It Was All a Mistake
Kenneth Fearing, 1927
One thousand people stand in line while the flashlights blaze. They are taking pictures of us, a record-breaking crowd. Above us towers the Paramount building, a monument to the moving picture industry. “A monument. Why, are the movies dead?” No, quite the reverse; the cinema has put forth its finest flower. The line moves forward and disappears around the block.
MOTHER, MEET THE SWEETEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
Inside, we have all the exquisite appointments of all the homes not owned, but often dreamed of, by the thousand clerks, shop-girls, taxi-drivers, college professors, pimps and poets who have been waiting for admission. It is our home. My footman bows and indicates the stairs to the main-floor balcony. You look at the hundreds of pictures framed in heavy gold that make your chateau complete. We walk on our heavy carpets and are blinded by the brilliance of our own mammoth cut-glass chandelier… That girl looks at her fountain in the middle of the stairs, splashing and gurgling.
HAROLD STUYVESANT, JR., SCION OF AN ARISTOCRATIC FAMILY. HE LOVES THE CIRCUS GIRL, WHOSE PARENTAGE IS A MYSTERY.
Sit down and listen to that organ, the best in the world, shake the Paramount building. You are now Harold Stuyvesant, Jr., the scion of an aristocratic family, and you love the circus girl.
FATHER, HOW CAN YOU JUDGE THE GIRL I LOVE BEFORE YOU HAVE EVEN MET HER. SON, YOU MUST GIVE UP THIS VULGAR CREATURE. I HAVE AMBITIOUS PLANS FOR YOUR FUTURE. FATHER, I WILL NOT GIVE UP THE GIRL I LOVE. THEN I WILL DISOWN YOU. FATHER, I WILL NOT GIVE UP THE GIRL I LOVE EVEN THOUGH SHE BE BUT A GIRL OF THE COMMON PEOPLE, JUST LIKE YOU BIMBOES OUT THERE IN THE AUDIENCE.
We are now Harold Stuyvesant, Jr., scion of an aristocratic family. Look at our wonderful home on the screen. That’s our home. But we give it up for the girl we love. Gladly!
COULD I LOVE YOUR SON MORE, SIR, WAS I A MEMBER OF THE UPPER CLASSES?
We are now Gladys Jones, circus-girl, and our parentage is a mystery. God damn the old man, he is a sour apple anyway. But wait! Just wait, you big stiff! That girl is the daughter of your own wife and you don’t know it yet!!
COULD LOVE STAND THIS POVERTY? JUST THEN HAROLD CAME IN THE DOOR AND SAW HER IN ANOTHER MAN’S ARMS. HOW WAS HE TO UNDERSTAND IT WAS ALL A MISTAKE AND SHE WAS REALLY SO LOYAL AND TRUE AND LOVING TO HAROLD ONLY?
We are in the Paramount theatre, a monument to the moving picture industry. The best! What genius has written and produced this super-feature? What genius or god has been able to guess the rotten cheapness in our souls, to guess it so accurately that unknowingly we have built this monument to its abysmal rottenness?
LOOK AT ME. I—I AM YOUR MOTHER!
It toins out she is de goils muddah. I suspected as much. Oi, hev I seen it dis pitcher somevere before? It turns out she is the girls own mother. After all, the girl is her daughter, it turns out. So we don’t have to give up our swell home. It turns out she is the girl’s mother.
- Kenneth Fearing
New Masses, April 1927, Volume 2, No. 6
Every issue of New Masses (1926 - 1948) has been digitized and made freely available thanks to the efforts of Riazanov Library and Marxists.org.
