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Show 90 George Gibbs. Something mysterious in me responded to the character implicit in the words on the page, something moved me. Some voice spoke and I answered. As much as anything I had ever done, and more than most, I enjoyed the rehearsals on the stage in the gym in the evenings, the group coming together, the feeling of a common purpose growing in us, the beginnings of a life on stage. I had always loved being part of a group with a shared purpose, football practices and the games, part of a crew stacking hay or threshing wheat, this play, and later in the Navy as a cadet marching with my platoon. The sharing makes a kind of brotherhood and sisterhood which made me like myself and my fellows more deeply. In step together, our purpose good, we were all sustained by the kinds of good fellowship which must have sustained mankind down through the ages. And then, of course, Kate was there without Pat. In our marriage scene I was supposed to hold the kiss through a long speech by the Stage Manager, and I loved the kidding I got about that. And there was nothing Pat could say. In fact, he didn't even come around. I hardly saw him those days. So for the first time we ran through that scene, I kissed her, I felt pretty cocky. I had studied movie kisses, I had practiced like we all practiced at holding my breath for a kiss and then, older, a senior, learning that it was all right to breathe while kissing and had practiced at that while tongue kissing. How much further could I go? So when Miss Carruth called me aside and said that I had been slouching, that my head had been tilted wrong, that I had held Kate awkwardly, I suffered considerable shock. To be feeling like Clark Gable and then to be told I wasn't as good as Mickey Rooney was more than I could handle. Kids tittered, some vindictively. But then Miss Carruth said that Kate and I would have to rehearse that scene in private with her, and I was restored. |
