ts during intermission:
"It doesn't get over!" "It's a flop!"
"What atmosphere!" "An absolute steal!"
"Such originality!" "Not a bit life-like!"
"That author has a wonderful memory!"
"He copped that lyric from Irving Berlin!"
"He's as funny as a crutch or a cry for help!"
"They grabbed that number in London!"
"She's one of his tigers!"
"From a Lucile model, my dear, but home-made!"
"I can't hand him anything on this one!"
"Some heavy-sugar papa backed the production!"
"Isn't my boy wonderful!"
"Yes, but my girl is running away with the piece!"
"If you like this, you're not well!"
"What could be sweeter!"
"What large feet she has!" "His Adam's apple annoys me!"
"She must get her clothes on Avenue A!"
"They say she was born there!"
"What an awful sunburn!"
"Best thing in years!" "The storehouse for this one!"
"Did you catch her going up in her lines?"
"Yes, and he's fluffing all over the place!"
"Splendidly produced, don't you think?"
"I think the stage direction is rotten!"
So I suggest the old Roman fashion of presenting,
The artists, like gladiators crying:
"We, who are about to die, salute you!"

THE DRAMATIST

I've put one over at last!
My play with the surprise finish is a bear.
Al Woods wants to read all of my scripts;
Georgie Cohan speaks to me as an equal
And the office boy swings the gate without being asked.
I don't care if the manager's name is as large as the play's
Or if the critics are featured all over the ash cans.
I'm going to get mine and I'm going to live.
A Rolls-Royce for me and trips "up the road,"
Long Beach and pretty girls, big eats at the Ritz
And the ice pitcher for the fellows who snubbed me.
How the other reporters laughed
When I showed my first script and started to peddle!
"Stick to the steady job," they advised.
"Play writing is too big a gamble;
It will never keep your nose in the feed bag."
I wrote a trunkful of junk; did a play succeed,
I immediately copied the fashion;
Like a pilfering tailor I stole the new models.
Kind David Belasco, with his face in the gloom,
And mine brightly lighted, said ministerially:
"Rather crude yet, my boy, but the way to write a play
Is to write plays from sunrise to sunset
And rewrite them long after midnight.
Try, try, try, my boy, and God bless you."
Broke and disgusted, I became a play reader
And the "yessir man" to a manager.
I was a play doctor, too.
A few of my patients lived
And I learned about drama from them.
How we gutt