From Time to Time

21

ALONG A SHORT DIM CORRIDOR, up three wooden steps, and—I sketched this later from memory—the stage-door man asleep. Sneak by him? No. I didn’t know where to go or what I was doing: I’d be caught, and thrown out. I looked at this sleeping man, then got out my wallet, moving quietly, slipped out a twenty-dollar bill, and folded it twice. Holding it in my closed fist, I worked up my best timidly eager, I’m-harmless smile, and tapped the man on the knee.

He didn’t move, just opened his eyes slightly, used to being caught asleep and pretending he wasn’t. He looked up at me steadily, and I said, “Excuse me, but I wonder if I could possibly see . . .” Who? I spoke the only name I knew here: “The Dove Lady.”

He was going to shake his head, ask who I was, and all that, but, not looking at my hand, as though it were acting independently, I passed him my folded-up bill. He glanced at it, then up at me, eyes going hard, and I understood. I’d made a mistake; he’d seen the yellow back and the big 20, and it was too much, ten times too much possibly, and it made him wary. But still . . . he glanced down at what lay in his palm, hesitated, then got to his feet. “Wait here.”

The little wooden-floored area he left me in was maybe ten by ten. To my right I saw the dark stage and the edges of the many backdrops, mysterious ropes rising up into blackness. From down the corridor my doorman friend had walked into, I heard a woman casually singing. Heard a man’s easy, skilled, good-natured laugh. Heard a man swear, not meaning it. The wall at my left was bare brick, a bulletin board fastened to it, and I walked over to see what the thumbtacked notices said.

One was a typed list of acts, with call times for afternoon and evening performances. A notice printed on cardboard—I had time to copy it—read, Don’t say “slob” or “son-of-a-bitch” or “golly gee” on this stage unless you want to be canceled peremptorily. Do not address anyone in the audience in any manner. If you have not the ability to entertain Mr. Keith’s audiences without risk of offending them, do the best you can. Lack of talent will be less open to censure than would be an insult to a patron. If you are in doubt as to the character of your act consult the local manager before you go on the stage, for if you are guilty of uttering anything sacrilegious or even suggestive you will be immediately closed and will never again be allowed in a theater where Mr. Keith is an authority. Wow.

Along the top of the bulletin board’s wood frame someone had lettered pretty neatly in crayon, Don’t send your laundry out until after the first performance. On the white-painted wooden surface of the board itself were more inscriptions, hand-printed in ink or pencil. Don’t blame the orchestra, they are too busy at the foundry to rehearse . . . Gee, what a small stage . . . Where’s the mail? . . . We know the theater’s rotten, but how’s your show? . . . The dressing rooms are swept out every summer . . . Tacked up in a corner, a printed calling card: Zeno Brothers, acrobats, can be addressed care of Billboard. A rubber-stamped inscription, Luke Mason of “The Josh Wilkins Company” is America’s Greatest Comedian. In pencil on a little rectangle of paper carefully torn from an envelope: Flo De Vere, of “The Belle of Boston” Company sending regards to the Wrangler Sisters of “The Merry Marauders Company.” A typed list of Boarding Houses: some twenty-odd addresses, mostly in the west Thirties and Forties. And added in pencil, half a dozen more. Penciled comments beside some of them: Good . . . Good food but not enuf . . . A bum place—for acrobats only. I heard my man walking toward me, and when I looked up he poked a thumb over one shoulder, saying, “Go on back,” and walked past me toward his chair; I felt like asking for my twenty back.

Down the same corridor, a right turn into another, wider corridor of dressing rooms, running parallel to the stage—I think; this was a little disorienting.

Corridors and dressing rooms were alive with people—tonight’s performers, I supposed. I walked along, glancing into the dressing rooms, edging past and around the people in the corridor, fascinated. Mostly they ignored me, but nodded if our eyes met. Was it okay to glance into their dressing rooms? I didn’t know how else to find the Dove Lady. Then—sitting at her dressing table, her back to the corridor but watching for me in her mirror—here she was, dressed for the street. Against a wall stood three large cube-shaped birdcages covered with a cloth. I stopped at her door, she said, “Come on in,” and I thanked her for seeing me. “And what can I do for you?”

“There’s a vaudeville act supposed to be in New York this month sometime. I have to see it, but I don’t know where they’ll be. Or when. Or how to find out.”

She waited a moment to see if there was any more; then: “You know what the act’s called, I trust.”

“Tessie and Ted.”

She thought about it, shook her head. “Don’t know them. What’s their act?”

“Well, she sings, I think. And he plays the piano, and dances.”

“And how come you picked me?”

“Well, I had to choose from the cyclists, Joe Cook, Kraus and Raus, and the rest. Your photo looked the kindest.”

“Oh, it does! And I am!” She smiled now. “Well, shouldn’t be hard to find out.” She picked up a copy of Variety from her table, opened it, turned pages, then folded it back to a page packed with small type, and handed it to me. “Take a look; you can see for yourself if they’re on.”

Bills Next Week in Vaudeville Theaters Playing 3 or Less Shows Daily. All houses open for the week with Monday matinees when not otherwise listed. Below this the page was dense with small type, and compact with symbols. Theaters listed as Orpheum without any further distinguishing descriptions are on the Orpheum Circuit. Theaters listed with S-C following name and in brackets, usually Empress, are on the Sullivan-Considine Circuit . . . (P) Pantage Circuit . . . (Loew) Marcus Loew Circuit . . . An entire world I knew nothing about.

New York was the first heading, naturally. And the first theater listed was this one, the Fifth Avenue. Beginning this last Monday: The Doyle Family . . . Kraus and Raus . . . Smith, Smith, Smith and the Smithies . . . Vernon and Vera . . . The Back Fence Banshees . . . Madam Zelda . . . The Dove Lady . . . Joe Cook . . . Merlin the Great.

At the American (Loew), another long list of acts . . . another at the Colonial (U.B.O.) . . . and on and on, dozens and dozens of vaudeville acts on this week in New York, Brooklyn, the Bronx. But no Tessie and Ted. Following New York, the listing became alphabetical, acts opening this last Monday in Atlanta, Georgia . . . Atlantic City (Young’s Pier), and in Oakland, Plattsburg, Portland, Pueblo . . .

The listing continued onto the next page . . . and onto still a third: hundreds and hundreds—thousands, for all I could tell—of vaudeville acts playing this week all over the United States, more than anyone could read.

“Find them?”

“Not in New York.” I offered her paper back.

“Keep it if you want, I’ve read it.”

“I never imagined there were so many vaudeville acts. And I’d like to see every one of them.”

“Oh no you wouldn’t. Those are the big-time listings, the two-a-day or three-a-day. There are even more small-time acts—six, seven shows a day. Which is murder, believe you me. And there’s medium small-time”—she was leaning toward her mirror, turning her face, lifting her jaw, inspecting—“that’s four, five shows a day. And big small-time, little big-time, medium big-time, big big-time.” She laughed, glancing at me in her mirror. “I’m kidding, but there’s something like two thousand vaudeville houses in the U.S. of A. and that means all kinds of vaudeville, and a lot you don’t ever want to see. New York gets the best, naturally. If you like vaudeville, you’re in the right place. You sure your act got to New York?”

I nodded.

“Well.” A final glance at her mirror; then she turned off its lights and stood up, leaning forward to brush off the front of her dress. “I’m going home now. Meaning my New York boarding house. If you want to come along, somebody there may know about Tessie and Ted.”

“I’d like to,” I said. She lifted a corner of the cloth covering the cages, I heard a kind of rustling, and she said, “Good night, chickees,” and we left. Outside, she walked straight across the sidewalk to a waiting hansom cab. “Evenin’, Miz Boothe.”

“Good evening, Charley. It’s home sweet home tonight.” And she climbed in while I trotted around to the other side. The driver clucked his horse awake, flicked the reins, and we pulled out into Twenty-eighth Street, heading west. “I don’t like the automobiles,” the Dove Lady said. “They stink.”

“Yes. But so do the horses.”

“They stink nice, though.”

“Yeah.” I thought so too. “I like the hansoms. Nice and slow so you can really see things.”

“And they give you time to think. What’s your name?”

“Simon Morley. Si.”

“Okay, Si. And I’m Maude. Maude Boothe.”

We clattered over the bricklike stone paving blocks under the Sixth Avenue El and its overhead station, then over to Seventh Avenue, and as we turned into it, I think my face must have shown something, because there up ahead stood Penn Station in all its majesty. I sat forward to take it in, great tall windows shining on the night. “Lovely, isn’t it,” Maude Boothe said, and I nodded yes, oh yes. “I came in there last time,” she said, “and it’s beautiful inside. It makes you feel good, proud to live in New York.” I nodded again: we were passing it now, my head turning to watch its white newness slide by.

Somewhere in the Thirties we turned west into a long block of four-story brownstones all more or less identical. We stopped in front of one, beside a streetlamp, and I sat forward making motions of paying. She waved me away, and I got out under the light, waiting to help her down. Two men in button sweaters and caps sat on the stoop watching us: one elderly or old, the other maybe forty. The cab clopping away, Maude Boothe turned to them. “Either of you ever hear of an act, Tessie and Ted?”

They thought, then shook their heads. “Knew Tessie Burns once,” the old man said. “Burns and Burns, the House-Afire Act. No Tessie and Ted. What’s their act?”

“Song and dance. This is Si; he wants to get in touch with them. Si, that’s John, the talkative one. And this is Ben. He’s an acrobat, they can’t talk.” They grinned, reaching out to shake my hand. “I’m going up to change,” Maude said. “Stick around if you want. There’ll be others out here: somebody must know Tessie and Ted. I’m beginning to feel I do.” She went up the stairs, and John, the old one, said, “Take a load off your feet, Si,” and I sat down halfway up the steps.

“That Variety?—he nodded at my coat pocket. “Mind if I borrow it?”

I gave it to him, and to Ben he said, “You seen this yet?” Ben shook his head. “Well, you know LaMont, LaMont’s Cockatoos?”

“Yeah, I played with LaMont. In Des Moines. Bird act. Noisy, squawking damn things. Not like Maude’s.”

“Well, he’s got a squawk himself here in Variety.” John took a pair of old-style specs with narrow oval lenses from his shirt pocket, flicked out the thin wire sidepieces, and put them on with one hand. A young good-looking woman in slippers and a long patterned kimono with wide Japanese sleeves came out of the house, sat down on an upper balustrade, pulling out a square of knitting from her kimono pocket, and began to knit. John said, “Dolores, this here’s Si,” and she smiled beautifully at me, and I nodded back, trying to equal her smile. John raised paper and chin high, turning his back to the streetlamp to bring its light fully on the page. “ ‘New York, New York,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘In last week’s Variety George M. Young wrote a review of Keith’s bill, Philadelphia, wherein he made mention of an act playing the Victoria there that was either a copy of LaMont’s Cockatoos, or there was difficulty in understanding how the routine of both bird acts could be so much alike. I think Mr. Young has made a big mistake in comparing any other act with LaMont’s Cockatoos. LaMont’s Cockatoos do back somersaults, giant swings, and so forth, which other bird acts are not on record as exhibiting. LaMont’s birds, fifty in number, are all trained, where the other act has but three birds, and features one trick like LaMont’s; i.e., the bell trick. But LaMont does not make the bell trick constitute the entire act as the other act does. In fact, the act spoken of is nothing like LaMont’s. It is like all other acts that are in the same line. They try the bluff of putting it over, but fail to accomplish the results of LaMont’s Cockatoos. Signed, LaMont.’ ” As he folded the paper to hand it back to me, I smiled and nodded to show I appreciated the humor of the letter he’d read. But none of the others smiled; they glanced at me quickly, then looked away, and I felt my face go hot. Dolores reached down to touch my shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t blame you, Si. LaMont’s letter does sound funny. All that fuss. But his act is all he’s got, you see. It’s everything, it’s his livelihood, it’s him, he’s nothing without it. None of us are. And he has to protect that. Bookers read the goddamn reviews, you can bet on that, bookers. So LaMont can’t let his fifty-bird act get confused with anything less.” She smiled at me. “Verstehen?”

I nodded, and so did the old man, who said, “You got to fight for your act. Hell, they’ll even steal it from the thief who stole it from you. Listen to this one.” He took the paper from my lap, opened it to the same page of letters, and read aloud. “ ‘Chicago. January 8. Editor Variety. Re: the letter accusing James Neary of stealing Mike Scott’s act, that of wearing dress coat, green tights, with medals on. I wish to state that I and Tom Ward produced it originally at the Odeon Theatre, Baltimore, Maryland, February 13, 1876. I can refer you to Steve Finn and Jack Sheean. Signed, W. J. Malcolm.’ ” John grinned at me, letting me know he agreed this was kind of funny. “Knew a guy once,” he said, “claimed he thought up the line ‘Beautiful but dumb.’ ” Got mad every time he heard anyone else use it.” He lifted Variety to his glasses again, and read, “ ‘London, December 19. Editor Variety. I desire to call your attention to an injustice which artists often have to suffer in the use by other artists of an expression or form of advertisement. For instance, with my daughter, Alice Pierce, who presents a series of “impressions” of stars, I find that the word “impression” is now being used for the first time by several artists. Signed, M. Pierce.’ ”

I nodded, not smiling now, at this little glimpse of an old man fighting for his daughter. “Steal your act,” Dolores said as a young man in shirtsleeves, no attached collar, appeared in the doorway behind her. “Worst thing they can do.”

“Oh, there’s worse than that,” the new man said; then Dolores interrupted to introduce us. His name was Al, and he’d never heard of Tessie and Ted. He sat down beside Dolores, and continued his story. “You know Noble and Henson? Songs and crossfire?” They all nodded, murmuring yes. “Well, I saw Pat last week at the Hoffman House. He’s not working now, but he says they’re booked. Well, Pat says last summer he was offered the Orpheum Circuit for the team at a salary of two hundred per week. He was to sign the contract next day. Well, he told people about it, and that night he runs into a fellow name of Burt Bender; you know him?” Nobody seemed to. Maude Boothe came out in a dark blue bathrobe and slippers; she sat down opposite Dolores and Al. “Well,” said Al, “Burt was the male member of another team not quite as good as Noble and Henson.”

“I remember them,” Maude said. “Played with them once in San Francisco.”

“Well, Burt meets Pat Henson, and came in like a million dollars. Says, ‘What do you think of Beck: wants me to sign for the Orpheum at two hundred and fifty. I been fighting him for the other fifty for six months.’ ” Two very tiny women, not quite dwarfs, came out, and sat down next to Maude. I’d become aware that, two houses to the west, a similar gathering had formed; and several more across the street. “Well, Pat said that after this gink left, he thought about that for the rest of the evening. Here’s The Benders, not as good as they were and everyone knew it. But the Orph Circuit offers them fifty bucks more!” The street before us stood empty, motionless; not a car had passed since I’d come here, and none were parked in the entire block. “So Pat talks the whole thing over with his partner, and next day they turn down the Orpheum Circuit at two hundred. Well, they laid off all winter, and he spent his savings. This last spring Pat finds out what happened. Somebody told Burt Bender about Pat’s offer, and Burt hotfoots it over to the Orpheum booking office. He tells the Orpheum he and his partner will work for one fifty. So they took him and his partner ’stead of Noble and Henson. Burt says he’s been layin’ for that guy ever since.”

Maude Boothe said, “Anybody ever hear of an act Tessie and Ted? Si down there is looking for them.” The two tiny women thought, then shook their heads. “Well, stick around,” Maude said to me. “Eventually somebody’ll know.” Later Maude told me who everyone out here was. Al and Dolores were married, and had an act together: they were magnificent dancers, the tango especially. They were on at the Victoria. Upstairs they had a year-old baby, and Dolores always sat where she could hear it if it cried. The two tiny women were twins, though not identical, born in Toledo to a pair of English music hall performers in the States on a tour, who never went home. Their twins became teenagers, and their parents taught and rehearsed them in the act they still used—the act was their inheritance. In it, one of them, heavily rouged and powdered, acted as a ventriloquist’s dummy for the other. Presently the dummy would rebel, and they’d trade places: audiences loved that, it was the high point of their act. They’d sing a little then, dance a little, not badly but not especially well. Didn’t matter because audiences always took them to their hearts, and the pair was always booked, and always in big time. They were shy, never went out, at ease only with vaudevillians. Old John was long retired. Like many vaudevillians, though by no means all, Maude told me later, he’d saved money, owned property, had several bank accounts: for safety. And a diamond ring he could hock if he had to. He lived in theatrical boarding houses like this one, moving occasionally for a change or because he got mad at somebody. Everything tangible he owned was in his old dome-topped trunk, professionally lettered with his name and his agent’s address. Ben was a fairly new arrival and Maude didn’t know much about him. “Yet,” she added, smiling. She thought he had or once had had a family somewhere. There were other boarders, either up in their rooms or not at home. Nothing about herself.

Ben spoke up, surprising everyone a little, I thought. “Something worse than stealing a booking. Or even an act,” he said. “Anyone ever hear of Sauer and Kraut?”

“I think maybe I did,” said old John. From other front stoops up and down the quiet street—no cars yet, not a one—quiet laughter and voices. From somewhere across the street, piano music from an open window. “Sauer and Kraut were strictly small-time,” Ben said. “German comedians: the little derbies, the padded stomachs, the awful accents, the pratfalls. Small small-time.”

Across the street a woman’s voice joined the piano notes, and she sang, as we all paused to listen, “When the town is fast asleep . . . And it’s midnight in the sky . . . That’s the time the festive Chink . . . starts to wink his other eye . . . Starts to wink his dreamy eye. Lazily you’ll hear him sigh, Chinatown, my Chinatown, when the lights are low . . .”

Down the street under the nearest streetlamp, a pair of men in street clothes stood practicing a balancing act, one on the other’s shoulders. “But Sauer and Kraut wanted to move up,” Ben said, “so they bought a new act. A lot better stuff than anything they had. They rehearsed it, tried it out, and got booked.” A boy came noisily down the center of the street on a contraption made from a two-by-four, roller-skate wheels nailed to each end, a box nailed upright to the front, a tin can “headlight” nailed to that. One foot on the two-by-four, he pushed himself along with the other. He stopped to watch the balancing act. “ . . . almond eyes of brown. Hearts seem light and life seems bright, in dreamy Chinatown . . .”

“I was on the same bill they were,” Ben went on. “At the Adelphi? In Guthrie?”

Al said, “Guthrie next week, and I don’t drink.”

“I never played Guthrie, but I played Norman,” said Dolores. “Before we were married, I was booked in Cleburne, Texas, by Swor Brothers of Dallas. I took the week for less money than I’d been receiving on account of it was a short jump. I was led to believe it was a week stand, and I got there to be informed by the manager that he only played acts three days, and that he had an agreement with the agent not to pay transportation on split weeks. And three days was a split week.” Dolores never stopped knitting. “So I paid my transportation, and after the three days I worked the rest of the week in Gainesville. For the next week I accepted booking by phone for Norman, Oklahoma, and was told that the contract would be mailed to me there. On arrival I found the house was booked by Jack Dickey, and no contracts. I went to my hotel, and immediately phoned Swor Brothers, but they refused to talk to me.” A barefooted boy of ten or eleven walked by, looking inquiringly at our stoop, and John beckoned him over. He gave the boy some money, so did Ben, and Al got up and walked into the house. “Went to the Western Union office,” Dolores said, “and wired them, requesting an answer. It was ignored.” Al came out with a large, shiny metal bucket, came down the steps, and handed it to the boy, gave some money, change, to John, and the boy left. “So I think artists working Texas and Oklahoma better watch out with these agents. They don’t look out after your interests, and the truth ain’t in them. You have trouble in Guthrie?”

“No, it was okay,” Ben said. “The Adelphi’s okay.”

I waited; no one said anything. Down the street, the acrobats finished their practicing, walking back to their stoop, the kid on the skate-wheel contraption scooting on, wheels grinding. I worked up my nerve, and said, “What happened with Sauer and Kraut?”

“Well, they were on maybe number four spot, and I saw them come out early, in costume, all ready, and they stood waiting in the wings watching. Opening act was a juggling team, I think, and then for some reason, some booking mixup maybe—nothing to do about it, you have to fill the bill—on comes another comedy team.” From one of the stoops across the street, a young man of maybe twenty came angling across the street toward us. “Hey there, Dippy.” He stopped before us, smiling at the general murmur of greeting. “Evening, folks.” This was Van Hoven, I learned, The Dippy, Mad Musician.

“You seen the beer boy, eh?” said John.

“Sure.” Dippy grinned, and sat down beside Ben. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

“Well, this other comedy team walks on, right past Sauer and Kraut, and they’re dressed the same! Looks like two pairs of twins! They go on, and do the same act! Word for word, joke for joke, same knockabouts, everything! The guy sold the same act to the both of them.”

The others nodded, saying, “Yeah,” or, “Wouldn’t you know,” and the like. After a little time I said, “Well . . . what happened? To Sauer and Kraut?”

“Oh,” said Ben, voice surprised at the question, “they were canned. On the spot. They were no use now. Had to borrow money to get out of town. We all gave them what we could.”

Across the street, “Chinatown” ended. A pause, then piano and the same young voice began: “Honey, honey, can’t you hear? Funny, funny music, dear . . . Ain’t the funny strain goin’ to your brain? Like a bottle of wine, fine. Hon’, hon’, hon’, take a chance! One, one, one! One little dance! Can’t you see them all swaying up the hall? Let’s be gettin’ in line!” Then the familiar chorus: “Everybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it! Doin’ what? Turkey Trot!” And Maude groaned, and said, “Everybody’s overdoin’ it.”

A middle-aged woman came out of the house and sat down on the step just below Maude, and Maude leaned forward, murmuring something to her. Then she called to me. “Si, this is Madam Zelda, Mind Reader. That’s Simon Morley. She never heard of Tessie and Ted either.”

“I’ll let Maude know if I do,” Madam Zelda said, and I nodded and smiled, thanking her.

The beer boy came walking toward our house, tilted to one side, his arm pulled straight down by the weight of his filled bucket. Dolores went into the house, Ben was digging into his pants pocket, and I stood up quickly, saying, “Let me,” and got out a pair of quarters. Ben took the filled bucket; I gave the quarters to the boy, who looked down at them astonished. “Gee! Thanks, mister!”

Dolores came out carrying a Coca-Cola tray full of assorted glasses, Maude just behind her with cups and a pot of tea on another tray. Then we all sat comfortably leaned back against the stone, sipping. Across the street I saw a boy coming slowly from Eighth Avenue carrying two tin buckets. And over at Eighth saw the corner saloon I thought he’d come from. It was a good moment sitting here sipping beer with these people. The night was turning a little cool, but no one left, and in the easy silence it occurred to me that my morning newspaper had had columns filled with Taft and Roosevelt struggling for the Republican presidential nomination; and other stories on the growing troubles in Europe. But these people sitting out here lived in another world, the only one that mattered. Did they ever vote? I suspected not, and I’d have bet that in the entire house behind us, up in the rooms they lived in, there wasn’t a newspaper not called Variety or Billboard.

The easy, lazy, mildly gossipy talk resumed. I heard about a vaudevillian called Sparrow; they all seemed to know or had heard of him. His act was unique. He stood up on the stage and tossed oranges, tomatoes, and other soft fruit out to the audience. Then he’d put a fork in his mouth, and the audience threw all that garbage back at him while he tried to catch it on his fork. He’d miss, and in no time his suit and face were dripping. And always, some of the audience knew his act, and brought along hard stuff like potatoes and turnips and threw them. Threw good, a lot of them, fast, hard, and right at his face. So he had to catch it. On his fork. If he missed, as he sometimes did, too bad; black eye, bloody nose. He carried his own floor cloth, and wore a dress suit made of black and white oilcloth. And when he came off, walking along backstage toward his dressing room, he got a clear path.

Another act was Sherman and Morissey, who did a comic trapeze act in funny costume. What they did was fall. Off a six-foot-high wire onto the stage. Singly and together. Then they’d get mad, and knock each other around, and fall some more. And the falls were real, no way to fake them. They hurt so much that they couldn’t take it for more than eight minutes; the shortest act in vaudeville, Ben said. Back in their dressing room, it was liniment, bandages, and pulling splinters out of each other, getting into shape for the next show.

I must have looked astonished, and Dolores smiled and said, “It’s vaudeville, Si. And it’s better to be in it than out.” That led the talk into failures, people who could no longer get bookings, the worst thing that could happen. A man most of them knew had gradually slipped from medium- to small-time, and then into no bookings at all. Friends had coached him then into being a store-window dummy. He’d stand in store windows, face whitened and rouged, motionless as a real dummy. Then he’d rap on the window at a likely passerby, who would stop to stare, and he’d make a stiff mechanical bow, with a jerky mechanical smile. Then absolutely still and motionless again. People would gather, rapping on the window at him, boys making faces trying to force him to smile, and he’d point to a sign in the window advertising something inside. “It wasn’t show business,” Al said, “but it was close as he could get,” and everyone nodded.

Something strange happened then. Young Van Hoven began to talk, and he went on and on and on, no one interrupting. As well as I can remember, this is what he said. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone who got up and left, though no one did, but I listened and could have gone on listening all night long.

“It’s hard,” he murmured, voice genuinely sympathetic to the ex-vaudevillian store-window dummy. “I was in the show business and I wasn’t putting it over either. Misery loves company, so I joined a partner who also didn’t have any money. I was broke all winter, and it was one of Chicago’s hardest. We roomed in South Clark Street near the alley of the stage door of the old Olympic, and talk about Ding Bat not knowing the family above—it’s a joke!” (I have no idea what that meant.) “The landlady never saw us, and we never saw her: when you look like we looked, you didn’t want to see anyone.

“We rehearsed a burlesque magic act, and put it together in a couple of days in our room by the aid of gaslight. That was the only way you could even find yourself in our room night or day, and we slept all day to try to forget we ought to eat.” Dippy smiled. “Now sometimes when I’m eating big meals I wonder if I’m awake.

“My partner, Jules, poor old Jules! He was sick and he was getting bald-headed. He wanted to give up, but one day I landed a job for three days for twelve dollars for the team, and our supper Sunday night. It was a German joint, and Jules was German, so we put it over. And on Sunday I ate like I eat now.

“The next week we played a joint on the far north side, got our money, paid a few debts, ate a couple of times, and were broke again. Couldn’t even get our laundry. Got a job then, supposed to pay us twenty dollars a week, and we had to walk to it; no carfare, nearly five miles. When we stepped into the place the bartender said, ‘Harding sends me two men? I don’t want men, I won’t play men, I want women, my audience wants women!’ Well, I don’t want to say I’m so stuck on show business that tears came to my eyes, but they did—for another reason! I begged this big dub to please play us, as I was sick and Jules was sick, and I showed him Jules’s hair. I did everything until finally he did play us. We flopped and the two old soubrettes he had on the bill with us were a knockout. So I knew the fellow was right, and I hurried out to a place on North Halsted Street and I actually begged for a job. He gave in, and I rushed back to get Jules.

“Well, we went to work for eighteen dollars for the team, and supper on Sunday night again. Booked direct, no commission. The place had a small German stock company. Our double-up magic act was a riot, but my own single was a fliv. I felt pretty blue because the manager wanted to keep Jules, and join up with the stock company. But I almost knew Jules would stick with me, and he did. But the next week was the finish: we both got canned. It was the first time since we were together. I’d often gone it alone, and when I saw the stage manager talking to my partner with some money in his hand, I knew it was finished with the two of us as a team. I stepped outside, on that cold rainy April night, and it just seemed I never could make good, and my good suit and cuff buttons and everything were in soak. I was desperate, and went back into the front of the house where Mr. Murphy, one of the owners, was sitting with two ladies. I pleaded with him to please keep both of us boys, and I showed him my clothes. He could easily see I didn’t have on all a human being should have. So he let me finish the week out alone, at twelve dollars.

“I did it, and did it hard. I drew fifty cents every night, and Jules would meet me after his turn, and we’d eat, and just go to sleep back at the boarding house. The next day I’d walk back to save carfare. Well, the next week Jules and I split up; he thought he could do better with a soubrette. So I was flat in Chicago once more. Jules went with a turkey burlesque. He took my muffler and a shirt, and all I had left was a summer suit of old clothes, and my trunk.

“Well, Williams of Williams and Healy put me next to a wagon-show job, and another friend bought my ticket. I jumped to Boswell, Indiana, to Adam Fetzer’s one-ring wagon show, and believe me, it was some bum circus. The room where we slept was upstairs, and the big top, or the big tent, was laid out on the floor, and it was full of ropes. Well, you can see what a chance you had to sleep lying on a lot of ropes, so I decided to move out. Now, Fetzer’s had a lion in a big cage with two partitions in it, and only one lion. So I slept in the empty partition. I got some horse blankets and all was fine. The other fellows thought I was swellheaded because I was sleeping outside with a lion instead of them.

“Fetzer was afraid I was a lemon, though, and I thought I was, too. So he made me do extra work like shining harness, painting wagons, and doing everything he could think of. And he was a good thinker. So I did as he thought best, because I was up against it. Nine dollars was the limit with that show, and all I got was seven. But I did my best. I fed the lion, and he wasn’t like a regular lion that got up early. He was old and nearly ready to die. Still, he was the best thing in the circus, so you can see what kind of circus it was. I used to have to wake him up to eat, and grind his meat, too, and when we gave a special show in the sideshow, I used to have to poke him with a hot iron to make him growl a little. A couple of times we nearly got run out of town for doing that. I felt sorry for poor old Jake, but I was in no position to pity a lion.

“I got to feeling pretty blue at times, but you can’t let yourself stay blue around a circus for very long. Those circus fellows are made of iron. There was one who had been with Fetzer for years, and to hold his job he did a dozen acts. One was a revolving ladder act, and he got me into it. I had to hang on because it would revolve and bring me clear to the top, and then he wanted me to clown up there to make him a bigger hit, but believe me, all I did was hold on, and I held on tight. Every time I saw that ladder, I thought I saw my finish.

“Now, come April the roads dried, and April twenty-fifth our first show on the road opened. Well, I’d practiced on my own in the winter, and now I pulled aside the canvas and waited; the band played, and I ran out into the ring and did a comedy juggling act, and as true as I’m alive, I was one big hit. I also did a magic act that was not so good but good enough.

“Well, that night I slept in a regular hotel room, and Adam, the manager, was all salve. I was called Frankie, and all that soft stuff. The next day they used me in the sideshow, too, and honest, folks, I was needed bad. It consisted of a dwarfed bearded woman and her giant husband, a couple of old alligators, two cages of monkeys, the lion, and myself. I lectured on them, and did the best I could to make the thing look like a real sideshow, but the more I see of Broadway today, the wiser I think those rubes are. Old P. T. Barnum might have fooled them, but I couldn’t. The best thing in our show was always our move to the next town.

“I got canned before my notice was up—I won’t go into that—and with ten dollars in my pocket I jumped to Dayton. No job there, so I went to work in a restaurant. Finally landed a job with Gus Sun, and I jumped to Elkins, West Virginia; had to sit up all night. And when I got there, all in, was told I wasn’t booked. Oh boy. But they couldn’t lick me, and I borrowed enough from the manager to get to my next booking in Fairmont, West Virginia, where I opened. Well, the manager was a real fellow. I was on that circuit for eighteen weeks—eleven weeks in theaters, and seven weeks in hotels and restaurants. I hate to admit that, but what’s the difference: I was as good as some of the theaters I played in. If I’d been a full-grown man instead of just a kid, some of those managers wouldn’t have done me the way they did. But it’s all over now, and I did my crying in my room in those days. I used to wonder if I was really bad, but it’s all in the game; only I sure held a bad hand pretty often.

“Got thrown off the Sun Circuit, and joined a rep show. The manager kept me on because he knew I had the nerve to do anything. And I did; did everything with that show, and I stuck with it till spring. It was the longest job I ever had, and to this day I write the manager letters; he was a regular fellow.

“The season closed, and I jumped back to Chicago, and all that summer I did eight shows a day on State Street. All day long from nine-thirty a.m. till eleven p.m. I couldn’t stand it, so I jumped to Des Moines, and when I got there was told business was bad, so I didn’t go to work, but landed a job in Oskaloosa at twenty-five dollars. From there I jumped to Manhattan, Kansas, and a couple of other small towns.

“Then my true friend, Frank Doyle, saved my life by giving me some time in Chicago, where I stayed all winter. Finally, the next summer on July fifth, came my chance. I opened at the Majestic—and to tell how I got that would be another whole story. Anyhow, I was a hit. Still, I’d sit in my dressing room and wonder if I was going to stay all week or get canned again. But I stayed all week, and up to now I have played in every first-class vaudeville theater in America and Canada, and I can only say it’s a hard game. Even to this day the thing I can’t bear is the manager who cans acts. That and the poor weak-minded simpleton who steals another man’s act when maybe the poor fellow he stole it from battled even a harder battle than the one I have just related.

“Well, let’s cheer up. I’m twenty-three years old in February, and I was born in Sioux City, on the Orpheum Circuit. And it’s great to have a room like I’ve got this week, and a dinner like I had tonight. And fine dressing rooms, big stages, and to sleep in sleepers and belong to clubs where you meet George M. Cohan and Andrew Mack and all those fellows, even have them ask you to join their show. Oh, it’s no use talking, this thing is great when you get it right. If it’s a dream, don’t ever wake me up. And if it’s true, oh, please don’t let the Commercial Trust Company fail, because that’s where I have all my money. So I say, good luck to all, and success comes if you deserve it. Do your own act, and let your brother live. Good night, folks, ’nuff said now.”

They replied, “Night, Daffy. Come again,” and John dug out a watch, snapped open its case, looked and groaned. Everyone was standing, stretching a little, and I stood up to shake hands, thanking these fine people for having me here. I think my voice told them that I truly liked being here this evening, because when they invited me back, smiling, I could see and hear that they meant it.

The others going on inside, I stood a moment or so longer with Maude Boothe. She asked me where I was staying, brows rising in mock awe when I told her. And said she’d phone if she heard anything about Tessie and Ted.

• • •

I walked clear back to the Plaza, a long way and it was late, late, late. But this evening had been exciting for me, and I walked for time to think about it. And think about just being here in this strange New York, everything almost but never quite entirely familiar. Walking here along the Lower Broadway I knew so well, passing buildings Julia and I had walked by, I heard—strange on Broadway—no sound but the scuff of my own shoe leather, not a headlight or car ahead or—I turned to look—behind me as far as I could see. From blank dark store and office fronts, only the occasional dimness of a light far back inside.

Then a change, momentarily puzzling till I recognized that a fragrance had come sifting through the air, only a hint then gone. Then back, stronger and now persistent. And a pleasure. What? New-baked bread, the air filling with it, and I inhaled, pulling it in. And saw up ahead an almost dreamlike sight: a silent, motionless crowd. There they stood as I walked closer: hardly moving, a crowd of silent men standing out here in the night. Suspended over the street corner—this was Broadway and Eleventh—a painted wooden sign reading, Fleischmann’s Bakery. Walking by, I looked over at this line of forlorn and silent men in pocket-sprung suitcoats, safety-pinned overcoats, some only in shirtsleeves.

A cop stood at the curb watching them—tall helmet of heavy tan felt, belted blue coat to just above the knees. He glanced at me, approaching, saw I was a gent, I suppose, and said, “Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening, officer.” I stopped. “What’s going on?”

“Fleischmann’s gives away day-old bread at midnight.” We both glanced away to the north at a pair of headlights, huge, round, dim, moving toward us, jouncing a little. Then stood watching the car slow and stop here at the curb; a limousine, long, polished, expensive. “Officer!” called a woman as she climbed out under a streetlamp—young, good-looking, long pale dress, big big hat. An older woman getting out of the car now, wearing the vague kind of dress that wasn’t a uniform but was. She had a satchel in her hand.

“We are giving a party!” the young one cried gaily to the cop, her tone inviting him to join the fun. “You see,” she said, confident of his interest, “I had thought at first of giving a dinner party to my friends. Then I thought how much better to give a dinner party to the poor.” She turned her head to smile beautifully at the line of watching men, sweeping out an arm to include them all. “I want to feed every man here! So, you see,” she explained kindly to the cop, “I want your help. For I am afraid some of the more anxious men will not be willing to wait their turn.”

I recognized this lady; I’d seen her before in a Sunday comic section along with “Bringing Up Father,” “Petey Dink,” “Doc Yak,” and “Der Captain und Der Kids.” This was a genuine “Lady Bountiful,” an actual type of this time, I felt sure. Lady Bountifuls really and truly existed here, superbly certain of themselves and their goodness, and the cop knew it. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered her quickly. “If you will stand here beside the curb, I’ll call them out two at a time. And very kind of you, ma’am; what is your name?”

“I had rather not give it; names won’t count at this party! Send over the first two.” The cop gestured, and two dirty-faced young men at the head of the line came over, pulling their caps off. “My friends,” said Lady Bountiful, her tone compassionate, “I want you to have dinner with me!” She reached into the satchel held open by the older woman, brought out two half-dollars, and gave one to each of them, who took them, ducking their heads, muttering their thanks. “This is a birthday party!” cried Lady B, “and I wish you well.”

At the cop’s signal, the waiting men came over two at a time for their half-dollars; actually a fairly large gift, I had to remind myself. When the satchel was empty, the older lady brought out another full one.

Standing there watching, I made a rough count: there were maybe four hundred men waiting here in the night at Fleischmann’s, and each got his half-dollar. And each thanked Lady Bountiful politely, a lot of them in a foreign language. She turned graciously to the cop then. “It’s been quite a birthday party,” she said, “and I thank you very much for assisting us. I don’t know what we would have done without you!” The cop touched his cap, and she glanced at me; for a moment I thought I was going to get a half-dollar. Then both women got back into the car, and as it pulled away I saw that a uniformed chauffeur was driving.

Fleischmann’s had opened up a door at the head of the line, light edging out onto the walk, and the line began inching forward. “What do they get?” I asked the cop, and he said, “Coffee and bread.” I said good night then, and walked on to the Plaza thinking of what I’d just seen. And of the vaudeville people out on their front stoops in their own tight, cozy, dangerous world.

At the hotel a pink-slip message lay in my box: Phone Madam Zelda. I knew she’d be up, still out on the front stoop, most of them, still talking vaudeville, vaudeville, vaudeville, so I phoned from my room.

Her call time for tomorrow’s performance had been changed; someone had just phoned her. Vera of Vernon and Vera had been taken to the hospital from their boarding house, apparently with appendicitis. And Madam Z had phoned me immediately because the replacement act coming in tomorrow from Albany was called Tessie and Teddy. If I was going to see it, Madam Zelda’s act was scheduled to follow; would I stay and see her? And I said that I certainly would.