Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the significant
American composer of his generation.
Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Mary Margaret McBride, Gene Autry, and millions of
others had to learn the lesson I am trying to hammer home in this chapter. They had to
learn the hard way-just as I did.
When Charlie Chaplin first started making films, the director of the pictures insisted on
Chaplin's imitating a popular German comedian of that day. Charlie Chaplin got
nowhere until he acted himself. Bob Hope had a similar experience: spent years in a
singing-and-dancing act-and got nowhere until he began to wisecrack and be himself.
Will Rogers twirled a rope in vaudeville for years without saying a word. He got nowhere
until he discovered his unique gift for humour and began to talk as he twirled his rope.
When Mary Margaret McBride first went on the air, she tried to be an Irish comedian and
failed. When she tried to be just what she was-a plain country girl from Missouri-she
became one of the most popular radio stars in New York.
When Gene Autry tried to get rid of his Texas accent and dressed like city boys and
claimed he was from New York, people merely laughed behind his back. But when he
started twanging his banjo and singing cowboy ballads, Gene Autry started out on a
career that made him the world's most popular cowboy both in pictures and on the radio.
You are something new in this world. Be glad of it. Make the most of what nature gave
you. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You
can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment,
and your heredity have made you.
For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden. For better or for worse,
you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
As Emerson said in his essay on "Self-Reliance" : "There is a time in every man's
education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is
suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the
wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through
his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which
resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do,
nor does he know until he has tried."
That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Malloch-
said it:
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.
Be a scrub in the valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.
And some highway happier make;
If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass-
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do