Aurora Dawn (10 page)

Two years after the snow-white-snow-pure episode, an event in the life of Talmadge Marquis restored his credit in the industry,
changed his way of work and, in no small measure, wrought a revolution in national habits of living: he discovered the radio.

Far from being the roaring colossus it is now, broadcasting was an industry on a small scale when Marquis decided to try vending
his soap by means of wireless entertainment. Although he was later hailed as the “pioneer” of radio merchandising, when he
took the first step he was as innocent of its implication as he was of the workings of God’s laws that made possible electric
pulsing of sound through silent space. An imaginative radio entrepreneur persuaded him to attend an audition of entertainers,
and Marquis was so enchanted with the homage paid him by these people, well known to him through his devoted attendance at
musical comedies, that he could not resist acquiescing to this dubious experiment in popularizing Aurora Dawn.

No American except a congenitally deaf one needs to be reminded of what followed. Sales of the soap increased so sharply upon
this first venture that Marquis realized he had stumbled into El Dorado. During the next five years, while conservative manufacturers
were debating the propriety of invading private homes with spoken pleas for their products, Marquis started program upon program,
and harnessed the full strength of this vast new selling machine to drive Aurora Dawn soap up to a fantastic level of popularity.
His mathematical charts of sales became Andes, Himalayas of new peaks, while his competitors fumbled in the foothills of journalistic
and billboard selling. In time they all imitated him, but in the interim Aurora Dawn had soared into the advertisers’ Ninth
Heaven of “household words,” beyond compare; and the pink bar became almost as usual a phenomenon in American homes as running
water.

It is safe to say that during all this Marquis had not a glimmer of what was happening, namely, that a very old institution,
the medicine show, was being revived in a mechanized form. The basic motion: attracting the attention of idle people with
amusement, and then diverting that attention to a commodity: was old in Oriental bazaars when Abraham went forth from Ur of
the Chaldees; the slight innovation of radio lay in its use of the mystery of electromagnetism to make its way into the hitherto
sacred privacy of family circles, there to perform its tricks and cry its wares. Talmadge Marquis, however, knew only that
he had been wafted to a Prophet’s Paradise of groveling attendance, infinite puissance, and unending indulgence of appetite.
Fawned on, flirted with, bowed to, he lost whatever sense of proportion he had and became as whimsical as Nero. Riding this
mighty new selling engine, it was impossible for him to make a mistake. His decisions, which diverted golden streams of dollars
one way or another and therefore called forth the most desperate efforts to please and placate him, were choices between Aphrodite
and Helen, for he was first in the field and had the entire range of American amusement at his command. He could afford to
offend skillful artists until they threw his rich contracts into his face, for there were always others to grasp for his money;
he could indulge with safety the urge to meddle, which had proved so disastrous when he applied it to an obdurate substance
like soap, for the quicksilver spirits of comedy and music slipped through his fingers, and, while satisfying himself that
his ideas were improving his programs, he actually did them only slight harm. The whole development was as lucky a turn for
Aurora Dawn as Old T.M. might have prayed for on his deathbed. Marquis abandoned all but the faintest pretense of being concerned
with the making and distribution of soap, leaving those matters in the hands of his father’s brilliant oligarchy of managers,
much to the increase of their happiness and efficiency. He spent his days as the arbiter of merit and taste in all the entertainment
for which he was paying and soon acquired among the gossipy folk of the amusement world a legendary fearsomeness combining
features of the reputations of the Marquis de Sade and the Erl King.

In all this I am, of course, striving only to reproduce the impression which Talmadge Marquis made on unphilosophical minds
unable to perceive that, in truth, he was suffering from an absence of Being where Being should be.

This chapter is an example of how the teller of a true story is hampered. Absolutely nothing has happened. Laura Beaton and
Stephen English are still walking up East Fifty-second Street, leaning forward into the March wind; Andrew and the painter
are still in their taxicab. Unless I make the excuse that the taxi has been held up by a traffic jam in front of Saint Patrick’s
Cathedral during all this time, I must plead guilty to the sin of having permitted the story to come to a standstill. Yet,
friend, had you been ushered without this dull explanation into the presence of Marquis, you would eventually have hurled
the book across the room, revolted by its implausibility. No writer of fiction could be forgiven for carving such an odd puppet,
but the Creator’s extravagances we accept
de facto
. The praying mantis exists; so does the bat, so does the cuttlefish, so does the duck-billed platypus; and so did Talmadge
Marquis, of whose history your author is but the wide-eyed and humble recorder.

In which, to make up for our previous discursiveness, there is nothing but pure plot.

T
HE ATMOSPHERE
was oppressive with Power.

In Talmadge Marquis’s inner office on the seventy-eighth floor of the Empire State Building were gathered four masters of
men: Marquis himself, Wilhelm Van Wirt (whom the attentive reader will remember as Andrew’s mentor, the sales manager of the
Republic Broadcasting Company), and two gentlemen named Walter B. Grovill and Thomas Leach, whose joined patronyms formed
the name of an advertising firm known wherever anybody ate the bread of broadcasting. As to these two new figures on our stage,
we are determined to leave description and proceed with our tale. You must be content, then, to know that Grovill was large,
fat, and pale, and ended most of his utterances with a conciliatory giggle, while Leach was small, bitter-visaged, and pale,
and incessantly twisted a college ring around his third finger by flicking it with his thumb. Some day, if spared, we may
tell the story of these two although it will not be so wholesome and improving a tale as this one, containing, as it must,
considerably more human error and fewer interludes of innocent romance.

The daunting array of four great men sat on one side of Marquis’s wide leather-topped desk, rather in the aspect of a general
court-martial; and facing them on the other side sat the fearless Andrew Reale. (Stretched on a large blue sofa at the other
side of the room, gazing out of the wide windows at the noble panorama of the city of stone and rivers, reclined the disheveled
Michael Wilde, whose presence had been explained by Marquis and quickly forgotten by everyone.)

“Andy, you’d better redeem me,” Van Wirt was saying with worried joviality. “I presumed on Mr. Marquis’s time to arrange this
meeting simply on the basis of your telegram saying you’d signed Stanfield.”

“I have signed him,” said Andrew. He took from his breast pocket the paper to which Stanfield had put his signature the previous
morning and unfolding it carefully, he extended it to Marquis. The soap maker scanned the document. As his eye fell on the
Faithful Shepherd’s signature a grin of triumph broadened his mouth, but as his eyes traveled through the typewritten paragraphs
his expression changed, and his physiognomy began to approximate the appearance of cirrus clouds, shifting winds, a falling
barometer and other signs of an approaching storm.

“I’ll be G––d,” he exclaimed. “Van Wirt, do you know what’s in this G––d agreement?”

“Why, no,” said the unfortunate sales manager, with the look of a man in a frail craft running before the gale, “I entrusted
the entire arrangement to Reale. Of course he’s a little young, and he may have slipped up on a detail or two, but nothing
that can’t be–”

“A detail or two?” roared Marquis. “Why, G––n it, how about reading what your company is trying to get me into before sending
out your G––n wet errand boys on a man’s business?” He threw the paper to Van Wirt.

(It should be said here that Marquis’s conversation, regarded solely as a numerical achievement in violations of the Third
Commandment, was remarkable; and, as sophisticated readers would be fatigued and innocent ones baffled by repeated dashes,
and as we do not intend to offend by printing his oaths, we will simply ask the audience to assume the single blasphemy, “Goddamn,”
inserted in his every third phrase during moments of anger, fear, excitement, surprise, or pleasure.)

Van Wirt pounced on the paper and his head moved from side to side in short jerks, so eagerly did he examine it. Dismay dawned
on his face. The ring on Leach’s finger increased its speed of rotation, and Grovill’s smile solidified.

“Andy!” said Van Wirt in a tremulous voice, “no commercials? What does this mean? You exceeded your authority–”

“I know I did, Mr. Van Wirt,” said our hero, with oleaginous deference. “Please hear me out, gentlemen–and first, notice that
that paper does not in the least bind us, except as to the manner of presentation of a
proposed
program. It only binds Stanfield.”

Marquis took the document out of Van Wirt’s hands with a glare at him, and ran his finger along several lines; then he passed
it to Grovill and bent a glance on Andrew Reale in which the barometer was still falling rapidly.

“Gentlemen,” said Andrew, “when you want to induce a religious fanatic to come on the radio to sell soap, after he has already
declared publicly that the Saviour isn’t for sale, you are facing a rather unusual problem in personal relations. I was given
carte blanche
on this problem and told that my career in my company would advance or end according to the way I solved it. I accepted the
challenge, and devised a presentation which, I thought, would cause Father Stanfield to agree to come on the air under commercial
sponsorship. As you see, it worked. The remaining question is, will this manner of presentation still sell soap? I think it
will sell vast quantities of it.

“That paper binds us to limit our commercial identification to a single sentence at the beginning and at the end of Stanfield’s
half hour of broadcasting, to this effect:

“
The Marquis Company, makers of Aurora Dawn Soap and Aurora Dawn Soap Products, have turned over the next half hour of radio
time to Father Stanfield’s Fold of the Faithful Shepherd, as an Aurora Dawn contribution to the religious life of America.

“There is to be no further reference to the product.”

As he said this, Andrew Reale rose to his feet and, pressing his fists on Marquis’s desk, proceeded with great earnestness.
He had the attention of everyone in the room, not excepting Michael Wilde, who sat up on the sofa and leaned forward.

“Now, it is my belief that such a gesture will create an amount of good will for the product that could not be approximated
by sledge-hammer sales talks. America is a religious country, despite the atmosphere around radio studios. Every pastor and
every churchgoer in the land will speak with favor of this uniquely unselfish act on the part of a soap company. The word-of-mouth
advertising will be colossal, and it will be solid selling of Aurora Dawn, gentlemen, because, if you will notice, in that
brief announcement Father Stanfield has accepted six mentions of the name: three at the beginning of the program, and three
more at the end. Six times your product is identified, Mr. Marquis, tied to the selling power of God himself. I don’t think
that’s a disservice to Aurora Dawn.”

Mr. Marquis’s face began to undergo curious and indecipherable alterations of expression.

“I realize, however,” went on our hero, with vigorous assurance, “that this is a radical selling approach, based on an opinion
of mine. I don’t propose, gentlemen, to induce you to accept the idea on such a flimsy basis. Despite the paper which Mr.
Leach is holding–” as this was said, Leach dropped the paper to the desk as though it had suddenly developed a voltage–“we
will tie an old-fashioned, double-barreled, two-and-a-half-minute straight commercial into Father Stanfield’s broadcast; and
he will never object to it, and probably never even know it!”

Van Wirt ran his tongue around his lips and said, “Now wait, Andy, you’re talking about the impossible–”

“Hear me out, Mr. Van Wirt,” said Andy. “Mr. Marquis, you have, in the Bob Steele comedy show on USBS, one of the most popular
half hours on the air. The time in which we of RBC propose to place Father Stanfield is 8:30 to 9:00 Sunday evening–the best
spot of the week. We know as well as you the prestige value of this religious marvel, and we intend to enhance our network’s
standing with it.

“Now, here’s the crux of the matter. It happens that in the 8 to 8:30 Sunday evening spot on our network, Durfee’s Yeast Cake
Jamboree
does not intend to renew
. That hour will be free on April the first. My idea is this, Mr. Marquis: shift the Bob Steele show to our network in the
8 to 8:30 spot. At the
end
of that program–at the time when every follower of Father Stanfield will be tuning to our station–put in the longest, strongest
commercial that the brilliant staff of Grovill and Leach can produce. You will then have a solid Aurora Dawn hour in the best
spot of the week–the second half will be a terrific good-will stroke that will take America by storm–and, for insurance, you
will cash in on the entire religious audience, by slipping in your straight commercial
at the end of the preceding show
.