I moved my star into our receiving room, a messy cubbyhole ten feet wide. He didn’t seem to mind, although now, since he couldn’t walk up and down, he was confined to sitting in a chair for his practice.
Meantime, a crowd far beyond our capacity had swarmed into both levels of the shop. Those who came early got seats. Others sat on the stairs leading down to the hall. The rest stood, and some even spilled out the door onto Michigan Avenue. I couldn’t get from one end of the place to the other without stepping on people. I found myself begging someone’s pardon all evening long.
Then the complaints began. Those seated in the hall were gasping for air. Our cooling system simply wasn’t up to handling that many people. I rushed to the boiler room where the gadgets for controlling the air-conditioning were located and tried to improve the situation. Of course, I made it worse.
Finally I introduced Primrose to the audience and beat a hasty retreat. Almost at once an “important” guest tackled me with his complaints. I beat my way upstairs (those sitting on the stairs discovered they were not able to hear a thing) and after tripping over dozens of feet and crushing against uncounted bodies was confronted by a thin, long woman wearing a turban hat, who seized me and, amid this utter confusion, began telling me I was the most wonderful man alive. Her eyes were burning and every time she took a breath, she rolled her tongue across her lips. I was fascinated, but desperate. “What do you want?” I begged, willing to do virtually anything to extricate myself. “I want you to be my agent,” she said, pressing me to the wall. “I’m an author and I’ll have nothing to do with anyone but you.”
I ducked beneath her outstretched arms, trampled some people, caught my foot in the lead wire to one of the microphones, and fell heavily into the lap of one of the most attractive women I have ever seen. She fell off her chair onto the floor and I rolled on top of her. A folding chair ahead of me collapsed, and before anything could be done, a dozen lovers of music and literature lay sprawled on top of one another, while those not engaged in this chain reaction pronounced menacing “shooshes.” By the time I had righted myself, several friends had come up from the concert hall to complain about the noise upstairs.
Finally the concert ended. I was later told that William Primrose gave a brilliant performance—something to be remembered and cherished for a lifetime. I would not know. All I know is that the “most attractive woman in the world” in whose lap I landed sent me a bill for eighty dollars to replace the dress which I apparently had torn beyond reconstruction. I paid the bill.
There were other fine parties, among them one that grew out of the arrival of a play called “Mrs. McThing,” a funny, whimsical, adroit production which could be the product only of a great goodness of the heart. Helen Hayes and Jules Munshin were the stars.
I loved every minute of the play, and in addition to being entranced by Miss Hayes’ remarkable performance, thought Jules Munshin to be extraordinarily comical in his role. One of his telling lines was, “Let’s have a meeting,” no matter what the situation that provoked it. The problem might be entirely trivial, but before a decision could be made, a meeting first took place. As things do happen, the morning after the play opened in Chicago, Mr. Munshin walked into the shop along with another member of the cast. It was impossible to greet him with any other words, but, “Let’s have a meeting!” We became friends instantly, and when the play neared the end of its run, we decided there should be a farewell party for the cast. Jules asked Miss Hayes if she would come, and I was properly thrilled when she agreed.
So on closing night they all came to the bookstore, along with about thirty people Jennie and I had asked to join us. The program did not have to be planned. There was singing, reciting, story-telling. Then, quite by surprise, Miss Hayes’ colorful husband joined us. The fun really began, not only in heightened conversation, but when the MacArthurs’ daughter sat at the piano with Chet Roble and played and sang. Roble is another Chicago “original”—an artist of the blues and a superb personality and musician who has been playing over the years at Chicago hotels and night spots and always attracts a large and appreciative following. He was part of the cast of Terkel[Terkel]’s famous “Studs’ Place” show. He represents an almost lost art not only in his old-time jazz musicianship, but also in terms of cabaret entertainment—the performer who genuinely loves his work and his audience and who will remember ten years later the face of someone he met in a noisy night club crowd.
It was an all-night party. I talked with Miss Hayes about Ben Hecht, who had collaborated with Charles MacArthur on “The Front Page,” which opened quite a new page for the American theatre. She agreed that Ben could talk more sense, more dramatically than any author we knew. I had had an autographing party for Ben’s book, Child of a Century, an autobiographical study of his life and development as a writer. We sold almost 800 copies of the book that night. Ben came with his wife and daughter and sat behind the desk with a cigar in his mouth, his eyes dreamy, his mind tending toward some distant land, but he was most affable, while repeating over and over: “I’ve never done such a thing in my whole life. And I’ve been writing for forty years!”