It was, to Joe, an amazing rehearsal. Actors walked to the mike as their bits came up, walked away as they finished. Nobody, apparently, paid any attention; nobody listened. When the telephone rang and Dennis answered, the reading of parts went right on. Those not at the mike conversed in undertones. It was all haphazard, without order, a sort of chaos.
“We’ll run through it again,” said Dennis. “Carlin, not so fluent. You’re supposed to be a fifteen-year-old kid. You’ve been brought into a studio to plead for your father; you’re nervous. Stumble a bit.” Before the cast could start another circle of the mike the telephone rang. “Yes,” said Dennis. “I’ll be right back.” He stood up. “Ten to-morrow morning,” he said abruptly and hurried from the room.
Lucille shrugged. “Well, that’s radio. We may have to come back half a dozen times.”
Why grumble, Joe reflected, if you earned six dollars for each rehearsal? A new wonder grew on him. In all the madcap confusion and lackadaisical inattention of the rehearsal, John Dennis had heard him read his part. Later, in the McCoy building, he spoke of this to Amby.
“That’s radio,” said the agent. “It’s like no other business in the world.”
Next morning, in the same room, the cast went back to rehearsal. Dennis began to stop the reading of lines, to coach for a different interpretation. But the telephone still kept ringing; there was still, apparently, a careless happy-go-lucky confusion. At noon the director of programs called a halt.
“Four o’clock,” he said.
Joe had a sandwich with Amby at Munson’s soda counter.
“Eat here always when you’re downtown,” Amby told him. “I hear Munson’s going in for a five-a-week in the fall. He walks around the store a lot watching business. Let him see us here. It doesn’t do us any harm.”
It seemed to the boy a queer angle from which to sell a radio show. But then, everything about radio was a law unto itself.