Marion Clayton, who had played in the film Mutiny on the Bounty, and Cece Broadhurst, the Canadian radio singer, beat the material from the original birthday party into shape. Globin brought his wife and a group of friends, including the Mayor of Carson City, Nevada's capital. Mrs Globin laughed so much, she said, that she hurt face muscles she had not used for years.

At the end of the evening the Mayor said to Buchman, 'That's the way to put patriotism to our people. You must bring the show to Carson City.'

'Fine. When shall we come?' said Buchman.

'Friday,' said the Mayor.

'We'll be there,' said Buchman. This was Tuesday.

The show played to a full house in Carson City on Friday. At the end, Hale went down to the best bar in town to fetch a telegram. 'Suddenly', he recalls, 'the bat-wing doors of the bar burst open and a big Irish gold-miner burst in. "Boys, have you been up the street?" he bellowed as the bar-stools swivelled. "I don't know what it's all about, but it's terrific! TERRIFIC!'"

From Carson City the show was invited to Reno. This would mean facing a more sophisticated audience, but Buchman, for whom everyone was a potential librettist, musician, actor or producer, saw no difficulties. So, shedding local references, the revue was launched on a career which in the next years took it back and forth across the country, reaching audiences who were perhaps unreachable through any other medium.

In November 1941 You Can Defend America was shown to delegates of the trade union conventions - the Congress of Industrial Organisations in Atlantic City and the American Federation of Labor in New Orleans, giving it a powerful send-off into American industry. Civilian Defence Councils of states and cities sponsored it, first on the West Coast and then in an extended tour in 1941 from Maine to Florida. The cast travelled 36,000 miles through 21 states and performed before more than a quarter of a million people. The General of the Armies, John J. Pershing, wrote a foreword* for the handbook in which he said, 'No patriotic citizen can read it without feeling its inspiration. None can fail fully to endorse its ultimate objective - the preservation of our precious heritage.' Army and Air Force bases and Naval shipyards asked for performances of the revue and distributed thousands of the handbook.

(* General George C. Marshall approached him to write it. In complying, Pershing, who had been American Commander-in-Chief in World War I, said he had broken the custom of a lifetime to do so.)

On 6 December 1941 a well-known Philadelphian, J. B. Kelly, father of the actress and future Princess Grace of Monaco, saw it in the Philadelphia Academy of Music where the city fathers and the Civilian Defence authorities sponsored it. His remark afterwards was typical of many: 'I thought I had all the patriotism I needed, but as I watched the play I felt here was a group of people who almost looked over my shoulder and read my mind and produced the answer I have been feeling America needs.'18

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