Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (493 page)

BUGS: I just thought so because the town my sister’s camp’s in is somewhere near Troy.

BILL: Since our parents have spent money to send us here I think we should take advantage of every single advantage that we have while we are here. Now this is a play that’s supposed to teach us how to be fine actors in the future or if we don’t want to be fine actors — well to be fine actors in any case.

HENRY: Shall we go on?

CASSIUS: “You have been a good student here, Playfair, and I regret to take this step. The other boys looked up at you.”

HENRY: Like we look up at Mr. Rickey.

CASSIUS: (studying the manuscript) It doesn’t say anything about Mr. Rickey here.

HENRY : You’re as crazy as Bugs.

CASSIUS: Aw go jump in the lake.

HENRY: Just what I’d like to do.

BILL: No, fellows we got to stay here till the Old Man comes back.

CASSIUS: Well I can’t walk up and down when I have this paper in my hand can I? (Nevertheless he rises and walks up and down.) All I can remember is a line I read in Bill’s letter, “Good bye and good bye and good bye.” But I couldn’t put that in the play, could I?

BILL: The next line is something about “Playfair, you are your own worst enemy.”

CASSIUS: “Playfair, you are your own worst enemy.” (He sighs a great breath of relief.)

BILL: “Doctor McDougall, you don’t understand it all.”

BUGS: Now wait a minute. Here’s where I come in. (Bugs makes a quick circle of the mom and intrudes upon the scene.) “Mr. Cassius says the team’s ready — “ I mean, “Mr. Jenkins says the team’s ready to go to bat down there, Dr. McDougall.”

BILL: “All right, I will tell you, I must tell you. There was a mountain settlement near my residence and they were trying to raise money for a schoolhouse. They needed a fast shortstop. I wanted to play for CrescentRange but I yielded because I wanted the school children to learn to read and write. I guess I was guilty.”

BUGS: You’re supposed to get up here now, Cassius.

CASSIUS: Don’t tell me now. I know all this part of my part. “Well, well, we must reconsider. Well, well, we must reconsider.”

BUGS: I never knew what I was supposed to do here, just stand or get out.

HENRY: Write on the blackboard.

CASSIUS: “Well, well, we must reconsider. Well, well, we must reconsider.” I tell you it’s the walking up and down that tells on you. Oh yes, I’ve got it. “Playfair, you are your own worst enemy — Playfair, we must reconsider.”

Bugs at the board has begun to write Wedoodle. The Old Man comes in.

The OLD MAN: Boys, we’re not going to have any more rehearsal this morning. Go along. I want to see Bill Watchman alone for a minute.

BILL: We did pretty well, almost up to the end.

Bugs makes a last dash at his blackboard and joins the others on the way out.

The OLD MAN: Bill, I have a telegram here that will make a great difference in your life and I want you to be a brave boy when you hear the news in it.

BILL: Is it about my father saying good bye? I had a letter and he said “Good bye, good bye, good bye.”

The OLD MAN: Yes, he said good bye because he’s gone away on a long long journey. Bill, you are old enough for me to tell you things that other people might tell you later in a cruder form. Your father is dead.

BILL: I knew my father was dead.

The OLD MAN: How did you know, Bill?

BILL: I just knew he was dead. I never ought to of left home this summer.

The OLD MAN: Bill, your father took his own life.

BILL: I don’t understand what you mean took his own life.

The OLD MAN: He killed himself.

BILL: Do I have to go home now, or, I mean wherever I’m going?

The OLD MAN: I don’t know yet. Of course you’ll stay here

till we see what arrangements are going to be made.

BILL: I don’t want to go home. I want to stay hero forever. I think Mr. Rickey is the most wonderful man in the world. I’d like to be able to dive like him. I know I can never bo as great as to be able to do a two and a half or even a one and a half like Mr. Rickey. And I want to be like you too. If I could ever bo like Mr. Rickey just once.

The OLD MAN: Mr. Rickey is a very fine athlete.

BILL: It’s like in the play. Sir, can’t wo just go on with it?

The OLD MAN: You mean now?

BILL: (passionately) Yes, now. I don’t want to think about my father. Can’t we just rehearse now as if nothing had happened and not tell anybody what happened? I won’t cry. I knew my father was dead last night.

The OLD MAN: (thoughtfully) Well of course if you think you want to do that — (He goes to the door and calls.) Hey, you down there, send those boys back for the festival play, Henry and BURS and Cassius. (He goes and puts his arm around Bill’s shoulder.) You like it here, don’t you, Bill? And we have been glad having you these four summers. Sometimes you’ve been your own worst enemy.

BILL: You won’t tell any of the rest of them will you?

The OLD MAN: They’ll realize how you feel. No one will say anything to you.

(Henry, Cassius and Bugs come in.)

The OLD MAN: We’ve decided to go on with the rehearsal. Now let’s start from the beginning. All ready?

Cassius takes his place behind the desk.

CASSIUS: “So, coach, you think we cannot win without Play-fair?”

HENRY: “It all depends on him, Dr. McDougall. He is our best pitcher and speed ball delivery artist and say, brother, is he good at the bat. If we are to beat St. Berries we need his services badly.”

BUGS: “Out!”

They all look toward him guestioningly.

HENRY: What’s that?

BUGS: Well, that’s the other line I’ve got that I’m supposed to yell from the window when Playfair makes a triple play.

The OLD MAN: He hasn’t made it yet.

BUGS: But I don’t know where he’s supposed to make it so I thought I’d just say it once in a while.

The OLD MAN: No, Trevellion, that’s not the way we work here. We wait till the man is out before we think he’s out. Henry, go to the window.

HENRY: Yes, sir.

The OLD MAN: Is Mr. Rickey out in the canoes?

HENRY: Yes, sir, I’m almost sure it’s Mr. Rickey.

The OLD MAN: (sighs) All right. Now let’s go on with the play. Now, Cassius, I don’t think you’re getting the full effect with the part. Let’s begin from the beginning.

CASSIUS: All right, sir. “So, Playfair, you are your own worst enemy.”

Bugs has gone to the board and in very small letters is tentatively sketching in Wedoodle. Bill has gone to the side of the stage and straddled a chair leaning his head forward on his arms, his shoulders shaking a little.

The OLD MAN: No, Now it ought to be more like this.

He pushes Cassius out of the way and sits down at the table as the curtain falls.

THREE COMRADES

Three Comrades
is a 1938 film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM studios. Fitzgerald wrote the screenplay with Edward E. Paramore Jr., adapting it from the novel
Three Comrades
by Erich Maria Remarque. It tells the story of the friendship of three young German soldiers following World War I.

The original film poster

Cast

    Robert Taylor as Erich Lohkamp

    Margaret Sullavan as Patricia Hollmann

    Franchot Tone as Otto Koster

    Robert Young as Gottfried Lenz

    Guy Kibbee as Alfons

    Lionel Atwill as Franz Breuer

    Henry Hull as Dr. Heinrich Becker

    Charley Grapewin as Local Doctor

    Monty Woolley as Dr. Jaffe

THREE COMRADES

1 FADE IN:

A GERMAN FLAG —
 — surmounted by a MAGNIFICENT BRONZE IMPERIAL EAGLE, waving against a white sky.

CUT TO:

2 A FRENCH SEVENTY-FIVE GUN —
 — in action. It fires.

CUT TO:

3 THE FLAGPOLE —
 — newly split, the eagle gone, the shredded flag fluttering on the remnant of the pole.

DISSOLVE TO:

4 A CORNER OF A MILITARY WAREHOUSE —
 — where a pile of rifles mounts rapidly higher as other rifles are laid upon it.

CUT TO:

5 A PILE OF GERMAN HELMETS —
 — added to as other helmets are thrown upon it.

DISSOLVE TO:

6 TITLE:

“DURING THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES WHILE THE WORLD WAS PROSPEROUS THE GERMANS WERE A BEATEN AND IMPOVERISHED PEOPLE.”

DISSOLVE TO:

7 EXT. OF A FOOD DEPOT; THE BEGINNING OF AN ENDLESS QUEUE OF PEOPLE —
 — the poor, the middle-class, returned soldiers, children, tramps, all waiting with baskets or reticules in a quarter-mile bread-line. It turns a corner and winds around a block as the CAMERA TRUCKS along beside it.

At the very end are a rather haughty aristocratic woman and a lovely, thin, wan-faced little girl of about thirteen who looks on the verge of starvation. A Red Cross Doctor struck by the distinguished aspect of the unhappy pair, stops for a moment beside them.

Doctor
: That little girl needs white bread and potatoes.

A demobilized officer and two soldiers overhear the conversation as they pass along the sidewalk and pause.

The Woman
(
with a short, scornful laugh
): What, bread! — Is there such a thing? And potatoes — this child wouldn’t recognize a potato if she saw one.

The Doctor
(
very sadly
): Ach! Later in life these growing children will suffer for all this.

CUT TO:

8 THE THREE SOLDIERS —
 — saddened. The officer, most matured of the three, wears a head bandage. His name is Otto Koster. The second, impetuous, fiery and smouldering, decorated with the Iron Cross of both classes, is Gottfried Lenz. The youngest, still lighthearted and carefree after a short experience at the front, is Bobby Lohkamp. We only establish the three as a group and immediately —

DISSOLVE TO:

9 A GRAPH —
 — to show the passage of ten years. A line drawn from the upper left to the lower right of the graph, is marked “National Wealth of Germany.” A moving pen draws another line which crosses the first line and moves always upward. This line is marked “Cost of Living.” As this insert is primarily for a time lapse, the dates on the graph should be very large. When the pen stops under
1928 —
: DISSOLVE TO:

10 A SIGN READING: “GASOLINE, 1 M. 40 Pfg.”

We hear a full-bellied laugh of derision. The CAMERA PANS DOWN to show an automobile in front of a suburban filling station. It is a paintless touring car with split fenders that do not match, and windshield patched with adhesive tape.

In it sit the Three Comrades, wearing mechanics’ jumpers. They are a little older. Koster wears eyeglasses and shows a large scar on his forehead.Bobby Lohkamp is the sprucer of the three, even to sporting a flower behind his ear. The man laughing is the filling station attendant, holding a water-can. The Comrades look at him with an expression which says, “Funny, are we? Oh yeah?”