Writing for Vaudeville Part 40

(f) _Re-copy a soiled ma.n.u.script_ as soon as it shows evidence of handling. Keep your "silent salesman" fresh in appearance.

(g) _Bind your ma.n.u.script in a flexible cover_ to give it a neat appearance and make it handy to read.

(h) _Type your name and address in full_ on the outside of the cover, and on the first white page. Thus you stamp the ma.n.u.script as _your_ act, and it always bears your address in case of loss.

(i) _Have your act copyrighted_ is a bit of advice that would seem needless, but many performers and producers refuse to read an act unless it is copyrighted. The copyright--while it is not as good proof in court as a public performance--is nevertheless a record that on such and such a date the author deposited in the Library of Congress a certain ma.n.u.script. This record can be produced as incontrovertible evidence of fact. The view of the performer and the producer is that he wishes to protect the author as much as possible--but himself more. He desires to place beyond all possibility any charge of plagiarism. Therefore, copyright the final version of your act and typewrite on the cover the date of copyright and the serial number.

(j) _How to copyright the ma.n.u.script of a vaudeville act._ Write to the Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., asking him to send you the blank form prescribed by law to copyright an unpublished dramatic composition. Do not send stamps, as it is unnecessary. In addition to the blank you will receive printed instructions for filling it out, and full information covering the copyright process. The fee is one dollar, which includes a certificate of copyright entry. This covers copyright in the United States only; if you desire to copyright in a foreign country, consult a lawyer.

(k) _The preparation of a scene plot_ should not be a difficult task if you will remember that you need merely draw a straight-line diagram--such as are shown in the chapter on "The Vaudeville Stage and its Dimensions"--so as to make your word-description perfectly clear. On this diagram it is customary to mark the position of chairs, tables, telephones and other properties incidental to the action of the story. But a diagram is not absolutely necessary.

Written descriptions will be adequate, if they are carefully and concisely worded.

(l) _The preparation of property plots and light plots_ has been mentioned in the chapter on "The Vaudeville Stage and Its Dimensions,"

therefore they require a word here. They are merely a list of the properties required and directions for any changes of lighting that may occur in the act. For a first presentation of a ma.n.u.script, it is quite unnecessary for you to bother about the technical plots (arrangement plans) of the stage. If your ma.n.u.script is acceptable, you may be quite sure that the producer will supply these plots himself.

(m) _Do not offer "parts" with your ma.n.u.script._ A "part" consists of the speeches and business indicated for one character, written out in full, with the cues given by the other characters--the whole bound so as to form a handy copy for the actor to study. For instance, there would be four "parts" in a four-people playlet ma.n.u.script--therefore you would be offering a producer five ma.n.u.scripts in all, and the bulk of your material might deter a busy man from reading it carefully. If your ma.n.u.script progresses in its sale to the point where parts are desired, the producer will take care of this detail for you. And until you have made a sale, it is a waste of money to have parts made.

2. The Stage Door the Vaudeville Market-Place

Unlike nearly every other specialized business, there is a market in each city of the country for vaudeville material. This market is the stage door of the vaudeville theatre. While it would be unlikely that a dramatist would find a market for a long play at the "legitimate" stage door--although this has happened--there are peculiar reasons why the stage door may be your market-place. A large percentage of vaudeville performers are the owners of their own acts. They buy the material, produce it themselves, and play in it themselves. And they are ever on the lookout for new material.

Not only is there a market at the stage door, but that market changes continually. Without fear of exaggeration it may be said that with the weekly and sometimes semi-weekly changes of the bill in each house, there will in time flow past the stage door nearly all the acts which later appear in vaudeville.

Offering a ma.n.u.script at the stage door, however, should not be done without preparation. As you would not rush up to a business man on the street or spring at him when he emerges from his office door, you certainly would not care to give a vaudeville performer the impression that you were lying in wait for him.

(a) _The personal introduction_ is a distinct advantage in any business, therefore it would be an advantage for you to secure, if possible, a personal introduction to the performer. However, you must be as discriminating in choosing the person to make that introduction as you would were you selecting an endorser at a bank.

A stage-hand or an usher is likely to do you more harm than good.

The "mash notes" they may have carried "back stage" would discount their value for you. The manager of the theatre, however, might arrange an introduction that would be of value. At least he can find out for you if the performer is in the market at the time.

(b) _The preliminary letter is never amiss_, therefore it would seem advisable to write to the performer for whom you feel sure you have an act that will fit. Make the letter short. Simply ask him if he is in the market for material, state that you have an act that you would like him to read, and close by requesting an appointment at his convenience.

Do not take up his time by telling him what a fine act you have.

He does not know you, and if you praise it too highly he may be inclined to believe that you do not have anything worth while.

But do not under-rate your material, either, in the hope of engaging his attention by modesty. Leave it for him to find out if you have an act, first, that is worth while, and second, that fits him.

If you do not hear from the performer, you may be sure that he is not interested in your act. He may be out for the first few weeks in a brand new act, and not in the market at all. So if you do not hear from him, wait until another act comes along and you see someone for whom your act is "just made."

(c) _Should you receive a favorable reply_ to your request for an appointment, you may be reasonably sure that your prospective purchaser at least needs a new act. In meeting your appointment, be on time, and have someone with you. A woman, of course, would have a chaperon, precisely as she would if she were meeting any other stranger. And a man might care to have someone to engage the attention of the performer's companion and leave him an uninterrupted opportunity to talk business.

(d) _Ask for an immediate reading_ of your ma.n.u.script, or at least request it read the next day, when you can be present while he is reading it. Do not leave a ma.n.u.script to be returned to you by mail. Vaudeville performers are as honest as any other cla.s.s of men, but they are busy people and the thing that is put off is forgotten. They are in one town today and miles away tomorrow, and they may leave the ma.n.u.script on the bureau of their hotel room intending to mail it at the last minute--and rush away and forget it. Therefore you should ask for an immediate reading.

It will take a performer only a few minutes to decide if he cares to consider your act. He knows of what he is in need--and usually is prepared to tell you.

(e) _Do not ask for specific criticism_, for of all people in the world vaudeville performers are the most good-hearted. They would rather please you than hurt you. They will evade the point nine times out of ten; so save them and yourself needless embarra.s.sment.

And thus you may also avoid a false valuation of your ma.n.u.script.

(f) _If the performer cannot use the act himself_, and if the act possesses merit, the chances are that he will suggest some other performer who might want it. If he does not suggest someone himself, ask him. Vaudeville performers know what other performers want, because they are continually discussing plans for "next season." You may thus pick up some valuable information, even if you do not dispose of the particular ma.n.u.script you have for sale.

3. Producing Your Act Yourself

While you are likely at many turns of the sales road to have offered you an opportunity to produce your own act, this method of finding a market is rarely advisable. You would not start a little magazine to get your short-story into print; your story could not possess that much value even if it were a marvel--how much less so if you were unable to find someone willing to buy it!

But there is a still more important reason why you should not rush into producing your act yourself. Producing is a specialized business, requiring wide experience and exact knowledge. Besides, it is one of the most expensive pastimes in the world. Without a most comprehensive experience and peculiar abilities, failure is sure. Do not attempt private production even if you are offered the services of a performer or a producer in whom you have absolute faith. Remember, if they thought your act was really worth while they would be anxious to reap the profits for themselves.

4. Selling an Act to a Producer

While any performer who owns his act is a producer in the sense that he "produces" his act, there are men who make a business of buying ma.n.u.scripts, engaging people, and producing many acts in which they do not themselves play. Producers who may own a dozen acts of all different kinds would seem to offer to the writer for vaudeville an ideal market. How, then, is the writer to get in touch with them?

(a) _Selling through a Play broker_ is a method that is precisely the same as though you consigned a bill of goods to a commission agent, and paid him for disposing of it. The play broker reads your ma.n.u.script and engages to try to dispose of it for you, or returns it as not likely to fit in with the particular line of business of which he makes a specialty. If your act is really good and yet the broker is able to make some suggestions that will improve it, he is likely to offer such suggestions, purely in the hope of earning a commission, and in this way he may prove of distinct value as a critic. In any event, if he accepts a ma.n.u.script to sell for you, he will offer it in the quarters he thinks most likely to produce it and will attend to all the business incidental to the making of the contract.

For this service the broker charges a ten per cent commission.

This commission is paid either on the price of outright sale, or on the royalty account. If the act is sold on royalty, he will collect the customary advance and also the weekly payments. After deducting his commission, he will remit the balance to you.

On the last page of this chapter you will find a partial list of well-known play brokers. Although I do not know of any who deal exclusively in vaudeville material, any one of the agents who handles long plays is glad to handle an exceptionally fine playlet.

(b) _Seeking a personal interview with a producer_ is usually productive of one result: The office-boy says, "Leave your ma.n.u.script, and he'll read it and let you know." Anxious as he is to secure good material, a man who is busily engaged in producing vaudeville acts has little time to spend on granting personal interviews.

And there is another reason--he fears you will try to read your act to him. A personal reading by the author is either a most distressing affair, because the average writer cannot read stage material as it should be read, or else it is very dangerous to the listener's judgment. Many a producer has been tricked into producing an act whose merits a masterly reader has brought out so finely that its fatal faults were forgotten. And so the producer prefers to read a ma.n.u.script himself. Alone in his office he can concentrate on the act in hand, and give to it the benefit of his best judgment.

(c) _Offering a ma.n.u.script by mail_ is perfectly safe. There has never come to my knowledge one clearly proved instance of where a producer has "stolen an idea."

(d) _Send your ma.n.u.script by registered mail and demand a return receipt_. Thus you will save losses in the mail and hold a check against the loss of your ma.n.u.script in the producer's office. And when you send your ma.n.u.script by mail, invariably enclose stamps to pay the return to you by registered delivery. Better still, enclose a self-addressed envelope with enough postage affixed to insure both return and registry.

(e) _Three weeks for consideration_ is about the usual time the average producer requires to read a ma.n.u.script at his leisure.

In times when a producer is actively engaged in putting on an act, he may not have an hour in the week he can call his own. Therefore have patience, and if you do not receive a reply from him in three weeks, write again and courteously remind him that you would like to have his decision at his earliest convenience. Impatient letters can only harm your chance.

5. Hints on Prices for Various Acts

What money can be made by writing vaudeville material? This is certainly the most interesting question the writer for vaudeville can ask. Like the prices of diamonds, the prices of vaudeville acts depend on quality. Every individual act, and each kind of act, commands its own special price. There are two big questions involved in the pricing of every vaudeville ma.n.u.script. First, of what value is the act itself? Second, what can the performer or the producer afford to payor be made to pay for the act?

The first question cannot be answered for even a cla.s.s of acts.

The value of each individual act determines its own price. And even here there enters the element inherent in all stage material-- a doubt of value until performance before an audience proves the worth of the act. For this reason, it is customary for the purchaser of a vaudeville act to require that it first make good, before he pays for it. "Try and then buy," is the average vaudevillian's motto. If you are a good business man you will secure an advance against royalty of just as much as you can make the producer "give up." Precisely as in every other business, the price of service depends upon the individual's ability to "make a deal."

The answer to the second question likewise depends upon the vaudeville writer's individual ability as a business man. No hints can be given you other than those that you may glean from a consideration of average and record prices in the following paragraphs.

(a) _The monologue_ is usually sold outright. The performer nearly always will tell you--with no small degree of truth--that the monologist makes the monologue, not the monologue the monologist.

Many a monologue has sold for five dollars, and the purchaser been "stung" at that price. But very rarely is a monologue bought outright in ma.n.u.script--that is, before a try-out. A monologue must prove itself "there," before a monologist will pay any more than a small advance for the exclusive privilege of trying it out.

If the monologue proves itself, an outright offer will be made by the performer. While there are no "regular rates," from two hundred and fifty dollars to seven hundred dollars may be considered as suggestive of the market value of the average successful monologue.

In addition to this, the monologist usually retains the author to write new points and gags for him each week that he works. This, of course, increases the return from a monologue, and insures the writer a small weekly income.

In very rare cases monologues are so good and, therefore, so valuable that authors can retain the owners.h.i.+p and rent them out for a weekly royalty. In such a case, of course, the author engages himself to keep the material up to the minute without extra compensation. But such monologues are so rare they can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is little doubt that "The German Senator" is one of the most valuable monologue properties--if it does not stand in a cla.s.s by itself--that has ever been written.

For many years it has returned to Aaron Hoffman a royalty of $100 a week, thirty and forty weeks in the year. This may be considered the record price for a monologue.

(b) _The vaudeville two-act_ varies in price as greatly as the monologue. Like the monologue, it is usually sold outright. The performers use precisely the same argument about the two-act that is used about the monologue. It is maintained that the material itself is not to be compared with the importance of its presentation.

When a two-act has been tried out and found "there," the performers or the producer will offer a price for it.

The same rule, that vaudeville material is worth only as much as it will bring, applies to the two-act. From two hundred and fifty dollars to whatever you can get, may be considered suggestive of two-act prices. Although more two-acts have sold outright for less than three hundred dollars than have sold above five hundred dollars, a successful two-act may be made to yield a far greater return if a royalty arrangement is secured.

Whether it is a two-act, or any other vaudeville act, the royalty asking price is ten per cent of the weekly salary. This rate is difficult to enforce, and while five per cent is nearer the average, the producer would rather pay a definite fixed figure each week, than a percentage that must be reckoned on what may be a varying salary. Usually a compromise of a flat amount per playing week is made when a royalty is agreed on.