MY NAME IS EVERYONE

Originally published December 16, 1961

The North Crawford Mask and Wig Club, an amateur theatrical society I belong to, voted to do Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire for the spring play. Doris Sawyer, who always directs, said she couldn’t direct this time because her mother was so sick. And she said the club ought to develop some other directors anyway, because she couldn’t live forever, even though she’d made it safely to 74.

So I got stuck with the directing job, even though the only thing I’d ever directed before was the installation of combination aluminum storm windows and screens I’d sold. That’s what I am, a salesman of storm windows and doors, and here and there a bathtub enclosure. As far as acting goes, the highest rank I ever held on stage was either butler or policeman, whichever’s higher.

I made a lot of conditions before I took the directing job, and the biggest one was that Harry Nash, the only real actor the club has, had to take the Marlon Brando part in the play. To give you an idea of how versatile Harry is, inside of one year he was Captain Queeg in the Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, then Abe Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and then the young architect in The Moon Is Blue. The year after that, Harry Nash was Henry VIII in Anne of the Thousand Days, and Doc in Come Back Little Sheba, and I was after him for Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. Harry wasn’t at the meeting to say whether he’d take the part or not. He never came to meetings. He was too shy. He didn’t stay away from meetings because he had something else to do. He wasn’t married, didn’t go out with women — didn’t have any close men friends either. He stayed away from all kinds of gatherings because he never could think of anything to say or do without a script.

So I had to go down to Miller’s Hardware Store, where Harry was a clerk, the next day and ask him if he’d take the part. I stopped off at the telephone company to complain about a bill I’d got for a call to Honolulu. I’d never called Honolulu in my life.

And there was this beautiful girl I’d never seen before behind the counter at the phone company, and she explained that the company had put in an automatic billing machine and that the machine didn’t have all the bugs out of it yet. It made mistakes.

“Not only did I not call Honolulu,” I told her, “I don’t think anybody in North Crawford ever has or will.”

So she took the charge off the bill, and I asked her if she