Maggie: A Love Story

By John Sanford

'She was small, she was slight, with limber hands and fingers and white and consonant teeth; hazel was the colour of her eyes, and she wore size three shoes on her high-arched feet. There was more, though, more than pigmentation, more than fineness of form and feature: she was the repository of winning ways, as if all the graces had devolved on her…'

Thus did John Sanford write of Marguerite Roberts, the 'Maggie' of this lyrical and moving memoir. His wife for more than half a century, she was a screen-writer of much distinction and one of the highest-paid in Hollywood. With uncommon generosity and with an unflagging belief in Sanford's ability, she supported him through the writing of his twenty books, all of them acclaimed by the critics but overlooked by the public. He has been called 'the undiscovered treasure of American literature'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781448211630

John Sanford

John B. Sanford was born Julian Lawrence Shapiro in Harlem, New York in 1904 to Jewish parents; his father was a Russian immigrant and his mother a first-generation American. His mother died in 1914 when he was only 10, which would have a marked influence on his life. A graduate of Lafayette College, Shapiro later studied law at Fordham University; after graduation he decided to follow the example of his childhood friend, Nathanael West, and concentrate on his writing. In the summer of 1931, isolated in a log cabin in the Adirondacks, he finished his first novel, The Water Wheel. When Shapiro was close to publishing his second book, The Old Man's Place, West (born Weinstein), suggested he change his name to one less identifiably Jewish, for fear of anti-Semitism damaging book sales. Shapiro became Sanford, and in 1935 the success of The Old Man's Place allowed him to move to Hollywood to try his hand as a screenwriter. In 1936, Sanford was hired by Paramount Pictures, where he met his future wife Marguerite Roberts, also a screenwriter. In the same year, he became involved in the Communist Party of the United States – Roberts became a member after meeting Sanford, but was to hand her card back in 1947. Nevertheless they were both called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where they refused to give their names, invoking the Fifth Amendment. Along with many other Hollywood professionals, both Sanford and Roberts were blacklisted between 1951 and 1962, which effectively ended their Hollywood careers.

Book preview

THE COLOR OF THE AIR, I

[The Sacco-Vanzetti Jury]

TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE

Like as the prophets were twelve to foretell the truth, the apostles twelve to preach the truth, the stones twelve that Jerusalem is built on.…

—a Person of Quality, 1682

The Dedham trial, Judge Webster Thayer presiding, began on the 31st of May 1921 with the selection of a jury. From a panel of 500, only seven proved acceptable to both the defense and the prosecution, whereupon the Norfolk County sheriff, at the behest of the Bench, rounded up 200 bystanders, and out of this fresh group of talesmen, the five requisite jurors were drawn. Nearly a week’s time was thus spent, and not until the 6th of June did the District Attorney, Frederick Katzmann, summon to the stand the first witness for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts….

But stay. Tell here of the twelve who would try the fact and give true answer. Tell of those prophets and apostles, those stones on which Zion was supposed to rest, tell here their twelve names:

Wallace R. Hersey

Frank R. Waugh

John E. Ganley

Frank B. Marden

Walter R. Ripley

John F. Dever

Louis McHardy

Harry E. King

George A. Gerard

Alfred L. Atwood

Frank J. McNamara

Seward B. Parker….

And yet what purpose does it serve, what light does it shed to call the roll? McNamara, Atwood, McHardy—does a patronymic decode them, reveal their heart, set Marden apart from Dever and Dever from Gerard? What’s shown of Ripley and Waugh and King that wasn’t known before, and in what save the spelling is Hersey distinguished from Parker and Ganley from the twain?

For thirty days that spring and summer, they’d sit behind their twelve faces and peer out at two Eyetalians (which was Sacco, by the way, and which Vanzetti?), or would it be Thayer they’d gaze at, or Katzmann (a Jew-man, was he?), or the world through the windows in the opposite wall—or, only seeming to see, would they stare at nothing at all? Would they care, any of the twelve, about a shoemaker from Torremaggiore and a fishmonger from deuce knows where?

The grocer Ganley, would his mind attune to a pair of ginnies, or would it dwell on his jars and tins and his coffee-grinder? Gerard the photographer and the mason Marden, what words would they retain of the millions they’d hear, and which would explain the torn cap, the left twist of a pistol barrel, the air of the aliens, their suspect bearing? And King and Dever, what bias would they bring from Brookline and Millis, what blind side to the brown-eyed no-spikka wops?

Those soothsayers, those tellers of truth, would they think ahead to the day when, in a locked room, they’d play with the doom of a seller of eels and an edger of shoes? Or would Hersey dream of real estate deals, would farmer McNamara hope for news of rain? Parker and Waugh, machinists both and both from Quincy, and McHardy who worked in a Milton mill, how would they find, those wage-earners—for or against their kind? And Ripley the foreman, and Atwood, another dreamster of metes and bounds and chattels real, how would they vote on a pair of ginzos who lacked a pot to piss in?

In that month of spring and summer days, one hundred sixty-seven witnesses would depose, but would the prophets, the apostles, the twelve stones listen?

One hundred sixty-seven would swear to what they’d seen or sensed of two stranieros who ran like Italians. From one hundred sixty-seven mouths would issue the sworn word on such life-and-death matters as place and time, weight and height and coloration, the clothing worn, and a revolver’s cannelure—but in the end, would it be any of those things that weighed with the twelve, would it be a cap that happened to fit, would it be the lands and grooves of a .38 Colt that swayed the twelve when a show of hands was made? Would it count for a pistareen what the witnesses said they’d seen and heard, would the finisher of shoes and the seller of fish be nailed by their shape and size and their somber hues? Or would the twelve when sequestered to poll themselves decide that the dagoes ought to die for their foreign views?

They believed that war was wrong: Brothers, you will not fire on your own brothers just because they tell you to fire, no, brothers.

They believed that wars were fought for the benefit of the rich: They are war for business, million dollars come on the side.

They believed it was wrong to kill: Why should I go kill them men? What he done to me? I love them people.

They believed that wealth should belong to all: Over here is not for the working and laboring class.

They believed that a man was entitled to the fruits of his labor: Debs, he wanted the laboring class to have better conditions, more education, but they put him in prison. Why? Because the capitalist class they want the working class to be low, not up with the head.

And they believed they had a right to say what they believed….

Six years later, shortly after midnight on the 27th of August 1927, two thousand volts of electricity put an end to them—but not to their beliefs.

(1987)

The Latter Days

Looking back at that time, you clearly see what you but dimly saw then—that she was failing. The signs were there, but they were undesirable guests, and your mind soon showed them the door. Not for long could you entertain her fatigue, her weaving gait, her broken sleep or none at all, her falling; you could not receive her own testimony (You’ll outlive me, Johnny), you could not endure it that some dire day she’d die. She was more than eighty, but her face was still full and quite unlined, and when the light came from behind her, the down that powdered it glowed. It was all too easy to persuade yourself that nothing else had changed, that what you beheld was the Maggie of old, the small, the fashioned figure of the days foregone. There she was, sitting just across the room and reading a book—no, holding a book and reading you. Why?, you wondered. Was she committing you to memory? … But in dread of knowing, you fled to other mysteries.

THE COLOR OF THE AIR, II

[I.W.W. John]

THEY CALLED HIM I. W. W. JOHN

… His true name was never known. He was tall, slim, and wore his black hair in a pompadour. To residents of Sapulpa, he was just I.W.W. John.

—Associated Press (1946)

Back when it happened, in 1917, if he came looking to find Sapulpa, he was likely a while on the way even after he got to Oklahoma, it being a not-much place spang in the middle of not much else. Indian Territory, it used to be, and not so long since, either. Ten years before, it wasn’t in the Union, and there were Chickasaws and Choctaws all over the outdoors just like they owned it, which, betwixt you, me, and the doorjamb, they damn sure did—once. But that’s another story.

This one has to do with a stranger to the section that Godamighty alone knew what drove or drew him there, and only He can say where the man stayed and why: in Sapulpa, nothing holds you long, and little takes the eye. A crisscross of streets at the Courthouse, and you’ve seen all it has to offer, and in the districk roundabout, the offer’s even less—a slew of swaybacked barns and broke-up Lizzies where, knee-deep in drop-seed and grama grass, Herefords used to feed.

Not far off, they mine for coal these days, and in the Glen Pool field, there’s oil, a regular lavish of it—and come to think, that’s maybe what brang this John to Sapulpa on Polecat Creek, a paltry little prong of the Arkansas—or poultry, as we’re apt to say when we use the word at all.

… "John" would mount the soap box and preach the Socialist ideologies of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was found dead one morning after a street oration the previous night….

It being 1917, it was the wrong year to be spouting that sort of stuff to Sooners. This John must’ve thought he was Gene Debs, shooting off that way about how it was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight, and about how the only good war was the one between the classes, and about how it would go on till the masses—and the Cherokees and the Seminoles—got their own back. If you went and said such things in Sapulpa, the more fool you, account of it was the right place and the right year to be found dead in the morning.

… An inquest was held, after which the body was brought to the funeral home of the Buffington Brothers with instructions to retain it until an investigation could be made.…

At any other time, those who tarried to listen to him that night might’ve just tapped their heads and gone on home to kick their dogs instead of kicking John. Not in ’17, though, and not in Sapulpa. What they heard off of that soap-box in the Square wasn’t rant or rimble-ramble. No, sir, it was real red-shirt talk, and it had to be stopped lest it find an ear in the Glen Pool field and down below in the mines. They could’ve cooled his ass in jail, maybe, or they could’ve drowneded him out with cat-calls, or they could’ve flang him on a train and rode him out of town—any of those things. But it was war-time, and what they done, they killed him.

… The investigation trailed off into time, hut under the law, the body could not be interred without a burial permit. None was ever issued….

What they handed John they would’ve handed Debs if the gant old geezer come to Sapulpa whilst we were fighting the Huns. Gene was a likeable sort of coot, sure, but he’d’ve only got as far as The master-class declares the wars; the subject-class fights the battles, and he’d’ve been gant, old, and just as dead as that stiff at Buffington’s.

… The body was kept in a packing-case in a corner of the Buffington store. In order to conserve space, a muslin band was tied around the corpse and the box was stood on end.…

And banded, boxed, and standing up, John was clean forgot for twenty-nine years, forgot all through the rest of the war, a heck of a depression, and then another war against the self-same Huns.

Forgot?

How about the excuse-me stink? They might’ve put John out of mind, and they done that, but how could they have got rid of the smell of rot? Was the store-room iced, or was John so well embalmed that he no more died than Christ? Whatever, the fact is that John stood in a corner till 1946, and he’d’ve been there yet if the Buffingtons hadn’t sold the business to a man name of Rampp, Harold Rampp, who got to poking around in the store-room to see just what it was he’d gone and bought, and, Godamighty!, one of the articles was a twenty-nine-year-old mummy called John.

Permit or no permit, Rampp was the one laid John to rest—let him lie down, so to speak—and if he ever wondered what that muslin band was for, he never wondered out loud. Anyway, not in Sapulpa.

SCENE 1: (WINTER OF 1936)

The Twain Meet

Through the transom of your room in the Writers Building at the Paramount Studio, you could hear people going by in the hall, wayfarers, some of them, coming from nowhere and to nowhere bound, and some went in haste, as if fleeing fate or eager to face it at last, but one set of sounds passed with purpose and in cadence, and it was for these that you began to wait each day. Wondering to whom they belonged, at length you wondered aloud to your writing partner, Joe March, who said I thought you knew. You’re always listening for her. Soon thereafter, he presented you to the maker of those precise, those measured footsteps, the screenwriter Marguerite Roberts. Quickly it became your custom to invite her to morning coffee at Oblath’s across from the studio entrance, but not for some weeks did you ask her out for an evening.

Coming in from the Valley, where she resided with her parents, she joined you in the parking-lot adjacent to Levy’s, a restaurant opposite the Vine Street Derby. She’d driven a spanking Ford Phaeton, and you watched her step out from under its canvas top and come toward you over the paving. Again you took note of her resolute way of going, but this time, you thought, her objective was you. She was wearing a gray single-breasted suit of hound’s-tooth checks, a white silk blouse, and black pumps made of interwoven strips of patent leather.

What other thoughts did you have—that you were about to take dinner in company, that ahead lay an hour’s conversation while bread was being broken, and did you wonder what would be eaten and what would be said? Or did you know without thinking, without knowledge, that coming toward you was your final girl, that you were bound to her early as she’d bind you late? And is that why you remember how she was dressed, why you can still see the curves of her suit as they stressed her own, why her voice is still distinct, as if she were speaking now instead of then?

After dinner, you suggested a movie, and when she agreed, the one you chose was The Plainsman, a Gary Cooper film for which your friend Lynn Riggs had written the script. It was showing at the downtown Paramount, and you drove there in the little convertible. On the way, you took a short-cut through the Silver Lake district.

I think you made a wrong turn, Maggie said.

You were new to Los Angeles, and as yet you were unfamiliar with its streets. All the same, you insisted, saying, I never get lost. I have a compass in my head.

After several ill-lit meanders, the road petered out against a hillside. In backing and filling, you dented a fender on a projecting rock.

Maggie said, What did you say you have in your head? and she laughed.

After the film, you drove back to Levy’s parking-lot for your own car, and climbing down from Maggie’s, you said, I’ll follow you out to the Valley.

Oh, you don’t have to do that, John. I can go home by myself.

Go home alone after a date? You’re joking.

I do it all the time.

Not when the date’s with me!

It isn’t a question of being a gent. It’s just that it’s easier for you. I live way out in North Hollywood.

I wouldn’t care if you lived in Yosemite. I follow you to the door.

Just as you say, she said.

You stayed close behind her through Cahuenga Pass and out along Ventura Boulevard to the Colfax bridge, where she turned northward across the Valley floor to an apricot orchard. There on a large lot stood a ranch-style house with a bricked-in courtyard behind it. As if they were penned inside, several of the tortuous trees seemed to be peering at the freer world beyond the walls.

With her hand on the gate-latch, Maggie said, You’ll be greeted by my Airedale, Minnie the Moocher. Don’t make any sudden moves.

Minnie lay on the stoop leading to the kitchen door, and as you neared her, saying, Hello, you low-down hootchy-kootcher, she slowly expanded.

Minnie! Maggie said, but the dog kept on growing until she reached a quivering sixty pounds.

What happens when you’re not around? you said.

Nobody has ever told me.

"Nobody has lived to tell you."

Would you care to come in? she said.

In order not to disturb her parents, who were asleep, Maggie led you through the house to her bedroom, and Minnie the Moocher followed. The quarters, reached by a long hallway, were spacious, and during the daytime, they must’ve been brightened by the broad bay window. The walls were covered in a paper of pale blue with a small silver design. Standing against this in one of the corners was a chest of drawers that drew your eye.

It’s made of cherry, Maggie said, and the little diamond inlays are holly. I got it when I was married to—living with, I mean—a man named Robert Ives.

Glancing about—at the fireplace, at the twin beds and their candlewick spreads, at the red satin slipper-chair—you said, This is a pleasant place.

Aren’t you going to ask me about Ives?

Is that what I’m supposed to do?

Most men would say something.

I don’t know the man.

And you’re not curious?

If I asked any questions, they’d be about you.

Me? Why?

I like you. An Oriental runner ran in a diagonal from the doorway to a dressing room, papered too, and a bath tiled in blue and black. A pleasant place.

I built the house for Mama and Daddy, but they made me keep this part for myself. For myself and Ives, I should say, but he’s gone. And now it was she who glanced about, and she said, I’m glad you like it.

There were no photographs on the chest or the table in the bay, and no prints adorned the walls; she was the only decoration to be seen. Will you join me again some time? you said.

And she said, Yes. Yes, I will.

SCENE 2: (FROM 1937)

Plain English

Maggie’s family hailed from Nebraska, and they brought with it the speech of the region, direct, broad, and hard-edged. It contained ridicule and ginger, and at times it became the storied tall talk of Davy Crockett and Johnny Inkslinger. Always it had the flavor of a rougher life than the one you’d known, but it delighted you, and at times you wished your own had matched it:

• The train went so fast it took two men to watch it, one to say Here she comes and one to say There she goes.

• It’s like bear-steak: the more you chew it, the bigger it gets.

• I’m fuller than a tick at a butchering-bee.

• He don’t know the difference between a crow and a crane.

• Busier than a soft-billed woodpecker on a pine knot.

• A typey-type of horse.

• He was put through a course of the sprouts. (An ordeal).

• He was hit hard enough to straighten a cockeye.

• It was so cold, if you got your leg up, you couldn’t get it down.

• It rained like a cow pissing on a flat rock.

• He talks too much with his mouth.

• He’s studying for a doctor.

• A numbing-stick. (A club).

• The heat took all the striffening out of me.

• He don’t know his ass from four dollars a week.

• Whatever he gets, he holds onto. He’s like a cow; he don’t spit nothing out.

• (Of poor land) You couldn’t raise an umbrella on it.

• (Of good land) The beans growed so fast, they torn their roots out of the ground.

• Don’t be so fine-haired, (high-and-mighty)

• Smarting around, (showing off)

• Yum-yumming around. (?)

• Useless as tits on a boar.

• A three-cornered fool, (or liar)

• He couldn’t tell the truth if it was to his own advantage.

• There’s a man his head is aching for a rock.

• I’ll be there with my hair in a braid.

• A good old foot-washing, (a confidential talk)

• Everything’s fine, and my hair’s laying smooth.

• He keeps unwinding like a ball of yarn, (of a constant talker)

• I done it just for a cod. (a joke)

• Now, that’s the God-Almightiest fact!

• Tighter than a bull’s ass sewed with a log-chain.

• I ain’t that kind of a hairpin, (that sort)

• He’s so thin he has to stand up twice to make a shadow.

• Messy as a hog’s breakfast.

• Like a skinned cat—tastes better than it looks.

• He gives me the flitflats. (makes me nervous)

• As out of place as a pewter dollar in a mud-hole.

• A flippin’-jinny. (an easy woman)

• Stomp the high road, (what a flippin’-jinny does) and your favorite

• Pretty as a little red pair of shoes.

SCENE 3: (1937)

A Nice Jewish Girl

One day, not long after you’d begun to walk out with her, Maggie asked you to meet her for lunch at Musso & Frank’s, and when you arrived, you found her in the company of a girl whose first name was all you caught—Miriam. After the lunch was over, and Miriam (Miriam-what?) had departed, you and Maggie started for the parking-lot around the corner on Cherokee.

On the way, you said, What was the big idea?

What big idea?

Lunch with that Miriam.

I thought you might like her.

Did you? Why?

Well, she’s Jewish, for one thing. And she’s—intellectual.

What makes you think so?

She knows about all the big writers—Joyce, Lawrence, Proust.

"Proust my ass! She only knows their names!"

No need to get so hot. I was only out to do you a favor.

You were out to look good while she was looking bad!

That’s simply not so. I thought a Jewish girl would be more to your liking.

"You’re to my liking. I don’t want a Jewish intellectual. I want an illiterate gentile."

I’m not so very. I’ve read those babies.

A few days later, she came to your office to say, I ran into Miriam at the Stanley Rose Bookshop. You know what she said?

Something intellectual.

She said, ‘That guy’s stuck on you.’ She said, ‘He was spreading his tail-feathers for you.’

And what did you say?

I said, ‘Maybe you’re right.’

SCENE 4: (1937)

In An Apricot Orchard

Invited to a family dinner one Sunday, you were placed beside Bijou Arissa, an older sister of Maggie’s. You understood that the tie between the two was strong.

What was she like when she was little? you said.

Marg? Bijou said. Cute as a bug. Dinky, we called her, and being Mama’s last, we spoiled her rotten.

She says you were extra-special good to her.

Oh, I don’t know. Everybody was.

She told me you’d get a job and then spend most of your wages on her.

That was nothing to what John Roach done—John Roach that was married to my sister Pearl at the time. He was so took with Marg, you’d’ve swore she was his own. She just witched him, the little thing. He bought her duds from Omaha, he bought her toys and games—in Clarks, gracious life, he’d empty the hardware store. He was just dotty about her, that Irishman, but, my, could that man drink! Two–three times a year, he’d go on a bender till hell wouldn’t have it, and then there wasn’t nobody could handle him—nobody but Marg, a panty-waist five-year-old. One time, being mean-drunk, he laid himself out across the U.P. tracks, swearing he was going to let the Flyer cut him half in two, and he’d kill anyone tried to move him. They quick sent for Marg, and all she done was say, ‘Get up, and come home, John-boy’—and up he got and went on home….

From the far end of the table, Maggie said, What’re you two gabbing about?

She doesn’t talk much about herself, you said. She doesn’t talk much at all. She says there’s enough traffic on the air as it is.

She ain’t the Marg she used to be, then, Bijou said. A recollection surfaced, and she smiled. Back in Nebraska, town name of Pilger, I worked the switchboard jacks for the Stanton County phone company. Nodding at Maggie, she said, She come to the office one afternoon to walk home with me, and just about then a man turned up to make a call long distance. While I was putting it through, Marg started up a conversation with him—darnedest thing I ever heard. She was going on about Hawaii! She’s only eight at the time, mind you, and she never been further than Norfork one way and Wisner the other, but here she’s talking herself out of breath. All about pineapples and volcanoes, things she only read up on, but out it comes slick and natural, like she just blew in from the islands. In the end, the man turned to me and said, ‘Now, this is a well-traveled young lady.’

After dinner, you and Maggie went out to the courtyard and sat on the canopied glider, and Minnie tagged along to lie at your feet.

You and Midge were pretty chummy in there, Maggie said.

And you said, Midge?

Bijou, Bijou Arissa—but no one ever calls her that.

She said the family used to call you Dinky.

"You two kept blatting away. Was any of it about me?

"It was only about you."

You must’ve led her on.

I was curious.

Why?

I didn’t meet you till you were thirty. I wanted to fill in the time I missed.

What did you manage to worm out of her?

As a kid, she said, you weren’t worth shucks around the house. You couldn’t cook, you couldn’t iron, you couldn’t make a bed.

I still can’t.

More to your taste was being sent after the cows—and you weren’t such a much at that, either. You’d fill your pockets with crackers—provisions, you called them—and off you’d go on your pony. Sometimes you’d forget what you went for, and the cows came home by themselves.

I got away with a lot, being the littlest.

Dinky, you said.

"I couldn’t even sew. Somewhere in my things, I’ve got a pot-holder I was forced to make at grade school. It’s shameful. It’s huge and thick and lumpy, and the stitching …! When I brought it home to Mama, she said, ‘Goodness, child, hadn’t this ought to have Welcome on it?’"

She said you were better at wrestling. A boy named Bobby Simmons—

Teddy Simmons. I could throw him.

I wish I’d been Teddy Simmons. He knew you, and I didn’t. I was somewhere else, and I wasted thirty years.

Isn’t it enough that we did meet finally?

There’s no such thing as enough of you.

A breeze came over the wall and shook the leaves of the apricot trees, and a light fall of blossoms fell on the flagstones, the lawn, the sleeping dog.

Do you know what I’d like to see? you said. Your early photographs.

They’re not much to look at. I was an ordinary child, and I’m ordinary yet.

Ordinary people aren’t ordinary.

No? What are they?

They’re clouds. No two the same.

At your first meeting, you’d thought her plain: she had a figurine figure, and her features each were fine, but still you thought her plain. Soon, though, you’d been with her every day and often all day long, never wondering what had drawn you, let alone what made you stay. And now here you were, sitting at her side on a glider, swaying it slowly and turning to her at times, telling yourself that, yes, she was plain, and turning away. But when you turned once more, you could not turn away. Instead, you stared at her, seeing rightly what you’d wrongly seen before: she wasn’t plain, she wasn’t plain at all! What had made you think her plain? You had no answer. You could only suppose that what you saw at last wasn’t seen with the eye, but with the sum of the senses. How could you ever have thought her plain …?

You said, You aren’t very full of yourself, are you?

And she said, I’m no great shakes, Johnny.

A jay came and berated all below it from the wall, and then in a blue-gray dive, it buzzed the sleeping dog and flew away.

You’re small, you said, "and there’s no brass in you, no boldness, and you speak softly when you speak at all. But you—reach me. I never used to care a pistareen about anyone’s approval. If people didn’t like me or my doings, they could jump in the lake. But if you disapproved, I’d jump in the lake."

Why is my approval so important?

Because you are.

Without looking at you, looking instead at her hands, at the trees, at the sky, she said, Do you mean that?

You’ve taken the place of my family, my friends, and every girl I ever knew. You’re all those and my lover too—and one of these days.…

And now she did look at you.

The jay returned, railing now from a gutter under the eaves, and railing still as it took off and disappeared.

How about showing me those photos? you said. "Maggie Roberts as a shirt-tail