 The Cavalcade of America, presented by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Tonight, we bring you a play about a lazy man. He was a writer of stories. In fact, he was America's greatest short story writer, Sidney Porter, known all over the world by his generation and ours as O'Henry. In a portrait study of O'Henry, written by Norman Rostin, as O'Henry might possibly have written it himself, the part of O'Henry is played by Carl Swenson of the Cavalcade Players. The orchestra and the original musical score are under the direction of Don Voorys. DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Carl Swenson as O'Henry on the Cavalcade of America. It's a place, a magazine office in the city of New York. Casey! Casey! Coming, sir. That's it. There I am, sir. What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here now. Huh? I work here. You know what day of the week it is? It's Friday, I think. You think, do you? What if I say it is Friday? Does that bring anything to your mind? If I can call it that. Friday? By heavens. What time is it, sir? It's after six. I'm late, sir. I'll grab my coat and rush right over. Wait a minute. Stop. Come back here. Casey, let me remind you for the last time, Friday is the most important day of the year on this magazine. Do you understand? Because that's the day O'Henry should be writing his story for the Saturday morning deadline, which he never does. That's the day when you have to go down there and see that he does, remember? Yes, sir. I won't forget again, sir. More important than your life. Understand? There are more than 100,000 people in this country and millions more throughout the world waiting to read O'Henry's Sunday story. How do you understand? See that he eats well at night. Watch him when he crosses the street. All right, go on. Last week when I got to his place, you know what? He was playing that guitar. Then I tell you to get that guitar away from him. That's what makes him late. He won't sell it. He says a man has to have something to talk to. Listen, Casey, if you don't come back with that story by tomorrow morning, you better not come back at all, you understand? No excuses. Wherever O'Henry is at this moment, and he's liable to be on top of the Flatiron building or sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge or walking under the East River, you find it. Stay there. Sleep there. And bring back that story, dead or alive. Now, don't pick up that guitar again, Porter. I want to talk to you. Go ahead and talk, Tom. Now, I must say you played that guitar almost as well as you write, Porter. I could take that two ways. Now, here, I've been sitting all afternoon waiting for you to say something about your new volume of short stories. All I get is a lot of guitar playing. Now, what would you want me to say about the book? Nothing more for me to say. It's all in there. Well, how do you feel about your new book? I feel fine. Is that all? Tom, you're a writer yourself, you wouldn't know. No, not like you, Henry. How do you sum it up? The word, Tom. One word. People. I like people. The way they walk and talk, run and laugh and play and everything about them again. Uh-huh. That's funny. You're one man that has plenty of reasons not to like them. After what some of them did to you. That little prison term I served? Nothing. Nothing at all to get hurt about. Nothing, even though you were innocent? Served a term for someone who was guilty? Matter of fact, Tom did me a lot of good. Made me understand people better. Helped me understand what was important about living. Little pain is good for the soul and makes you understand what peace is like. Everything that holds you down for a while makes you stronger when you're up again. That's why I'm not feeling twisted about the prison. Met some fine people there. I don't think many people would feel that way about it. You're trying to embarrass me, Tom. I'll have to start playing the guitar or ask you to leave. Nice of you to say that, Tom. It seems to me like being a good writer means only one thing. Being honest. I try to be honest with the people I write about. Naturally show their appreciation by working together to make a good story. Come in. Good evening, Mr. Porter. The boss sent me down. Thomas? I'm like Robinson Crusoe. There's always a Friday at my heel. Yes, sir. Comes every week, doesn't it? Tom, I picked writing stories because it sounded like the easiest kind of work. That's where I made the biggest mistake in my life. Yeah, well, I'll be going now while you turn out another one of your weekly mistakes. So long. See you soon. Casey, you better come back tomorrow, too. Back? I just came. I have to stay and wait for that story. Casey, why don't you go out and write that story yourself? Me? Sure, it's very simple. Just follow any person down the street and figure out where he's coming from, where he's going to, and why. And there it is. You better not joke about it, Mr. Porter. The boss told me... There's a line here on the back all solid day waiting for a story to come down from heaven, but it just didn't come. You go on back and tell your boss. It just didn't come down this week. Tell him to reprint one from my last book. I can't go back now without your story. I got orders. He said dead or alive. Chief's a bloodthirsty man, all right. Well, I better start. Yeah, I suspect. I'll just sit right down here until you're done. Let me start for something to eat. Come on, Casey. I know a fine place for a 30-cent dinner. All you can eat. Oh, look, if you don't do that story, I'm going to get fired. He said so. As long as that's the way it is, you might as well get fired on a full stomach. Come on, boy. Boys, I've been doing the talk in most of the night. Not to mention the drinking. Oh, that reminds me. How about another round? That's a good point. I don't know who's paying, but we'll let the house worry about that. Matter, Casey. You're not saying a word. I'm unhappy. Think of how it'll be Saturday morning in a few hours. Don't worry about Saturday. It'll just naturally take care of itself. Boys, boys, is everybody happy? No. Do you want to go home? No. Well, then don't. Say, Porter, that last story of yours that fell a soapy in the cup. True life picture it was. I said to the missus, you know, that might have happened to me just as well. What's that sticking out of your vest pocket? Huh? Oh, this. Oh, just a cheap bracelet. Funny little trinket, but a little elephant hanging from it. Not worth anything. I got it from that girl over there at the table. Huh? She insisted I take it. Said it was a good luck piece, but she wouldn't be needing it anymore. She's probably feeling sorry for herself. Well, you meet all cranes in a place like this. Who is she? I don't know. Callous girl, I guess. Comes in here a lot. Think she lives, I think she lives somewhere around here on 10th Street. Let me say it. Here it is. I haven't. Take it. I don't plan to wear it. Thanks. Now, if you'll excuse me. Oh, sure, sure. Pardon, ma'am. Is this chair taken? Yes, it is. Mind if I sit down in this other one? Why don't you sit at the next table? Your name wouldn't be Sarah, would it? Say, why don't you leave me alone? No, don't get up, please. Uh, would it be Susan? What do you want? Or shall I call the proprietor? It says right here on this bracelet, from M to S. What? You must be the S part of it. How did you get that? Oh, I, uh, accidentally picked the proprietor's pocket. We're old friends. Would it be Sally? Why, yes, it is Sally. That's a nice name. I'm an ass name myself, Sidney. Sidney Porter. Bill to my friends. Well, I'm Sally Blake. Sally to my friends. Uh, I didn't mean before to... Oh, no, of course not. You know, after a while, you get to feel that everyone's your enemy. When you live five flights up in a furnished room, you get to feel the whole world's against you. Doesn't really. The world is made up of lots of kind little people like you and me. People are never really against one another when you scratch them deep enough. Now, take me for instance. I look pretty ordinary, but I'm not. No, you're not. Who are you? Just a small part of that world you're afraid of. Somehow, I'm not afraid of you. No, of course not. People are only afraid of themselves, Sally. You get that way, I suppose, from trying hard and failing. Or from being alone. Yes, that's it, mostly from loneliness. It stays over your heart, like a shadow, and it hurts. I came from Ohio two years ago to try the stage. I ran off, but I wish I hadn't now. I'm lonely now, and afraid. That's where the other initial on the bracelet comes in, huh? I, uh... I don't suppose the ammits stand for Martin or... Please, I'd rather go now. No, not yet, Sally. We can't drop Mike that way, it wouldn't be fair. Besides, he might be lonely too. You know what, mister? What? Mickey, that's his name. He doesn't know where I am. But he's in the city looking for me all this time, ever since I left, and I'm afraid he won't find me. He won't be able to find me. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Porter. This is important. Oh, um, excuse me for a moment, Sally. I'll be right back. Casey, I can't imagine why he called me here. Say, mister, have you a pencil, please? Oh, yes, ma'am. Here's a pencil. Thank you. Oh, don't go away. Here you are. When that gentleman returned, give him this note with this bracelet. Yes, ma'am. Why don't you wait for him? Here he comes. Sally! Wait a moment, Sally. She said this notice for you and this bracelet. Here, let me have the note quick. All right. What's it say? I should like to leave this bracelet in the keeping of a kind person. Goodbye forever. Oh, that's bad. Now you can go back home. Come on, Casey. I've got to return this. She might still be outside. Come on, hurry. No sign of her on the street. She must have turned off somewhere. I'm a little worried about her. What a downed heart. Yeah. I think we ought to get out of it instead of just walking. We'll never find her. We might. After all, there are only four million. Look at those lighted buildings, Casey. The eyes of the city are wet tonight and the streets are cold. Look at the people passing by. Each walks around with a secret Aladdin's lamp rubbing out their pain. Wishing in their dreams. Bagdad on the subway. They're all lost children wandering in a kind of enchanted wilderness. That girl, Sally. He too is a child lost and pitiful. Yeah, look, Mr. Porter. I can't keep on following you all night while you walk around the rain. I came to get your story for tomorrow. I came to your room to stage where you wrote it. First you went to get a meal, now this girl. Let's go inside this place for a cup of coffee. We have to go home, Mr. Porter. Sit here at the counter, huh? We can't go wandering around all night looking for someone that ain't natural. You should be sitting at your desk, Mr. Porter, thinking up some good stories. Two coffees. Casey. How'd you like to turn detective? Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Why not tomorrow night, Mr. Porter, huh? Here's this bracelet swinging from my hand, Casey. Yes, sir. From M to S. A girl on East Tenth Street. That's all we know. This bracelet is worth less than a dollar. Probably cost him six bits. All he could pay. Now, why'd you pick one with a little elephant on it? That all means something. Perhaps if we swing the elephant like this, coffee too, come on. Where'd you get that bracelet? I said where'd you get it. I know that bracelet. Tell me. It was left by a girl. Let me see it, please. The left eye's cut out of the elephant. I did that for luck. That's my girl, see? Where'd you find it? In the cafe down the block. She told me she'd always keep it. She said she'd keep it until she couldn't go on any longer. What? We have to find her. We gotta find her. Come on, hurry. We have to get there fast before she is on that street. Now, it's a matter of life and death. Oh, here we are. East 10th Street. It's a big street when you haven't got the number. She won't do anything rash. She can't. Now, now that I'm so near. There's a policeman. He might be able to help. Say, officer, we're looking for a girl named Sally Blake. She lives on this street somewhere. You see this bracelet? Look at it, officer. It's elephant. Pink elephant, I suppose. Come on, homeworlder, before I turn you in for drinking. But, officer... Come on, soak your heads in cold water. There he goes. Our last chance. What do we do now? We've got to do something. Well, it's a big street, all right, but it has a beginning and an end. What do you mean, Mr. Porter? I mean, we're gonna comb these houses one by one. Go over them room by room and climb every flight of stairs. We've got to find that girl. Pardon, ma'am. I'm looking for a young lady named Sally Blake. I'm looking for a girl named Sally Blake. She's got black hair. Nobody in my house for that name. Sorry. I don't like her so much. Come on, Mickey, next house. How do you do, ma'am? I'm looking for a girl named Sally Blake. Have you a room here by that name? She's my girl. Cover two blocks. No sign of her. I don't know. I'm scared. There's so many houses. It's two o'clock. It's getting late. Early is the word, boy. She keeps getting early hour by hour from now on. Pardon, I'm looking for a Miss Sally... What's so bad about it, Mickey? I don't know what to feel. You know, Mr. I feel she's in the street somewhere. I love her very much. I'm scared. How do you feel, Kazim? Oh, I'm all in from climbing stairs. Yeah, I guess you fellas tried your best. Thanks. No, wait a minute, boy. There are a couple more flights of stairs than me yet. Let's go. Sally Blake. Belonging a jail yard for waking people up. Sorry, I troubled you, ma'am, but... Oh, no, I recollect. I didn't have a girl by that name live here a while back. You know where she went from here? Straight across the street, she did. And I told Mrs. Brady she'd be trying the same thing there. It wouldn't surprise me. Hey, what are you doing? It's all over. I'll close the jets. Casey, quick, open the door. Sally, wake up. Please wake up, darling. Rub her hands. That's right. Get some water out of that sink in the towel. Get some water, please. Coming around. Just got here in time, I guess. Sally, open your eyes. Let me see your eyes. Oh, just you breathe slowly. Let me see that in the cabin. Yeah, sure thing, Sally. I brought along a friend of yours. Devin, we're all in heaven. No, ma'am. This isn't heaven because if it was, they'd never let me in. Oh, the safe protector. What do the neighbors say? Oh, Mickey, darling. Oh, why did you? Why? I was tired, Mickey. I was so tired of waiting. Go ahead, boy. You can kiss her again. Seems to do her good. Well, children, I was pleased to have met you. Very, very pleased. Now I'll have to go. What can I say to thank you? Your shining face, Sally, gives me all the thanks I need. I'd like to... May I kiss you? Is that all right with you, Mickey Millad? Sure. Sure thing. Well, I guess I'll be able to get down these stairs now. Oh, mister, I... You don't know what you've done. I know. I'll be buying a few days, just in case you might need a witness for the wedding. Oh. Oh, and here's my wedding present in advance. It's a bracelet with an elephant. I hope you won't mind, but the elephant has only one eye. Looks like the rain's over, Casey. A day to watch the morning come stealing in over the rooftops, over the bridges, putting out the stars, putting out the million dreams of evening, waking all the dreamers. Sure was a wild night. Funny, I don't feel... very sleepy. I never had so much exercise in my life, Casey. Never be able to look another flight of stairs in the face again. I guess it's all right to help others, but all I know is it's six o'clock Saturday morning, and where are we? We're home. Come on inside for a moment. Yeah. That guitar won't make me feel any better. Nine o'clock is a deadline, and I'm on the old soup, I guess. Cheer up, boy! Cheer up! We've reunited two lovers. Come back to God! Yes, we did. I gotta think what's gonna happen to me when I go back without your story. You go ahead and think about it, Casey. Make yourself some coffee and make you feel better when you walk into the boss' office and collect your salary. Go ahead, torture me. Why do you care if I lose my job? That's right. Don't pay any attention to me. Talk to your typewriter. They're not going along now. Casey, hand me one of those to God. That lad will be living next door to her all the time. See? Oh, what lad? And I've been thinking too... Seems to me like I won't have her die in the end. What are you talking about? Talking about my story. That's what you came here to get, wasn't it? No, Sally won't die in my story. Fiction doesn't always have to improve on fact, you know, because she wouldn't have died, even if we hadn't gotten there. She would have wakened in the morning, her poverty would have saved her. That's how the story will end. You mean, Mr. Porter, that's a story? Say, it is. See, that could make a story. Yes, sir. When we went into Sally's room, I turned off the gas yet. There was no gas coming out of it. So the last line of my story will be this. And Sally lived happily ever after because she didn't have the small round quarter to put into the gas meter. The Cavalcade of America thanks Carl Swenson and the Cavalcade players for their performance of our radio play about O'Henry. It was shortly after the turn of the century when his career as a writer attracted world attention. That wasn't very long ago, but it was before our wonder age of modern science when the achievements of chemistry began to bring so many comforts and conveniences into our daily lives. One of chemistry's most brilliant achievements is the manufacture of America's number one synthetic rubber, neoprene, of which DuPont now brings you the latest news in the story of chemistry at work in our world. In 1932, less than 10 years ago, a DuPont pilot plant turned out 250 pounds of a new synthetic rubber called neoprene. 250 pounds weren't much. Manufacturers experimented with it, found it useful, readily bought all of it and asked for more. A bigger plant was built. Additions were put on. Still, demand exceeded supply and larger plants had to be built. This year, a plant at Deepwater, New Jersey is turning out neoprene at the rate of 13 million pounds a year. That still isn't enough. By fall, the Deepwater plant will be making neoprene at the rate of 20 million pounds a year. That amount won't supply the demand either. A new neoprene plant built, financed and operated by DuPont in Louisville, Kentucky. By the fall of next year, 1942, the Deepwater plant will be making some 20 million pounds, and the Louisville plant will be making more than 22 million pounds of neoprene. A grand total of over 42 and 1.5 million pounds a year. And there is every reason to believe that the supply, even so, will have difficulty keeping up with the demand. Neoprene was one of the first five materials and the only non-metallic substance of the five was placed under mandatory priority rule by the government. Why is there such a demand for DuPont's chemical rubber? Because it resists oil and is used on ships and docks in hoses that load oil into tankers, for example. Because it's used where natural rubber might catch fire and burn, where it might carry flame along electrical wires inside a battleship, say. Because neoprene is used where natural rubber goes to pieces under the action of sunlight, which neoprene resists. Because hundreds of the machine tools that are so vital to defense production have parts that come in contact with oil and gasoline, and neoprene stands up better than rubber in such applications. Because the bulletproof gas tanks of our American fighting planes are lined with neoprene. Because every truck and every tank turned out on an American production line has anywhere from one to a hundred neoprene parts. Those are a few of the jobs that neoprene does. Nor is it an accident that we find neoprene doing such jobs. It was exactly such qualities of service that chemists of the DuPont laboratories had in mind a dozen years ago when they set out to find a formula for chemical rubber. They weren't looking for rubber. They were looking for an entirely new material that would have the toughness and give and stretch of rubber, but that would have in addition special properties of its own. Unique properties that would make it better than natural rubber that would enable it to do things rubber could never do. It is because America's number one synthetic rubber has brilliantly fulfilled and even exceeded all hopes that were held out for it that the DuPont plant at Louisville will be making by the fall of 1942 more neoprene by itself than the combined output of all synthetic rubber plants today. In this time of national emergency America has an invaluable asset in neoprene. A major triumph of the chemists who bring you better things for better living and new chemistry. And now a word about our program next week. We're going to tell you about a man and his fight for an idea against terror and danger in one of the most hazardous undertakings of mankind. That man was Clifford Holland and his idea, well, the great tunnel underneath the Hudson River that links New York and New Jersey in the service of millions today bears his name. We tell you the story of the man who built it and how it was built with William Johnstone and the Cavalcade players starring in the role of Clifford Holland. In our story of chemistry at work in our world we will tell you about an explosive rivet perfected by DuPont which is speeding up the manufacture of American aircraft today. We hope you'll join us at this same time next week when DuPont again presents the Cavalcade of America. On the Cavalcade of America your announcer is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This is the red network of the national broadcasting company.