THE TROUBLES OF A PERFECT TYPE

Walk through Grand Street from Third Avenue to Clinton Street, which is not a long distance, and you have the types of the whole world before you. They are not in concentrated form; they are diluted. But if you analyze, even hurriedly, you will soon be able to know the components of each one of them.

A remote Tartar ancestor of one of the pushcart peddlers is plainly seen in the small sunken black eyes. In another the straight line of the back of the head tells you that his mother, or his grandmother, had lived once in Hungary. In another one the Slav type, the flat fleshy nose, is mixed with the Wallachian strong chin. Some Teuton blood calls out through the heavy cast of an otherwise typical Austrian Jew. A Spanish grandee, as if come out from a page of Cervantes, is selling shoe laces and cuff buttons. And a Moroccan prince, ill at ease in his European garb, is offering to the passer-by some new Burbankian fig-plum-orange combination.

The vendors call out their wares in what seems at first a tongue all their own. But a trained ear soon discovers that it is English, or rather that English is the essential component of the chemistry of their language; the rest being words of their own creation, or scraps from a dozen other languages which stuck to the people of woe in their two thousand years peregrination from land to land.

They needed a Jewish type in producing a screen drama. Not one of the actors, semi-actors or hanger-ons of the company fitted the demands of the omniscient director; so he set out to find the type himself. Seated in a large touring car, he traversed every street of lower Manhattan, carefully scanning the faces of men. For a full week he thus busied himself without much success, unable to discover what he wanted.

The beginning of the second week found the director roaming through the east side on foot. He stocked up more cigarettes than his pockets could hold, visiting the innumerable little shops on every street, and drank tea in a dozen obscure cafés without locating his man, the counterpart of his imagination. But on the fourth day of the second week his patience and perseverance were rewarded.

As he was sipping a glass of tea in a little coffee house the door opened and a tall, lanky fellow appeared as if drawn by the magic power of the director's desire.

He sat down at the first table and ordered something to eat. The director could not take his eyes off him. That spare, long, black beard, undulating to midway between chin and belt, those side locks, the drooping mustache that hardly covered the long thin upper lip, that misty something over the whole countenance, and the garb in which the man was wrapped up! It was as he wanted, and better. It was the ideal type for which he had searched the whole city in vain, and now, suddenly, when least expected, the man had come by himself.

Mr. Cord was too anxious to realize his plans to be bold and direct. After deliberating with himself as to the best method, he did what he had seen done in the movies years ago. He called the waiter, tipped him liberally and asked information about the man sitting at the corner table.

"That fellow there? It's Samuelson, from the candy store on the corner."

"Is he making much money?"

"Him?" the waiter sighed. "Selling four sticks of gum and three packages of cigarettes a day."

Mr. Cord began to see his line of action.

"Is he a clever fellow?"

"He plays chess with the boss and beats him every time."

Meanwhile the bearded fellow got through with what was before him, wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and was ready to go, when the director called out:

"I say, Mr. Samuelson, can I see you for a few minutes?"

"What do you want to see me for?" the man asked, hesitatingly approaching Mr. Cord's table.

"Would you not sit down and have a glass of tea with me? Waiter! two more teas and some cake, please."

A few minutes later the two men were engaged in earnest conversation. The director wanted to draw him out and did not know how to do it, while Samuelson scented that the other one needed him, and decided to be on his guard until he should know more definitely what it all was about.

Has he ever gone to the theatre? Sure enough. He has seen every play in the Jewish theatres, and Libin the playwright, bought his cigarettes from him every day.

Has he seen the movies? Sure enough. When it was very cold in the store, and on Saturdays. What warmer place was there than the movie theatre on the street! And cheap too, five cents, including war tax.

Does he like them? Of course! What a question!

How would he like to be seen in the movies? Well, that was a different question. He could not do any of the stunts the movie actors do. Leaping from a galloping horse, falling down a precipice, or walking over from one side of the street to the other on a telephone wire a hundred feet from the ground, was not exactly his profession or to his liking. But what a director wants cannot be denied. This one talked long and convincingly, ordered tea after tea and cigar after cigar, and got Samuelson so excited that at the end of their conversation the candy store keeper was convinced a greater actor than himself had never yet trod the earth. To clinch the bargain the director gave Samuelson twenty dollars on account of a promised fifty dollars a week contract, and it was agreed that the store keeper was to present himself ready for duty a week later.

And now, to preserve the flavor of what happened, I will tell the story in Samuelson's own words—or rather, I will use as many of Samuelson's own words as possible.

"And when that feller Cord, or what's his name, when he walked away and I remain alone with twenty dollars in my fist—like that—what do I do but sit and think what a great country this is.

"In Russia I have been a tailor twenty years, and nobody saw that I was a great actor, not even myself. I met thousands of people. They saw me at work and at prayer. They saw me every week day and every Sabbath. My own wife in Russia has never seen that I was a great actor. And here comes a man I have never seen and who never saw me before and offers me tea and cake and gives me twenty dollars and a contract for fifty dollars a week, and who tells me I am a great actor! So of course I am a great actor.

"So this is a great country, I said to myself! And now that I am such a great actor, why should I have such a little store that don't even pay for coals in the winter? Why should I? Why? So I goes out to Mendel the waiter and he calls by the telephone a jobber and I sell him the whole store, and the shelves, and the show case, and the sign over the door, and even sell him the big lamp I bought on payments. He gives me two hundred dollars for everything. I know he cheats me, but what do I care! Am I not a great actor?

"And I go out and watch the great actor, Adler, come out of the theatre, and I see how he goes dressed up and with a high hat. So I say to myself, this is how you have to be dressed up. And I go in a store and buy a what you call, a full dress suit and a high hat and white shirts and collars and neckties and patent leather shoes. And I go to a barber and tell him: This is a great country and I am a great actor. And when I got up from his chair I looked almost like Adler. The hairs cut nicely and no beard, no moustache, no sidelocks.

"When I am through I go to the office of the movie company.

"When Mr. Cord sees me all dressed up and with no beard he gets terribly excited and throws me out of the office.

"What have you done with your beard and side locks?" he yelled, and he nearly wanted to murder me.

"And now I have to sit and wait until my beard and mustache will grow back. I am ashamed to go to the café house. The boss will laugh, the waiter and everybody will laugh, and with a high hat how can I go to look for work at my trade? And my hairs grow so slowly!

"What kind of a country is this?"