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About this Episode
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Hosts & Guests
Transcript
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The American Broadcasting Company presents Quiet Play, which is written and directed by Willis Cooper, and which features Ernest Chaplin.
Quiet Play's for today is called Meet John Smith. John?
I'm funny about snow, I guess.
Yeah, I get sentimental about it. I get silly about it. The way some people get about pussy willows and
Pacific in the springtime, the way you get about kids and dogs or...
Simon's cats, you know. I was looking at the post the other day and there were some pictures of the fighting in the bulge.
When was it four years ago, Christmas time?
Soldiers wearing white sheets over them, tanks painted white, the snow sifting down a little pine trees pile thick with it.
How awful. I was having to fight with each other Christmas time in the snow.
Blood on the snow. There wasn't a big blood on the snow. The snow was kind of...
All right, sacred.
Fire star ever since I was a kid, I hope it's snowing when I die.
You ever feel that way?
Snow. Peaceful snow.
Yeah, it's the only thing on this earth, you know, it's really eternal. It's always here.
Sure, it goes away from the lowlands in the hot weather, but up high there's always snow, always been snow.
Way even down on the equator of this snow all year round, I can even remember the names of some of my mountains.
I can coagulate. Isn't that right? I can coagulate in Kilimanjaro.
Remember having even wrote a story about that snow was a Kilimanjaro, wasn't it?
Sure, swell story.
See, the man reads books.
But I was talking about snow, about how I'd always hoped it'd be snowing when I die.
Five will get to ten. It will be a chunk of it against you, I know.
Well, all that's a long way around to making a start.
But the snow was the reason for what you see.
And the snow will be flying again pretty soon.
I'll be glad to see it, even if.
Oh, well.
It was New Year's Day in 1939. New Year's Day.
And boy, what a hangover.
For zero night, had some people in New Year's Eve, we had a lot of champagne.
They brought a lot of champagne. Somebody brought some other stuff.
You ever tried Amboca. Amboca, it's a common Dutch concoction.
It's kind of a custard. It's got snaps in it.
It was a spoon. And somebody comes and hits you with a railroad tie.
Johnny King had a kind of vodka. I never heard about it.
It's a rough guy, I think it's called.
It's got an effusion of buffalo grass, whatever that is, isn't it?
It's wonderful, kind of like tobacco.
Summer afternoon.
I feel the hay. And boy, howdy.
Champagne and avocado.
Benz of broccoli.
Get eggs and hangovers.
And shooting paint.
It was a seal's idea to go over the Lafayette and drink a burrito, whatever you did to it.
Some onion soup.
And boy, it was snowing.
I felt some better as we walked over. We got inside and ordered.
And sat there with a front window with a marble top table.
And pushed the crushed curtains aside and looked out.
It was snowing off of our big fat flakes floating down.
People going by with their hats and their shoulders piled high.
Loving it most of them.
So we had some soup.
We began to feel partially human again.
The ceiling across the table.
Oh, that poor old fella.
What poor old fella me?
Nobody pays attention to one.
Where?
Up there in the snow. Say there goes another one.
What are you talking about?
Your man out there on the corner, people passing him off.
Well, what do you want him to do?
John, go give him a dime or something.
Where?
There.
Oh, gosh.
There's not a shine begging in the snow.
Say there goes another one on the jeep.
The poor old guy's probably starving.
Not a new year's day in the snow.
Well, pardon me, some more onion soup.
What?
Oh, give me a dollar with it.
Oh.
Five the smallest are gone.
Give me that.
Thanks.
I'll be right back.
John, take your coat.
I don't need any coat I said.
And I busted right off and found the steps in the snow.
No hat or anything.
And I called the poor old fella.
Hey, I called.
Hey, bud.
Oh, man, that's true.
Mr.
If you got a dime, I'll tell you what.
I'm about frozen.
It's new year's day in here.
Oh, my gosh, Mr.
Go get some, deep bud.
Find yourself someplace to sleep and get warm.
Oh, gosh.
I found it.
It's all right.
New year's present for my wife and me.
Wife?
Where have I not shed air in the window?
Oh.
Oh.
Thank you, mom.
Thank you, mom.
Thank you ever so much.
This, mom.
Thank you.
God bless you, mom.
God bless you too, Mr.
It's all right.
We all have tough luck.
Happy New Year.
I'm saving you, Mr.
Gosh, it's been a long time since anybody said that to me.
Yeah, your wife's taping on a window.
She wants you to come in before you catch your death of cold.
Oh, yeah.
Well, good luck, bud.
Hey, Mr.
What's your name?
What difference does that make?
Go get some, deep.
Well, I was just thinking I could walk over to Grace Church tonight.
I could say a prayer for you, sir.
I was going to pray anyway.
Thanks, partner.
My name's John Smith.
It is.
Well, what do you know about that?
What?
That's my name too.
John Smith.
Hey.
Period.
That's all.
His name was John Smith.
My name's John Smith.
Then we met in the snow until you were stayed ten years ago.
Yeah, I know.
I used to learn the snow and shoot it a minute watching and clump away through the snow,
and I thought,
Oh, boy, I fought John Smith.
Mary, but for the whatever it is, goes this John Smith.
And we'll see you down here, busted the window, wrapping on it with her wedding ring,
making faces out of me to come in before I froze to.
Well, so New Year's Day in 1939 was on a Sunday that made Monday the holiday,
and I didn't have to work.
We just sat around the house loafing,
and I was drinking up what was left of the New Year's champagne.
The alarm comes evening.
I said,
Do you mind if I go off for a walk to see you?
She said, No, I'm going ahead.
So I put on my leather jacket and my other shoes went off and walked in the snow.
And it was black and dirty already, like it always is in New York.
And it went well.
Maybe it'll still be nice if I'm washing this square.
So I am all over there.
Yeah, it was nice.
The lights and stuff, you know.
The tree was still there alongside the arch.
I brushed the snow off of the bench and sat down for a minute.
Wasn't anybody else in the square except me?
But all of a sudden somebody said, kind of quiet.
You know, how flat voices sound when they're snow.
And this voice said, Hello, Mr. John Smith.
And I looked up and down if it wasn't my little old man, little old John Smith.
Well, I said.
And all of a sudden, John Smith.
I thought that was you.
Sir.
How you doing?
That thing you gave me yesterday brought me off a good luck, Mr. Smith.
John.
Huh?
John, that's my name.
Oh.
What you mean, good luck?
Well, I got me a job shoveling snow this morning.
I made four bucks.
That's fine.
I could give you a part of the five if you wanted me to.
I forget it.
No, I really like to pay it back.
I need some other time.
Well, I got seven bucks altogether, Mr. John.
Well, what if I bought you a drink?
What would you mind?
I won't say no.
I don't mind if I do.
Ah, sure.
That's fine.
Yeah.
You like to walk over to McSorley's with me, huh?
I usually go there.
Well, sir, I thought.
A mug of ale would go all right, I thought.
Yes, sir.
And it'll make your boy feel better.
There, I was full of holiday spirit.
Come on, John Smith.
I said, let's not walk to McSorley's.
Let's run.
You know, McSorley's on 7th Street.
I just talked about right there in my Cooper Union.
Grand Place, no women, no chromium plating.
Just about a little bar, a couple of cats.
Four inch sandwiches, hard world eggs.
And ale.
Boy, howdy.
Yeah, and in a winter time, the big ol' stove in the front room
red hot and stilly eaten.
So, everywhere in the back room,
not quite so hot, but mighty fine.
And a mug of ale apiece.
Ah, that was nice.
I sure am grateful to you, John.
Well, I sent shut up and let's have another ale.
Hey, it's on me.
And I wanted to know that we had something under it.
800 mugs of that ale before the evening was over.
And that ale is all right.
And pretty soon we were talking like old pals.
John Smith and me.
Sick.
Say, well, what do you do for a limb, John?
I'm a newspaper man, John.
I'm no newspaper man, myself.
Well, I sold.
I said and I didn't tell him I was in a
classified department selling ads over the counter.
Yeah, many years ago.
Very business.
I said and hoped he wouldn't pursue the subjects.
Well, there was.
I mean, it wasn't a reporter or anything like that.
Well, that's several other ale.
Yeah, I'll get it.
I was in the classified department selling ads over the counter.
I pretty much dropped my mug.
But he was on the way to the bar.
And when he came back, he had to be mine, sat down and grinned at me.
Yes, sir.
Just ten years ago tomorrow that I left the business.
That's all?
Yeah.
Not really.
That boss I had.
He hated me.
I guess.
Do you remember just his plane?
We had a bottle stashed away in the men's room.
I went in to take a little snort and this
he came right in after me.
Just as I was living up the bottle.
You know what he did?
He knocked that bottle right out of my hand and busted it all over the floor.
And that's what I said.
You're fired, he said.
And I said, who cares about being fired?
But why'd you have to bust a bottle?
With that sloan.
Yes, sir.
You know what happened?
He called me up and apologized that night and begged me to come back to work.
Where do you think of that?
Ten years ago tomorrow.
I spacked a cop once in the Hawthorne plant in Chicago.
Say, I did that once too and I can...
I was smoking in the yard and he came up on his bicycle and called me out of my name.
I knocked him right out of his bike.
I remember so well.
It was my birthday.
I was 23 years old, 1923, April 2nd.
I was 22 years old too.
Only it was in 1913.
He was in April too.
I think.
A coincidence, huh?
A coincidence.
Yeah.
I used to have an awful temper.
Yeah, me too, blazing.
Yeah.
So you're a newspaper man.
Why do you want sloan?
Well...
Well, maybe.
Say, John, do you want me to get you a job?
I could do it.
No, no, no, no, thanks, John.
I'm laying low for a while.
I don't want any publicity.
Anytime, though, thanks.
Say, I don't know how to tell you about the time I was a newspaper man.
No, that was me.
Oh, no, me.
I got fired.
I got fired, yes.
Well, I didn't have long to wait.
Some of the boys kept the bottle slashed away in the men's room with the office and Tuesday morning I slipped in there just to take a little smart.
The scallion came right in after me just as I was lifting up the bottle, you know what he meant?
He knocked that bottle right out of my hand and busted it all over the floor.
Your fire, he says.
I says, who cares about being fired?
Why did you have to bust the bottle?
When that I swung on him.
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I heard that before.
Yeah, so I died.
Ten years after it happened to John Smith that happened to John Smith.
It's not pretty low about it.
But I got a funny thought in the back in my mind.
What was it?
John Smith had said to me.
You know what happened?
He called me off and I apologize that night and they needed something to work.
All right, it was silly.
But I decided I wouldn't tell the CEO right away.
I sat alongside the telephone for 11 o'clock, waiting for a call.
And the phone didn't ring once.
I take another Wednesday evening, January 4th, 1939.
As seen as again, Mixorly, the actors of John Smith, John Smith,
and several pewter mugs of Mr. Mixorly's fine product.
I am speaking, I say, say, John.
Did you tell me your boss called you up and apologized and asked you to come back to work?
He was a web boss.
The one that fired you ten years ago.
Oh.
You're perfectly honest, Johnny.
That was a little mullarty.
I was sitting here.
You know, I'm going to climb the exact rail that went up.
You know, and you look up small.
I'm sorry.
Why, why yes?
I was just wondering.
Just take it.
No.
No, he really didn't call me up.
But I met a fellow on the street a week or two later, and I got a job in a hotel.
And a nightclub.
And I could tell you more things about a hotel.
Oh, yeah, I bet.
Say.
What?
That fight you told me about with the policeman on the bicycle, like the one I had.
Was that point true?
No, sir.
Hacking a high April 2nd, 1913.
And I got a job three days later.
And this time, ten years later, after John Smith got fired from his newspaper.
I met a fellow on the street a couple of weeks later.
And I got a job.
I hope all these days, I'm getting old, bald up.
And I'm going to get a job.
I'm going to get a job.
I'm going to get a job.
I'm going to get a job.
I hope all these days, I'm getting old, bald up.
But if you just remember ten years, you'll have it.
This all happened almost ten years ago.
On January 26th, the Thursday, the seal came running into the hotel where I was working as a nightclub.
I could tell you more things about hotels.
John, he's dying.
Who's dying?
That poor old man, that John Smith.
You know, the one who gave us five dollars to a new year's day for Lafayette.
He's been hurt.
Why, how do you know?
They just call the house, and they keep asking me.
They'll call the house.
I told you hospital.
He's in Annie's and expected to live.
And he keeps calling for you.
Oh, that's too bad.
Can you go right over?
Well, you know, I can't.
I've only been on the job here for two days.
Oh, John, I think of that poor old man lying there all alone.
I can't do it.
I can't leave.
Wait.
I'll call a belt here.
Oh, good.
Stay there.
Hurry.
He's in the emergency ward.
Hello, Belgium.
Emergency ward, please.
Hello.
I'm calling you about the John Smith.
Why?
It's afternoon.
If I talk at University, I know.
It's afternoon.
Yes, my ass cracker.
Do you know the University of Italy?
Eight.
Yeah.
My name?
John Smith.
No, John Smith's a patient, too.
We've got the same names.
All right.
Yes, that's right.
Thanks.
How is he?
He's checking.
Good.
Yes, hello.
Hello.
Yes.
Yes, I'm the one.
Yes, that's right.
My wife said you call.
Okay, thanks.
Yes, I'll come over in the morning and get back.
Okay.
Thanks.
What?
He's dead.
And I went and got the things John Smith had left me.
No, not much.
John Smith, no address, it said on a tank.
Just John Smith, no address.
A tiny little bun will look like paper
It's a shaking oak scroll across the ravings.
Dear friend John, it's him.
Dear friend John, you're a mighty good person.
You're a mighty good.
Something or other I couldn't read it.
This is all I got to leave you.
It said maybe you could use this stuff.
Your own despicable man.
Sign John Smith.
I see a sniffer a little, and I guess I must have bought two.
Especially when I cut the string and three dollar bills fell out.
I picked them up and put them in my pocket.
The tattered little old notebook
The leaves falling out across the cover of the legend.
John Smith, his diary.
Well, I wasn't a newspaper man anymore, but...
Why don't you go to bed now, John?
You can read it tonight on the job.
It'll help pass the time away.
You need something to pass the time away.
There's long nights alone behind the desk of a third-rate hotel.
You need something besides phone calls, complaining there's no hot water,
and make those people turn down their radio.
What time is it? Call me at seven o'clock.
You need somebody to talk to through those stickierly morning hours,
when there's nothing to read, but the hotel guide
and the women's page last Friday's newspaper.
I turned first to the period in the diary when John...
Been a hotel micro.
Ten years before me.
John had seen was no angel in his earlier days.
No angel indeed, there was a girl at his hotel.
There, some little town in Delaware.
The girl who took his eye, Helen, the waitress,
blonde, the diary said blonde and petite.
You got acquainted.
You got very well acquainted.
There was an assistant housekeeper in my hotel.
Mickey, her name was Blackhear, snapping Irish eyes
and a laugh like Tommy Bartlett on the radio.
Mickey, pretty Mickey.
I used to sing to her once she was going off to be.
Ah, that old song.
And it seemed John Smith got in trouble over his Helen white trouble.
The diary hinted at a certain unpleasantness as ten years before.
But John and his diary always insisted righteously that he loved his wife.
I love grace, one paragraph red.
This is only a passing passie, Helen is a lovely girl, but I love grace.
Well, I love Lucille.
I'm straight more this old romance, I thought sleepily.
Put my arms down on the switchboard, laid my head on them and dropped off the sleepboard.
And woke up with Mickey standing at the counter laughing at me.
Hey, wake up and go home to your wife.
She said, it's morning and I got work to do.
John, have you read all that poor old man's diary yet?
He's not a poor old man, he was just ten years older than I am.
Is that so?
He looks like so.
Ten years older than me to the day.
Have you read it all yet?
Why?
Well, I'd like to read it too.
Well, I get finished with it.
All right.
Is it interesting?
Sort of.
John.
That's true.
When are you going to get a raise?
Gosh, I've only been there such a short time.
Are we pretty broke?
Well, a collector was here for the furniture, and I've paid the rent at this month.
You haven't.
Well, darling, it's off the hard on your salary, the hotel, you know.
Oh, it's the best I can do with it.
I'm sorry, darling.
What are you thinking about?
I was just thinking.
I might.
No, what I was thinking about.
I was remembering a page in John Smith's diary.
Today was February 7th, 1939.
The entry in John Smith's diary for February 7th, 1929.
I knew it practically by heart.
Hey, that's plenty of money.
There isn't a chance the world is there ever finding it out.
Besides, when I get home, I'll pay it back.
I'll take 20 tonight.
20 tomorrow night.
Pretty sure I'll be one.
And so I took 20 and 20 and 20 from the hotel.
And I phoned in the records and I told you see it.
I borrowed the money from a friend.
That's what John Smith did 10 years before.
And that sent someone's diary.
That diary was a very strange thing.
I read that John Smith broke his arm in 1908.
I broke mine in 1918.
John Smith was married in 1925.
I was married in 1935.
John Smith stole money in 1929.
10 years later, I did the same thing.
John Smith had a girl named Helen in 1929.
In 1939, I had a girl named Mickey.
And in 1930, John Smith fell heir to a very tidy little fortune.
His great uncle left his home.
I didn't even know I had a great uncle, Norbert.
But I wasn't at all surprised when 1940 came around
and I got $30,000 from Uncle Norbert's estate.
And so we'll see him.
I did very well.
Thank you for the next few years.
We'll see him and I.
And Mickey and I, just like John Smith did with his Helen and his grace.
Somehow or other, I didn't look at John's diary for years.
He got put in a bookcase.
You know how these are.
But...
Sure, maybe it was that kind of subconscious stuff you read about.
Maybe I didn't want to read it or...
My subconscious didn't want me to.
So, there it's set to last Wednesday.
I pulled out a book and the diary fell under the floor.
Well, I said.
And I picked it up.
I turned to the back of the diary in 1938.
Ten years ago.
And before I knew what I was engrossed in John's account
about grace who found out about Helen and what happened.
And the door opened in the shoes, gone dead.
Where?
You and your girlfriend, Mickey.
Mickey.
What are you talking about?
Don't try to stole me.
I know all about her and about you.
You...
Don't try to deny it.
I know all about it.
I'm gonna fix you.
What are you going to do?
I'll show you.
Look at that phone dial.
I'll show you.
I'll tell everybody in town.
I'll divorce you.
Look at that phone dial.
I will now.
You'll see it.
Get away from me. I'll take you.
Give me that phone.
Hello? Hello?
And John Smith's diary.
And they're on the desk beside Lucille.
I could either get the phone away from Grace
but I couldn't for a minute.
And I hear it was a deathful happen.
And the date was September 29th, 1938.
Ten years ago last Wednesday, the day that John Smith became a murderer,
as well as a thief.
And me?
Yes, I took the diary away with me.
Has anybody found it?
Well, they haven't found me yet.
They won't.
Of course.
I know John Smith's diary said they didn't find him either.
The last entry in it is about the kind man named John Smith,
who gave him $5 on New Year's Day 1939.
Well, so I got a little while left.
They won't catch up with me.
And I know what's going to happen to me.
Ten years ago on January 26th, 1939,
John Smith died.
On January 26th, 1949,
I hope it'll be snowing.
The title of today's quiet place story was Meet John Smith, John.
It was written undirected by Winner Scooper.
A man who spoke to you was Ernest Trouble.
And Jesus Wayne Gordon played the other John Smith.
The seal was Nancy Sheridan.
As usual, music required please is played by Albert Wermann.
Now for word about next week.
Here's our writer director, Willis Scooper.
Thank you for listening to Quiet Please.
Next week I'll start for you about Beezer's Seller.
And so until next week at the same time.
I am Quietly Yours, Ernest Trouble.
And now a listening reminder.
The dramatic battle between law enforcement agencies
and the underworld continues on David Harding-Countispar,
which you can hear over your ABC station this afternoon.
The ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.
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