"What, in Your Opinion, Is the—?"

The Newspaper Interview in All Its Forms, as Analyzed bv a Recent Victim

DEEMS TAYLOR

EVERYBODY has a secret ambition. Mine pH has always been to be interviewed. Privately, I had always dreamed of the day when 1 should lay my opinions before the public with the finality and fluency possessed by all persons who get themselves quoted in newspapers. I even used to make up questions to ask myself, and formulated a series of immensely pungent and illuminative answers.

Well, I have been interviewed. And like most anticipated experiences, this one has been a bit of an anti-climax. In short, I have discovered why the hardened interviewee substitutes mimeographed bulletins for conversation. I know the lingual paralysis that sets in after "Just how did you come to—?" No strangers to me are the mental collapse that succeeds "Could you tell us, briefly—f ", the softening of the brain that follows "What, in your opinion— ?" I have tasted the fatal misquotation, and the literal transcription that is more deadly than misquotation; and I have uttered the harmless quip of the afternoon previous that turns into the libellous asininity of the morning subsequent.

There are various ways of getting yourself interviewed. The two methods most nearly infallible are to commit a murder or to announce yourself as candidate for President of the United States. Other methods nearly as efficacious are to be married or divorced, to arrive on a transatlantic liner bringing some peculiar animal as a pet, to predict war between two fairly well known countries, and to be expelled from some college or university. But whatever you have done to engage the fickle attentions of the newspaper city editors, the genesis of your interview is always the same.

LET us assume, for example, that you have written an opera. (Oddly enough, I did write an opera, and the libretto was by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and it was entitled The King's Henchman, and if there were any justice in the world, Vanity Fair would have printed this piece before the Metropolitan Opera season closed, and it might have done us some good). 'The city editor holds a brief conversation with one of his staff, who returns to his colleagues remarking, morosely, "Oh my God. I've got to go up and get a story from some bird that wrote an opera or something." He then calls you on the telephone, as follows:

"Mr. Cmfwyp? This is the editor-in-chief of the morning Outrage speaking. We are very anxious to get your views on the future of opera on the radio. I wonder if we could send up Mr. Crumb, our star reporter to interview you?"

"And about time, too," you think to yourself. Aloud, you merely say, "Yes, I could give Mr. Crumb a few minutes, say about five this afternoon." You then tidy up the living room, which has just been dismantled for the paperhangers, telephone for fresh flowers and a bottle of gin, rearrange the book-case, taking out the best books and scattering them carelessly about, take all the music off the piano except your own, broach a fresh package of cigarettes, and sit, nervously awaiting the doorbell, from one to six P. M. Nothing happens. Worn out by your vigil, you sleep heavily and late. About eleven the next morning, as you are sitting, well soaped, in the tub, the doorbell rings. After shouting vainly for someone to answer it, you suddenly remember that the apartment is empty, save for the paperhangers, who arc doing the right thing by the living room; and a sudden premonition causes you to leap from the tub, blot yourself hastily, and still rather damp and encased in a bathrobe, admit the visitor yourself. It is, of course, Mr. Crumb, of the Outrage, who proceeds to interview you, as follows:

Question: How did you come to write your opera?

Answer: Why, ah—I asked Mr. Ziegfeld if he would be interested in a musical comedy, and he said no; so I wrote a grand opera for the Metropolitan.

Q: What is the period of your opera?

A: Early Aztec.

The Doorbell: Brrrr. (Business of answering door. Enter young man from the tailor's, before he cats be stopped, requesting them pants that was to be pressed. You give him some, to be rid of him, and resume.)

Q: Why did you choose that?

A: I didn't. The librettist did.

Q: What gave her the inspiration for her story?

The Doorbell: Brrrr. (Same business. Handsome stranger, inquiring if this is Mr. Cmfwyp. Beaming, you assure him that it is, and he hands you a summons. You hill him, and resume.)

A: An old Chinese legend.

Q: What is the language of the libretto?

A: Not a word is not of Aztec origin.

Q: How many notes are there in the score?

The Telephone: Brrrrr. Brrr. Brr. (You answer it.)

A Voice: "Is this the Sacred Heart Convent?" (You reply "yes" or "no", as the case may be, and resume.)

A: 822,347.

Q: Is the music modern?

A: It was finished last week.

THIS done, Mr. Crumb takes his leave. But II the interview, as he writes it, will not be like that. When it appears it will belong to one of the three major divisions, which may be classified as (1) Personality, (2) Exhibitionist, and (3) Factual. Class I can further be subdivided into two sections, depending on whether the interviewer has taken (a) a violent dislike to you or (b) an equally violent liking. You will not be able to tell, from his attitude, to which class his interview is likely to belong. Mr. Crumb, for instance, has been attentive and respectful, and you spend the rest of the day in an anticipatory glow. The glow fades next morning, when you open your copy of the Outrage and read his contribution:

Example of

Class I (Personality), Section A (Inimical) Interview

"Sit down if you like—since you're here."

The speaker grudgingly indicated a small, uncomfortable chair, he was a swarthy, beadyeyed, "artistic" looking individual of something over forty-five, short, inclined to stoutness, bald and bespectacled. He lounged against the mantelpiece, a cheap cigarette dangling from his pudgy, yellowed fingers, the ashes spilling untidily over his shabby blue dressing gown, and waited with ill-concealed impatience for the interviewer's first question.

Asked for details concerning the genesis of his forthcoming production he hesitated uneasily, and then, picking his words with obvious care, replied haltingly, "Why—er, I was thinking of doing a musical comedy for Ziegfeld, but changed my mind and wrote a grand opera for the Metropolitan instead." (Parenthetically, rumor hath it that the piece is still a musical comedy, that it was returned by the Ziegfeld office after a single reading, and that the Metropolitan officials are anything but overjoyed at their bargain.)

The interviewer remarked that the period of the opera was reported to be early Aztec.

"That's a lie!" he shouted, flushing angrily. Then, struggling to recover his composure, he added, lamely, "that is, practically."

The doorbell rang, and he shuffled over to answer it. The visitor, evidently a collector from an installment clothing house, demanded, and after an ugly display of temper on the part of the "maestro", received, a bundle of half-worn garments. Judging from the steady stream of bill collectors that punctated the interview, and the everjangling telephone, Composer Cmfwyp 'has not created any wide-spread favorable impression with his displays 0f "temperament".

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Suppose, however, that your interviewer had been Mr. Gurk, of the evening Yawn, whose apparent impassiveness had masked a fatal devotion to you:

Example of

Class I (Personality), Section B (Adulatory)

Interview

"Won't you—sit down."

Slender and compactly built, his broad, high brow surmounting a pair of keen dark eyes whose sternness was mitigated by the lurking hint of a mischievous twinkle, the composer, whose youthful, almost boyish appearance belied the two score years chronicled in the telltale pages of Who's Who, motioned me to a seat with a graceful wave of a slim white hand. He stood, drooping against the marble aloofness of the old-fashioned mantel-piece, the blue spirals from his cigarette coiling lazily about the ultramarine richness of his gorgeous brooded lounging robe as he waited, composed and smiling, for the avalanche of questions to descend from he interviewer's impatient lips.

"My opera?" He smiled lazily. 'Fancy anyone's being interested in ny poor efforts! A trifle, really; an artist's self-indulgence, you might ■all it. They were all after me—the Ziegfelds, the Dillinghams, the 11amnersteins, you know—to write music for their—revues, I think they call :hem. But I said no." The twinkle broadened. "It was really naughty of me, for the sums they offered were scandalously large; but Art—"

A bell tinkled discreetly, and he broke off to answer it. Some poor fellow asking alms, evidently, for after a brief colloquy he dismissed the needy one with a generous gift of Nothing.

"The basis of our story? An old Chinese tale—or should I say tael?:" he interjected, with that flashing smile that has disarmed thousands.

He lighted a fresh cigarette and mused a moment. "Ah, China, the hum of the compound, the lights on the Hankow Road, the tinkle of hells in the joss houses, the bitterness, the sweetness, of the hateful, beloved Fast—." He turned to me. "But you, my friend, You, I think—understand."

We were both silent.

If, however, your visitor were Miss Bilge, of the Snooze, that would e something else again. For Miss Bilge is of the Exhibitionist school of interviewers and is so enchanted with rhat she calls her style that you are Lucky if you are mentioned at all:

Example of Class 2 (Exhibitionist) Interview

"Sermons in stones," murmurs the Sage of the Concord, "and good in everything." Ergo, unless the transcendentalist seer be, for once, guilty of psychic myopia, there must be good in interviews. So I pondered, standing before the as-yet unopened door of the studio home whence, by the mysterious alchemy of that process which, just how truly the hasty mouther of clichés dare not stop to realize, we call creative, has issued that opera (or should it not be, those opera?) whose imminent materialization is awaited with such anticipatory gusto by the cognoscenti musical.

Soon Cmfwyp himself would be standing before me. What a responsibility would shortly be mine! For in these journalistic colloquies, these brief (alas! how hastily reasoned and inadequately penned) spiritual and intellectual contacts vouchsafed the readers of the diurnal press, it is the interviewer who must analyze and synthesize, exercising such interrogatory selectivity as will translate and transliterate the human actuality in terms two-dimensional and—more or less—amorphous. The moment approached, was here! The question? . . . "Let others reason and welcome; this we musicians know." Ah, Browning (Robert), you never faced a Cmfwyp!

"Your work?" I ventured.

He flashed an evasion. Pressed, he proffered details. Interesting (vulgar word!) but hardly the crux. The period, Aztec; the legend, Mongolian. Etymology and arithmetic, but not The Point. Defeat again.

So this was genius!

Lastly, there is Mr. Klunk, of the evening Yell. His motto is Accuracy, Terseness, Accuracy; and he sticks to facts—after his own fashion:

Example of Class 3 (Factual)

Interview

A libretto that contains not one word of Aztec origin is the feature of Henrv F. Cmfwyp's new Aztec opera, it was learned today from Mr. Cmfwyp himself. Interviewed by the Yell correspondent, the composer added that his work had been inspired by artistic rather than financial considerations, and that the period of the work was early Anzac. The score contains 822,347,000 notes, and the music, although modern, will be finished next week. Questioned as to the truth of Mr. Cmfwyp's statement, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company, said, "I have nothing to say."

Mv next interview is going to be mailed.