY Like I told you, I like getting married.

PAUL If you did actually marry him. I never saw any proof.

MAY I remembered, when I was laying there pregnant, listening to you at the piano trying out ideas for a sad song about a letter. I told Max to find out if you ever got around to finishing it.

PAUL “The Letter That Never Came.” I was at the Dayton Soldiers Home one time. They had a good-sized theater. All the acts and shows played there. One day, I’m talking to a clerk at the welcome desk. This doddering old soldier comes up and asks if a letter came for him.

The clerk said, no, nothing today, and the old guy sadly shuffles off. Clerk says, he comes and asks every day if there’s a letter, but there never is. Well, I couldn’t get the old guy’s look of disappointment out of my mind.

(Song: “THE LETTER THAT NEVER CAME”) MAY (singing) A LETTER HERE FOR ME? WAS THE QUESTION THAT HE ASKED OF THE MAILMAN AT THE CLOSING OF THE DAY. HE TURNED SADLY WITH A SIGH, WHILE A TEAR STOOD IN HIS EYE, THEN HE BOWED HIS HEAD AND SLOWLY WALKED AWAY. (more)

I - 29

MAY (con’t) (singing) THEN HE MURMURED, “CAN IT BE, WILL IT NEVER COME TO ME?” HE’D BEMOAN HIS FATE, YET NO ONE WOULD HE BLAME. BUT FROM EARLY MORNING’S LIGHT, HE WOULD WATCH TILL DARK AT NIGHT, FOR THAT LETTER, BUT ALAS! IT NEVER CAME.

WAS IT FROM A GRAY-HAIRED MOTHER, A SISTER OR A BROTHER, HAD HE WAITED ALL THOSE LONELY HOURS IN VAIN?

MANY YEARS HAVE GONE THEY SAY SINCE HIS SPIRIT PASSED AWAY, BUT THE LETTER THAT HE LONGED FOR NEVER CAME.

THEODORE Why would you let the guy who replaced you have the song for that woman?

PAUL Songwriting’s a business. You make money by giving the right song to the right performer and I knew May could sell it. But a few weeks after I sent it to Sturm, I see an advertisement. A new song! A “famous success”! Written for—and sung by—Miss May Howard. Words by Paul Dresser. Music by Max Sturm! You and your so-called husband stole my song, you thieving jezebel!

MAY Max told me you sold him the words. He said he wrote the tune himself. People loved it. It was a hit everywhere.

PAUL And what did I get? My words, but Sturm claimed he owned them. My tune, but Sturm claimed he wrote it. I never got a penny for that song but I was sure getting the laugh from the two of you.

MAY Well, my fine Falstaffian lothario, how do you like those curses now, huh.

PAUL sings with operatic passion, suiting the action to the word, literally barring her way. MAY brushes him aside and exits, head held high, as PAUL finishes by dramatically pointing the way to perdition.

I - 30

(Song: “THE CURSE (REPRISE)” PAUL (singing passionately) AT THE HEAVENLY GATES WHERE WE ALL SHALL MEET I’LL BE ON THE JUDGMENT DAY. VICTIM OF HER DARK DEEDS IN THE PAST I’LL BE THERE TO BAR THE WAY.

NO HEAVEN FOR ME FOR REVENGE IS SWEET. WITH A FIENDISH INCARNATION, THRO’ THE GATES OF PERDITION I’LL FOLLOW HER ON TO ETERNAL AND LASTING DAMNATION!

END ACT I

II – 31

ACT II

SETTING: Same as ACT I. In the darkness a piano is heard.

(Song: THE CURSE [instrumental])

As piano finishes, lights come up on PAUL, MAX, and THEODORE in their respective areas.

PAUL When May and Max stole my song they taught me another great lesson, Thee. You can only make money writing songs if you control them start to finish. From the idea to the publication to the distribution to the music stores. I vowed I’d make that happen for me and my songs. Took almost a decade, but I got there. I got there and my songs were popular and they made money. Lots of money. ‘Course, I had to pay a lot of dues first.

MAX (reading newspaper) From the New York Clipper, the newspaper of the entertainment arts: “Fatty” Stewart announces “The Two Johns” will open in Niagara Falls on Monday, August 23, 1886. Playing opposite Steward will be Paul Dresser, the well-known heavyweight vaudeville comedian. The interplay of these jocular behemoths should insure a good time for all who see them.

PAUL We had a great reception in Niagara. Roar of the crowd almost drowned out the roar of the Falls. Fatty rented a private railroad car just for us. We got aboard, the New York Central hitched us to a passing train, and we headed west.

As they begin singing, MAX and PAUL physically indicate a moving train and alternate chanting the following lines to simulate the rhythm of the wheels. They begin slowly and speed up to an easy 60 beats to the minute. They will clickety-clack along through each iteration of the song.

(Song: “ONE NIGHT STAND” Part 1) PAUL & MAX (duet) PAUL MAX ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand. ONE night stand.

II – 32

PAUL (con’t.) MAX (con’t.) ONE night stand. ONE night stand. From Cleveland to Seattle, And from Houston to Atlanta, In every little county seat podunk village in between, From Charleston to Washington, From Baltimore to Boston, In every single town the same routine. The same routine! You unload the baggage. And you haul it to the theater. And you set up the scen’ry. And you unload the prop box. And you iron all the costumes. While the orchestra rehearses. You put on your make-up. And go on for the matinee. Supper at a greasy spoon. Go back for the evening show. Then fold up the costumes And then load up the prop box. And then take down the scen’ry. And then haul it to the train car. Try to sleep while we’re traveling. Going on to the next town. Savannah, Wilmington You do it all a hundred times. Richmond, Trenton You do it all two hundred times. Bridgeport, Providence You do it all three hundred times. Albany, Schnectady Forty weeks! Forty weeks! Sheer exhaustion. Sheer exhaustion!

PAUL And next year do it all over again, town by town by town. And season after season. You kept touring a show as long as it was making money. Nine years I was on the road. Nine years of one-night stands. It was a dog’s life, but most of the time I loved it.

II – 33

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Clipper, 1889: After three seasons with Fatty Stewart, Paul Dresser will join the cast of C. H. Hoyt’s comedy “A Tin Soldier.” Wherever he performs, Dresser is sure to open wide the gates of mirth.

(Song: “ONE NIGHT STAND” Part 2) PAUL MAX Two more years of one-night stands! Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. Go west, young man, to California! Then head back east again. On tour with a troupe of actors All cooped up in a railroad car, You only hope and pray that things go well. When everybody gets along it’s just like family. But when egos clash and tempers flare, it’s forty weeks of hell. Wichita, Omaha. Cedar Rapids, Helena. Oh, it was hell in Helena! I was feuding with this actress. She said I pulled a gun on her. She filed a complaint. After list’ning to her whiny voice, the jury said, “not guilty.” They told me that not shooting her showed admirable restraint. On to Bismark, Minneapolis, Madison, and Fargo. Des Moines, Dubuque, Peoria. Milwaukee and … Chicago.

THEODORE You were in your second season with “A Tin Soldier” when Mother went into her final illness. This time she was really leaving and no amount of begging could keep her with us.

PAUL When the show got to Chicago I rushed to her bedside but she was so far gone she didn’t even recognize me. At least I got to see her face one last time. Of course I wasn’t there when she died. I was telling jokes in some theater at the other end of the country. And then crying myself to sleep.

II – 34

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Clipper, summer, 1891. Henry DeMille announces a new play, “The Danger Signal.” It is a railroad drama featuring a genuine full-sized locomotive and a cannonball train flying across the stage. Comic relief will be provided by Paul Dresser as brakeman Heinrich “Pretzels” Yost.

(Song: “ONE NIGHT STAND” Part 3) PAUL MAX Another three years of one-night stands Where are we today? San Diego? San Francisco? San Antonio? Santa Fe? We play the cities, play the towns, Pay the rural whistle-stops. Will the audiences like us? Or will they call the cops? In Cincinnatuh the entire cast was carted off to jail, arrested for performing in a theater on a Sunday. It’s against the law to entertain On God’s most holy Sabbath. The Lord above did not ordain that it should be a fun day! We play Utica and Buffalo and Harrisburg and Erie. Then Chattanooga, Birmingham, Nashville, and … St. Looie.

THEODORE You were still performing in that claptrap melodrama two years later when it came to St. Louis. I had moved there to work on the newspaper.

PAUL I couldn’t believe how grown up you were.

THEODORE I took my friends to see my famous brother. I remember all the usual character types—a clueless young man, a virginal young woman, a villain who threatens to derail the express train if the young lady won’t let him have his way with her. But whenever the situation became too overwrought, we could count on “Pretzels Yost” to impart some homespun wisdom with a railroad theme.

II – 35

MAX Like the famous parable of the Prodigious Son.

THEODORE Prodigious? Shouldn’t that be Prodigal?

PAUL St. Luke can tell his story, Pretzels could tell his. (Shifts to his German accent) You see, there once was a very important railroad man, an assistant brakeman no less, and the assistant brakeman had a prodigious son. Everything about him was prodigious. He had a prodigious physique and a prodigious brain, and most of all he had a prodigious ambition. One day the prodigious son said to his father, I do not want to spend my life like you, working on the railroad all the livelong day. I want to go to the city and become a great success and make so much money I can buy my own railroad some day.

Impressed by those prodigious plans, the old man drew his month’s pay and gave it to his boy, who got on the very next train to the big city. But somehow he got off track. Instead of staying on the main line, he went off on some branch line that went the other way and he ended up in the middle of nowhere. Well, when he got there the first man he met sold him some worthless railroad stock and took all his money. He had to live in the gutter, cold and starving. He was even reduced to eating corn meal mush, shucks and all.

Finally he swallowed his pride and walked ten miles through the snow to the nearest railroad depot. There he found an old friend of his father who took pity on him and bought him a ticket back home. The old man forgave his wayward son because he was very happy, for him that was lost had returned to the main line and was back on schedule according to the official timetable. And when he saw how thin his son was, a mere shadow of his former prodigious self, the father ordered lunch for everyone and insisted that the boy have the biggest steak, and an extra helping of mashed potatoes, and a second piece of pie. Before long the young man was as prodigious as he had ever been. And he lived happily ever after, working on the railroad just like his father. And that prodigious son (Beat) was me.

THEODORE Railroading aside, except for the father’s reception some of that story sounded very familiar. Did the playwright really write it, or did you?

PAUL (as himself) He did the original. But since I had to tell it nine performances a week for nine months a year, I kept making minor changes to keep it fresh. Helped the monologue. Didn’t help the show.

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Dramatic Mirror, September 12, 1891: “A Danger Signal” is one of the worst conglomerations of cheap melodramatic rubbish that has ever been inflicted on a suffering public.”

II – 36

PAUL Awfulest review of any show I was ever in. But we toured it for three seasons. Three seasons of me playing second banana to a cardboard locomotive.

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Clipper, December, 1894: Paul Dresser announces a new play called “A Green Goods Man.” In his first attempt at playwriting, Dresser will play Herman Blatz, a bartender who becomes a judge although he has no legal experience. Under Dresser’s direction the players are certain to carry the fun out to the extreme limit.

(Song: “ONE NIGHT STAND” Part 4) PAUL MAX One more year of one-night stands. One LAST year of one-night stands! Write a show about a conman. Pepper it with jokes. Hire comedic actors. Let each one do his bit. Throw in a few Paul Dresser songs. ‘bout young lads and their mothers. Make them laugh and make them cry and you’ve got a surefire hit.

MAX (reading newspaper) Pittsburgh Press, May 5, 1895: This play has proved a record breaker as the best comedy farce on the road this season. The quaint humor of that prince of comedians Paul Dresser is infectious and his funny sayings and actions will long linger n the memory.”

PAUL And here I was getting paid four times, as author, producer, songwriter, and lead actor.

(Song: “ONE NIGHT STAND” Part 5) PAUL MAX ONE last one-night stand LADIES and GENTS, final STOP! [S’s like escaping steam] LASSSSST show! [S’s like escaping steam] LASSSSST show! LASSSSST show! LASSSSST show!

PAUL That was it. No more one-night stands for me.

II – 37

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Clipper, June 1, 1895: Howley, Haviland and Company, publishers of popular songs, announce the return of their partner, Paul Dresser. He will be at the office, 4 East 20th Street, where he will be pleased to receive old friends and welcome new ones.

THEODORE You finally got what you were looking for. You could publish and control your own work. Congratulations!

PAUL Touring stopped every summer when the theaters got too hot. That’s when I worked on writing and plugging my songs. Walked my shoes off taking them around to the New York publishers, meeting guys in the offices. Finally found two of them eager to start their own company. Howley and Haviland handled the business end while I trolled Broadway looking for new talent. It was a risk. I hadn’t written a real hit since “The Letter That Never Came.” But then, suddenly, I struck gold.

THEODORE I was there, in your office when you came in. You didn’t even say hello, just went directly into the tryout room and started repeating the same line of melody over and over. You were in that state of total distraction that meant you were possessed by a song.

(Song: “JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW ME”) PAUL (singing) WHILE STROLLING DOWN THE STREET ONE EVE UPON MERE PLEASURE BENT, ‘TWAS AFTER BUSINESS WORRIES OF THE DAY, I SAW A GIRL WHO SHRANK FROM ME IN WHOM I RECOGNIZED MY SCHOOLMATE IN A VILLAGE FAR AWAY.

“IS THAT YOU, MADGE?” I SAID TO HER, SHE QUICKLY TURNED AWAY. “DON’T TURN AWAY, MADGE, I AM STILL YOUR FRIEND. NEXT WEEK I’M GOING BACK TO SEE THE OLD FOLKS AND I THOUGHT PERHAPS SOME MESSAGE YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEND.”

“JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW ME,” SHE SAID, “THEY’LL KNOW THE REST. JUST TELL THEM I WAS LOOKING WELL, YOU KNOW. JUST WHISPER IF YOU GET A CHANCE TO MOTHER DEAR, AND SAY, I LOVE HER AS I DID LONG, LONG AGO.”

II – 38

PAUL and MAX (duet) “JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW ME,” SHE SAID, “THEY’LL KNOW THE REST. JUST TELL THEM I WAS LOOKING WELL, YOU KNOW. JUST WHISPER IF YOU GET A CHANCE TO MOTHER DEAR, AND SAY, I LOVE HER AS I DID LONG, LONG AGO.”

THEODORE “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me” was the catch phrase of the year. It found its way into vaudeville routines, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons. It was the punchline of a thousand jokes.

MAX “What did the cello say to the cellist?”

PAUL “Just tell them that you saw me!”

MAX “What did the tree say to the lumberjack?”

PAUL “Just tell them that you sawed me!”

THEODORE I was only in that room because you’d persuaded me to move to New York, where—you said!—my talent was sure to be recognized. It wasn’t. I was a fish out of water but you were the biggest fish in the biggest pond. Welcomed everywhere, embraced by all the most glamorous people in theater and sports.

MAX “Why hello, Dresser, you’re just in time! Come on in. What’ll you have?”

THEODORE You lit up every room you entered. My brother! The man with the hit song and the busy publishing house. Slapped on the back. Taken aside for a joke. Or a proposition.

ROSE enters during next speech

PAUL The women couldn’t get enough of me. Young girls looking to break into show business. Established singers looking for new material.

ROSE Paul! Darling!

II – 39

PAUL Ah, Rose! When did you get back off the road? I heard you wow’d ‘em in Peoria.

ROSE Yeah, the reviews were great if I do say so myself. Do you have any new songs? You know my voice. You know my style. Do you have anything that would fit me?

PAUL Sweetheart, why don’t you drop by the office tomorrow? I’m sure I have something that will fit you perfectly.

ROSE I bet you do! Just make sure it’s not something a lot of other girls have already seen.

She winks and sashays out

THEODORE The opportunities in New York were not as plentiful as you had portrayed.

PAUL But I fixed you up, didn’t I? Most people who bought sheet music were women, so we decided to publish a magazine that would lure them in. With plenty of ads for our latest songs, of course. Even the complete music and lyrics for one of them to sweeten the appeal. I naturally put you forward to be the editor-in-chief.

THEODORE I had high literary goals for our little journal.

PAUL Yeah. You wanted to publish great art. But we weren’t selling great art. Me and my fellow song writers wrote for the middling masses. Not the arty classes. And at no time for the critical asses.

THEODORE I considered you the epitome of soppy middle-class romance. Crude middle-class comedy. Racy middle-class humor. And in your personal habits, gross middle-class vices.

PAUL You can lecture me about vice, Sport, when you stop taking “French” lessons. There’s no money in high culture. But “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me” brought me around 20,000 dollars in royalties alone.

II – 40

THEODORE You were raking in mountains of cash by pandering to tasteless vulgarity while I was dependent on you just to get by. I was rubbed raw from the chafing of it.

PAUL That became painfully obvious when you published a satirical article called “How to Write a Comic Opera.” You made fun of my livelihood. My shows, my songs, put food on your table and you made a mockery of them. I felt betrayed. Then you had the gall to ask us for a raise. That was the last straw as far as the firm was concerned.

THEODORE You left town, you coward. You made Haviland give me my walking papers. (Beat) I was really low after that. I found a sad little room in a seedy neighborhood. Then one spring night, 1897, I was lying on my narrow bed trying to get to sleep. Through the open window I heard people coming down the street singing an unfamiliar tune.

ROSE enters

(Song: “ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH, FAR AWAY”) PAUL & MAX & ROSE (trio) OH, THE MOONLIGHT’S FAIR TONIGHT ALONG THE WABASH. FROM THE FIELDS THERE COMES THE BREATH OF NEW MOWN HAY. THRO’ THE SYCAMORES THE CANDLE LIGHTS ARE GLEAMING, ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH, FAR AWAY

ROSE exits

THEODORE I jumped out of bed. Those were my words—and they were singing them in the street!

PAUL and MAX Your words?

THEODORE You remember. It was just after the appearance of that article you hated. We were in the office, me reading magazines looking for story ideas, you noodling around on the piano looking for a melody.

PAUL takes MAX’S place at the piano. Experiments with a few notes.

PAUL I look across the room at my smug little brother—who knows so much—who thinks he even knows how to construct a hit song. Well, let’s find out. “What do you suppose would make a good song these days, Sport? Why don’t you give me an idea for one once in a while?”

II – 41

THEODORE (Pause while he considers) “Why don’t you write something about a state or a river? People like that. Look at ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ and ‘Swanee River.’ So why not the Wabash River? It’s as good as any other river.”

PAUL (mildly surprised) “That’s not a bad idea. But how would you go about it? Why don’t you write the words and let me put the music to them? We’ll do it together.”

THEODORE We both knew I never had any talent for versifying. But you kept urging me on. Finally, I scribbled out the first verse and chorus of that song. Almost as it was published.

PAUL relinquishes the piano back to MAX.

PAUL Not quite. What you handed me was a list of phrases describing typical Hoosier stuff— old homestead, hay, sycamores, moonlight, candles. And they were hardly ready for publication.

THEODORE You said what I gave you was fine. You even suggested I write a second verse. By that time I realized what you were up to. You had me trying to do—coldly and cynically— what you always did with honest feeling. I said no. It’s yours. I’m through.

PAUL Once I’d hammered it into shape, the company promoted it every which way. In one ad we printed a fake check for one thousand dollars, issued by that venerable financial institution, “The Bank of the Wabash.” Check was payable “to anyone who has not heard the song.”

THEODORE Nobody could have claimed that check. That song was everywhere. Sung in every music hall. Wheezed out by organ grinders on every street corner. Whistled by newspaper boys for tips.

PAUL Within a year we were breaking all sales records and approaching one million copies. There were estimates in the trades that I cleared over 50,000 dollars. Those estimates were very low.

THEODORE So here you were wealthy beyond your wildest imaginings. And what did you do with the money? You started giving it away. Every time some poor widow or broken-down old actor needed a handout, they came looking for you.

II – 42

PAUL Remember how poor we were and how important that fifty cents you lost was. How much it meant to me when that farm woman gave me a quarter out of her tin can so I could get something to eat. Such little kindness can make so much difference.

THEODORE You were especially a sucker for people who claimed they knew you when you were a kid back in Indiana. In fact anyone who said they were from Indiana. Or even anyone who said they knew someone from Indiana. Especially if that person was an aspiring girl singer.

PAUL I got a lot of satisfaction from helping develop young talent.

Lights up on LOUISE DRESSER in the actress’s area, which has become the showroom at the music company. LOUISE is leafing through a stack of sheet music.

THEODORE I remember the outer office at Howley and Haviland was a showroom where you displayed all the latest songs. There were always women there browsing through the sheet music hoping you might notice them.

PAUL Girls who thought they had talent—or their domineering mothers who thought their baby girls were the next Lillian Russell—they were always pestering me for the chance to show off their pipes. But sometimes a girl was special. And with luck she could sing, too. I was at our Chicago office when our sister Louise dropped by.

THEODORE Louise wasn’t … Oh never mind.

PAUL takes over the chair at THEODORE’S desk and sits with his back to the piano. THEODORE moves to the side, where he can observe. MAX moves to the “door” to the showroom.

MAX Can I help you, miss?

LOUISE I’m looking for a new song to freshen up my act.

MAX So you’re a professional singer? Would I have heard of you?

II – 43

LOUISE Probably not. I’ve only been playing small theaters. But audiences seem to like me. My name is Louise Kerlin.

MAX And I’m Max Hoffman. Have you found some possibilities?

LOUISE hands him a piece of sheet music.

LOUISE This one might work.

MAX Ah, yes. That’s one of Paul Dresser’s newest. Not many people have heard it yet. Come into the tryout room and I’ll play it for you. (They move to the piano) What key would you like?

LOUISE I think G.

MAX You got it.

MAX plays an introduction, then LOUISE sings, tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence.

(Song: “THE TOWN WHERE I WAS BORN.”) LOUISE (singing) JUST AGAIN TO HEAR THE VILLAGE CHOIR. JUST TO HEAR THE SONGS THEY USED TO SING. JUST TO SEE THE LITTLE CHURCH AND SPIRE HALF HIDDEN BY THE TREES IN SPRING.

JUST TO SEE THE LITTLE RUNNING BROOK FLOWING ON IN PEACE TOWARD THE SEA. JUST THE FRIENDS I KNEW, WITH SWEETHEARTS TRIED AND TRUE SEATED BENEATH THE SUGAR TREE.

MAX stops her before she can go into the chorus.

MAX Excuse me a second. ( Moves to THEODORE’S desk area) Paul, there’s a young girl singer in the tryout room.

II – 44

PAUL Another one?

MAX Trust me. You will want to hear this one.

PAUL Is her mother with her?

MAX Not that I can see.

PAUL Alright then. But you know the drill. Just one chorus. Then I can assure her that no doubt she has talent and the prospects of a promising career—and you ease her out the door.

They move into PAUL’S area and MAX returns to the piano.

MAX Paul, this is Louise Kerlin. Miss Kerlin, may I present Paul Dresser.

LOUISE (to THEODORE) Here I was being introduced to one of the biggest men in show business and my very first impression was how big he actually was. I remember thinking at the time that I had never seen such a fat man.

PAUL Max tells me you have a lovely voice. Would you do me the honor of singing something for me? Just the chorus if you don’t mind.

(Song: “THE TOWN WHERE I WAS BORN” [Chorus]) LOUISE (singing) THERE WERE NO BROWN STONE MANSIONS THERE, NO GILDED HALLS OF FAME. THERE WERE NO SILKS OR LACES RARE, ALL TARNISHED O’ER WITH SHAME.

THE SMILES OUT THERE WERE GENUINE, AND HEARTS WERE SELDOM TORN, AND FRIENDS THO’ FEW, WERE STAUNCH AND TRUE, IN THE TOWN WHERE I WAS BORN.

II – 45

PAUL (a bit choked up) You were right Max. Miss Kerlin that was lovely. And so are you. Tell me about yourself. Where you from?

LOUISE Evansville, Indiana, Mr. Dresser. I think you know it well.

PAUL Really?! Kerlin? By any chance are you related to Billy Kerlin? Used to be a conductor on the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad?

LOUISE He was my father. He was killed in a train accident six years ago.

PAUL So sorry to hear that. I was a butcher boy on his trains many a time. I was a fat little kid and sometimes the other guys would give me a hard time. Laughed at me. Called me names. Knocked me to the ground once. Your father stepped in, told them to cut it out. Said if it happened again they couldn’t work his trains anymore. That put a stop to it. I’ve never forgot his kindness. (Beat) Hang on a second. Come into my office.

PAUL returns to the desk. LOUISE gives MAX a questioning look. MAX nods reassuringly, so LOUISE follows PAUL into THEODORE’S area. PAUL picks up the telephone, speaks to the operator then to the critic, with appropriate pauses

PAUL (con’t.) Elliott, get me the drama editor of the Chicago Tribune. … Hey, Donaldson. Paul Dresser here. … Fine, fine. Listen, my kid sister Louise, Louise Dresser, is here in Chicago. She’s opening at the Masonic Roof Theater in a few weeks. I’d appreciate it if you’d give her some notice. I think she’s really terrific but that might be just a brother’s pride talking. … Thank you, Donaldson. I’ll talk to you later. Give you all the details. (Hangs up)

LOUISE But I’m not appearing at the Masonic Roof!

PAUL Sure you are. (Picks up phone) Elliott, now I need John Murdock at the Masonic Roof. … Johnny! How are you! Paul Dresser here. Listen. My sister Louise Dresser is here. She’s been working vaudeville using the stage name Louise Kerlin. Didn’t want to trade on our relationship, you know. … Oh, she’s terrific. Wait till you hear her. I told her I want her

(more)

II – 46

PAUL (con’t.) to drop the pretense and start using the family name. I need you to find an opening for her in your show. … Two weeks? Thanks, Johnny. … Remember the name on the program is Louise Dresser. … Yeah apparently talent runs in the family. (Hangs up)

LOUISE But—

PAUL —I told you. Your father was an idol of mine when I was a boy. If there’s anything I can do to help his girl make a name for herself I want to do it.

LOUISE Well it looks like you’ve made a new name for me that’s for certain.

PAUL And from now on call me Paul. None of that Mr. Dresser stuff. You’re my little sister remember. Now the name will only get you in the stage door a time or two, get you a little press at first. But if you’re as good as I think you are you’ll go far. I know it.

PAUL and LOUISE move into PAUL’S area, THEODORE reclaims his desk.

LOUISE (to THEODORE) And so goodbye Louise Kerlin, hello Louise Dresser. He never asked how I felt about it. It was all done before I could catch a breath. But he was right. A good review from the Tribune, notice in the trades because I was Paul Dresser’s sister and I never looked back. Soon I went from vaudeville to the legitimate stage. Now I’m making 1700 dollars a week and they’re talking to me about acting in motion pictures. That name change was a wonderful gift.

PAUL You made the most of it. Maybe the name would’ve made you a temporary sensation. Your talent made you a success.

PAUL and LOUISE kiss cheeks. LOUISE exits.

THEODORE (to PAUL) There was never anything between the two of you was there?

PAUL Thee! She was my sister!

II – 47

THEODORE (Sighs and rolls his eyes) For your real siblings you were the anchor we clung to once Mother died. We were a constant drain on your emotions and finances. When Sister Carrie finally got published it sold fewer than five hundred copies. I got so discouraged and depressed I couldn’t make myself work anymore. I moved to a tenement over in Brooklyn.

PAUL Brooklyn!

THEODORE One of my characters in Sister Carrie committed suicide by turning on an unlit gas jet.

MAX (reading from Sister Carrie) “Hurstwood’s room was a dingy affair—wooden, dusty, hard. A small gas-jet furnished sufficient light for so rueful a corner. He took off his coat and tucked it along the crack under the door. Then he turned the gas out, standing calmly in the blackness. After a few moments he turned the gas on again, but applied no match. While the fumes filled the room, he fumbled for the bed. ‘What's the use?’ he said, weakly, as he stretched himself to rest.”

THEOORE I was on the verge of doing the same thing when there you were banging on my door.

PAUL “For God’s sake, living in a place like this—and you sick and run down this way! I haven’t heard a thing about you in I don’t know when. My God I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself. And me feeling the way I do about you!”

THEODORE “I don’t need your help. You’ve done enough already.”

PAUL “You’re my brother—my own flesh and blood! You can’t go on living like this. I’m not going without you, that’s all.”

THEODORE You packed up my stuff. Paid my rent. Put me into your car.

PAUL I knew just the place for you. The Olympic Hygienic Institute, a famous sanitarium up in Westchester.

II – 48

THEODORE Sanitarium. The word conjures up images of a restful retreat, everything calculated to calm the nerves and restore the battered soul—everything this place was not. It was run by one of your buddies from the sporting world.

PAUL Thomas Culhane. Former Greco-Roman Wrestling Champion. Renowned trainer of the boxer John L. Sullivan. They called him “The Solid Man.”

THEODORE He only took me in because you were my brother. Because he was famous, his treatments became fashionable. And because they were expensive, his clients were almost exclusively representatives of new wealth or old money. The course was for six weeks at a hundred dollars a week. Which you gladly paid.

PAUL Because you were my brother.

THEODORE Culhane’s program consisted of plain food, strenuous exercise, and submission to his will. Plutocrats who would never walk seven blocks in the city were expected to do seven-mile hikes up and down the Westchester hills. Financiers who never lifted anything heavier than a dessert fork had to try to play catch with twenty-pound medicine balls. And powerful men who were accustomed to giving orders found they had to take them from a jumped-up Irishman, like it or not. You could try to fight the system but if you did Culhane would eventually break you. His weapons were unrelenting browbeating and shaming.

MAX (as CULHANE) This big boob here hasn't strength of will or character enough to keep himself in good health. He has to be brought up here by his brother. He hasn't got brains enough to see that when I plan a thing for his benefit it is for his benefit, and not mine. And he's supposed to be a writer and have a little horse-sense! His brother claims it, anyhow. The right thing would be to set him out on the road with his suitcase and let him go to hell.

THEODORE I couldn’t let that happen. You paid the $600 in advance and there were no refunds. So I came to accept the fact that Culhane regulated everything—mealtime, bedtime, even showers—twenty seconds under the water, twenty seconds to soap yourself, ten seconds to rinse, twenty seconds to towel dry. With Culhane standing right there to make sure you didn’t cheat.

THEODORE will attempt to follow “Culhane’s” instructions.

II – 49

MAX (as CULHANE) Soap your chest! Soap your stomach! Soap your arms, damn it! Soap your arms! And don't rub them all day either! Now soap your legs! Don't stand there all day! Soap your legs! Now turn round and soap your back! For Christ's sake, soap your back! Do it quick—quick! Now wash your toes! Don't you know how to wash your toes yet? You're old enough, God knows! Wash between 'em! Wash under 'em! Now come back under the water again. Move! Move! Lord, you act like you got all day—like you had never taken a bath in your life!

THEODORE I will say, once I started letting Culhane do my thinking for me, and ate food I sometimes didn’t like, and built up a little muscle, then hope and ambition did slowly return. (Beat) Meanwhile, your own health started to deteriorate.

PAUL I was too heavy for one thing. Really that didn’t bother me much until I started having problems attracting the ladies. For the first time I tried dieting.

MAX (reading newspaper) New York Telegraph: Paul Dresser is seriously ill. Early this Spring he weighed 326 pounds and was gaining nearly a pound a day. He resolved to starve himself and for thirty-five days he lived on only orange juice and water. He lost sixty-six pounds but since then he has been making up for all the meals he missed. His doctors say the songwriter’s latest ailment is directly traceable to the abuse of his stomach after his voluntary fast.

THEODORE You were killing yourself! Why didn’t you just go to Culhane’s sanitarium?

PAUL That would’ve killed me for sure. All that exercise! And no way could I soap up my big body in twenty seconds.

THEODORE At the same time your whole professional world was disintegrating. I was so involved with my own issues I had no idea what was happening.

PAUL I always prided myself on being able to deliver what the public wanted. Suddenly they wanted something I couldn’t give them. I couldn’t tell whether I’d lost my touch—or just lost touch period.

MAX The old century looked backward in sweet sentimental poetry and slow gentle waltzes. But people didn’t want to face the future with a tear and a sigh. They wanted a wink and a laugh. They wanted—

II – 50

PAUL —Ragtime. Colored music! But it had the white folks snapping their fingers and tapping their toes. It was the way of a whole new world, Thee. The public didn’t want the next “Banks of the Wabash” anymore. They wanted the next “Hello, Muh Baby, Hello Muh Honey, Hello Muh Ragtime Gal.” I couldn’t write ragtime. I tried but it was obvious I was faking it. By 1905 our company’d gone bankrupt. Everything I had was gone. Including the rights to my songs. All of a sudden I had no income. I couldn’t even keep “On the Banks of the Wabash.”

THEODORE If it’s any consolation there’s a movement in the Indiana legislature to make it the official state song.

PAUL That’s nice. Very nice. They’ll sing it at all the important occasions and they’ll think fondly about the Terre Haute boy that wrote it. (Pause. Silence from the others) Won’t they?

MAX Remember how you said people wanted peppier toe-tapping music? Well two years ago a couple guys named MacDonald and Hanley published this perky little ditty.

(Song: “BACK HOME AGAIN IN INDIANA”) (Up tempo, with a swing) MAX (singing) BACK HOME AGAIN, IN INDIANA AND IT SEEMS THAT I CAN SEE THE GLEAMING CANDLELIGHT STILL SHINING BRIGHT THROUGH THE SYCAMORES FOR ME. THE NEW-MOWN HAY SENDS ALL ITS FRAGRANCE FROM THE FIELDS I USED TO ROAM. WHEN I DREAM ABOUT THE MOONLIGHT ON THE WABASH, THEN I LONG FOR MY INDIANA HOME.

MAX It’s very popular.

PAUL But they stole the whole thing. All they did was cut my lyrics apart, put them in different order, and paste them back together.

II – 51

(Song: “INDIANA MONTAGE”) PAUL (singing) THRO’ THE SYCAMORES THE CANDLE-LIGHT IS GLEAMING… MAX (singing) THE GLEAMING CANDLE-LIGHT STILL SHINING BRIGHT THRO’ THE SYCAMORES… PAUL (singing) FROM THE FIELDS THERE COMES A BREATH OF NEW-MOWN HAY. MAX (singing) THE NEW-MOWN HAY SENDS ALL ITS FRAGRANCE FROM THE FIELDS…

PAUL They even stole part of my tune! Twelve notes!

PAUL (singing) OH, THE MOONLIGHT’S FAIR TONIGHT ALONG… MAX (singing) WHEN I DREAM ABOUT THE MOONLIGHT ON… BOTH (singing) THE WABASH.

PAUL Shameless! How’d they get away with that? Thee, you’re my executor. You should sue for damages!

THEODORE They did it all legally. They contacted the new copyright holder and bought the rights to use those twelve notes. Paid two hundred dollars for them, so the lawyer tells me.

PAUL And you think that piece of bald-faced plagiarism will get so popular people will forget all about the original. Well, whoever said fame is fleeting sure knew what they were talking about. (Beat) I bet those guys aren’t even from Indiana.

MAX Hanley is, actually.

PAUL Harrumph!

THEODORE When you were so sick—sick in body, sick at heart, nearly broke—where were all those people you were so generous to all those years? Surely some of them could have helped.

II – 52

PAUL They were nowhere to be seen. Once I was the center of everything. Suddenly I wasn’t even on the fringes. It hurt Thee. It surely hurt.

(Song: “WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS OF OTHER DAYS”) PAUL (singing) WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS OF OTHER DAYS, SOMEHOW IT SEEMS TO ME, THEY DO NOT SEEK ME AS ONCE THEY DID, WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE?

WHERE ARE THE FRIENDS OF OTHER DAYS, FRIENDS THAT I LOVED SO WELL? FRIENDS THAT I NEVER TURNED AWAY, IS THERE NO ONE TO TELL?

VAINLY MY HEART CRIES OUT TO THEM, HERE IN THE SHADOWS GRAY. ANSWER ME, SOMEONE! I AM ALONE! ANSWER ME, WHERE ARE THEY?

THEODORE But you kept up such an optimistic sunny façade the family didn’t realize what awful shape you were in. We were all so used to leaning on you. A nephew needed new clothes for school. You sent the money. A sister’s doctor said she had to move to Arizona. You sent the money for a train ticket. A brother owed back rent at the boarding house he lived in. You sent the money. After you were gone I couldn’t make them understand there was no money left in your estate. They accused me of hiding your vast riches.

PAUL By the end I couldn’t even afford a place of my own. Our sister Emma—

THEODORE Our dear sister Emma—

PAUL Took me in. Gave me a home to live in. To die in. (Beat) I did have one last hit in me though didn’t I? I didn’t have much to do besides think back over my life. You even sat at my bedside and wrote down some of my stories. Research for that book you said you were going to write. Amidst all those reminiscences there was Sally Walker. My old gal Sal from Evansville. The song came to me real quick and easy. I roused myself and took it to our sister Louise. (THEODORE raises a finger to protest but thinks better of it) Louise was a really big star by then.

LOUISE enters

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LOUISE Paul begged me to put the song in my act. I’m afraid I hesitated. It sounded too old- fashioned. But I owed him my whole career.

(Song: “MY GAL SAL”) LOUISE (singing) THEY CALLED HER FRIVOLOUS SAL, A PECULIAR SORT OF A GAL, WITH A HEART THAT WAS MELLOW, AN ALL ‘ROUND GOOD FELLOW, WAS MY OLD PAL.

YOUR TROUBLES, SORROWS, AND CARE, SHE WAS ALWAYS WILLING TO SHARE. A WILD SORT OF DEVIL, BUT DEAD ON THE LEVEL, WAS MY GAL SAL.

LOUISE and PAUL (singing) A WILD SORT OF DEVIL, BUT DEAD ON THE LEVEL, WAS MY GAL SAL.

LOUISE It took some time to catch on. But I kept singing it and people started buying it.

PAUL Thanks to you I showed them I could still a hit song. It was too late to do me any good financially but you made my last days a little happier, Louise. That meant the world to me.

PAUL and LOUISE embrace. LOUISE moves behind the piano

THEODORE (to PAUL) In December 1905 you wrote our sister Mame…

PAUL “I’ve been a little ill recently but nothing to amount to anything.”

THEODORE Emma and I knew better. Your doctor told us, “Paul has pernicious anemia. He is breaking down inside and can’t last long. And he’s too depressed to fight it.”

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PAUL Despite “My Gal Sal” I was never again gonna be what I was. Never again the life of the party. The acclaimed celebrity. The open-handed generous man about town. Nobody wanted to hear my stories or sing my other songs. Nobody wanted to be with me. Not as a friend. Not as a lover. When I did catch someone looking at me what I saw in their eyes was pity, Thee. Pity! I couldn’t bear the thought of a lifetime of that. I just couldn’t.

THEODORE 6:23 p.m., January 30, 1906. A brain hemorrhage took you. Mercifully. Quickly.

PAUL I was only forty-seven. Funny. People always thought I was older than I was.

THEODORE The tributes came pouring in.

MAX and LOUISE read obituaries

MAX “Ballad-maker of a nation. He was the greatest of them all as a song writer of the people.”

LOUISE “His body was none too large to carry that great heart that was a large as life itself.”

MAX “Not in years has a death among the music trades occasioned greater regret.”

LOUISE “Mr. Dresser made several fortunes out of the sale of his songs, the greater amount of which was given away to his friends as fast as he made it.”

MAX “Dresser’s songs were of the kind That left sweet memories behind.”

PAUL But nobody remembers them anymore.

THEODORE All your lost friends of other days showed up for the funeral mass. They filled the church and wept over your coffin. Afterwards we shipped you to Chicago and had you buried next to our parents.

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PAUL In an unmarked grave in Illinois! A travesty! I should be wrapped in the soil of the Indiana I loved. Besides, I wrote a song about Illinois once. It wasn’t a hit.

THEODORE We could barely scrape up enough money for the burial let alone a headstone. But some of your fans are planning what they consider the perfect memorial. They’re going to fish out of the Wabash River the biggest boulder they can find and they’re going to plop it right down on top of you.

PAUL That’ll be an inconvenient obstruction when Gabriel’s trumpet sounds. (Beat) So. Here we are at my final curtain. Before I go, Thee—what was it you were writing when I snuck into your memory?

THEODORE I’m working on a book about various men who influenced my life and career. I’m calling it “Twelve Men.”

PAUL By any chance am I in that book?

THEODORE (sheepishly) Well yes as a matter of fact. I’m just finishing your part. Hammering it into final shape if you will. It’ll be titled simply “My Brother Paul.”

PAUL “My Successful Brother Paul.”

THEODORE Just “My Brother Paul.” Once you were gone, once I stopped feeling we were in some sort of competition I could finally let myself feel the gratitude I owed you. For encouraging me when no one else would. For rescuing our family time after time. Maybe I can atone a little by showing people what a good man you were. How you were so spirited and bubbly and emotional and sentimental. How generous you were even to the point of self-destruction. (Beat) And how much I loved you.

PAUL So—twelve men.

THEODORE Yes.

PAUL And I’m one of them.

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THEODORE Yes. I know it’s only a pale, pale testimony to—

PAUL —It’s o.k., Thee. It’s o.k. One-twelfth of a book is better than no book at all. You know you could have told me about that book a couple hours ago.

THEODORE If I had you would have faded back into the ether. I’d have lost the opportunity to hear you tell your stories and sing your songs one more time. I’ve missed you. That’s why I converted your piano into a desk. Now every time I sit down to write I feel like you’re close by.

PAUL You know the spirit of your brother hovers near. And when you write your memoirs— and I’m sure you will—and no doubt it’ll be a very big book indeed—all I ask is you give me a little credit in a supporting role. (Affectionately) Good night, Thee.

THEODORE Good night, Paul. (They embrace, THEODORE with none of the stiffness of the Act I embrace) Oh. And if you happen to see our Mother. … And Father ...

PAUL Yes?

THEODORE Just tell them that you saw me. And tell Mother I love her.

PAUL I’ll do that, Sport. I surely will.

Lights slowly fade except on THEODORE as PAUL sings.

(Song: “JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW ME”) PAUL (singing) JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU SAW ME,” HE SAID, “THEY’LL KNOW THE REST, JUST TELL THEM I WAS LOOKING WELL, YOU KNOW, JUST WHISPER IF YOU GET A CHANCE TO MOTHER DEAR, AND SAY, I LOVE HER AS I DID LONG, LONG AGO.

And from the darkness, PAUL segues into one last line as lights fade on THEODORE, who is returning to his desk to resume his writing.

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PAUL (singing con’t.) ON THE BANKS OF THE WABASH, FAR AWAY.

THE END OF THE PLAY

Bow music may be pre-recorded so Max can take his bows.

(Song: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FOR BOWS & SUNG ENVOI ENTIRE CAST (singing) AS YOU DEPART, REMEMBER WHAT YOUR MOTHER DEAR WOULD SAY: STAY OFF THE EVIL PATH THAT LEADS THE OTHER WAY!