It's been Heard Round the World, presented by the DuPont Company, makers of better things,
for better living through chemistry.
With Donald Crisp as Judge Henry French, here is Heard Round the World, time 1875.
This is Concord, Massachusetts, by the rustic bridge across the Concord River.
Look at that pack of people.
Look at them on both sides of the bridge.
Cover the meadows too, stretching way down the river in both.
There's a fight.
Take your hands off me.
I'm going across that bridge.
It's been just right.
Mister, you're not going across that bridge.
Step aside, Captain.
No one is allowed across the bridge till the statue is unveiled.
The governor's, congressman, judges, and foreign portentates are allowed.
Now does that describe you?
It does.
I am Patrick Harrington, handyman extraordinary to his honor, Judge Henry French.
That's enough out of you.
Get back now.
Back.
Judge French, Judge French.
Here's his honor.
Now he'll tell you he'll fix it.
What's all the commotion about?
Why, Judge, this man was trying to...
Your honor, do I or don't I deserve to cross the bridge?
You certainly do, Patrick.
Captain, since I'm here taking my son's place, you understand, of course, that my son was
the sculptor of this statue.
But he is now studying in Italy and I've been chosen to take his place at the ceremony.
Well, that's all right.
So go right ahead.
Well, now, if I take my son's place, that means my place is empty.
Exactly, your honor.
Well, now, just a minute, Judge.
Therefore, I will appoint my handyman Patrick to fill my empty place.
Will you follow me, Captain?
Well, now...
Now that I believe is all quite regular, especially as Patrick's strong right arm was used as
a model for this statue of the minute man.
Good afternoon, Captain.
Come along, Patrick.
Come along.
Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson will now deliver an address.
Thank you very kindly, your honor, for sneaking me in.
Well, you deserve it.
We have gathered here in Great Concourse to dedicate this memorial to the minute men who
stood in this same green field and by this calm river stood and died for us a hundred
years ago today.
When it was first my privilege to act on the committee to select this statue, I suggested
that we send an emissary...
Yes, my son's statue.
It will be in the school books.
Even I'll be in the school books because I'm the father of Daniel Chester French.
Yes, but I feel dishonest.
I doubted my own son.
Watching the boy grow up, I always doubted him.
Even five years ago, I doubted him.
I remember one evening when I'd sent for him...
Come!
Henry, why have you asked Dan to come to the study?
Because, my dear, I think a very direct talk is most decidedly indicated.
But he's the fourth child, Henry.
You can't judge him by the others.
I'm judging him by his brother, Will.
Will is six years older.
Please come in and shut the door.
Yes, dear.
When Will was Dan's age, he was one of the most brilliant students Arvid ever had.
Now, is Dan at Harvard?
I'm asking you, is Dan at Harvard?
No, dear, he isn't.
Well, you think he ever will be?
Well, that's difficult to say, but at least he's happy here working on the farm.
Do you think there is the remotest chance of our youngest child ever engaging in any
form of intellectual activity higher than that of a rustic?
Oh, here's Dan now.
Now, Henry, please don't be too severe.
Come in.
Did you send for me, Father?
I did, son.
What have you been doing today?
Cutting asparagus.
Did it ever occur to you that there might possibly be some more productive form of enterprise?
Yes, Father.
Well, now, that's very encouraging.
What were you thinking of?
I was thinking that I should work on the strawberries.
Now, Daniel.
Yes, sir?
When we moved to Concord, we came partly to be near Boston in my law office.
Mainly, we came to give our children the advantage of growing up in a community where education
and culture are bound.
Yes, sir.
Now, I may be in error, son, but I've always believed that ideas could be communicated.
Yes, Father, I think you're right.
Now, would you, son, tell us any ideas you might have received during these years we've
been here in Concord?
I don't know, Father.
I like it here.
I like the birds.
I like the river.
I like to walk by Walden Pond.
Are those ideas?
Oh, dear Lord.
Henry, may I make a suggestion?
Under the circumstances, I think anything would be welcome.
Well, Dan might read more if he didn't work quite so much on the farm.
Well, I see.
All right.
What books do you think you might read, Dan, if we shortened your labor?
I don't rightly know, Father.
Well, suppose we gave you the afternoons free.
What would you care most to do?
Should I answer honestly, sir?
By all means.
If I had my afternoons free, Father, I'd care most to walk out with the girls.
Oh, what a wrong question.
Daniel, what your father's trying to say is what would you...
I'm asking you, what are you going to do with your life?
You are now 19.
What will you do?
Well, Father, I haven't quite decided.
I...
Would you like to work in my office as a petty clerk?
No, thank you, Father.
Or a messenger.
That would keep you outdoors.
Yes, but it would be outdoors in a city, Father, and that isn't outdoors.
Would you perhaps be interested in shipping before the mass like that Dana boy did?
No, Father.
Then what, my dear flesh and blood, would you care to do?
Father, do you figure I earn my keep working with Patrick here on the farm?
I certainly do.
Then Father, I'd just like to keep on earning my keep.
That boy would have driven a saint to distraction.
As I look back, I realize I wasn't all my fault.
I did everything I could.
I tried to interest him in something.
I left books around.
I took him to the Old Cots to tea.
I took him to the Emersons, the Hawthorns.
And finally, in the middle of one Sunday night, I gave up.
Pamela?
Yes?
You asleep?
No, dear.
What's troubling you?
From this moment forward, I wash my hands of Dan.
Oh, Henry.
It isn't that he's a troublesome son.
He's a good boy.
He goes on good and he's a good boy.
He goes on good and he's honest.
He's
I can't help thinking of a commonplace son.
He might be an artist.
What could possibly have put that into your head?
Oh, I think he draws a little.
Dan Draw?
He draws a plow and no more.
Once I found some pieces of brown wrapping paper on his bed.
Where?
They were covered with drawings of gods and goddesses.
How did they look?
I confess I didn't frame them.
It's exactly as I thought.
Why don't I try having a talk with Dan tomorrow?
Try, my dear, if you want to.
But I give up. I honestly give up.
Dan?
Dan, are you in the barn?
No, Mom, it's me, Patrick. Dan ain't here, Mrs. French.
Oh, I thought he was out here bundling asparagus with you, Patrick.
Oh, the boy was working hard, Mrs. French.
But then he started glancing up at that pile of turnips over there.
Well, he knew his father wanted everything bundled before dark, didn't he?
Yes, but he keeps looking up at a great round white turnip on the top of the pile.
About an hour later, without a word, up he gets, goes over to the pile, takes that turnip,
heads out the barn door and way across the field, out of sight down by the river.
Well, Patrick, didn't you say anything? Didn't you ask him what was wrong?
No, ma'am. I just figured he was took with a longing for turnip.
Oh, Patrick, I have to ask you a question about Dan.
Yes, of course, ma'am.
Now, you work with him all day. You see more of him than we do.
What do you think of the boy?
He's not lazy, Mrs. French, if that's what you mean.
Nor certain he'll sweat it out with anima.
His father keeps saying if he'd only leave in the evenings to better himself, he just sits.
Well, now, he does sit every chance he gets. There's no denying that.
Now, take every evening this week. He's been sitting out here with me,
watching two owls in the hemlock tree.
The judge says Dan hasn't a thought in his head.
I don't know what he's got in his head, ma'am, but he's got a fine pair of hands.
Did you see the job he did mending the harness?
No.
Oh, ma'am, I tell you, watching that boy's fingers go is a pleasure, like watching a family of fish.
Pat! Pat, I did it! I've got something! I did it!
Oh, mother, look. Look what I found inside the turnip.
But, Dan, you carved that frog out of a turnip?
Oh, the saint. It is a frog.
Do you like it?
The fanciest frog I ever saw.
In pants and tailcoat. It's a frog that's going a-wooing.
Do you like it, mother?
Oh, Dan, it's a beautifully beautiful frog.
He seems to be hopping right at me.
I thought that, too. He seemed to be hopping at me right out of that turnip.
You are listening to Heard Round the World, starring Donald Crisp on the cavalcade of America,
presented by the DuPont Company, makers of better things for better living through chemistry.
On April 18, 1875, in Concord, Massachusetts, before thousands of people,
the statue of the Minuteman is about to be unveiled.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson is speaking, Judge Henry French, the sculptor's father,
thinks back to the time when he first had a hint there was a sculptor in his son,
and he tried to help.
Dan, will you have more stew?
What's that big bundle on the sideboard?
Daniel?
Yes, sir?
Last night, after your mother showed me that piece of turnip,
and after you went up to bed, she asked me what I was going to do about it.
Yes, Father?
Well, at the time, I didn't know exactly what she meant
or what I could do about the turnip if I knew what she meant.
But then on the train into the office this morning, I started thinking about this and that,
and again during the day, I thought a bit further.
How do you mean, Father?
Well, that is, of course, I didn't think about it during working hours,
because I always keep my mind on my work during working hours.
Oh, yes, Father.
But during luncheon, I recollected a little shop on Bromfield Street
that I once saw with paints and brushes in the window.
Eat your dumpling, Dan.
So when I left the office, I stopped on the way to the depot,
and I asked the shopkeeper if there was any special material
that could be used by someone who might be inclined to make or shape
small ornamental objects out of one thing or another with his hands.
Eat your dumpling, dear, it's getting cold.
He said, yes, there was.
With that, he sold me ten pounds of what is called modeling clay.
Father.
And that is what is in that bundle that now rests on the sideboard.
Oh, Father.
From then on, all his spare time, Dan stayed in his room.
He made a lot of little things out of the clay.
Even then, I doubted him.
But one of our neighbors, Mae Alcott, was a professional sculptor.
She had just returned from studying abroad.
So I asked Mrs. French to go to her for advice.
Yoo-hoo, Mr. Alcott!
Hello there, Mrs. French. We're all out here in the garden.
Good afternoon, Mr. Alcott.
Join us for tea. Tony, Louise, and me.
Oh, thank you. I can't stay.
Oh, come along, Pamela. Do join us.
We're reading Louise's mail.
Everybody, every day there's someone who wants to know
when the little women will get their little men.
Oh, please sit down, Pamela. Here now.
Milk or lemon?
Or a clove.
No, no, thank you.
Or half a clove.
May I cleave you a clove?
Nothing. I can't stay, really.
But I must have two words with Mae.
Yes, I think she's in her studio.
Mae!
Mrs. French, if you look up at the third-floor window,
my daughter Mae will any moment now thrust out her head.
Mae Alcott!
What, Father?
Oh, hello, Pamela. I'm filthy and sticky,
and you can't come up, and I won't come down.
Well, Mae, I've come for advice.
Well, I hear wonderful gossip of your boy Dan.
Is it true, is he talented?
Well, he's made a dog's head, and he's made two owls and a deer.
Send him around.
Well, his father doesn't think he should be further encouraged,
unless his talent is genuine.
Well, have Dan bring his stuff over.
Good. Then you can say what you think.
Don't worry, I will. I'll say exactly what I think.
There's my dog, Miss Mae, and...
Mm-hmm.
Uh, here's two owls.
Well.
And, uh, there's my deer.
Fine.
Let's put them around this way, Dan, where the light can hit them.
All right.
Oh, uh, this is a panther. I haven't finished it yet.
Yes.
Its legs are wobbly. It needs an armature.
A what? An armature?
A skeleton, a little skeleton of stiff wire, a small pipe.
That keeps it strong and straight.
Ah. Then you build the clay around that.
That's right.
Uh-huh.
I like that pair of owls, Dan.
I like that best, too.
Do owls have such beautiful faces?
Oh, yes, Miss Mae. I think they do, in the evening.
That... that wing outstretched, it's wonderful.
That pair of owls was in our hemlock tree.
Every evening after supper, he used to put one foot on hers,
and then his wing around her like that.
He was courting.
Can you tell that?
Of course you've caught it, Dan.
I've tried to.
You have.
I don't know. I don't know.
Dan, if you want to, you can come here to my studio every day.
I'll teach you all I can.
Do you think I could learn?
I'm not very bright, you know, and I disappoint people.
I've always disappointed my father.
Dan, I can tell it from your hands and from your heart.
You know what can't be taught, and what can be taught, I'll teach you.
And when I can't teach you any more, then you'll go to Boston,
then New York, then Rome.
Rome? Italy.
Do you want to work with me, Dan?
Will you start tomorrow?
If I can just run now and tell my father,
I'd like to come back here and start tonight.
The days after that were the happiest of my life.
We used to ride to Boston together.
I went to my law office.
Dan went to Dr. Rimmer's class in artistic anatomy for surgeons and sculptors.
This went on for some time.
Then one night as we rode home on the train together...
Father.
Yes, son?
I've come to a decision.
Yes?
There's no art school in Boston.
I've learned all I can from Dr. Rimmer.
I want to go to New York.
Well, do you think you're ready?
Dr. Rimmer does.
And my little animal figures won a prize at the cattle show.
And I sold the two owls for $50 to that novelty manufacturer.
Where would you study in New York?
Oh, there's a real sculptor there.
He has a studio right on Central Park.
I think he'd take me for a month or two.
Young man, you seem rather well informed.
And I can live for nothing in Brooklyn.
I've already written my Aunt Catherine Wells, and she'll take me.
And she knows the sculptor.
Do you consent, sir?
Can I do anything else?
So Dan went to New York.
Learned all about calipers and castings and all the endless mechanical work that makes the sculptor's discipline.
Then one night at supper after his return, the...
Read the paper tonight, Dan?
I did, Mother.
You see what it said about a statue competition?
No, no, I didn't, sir.
Old Ebenezer Hubbard has left $1,000 to erect a memorial to the minutemen at Concord Bridge.
Mother, may I have some more shad?
Yes, dear.
Did you hear me, Dan?
Yes, sir.
There's been a committee chosen to choose it.
Mr. Emerson is one of the members.
Some more potatoes, too, please.
Now, I happened on Mr. Emerson today.
I'm really hungry.
I plowed up five acres today.
Dan, your father wants to tell you about Mr. Emerson.
Oh, I'm sorry, Dad.
He informed me that small clay models would be invited from various sculptors of the nation.
And from these, the committee would select the best to be made life-size and then cast into bronze.
I wondered how they might go about it.
Well, your interest seems remarkable.
We listen, Shad Henry.
Dan, have you any thought to make such a model?
No, sir.
Well, may I ask what restrains you?
My own limitations.
What?
Father, this is for professionals.
Well, what are you?
You sold that pair of owls for $50.
But I'm only beginning. I never tried anything in bronze.
I've never made a full-length figure.
Then it's high time you did.
No son of mine is going to spend his entire life playing with mud and making midgets.
Oh, please, Henry.
I tell you, at high time, that boy buckles down to a full-sized man.
Henry, please have some shad.
I'm waiting for your reply, Daniel.
But, Father, this is hard.
The Minuteman has to be more than a statue.
It has to stand for something.
Give me some shad.
All right, dear.
Now, Daniel Chester French.
Yes, Father.
I shall expect you to have something to submit to that committee within six months.
But, Father, owls are owls and a deer is a deer.
But I don't know how to start on a man.
You'll do exactly as May Olcott said.
First you draw. You draw a Minuteman.
Then you draw another.
You draw Minutemen standing up.
You draw them sitting down or running or firing or crouched behind a stone wall
or standing by a plow or leaving a plow.
His sleeves rolled up, his sleeves rolled down with his musket, without his musket.
You follow me?
Henry, your shad is getting cold.
Then you do it all, all over again in little clay models.
You will cover your table with models.
You will cover your bookshelves and your washstand.
When your windowsill is stacked with them, we will give you your brother Will's room.
When six months have elapsed and the house is stacked with clay models,
you will then select your best model in consultation with your mother and me, of course.
And you will convey that model to the committee.
They at one glance will decide that it is the best possible Minuteman
and, without further delay, commission you to recreate it life-size and have it cast in bronze.
Do you consent, sir?
Yes, Father. I do.
And that's what happened.
That's why I'm here today taking my son's place, because he's away studying in Italy.
Your Honor, Your Honor!
What?
The unveiling is about to take place. Look now.
We shall never debase ourselves.
And now let the silken cord be pulled and let the statue face the world.
Oh, look! Oh, look at that now, Your Honor!
As we face the Minuteman in this clear April air, let us remember what he stands for.
Sleeves rolled up, clutching vigilantly his musket in the defense of American freedom.
Let us remember what happened here, as these verses carved on the base of the statue say,
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
What?
They're all leaving now, Judge. So, shall we be going home with the rest?
No, you, you just go on, Patrick. I want to be alone here for a while with just the statue.
In just a moment, we have a surprise for you.
Now, our surprise. Here is the only daughter of Daniel Chester French, the sculptor whose story we brought on you,
we brought you tonight, rather, on tonight's Cavalcade. Mrs. Margaret French Cresson, an author and a sculptor in her own right.
Thank you, Mr. Pearson. I think Cavalcade's audience will be interested in this footnote to tonight's story.
Fifteen years from the time my father started his sketches for the Minuteman in Concord,
another great statue of his was unveiled on Memorial Day 1922,
the statue of another American defender of liberty which can be seen in another hallowed American shrine,
the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Well, Mrs. Cresson, those fifty years represent one of America's most distinguished careers in sculpture.
Thank you, Mrs. Cresson, for being with us on tonight's Cavalcade.
Tonight's original Cavalcade play, Heard Round the World, starring Donald Crisp, was written by Halstead Wells,
was adapted from the book Journey into Fame, published by the Harvard University Press,
and was written by Margaret French Cresson. Featured tonight with Mr. Crisp in the cast was Elliot Reed as Dan.
Donald Crisp may currently be seen in the Paramount Pictures production, Whispering Smith.
The music for the DuPont Cavalcade is composed by Arden Cornwell, conducted by Donald Borees.
This is Ted Pearson speaking.
Next week, Cavalcade will present the dynamic and dazzling Hollywood star Ginger Rogers.
Our play is set in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War when a beautiful woman named Lydia Dara
outwitted a British colonel and came to the aid of General Washington and the American troops.
Be sure to listen next Monday night to Cavalcade, and our star, Ginger Rogers.
Cavalcade of America is directed by John Zoller.
Comes to you each week from the stage of the Longacre Theatre on Broadway in New York,
and is presented by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware.
Applause
This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.
Music