Quiet, Please
As promised, to commemorate Corey’s show opening, which is taking place as I type, I’m putting up links to the scripts and places you can download the original “Quiet Please” shows he’s adapted for the stage.
“The Thing on the Fourble Board”
(script) (download the original)
“Whence Came You?”
(script) (download the original)
I recommend hearing them if you can, but reading the scripts should be sufficent to give you the creeps. I’m also gonna give you a little taste by quoting the openings of each.
Click below…if you dare…
Episode #59
Date: 9 August 1948
CHAPPELL: Quiet, please.
(MUSIC … THEME … FADE FOR)
ANNOUNCER: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents “Quiet, Please!” which is
written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and which features Ernest Chappell.
“Quiet, Please!” for tonight is called “The Thing on the Fourble Board.”
(MUSIC … THEME … END)
PORKY (narrates, in conversation with an unheard guest): Me, I’m a roughneck.
Well, I was a roughneck, I mean, twenty years ago – a little too old, too
slow now. Besides, I got a dollar now, I don’t have to be a roughneck, y’see.
Married, got a nice home. Hafta meet my wife. (calls out) Hey, Mike!
(narrates) Her name’s Maxine but she likes to be called Mike. (calls out)
Mike! (narrates) I guess she’s busy out in the kitchen someplace. Besides,
she doesn’t hear very well. Shame, too – she’s so pretty and everything.
Well, you’ll meet her… Sit down… I was sayin’ I was a roughneck…
Well, no, that doesn’t mean exactly what you think it means. A roughneck is
an oil field worker, specifically, a guy on a drilling crew. Call ‘em
roughnecks like ya call a section hand on the railroad a gandy dancer or a
garage hand a grease monkey. Same time, you work around a drilling crew for a
while, you’re gonna be a roughneck in every sense of the word, boy. The
derrick floor or a fourble board’s no place for a guy with a bow tie ‘cause
when you have to fool around with drillin’ holes that go farther down in the
ground than it is from the top of Pike’s Peak down to sea level… Yeah, sure
they do. Time I was a roughneck, we got this one well down to seventy-three
hundred and thirteen feet. That was a record. But last May, Pure Oil brought
one in out in the [Natrona?] Valley in Wyoming at fourteen thousand three
hundred and nine feet. That, friend, is almost three miles. Quite a hole
that, huh?
(MUSIC IN AND UNDER)
PORKY (narrates): Sure, I don’t think there’s an oil man in the world that
don’t wonder one time or another what’s down there besides rock and oil and
gas. Oil that’s made out of trees that died twenty million years ago. Oil
that’s made out of dinosaur bones. Oil that’s maybe… made out of the flesh
and blood of men, maybe, that beat each other to death with a stone axe, ate
saber tooth tiger for lunch. Yeah, you get to wondering. You look at the
cores that come up from way down there and sometimes there’s little shells,
trilobites mostly, that was alive when Manhattan Island, where New York is,
was under half a mile o’ ice. We found somethin’ once, me and Billy
Gruenwald. And… something found us. I’ll tell ya about it.
Episode 36
Date: 16 February 1948
CHAPPELL: Quiet, please.
(SEVEN SECONDS’ SILENCE)
CHAPPELL: Quiet, please.
(MUSIC … THEME … FADE FOR)
ANNOUNCER: The Mutual Broadcasting System presents “Quiet, Please!” which is
written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and which features Ernest Chappell.
“Quiet, Please!” for tonight is called “Whence Came You?”
(MUSIC … THEME … END)
AUSTIN (narrates): I came from Jerusalem. I’ve traveled in the East a good
deal in the last twenty-odd years. And I flatter myself that I know my way
around. So when I got off the plane at Cairo, I didn’t start for the camp
right away as a good storybook archeologist would have done. I made a beeline
for Shepherd’s and the room I’d left a couple of days before when I went to
Jerusalem. A bath, a gin and tonic, and a large batch o’ mail from the
States. (chuckles) What more can a man ask? In Cairo? On a hot night? But,
of course, it was too good to last.
SOUND: (KNOCK at the door.)
AUSTIN (sighs, to himself): Just gonna let ‘em knock.
SOUND: (The KNOCKING continues.)
AUSTIN (whispers to himself): Go ‘way, go ‘way, go ‘way…
SOUND: (More KNOCKING.)
ABE FELDMAN: Hey, Austin! Wake up!
AUSTIN (disgusted, to himself): Aw, who the–?
ABE FELDMAN: Hey! It’s Abe Feldman!
AUSTIN (disbelief): Abe Feldman?
SOUND: (FOOTSTEPS across the room, door OPENS.)
AUSTIN (happy to see him): Abe!
ABE FELDMAN: Hi, Austin! (laughs) Regards from State and Madison.
AUSTIN: Well, I’ll be darned! Come on in!
SOUND: (Abe enters the room, door CLOSES.)
AUSTIN: What’re ya doin’ here? What’ve you got there?
ABE FELDMAN: I sure get around, don’t I? Ha, ha. This? This is gin and
tonic. How are ya?
AUSTIN: Well, I’m fine, but– Come in. Well, sit down. You’re the last man
in the world that I–
ABE FELDMAN: Here, take a gin and tonic before I drop it. (chuckles) Well,
l’chaim.
AUSTIN: L’chaim in spades, Abe.
SOUND: (They DRINK. Abe EXHALES happily.)
AUSTIN: By golly, I’m glad to see ya, boy.
ABE FELDMAN: I’m glad to see you. I’ve been looking here for three days,
waiting for you to come back. Hey, ya look skinnier.
AUSTIN: Well, you go out and dig holes out there for six months, lad, you’d
take off some of that fat, too.
ABE FELDMAN: Me? [Sand?]? Go ‘way, you’re kiddin’! Well, get your shirt on
and let’s go see the town.
AUSTIN: Sit down! (chuckles) Come on, whatcha doin’ here?
ABE FELDMAN (takes another drink, exhales): Business.
AUSTIN: Yeah, what kind o’ business?
ABE FELDMAN: Newspaper business, natch. What’s cookin’ in the Middle East and
stuff. (takes another drink) Say, uh, how do you get more of these things?
AUSTIN: We’ll go down to the bar in a minute. They’re colder down there.
Well, go on, go on. Tell me about it.
ABE FELDMAN: Well, you know, Eddie Hoeferkamp just called me in and said
“Draw some dough and go east and send up some stuff for the Sunday feature
section, the Trib’s makin’ a monkey out of us again.” So, I remembered the
dear old days on the midway, you and me, and… you’re around here, so…
let’s go see the town, huh?
AUSTIN (chuckles): Well, I’ll be darned. When’d you leave Chicago?
ABE FELDMAN: Day before yesterday.
AUSTIN (remembering): Oh, boy.
ABE FELDMAN: Yep. The Loop’s still there. They still got the burlesque
[pronounced burlee-kyoo] shows on South State Street. The Michigan Avenue
Bridge is always up. The Cubs are in seventh place. (pause) Now?
AUSTIN: Now what?
ABE FELDMAN: Now we go see the town? Come on, put on your pants.
AUSTIN (laughs): You never been in Cairo before, have you?
ABE FELDMAN: Me? Heh. Not me. Why?
AUSTIN: Well, if you had, you wouldn’t care much about seein’ it, my boy.
ABE FELDMAN: Yeah?
AUSTIN: Yeah.
ABE FELDMAN: But, uh… women!
AUSTIN (dryly): You had a good look at any of ‘em?
ABE FELDMAN: Have I? Oh, boy! Heh, heh.
AUSTIN: What?
ABE FELDMAN: The one that’s waiting for you downstairs.
AUSTIN: Waiting for me?
ABE FELDMAN: Wow!
AUSTIN: What are you talking about? I don’t know any women in Cairo.
ABE FELDMAN: Well, there’s one who knows you.
AUSTIN: Why, you’re crazy.
ABE FELDMAN: I’m tellin’ ya.
AUSTIN: How do you know?
ABE FELDMAN: She’s been waiting down there for three days. I’ve seen her.
AUSTIN: What’s she look like?
ABE FELDMAN: Oh, boy…
AUSTIN: Not a native?
ABE FELDMAN: Cleopatra!
AUSTIN: Is this one of your bum jokes, Abe?
ABE FELDMAN: I give you my word of honor.
AUSTIN: I don’t get it.
ABE FELDMAN: Come on downstairs and you will.
