The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies

TWENTY-THREE

The Darling Dahlias’ annual talent show was held a few weeks after Violet came home from Memphis with Baby Dorothy and Frankie Diamond was extradited to Illinois on murder charges and Miss Jamison’s plea deal was successfully worked out between the Treasury (who needed Lorelei LaMotte as a witness against Capone and an honest Illinois judge, who was just as happy that the Blade was no longer roaming the streets). And as Mr. Moseley told Lizzy, the T-boys’ case against Al Capone was moving right along. They expected to be able to indict him early in the next year on charges of tax evasion. As for Miss Jamison’s safety, it was clear that the Chicago gangsters had no intention of sending another of their pals to Darling, where he might be subjected to an African slave song, a Rebel yell, and indefinite imprisonment in the Darling jail.

But of course, very few people in Darling knew anything about Frankie Diamond or Lorelei LaMotte or Al Capone’s unpaid taxes. Most Darlingians had met Baby Dorothy, though, and agreed with Doc Roberts, who gave her a good going-over and pronounced her the sturdiest, sweetest little cupcake he had ever seen. In fact, business at the diner was up by nearly ten percent over the past few weeks, since lots of folks wanted to come in and meet Cupcake, the enchanting little blue-eyed creature with (as it turned out) the most beautiful strawberry curls in all of Southern Alabama.

But if Darlingians knew very little about the momentous events of national significance that had transpired in their own small town, most of them thought they knew exactly what was coming when they settled into their wooden folding chairs in the Darling gymnasium, where the basketball floor had been covered with canvas to keep it from getting scratched. All the acts were listed in their programs, produced during several frustrating hours with the Academy’s old mimeograph machine, which had (predictably) eaten Lizzy’s carefully typed stencils. The audience had already seen almost all of the acts, anyway, because they were old favorites that appeared every year.

The program started off with Carsons’ Comedy Caravan, featuring the Carson brothers, Billy and Willy, two old men who had been on the vaudeville circuit back in the Gay Nineties. Their jokes were long out of date, but still the audience laughed, so as not to hurt their feelings. Next came Sammy Durham, who made a big hit with his drum solo, especially with the younger folks who appreciated his syncopated style. The quartet of Tumbling Tambourines flipped and flopped across the stage, astonishing all with their daredevil acrobatics, performed to the accompaniment of rattling tambourines, which they tossed from one to another. Mr. and Mrs. Akins followed with their famous Spanish fandango-but this time, the audience was in for a real treat, because they danced to a recording (played on the Academy’s Victrola) of part of Maurice Ravel’s stirring new piece, Boléro. However, some in the audience were disappointed, because the Akins’ fandango wasn’t nearly as infamous as it had once been. Mrs. Akins had added quite a bit more cloth coverage in crucial areas of her costume.

After the Akins danced off the stage, old Mr. Trubar and his dog Towser came on to do their trombone act, which was always fun, even if everybody had seen it five or six times. Trubar and Towser were followed by an act that most hadn’t seen before, and the excitement brought the entire audience to the edges of their chairs. This was the Juggling Jinks, two boys who juggled balls, wooden clubs, apples and oranges, pineapples, knives, and even flaming torches-all the while making jokes and dancing and taunting one another. Their prowess and their glib patter so thoroughly amazed and entertained the crowd that they were called back for an encore.

After the Jinks, Miss Rogers’ slow, sepulchral reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” gave everyone a chance to settle back in their seats, catch their breaths, and calm down. But this politely applauded performance was not the finale of the program, oh, not at all! There was one more act to come. On the program, it was simply listed as “Tiptoe Through the Tulips with Melody Kilgore and Friend.” It started with a tap dance by little Melody (Mildred and Roger Kilgore’s daughter), dressed in a pink satin costume with a big pink tulip on her head. She tap danced to Nick Lucas’ recording of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” played on the Victrola, in front of a row of painted wooden tulips.

But that wasn’t the end of it. When Melody finished her dance and scampered offstage, Miss Nona Jean Jamison stepped through the curtains and sang her own version of the song to the accompaniment of a mandolin, played backstage by her friend Miss Lake. The brown-haired Miss Jamison was not nearly naked, as the platinum-haired Lorelei LaMotte would have been, of course. Instead, she was dressed in a white, frilled, full-skirted Southern belle costume, with a lacy, flower-trimmed white parasol. Then Melody danced back onstage and joined Miss Jamison. Holding hands, the two tap-danced together, the little pink tulip and the big Broadway star, although of course only a very few people knew about Miss Jamison’s previous career as one of the nearly naked dancers in Mr. Ziegfeld’s Frolics-and they weren’t telling.

The act brought down the house. For a long time afterward, nothing else was talked of but that adorable, demure, darling Miss Nona Jean Jamison.