Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 741

When the family business failed, Mercer left school and on his mother's urging -- for she hoped that he would become an actor -- he joined a local little theater group.

When the troupe traveled to New York to participate in a one-act-play competition -- and won -- Mercer, instead of returning with the rest of the company in triumph, remained in New York.

He had talked one other member of the group to stay with him, but that friend had tired of not eating regularly and returned to Savannah.

But Mercer hung on, living, after a fashion, in a Greenwich Village fourth-flight walk-up.

`` The place had no sink or washbasin, only a bathtub '', his mother discovered when she visited him.

`` Johnny insisted on cooking a chicken dinner in my honor -- he's always been a good cook -- and I'll never forget him cleaning the chicken in the tub ''.