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The
daydream ends, and Betty Lou sits down at the desk. “Dear
Diary. Something most exciting and dreadful happened to me this
evening.” Her friend Bernadine (Laurann
Reese)
arrives and begins reading over her shoulder.
“Tonight
the clay of fortune shaped my future; but I knew I acted
unselfishly, thinking not for an instant of myself but only of my
loved ones. For it was tonight that I first met Conrad.
It all began with Molly, and when I found out that tonight Marvin is
eloping with Connie, not because of a tenderness for her, but because
of his mad desire for me.” |
“What’s
going to happen in the next chapter?” Bernadine asks.
“How do I know?” Betty Lou replies. “I’ll
just have to wait and experience it.” They go to the
movies to get some more ideas, leaving the diary on the desk.
And
of course, this being a farce, I discover the book — Diary
of a Darling Daughter, by Betty Lou Maxwell — and assume its
contents are true. My son Wilbur threatened by Conrad? My
daughter Connie eloping? Oh, no! I sink into a
chair. My wife’s Aunt Mary (Mary
Jo Fetter)
discovers me screaming and calls out, “Janet, call the
doctor. I think John’s control tower just went on the
blink.” CURTAIN.
INTERMISSION
UPDATE:
“Connie” and “Molly” met “Betty Lou’s
teacher” in Fort Myers in the spring of 2016. Tonya,
Sally, and Pat posted a picture on Facebook.
As
Act Two opens, Janet and Aunt Mary and I are pondering the shocking
news. Aunt Mary says, “You know what I think? I
don’t believe Wilbur should be allowed to associate with this
— this Conrad anymore.” I moan, “My own little
son. He’s just like me.” “That’s
beside the point, John,” Aunt Mary retorts.
“We’ve got to save him anyway.”
The
doorbell rings, and I yell, “It’s Conrad! Door the
bolt! I mean bore the dolt! I mean —” But
no, it’s only Betty Lou’s teacher (Pat
Ransome).
She’s come for a consultation, and we all exit the room.
Connie
and Marvin enter. Of course, in reality they aren’t
eloping; he’s going back to college, and he hasn’t even
asked her to “go steady” yet. But the following scene
made me laugh out loud when I first read the script.
The
bashful Marvin says, in part, “Gee whiz, Connie, I’m gonna
hate to leave. I gotta catch the bus in a few minutes.
Connie, I’m not much of a speech maker or anything like
that. I’m studying agriculture, and we spend all of our
time close to the soil and things like that, and raising crops and
things like that, and cows and things like that, and well, therefore,
I’ve never made many speeches. Connie, I — I think
the time has come for me to make a big decision. There comes a
time in a man’s life when he has to make decisions, and things
like that. Right now I’m standing at the crossroads.
I want you to help me decide something, Connie. Last week I
wouldn’t have asked you anything like this. But since
I’ve been home you’ve come to mean quite a bit to me.
I’ve found I can believe in you, and trust your judgment, and
things like that. Well, Connie ... you can answer yes or no to
this question ... just the way you really feel. Connie ...
should I buy a cow?”
Naturally,
that’s not the sort of question Connie led herself to expect,
but she recovers enough to pat him on the shoulder and say, “I
think it would be wonderful if you got a cow, Marvin.”
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At
this point I return to the room and discover the couple.
“I’m really excited, Mr. Maxwell,” Marvin tells me.
“Something
monumental’s about to happen to me. Connie has helped me reach
a big decision, and frankly, I feel I’ll be indebted to her for
the rest of my life. The two of us decided that —”
“I
am aware,” I growl, “of what you two have decided.” |
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“Must
have heard us talking. Basically, the idea’s sound,”
Marvin explains. “You see, I’ll just take her out to
the farm and dump her off with the folks. Plenty of room in the
barn. I’ll start out with one now, and get another next
year and one the next, and keep on getting another for ten years running.”
Of
course, this being a farce, they leave before the misunderstanding
is cleared up. But I notice that Marvin has left his suitcase
behind. I open it and discover, somewhat to my surprise, that
it’s filled with clothes.
Just
then the doorbell rings and I yell again, “It’s Conrad!”
Here
we ran into a slight continuity problem with the script. The
suitcase is lying open at center stage, and we can’t leave it
there. But the prop isn’t mentioned again in the stage
directions until 27 pages later, when Marvin appears in the doorway
at stage right to retrieve it — and finds it conveniently
sitting right next to the door. So I had to improvise some
business. I hope it didn’t appear too improbable. As
I yell “It’s Conrad,” in a panic I quickly close and
latch the suitcase, set it upright, and slide it 10 feet across the
stage floor towards the door, as if to impede Conrad’s progress
when he enters.
My
wife answers the door. It’s my boss, J.C. Mallory (Ed
Olson),
come to tell me he’s discovered a $3,000 accounting error and
we have to find the mistake immediately. He’s brought over
the books, and we all retire to the kitchen.
Learning
of this, Betty Lou recalls a movie where a man had mental blackouts
and didn’t know he was embezzling from his company. That
sets off a fourth daydream.
She
imagines Mr. Mallory discussing the missing money with his
bookkeeper (Sue
Beightler).
Then I enter the fantasy. I tell her that I’m having
periodic lapses of memory, and I’m worried. Standing in
front of the curtain downstage left, I put my arm around Betty Lou
and speak to her tenderly (while trying to project my voice enough to
be heard in the back row of our 500-seat gymnasium
and auditorium).
“I
want you to know,” I tell her, “that you’re the
finest girl I’ve ever known. As a daughter you’ve
been all a father could wish for, or desire. You’re good,
you’re sweet, and you’re understanding. That’s
why I’m coming to you with my — problem. Monday, when
I checked my bank account, I discovered I had $3,000 more than I
actually thought. Where did it come from? Where?”
We
discuss the horrific possibilities, and then I make my dramatic
exit, giving Betty Lou’s shoulder a little squeeze and saying,
“Remember, my dear. Anything I may be accused of, anything
people may say, just remember that I know not what I do.”
The lights come back up.
“The
world has taken a sorry turn,” Betty Lou muses. “But
that’s life. And life is a strange painting made up of
bright and cheery colors and black and purple. Fate is the
unseen artist that moves with quick and bewildering splashes across
the canvas.”
She
adds the embezzlement story to her diary. “You know what
I’m going to do? I’m going to take these episodes,
and tomorrow in study hall I’m going to change the names and
sorta rewrite it and hand it in for my English theme.”
After
she leaves, the women and J.C. Mallory return to the room.
Soon they pick up the diary, and my boss discovers the entry about my
theft. Then I enter, asking innocently whether Mr. Mallory has
found the missing $3,000.
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“I
certainly did,” he replies. “John, friend, pal,
buddy, companion — scoundrel, thief, no good bum! And you
thought you could get by with it!”
Hopping
behind a chair, I observe, “I can tell you’re upset.
What is it?” He shouts, “I’m gonna maul you
within an inch of your rascally, good-for-nothing life, or my name
isn’t James Conrad Mallory!”
Conrad?!
CURTAIN. |
As
Act Three begins, Betty Lou can’t find the diary she left right
there on the desk. “I’m doomed!” she wails.
“How can I lift the most gripping and heart-throbbing sequences
when it’s disappeared? My story’s due day after
tomorrow. Gee. These problems in life make things
very perplexing.”
Things
become even more perplexing when her teacher and Aunt Mary break the
news to her: her brother has run afoul of a gang of scoundrels,
and her sister is eloping, and now her father is an embezzler.
To Betty Lou, everything she wrote in her diary has come true!
She
warns Wilbur and Hercules — for real this time, not in a dream
— that Conrad is coming to get them at midnight. They
begin stuffing themselves as a last meal. Next she explains to
Mr. Mallory that I, her father, stole the money, but it isn't my
fault. “You see, he has spells. Just blacks
out. Somewhere along the line he has flipped his smokestack.”
The
boss forgives me in a weepy scene where we blow our noses several
times. (I asked Ed how to make a loud nose-blowing sound, and
he demonstrated how to cover one’s nose and mouth with a
handkerchief and use one’s lips to make the noise.) After
we exit, apparently we get into an offstage scuffle and the police
take us into custody.
Then
Betty Lou has an idea. “Why didn’t I think of this
sooner? Look, I just imagined everything I put in my diary,
didn’t I? And yet it came true, didn’t it? Now
all I’ve got to do is just imagine a way out! I’ll
just visualize a solution and that’s the way it’ll
happen.” She sits at the desk and prepares to daydream.
However,
this time the lights don’t dim, and we don’t hear my
spooky music; instead, we hear the doorbell ring. Did Nick
Taylor miss his cue? No, the audience is meant to understand
that this is not a daydream; whatever is about to transpire on
stage is really happening. But Betty Lou doesn’t know
that. She thinks it’s another of her fantasies.
The
visitor at the door is merely a woman with a flat tire, looking for
help, but Betty Lou thinks she’s Conrad’s moll Molly and
orders her to sit down. Wilbur and Hercules stagger in.
Having overindulged for their last meal, they’re now suffering
from severe indigestion. “Ohh, I’m dyin,’”
they moan. “Looks like I’m finally gettin’ out
of the eighth grade.” They collapse on the floor, and
Betty Lou covers their bodies with a blanket.
Marvin
comes back for his suitcase and is flabbergasted when Betty Lou puts
her arms around his neck and tells him, “I can’t let you
elope with Connie. We mean too much to each other, my dear
— you and I. You don’t want a girl like Connie when
you could have a woman like me.” Then the phone rings;
I’m calling from the police station. “I know,
Father,” Betty Lou tells me, “but we’ll carry on.
Farewell, Father.” And she hangs up on me.
Janet,
Aunt Mary, and the teacher come in to discover the baffling scene as
the clock strikes midnight. But then Betty Lou’s friend
Bernadine also enters, having found the book she identifies as Betty
Lou’s make-believe diary. “You mean,” the
teacher asks, “she just invented everything that’s
in there?”
“And
I’m having a vision now,” Betty Lou adds helpfully.
“Here’s Molly — and Wilbur and Hercules are
dead.” But the woman explains she’s not Molly, just
someone looking for a tire pump. And the boys are not dead,
they only wish they were. “Wilbur,” Betty Lou asks,
“do you mean you’re still alive? What a dirty,
chintzy trick. I can’t figure it out. I just
can’t figure it out.”
After
the adults give the moral of the story — “Understanding
the Effervescent Adolescent” is an impossibility — we have
the final CURTAIN.
So
that’s a summary of the plot. The script was also loaded
with jokes that I haven’t included (sample: “Bernadine, you
should never talk to strange men.” “I know it.
That’s what mother says. So I let him do most of
the talking.”)
We
were a bunch of high-school amateurs merely reciting a script, and I
suspect the line readings we rattled off were not ideal. For
example, at the time I thought “hoody” was just an odd
hoodlum-derived interjection used randomly by one of the characters,
because Carl didn’t say it with a wave of his hand like the
greeting it’s apparently supposed to be.
However,
as I read the play now, having watched almost an additional 50 years
of sitcoms, I can imagine it being enacted by an experienced cast of
professionals who know how to draw out every possible laugh.
And as I imagine that performance, Dear Diary actually is funny.
My
memories of the cast party that followed are slightly fuzzier,
because there was no script for that.
I
recall two wrap parties, actually, the other being the one that
followed our junior class play a year earlier. I think
one was held at the home of Sherry Keigley and the other at the home
of Kelly Drake. The Keigleys and the Drakes were almost the
only families in town who had color TVs, and on one of those Friday
nights I recall seeing a bit of the Johnny Carson show in color —
a first for me. But which party was which year, I’m not sure.
However,
I do remember the arrival of the star of our senior class play.
Roxye was no longer wearing Betty Lou’s sensible skirt and
sweater. She had changed into a rather glamorous party dress,
with one shoulder daringly bared. In our little town in 1965,
anyway, it was glamorous.
Recently
I ran across a photo of model Donna Lazarescu wearing a shorter
version of that dress. I couldn’t resist colorizing a
couple of photos from the play to change Donna’s face into
Roxye’s, thereby realizing my fantasy of what really
caused Hercules and Wilbur’s mouths to gape and knees to shake.
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The
curtain rises on John Maxwell (me) lying on the sofa in a robe,
groaning, having taken a day off from work due to a headache.
But I can’t get any rest. My family is making too much noise.
