It got so you could hate Shelley Berman.
He finished the last of the forms, and brought them over to Bob Haldemann, who was laboriously writing on yellow note-paper with a stubby pencil. He took the forms and the pen and said, “Sit down a minute, Mel.”
Mel sat down.
Bob Haldemann held the stubby pencil in both hands and, watching the pencil, said, “This is your first season of stock, am I right?”
“Right.”
“Your experience—” He riffled through the papers on his desk again. “I don’t have your résumé here. But you’ve been in a few off-Broadway shows, isn’t that it?”
“That’s it.”
“No other experience?”
“I toured with an Army show, I was in Special Services.”
“Oh?” He seemed surprised. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“No college?”
“I’m going to CCNY, part time.”
“Ah. And you’re serious about acting.”
“Sure.” He said it easily, but who knew? He didn’t know yet what he was serious about, but why rush it? He liked acting, and it put him close to girls, and if he could make a living at it, why not?
Bob Haldemann was still studying that pencil. He said, “If you’re at all like most of the young actors we get here, you aren’t particularly interested in this theater or this season. You’re here for two things, a good time with the girls and an Equity card at the end of the season.”
That about summed it up, but it would probably be bad politics to admit it. Mel sat silent, and waited.
“I don’t blame you, Mel. At your age, in your position, I’d feel the same way. But I want you to get interested in this theater, and I want you to get interested in this season. I want total commitment from you, Mel, for the next eleven weeks. We have an impossibly tough schedule here, a new play every week. You’ll have a major role in only four or five of them, but you’ll be working in all of them. You’ll be a stagehand, or you’ll run the flies, or you’ll work props. You’ll help build sets, and you’ll help strike them. You’ll work a seven-day week, and you’ll work a fourteen-hour day most of the time. You can’t do that and last the season if you don’t give a damn about what’s happening here.”
Mel grinned. “I guess I can’t be doing it for the money.”
Bob Haldemann smiled back. “I know. Thirty-five dollars a week can’t buy the kind of work we’ll need from you. Not even an Equity card can make it all worth it. The only thing that will keep you going is a commitment to this season and this theater.” He broke off suddenly, and sat back in the chair, tossing the pencil down on his desk. “I wish you’d come in yesterday,” he said. “This speech makes more sense when it’s given to a whole group.”
“I know what you’re saying, though,” Mel told him.
“Good. Do you think you can do the job?”
“You mean, on account of me coming in late?”
He shook his head and waved his hands, as though embarrassed. “No, no, not at all. That’s in the past. It was simply a rhetorical question, part of the speech. Believe me, Mel, I’m not trying to talk you into going back home. It’s just part of the speech. If anybody ever took me up on it and said, ‘No, I don’t think I can do the job, you better get another boy,’ I don’t know what I’d do. You think I could get somebody to take your place this late in the season? New York is empty by now.”
“Oh.”
Haldemann got abruptly to his feet. “Come on, I’ll introduce you around, and then you can get settled in your room.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Haldemann led the way out of the office. The theater was in semi-darkness, lit only by work-lights from the stage. Somewhere, a power saw was whirring. The stage was empty, all the way back to the wooden rear wall, where some chairs were clustered.
They walked down the center aisle and up the side steps to the stage. A young man in T-shirt and dungarees had disemboweled the light-board and was standing looking at the wreckage, holding a screwdriver. Haldemann introduced him as Perry Kent, and Kent nodded distractedly. “Perry’s run the lights for us the last three years,” said Haldemann. “Come on this way.”
They crossed the stage to the other side, toward the sound of the power saw. The stage was large — thirty-some feet wide, and almost as deep — with large wings. The light-board was to stage right, with the fly loft above. To stage left, the wing was stacked high with platforms and flats and odd sticks of furniture. High above, the flown drops swayed very slowly.
Haldemann went first, threading his way through the junk stacked up to the left of the stage, and over to a door on the side wall. He opened it, and the sound of the saw was suddenly much louder. It shut off as Mel came through the doorway.
It was a small room, with an incredibly high ceiling. Two dusty windows high up on the side wall let in practically no sun; light came from a bare bulb suspended from a crossbeam. Flats were stacked against all the walls, in a jumble of old sets, a twelve-foot pale green flat next to an eighteen-foot maroon flat with a false window overlooking mountain scenery, a white door-flat with a blue door next to a narrow ten-footer splashed with all the colors of the rainbow. Long lengths of pine jutted up above it all from one corner.
In a cleared space in the middle was a scarred worktable, and on the table the power handsaw. Next to the table stood a tall fat man with steel-rimmed spectacles, wearing a blue T-shirt and dirty white bib overalls. Haldemann introduced him as Arnie Kapow, carpenter/designer.
Kapow shook Mel’s hand, his grip surprisingly soft for such a big man. He said, “You know anything about flat sizes?”
“Some.”
“You come work with me when you get settled. All right, Bob?”
“If it’s all right with Ralph.”
“Up Ralph.” Kapow turned away and switched the saw on again. The buzzing made any more conversation impossible.
Haldemann motioned to Mel, and they went back out to the stage area. “Arnie’s not much of a talker,” Haldemann said, apologizing, “but wait’ll you see his work.”
Mel shrugged. This whole tour was a waste of time anyway. You met people by working with them, not by walking in and out of rooms. Haldemann was wasting time on him this way because he was late; Haldemann was bending over backward to show Mel it was all right.
There was a wide double door at the rear of the stage. Haldemann opened it, and they went out to the sunlight. This double door was a loading entrance, with a three-foot jump to the ground. They jumped, and walked to the left, where two girls were hosing flats, and scrubbing them with GI brushes. Haldemann explained, “We don’t have any permanent sets, so we use water-soluble paint. Kemtone. Wash it off and you can use the flat all over again.”
“Why not just paint over it?”
“Weight. You’d be surprised how much five or six coats of paint can weigh.”
Haldemann introduced him to the girls, but he didn’t get their full names. Linda was the childish-looking redhead, and Karen was the emaciated brunette. Both were sopping, and soap-covered, and desperate-looking. They stood dripping, and acknowledged the introductions with hysterical smiles. If he remembered right, they were the ones whose names appeared under his on the poster in the lobby.
From there, they went around to the front of the theater, Haldemann saying, “The rest are over at the house. You might as well pick up your bag on the way.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t mind Ralph, when you see him,” Haldemann cautioned gently. “He isn’t the most tactful person in the world. But he’s a really first-rate director. You can learn a lot from him.”
The station wagon was still out front, with the other three cars. Haldemann frowned at the dusty Dodge and said, to himself, “Mary Ann still here?” To Mel he said, “I’ll be with you in just a second.”