Aduse Among Doughnuts

IT could happen to you, too, if you’re one of those people who chorus, “Oh yes, let’s!" when some dynamic soul comes up with an idea. “Let’s hire a cabin in the middle of winter and go skiing!” “Let’s all go to Indo-China in 1953.” You’re sitting safely in a nice warm room and it all seems very remote. You chirp agreeably that it sounds wonderful, you’d love to. But watch out. That’s how I got on a television show.

“How’d you like to be on my show next week?” Burt asked in a deceptively casual voice, “Just walk on and buy a loaf of bread, for the commercial.”

“Oh I’d love to,” said I, in the seclusion of the living room and the safely of this week. “It sounds wonderful.” After all, I’d been in college plays. And this sounded easy enough just walk on and buy bread. I’d bought enough bread in my time. Nothing to it. And it would be exhilarating to feel myself truly a part of the television age.

“Come up to the station for the dry rehearsal,” said Burt. “Next Monday.”

“The dry rehearsal,”I said. “Sure, sure. I’ll be there.”

On Monday I walked into the radio station feeling for the first time qualms of doubt about the whole thing. “Where’s Mr. Kelsey rehearsing his television show?” I asked the man at the desk.

“Right in there,” he said.

I walked to the door and looked at a sign: KEEP OUT.

“Go right in,”the man insisted. “All right,” I said, and went on in. My friend Burt, who at home sits quietly in a chair with a glass of ale, was now transformed. He was waving his arms around, leaping in and out of the control booth, and telling people what to do. I should have liked to settle down in a quiet corner, but there was no place that looked safe. Every inch of the studio bristled with equipment, plugs, wires, sockets, cables.

Burt came zooming past and saw me. “Hi, darling. Now here’s what you do. You’re to come over here, and come in the door, and ask for a loaf of bread.”

“Make it two,” said the man from the advertising agency.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Two loaves of bread.” I was trying to summon up a fraction of the aplomb being displayed by the stars of the show: fourteen-year-old Emilie Marie and seventeen-year-old Bill. The guest star was sixteen-year-old Don. Veteran troupers, all. “Where’s the door I come in?" I asked. [Laughter.]

“The floor’ll be here Wednesday at the juiced rehearsal,”Burt explained kindly. “Be sure to close it after you.”

I walked in through where the door would be Wednesday, trying to look glamorous.

“You’re the mother of five children,” Burt shouted. “Say that you’ve got to make the kids a lot of Sandwiches.”

“We’re pushing doughnuts this week,”said the man from the agency. And he added to Ken, the announcer, “Say something about doughnuts.”

Ken stood before me and looked at me earnestly. “Wonderful handmade, lace-edged doughnuts,” he said. “The kind Grandma used to make when they could keep her homo from the saloon. If you have a hole in your head, you’ll like the hole in these doughnuts.”

“When he’s through the commercial,” called Burt, “take the two loaves of bread and a dozen doughnuts and go out. That’s line. That’s all there is to it.”

Between Monday and Wednesday I told everyone I was going to be on television, and they all looked dubious. They warned me about the heat of the lights. They assured me I would have to wear special make-up with blue lipstick. They told me the television camera added twenty pounds.

With my confidence thus bolstered, I went to the rehearsal on Wednesday before the show. The lights were on (they weren’t bad at all). On a turntable in a corner of the studio a dozen doughnuts rested in state, turning slowly. And those doughnuts revolved relentlessly through the rest of the proceedings. There were two men manning the cameras. There were three men waving wandlike microphones over our heads. Everyone seemed to be wearing earphones. The set was up — a country store — and there was my door to come in.

I found Tony, the producer, and Burt, and two cameramen, all looking at me. “Now, your scene,” said Burt. “While Ken tells you about the doughnuts, you stand right here.” He made a large chalk mark X on the floor. I was wondering how I could find the X without looking down. Ken, now becomingly attired as a bread delivery man, had his commercial slashed it way in the bread carrier, and read it adeptly. I was worrying so about the chalk mark, the door, holding in my stomach, and remembering my two lines, that. I found it difficult to look interested in the doughnuts. “A real taste treat,” Ken finished. That was my cue. I made my little speech and went out.

“All right, everybody, take it again from the top,” called Tony, and we went through it all again. I was very nervous. Emilio Marie and Bill sang their duet from South Pacific without a quaver, and Don played five sizes of harmonica — all with the greatest of ease — while I sat behind the set, going over and over my lines. “I’d like a loaf of bread.” No. “I’d like two loaves of bread.”

The show was to go on the air at seven, and we were told to assemble back in the studio at five minutes of. “Where’s the make-up?” I asked shyly. Everyone looked blank. Nobody wore any, it seemed, except Emilie Marie, and she just used a dash of powder. And here I was. I had put my face on at. 7 A.M. and I’d had a tough day at the office. Nothing for it but to appear on television, in thousands of homes and cocktail lounges, just as I was. I felt it was most important to get real feeling into my role.

By ten minutes of seven I was sitting in my corner behind the set, biting my nails. By five minutes of, everyone had assembled but Don. He appeared, complete with harmonicas, at two minutes of. At one minute of seven the most violent silence seized the studio. It was perfect setting for pure terror. seven, we were on the air.

I heard my cue, and went through the door, remembering close it after me. There was a little draft, and a piece of paper sailed the floor. Out of the corner of eye I saw someone hastily retrieve Ken looked at me firmly. “Now about these doughnuts,” he began. listened with amazement as a completely new commercial came forth from his smiling face. I listened gerly for my cue, all attention. nally he thrust a box of doughnuts into my hand. “Don’t you want try these?” he asked pointedly.

I said of course, I’d love to, would be wonderful. (Years of conditioning brought forth the automatic response.) And somehow I got the door again, with the doughnuts and the (two) loaves of bread. And was all over.

Afterwards, we all stood around eating the doughnuts off the revoking stand. They were nicely crisp hot from the lights. Everyone me I did fine. It seems Ken dropped his commercial, but he’d ad-libbed a good new one. And looked so interested in it. The man from the agency thanked me as if been Katharine Cornell.

I came home with a dozen doughnuts and two loaves of televised bread. And I’m through. I have retired from television. I know could never again recapture the quality of that performance.