 Remember a hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best. From Hollywood the makers of hallmark greeting cards bring you an exciting dramatization of an unforgettable story. On the hallmark playhouse chosen from the whole world of fiction by one of the world's most popular authors whose knowledge of stories that will entertain you and stir your imagination is universally recognized. Hallmark is proud to present the distinguished novelist Mr. James Hilton. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Tonight on the hallmark playhouse we offer for the first time on the air a dramatization of a story which captured my fancy rather neatly when I first read it. It's called Girls Are Like Boats and it's by Charles Rawlings. And because we all liked it so much we thought it quite a good idea to talk to Mr. Rawlings himself about it. So he finally located him in a small village in the state of Maine and we found as we guessed that he was something of an expert about boats. Perhaps when you heard Girls Are Like Boats you will wonder if he was equally an expert about girls. Anyhow he still says they're like boats. So let's leave it at that especially since his story has two heroines a girl and a boat and our hero was emotionally involved with both of them. Mr. Rawlings also told us he had raced many boats himself both on Lake Ontario and Long Island Sound. However the main thing is as I think you'll agree when the program is over that he can weave a yarn as smartly as he can trim a mainsail. But before we begin a few words from Frank Gott. I'd just like to remind you that there are hallmark cards for any memorable occasion you can think of. For birthdays, anniversaries, holidays. Yes for every occasion that calls for remembrance there is a hallmark card that says just what you want to say the way you want to say it and those three identifying words on the back. A hallmark card. Well they say you cared enough to send the very best. Thank you Mr. Hilton and now it's all yours. The moment George saw her it was that most exciting cliche of life under popular literature loves at first sight. She was slim and graceful, impudent, smart and indescribably beautiful but let George tell it it was his affair. George? Like you say Mr. Hilton, love at first sight. My ventricles went pity and my oracles went pat. She was class all over and every inch a lady and there was thirty feet of her and she didn't weigh an ounce over seven tons. She was a dream boat. Her decks were robin's egg blue. Her woodwork was teakwood polished like black glass. Ah she was a charmer. Built for speed. There was only one thing wrong with it. The minks just wouldn't sail. A cotton blossom wouldn't win a race. Everyone tried. Everyone gave up. Until finally they hauled her out of the water in disgrace. There she sat all through the fall and winter and into the spring. Glow and what have you, there she was a float again and her old birth and men working all over her. A little man with horn-rimmed spectacles was watching her the way a cat watches its first floor and absorb its first mouth. Well, hello there. Not the cotton blossom. Yeah, she's her. I've seen you around the yacht club haven't I? I come around Sunday afternoon. That's right. You and your wife I believe. Sort of tall one. Yeah. Wide and pushy. I remember. Twice my size. Yeah. Lassie, Lassie do little. I'm Pete do little. I'm George Bemis. I'm on the racing committee. How are you do little? Racing committee, huh? Uh huh. Well, Mr. U-Chap and the Arbos are going to have something to beat this year. Not the cotton blossom. I just bought it. No. I'm just getting back in. It's my sport you know. Are you a yachtsman? Why not? There's nothing. Nothing. Oh, I know. You think I'm just a squeaky little guy with showroom glasses and a broken down hat and a word taxpayer written across my coattails like in the cartoons, huh? I look like the funny pictures of John public. I know. Or maybe Bonnie Google. Oh no, no you don't. Oh, I do too. Yes, I do. I do. But not when I'm sailing. Well, we're glad somebody took an interest in the cotton blossom. We want to see her go. Oh, she'll go. Oh, she'll go. If I have to give her the hot foot. That's the talk. Well, it isn't just talk. Well, our first club race is Saturday. I'll be in the art debt at 36 footer. Well, I'll be in the cotton blossom. So watch out. You just watch out for Pete Doolittle. There's a little guy in the cartoon. And we got a white squall two minutes before our starting gun. And pretty soon I lost track of the cotton blossom. When I had a minute to look around, hanged if she wasn't in a good berth up to the weather. Then I got very busy again. And when I could look around again, she was up in the wind, very close alongside us with her crew hauling down the mainsail. And she was in trouble. Her mask cracked up the deck line, was leaning like a vent sapling. And Pete Doolittle was standing up in the cockpit, screaming at the whole world. Was that little fellow indignant? I thought so. I thought so. A spoiled society boat, blue deck. A sailor like a hope chest. Ahoy, cotton blossom. Can we help you? Pet it, baby cotton. No, you can't help it. Mask off from the bill. Give her a first real chance and she cracks her mask. How did it happen, Doolittle? You were doing great. Oh, I had to do it. She's got to face the facts of life. I'll take her down. I'll show her. I'll get a race out of her. I'll relax, Pete. Relax. I'll make her go. I'll kick her in the slaps. Maybe the little guy's right. Maybe that's the way to handle temperamental females like the cotton blossom. Maybe so. I thought you might like coming down here for a little talk in my boat, Pete. Ah, it's a nice little boat. It's ship-shaped. Have a drink of something? A root beer. I just happened to have a bottle I bought in 1929. Ah, there she is. Ah, the blossom should have taken that score. Oh, still brooding about the cracked mask? She's a good boat, but they babied her. Who did it then? Well, drown your rage in root beer. She's all laced up. That spar should never have broken. But I'll teach her. I'll get her if I live long enough. There you are, a root beer. Oh, thanks, thanks. What do you mean if you live long enough? Well, I promised my wife when we were married that I'd never race again. Backslider. Well, I just had to get back to the boats. Sea fever. I must go down to the seas again to the lonely sea in the sky. That's right. What'd you sail before? Oh, skiffs, dinghies. Really? Where? Oh, we raced on the Thames once. We beat the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk in a four-boat team series. Really? Mm-hmm. What skiff championship at Alexandria Bay? What championship was that? The National. The National? Oh, wow. That was years ago. Pete. On behalf of the Middle Long Island Sound Yacht Association of which I am race committeeman, welcome home. Ted, come in. You wouldn't drown yourself out like that. You are, Mr. George Bemis. Uh, yes, ma'am. On the race committee of this yacht club? I am. Now, I presume you're in this piece of treachery with Peter. Here? Treachery. Peter. Look, I don't... Ah, don't deny it. You've been encouraging him about that miserable sailboat he bought here. Oh. Yes. Oh. I found out, you see. I ought to break every bone in your body. How much did such things cost? Boats or damaged suits. Peter's bank statement shows that he withdrew $4,000 three weeks ago. Well, there's your answer then. Now you listen to the young man. I am not going to have it. I had my reasons when I made Peter promise me not to race again. He's a very nervous man. Racing makes him dream at night. But it was a full year after we were married before he stopped being profane in his sleep. Now he started again. The sea, ma'am, is a hard master, ma'am. Do you drink? Well, I take a little cooking whiskey on cold rainy nights. Oh. Those boats are floating bar rooms. I happen to be an organizer of women. I hold several committee posts of importance. Why, to have my husband publicize on the sporting pages? Breaking of sweat and alcohol and liniments. Yes, dear lady, I understand utterly. Peter is a good man. For 25 years we've lived happily together. This demoralizing foolishness is therefore something I will not have. I am not going to have it. It's not girl. Not for my height and build. Good day, Mr. Beaton. What's on your nautical mind? I've just been scrimmaging with a forward wall of the Green Bay Packers. Huh? Yeah, lady, who keeps on shrieking, she will not have it. Oh, dear, my wife. Uh-huh. I just spoke to her. No one ever speaks to my wife. Now, you just listen. Now, you listen, Pete. You've raced some good races for us and you've raced some bad ones. Well, the bad ones are because I keep on worrying that my wife will find out. Well, you can stop worrying. She has found out. Oh, dear. It seems you've started swearing in your sleep again. Oh, dear, dear, dear. Pete, tonight you're going home to the crisis of your life. But there's one thing you've got to promise me. You're not going to quit racing. Now, promise. Well, suppose she murders me. Well, Teller will never have a drop of liquor aboard. Tell her you'll be home Saturday and Sunday night. Anything she wants. Give it to her. But you can't stop sailing. Oh, dear me, dear me. Rough language isn't going to save you. Now, you come with me. Oh, wow. To the back room, I want to talk to you. Now, come on. Why don't you try to feel as tough and uncompromising as you felt that day when you pulled the mess out of the cotton blossom? Well, what am I going to do? Lassie's twice my size. Ah, yes. Why is it that the Providence gives such great gifts to timid little men? Well, she's no gift. No, no, no. I mean your gift of seamanship. You know, you sure don't look like a great sailor, but you are. Well, look at Napoleon. He was little. Napoleon's dead. I think I can match that. You have this great gift and you don't know what to do with it. Lassie'll tell me what I can do with it. Pete, promise me you won't weaken. When was I strong? You. You, Peter, do little. You're a sailor. Yours is the heritage of the Vikings, of Columbus, of the seafaring Phoenicians. I call upon you to think of the men who have fought and conquered the sea before you. You do little. You're one of them. Me? They are your preference. Yeah? Think of the great heroes of the sea. Think of the seahawks. Drake, probisher, Hawkins, sailing their Elizabethan thunderbolts to eternal glory. Think. Yeah, yeah. And the bounty. Think of the epic of the bounty of old Ironside, the Alabama. That's right. And the Mayflower. What about the Mayflower? Like Henry Hudson in the half moon. Paragate in the Mississippi. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! Harry on Lake Erie. We have met the enemy and they are ours. Captain Lawrence in the Chesapeake. You don't give up the ship. Adder boy, Pete. And what about John Macefield, co-at Laureate of England, and sea fever, huh? I must go down to the seas again to the lonely sea in the sky. Do it, do it. And all I ask is a tall ship. The cotton blossoms. The stars... A tall ship. The cotton blossoms. The stars... Had a boy, Pete Bass, for the win for Crane. Columbia, Dad! Had a boy, Pete! Had a boy! Out of my way! I'll probably get killed, but I'm off to the war! And if anything goes wrong... Don't you worry! We'll bury him at sea. You are listening to a dramatization of girls alike boats on the Hallmark Playhouse, a story selected for you by the distinguished novelist James Hilton. Before Mr. Hilton introduces the second act, I'd like to introduce a great Italian sculptor of two centuries ago. His name was Antonio Canova, and his studio was a monk cell. One day a friend came visiting and burst into praise of an apparently completed statue. But Canova calmly continued to make minute refinements with what seemed to be trivial taps of his melon. And when the visitor chided him for wasting time on such small details, the sculptor replied, these final touches make the difference between failure and perfection. Yes, whether it's a statue or a greeting card, it's the extra touches, the small refinements that make the difference. And the folks who make Hallmark cards know just how to give their greeting card that extra something that you and your friends will most appreciate. You see, they're not making just cards. They're creating Hallmark cards, greeting cards that go out of their way to be warm and friendly and sincere. Cards that have a wonderful way of saying just what you want to say, the way you want to say it. That's why Hallmark cards are America's favorite greeting cards. And that's why those three identifying words on the back, a Hallmark card, tell your friends you've cared enough to send the very best. Now James Hilton, the famous writer who selects the stories for the Hallmark Playhouse, takes you back to girls are like folks. So here we are with Peter Doolittle in quite a serious dilemma for anyone like Pete who takes his voting seriously. Well, Mr. Rowling's got him into it. Maybe he can get him out of it. Because as I said before, he can weave a yarn as smartly as he can trim a mental. So let's see how he does it. He has Pete's wife talk to the Commodore of the Yacht Club. She pretends to have a nervous breakdown. She advertises cotton brothels for sale. At her own property, she pleads firmly against Yacht Club. Week after week after week, it wore Pete down. But somehow he never quite gave in, but it was hurting his racing form. And George finally had to speak to Pete about it. Pete, life's just not worth living to you, is it? Not very nice. Want to quit? Well, the only happiness I have is racing my boat. If I quit, I won't have anything. No, I blame your wife. She's a wussess. Oh, now we ought not to talk like that, George. Well, she isn't so bad. Well, not so awful bad. Well, what that woman needs is what you said the cotton blossom needed once and you were dead right. Rough handling occasionally. Discipline. Women are like boats. Yeah, they've got to be paddled every so often. Women are like boats, all sizes, all shapes, all temperaments. And full of bilge. They're like boats and they've got to be treated like boats. You took the cotton blossom and actually wrestled the performance out of it. Oh, well, she's a great boat. Yeah, she's a great boat. But since you've been fighting your wife on this issue, I've gotten only two good races out of you. I know. Nothing you can do about it? You're a great enemy and I am pood. Well, in that case, Pete, I'm afraid I've got bad news for you. We picked the boat that's the race against Montaigne's dandelion up at Lodgecrest. Oh, you are dead, I suppose. No, the cotton blossom. The cotton blossom? You call that bad? Wait a minute, Pete, wait a minute. I tried to get the race committee to let you sail us and she's your boat. Well, she is my boat. Pete, the club comes first. You know that. Well, to put it bluntly, they just couldn't see a hen-packed husband in the role of a winner, a victorious hero. You mean I'm not going to sail it? No. That youngster, Parks, is going to sail the cotton blossom. Oh, no. I'm sorry, Pete. You're sorry. I'll never race again. I wouldn't say that. I am saying it. I'm going right home. I'm going to promise Lassie I'll never race a yacht again. Well, I'll send you my letter resignation when I get around to... They fly the budding and swish the brass polishing rags when you come up to a race. Monty, their champion, was wearing a snow-white polo coat that year. Parks and the cotton blossom made all the right motions and by a miracle of some kind, we took the first race. But it didn't mean anything. Parks was sailing better than he knew how and had a reputation for blowing up. The next day, Parks flew up. We lost by two and a half minutes, shivering and unnerved. Parks stepped into the dinghy to take him ashore and slipped, dislocated his shoulder. The next morning, he couldn't move his arm. The day was perfect for racing. No chance for a postponement. So I got the sailing secretary of our own club on the phone and I said, deliver this message for me in your official capacity, will you? Just get Pete to do a little of the news that I want him right away. Tell Pete that George wants it. He'll understand. Don't fail me. Get going now. Good morning. Peter, do a little speaking. Secretary's... Yeah? George? He wants me right away. I see. Oh, I get it. Sure. Oh, please. I gotta go someplace. It's very important. In your long life, despite of your promise to me never to race again. I want my clothes. Now where's my pants? Now look before I get... The boat was coming toward us. I shoved the cotton blossom slowly into the wind. The ten-minute gun. And then the mahogany launch swung alongside us and... There was Pete in the files in his underwear and glasses. Pete! I maybe killed my wife. How? I hit her. Yeah, I bumped her right on the schnoz. She tried to stop me as I was crossing the yard to the garage and I let her have it. But it begins to reach away at about three minutes before the start. And then comes back broad and hardens down and gets going. Well, leave us get going too. I feel wrecked. I shoved into the cotton blossom six sheets and Pete got underway toward the starting line. Then, between Montauk Point and Staten Island, to this day the encounter is known as the meeting of the long Bal Brighan draws and the snow-white polo coat. For Pete's sake, you barely missed the following, boy. I haven't got... I forgot how funny Pete's a little look in the cockpit of that racing yacht. A little husk of a man wearing shell-rimmed glasses in a sea-soaked Union suit. Casper Milk-toast snuck down to the lured, watching the jib like the master that he was. You forgot how small and meek he was. You forgot the Bal Brighan Union suit. You forgot everything, except that there was something heroic about that little man. Something timeless, something in a blood. Yes, as far back as Drake and Probisher and Hawkins, and we have met the enemy and they are ours. Don't give up the ship and all that. All that. Of course we won. Pete swept the finnaker lifting and bow wave, crooning across that finish line, and a gun welcomed the victor. I was waiting for you in the club room, Pete. And how are you? Oh, Pete, dearie, you all... Is it broken? It's not broken. You're snot. I mean your nose. Oh, I won the race and I am not coming home. And what is more, I'm going to stay out all night. Yeah, he's here. Well, let me... She wants to talk to you. I'm dead. A wave washed me overboard. No, no, she's a different woman. Go on, talk to her. You come down and join us, huh? Where to take a taxi, George? Pete wants you with him. In his...in his hour of trouble. Don't you wear that yachting dress I bought for you 25 years ago? Oh. Right back in style again. Just like you and me. I think Mr. Rawlings must have enjoyed writing that story almost as much as we've enjoyed it tonight. And we were certainly lucky to have such fine players in our cast as Lois Corbett, who played Lassie Doolittle, Joseph Kearns, who was Pete, and Gerald Moore, who was George. ...to tell you about next week's story. Meantime, I'd like to remind you that there's nothing like one of those charming hallmark dolls in the land of make-believe to make a child's eyes light up with joy. There are 16 dolls in all, Little Miss Muffet, Cinderella, Little Boy Blue, and 13 other childhood favorites. Each one wears a hat topped off by a jaunty plume that's a real feather. Each doll stands up by itself, and each one has a clever rhyme story about the doll inside. But that's not all. No, indeed. There's also a big, beautiful album to put them in. The hallmark dolls are as easy to send as any hallmark greeting card, and cost only 25 cents each. And the big hallmark doll collector's album, which you'd expect to cost at least a dollar, is also only 25 cents when you buy one or more of the hallmark dolls. That means you can give some little friend of yours the album with three dolls in it to start a collection for only $1. See all 16 of the charming and colorful hallmark dolls and the beautiful new hallmark doll collector's album. Tomorrow at the store where you buy your hallmark greeting card. Now here again is Mr. Hilton. Next week we have a story which could truthfully be called a modern classic. It's the Citadel by A.J. Cronin. A great story about a doctor written by a doctor who became a great writer. And now let me take just a moment to remind you that there's a great shortage of nurses in our American hospital, and that a fine opportunity awaits young women between the ages of 17 and 35 who are high school or college graduates. You can apply to your nearest hospital or school of nursing. Thank you very much, and now until next week this is James Hilton saying good night. Tonight's story was adapted for radio by Milton Geiger. Our music was arranged and conducted by Lynn Murray. To be doubly sure of the finest quality always look on the back of a greeting card for those three identifying words a hallmark card. Remember hallmark cards when you carry enough to send the very best. Next week James Hilton's story selection for the hallmark playhouse is the Citadel by A.J. Cronin. And the week following you will hear George Agnew Chamberlain's Phantom Fillet. So until next Thursday at the same time this is Frank Goss saying good night to you all. This program came to you from the hallmark playhouse. This is CBS, the Columbia Broadcasting System. This is KMBC, Kansas City, Missouri. Earl Smith and the news after this announcement.