THE SONGS OF WAR
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The narrator, Calvin Saks (nee Sakowitz), is a seasoned, successful performer of stage and screen both big and little–much as Schisgal is a seasoned and successful writer for these venues. On this evening Calvin/Schisgal proposes to determine once and for all which of his parents was responsible for his unhappy childhood and his emotionally crippled adulthood (evidenced by two broken marriages and one recently broken engagement). He feels that the answer lies in the events surrounding his enlistment in the Navy at the age of 16 in 1942. And with the assistance of popular songs from that era he sets up the milieu against which he–and we–will review, judge, and perhaps vindicate the Sakowitz family.
It’s not an easy call. Saul Sakowitz is a stolid and taciturn man, given to jeremiads on the state of the world and his place in it. Bertha Sakowitz is an energetic and extroverted woman, given to gambling the household money on the horses and devoting her time to bond drives and other war efforts–activities that take her out of the home and into the exciting, dangerous realm of patriotic fever and glamorous male strangers, like the warm and affectionate Roy Atkins. Saul and Bertha’s marriage has been more or less engineered by Zada–Bertha’s father and Saul’s boss–and time and two children have not created any special affection between them: they bicker every moment they’re together, forcing their distressed children to act as messengers for their rage. For example, “Tell your father I think he’s . . . ” “Yeah? Well, you tell your mother I said she’s . . . ” Calvin’s only pleasant recollections of home are of his younger sister, Lilly, who has achieved near saintly status in his memory.
