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Read Ebook: You're on the Air by Heyliger William O Keeffe Neil Illustrator
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Ebook has 1838 lines and 59884 words, and 37 pages
Illustrator: Neil O'Keeffe
You're on the Air
THE CAPTAIN OF THE NINE AGAINST ODDS OFF SIDE
Boy Scouts Series
DON STRONG OF THE WOLF PATROL DON STRONG, PATROL LEADER DON STRONG, AMERICAN
Lansing Series
BATTER UP STRAIGHT AHEAD FAIR PLAY
You're on the Air
Illustrated by NEIL O'KEEFFE
D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY Incorporated
New York London 1941
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher.
The names of all characters used in this book are purely fictitious. If the name of any living person is used, it is simply a coincidence.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
"First an actor and now a producer. You should try script writing, Carlin"
Vic Wylie said, "Don't let it tear you apart, kid. You can't change it. It's show business"
"Now, now, folks," Tony Vaux said. "I don't mean it's a bad show"
Lucille's performance held Joe spellbound. "Brilliant," Pop said softly. "I salute her"
You're on the Air
Joe Carlin awoke. At once his mind, still partly drugged with sleep, began to worm restlessly through a hungry channel.
How did you go about getting on the air?
His hand reached for a radio beside the bed. A station came in, swelled, and filled the room with a crash of music.
Mrs. Carlin protested from the floor below. "Joe! Do you have to blast down the walls?"
The boy turned down the volume. Wide awake, he sat on the side of the bed.
How did you become a radio actor?
"My age," said Joe Carlin, lacing his shoes. How had Sonny broken in? How did anybody break into radio? How did you climb to the spot where people watched a clock for your program and you earned two hundred dollars a week?
The photograph of Fancy Dan Carlin mocked him from the bureau. Fancy Dan Carlin, actor. There the Fancy one was, rakish silk hat, jaunty cane, immaculate tails, looking as though he might come dancing gaily right out of the silver frame.
"I guess I've got show business in my blood, Uncle Dan," Joe said, and remembered a routine his uncle had taught him last summer. His feet became sharp castanets against the bedroom floor.
"Joe!"
Joe sighed. He lifted a shirt from a chair and under it found part of the costume he had worn in last night's high-school play. He opened the door.
"It's here."
Joe came downstairs. "What kind of press did we get?"
"Fancy Dan Carlin speaking," Kate Carlin said plaintively. Suddenly she began to laugh. There was something so rich, so special in her laughter that, somehow, the boy laughed, too.
"That's show business talk, Mother. A show gets a good press or a bad press."
"You're not in show business, Joe. Or must I remind you?"
The boy caught himself in time. He had almost blurted that he intended to go into show business.
Joe Carlin Stars in Annual Hi Show
Hunched in the breakfast nook, he read every word of the story: "An audience of eight hundred that packed the Northend High School last night--" What was eight hundred when Sonny Baker played to two hundred thousand? He carried dishes to the sink and asked a tentative question.
"Don't you think radio's swell, Mother?"
"Not when I get it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Sometimes you tune in for a noisy midnight snack."
"I mean dramatic sketches," Joe said hastily. "Aren't they swell?"
"Some of them."
This, Joe thought, might represent encouraging progress. Perhaps this was the moment, while his mother was in the mood to like something about radio, to drop a hint of his plans.
"Some are pretty bad," Mrs. Carlin added with conviction.
"Well--some," Joe said unhappily. Back in his room, after packing the costume, he tried to give his tie a Fancy Dan Carlin touch--a tweak here, a pinch there. The effect wouldn't come. He came downstairs with the costume in a box. How did you arrange for a radio audition?
June roses bloomed on a trellis in the next-door yard, and the sky was a June blue. All at once the courage and faith of young spring were in Joe Carlin's blood, and problems and perplexities were miraculously gone. Why, no station could give you an audition unless it knew you wanted an audition. It was as simple as that.
The corridors of the high school, brisk and alive during school hours, were shrouded to-day in Saturday darkness and gloom. Somewhere in the building a janitor's mop knocked against a wall and filled the stillness with hollow echoes. Joe pulled at one of the great doors leading to the auditorium. Instantly light and clamor burst upon him.
A girl shrieked, "There's Joe."
A very dark, very intense girl said rapturously: "Joe, you were perfect. Absolutely perfect. You ought to be an actor."
The boy on the stage stopped his dance. "You'd give all the stars something to worry about, Joe." He sounded envious.
Joe wondered what they'd say if he told them, casually, that he intended to be an actor. Soon he'd have to tell his father and his mother. All at once his throat was dry.
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