“No!” Jill’s tone was firm. “We’re not going to let anyone peddle you. You’re not some bum looking for a job. You’re Toby Temple. We’re going to make them come to you.”
Toby smiled wryly and said, “They’re not beating down the doors, baby.”
“They will be,” Jill promised. “They don’t know what shape you’re in. You’re better now than you ever were. We just have to show them.”
“Maybe I should pose in the nude for one of those magazines.”
Jill was not listening. “I have an idea,” she said slowly. “A one-man show.”
“Huh?”
“A one-man show.” There was a growing excitement in her voice. “I’m going to book you into the Huntington Hartford Theatre. Everybody in Hollywood will come. After that, they’ll start beating down the doors!”
And everybody in Hollywood did come; producers, directors, stars, critics—all the people in show business who mattered. The theater on Vine Street had long since been sold out, and hundreds of people had been turned away. There was a cheering mob outside the lobby when Toby and Jill arrived in a chauffeur-driven limousine. He was their Toby Temple. He had come back to them from the dead, and they adored him more than ever.
The audience inside the theater was there partly out of respect for a man who had been famous and great, but mostly out of curiosity. They were there to pay final tribute to a dying hero, a burnt-out star.
Jill had planned the show herself. She had gone to O’Hanlon and Rainger, and they had written some brilliant material, beginning with a monologue kidding the town for burying Toby while he was still alive. Jill had approached a song-writing team that had won three Academy Awards. They had never written special material for anyone, but when Jill said, “Toby insists you’re the only writers in the world who…”
Dick Landry, the director, flew in from London to stage the show.
Jill had assembled the finest talent she could find to back up Toby, but in the end everything would depend on the star himself. It was a one-man show, and he would be alone on that stage.
The moment finally arrived. The house lights dimmed, and the theater was filled with that expectant hush that precedes the ringing up of the curtain, the silent prayer that on this night magic would happen.
It happened.
As Toby Temple strolled out onto the stage, his gait strong and steady, that familiar impish smile lighting up that boyish face, there was a momentary silence and then a wild explosion of applause and yelling, a standing ovation that rocked the theater for a full five minutes.
Toby stood there, waiting for the pandemonium to subside, and when the theater was finally still, he said, “You call that a reception?” And they roared.
He was brilliant. He told stories and sang and danced, and he attacked everybody, and it was as though he had never been gone. The audience could not get enough of him. He was still a superstar, but now he was something more; he had become a living legend.
The Variety review the next day said, “They came to bury Toby Temple, but they stayed to praise him and cheer him. And how he deserved it! There is no one in show business who has the old master’s magic. It was an evening of ovations, and no one who was fortunate enough to be there is likely ever to forget that memorable…”
The Hollywood Reporter review said, “The audience was there to see a great star come back, but Toby Temple proved he had never been away.”
All the other reviews were in the same panegyric vein. From that moment on, Toby’s phones rang constantly. Letters and telegrams poured in with invitations and offers.
They were beating the doors down.
Toby repeated his one-man show in Chicago and in Washington and New York; everywhere he went, he was a sensation. There was more interest in him now than there had ever been. In a wave of affectionate nostalgia, Toby’s old movies were shown at art theaters and at universities. Television stations had a Toby Temple Week and ran his old variety shows.
There were Toby Temple dolls and Toby Temple games and Toby Temple puzzles and jokebooks and T-shirts. There were endorsements for coffee and cigarettes and toothpaste.
Toby did a cameo in a musical picture at Universal and was signed to do guest appearances on all the big variety shows. The networks had writers at work, competing to develop a new Toby Temple Hour.
The sun was out once more, and it was shining on Jill.
There were parties again, and receptions and this ambassador and that senator and private screenings and…Everybody wanted them for everything. They were given a dinner at the White House, an honor usually reserved for heads of state. They were applauded wherever they appeared.
But now it was Jill they were applauding, as well as Toby. The magnificent story of what she had done, her feat of single-handedly nursing Toby back to health against all odds, had stirred the imagination of the world. It was hailed by the press as the love story of the century. Time Magazine put them both on the cover, with a glowing tribute to Jill in the accompanying story.
A five-million-dollar deal was made for Toby to star in a new weekly television variety show, starting in September, only twelve weeks away.
“We’ll go to Palm Springs so that you can rest until then,” Jill said.
Toby shook his head. “You’ve been shut in long enough. We’re going to live a little.” He put his arms around her and added, “I’m not very good with words, baby, unless they’re jokes. I don’t know how to tell you what I feel about you. I—I just want you to know that I didn’t start living until the day I met you.”