The Valiant (play)

The Valiant began life as a one-act play by Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass. It is a stark little vaudeville piece about a convicted murderer who goes silently to his execution without ever revealing his true identity. Expanded to 65 minutes, The Valiant was filmed in 1929, starring Paul Muni in his first feature-film role. He plays a drifter with a clouded past who accidentally kills the key witness to a crime, then sacrifices himself to the law under an assumed name rather than disgrace his family. In this manner, Muni is certain that he's redeemed himself for his previous misdeeds--but a curious police inspector tries to probe his past. The Valiant was remade in 1940 as The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, with Lloyd Nolan in the Muni role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Characters

Referred to on the script (their name in the play)

• Father Daly (Father Daly) - a priest/minister who visits the condemned to get them to repent so they can enter heaven.
• The Warden (Holt) - watches and takes care of the prisoners and escorts them to the execution room.
• James Dyke (see Who was James Dyke below) - a mysterious comdemned man who has no documented past and refuses to divulge it.
• The Girl (Josephine Paris) - sister of a long lost brother who journeys to Connecticut to find out if Dyke is her brother.
• The Jailer (Dan) - takes care of the electric chair, keeps it in good order, and prepares the condemned for execution.
• The Attendant (Wilson) - files, types and well is a secretary...

Summary

"The Valiant” by Holworthy Hall and Robert Middlemass. The play tells the story of James Dyke, a confessed murderer who has been sentenced to die and now awaits his fate on death row. The only problem is that no one knows who he really is or where he comes from, and he is determined to take his secret to the grave. The prison’s warden and chaplain have nearly given up hope of discovering his true identity until the night of Dyke’s execution when a strange young woman arrives requesting to see him. Now, she may be the only key to unlocking Dyke’s mysterious past.

In depth summary

Set: On the left side (audience view) of the stage (unless there is a scene change) you can see an electric chair and the Jailer, on the right side is an office with an attendant. In the middle is what looks like an office. (please note these could be switched)

It starts in the Warden's office where the Warden and Father Daly are having small talk waiting for midnight to arrive (12:00 pm). The topic turns to James Dyke a criminal who is a complete mystery. Although he admits he killed a man and pleads guilty to the court, he acts in a "gentlemanly" fashion to the Warden and Father. The Warden is puzzled by this man, he jumped at the opportunity to get his biography published for money but doesn't know what to do with it. The Warden decidees to do something unorthodox, kindness toward the condemned man. Warden has the Executor go and bring him to the office, so he doesn't have to wait in his cell. The Jailer although surprised proceeds to go and get Dyke. Shortly after the Jailer leaves there is a phone call. The Warden picks it up and the Mayor is calling. The Mayor (Fuller) is sending a young lady who believes that the man could be her long lost brother and asks to hold off the execution until she's had a chance to speak with him. The Warden agrees and the Executor arrives shortly after the phone is hung up with James Dyke. Executor leaves to go back to the electric chair.

The Warden asks Dyke to sit down. Dyke sits and the Warden tells him that he will stay here until it is time for his execution. Dyke replies to this saying it doesn't make much difference because either way he is a condemned man whether it be in his cell or here, he proceeds to explain that he has never struk a man in anger but when he knew what this man had done it was "his duty" to kill him. The Warden then asks Dyke if he wants to be sent back to his cell. Dyke answers no and that it is "a little pleasenter here" but at least back in the cell he could smoke. The Warden offers Dyke a cigar or a cig. Dyke takes a cig and proceeds to smoke it. The Warden shows Dyke some letters out of four thousand, that are asking if Dyke might be their lost brother, son, or sweetheart. Dyke replies that the Warden already has the answer, and he can answer those letters because he has no mother, sister, or sweetheart, Dyke insists that he is not the one they are looking for. The Warden explains to Dyke that if Dyke reveals his real name to him that sorrow will only fall on one family not all of them.

The Warden asks him are you protecting anyone. Dyke answers "Ye-NO!" The Warden catches this and says "so you are protecting someone". Dyke replies that it was "a slip of the tongue". The Warden takes out the money that was sent for Dyke's published biography and asks who to send it to. Dyke catchs that the Warden is trying to trick him and says you can't get me with that. The Warden becomes exasperated telling Dyke that he can't spend them or use them unless Dyke tell him what to do with the money. Dyke says he'll think of something. The Warden informs him that there is a girl coming to see him, "came over a thousand miles". Dyke is surprise "she came all this way to see me?", just a year ago people wouldn't cross the stree to see me, "now they're coming a thousand miles". The Warden says that he will allow them to talk alone after he speaks to the girl. Father and Dyke leave and the Warden tells the secretary to let the girl come in.

The girl enters and is asked to sit down in the chair formerly occupied by Dyke just moments earlier. The Warden asks her why she thinks this man could be her brother. She explains that they saw his picture in the Ohio newspaper and it looked a little like him and the way it was written it was just like the way her brother talks. She goes on to explain that he is 10 years older than she is, this makes him about 27 which is Dykes age (this is revealed earlier in the play), and has not been seen by his family for eight years and it has been five or six years since they had a letter from him. She remembers that her borther, Joesph, liked to read books, at this point the Warden shakes his head, she continues that Joe really liked Shakespeare wanted to be an actor, and was in all the high school plays. She goes on about he would tell stories to her and that's what she is counting on recognizing, his stories because she was too young to remember him properly. And how at night they would quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to say goodnight. "Why are you doing that?" she asks the Warden noting that he is still shaking his head. The Warden tells her that he is sure that this man is not her brother because it doesn't seem like he would ever pick up a book. Even so the girl still wishes to see him for her mother so she can confirm that it is not him. The Warden tells her that she can and to cut it short if this man is not her brother for both her sake and Dyke's.

The Warden has Dyke brought back in and then leaves them with the condition that the door is open. The girl asks Dyke questions that Joe would know and Dyke says the words that only confirm that he isn't Joe. The girl desprate to make sure quotes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet for what they said for goodnight:

Thou knowst the mask of night is on my face

Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek

For that which -Shakespeare

She stops and asks if Dyke knows what it is. Dyke repies that he doesn't know and that it seems silly to him. She tries one moare time:

Good-night, good-night, parting in such sweet sorrow That I shall say good-night till it be morrow. -Shakespeare

Dyke looks clueless, the girl gets up to leave telling Dyke that since there is no way he could be her brother that she has to leave because she promised the Warden. Dyke stops her to ask her name. She tells him Josephine Paris. Dyke thinks "and your brother's name was Joseph?" He gets up and paces "What was that boy's name? I've got it Joesph Anthony Paris!" She lights up and nods yes that's Joe. Dyke tells her to listen carefully because they don't have much time, he tells her the couragous story of her brother going out to save an officer and how he died on the way back and all they found was his dogtag. And if she doesn't believe him she can go look it up and not to pay attention to whether it says MIA, died of wounds, or had a honorable discharge "they don't know what happened to half the men".

Dyke picks up the envelope with the biogrophy money and gives it to her saying "give this to your mother" and let her know that her son died a brave man. The girl looks at him and says thank you. And he tells her to buy a gold star for her and her mother and to think of Joe. She said that she'll think of her brother but will also think of him (Dyke). Dyke says "No! You mustn't ever do that" and continues telling her that he doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as her brother. The girl as she starts to leave asks Dyke if he would like her to do anything for him since he gave her information on Joe. Dyke asks for her to say goodbye as though they are family because he doesn't have any. She kisses him on the cheek and pauses just before she leaves the room. Dyke asks what's wrong and she replies that "If I only could have-have said it to him just once more-for good-bye". Dyke asks her to say it again. She quotes:

Good-night, good-night, parting in such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.

Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast;

Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. -Shakespeare

She leaves choking a sob. Dyke stares after her and then quotes from Shakespeare:

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

(The Warden and Father Daly come in)

Cowards die many times before their death;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

The valiant never taste of death but once. -Shakespeare

"The valiant never taste of death but once." He continues to repeat the last line as he is led away to the chair and is hooked up. Then he is electrocuted. The play ends.

Who was he? Was he really James Dyke or someone else? And if he was someone else could he have been this girl's brother? You can decide.

Who was James Dyke?

James Dyke is Joseph Paris besides and including the blatant speech at the end. Reasons going from hints at the beginning of the play to the end. Or maybe i'm over analyzing...

1. When asked if he is protecting someone Dyke answers "Yes-NO!".

2. Dyke says in reference to a book "I read a book once that said a milligram of musk will give out perfume for seven thousand years, and a milligram of radium will give out light for seventy thousand." That doesn't sound like a book the persona Dyke would read in his free time.

3. The Girl states that Joe wanted to be an actor, this could mean that Dyke is just an act and he is her brother.

4. Joe is 10 years older than his sister, Dyke is 27 and the girl is "almost 18".

5. The girl tells the Warden that a little part of the paper he wrote about himself sounded like Joe and the picture looked a little like him.

6. When the Girl and Dyke are talking, Dyke somehow lived all over but never was in Ohio. Dyke was a "Jack-of-all-trades". Yet he never worked with books.

7. Dyke says "Still, when you tell her that her son isn't a murderer-at least he isn't this one-that'll confor her a good deal, won't it?" It is only after the girl says that her mother won't really until they know for certain what happened to Joe. It is only than Dyke asks her, what her name is. Then proceeds to tell his war story. At the end he says to her, "And it certainly ought to make your mother happy when she knows that her boy died a soldier, and not as a criminal."

8. He gives her the liberty bonds (money for his story in the paper).

9. After the girl leaves for the last time, Dyke quotes Shakespeare.

References

• The script for the play (cannot find online copy)
• New York Times Movies

External links

• The Valiant: a play in one act on World Cat only title and authors