The Happy Clown

								

the Youth Bed, he looked at the Happy Clown, and he did much better in
kiddie-garden. He even joined in the group experimentation and was not
sick any more, though he could not keep himself from losing color.
They were pleased with him at the clinic and after a few months
discharged him. By the time Steven was twelve and had made the Happy
Tour and joined the Happy Scouts and had a happy affair, involving
experimentation, with a neighbor's daughter, Harriet and Richard ceased
to worry about him. If sometimes he felt so tightly strung-up that a
storm of tears was his only relief, he kept the tears quiet.



       *       *       *       *       *
He was graduated from high school at sixteen and from college at
twenty, having read all he could of the silent books in the scant high
school library and the more ample university one, and having wisely
elected to appear more stupid than he was. Even his I.Q. was now
judged to be only slightly above normal. He left college with honors,
popularity and a reputation as an actor. He took the lead in all the
dramatic club plays, having particular success in the reproduction
of a Happy Clown program. Steven, of course, was the Happy Clown. He
enrolled at once in the New York School of Television Arts, and his
mother cried when he left home to live in the School dormitory.
Steven did well at Television Arts, soon taking more leads than was
customary in School productions, which were organized on a strictly
repertory basis. He did not stay to graduate, being snatched away in
his first year by a talent scout for a popular daytime serial, "The
Happy Life."
"The Happy Life" recounted the trials of a young physician, too
beautiful for his own good, who became involved in endless romantic
complications. Steven was given the lead, the preceding actor having
moved up to a job as understudy for the Jolly Kitten, and was an
immediate success. For one thing he looked the part. He was singularly
handsome in a lean dark-browed way and did not need flattering makeup
or special camera angles. He had a deep vibrant voice and perfect
timing. He could say, "Darling, this is tearing me to pieces!" with
precisely the right intonation, and let tears come into his magnificent
eyes, and make his jaw muscles jump appealingly, and hold the pose
easily for the five minutes between the ten-minute pitch for Marquis
cigarettes which constituted one episode of "The Happy Life." His fan
mail was prodigious.
If Steven had moments of bewilderment, of self-loathing, of despair,
when the tears were real and the jaw muscles jumped to keep the mouth
from screaming, no one in the Happy Young Men's dormitory where he
slept ever knew it.
He managed his life well enough. He had a few affairs with girls, it
was expected of one, and he did not have to work very hard at it since
they always threw themselves at him; and he got along well with other