Natalie looked at the reviews and declared, "They're mixed."
The show closed after four weeks. But during its brief run, Ben Roberts and I had three plays on Broadway.
Shortly after the closing of Dream with Music, I received a strange telephone call. A man with a thick, Hungarian accent said, "My name is Ladislaus Bush-Fekete. George Haley suggested I call you."
George Haley was a writer I knew in Hollywood. "What can I do for you, Mr. Bush-Fekete?"
"I would like to talk to you. Could we have lunch?"
"Yes."
When I hung up the phone, I called George Haley. "What is a Ladislaus Bush-Fekete?" I asked.
He laughed. "He's a famous Hungarian playwright in Europe. He's had a lot of hits over there."
"What does he want with me?"
"He has an idea for a play. He came to me but I'm busy, so I thought of you. He needs someone to work with who speaks good English. Anyway, it can't hurt you to meet with him."
We had lunch at my hotel. Ladislaus Bush-Fekete was an affable man who was about five foot four and must have weighed three hundred pounds. With him was a pleasant, matronly-looking brunette.
"This is my wife, Marika."
We shook hands. As we sat down, Bush-Fekete said, "We are playwrights. We have done many things in Europe."
"I know. I talked to George Haley."
"Marika and I have a fantastic idea for a play, and we would be very happy if you would write it with us."
"What's the idea?" I asked cautiously.
"It's about a soldier who comes back from the war to a little hometown, to a fiance. The problem is the soldier has fallen in love with someone at the front."
It did not sound very exciting to me. "I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't think - "
"The twist is that the soldier who comes back to the little hometown is a woman."
"Oh." The more I thought about that, the more the idea appealed to me.
"She has to choose between her fiance and the soldier she met."
"Are you interested?" Marika asked.
"I'm interested. But I have a partner I work with."
Ladislaus Bush-Fekete said, "That's fine, but his share will come out of your share."
I nodded. "That's all right."
I called Ben that evening and told him what was happening.
"I'm afraid you'll have to do without me," he said. "My CO is teed off that I've taken so much time away from the post. From now on, I'm trapped here."
"Damn! I'll miss you."
"Me, too, buddy. Good luck."
Laci, as he asked me to call him, and Marika and I went to work. Marika's accent was not too bad, but Laci was difficult to understand. We called the play Star in the Window.
We finished the play in four months and my agent showed it to a producing team, Choate & Elkins, and they were eager to produce it. The director was Joseph Calleia. We began casting. Peggy Conklin, an excellent Broadway actress, was set as the female lead. We tested a lot of men, but we were having trouble finding the male lead. One day an agent sent over a young actor.
"Would you mind reading?" I asked him.
"Of course not."
I handed him five pages of the script. He and Peggy Conklin began to read the scene. They had read about two minutes when I said to the actor, "Thank you very much."
His chin went out and he said angrily, "Right."
He shoved the pages back at me and started to walk off the stage.
"Wait a minute," I called. "You've got the part."
He stopped, confused. "What?"
"That's right."
He had caught the essence of the character instantly and I knew he would be perfect for the role.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Kirk Douglas."
The rehearsals went well and Peggy Conklin and Kirk Douglas turned out to be a perfect combination. When the rehearsals were finished, we took the play out of town. Washington, D.C., was our first stop, and the reviews fully justified our optimism.
"Star in the Window shines bright."
"Peggy Conklin plays the lieutenant with a great deal of spirit and vitality."
"Kirk Douglas is delightful as Sergeant Steve, always assured of himself and never missing a beat in his line of patter."
"The audience last night found Star in the Window gay and amusing and gave it an enthusiastic round of applause that kept the curtain going up."
I was delighted. After the debacle of Dream with Music, it would be wonderful to have another hit on Broadway. Before the New York opening, the producers had decided to change the title of the play to Alice in Arms.
The play opened on Broadway January 31, 1945. Everything went smoothly. After the opening night curtain came down, we all went to Sardi's to celebrate the reviews. The New York Times was the first one we saw: "A plague on the house. The dialogue is so wooden it could splinter."
Daily News: "A mistake."
Herald Tribune: "Shopworn."
PM: "Harmless but halting."
And these were the most positive reviews.
I locked myself in my hotel room for the next three days, refusing to answer the telephone. I kept going over the reviews in my mind, again and again. The dialogue is so wooden it could splinter . . . shopworn . . . a mistake . . .
The critics were right. I was not good enough to write for Broadway. My successes had been the result of dumb luck.
Whatever was going to happen, I knew that I could not spend the rest of my life in a hotel room feeling sorry for myself. I decided to return to Hollywood. I would write an original treatment, try to sell it, and write the screenplay. The problem was that I had no story ideas. In the past they had come easily to me, but now my mind was too distressed to concentrate. I had never tried to force an idea before, but I was desperate to come up with a project.