Further Adventures (27 page)

No stained glass but the windows are 20 Feet Tall & set back over olive green marble benches which they positively invite you to peer down 38 floors and scoff at the Human tide below. Between the windows dark oak panels which the Founders took off the planks of the
Mayflower
or some other Pilgrim vessel. So there is American history staring you flat in the face there. Outside the windows at night all you see is the sparkling lights of Manhattan they are flung out at your feet like a box of junk jewelry spilled there. And the Human ant colony digging around in it unbeknowing of the Drama ordained to unfold high above.

The smorgasbord courtesy of P. K. Spiller appeared very elegant from across the room. Up close was a different story. Besides the crystal bowl full of rum punch & the matching ones with the pyramid of wax fruit the rest of the food was Spiller products. A special treat that night was he offered us the premier taste of a new line he was not bringing out until 1947. That was the famous Cheez Skweez Sandwich Spread & you can find descendants of it in your local supermarket today being a
fat tube which squirts a orange worm of processed Cheddar Cheese out of its nozzle on request. Progress in eating!

Here is the rest of the menu—

Orange Jell-O cubes with Spiller’s Powder Puf Marshmallows floating in them. Tiny Toto Pretzels next to a bowl of Onion Dip. Potato Salad coated very thick by Spiller’s “Mr. Whitey” Mayonnaise Dressing. White bread sandwich squares with the crust cut off & a layer of Monsieur Meat Spread inside. And for dessert at the end of the table a party mix of Powder Puf Junior Marshmallows which they colored special in our honor pistachio green.

“Help yourself to refreshments!” Mr. Spiller clapped his puffy hand on Leon Kern’s back & beamed him a bossman grin. Like a zookeeper who just tossed a pound of raw meat to a snarling beast then realizes he still has the scent of sirloin on his clothes he stepped back & gave Leon enough room to move in on the buffet. Leon Kern loaded up his paper plate & started to say a word of thanks but Mr. Spiller was gone. He was very deep in some manly conversation with Howard Silverstein & a tight knot of Liberty V.I.P.s who all dressed up in tuxedos for the occasion. Spiller squeezed his hands together in front of his chest he leaned forward on the balls of his feet & bounced into the joy of selling his point of view.

The deflated look on Leon’s face said the same for us all. P. K. Spiller’s refreshments could not refresh our downpunched Emotions. And I would say the person worn out the worst if you go by Appearance had to be David Arcash. He turned up in a camel color sweater it had buttons missing & the rest hanging on by a thread. Nor he did not take a shave that morning either. I will guess it was because he could not stand to look at his own miserable face in the mirror.

If he even owned a mirror that is. For 1945 was the year that knocked him down and 1946 was the one that knocked him out. Back in August his Golden Glove Gym went bankrupt so he had to
sell off his apartment just to keep up with the alimony to Annie. A week after he moved out he heard the reason he could not visit his little daughter Amy as usual was because she was in Havana Cuba for the weekend. Why Havana Cuba? Because Annie was there. Why was Annie there? Only to say “I do” to Mr. Rand Comyngore II. When Spiller & Co. pulled the plug on our Radio show it was a death blow to David’s livelihood. He stayed away from us mainly he occupied a corner of the Dining Room chain-smoking & staring at the carpet. His eyes flashed up whenever he heard somebody arrive then he watched the door very jittery. He wanted to be the first to know when Annie & her new Hubby came in so he could torture them with the cold shoulder.

(Also he wanted to be the first in line to greet the great Heavyweight Champ Joe Luis who was a personal invited Guest of the Spillers. “Hello kid!” was about all the dialogue he got out of the Champ all evening but the crush of the crowd forced David into a ugly Scene with Annie in front of the hors d’oeuvres.)

Little Amy ruined it for him. She toddled back from the buffet like a big girl with her Dixie cup of lemonade & she wound up in the corner with David. She waited there knee-high & slurping her beverage very patient until he was going to notice her. Except Annie noticed him first. “Say hi to Daddy,” she pushed Amy on.

David ignored Annie & gave his girl a hug. “Hiya pipsqueak.” When he lifted Amy into his arms she started kicking & whining he should let her down. “Yeah,” he said, “great to see you too.”

“Really David. She’s just a baby.”

“Something she gets from you.”

Rand Comyngore broke in like the shuddery boom of a temple gong. “I’ll look after Amy for a while. I’m sure there’s a small private room where you can express your feelings more freely to each other.”

“For that I’d need a whip and a chair,” David replied.

Rand sighed he gave his head a wise old shake. “Really old man don’t you want to look forward to when you and Annie can bury the hatchet? When you can socialize. Treat each other as friends.”

David pretended he was trying to be friendly. “Confidentially I’d rather gargle with razor blades.”

Jack Dempsey picked that second to brush by behind Rand. David grabbed hold of Amy’s hand & pushed Rand out of the way he dragged his little girl in the Champ’s wake. Her heels made wavy lines where they ploughed through the carpet. “You never met my daughter Champ!” So Dempsey turned around very sweet. “This is Amy. Amy say hello to Mr. Dempsey.”

As soon as he turned her loose she swung around & punched Daddy high up in the leg. “Cute kid,” the Champ chucked him & then he sidestepped David into the huddle of tuxedos around P. K. Spiller. Brushed off by the best!

This other Sight gave me a knock in my Heart—Bernhardt Grym sinking into the tricks of the Stage to hide over his upset emotions. The more cheer he poured on the less I believed it so there is a Lesson of Acting and a Lesson of Life rolled into one. Nor he did not want anybody to miss his Command Performance. Deaf & blind you could not miss it. Even under his slumped shoulders Bernhardt was the tallest object in the room also with the loudest Voice. Like a Hebrew Patriarch he walked around there.

His only Prop was a copy of
Variety
he did so much flapping of those pages it sounded like pigeons flying around his head. And Bernhardt had a stooge too by the name of Vaughan Cherry the day-rate actor who Mr. Argyll hired to perform the role of our Announcer for the last time. Bernhardt quoted out from every page some big name of his acquaintance who was producing a big Show & now all he had to do was walk in the Stage Door & back to his real Life in the Theater—

“Oh my dear! Arthur Beaumont is in the Old Vaudeville for 12
weeks with…”—Bernhardt gave this a chuckle—“with a musical by Paul Raskob & Nat Firelli. Oh no…” He dropped his Voice down very serious he read the page very close. “Oh he’s not waltzing
that
prehistoric behemoth in front of the public again! Madman!”

“What’s that Mr. Grym?” Vaughan said up on tiptoes to read the news over Bernhardt’s arm but caught the splash of the page in his face when Bernhardt flicked it over.

“Ah!”

“What?”

“DeKalb!”

“Where’s that again? In Indiana isn’t it?”

“Not
Indiana
.” Bernhardt winced to show off how Vaughan’s ignorance gave him a pain. “Morris!
Morris
DeKalb of Happy Pappy! Of Sing To Me In Springtime! Of Jazz Baby Serenade! You know…” He crooned a verse of the Hit Tune from that show. “There’s no tax to pay on apple blo-oo-ssoms…there’s no rent due on the dew…Nobody can cha-aa-rge you for falling in love…So I’m free to fall in love with you-oo-oo…”

Nor Bernhardt did not notice only Vaughan Cherry did how heads started to turn toward him. “Bring the noise level down will you Bernhardt?”

“Moe DeKalb! My God don’t you attend the theater Vaughan? You should know his name if you want to get any further in this business. He produced all the early classics on Broadway. And look. Look what he’s auditioning!” His big stiff finger harpooned the middle of the open page. “A revival of Belvedere Boy! I wonder if Moe even knows I’m at liberty…”

“If he listens to the radio he does.”

“My God. The part of cunning old Major Van Loon the flowergirl’s estranged father. Not her
real
father. That comes out in the second act. I was too young for it in 1922. I tell you I’m ripe for it now.”

“Who’s her real father?”

“I’ll bring you along to meet Moe. I’m sure if you ask him pretty please with a cherry on top he’ll give you a crack at one of the smaller roles. You don’t want to stay in
ra-di-o
,” Bernhardt sneered, “any longer than you have to…”

Here you are I hand you a night when Theater History got made for this was the occasion when David Arcash dubbed Bernhardt Grym with his famous nickname which dogged him all over Broadway & some will say it Hounded him into his mortal grave. You could hear it drip from the greasy lips of any pickle sucking wiseguy who rented a Theater & called himself a Producer. On the first day of any Audition going in New York City, “Here he comes,” some Voice in the Stalls had to groan, “the Kosher Ham.”

Exactly the way a pinball rolls around a machine that was how Leon Kern rolled across the room. He circled around each bunch of Guests in his path he caromed off the walls & back into the Crowd until he zigzagged over to Mr. Burrows & me. “You want some cheese & crackers?” Leon pointed to his almost empty plate. “I can go get some more.”

Mr. Burrows took 1 look at the shiny smear of Cheddar in front of him then over at its creator P. K. Spiller. “I wouldn’t touch that stuff with a 10 foot Polack.”

“No appetite,” I said. All 3 of us had our eyes on Mr. Spiller & his intimate party including Walter Winchell & Arthur Murray & Arthur Godfrey of course nobody took the plunge & introduced us working stiffs to those high flyers.

“I’ve been over it a thousand times in my mind…” Mr. Burrows shook his head. “I can’t come up with why. How can he pull the plug on us like this?”

“Howard threw in the sponge pretty easy too.” I spoke the obvious.

“Silverstein’s got a dozen other shows to worry about. What’s so special about The Green Ray?”

Leon swallowed his cracker. “Mr. Silverstein was saying something about the future and it’s television.”

The mention of the word made Mr. Burrows want to spit. “Oh hell Leon. Spare me. It’s just business to them. Silverstein doesn’t care what he puts on the air. To him it’s all
numbers
. You think he sits around with P. K. Spiller & they congratulate each other on broadcasting something wonderful like The Green Ray? Not a chance. They care about how many more boxes of Spiller’s dry cereal got sold last week. Or how many less.” Zingo right on cue a blast of laughter roars out of the guts of Spiller’s crowd. Mr. Burrows gave us a bitter smile & said, “And now a word from our Sponsor.”

I was not going to let dat ole debbil Regret creep into the Studio with us & sabotage going out in a blaze of Glory. “We can be proud of what we did from beginning to end. Every minute of it.”

Mr. Burrows nodded very sure. “Indeedy.”

“When you got trapped in the cargo hold of Horvath’s gambling boat. And sank to the bottom.” Leon poked me in the ribs to remind me.

“And I lived to fight another day.”

“You floated up in that sealed oil drum,” remembered Leon.

“You rose to the occasion!” Mr. Burrows grabbed my arm he shook a chuckle out of me. “Wait a minute,” he stopped right there & said, “the sealed oil drum was how you got out of that Jap submarine in San Francisco Bay.”

“Ray got shot out of the torpedo tube on that one,” Leon corrected him. “Remember how I used the bicycle pump with the echo on it?”

“I’m sorry Leon you’re wrong. You used a bicycle pump for the air decompressing when the lid came off the oil drum
after
the Jap sub blew up.”

“Let’s not fight between ourselves,” I said here. “If I’m so smart how come I let Horvath lock me in his bullion vault?”

“Ask Lamont Carruthers.” Mr. Burrows tickled himself by this no
tion. “How does he think that stuff up? Traps you in a lead vault so Horvath can suck the oxygen out of it. You have to have some kind of sadistic imagination to come up with a gag like that.”

“Gag is right. I think I did my best work of all time in that scene. Got suffocating down to a fine art.”

“If I hear of any vacancies…” Mr. Burrows said.

“Remember the phone calls? The whole country wanted to make sure I was all right.” Their quiet told me I hit our Sentiments on the nose. “They don’t know what they’re killing off.”

Mr. Burrows said, “Amen to that.”

“I swear,” I swore, “I can rescue this situation.”

“It’s hopeless,” was how Leon put it.

“A hopeless situation,” Mr. Burrows agreed.

I did not agree. “I’ll talk him out of it. Bring certain facts to his attention.”

“Here’s a fact my boy. At 8 o’clock on the button the final episode of this show goes on the air and at 8:30 it’s off. Look in the dictionary—final means
final
. Finished. The end.” Mr. Burrows squinted at me. “You read the script. You know how they made Lamont end it.”

“I read it forwards and backwards and all I know is there’s a lot that happens before we get to the last scene.”

“What the hell do you think you’re going to change?” Mr. Burrows pulled me close by my lapel. “Don’t make a monkey out of yourself. You can’t switch endings on everybody!”

“We’re all professionals here. David is. Bernhardt…”

“I’m telling you for your own good—don’t make enemies Ray. Some of these people you’re going to need after tonight.”

“Where’s the law that says this episode has to end the way Lamont wrote it last week? A green light from Howard Silverstein and he can write me a miraculous escape.”

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

“It isn’t 8 o’clock yet. And 8:30 sounds like a year from now.”

“Argyll should go. He’s the goddamn producer.” Mr. Burrows was coming around to my opinion!

Leon also almost. “Maybe you should talk to Mr. Carruthers first. Clear it with him.”