Next script on my script shelf:
Next play in my little unalphabetized pile of Samuel French plays is The Owl and the Pussycat: A Comedy in Three Acts
I remember seeing the film version of this when I was a kid – 10 or 11 – and laughing so hard at the whole “the sun spits morning” sequence that I was incapacitated for about 5 minutes. Also – Barbra Streisand’s ridiculous nightie is … pure comedy. They’re having these serious scenes and she’s wearing THAT. Also, you want to see why Barbra Streisand is such a good actress? Watch her during the scene where she is laid low by a case of the hiccups. Hiccups are HARD to re-create. And the hiccups have to come at certain points in the lines – in order to achieve the greatest comedic effect. You can’t just hiccup randomly. Barbra Streisand being taken over by hiccups is just a wonderful piece of physical acting and you never – for a SECOND – think that she’s acting or “pretending” to have hiccups. I love that.
So. The script. It was originally produced in 1964 with Alan Alda as Felix and Diana Sands as Doris. If you’ve seen the movie you know the plot. It’s another one of those two-person plays – get two people into a room – two wildly different people – and see what happens.
Felix is a “writer”. He also considers himself an intellectual. He is snobby, elitist, and finicky. Doris is a whore who lives across the alley. Felix has binoculars and has basically been spying on Doris – and when he sees that she is having sex for money – he tells the landlord of her building. Doris gets thrown out on her ass. And she somehow finds out that Felix is the one who turns her in – so she comes a-knockin’ on his door, dragging a suitcase and her television set – demanding that he put her up until she can find a new place. They’ve never met. This is how the play begins – with Doris banging on his door at 2 in the morning.
Felix resists Doris. Felix condescends to Doris. Doris is VERY sensitive about not having an education and she FLIPS OUT when he uses a word she doesn’t know. Somehow she wears down his resistance and he lets her sleep on the couch. There is a VERY funny moment where she can’t sleep and she asks him to read to her. He ends up starting to read his unpublished novel to her and the first sentence of it is: “The sun spit morning into Werner’s face”. Doris kind of can’t get past it … she’s never read a book in her life but she knows that “the sun spit morning” is crappy writing. She keeps referencing it throughout the rest of the play. “Okay, so the sun spit morning, I know, I know …”
They end up having a steamy sexual relationship which rocks the foundations of Felix’s beliefs about himself – that he has conquered his body with his mind, that (to quote the Elphant Man) HE IS NOT AN ANIMAL – He has split himself off into different compartments.
The relationship progresses. Felix decides that Doris is train-able – he starts giving her little tasks – she is supposed to look up a word a day in the dictionary and then use it in a sentence, etc. hahahaha She resents this, but she does her best.
Here’s a scene from later in the play – when there is trouble in paradise.
EXCERPT FROM The Owl and the Pussycat: A Comedy in Three Acts
FELIX. How many times did you say you used the dictionary today?
DORIS. I don’t know. What’s wrong, honey?
FELIX. Please go over to the dictionary and look at it closely.
DORIS. [Doris goes and looks at the dictionary] What am I supposed to see?
FELIX. Look at the edges — at the top —
DORIS. What’s this? [Peeling off a strip of scotch tape]
FELIX. That is a strip of Scotch tape. It’s been there for two days. Undisturbed. Where were you this afternoon?
DORIS. That’s such a nasty thing to do.
FELIX. Where were you yesterday afternoon?
DORIS. I do not care for the tone of your voice.
FELIX. Where did you get the dirty but brand new radio?
DORIS. I’m warning you — stop it — this warning will not be repeated.
FELIX. We’re not going to fight. We’re going to have an honest unemotional discussion.
DORIS. Yeah? So you start out by calling me a liar.
FELIX. I did not call you a liar. I’m not going to lose my temper.
DORIS. You might as well. I’m gonna lose mine!
FELIX. Would you care to tell me what’s wrong?
DORIS. What’s wrong? You’re a creep that puts scotch tape on the dictionary — you know that word — “creep”? Used in a sentence: “Fred Sherman is a big creep”.
FELIX. [starting at “Fred”] What did you call me?
DORIS. It’s your name. Fred — Freddie — I thought that would jar your apricots! I found your yearbook from school — Fred Sherman. You didn’t tell me you changed your name, did you? You creep. I’m sorry — pardon my language, but you are a creep.
FELIX. It’s all right — it’s a step up from “fink”. Congratulations — now — I’d like to hear why you feel you have to sneak out afternoons and lie to me.
DORIS. I just got bored. I had to get out. Look — I tried. I tried working on hats. I tried looking for a job, right? I tried.
FELIX. Have you been plying your old trade?
DORIS. Have I been what? No, I haven’t. I told you I was through doing that.
FELIX. Where’d you get the radio?
DORIS. I collected some money. Somebody owed me some money and they paid me.
FELIX. I see. Why didn’t you tell me that?
DORIS. Because I knew you wouldn’t believe it. I knew what you’d think.
FELIX. I see.
DORIS. Dont’ say “I see”, like you were looking through your lousy spy glasses. Listen — why don’t you stop trying to make out like you’re a human being? I mean the strain must be terrible — why don’t you just relax and admit you’re God and you know all about everything?
FELIX. Why did you have to lie? I just want to know why you lied to me about going out and about looking up words.
DORIS. Because I’m a liar, okay?
FELIX. Why didn’t you tell me?
DORIS. Why didn’t you tell me you changed your name from Fred to Felix?
FELIX. [ignoring her question] I’m very sad. You had a chance to do something important for yourself and you’re quitting. You’re not giving yourself a chance.
DORIS. I gave myself a chance — you had me going there for a while, but it’s silly. I’m a dope and that’s all there is to it.
FELIX. You’re not a dope. You’re a bright girl.
DORIS. Not when it comes to dictionaries and the history of philosophy, I’m not.
FELIX. You have a potential capacity for —
DORIS. No, I don’t have any potential anything.
FELIX. [losing the fight against his temper] Don’t interrupt me — who do you think is better qualified to judge mental capacity — you or I?
DORIS. You —
FELIX. Then why are you arguing with me?
DORIS. Felix, I —
FELIX. Would I be wasting my time with you if you didn’t have a brain?
DORIS. Felix —
FELIX. Do you think an intellectual such as myself would waste his time with a dumbbell?
DORIS. Felix, I know myself — you can’t tell me —
FELIX. I tell you you’re a very intelligent girl, and you’d know it yourself if you weren’t so damned stupid!
DORIS. I am not stupid! I’ve got good healthy everyday brains. I haven’t got your kind of brains and I’m glad, because I’m gonna tell you something — I think your brains are rotten!
FELIX. Ah — the cat turns inevitably and bares her atavistic fangs.
DORIS. To use those ugly, lonely words nobody else uses — that’s all your brains are good for. To keep people away because you’re scared to death of people!
FELIX. She spits in inarticulate fury!
DORIS. You know what your brains are good for? To make up your own lousy little language that the rest of the world can’t even understand.
FELIX. Well, all right — stay with the rest of the world — don’t let anybody make you a foreigner there by teaching you to speak the English language!
DORIS. [going to closet] What a dope I was to listen to you. [Mimicking him] I’m gonna save you, Doris! [In her own voice] You are such a phony. I can’t believe it. You don’t write for money but you keep sending your junk to magazines, don’t you? And you keep getting it sent back, don’t you? Meanwhile all you got is a phony job, a phony girlfriend, a phony apartment and a phony bunch of words. [she has taken the suitcase from the closet and started to throw garments into it as she talks]
FELIX. What are you doing?
DORIS. What does it look like I’m doing?
FELIX. Now don’t get washed away. Think, Doris. Try to understand one basic thing. Try to hold on to what I see in you.
DORIS. [Yelling] You see nothing! You don’t see me at all! You don’t see anything. Because even your eyes are phony! [Knock on the wall. Doris addresses the wall; yelling] I’ll be through in a minute! [To Felix] You know what you see in me? You never had a girl that made you feel like a big man in bed — that’s all.
FELIX. Doris —
DORIS. Well, I want to tell you something about what a hot stud you think you are in the sack —
FELIX. Don’t say it, Doris —
DORIS. You leave me cold, Fred. You’re nothing at all.
FELIX. You’re raising your voice.
DORIS. You do nothing to me, Freddie — you only think you do. You know why?
FELIX. I know — you’re a great actress and to you that bed is theatre in the round — I know all about it — well, now I’m going to tell you something — I don’t leave you cold — I find you cold — “frigid” — is that word in your meager stock?
DORIS. Drop dead.
FELIX. Sure you’re an actress in bed — because you can’t be a woman.
DORIS. With a man I can, Fred — Freddie, it takes a man.
FELIX. Sometimes. Even with fantasies, and dirty words and the guilty stink of the sewer you can only sometimes whip yourself into a parody of passion — sometimes! Isn’t that right?
DORIS. Stop yelling. Nobody’s listening to you. [She’s closing the suitcase]
FELIX. All right. You’re lost. Goodbye. I tried.
DORIS. Now try shutting up. I’ll send for the TV. I’ll send a man! Takes a good look at him.
FELIX. [following her to the door] No matter where you go or what you do or what you call yourself — you are now and forever a whore named Doris Wilgus.
DORIS. Okay. And what are you now and forever? A miserable magazine peddler named Freddie Sherman and a lousy writer and you always will be and you wanna know why –? [Hitting him deliberately with every word] Because, God damn it! The — sun — does — not — spit!
BLACKOUT
