a pneumatic door closerThe story of how the son of a television programmer and a librarian was able to finance a play like Persephone (although there is, of course, no play like Persephone) can be classified under fables about the Modern American Dream. Not the Classic American Dream where Horatio Alger leaves the farm to sell lemonade on a street corner in New York and uses his profits to invest in the production of his invention of the pneumatic device that keeps screen doors from slamming, but the Modern American Dream where the son of a television programmer and a librarian approaches an old man who made several billion dollars on his invention of the pneumatic screen door closer and convinces him to finance a ludicrously ambitious theatre project that would not even start performances for five years.
There are a number of occasions when Oliver Fagin Thomas has been reported to be visibly nervous but the most detailed account of this phenomenon comes from the section of Vincent Regula's memoir "Hold the Door for Me" that describes the day Oliver first approached him to finance Persephone. As the book is out of print and extremely difficult to come by at the time of this writing I have included an excerpt.
"I happened to be spending the day in my bathrobe. This was quite a nice bathrobe, green with a soft furry inside. I've never been able to find another like that one. I wasn't really thinking about my attire when I answered the door, but the young man who was standing there looked shocked. "I didn't wake you, did I?" I distinctly remember him saying that. He looked like his whole world view would have been invalidated had I said yes. I might have actually been taking a nap, I don't remember that but I know I just chuckled and shook my head and invited him in. This fellow had something about him that won my sympathy. He seemed nervous, but it was an honest nervousness, no attempts to pretend that he wasn't feeling what he was feeling. That's a rare thing to come across in a young man, and rare in anything but the best of old men, in women this can be annoying, there's a threshold of politeness past which the expressions of one’s feelings just makes those around you uncomfortable.
I thought this young man was doing door to door evangelism. He looked Mormon to me, but they always come in pairs. When I let him in I decided that I'd listen to what he had to say, argue with him to make sure he was reasonable and send him on his way. I sat him down in the sitting room. I used to keep a nice set of oversized leather chairs in there at the time. Very comfortable; good for talking. I offered him coffee, and he declined. This brought the Mormon issue back to my mind. To make sure, I offered tea and he accepted without asking about caffeine. That settled the Mormon question right there.
He told me that his name was Thomas. Still thinking that he was at my house for evangelistic purposes I assumed Thomas was his first name, had I realized he was there on business I would have known he meant his last. Still he didn't correct me when I called him Tom. "What is it you're here for, Tom?" I asked.
"Money." he replied. That was a lot blunter than I expected. I remember thinking whatever church he was peddling this was the only one I'd ever seen that was honest about its number one priority. He must have sensed my shock because he started to look ashamed.
"Tom," I told him, maybe too matter-of-factly, "I'm Jewish." The kid got pale in a way you might get pale when you think someone is going to tell you that he subscribes to a harmful stereotype about himself. "And while I'm all for religious freedom." After that he just looked about as confused as a mule in a genetics class. "Hell," I said, "I've always been open to hear someone pitch an idea about how the world works, but truth is I'm very fond of being a Jew and I'm not about to go writing checks to someone else's church."
"Church?" he said. I'll never forget the way he said that.
"Yeah, what are you? JW? You're not Mormon, I figured that out. You look too intelligent to be a scientologist and I'm fairly sure they don't go door to door. I give up." He told me weakly that his father was Episcopalian. I laughed; he sort of forced a smirk. "You're not here evangelizing, are you?" A person always gets a pleasant feeling when things start to make sense. I think our friend Tom got a pretty good sensation because he snapped right back into the role of healthy young man.
"No. Of course not. I want you to finance a play." I laughed even harder. He, of course, did not. "If this was any other play," he told me plainly. "I'd laugh right with you. There are plays that have cost a great deal of money and plays that have made a great deal of money. The play I am proposing is going to cost more money than any play before, but it's going to make more money than any company has ever made."
I've never been quite sure why Oliver Fagin Thomas chose me to be his financial backer. I've never achieved anything that anyone would call prominence. I was just an engineer who loved being an engineer. I once stumbled across a good idea and ended up with a few banks keeping records with awfully high numbers next to my name. I never knew what to do with all of that money. I just let it sit and accumulate--Pretended that it wasn't even there for the most part except to buy a nice bathrobe or sitting room chair on occasion.
I'm not sure why I felt so generous to Oliver. He was not the first person to ask for money but I had never given in before. Too afraid of giving anything to the wrong person I suppose. Not that I was worried about losing my fortune, but more because I didn't want to be scammed. I never once thought that Oliver Fagin Thomas was trying to pull one over on me. He was too honest, too confident for me to question.
That afternoon we went together to visit my lawyer. We set up Persephonia Inc. right then. I gave Oliver pretty much everything. I'm proud of that decision. The money certainly went to good use."
