 Remember a hallmark card when you will care enough to send the very best Tonight from Hollywood the makers of hallmark greeting cards bring you miss Irene Dunne in Edna Furbur's simmer on on the hallmark playhouse Each week hallmark will bring you Hollywood's greatest stars in outstanding stories chosen by one of the world's best-known authors The distinguished novelist mr. James Hilton Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is James Hilton Welcome to our new series on the hallmark playhouse Tonight we present one of the great American stories Edna Furbur's simmer on When I first read it it came to me as perhaps to many others as a window opening on the great conception of an expanding America an Expansion which reached a climax on September 18th 1889 when the simmer on country of Oklahoma was opened up to the throng of waiting settlers It is this tremendous story that miss Ferber tells with great skill And I'd rather think that no living American writer has done more than miss Ferber to open up this vast territory of fiction In our story tonight. We have the special privilege of bringing to you one of Hollywood's most celebrated stars miss Irene Dunne But before we begin here is Frank gas who has a brief message from hallmark There are hallmark cards for every memorable occasion on your calendar for birthdays anniversaries holidays Yes, for every occasion that calls for remembrance for a friendly greeting a word of good cheer an expression of sympathy There is a hallmark card that says just what you want to say the way you want to say it and that identifying name on the back Hallmark well that says you cared enough to send the very best And now we raise the curtain on hallmark playhouse Starring Irene Dunne as Sabra cravat in Edna Ferber's simmer on the simmer on It is a county a river It is a legend and a reality. It is the fabric of my life For I dreamed of it then feared and hated it and finally came to love it It is Oklahoma Inge when you look back the things that measure off the years for you I can look back and count the years of my growth and my country's growth by sounds. I hear a clock Measuring the moments and I close my eyes and I'm back in my mother's great stately house in Wichita I open a music box and once more. I'm sitting on the floor of that house with my young son beside me What did daddy say when he gave you the music box? Oh, I've told you so many times I like the story Well daddy said Here, let's close the box. Shall we? Daddy said I Saw this and I thought you might fancy it as a wedding present And I said my goodness who am I marrying and daddy said me and I said who would marry you and daddy said Any girl in the territory was he telling the truth? Oh daddy always tells the truth So naturally I had to marry him right away before some other girl in the territory got him Some other girl had got him. Where would I be? Well, you see and well I'll explain that to you when you're a little older No other girl in the territory would have gotten me once I had a look at your mother Hello, son What is all this ridiculous nonsense about you going to the simmer on I'm going wherever yancy goes mother yancy It's time you've settled down someplace Why can't you be content to run that newspaper of yours and conduct your law practice in Wichita because there's nothing to fight in Wichita There's no more wilderness. Oh sage is a frontier town. That's where I'm going to start my newspaper No daughter of mine is going crepesing off into the wilderness and boots and calico and sunbonnets Wichita was wilderness when you came to it mother and you brought to Wichita But I'll take to Osage. I'll make a home for my husband. I'll raise my children We'll make the land yield for us We'll put our roots into the earth and our home upon it and when I'm your age I'll have an oh sage what you have in Wichita Oh, darling I've suddenly realized why it could be you and no other from the moment I saw you I've suddenly realized why I always come back no matter where I go Because you're the wife of my heart and my dreams I can measure the years of my growth by sounds Horses hoops and wheels rolling westward and the droning punctuation of insects and birds and sometimes an animal in the distance Singing as he led us into the wilderness It was adventure and excitement during the day and if it night I wept thinking of the cool green grasses in the gardens of home He didn't know and the tears were dry by morning And then one evening Yancey stopped the wagons and pointed with his wagon whip to something that looked like a wallow of mud Dotted with crazy shanties and tents. There it is Sabra. There's our future home Sounds of that first night. I spent in Osage Yancey found us a room above a saloon and disappeared as soon as he got us into it. I lay there in the dark listening Why aren't you asleep asleep? What were all those shots and the screaming and the man hollering? Why sugar? What's happened to my pioneer woman? Well, I certainly didn't know this was pioneering I expected to put up with scalpings and famine and flood, but I certainly didn't expect anything like What are you laughing at? I'm laughing at you now see you the most delightful woman that was ever created No, you don't see some day. I'm liable to get very angry with you. Yes, but not tonight darling not tonight Sounds that my heart had quickened to and treasured and listened for over and over Yancey's footsteps on an Oklahoma Street as we walked on our first morning He wore his fine Texas star boots and a Prince Albert coat and a Snow White sombrero He was handsome Lord, he was handsome Darling, you notice the way everybody's staring at you elegance is rare out here You're going to be very careful what you print in the paper, aren't you careful me? Did you know that Tom Carter the last man who tried to run a paper out here was found shot right through the heart and not through The center though the bullet barely pierced the heart it was sloppy shooting well sloppy shooting or not He wasn't able to write about it the next day. You know what the first item. I'm gonna write my papers gonna be I'm gonna find out who killed Carter and printed what they'll kill you too not a chance I'm the quickest drawing the territory Those dirty buzzes they shot my hat clean off my head where you're going at you stand right where you are sabre I'm gonna pick up my hat. Oh, yes. I wish you wouldn't worry sabre I'm just gonna bend down and get my hat Quit yelling on I just nipped your ear Sure, I can take a joke and I could perform a few jokes myself I'll get you for this Whatever your name is you're a lot of miserable good for nothing loafers. That's what you are shooting at people on the streets You declare I have a notion to box your ears And don't you ever let me catch you shooting at my husband again sabre What did you want to do a thing like that for somebody had to take a hand? Oh, but tomorrow everyone in the territory will be saying that you antsy cravat is hiding behind his wife's petty coach But you didn't they can't say so you shot him very nicely in the ear darling. No, come on Let's continue our walk. We're never going to find a house to live in at this rate Would you like to tote the guns mrs. Cravat? No, mr. Cravat? I don't need a gun to handle the simmer on Shall we go on? We found a four-room house and Yancy bought a two-room cabin made of rough boards and had it hauled and plastered to the main house We had a sitting room a dining room a bedroom and a kitchen to live in and the rooms of the cabin Became a combination law and newspaper office a composing room and a print shop and another sound Clammered its way into my everlasting memories The old sage wigwams gossipy clatter as she came off the press. Yeah, she'll soon be out now Yeah, what are you doing with that gun cutting a notch in it cutting a notch cool lawn? He isn't gonna be able to read in the papers about the way murdered caught her You killed a man your other he had killed me it was one of the other of us Somehow I thought you'd rather have me around than him Yes after a week month after month and finally we were counting years by the editions of the paper I Began to print things for the women readers recipes and fashions and stories Curtains began to appear in the old sage windows and the houses were painted and the grass and flowers began to grow It wasn't Wichita, but it was going to be and though it hadn't the elegance of Wichita yet It had become one thing that Wichita would never be again for me. It was home Bridges and wagons tearing down the roads founted around the house Rattling the windows whistling through the doors and cracks whirling the red dust through the house I was half out of my mind with the pain and the sound of it Oh what agony the wind can blow through your memories. I hate the wind I'm going to pay for the house again I like rose buds in the bedroom and one of those new vine patterns in the parlour listen sugar President Cleveland just issued a proclamation setting September 16th for the opening of the Cherokee Strip. Oh Really, and I've been thinking of organizing another woman's club honey. Let's get out of this clubs wallpaper church suppers Let's sell the newspaper take the children and head for Cherokee. No. No, you can't you can't mean it It's the chance of a lifetime the biggest thing in the history of Oklahoma Sabra listen to me. I won't listen. We've worked and worked. We've got a home now the paper's a success. It's growing We're just beginning to be a little secure about it later in the morning Nancy let the excited shots and yells of the few other men of Osage who also had decided to make the Cherokee run I stood there listening Sabra come with me throw whatever you can in a bag and come with me Children to all of us. It's not too late We're frontier people Sabra. We have to move on as the West moves. We're beginning to have too much when it comes easy It's no good darling. Your food tastes flat and nothing you look at has any color in a house becomes a prison All right, Hansy take your claim on the Cherokee Strip We'll be ready to go when you come back. Oh Sabra my darling my darling. I do have my pioneer woman back after all Goodbye sugar and then my son came into the room And raised the lid on the music box and the box tore at me with almost human fingers Suddenly it was unbearable. I pushed it off the table. Oh, yes Hilton introduces the second act of simmer on the story. He's chosen for tonight. Will you join me at an after theater party? It's an honor of a famed playwright Among the guests a young writer was just overheard asking a question of a friend of the author Sir the young writer asked respectfully How is it that your author friend knows just what to write about? How does he know what people will like? The man thinks deeply for a moment and then answers He is a successful playwright because he knows the things in people's hearts and takes the care to write about them simply and honestly In those words was revealed a secret of the greatness of William Shakespeare Dean of all the world's writers Those who make hallmark cards believe that the bonds of friendship are created and cemented by an extra measure of understanding of knowing what is in people's hearts That's why for every occasion a hallmark card always seems to have an extra measure of warmth and sincerity Yes, every hallmark card seems to say just what you want to say the way you want to say it That's why too your hallmark card is always received with such pleasure For when your friends turn the card over as you did and see the name hallmark They'll know you cared enough to send the very best Now we continue with part two of simmering starring Irene Dunn as sabre crevette I ran the paper for the next five years with the help of jesse ricky the best printer in the southwest And believe me they were five years of reform I was fighting for the day when oh sage could take its place in the sun with wichita on kansas city and chicago and san francisco I wrote editorials about the loafers on the fahaska avenue corners. I denounced politicians I fought for law and order and the sanctity of the home and the days of those years were measured in sound Chilling terrifying sound of fire And then the shouting silence Of absolute stillness that followed it was so quiet That my ears ache for sound I sat there on the front steps unable to move mother Yes, sim it was mongol who set fire to the house Was because you were writing editorials against its saloon There's a posse after him No one would have dared set that fire if my father had been here No, probably not Do you think you'll ever come back? Do you mother? Yes, sim Yes, I do You're laying awake through long black merciless hours praying to hear sound Yancy, I simply can't believe that you would come back after five years And now want to leave again, but I've enlisted with teddy roosevelt's rough riders I was lucky to get here at all. There's a war on yancy yancy darling. You're so beautiful Even more beautiful than I remembered Come here sabre. No, don't yancy. You're my wife. I was your wife five years ago Yancy doesn't your home your family mean anything? Yes, they do That's why I came back But sabre honey, there's a mighty difference between you and me You're in love with houses I'm in love with horizons We had the same dream once I thought we did no We shared the same love That's been our blessing and our tragedy darling For it will always bring me back to you, but I'm afraid it will never keep me here Love is my whole existence To you it's an interlude, isn't it? No, it's it's something I carry with me wherever I go Remember how the knights of the round table wore their ladies colors wherever they went? That's how I carry your love, but I want you to stay Do you want to conquer me or do you want to love me? If you conquer me, there'll be no love left between us But I'll stay if you want sabre No Oh yancy I thought it was happiness to love Only for a few moments here and there It is sorrow to love And it is glory But rarely happiness My dearest my darling I do love you so much so very much I love you and I hate you and I worship you And if it were today that we were starting out together I'd still go with you. I'd still wait for you. Sabre Sabre As measured in sounds I listen to them thrill to them put them into print The sounds of the new century coming up like thunder For yancy cravat a deplorable century Civilization everywhere you looked automobiles airplane skyscrapers And you could walk into the homes of osage and think you were in wichita In fact, you could refer to the homes in wichita as being a little outmoded now You couldn't expect yancy cravat to remain long in a town like that He was still the young fighting pioneer spirit of the country He had to keep hunting for new frontiers new horizons I missed him. I yearned for him. I prayed for him But I had learned how to live alone Completely alone For the children were grown and married now I thought I had heard all the sound you could hear in a lifetime But there were more to come Pull the pump the blast and then the rich black oil gushing from the red soil of oklahoma Their sounds were the best cries of the metropolis osage oklahoma overnight was a metropolis Newspaper of the town and I was elected congresswoman from oklahoma. Where was yancy cravat? What frontier had he found? I had not known for years And then one day I was showing a group of senators and newspaper editors around the oil fields And a sound that was now old and familiar rushed by my ears A new gusher, isn't it mrs. Cravat? Yes another million dollars coming up out of the earth How do they start them with nitroglycerin? Yes, they lower it in a can And there's quite a crowd gathering over there some sort of excitement is going on. Let's walk over and see what it is Can you tell us what's going on tradition all of us? What happened? They put 50 quarts of nitroglycerin into the gypsy pool, but the oil came up before the nitro got down Oh, no. Well, what did they do about it? I never saw anything like it in my life. An old man caught it and a dynamite. That's right They say he just ran back like an outfielder engaged it with his eye while it was up in the air And run back like an outfielder and caught it. Well, how's the man? He's dying his chest is all caved in Who was he? What was his name? Oh, he's an old bum that's been doing odd jobs around the field Name uh, yankee or uh, uh, yancy. Yeah, that's it. Yancy. Yancy Yancy cravat came home forever To the simmer on james hilton will return to tell me in time I'd like to remind you that there's nothing like one of those colorful hallmark dolls from the land of make-believe They make a child's eyes light up with joy There are 16 dolls and all little miss muffett cinderella little boy blue and 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 children really love them You couldn't ask for nicer favors for a children's party or more appropriate place cards than these unique hallmark dolls And these colorful feather-headed hallmark dolls are just as grand for children who live far away from you as for those in your own home Hallmark dolls you see are just as easy to send as any hallmark greeting card and they cost only 25 cents each See all 16 of the charming and colorful hallmark dolls tomorrow at the store where you buy your hallmark greeting cards Now here again is james hilton After that great story of america. I want to compliment you miss done on a splendid performance And for the makers of hallmark cards our gratitude for your charming presence here this evening Thank you mr. Hilton for those nice words But of course you hallmark people specialize in nice words both on your programs and on your greeting cards So naturally I haven't even disappointed But I enjoyed being here tonight and please thank the hallmark people for me and for all those nice words I've heard and seen I shall do that miss done and mr. Hilton may I suggest to the hallmark audience That they listen next week to your own great story Goodbye, mr. Chips starring ronald colman Thank you miss done and so until next thursday when we welcome ronald colman. This is james hilton saying good night Tonight's story was adapted for radio by gene holloway with music composed and conducted by lin murray Our producer director is d angle buck Look for hallmark cards that are so lonely in stores that have been carefully selected to give you expert and friendly service Remember hallmark cards when you care enough to send the very best Now this is frank goss saying good night to you all until next week at the same time when james hilton returns to present Goodbye, mr. Chips starring ronald colman and came to you from the hallmark playhouse. This is cbs the columbia broadcasting system