The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze by William Saroyan Page A

into his room and closed the door.
    And you know the picture is about to end.
    The atmosphere of the theatre is becoming electrical with the apprehension of middle-aged ladies who have spent the better parts of their lives in the movies, loving, dying, sacrificing themselves to noble ideals, etc. They’ve come again to the dark theatre, and a moment of great living is again upon them.
    You can feel the spiritual tenseness of all of these ladies, and if you are listening carefully you can actually hear them living fully.
    Poor Tom is in there with a terrific problem and a ghastly obligation.
    For his honor’s sake, for the sake of Hollywood ethics, for the sake of the industry (the third largest in America, I understand), for God’s sake, for your sake and my sake, Tom has got to commit suicide. If he doesn’t, it will simply mean we have been deceiving ourselves all these years, Shakespeare and the rest of us. We know he’ll be man enough to do it, but for an instant we hope he won’t, just to see what will happen, just to see if the world we have made will actually smash.
    A long while back we made the rules, and now, after all these years, we wonder if they are the genuine ones, or if, maybe, we didn’t make a mistake at the outset. We know it’s art, and it even looks a little like life, but we know it isn’t life, being much too precise.
    We would like to know if our greatness must necessarily go on forever being melodramatic.
    The camera rests on the bewildered face of Tom’s old and faithful secretary, a man who knew Tom as a boy. This is to give you the full implication of Tom’s predicament and to create a powerful suspense in your mind.
    Then, at a trot, with the same object in view, time hurrying, culminations, ultimates, inevitabilities, Tom’s son Tommy comes to the old and faithful secretary and exclaims that he has heard Tom, his father, is ill. He does not know that his father knows. It is a Hollywood moment. You hear appropriate music.
    He rushes to the door, to go to his father, this boy who upset the natural order of the universe by having a sexual affair with his father’s young wife, and then, bang, the pistol shot.
    You know it is all over with the President of the Chicago & Southwestern. His honor is saved. He remains a great man. Once again the industry triumphs. The dignity of life is preserved. Everything is hotsytotsy. It will be possible for Hollywood to go on making pictures for the public for another century.
    Everything is precise, for effect. Halt. Symphonic music, Tommy’s hand frozen on the door-knob.
    The old and faithful secretary knows what has happened, Tommy knows, you know and I know, but there is nothing like seeing. The old and faithful secretary allows the stark reality of the pistol shot to penetrate his old, faithful and orderly mind. Then, since Tommy is too frightened to do so, he forces himself to open the door.
    All of us are waiting to see how it happened.
    The door opens and we go in, fifty million of us in America and millions more all over the earth.
    Poor Tom. He is sinking to his knees, and somehow, even though it is happening swiftly, it seems that this little action, being the last one of a great man, will go on forever, this sinking to the knees. The room is dim, the music eloquent. There is no blood, no disorder. Tom is sinking to his knees, dying nobly. I myself hear two ladies weeping. They know it’s a movie, they know it must be fake, still, they are weeping. Tom is man. He is life. It makes them weep to see life sinking to its knees. The movie will be over in a minute and they will get up and go home, and get down to the regular business of their lives, but now, in the pious darkness of the theatre, they are weeping.
    All I know is this: that a suicide is not an orderly occurrence with symphonic music. There was a man once who lived in the house next door to my house when I was a boy of nine or ten. One afternoon he committed suicide, but it took him