“Think?” Vic Wylie cried harshly. “I don’t have to think about show business; I know. Tough? There isn’t any game in the world that’s tougher. I’ve seen it around the country: stage-struck kids working in crummy night clubs or picking up a few dollars from movie houses that run Saturday vaudeville. I’ve seen it at Hollywood: movie-crazy kids storming the Central Casting Bureau because they’ve won a two-bit beauty contest or have a straight nose. But at least, if you work at Hollywood, you get paid. There’s no such thing at Hollywood as a sustaining movie. Hollywood doesn’t fatten itself on gratis talent. Radio’s just a little tougher than any other part of show business. Don’t you know it? Don’t you use your eyes?”
Joe thought of bread-and-butter hunters making the rounds.
Wylie’s sunken cheeks were pale with intensity. “What do you think you’re going to do in New York—show me up for a mug? I’ll tell you what’ll happen in New York, kid. Maybe you’ll audition and a producer’ll say: ‘Ah, a voice of great promise.’ Maybe you’ll go back for a committee audition. Maybe the committee hears a voice of great promise. Then what? Do you think you’ll snatch a part like picking an oyster from a shell? You’ll be competing with the people who are tops. Who are you? What’ve you done? You become a card—a Joe Carlin card. You’ll go into a talent file. Do you know how many cards are in the N.B.C. file at WEAF? The last time I heard, more than two thousand. Many of them are troupers with years of stage experience, many of them have played big-time radio. When a producer casts a show, those are the people he picks. He knows what they’ll give him. Maybe a show comes up and the producer can’t get the people he wants; they’re tied up in other shows. Then he goes to the file. Maybe he’s forgotten Joe Carlin—some new cards go into that file every month. It’s a grab-bag. Figure the chances of the Joe Carlin card coming out. If you had great talent I’d tell you to stay with it if you were down to your last pair of socks, if you were mooching your meals and panhandling your friends. I’d help you. Great talent is rare. Kid, what makes you think you’ve got it?”
Looking at Wylie, intense and drawn, listening to his impassioned voice, Joe had to believe. Wylie had spent far more time on him than on any other member of the cast. That now became significant. Memory leaped at him with other scenes, all significant. Wylie talking to Tony Vaux about his voice—only about his voice. Wylie almost frantic because he couldn’t put something into the word “Mother” that the producer wanted put there. Wylie slaving over him through the long evening rehearsals. But he had dreamed a dream, and a dream always dies hard.
“Vic, why did you wait so long to tell me this?”
“Kid, I was on a spot. It didn’t take me long to learn you didn’t have the spark. You’d never lay them in the aisles. What could I do, toss you out? You were the best I could get for Dick Davis. Suppose you had no special training for a business job? Suppose you couldn’t land a job? Suppose radio was your only chance of nailing a dollar? Yesterday I began to check on you. You never told me anything about yourself. How was I to know your father owned that Carlin store on Royal Street? What’s the matter, doesn’t he want you there?”
“He’d be glad to have me there.”
“Then get wise. That’s where you belong.”
Sometimes, Joe thought wanly, it was hard to be wise. The easy companionship of show people, light-hearted despite its anxiety, the feeling that came over him every time he walked into a station, the hush that settled over a studio as the clock in the control-room crept toward the opening, the thrill as the show went on the air! He couldn’t give up all that.
“Vic,” he said, “I’m sorry. I still want show business.”