Thanks for a Terrible Try

by R. J. HICKS

RADIO

IT sounded at first like the usual quiz show — studio audience bellowing, oozy commercials, gaspmaking patter about the size of the kitty — but there was something about the Quiz Master’s tone which stayed my hand on the knob.

“So you’re Mrs. Boheme Quiltman, and you come from McClusky, North Dakota? Hmm.”The way he uttered these words (a touch of Basil Rathbone in an unsympathetic role) caused the audience to applaud a shade uncertainly.

“McClusky must be over a thousand miles from Hollywood,” he continued. “Tell me, Mrs. Quiltman, what possessed you to come all this way?”

“Wanted a little vacation. Been saving up for years. Came by bus,” said Mrs. Quiltman.

“Ah, yes. It is, after all, a free country. But once here, Mrs. Quiltman, what strange whim induced you to appear on a quiz program?”

“Want ta win a little money, I guess. Tee-hee. Could use it back home in McClusky!”

“Could you? Well, let’s see what sort of figure you cut. Incidentally, the makers of Chewy Chewettes will pay you $11,000 if you contrive to answer this one question correctly.” (A wail of muffled cupidity from Mrs. Quiltman.) “All right. How many decades are there in twenty years?”

“Dec— Jer mind repeating that, Mister?”

“You heard it all right, but I will. How many decades in twenty years? . . . You don’t know, do you, you pinhead? As a matter of form I must wait for the sound of the gong.”

The Quiz Master waited in sadistic silence, with none of the little goadings and sympathetic gigglings customary with his more normal confreres. From the audience there came sounds of puzzled restiveness. The gong sounded.

“I sometimes wonder about people like you, Mrs. Quiltman,” continued the Quiz Master in bluediamond tones. “You must hear such words as ‘decade’ occasionally, and read them in a newspaper, even in McClusky. Why don’t you ever ask what they mean?”

“ Well, I — ”

“Or look in that handsomely engraved leathercovered dictionary which I’m sure you display prominently in the Quiltman place on Elm Street. Yet you go on, year after year, taking ‘decade’ for granted, and scores — hundreds — of other words as well. You probably haven’t the slightest idea how long a generation is?”

“I —well, I—”

“As I thought. What grade did you end up in, in school?”

“Why, the same one everyone ends up in.”

“Have you any real interests in life?”

“In-terests?”

“Ah, well, let’s not go into that.” (Renewed signs of restiveness from the audience.) “Do you ever read any books, Mrs. Quiltman?”

Mrs. Quiltman by this time sounded distinctly defiant. “I should just say so!”

“And what, if one may ask, was the title of the last one that you read?”

“Why — er — why, it was a very good bestseller. Very good.”

“Ever write any letters?”

“Don’t have any call to, Mister Smartypants!” (A cheer from the audience.)

“I see, Mrs. Quiltman. Well, I wish you luck, I suppose; but I honestly think you’d do well to stay away from any too public demonstration of your mental attainments. I’m pretty sure that you would have been incapable of answering any question put to you tonight. It isn’t a matter of being flustered, or of not being able to think on your feet (capacious though I observe them to be). You are just an ignoramus. Good night.”

“Now,” continued the Quiz Master, to a background of rather plaintive growling, “Chewy Chewettes simply double the kitty each time a question is muffed. So we have $22,000 awaiting Mister what is your name, sir?”

“Mortimer Flange. Just call me Mort. And my home town’s right here in Hollywood. I’m a bus boy at the Hotel Hibiscus.”

“I see. And are you a film fan?”

“Am I! You kiddn, Mister?”

“Good. I take it that you are familiar with the names of Bette Davis and Charlie Chaplin ?”

“You kiddn?” asked Mort again.

“Very well. Bette Davis often appears in tragedy; $22,000 if you can tell me what kind of films Chaplin appears in.”

“What hind of films?”

“Yes. In other words, the opposite of tragedy. Charlie Chaplin makes — what kind of films?”

“Funny uns?”

“Yes, but they are known as — what?”

Long pause. Crash of gong. “The answer is, of course, comedy,” said the Quiz Master. “Comedy is the opposite of tragedy.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Surely you knew that?”

“Seems like I heard the word before some place, but you don’t hear it much around the Hotel Hibiscus.” (Applause.) “Dunno what it means, anyway.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen — going on twenty.”

“Do you read much?”

“Sure — fan magazines; and the funnies.”

“But what kind of imbecile are you that you don’t know that Chaplin is a comedian?”

“Hunh? What was that you just called me?”

“Only an imbecile.”

“Oh, for a minute there I thought you was maybe gettn fresh.”

“Do you break many dishes while you work?”

“Fair number.”

“I don’t doubt it. I can just picture your puzzled frown each time you start to pile them on the tray, never learning the knack, amazed each time again at the renewed complexity of existence. What do you want out of life? What would you like to be? Surely not just a bus boy? . . . Well, I won’t detain you, Mortimer. You are a moron, but at least a happy one, apparently. Good night.”

“Your name, please?”

“ Miss Imogene Cusack. I am just twenty-three.” The voice was mincingly self-possessed. Its owner evidently had well-defined ideas about Poise — keep the tone level at all times . . . watch yourself ... the girls from the office are out there listening.

“ Your profession? ”

“Stenographer. I work in an office—in a business house, that is — in Pasadena.”

“Good. Now, Miss Cusack, the sum of $44,000 awaits you if you answer this correctly. You are standing on the eastern shore of England, looking out eastward across the English Channel and the North Sea. Name any one country towards which you are looking.”

“Well — er — I think I know —”

“Good. But time is slipping past, so let me put it this way: name any country besides England and Scotland which has its coastline on the North Sea or the English Channel. . . . Think of D Day.”

“Think of what?”

“Never mind — think of a map of Europe.”

“Maps. Oh, I don’t look at maps much.”

“Well, guess!”

Miss Cusack’s veneer was cracking fast. She cried excitedly: “Ireland!” (Wild pandemonium from the audience, which apparently thought her right.)

“Wrong, you little silly, utterly wrong,” said the Quiz Master wearily. “Why don’t you look at a map now and again? You do realize, I hope, that the United States is now a great world power?”

“Why certainly,” retorted Miss Cusack, with hauteur. “My boy friend hopes to get on the next Olympic Games track squad.” (Applause.)

“And why don’t you cut out that phony bored look? Nobody expects every woman to be a beauty, but you could attain some degree of charm and attractiveness if you would relax — be natural. That’s to say, you might have done so — it’s probably much too late now. To me you look almost repellent, minus all the feminine graces. No kindliness, no sympathy, no warmth. Just a desiccated imitativeness. How sorry I am for your boy friend.”

Miss Cusack said, “Am I being insulted?”

“Yes,” returned the Quiz Master with gusto. Miss Cusack burst into tears and withdrew. “All right, next. Come on, ladies and gentlemen, not much more time.”

The audience was in uproar. Some voices could be heard maintaining that it was all just a gag, as when Hope insults his guest stars.

“Ah, we have here?”

“ Jonathan Spawnson. ”

“And this, doubtless, is Mrs. Spawnson. Here goes for $88,000. Last spring we had visiting us in the United States a Good Neighbor from the south. He is the head of the neighboring state directly to the south of us, a country with which we had a war just one hundred years ago. What is his name?”

Mrs. Spawnson: “General Eisenhower!”

Quiz Master, evenly: “You, Mr. Spawnson?”

Spawnson gave a sudden shout: “I got it — you mean he was from Mexico, don’t you?”

“Yes, that’s the country. Who is its president?”

Spawnson, fortissimo: “President Alamo!”

Quiz Master: “Good God. Well, our time is practically up, but I must ask you both one more question: Have you any children?”

The Spawnsons replied in chorus, “Five fine sons and two fine daughters.”

“And I suppose your seven children are sitting out there in the audience or listening at home? What must they think of such parents! If either of you had a sense of the fitness of things you would have taken a good deal of trouble to ensure that you did not expose your ludicrous inadequacies in public like this. Why undermine whatever lingering faith they may still have —”

The telephone rang insistently. I answered it in hot impatience, aware of what sounded like blows and imprecations flowing from the radio. When at last I was free to dash back, the program had ended. Silence reigned. Since then I have worn my fingers to the bone twiddling at the dials, but, alas, never to this day have I been able to find again that beautiful, beautiful Quiz Master.