I'd Like to Do It Again

by Owen Davis

I first learned of the fact that ICEBOUND had won the Pulitzer Prize from Al Woods, who called me up and told me the news. He was, I think, as much excited as I, and perhaps he knew better than any one else what a far cry it was from our old Bowery melodramas to the winning of the prize for the best play of 1923. A lot of water had flowed under the mill in those twenty-five years, and to throw so completely aside a hard-won method and adopt another so radically different was a very difficult thing. Since then I have served several times on the committee to award the prize, and I have never voted to give it to a dramatist without recalling my own pleasure in listening to Al Woods’ voice over the ‘phone when he called up and said: “Listen, sweetheart, who do you think cops the Pulitzer Prize this year?—you’d never guess—neither would I—a guy told me—it’s you!”

Owen Davis and his two sons, Donald and Owen, Jr.
(Photograph by Atlantic Photo Service)

During the run of ICEBOUND Bob Davis ruined a golf game by telling me about a new story he was about to publish. It was, so he told me, written by E. J. Rath, but, as a matter of fact, it had in all probability sprung from his own amazing mind, as have literally hundreds of other stories that have appeared under the names of our most famous writers. Bob has been for many years the dry nurse of American fiction and responsible for the present fame of more successful novelists and short story writers than any one man who has ever lived. This story that he called The Wreck bored me very much and quite ruined my game, as Bob usually saves his loudest and most startling statements until I am at the top of my back swing; so to keep him quiet I told him to shut up and I’d read the fool thing if he would send it to me. When I read the proof sheets, all I could find there was a very amusing character, but urged on by Bob I finally agreed to try my best to make a play out of it. The play was THE NERVOUS WRECK, probably one of the most successful farces of the last twenty years.

As soon as I finished this play I took it to Sam Harris, who read it promptly and told me it was terrible. As I fully agreed with him, we decided to have it tried out on the west coast, figuring that the further we got it from the sight of our friends the better. Mr. Harris had at that time some business relations with Thomas Wilks of Los Angeles, and the play was announced for production by him. After the first rehearsal Mr. Wilks’ stock company went on strike and refused to play the thing, saying that it was without a doubt the worst play ever written by mortal man. It was only after a battle that they were forced to continue.

Mr. Edward Horton who first played the part has since told me that he was never in his life so startled as he was by the screams of laughter that followed his first scene, and he and the leading lady got together after the first performance and hastily learned their lines, a thing that up to that time they had not thought it worth while to do. The farce played in Los Angeles for twelve weeks to enormous business, but Mr. Harris and I were still a bit doubtful and rather reluctantly started to put together a cast for an eastern tryout. We put it on in Atlantic City with Mr. Horton and Miss Frances Howard, now Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn, in the leading parts. After the first performance Mr. Harris confided in me that he had always thought it the worst play he had ever seen and that now he was sure of it. I had very little if any more faith than he had, and we returned to New York together in disgust. But to our amazement the fool thing did a big week’s business and we decided to see it once more during the following week in Long Branch. At Long Branch we saw it before a half empty house and decided we would close it up, and that I would work on it at my leisure.

I re-wrote it completely seven different times, and each time Mr. Harris liked it just a little bit less. It kicked around the office for a year before Al Lewis picked it up in an idle moment and insisted on our once again tempting fate with it.

The third cast we selected for this outcast of ours was headed by Otto Kruger and June Walker. Otto said it was terrible and almost walked out on us, but at last we got it on in Washington, where Mr. Harris said he would come to see it with an unprejudiced eye. This time he only remarked that he’d be damned if he knew why he had ever bothered with the thing, but if it was any fun for me to mess about with such truck he had no objection to my seeing what I could do. Messing about with a farce isn’t exactly fun, and I almost killed myself working over it.

During the next week in Baltimore, Mr. Harris wired me that a failure at his New York theater was leaving his house dark, and that he had booked THE NERVOUS WRECK to open there the following Monday. By that time I had the play in pretty good shape. Al Lewis, Sam Forrest and I had been at it night and day, but I had no last act at all. A farce without a last act is a pretty sad affair, and one night in desperation I remembered a hot comedy scene I had in an unproduced farce called THE HAUNTED HOUSE. I promptly pulled the scene bodily out of one play and stuck it into another.

This scene, the examination of some cowboys on a ranch by a young eastern highbrow who used the methods of laboratory psychology, made the play’s success, but left me in an awful mess when the time came to produce THE HAUNTED HOUSE, which was now without any last act at all. One act, however, has always been a little thing in my life, and I stuck something in the hole left by the missing scene, and with the late Wallace Eddinger in the leading part, THE HAUNTED HOUSE did well enough for a season.