On O. Henry, Vaudeville and the Vitagraphoscope

The writer known as O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) covered a lot of ground in his relatively short life: small town druggist, bank clerk, Texas ranch hand, hotel cigar vendor, prison inmate, government bureaucrat (draftsman for a land office), and writer/editor/publisher with one foot in real literature, one foot in pulp. Like Thomas Wolfe he was a native North Carolinian. The bulk of his adulthood however was spent in Austin and Houston, but he also spent time in New Orleans and Latin America, and and the last part of his life was spent in New York City at a time when the publishing business, along with everything else, was growing at an unbelievable rate. All of these experiences went into the making of a writer with deep interest in, and experience of, and sympathy for, all kinds of people.

O. Henry turned out hundreds of short stories during that productive life, his pen name becoming a kind of by-word for a certain kind of ironic, twist ending, much emulated by writers of all types, from melodrama, to horror, to science fiction. Notable examples being E.C. Comics (e.g. Tales from the Crypt) and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. Of the many hundreds of his stories “The Gift of the Magi”, “The Ransom of Red Chief”, “The Retrieved Reformation” are undoubtedly the best known.

The first two were included in the 1952 anthology film O. Henry’s Full House. Henry King directed “The Gift of the Magi”, a Christmas tale about an impoverished young couple (Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger) giving up the things they loved in order to buy gifts for each other they can no longer use. “The Ransom of Red Chief” was directed by Howard Hawks from a script by none other than Ben Hecht,Nunnally Johnson, and Charles Lederer, and starring Fred Allen and Oscar Levant. It was removed from many prints of the film, perhaps because the comedy was a bit too black. Both Allen and Levant had very sour and acerbic presences, and the hilariously dark plot is about a couple of kidnappers who snatch a child so obnoxious they pay the parents to take him back. (It’s definitely a precursor to things like the excellent 1986 ZAZ comedy Ruthless People). The other segments in the film include “The Cop and the Anthem” with Charles Laughton, David Wayne, and Marilyn Monroe; “The Clarion Call” with Richard Widmark; and “The Last Leaf” with Anne Baxter, Gregory Ratoff, and Jean Peters. The film was narrated by John Steinbeck, an indication that O. Henry was respected as much for his realism as his fantastical twists.

As for “A Retrieved Reformation”, it was turned into a successful Broadway play in 1910 under the title of Alias Jimmy Valentine, and adapted for film in 1915, 1920, 1928, and 1942, and a radio show in 1938. The author lived to see the Broadway hit, but died a horrible alcohol related death before the screen successes. All told, there have been 300 adaptations of O. Henry works for the screen, and even a TV show called O. Henry Playhouse (1956-57). And of course the prestigious O. Henry literary award (established 1919) as well as the famous candy bar which may or may not have been inspired by his pen name. It debuted in 1920 and was quietly discontinued shortly before its 100th anniversary:

The man himself had diabetes, so I hope he didn’t go around eating candy bars. He definitely drank, and that’s what killed him in 1910. In addition to being diabetic he had an enlarged heart and cirrhosis of the liver. Young Franklin P. Adams organized his memorial and funeral arrangements.

We love books, but show business is our primary bailiwick, and this post sort of came about because it occurred to me that O. Henry would have been a perfect person to pen those one act vaudeville playlets that were such a mainstay of the Big Time (it’s the topic of an upcoming book project of mine). I think he would intuitively grasped that peculiar form. Those socko endings! He also dabbled in amateur theatre, sang with quartets, and played the guitar and mandolin. I know of at least one vaudeville sketch adapted from an O. Henry work, Joe E. Brown’s “Arrest Me”, adapted from “The Cop and the Anthem.”

But most importantly, there’s THIS, the final chapter of his 1904 novel Cabbages and Kings. The title for his first book length work (which is more like a short story collection) is of course taken from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter”. The last section, The Vitagraphoscope is semi-autobiographical — Porter really did embezzle money from a bank and abscond to a Latin American country (Honduras, in real life). But he was robbed of his happy ending — his wife contracted TB and couldn’t join him in exile, which is why he returned to the States and served his jail time (a three year stretch).

But more than that, we prize this piece of his writing for the insight the writer demonstrates on the nature of vaudeville, as well as his appreciation for silent movies. His slightly satirical title of course is a humorous mash-up of the names of silent movie companies: Edison had a Vitascope, Stuart Blackton headed up Vitagraph.

And now, O. Henry’s The Vitagraphoscope:

*****

Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic cyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of (property) china-ware. Neither do they consider that their seat coupons entitle them to be instructed whether or no there is a sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.

Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of the united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated by the comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to the Cerberi of the fifty-cent seats.

But our program ends with a brief “turn” or two; and then to the exits. Whoever sits the show out may find, if he will, the slender thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that, perhaps, only the Walrus will understand.

~Extracts from a letter from the first vice-president of the Republic Insurance Company, of New York City, to Frank Goodwin, of Coralio, Republic of Anchuria.~

~My Dear Mr. Goodwin:~–Your communication per Messrs. Howland and Fourchet, of New Orleans, has reached us. Also their draft on N.Y. for $100,000, the amount abstracted from the funds of this company by the late J. Churchill Wahrfield, its former president…. The officers and directors unite in requesting me to express to you their sincere esteem and thanks for your prompt and much appreciated return of the entire missing sum within two weeks from the time of its disappearance…. Can assure you that the matter will not be allowed to receive the least publicity…. Regret exceedingly the distressing death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but… Congratulations on your marriage to Miss Wahrfield… many charms, winning manners, noble and womanly nature and envied position in the best metropolitan society….

~Cordially yours, Lucius E. Applegate,~ FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT THE REPUBLIC INSURANCE COMPANY.

~The Vitagraphoscope~ (Moving Pictures) ~The Last Sausage~

SCENE–An Artist’s Studio. The artist, a young man of prepossessing appearance, sits in a dejected attitude, amid a litter of sketches, with his head resting upon his hand. An oil stove stands on a pine box in the center of the studio. The artist rises, tightens his waist belt to another hole, and lights the stove. He goes to a tin bread box, half-hidden by a screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage, turns the box upside-down to show that there is no more, and chucks the sausage into a frying-pan, which he sets upon the stove. The flame of the stove goes out, showing that there is no more oil. The artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage, in a sudden access of rage, and hurls it violently from him. At the same time a door opens, and a man who enters receives the sausage forcibly against his nose. He seems to cry out; and is observed to make a dance step or two, vigorously. The newcomer is a ruddy-faced, active, keen- looking man, apparently of Irish ancestry. Next he is observed to laugh immoderately; he kicks over the stove; he claps the artist (who is vainly striving to grasp his hand) vehemently upon the back. Then he goes through a pantomime which to the sufficiently intelligent spectator reveals that he has acquired large sums of money by trading pot-metal hatchets and razors to the Indians of the Cordillera Mountains for gold dust. He draws a roll of money as large as a small loaf of bread from his pocket, and waves it above his head, while at the same time he makes pantomime of drinking from a glass. The artist hurriedly secures his hat, and the two leave the studio together.

~The Writing on the Sands~

SCENE–The Beach at Nice. A woman, beautiful, still young, exquisitely clothed, complacent, poised, reclines near the water, idly scrawling letters in the sand with the staff of her silken parasol. The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose is one that you feel to be impermanent–you wait, expectant, for her to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably become stock-still. She idly scrawls in the sand; and the word that she always writes is “Isabel.” A man sits a few yards away. You can see that they are companions, ever if no longer comrades. His face is dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable–but not quite. The two speak little together. The man also scratches on the sand with his cane. And the word that he writes is “Anchuria.” And then he looks out where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle with death in his gaze.

~The Wilderness and Thou~

SCENE–~The Borders of a Gentleman’s Estate in a Tropical Land.~ An old Indian, with a mahogany-colored face, is trimming the grass on a grave by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and walks slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief twilight. In the edge of the grove stands a man who is stalwart, with a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut loveliness. When the old Indian comes up to them the man drops money in his hand. The grave-tender, with the stolid pride of his race, takes it as his due, and goes his way. The two in the edge of the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close– for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

 For more on vaudeville please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on silent film read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.