Joe’s breath made a sound in his throat.
“You’re good, kid, but you’re not good enough. There’ll always be somebody better. That’s the curse of small-time radio. Thousands of kids working in radio all over the country, wild with ambition and dreaming of the pot of gold. They’re good, but not good enough. You’ve got to be better than good. Archie Munn was good; he’s out of radio. Stella’s good; she’s working as a part-time waitress. Lucille Borden was good, and she was selling stockings when she got the breaks. A part came up made to order for her just when she auditioned, or she’d still be selling stockings. Where will you be ten years from now? Exactly where you are to-day. You know small-time radio; do you want that all your life? Your voice gets you a couple of fat parts one season, and next season you get bits. Year after year you make the rounds. By and by John Public gets tired of your voice, or a new voice comes along. Then where are you? Television’s only around the corner. John Public’s going to see the setting, the action, and characters in costume; radio actors will really have to act. What will you do then? If you had dynamite on the ball I’d tell you to stick it out if you starved. You haven’t got it, kid, and there’s no percentage in starving for what you haven’t got. I knew a long time ago you didn’t have the stuff, but you were the best Dick Davis I could get. I told you when Mrs. Munson’s nephew auditioned you’d have been out had he been hot. I’ve never lied to you, kid. If you’d played forty weeks in the Sue Davis show you’d be hooked for life. The bug would bite so deeply there’d be no cure. But you were only on the air a few weeks—that shouldn’t be fatal. You can make your exit while there’s still time.”
The indictment struck Joe with a paralyzing shock. He didn’t want to believe. He couldn’t believe that this was true.
“I’m not getting out, Vic. I’m writing New York for an audition.”
The producer brooded. “That’s up to you.”
“A producer told Ezra Stone—”
“I know. A producer told him to go home and forget acting. That gets a big play. But you don’t hear a word about the hundreds of times producers tell the same thing to kids and are right. It’s a waste of time to try to give the low-down to a stage-struck kid. Doesn’t he want to act? He doesn’t know the difference between wanting to act and being able to act.” The producer’s hand went up and ran through his hair; the arms fell heavily. “Kid, what have I got to say to make you believe me?” The sunken eyes burned.
Joe felt the first thin edge of doubt. He fought it off wildly. “Why should you care what I believe?”
“Kid, do you have to ask that?”
A lump, quick and unbidden, formed in the boy’s throat. “I—I know you think....”