The revival of the road, until such time as the turn of the tide has made that revival automatic, could be accomplished under wise leadership that would work for, say, forty decent plays, decently produced, underwritten by local subscription lists. Any community of a hundred thousand population will furnish an audience, once they are assured that there is a certainty of their getting adult entertainment. These aren’t day dreams; everybody knows them; several times we have banded together to fight for them. The last meeting called by John Golden of the managerial group actually had a real grip on this problem, only dinner time came around and we all went home. If some one were to call a meeting of a strong group of actors, authors and managers, all instructed to sit there until they accomplished something, I am sure we would at last be under way—provided always that no lawyers be allowed at the meeting and that it be called at a good restaurant.
During my two years with the Paramount Company, my contract reserved half of my time for my own private affairs and I divided this time as honestly as I knew how between my duties to the Authors’ League and my writing. By now my son Donald had finished college and gone to Hollywood as a staff writer, and Owen had walked out on Professor Baker at Yale, horned into the theater when my back was turned and secured for himself the part of the son in THE BARKER with Dick Bennett in Chicago. This action of his, so his mother informed me, was the most dreadful calamity of modern times and would undoubtedly bring her in sorrow to the grave, but if you have ever seen her seated in an audience where this boy is a member of the cast of players, you might possibly read in her deeply absorbed face a certain smug satisfaction that would not, I am sure, make you think of either graves or calamities.
I, being of coarser stuff, never for a moment regretted the fact that these two boys of ours had insisted upon following in our footsteps; how could they do anything else? They were born of two stage-struck parents and had cut their teeth by biting managers who frequented our establishment. If a child learns anything in the home circle, how could they help learning about the theater? Their mother knows a little about things outside its range, but I know nothing else at all, not even enough to be ashamed of the fact. The great happiness of my life to-day is that as we grow older, the four of us, we grow closer together, and that I can talk with my sons of their problems with the authority of one who knows something about them.