Writing for Vaudeville Part 29

An improper t.i.tle, first, is one that does not precisely fit a playlet as a name; or second, that tells too much. For instance, "Sweets to the Sweet" is the t.i.tle of a playlet whose only reason for being so named is because the young man brings the girl a box of candy--it does not name the playlet at all precisely, its connotation is misleading. Do not choose a t.i.tle just because it is pretty. Make your t.i.tle really express the personality of your playlet. But more important still, do not let your t.i.tle tell too much. If "The Bomb" were called "The Trap," much of the effect of the surprise would be discounted, and the unmasking of the detective who confesses to throwing the bomb to trap the real criminal would come as something expected. In a word, be most careful not to select a t.i.tle that "gives it all away."

3. Other t.i.tle Considerations

A short t.i.tle seems to be the playlet fas.h.i.+on today; but tomorrow the two- or three-word t.i.tle may grow to a four- or five-word name.

Yet it will never be amiss to make a t.i.tle short.

This same law of good use points to a similar variation in the context of even the short t.i.tle--I mean that every little while there develops a fad for certain words. There may at any time spring up a wide use of words like "girl," or "fun," or color words, like "red " or "purple" or "blond." But your close study of the vaudeville of the moment will show you when these fad-words may be used advantageously in a t.i.tle.

You need never worry over-long about a t.i.tle for your playlet if you put the emphasis in your own mind upon the fact that your t.i.tle is an advertis.e.m.e.nt.

V. MAKING THE PLAYLET A HIT

But when you have a playlet ma.n.u.script that is full of laughter and vibrant with dramatic thrills, and even after you have sold it to a manager who has produced it, your work as a playlet writer is not done. You still must cut and polish it until it is a flawless gem that flashes from the stage. As Edgar Allan Woolf expressed it to me in one of our conversations:

"The work of the author of a one-act comedy is not over until, after several weeks of playing, his playlet has been so reshaped and altered by him that not a single dull spot remains. Individual lines must be condensed so that they are as short as they possibly can be made. The elimination of every unnecessary word or phrase is essential. Where a line that develops the plot can be altered so that it will still serve its purpose, and also score a laugh on its own account, it must be so changed. Where lines cannot be changed, bits of comedy business may perhaps be inserted to keep the audience from lapsing into listlessness. For it is a deplorable fact that a vaudeville audience that is not laughing outright at a comedy becomes listless. Vaudeville managers never book a playlet that makes an audience smile--for while the humor that brings a smile may be more brilliant than the comedy that gets a laugh, it must always be remembered that vaudeville audiences come to laugh and not to smile. Some of the biggest laughs in every one of my many acts I put in after the acts had been playing some weeks.

And I attribute whatever success they have had later in the best vaudeville theatres to the improvements I have made during their 'breaking in' periods."

To sum up: While no two writers ever have written and never will write a playlet in precisely the same way, the wise beginner chooses for his first playlet a comedy theme. Your germ idea you express in a single short sentence which you consider as the problem of your playlet, to be solved logically, clearly and conclusively.

Instinct for the dramatic leads you to lift out from life's flowing stream of events the separate incidents you require and to dovetail them into a plot which tells the story simply by means of characters and dialogue skillfully blended into an indivisible whole, flas.h.i.+ng with revealing meaning and ending with complete satisfaction.

After you have thought out your playlet, you set down so much of it as you feel is necessary in the form of a scenario. But you do not consider this scenario as unchangeable. Rather you judge the value of the idea by the freedom with which it grows in effectiveness. And while this process is going on, you carefully select the basic points in the beginning of the story that must be brought out prominently.

Then you develop the story by making the points that foreshadow your "big" scene stand out so as to weave the enthralling power of suspense. You let your audience guess _what_ is going to happen, but keep them tensely interested in _how_ it is going to happen.

And you prepare your audience by a carefully preserved balance between the promise and the performance for the one big point of the climax which changes the relations of the characters to each other.

After you have shown the change as happening, you punch home the fact that it has happened, and withhold your completing card until the finish. In your finish you play the final card and account for the last loose strand of the plot, with a speed that does not detract from your effect of complete satisfaction.

In seeking to "punch up" your playlet, you go over every word, every bit of characterization, every moment of action, and eliminate single words, whole speeches, entire scenes, to cut down the playlet to the meat, seeking for lost punches particularly in the faults of keeping secrets that should be instantly disclosed, and in the too frank disclosures of secrets that ought to be kept in the beginning. And out of this re-writing there rises into view the "heart wallop" which first attracted you.

Finally, when your playlet is finished, you decide on a proper t.i.tle. Remembering that a t.i.tle is an advertis.e.m.e.nt, you choose a short name that both _names_ and _lures_. And then you prepare the ma.n.u.script for its market--which is discussed in a later chapter.

But when you have written your playlet and have sold it to a manager who has produced it, your work is not yet done. You watch it in rehearsal, and during the "breaking in" weeks you cut it here, change it there, make a plot-line do double duty as a laugh-line in this spot, take away a needless word from another--until your playlet flashes a flawless gem from the stage. The final effect in the medium of expression for which you write it is UNITY. Every part--acting, dialogue, action--blends in a perfect whole. Not even one word may be taken away without disturbing the total effect of its vital oneness.

CHAPTER XIX

THE ELEMENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL ONE-ACT MUSICAL COMEDY

If you were asked, "What is a one-act musical comedy?" you might answer: "Let's see, a one-act musical comedy is--is--. Well, all I remember is a lot of pretty girls who changed their clothes every few minutes, two lovers who sang about the moon, a funny couple and a whole lot of music."

Hazy? Not at all. This is really a clear and reasonably correct definition of the average one-act musical colnedy, for this type of act is usually about fifty per cent. girl, twenty per cent.

costumes and scenery, twenty-five per cent. music, and usually, but not always, five per cent. comedy. A musical comedy, therefore, is not music and comedy--it is girls and music. That is why the trade name of this, one of the most pleasing of vaudeville acts, is--a girl-act."

It was the girl-act, perhaps more than any other one style of act, that helped to build vaudeville up to its present high standing.

On nearly every bill of the years that are past there was a girl-act.

It is a form of entertainment that pleases young and old, and coming in the middle or toward the end of a varied program, it lends a touch of romance and melody without which many vaudeville bills would seem incomplete.

A girl-act is a picture, too. Moreover, it holds a touch of bigness, due to the number of its people, their changing costumes, and the length of time the act holds the stage. With its tuneful haste, its swiftly moving events, its rapid dialogue, its succession of characters, and its ever-changing, colorful pictures, the one-act musical comedy is not so much written as put together.

1. The Musical Elements

Technically known as a girl-act, and booked by managers who wish a "flash"--a big effect--the one-act musical comedy naturally puts its best foot foremost as soon as the curtain rises. And, equally of course, it builds up its effects into a concluding best-foot.

The best-foot of a musical comedy is the ensemble number, in which all the characters--save the princ.i.p.als, sometimes--join in a rousing song. The ensemble _is_ musical comedy, and one-act musical comedy is--let this exaggeration clinch the truth--the ensemble. [1]

[1] Of course, I am discussing the usual musical comedy--the flash of a bill--in pointing out so forcefully the value of the ensemble.

There have been some fine one-act musical comedies in which the ensemble was not used at all. Indeed, the musical comedy in one act without any ensemble offers most promising possibilities.

Between the opening and the closing ensembles there is usually one other ensemble number, and sometimes two. And between these three or four ensembles there are usually one or two single numbers--solos by a man or a woman--and a duet, or a trio, or a quartet. These form the musical element of the one-act musical comedy.

2. Scenery and Costumes--The Picture-Elements

While the one-act musical comedy may be played in one set of scenery only, it very often happens that there are two or three different scenes. The act may open in One, as did Joe Hart's "If We Said What We Thought," and then go into Full Stage; or it may open in Full Stage, go into One for a little musical number, and then go back into a different full-stage scene for its finish. It may even be divided into three big scenes--each played in a different set--with two interesting numbers in One, if time permits, or the act be planned to make its appeal by spectacular effects.

Very often, as in Lasky's "A Night on a Houseboat," a big set-piece or a trick scene is used to give an effect of difference, although the entire act is played without dropping a curtain.

To sum up the idea behind the use of musical comedy scenery: it is designed to present an effect of bigness--to make the audience feel they are viewing a "production."

The same thought is behind the continual costume changes which are an integral part of the one-act musical comedy effect. For each ensemble number the girls' costumes are changed. If there are three ensembles there are three costumes, and four changes if there are four ensembles. Needless to say, it sometimes keeps the girls hustling every minute the act is in progress, changing from one costume to another, and taking that one off to don a third or a fourth.

The result in spectacular effect is as though a scene were changed every time an ensemble number is sung. Furthermore, the lights are so contrived as to add to this effect of difference, and the combination of different colors playing over different costumes, moving about in different sets, forms an ever-changing picture delightfully pleasing and big.

Now, as the musical comedy depends for its appeal upon musical volume, numbers of people, sometimes s.h.i.+fting scenery, a kaleidoscopic effect of pretty girls in ever changing costumes and dancing about to catchy music, it does not have to lean upon a fascinating plot or brilliant dialogue, in order to succeed. But of course, as we shall see, a good story and funny dialogue make a good musical comedy better.

3. The Element of Plot

If your memory and my recollection of numerous musical comedies of both the one-act and the longer production of the legitimate stage are to be trusted, a plot is something not vital to the success of a musical comedy. Indeed, it is actually true that many a musical comedy has failed because the emphasis was placed on plot rather than on a skeleton of a story which showed the larger elements to the best advantage. Therefore I present the plot element of the average one-act musical comedy thus:

Whereas the opening and the finish of the playlet are two of its most difficult parts to write, in the musical comedy the beginning and the finish are ready-made to the writer's hand. However anxious he may be to introduce a novel twist of plot at the end, the writer is debarred from doing so, because he must finish with an ensemble number where the appeal is made by numbers of people, costumes, pretty girls and music. At the beginning, however, the writer may be as unconventional as he pleases--providing he does not take too long to bring on his first ensemble, and so disappoint his audience, who are waiting for the music and the girls. Therefore the writer must be content to "tag on" his plot to an opening nearly always-- if not always--indicated, and to round his plot out into an almost invariably specified ending.

Between the opening and the closing ensembles the writer has to figure on at least one, and maybe more, ensembles, and a solo and a duet, or a trio and a quartet, or other combinations of these musical elements. These demands restrict his plot still further.

He must indeed make his plot so slight that it will lead out from and blend into the overshadowing stage effects. Necessarily, his plot must first serve the demands of scenery and musical numbers-- then and only then may his plot be whatever he can make it.

The one important rule for the making of a musical comedy plot is this: _The plot of a one-act musical comedy should be considered as made up of story and comedy elements so s.p.a.ced that the time necessary for setting scenery and changing costumes is neither too long nor too short_.

More than one dress rehearsal on the night before opening has been wisely devoted to the precise rehearsing of musical numbers and costume changes only. The dialogue was never even hastily spoken.

The entire effort was directed to making the entrances and exits of the chorus and princ.i.p.als on time. "For," the producer cannily reasons, "if they slip up on the dialogue they can fake it--but the slightest wait on a musical number will seem like a mortal wound."

If you recall any of Jesse L. Lasky's famous musical acts, "A Night at the Country Club," "At the Waldorf," "The Love Waltz," "The Song Shop" (these come readily to mind, but for the life of me I cannot recall even one incident of any of their plots), you will realize how important is the correct timing of musical numbers.

You will also understand how unimportant to a successful vaudeville musical comedy is its plot.

4. Story Told by Situations, Not by Dialogue

As there is no time for studied character a.n.a.lysis and plot exposition, and little time for dialogue, the story of a musical comedy must be told by broad strokes. When you read "A Persian Garden," selected for full reproduction in the Appendix because it is one of the best examples of a well-balanced musical comedy plot ever seen in vaudeville, you will understand why so careful a constructionist as Edgar Allan Woolf begins his act with the following broad stroke:

The opening chorus has been sung, and instantly an old man's voice is heard off stage. Then all the chorus girls run up and say, "Oh, here comes the old Sheik now."