Now suddenly, on April 8—the very day that Bette had informed him she will be opening in the play—from his office in Boston, Harlow writes a letter whose barely suppressed frenzy about whether or not she has been cast as Hedvig suggests that in the interim he has read and been profoundly disturbed by the play that first caused his daughter to want to become an actress. All too obviously, he, like Bette, has instantly grasped the story's personal implications. IWice in the course of five sentences, he begs her to tell him if she is indeed to play Hedvig. The repetition suggests Harlow's desperate need to find out whether his worst fear can be true: a need he struggles to conceal by transparently pretending to be interested in her other roles as well. Having written that he is especially anxious to know if she is to play Hedvig, on second thought he scratches out "if," replaces it with "whether," then adds "or Gina" to the end of the sentence. Ineluctably drawn to Hedvig's name when he goes over the sentence yet again, Harlow marks an "X" above it.
