The Curran Theater stage was twenty yards wide, a distance few actors could command. Lee asked for a lipstick spot, and a baby spot, just so, with a red gel, commands that amused the lighting crew.

“Go,” said the prompter.

He ran through an internal checklist: Am I breathing? Am I positioned correctly? Are my trousers hitched?

He began his four minutes.

Here he was, hoeing in a field, wiping his brow from the simple exertion. He hadn’t a single prop with him except his imagination, and yet the action, hoeing, was as vivid as if he had brought his own beanfield on stage. Then! He was tapped on the shoulder by someone much taller than he. Lee shook a mighty hand, threw down the tools, picked up a rifle (again, there was no rifle, but he acted), and marched.

He marched as far as the door of his best girl’s house, where he said a tearful goodbye, and promised that one day he would return. Straightening his hat, he prepared again to march, but was stopped short. He mouthed the word “Mom,” and then was sharing one last embrace with a woman who had been thoughtful enough to bring a pie, which he carefully carried to the troop train; he waved goodbye from the platform.

A minute and thirty seconds had passed. Now was the big action scene. He was in the trenches, grinning as bullets and mortar fire sang overhead. It was his time! Over the Top! Lee crawled on his belly, raced through the razor wire, and found himself in No Man’s Land. He raised his rifle to his shoulder, put his finger to the trigger, and squeezed. Then, in confusion, he looked at his rifle as if something was terribly wrong. Carefully, slowly, he looked into the pouch where his bullets should be.

The tension, he had determined, would arise from whether in fact he had any bullets.

He strode across the stage, setting up another place and time, bringing himself Stateside, where he was a swain drinking champagne with a girl on each arm. He was just about to drop a wad of bills for a new bottle of champagne. Then he, like Farmer Lee, felt a tap on the shoulder.

He looked up, and from his reaction, he was seeing the noblest, kindest, most influential face in all the known world. Soon he was nodding, pounding his fist into his open palm, and mouthing, “I’ll do it!” He scooped all the money off the table, dismissed the oncoming bucket of Dom Pérignon, and handed over the greenbacks to Uncle Sam.