Notes on a Cowardly Lion (11 page)

Katinka brought a large and capable cast to Charleston and yes—one really pretty girl; the petite little brunette, and there was only
one. Too bad she was in the chorus, because there are better things ahead of her, much better things.

A few pages later in the book there is another mention of someone other than Lahr:

The chorus is both beautiful and energetic. Even a sober-faced young woman who is a good chorus girl “because she is so different” won applause from the enthusiastic Sunday crowd.

These clippings are the only indication that someone shared his theatrical dreams. Nameless in these notices, she used many aliases. She may have been looking for the right stage name, or perhaps the right personality. Mercedes La Foy, Elizabeth La Fay, Mercedes del Pino. Her real name was Delpino.

My father had seen her at rehearsals, but he was ashamed of his shabby clothes, fearful of his unattractiveness, and he did not dare speak to her. The first words that passed between them were in Philadelphia, at a candy store across from the theater. He offered her some candy and began to talk about the show. As he talked, he kept looking down at his pants. He had a large hole on the side of his trousers.

“Oh, don't worry about it, Bert,” she said, “I have those too.” She lifted up her long skirt and showed her stockings—they were ripped. She smiled at him. They laughed, and Lahr forgot his feelings of awkwardness.

Their meetings had been infrequent, although Lahr thought of her often on the road. When he met Pearl in Portland for
College Days
(1916), Lahr asked about her. Pearl, who knew Mercedes from other kid acts, mentioned that she was going into a show called
Katinka
. It was not until the end of the summer that they met again in New York. Pearl recalls her. “She was the most beautiful Spanish woman you have ever seen in your life. Beautiful, beautiful, God …”

She never spoke of her past, although Lahr talked about his family affectionately and puffed up his cheeks to imitate his father when he was in a rage. She spoke modestly about her dancing, which was the only thing that elicited her excitement. When she talked about it, her eyes, beautiful against the rich olive smoothness of her skin, would widen with intensity. Her hands, which usually lay placidly on her lap, became animated; and she continually raised them to smooth back her hair. He was amazed at how passionate she became about the theater. She was usually so quiet and unassuming, but when she spoke about
herself and her work she took on a strange aggressiveness. It was unexpected. It made her mysterious.

When Lahr went into
The Best Show in Town
Mercedes auditioned and got a job easily. She was very popular with the girls in the troupe. They called her “Babe” and flattered her. Although she was the most attractive of the girls, they did not look on her as a competitor. She showed little interest in men except for Lahr. She did not respond to the camaraderie of the cast, but she was friendly and never rude about the wisecracks they made. She took care of her body; her hair was always carefully combed and her lips painstakingly drawn. But in her clothes she showed a curious lack of imagination. The girls always had to remind her that her clothes did not match and that red and yellow—her favorite colors—did not go well together. It was as though she could concentrate only on one part of her body at a time, and could never see herself as a unity.

At rehearsals Mercedes worked with the same ferocious energy in her dancing that Lahr put into his comedy. She practiced her new steps in the shadows of the large stage, working late on routines until her body responded without effort to the tempo of the music. (Her success had won her the unofficial title of “Miss Pep” from the performers and the press.) She was proud of her gracefulness. She knew how her legs tightened and relaxed when she beat out a rhythm on the stage. And when she was working well, she had the wonderful sensation of being apart from her legs and admiring them for their supple strength and smoothness. She always said she had beautiful legs. When she mentioned this in public people glanced down at them in amazement, because her face and raven hair usually captured their complete attention. Occasionally, Lahr wandered out on the stage while she was rehearsing. She would smile at him, but when he tried to talk with her, she would cut him short, saying, “Can't you see I'm working?” She never lost a step.

When
The Best Show in Town
went on holiday in the last week of May, Lahr and Mercedes pooled their savings (four hundred dollars) and headed for Lake Hopatcong, a New Jersey vacation haven for burlesque performers. With Lahr making forty-five dollars and Mercedes sixteen as a chorus girl, the sum represented a rigorous and dreary struggle to economize. The hotels they chose had been the dingiest; they limited their meals to one a day. As a result, Lahr often complained about his legs aching. “I didn't know it then,” he explains now, “but I was suffering from malnutrition.” However, with the
savings and a three-year contract on the Wheel, life was exhilarating. Looking back at it now, my father pauses in his speech to make sure he's telling the truth, but finally maintains, “I think those were the happiest days of my life. I felt secure in my business. I knew I could always get a job …”

Lahr, Mercedes, and a few of their friends from
The Best Show in Town
found bungalows in a village called Northwood, along the lake. Many other famous burlesquers, such as Joe Cook, Jim and Betty Morgan, and Rose Seidel spent their holidays there too.

Lahr and Mercedes lived in a two-room shack, which he describes as “just four walls and a bed.” There was no electricity, and their cooking was done either on sterno stoves or at a stone fireplace overlooking the lake. The closest telephone was a half mile away, and the greatest novelty of all was lugging provisions by boat to the house. Whereas the months in burlesque had been hectic, limited to one dressing room after another, Lake Hopatcong offered an exotic adventure that they explored with childlike curiosity. It only cost them a dollar a day, which made it an even happier time.

Lahr's first acquisition was a boat. He dubbed it the “Flying Leopold” because its engine was always sputtering to a standstill. It provided them with a great deal of fun. It was this boat in which he took his first fishing trip, setting out with a few friends to still-fish for bass and grass pickerel. They spent the day with feet jutting over the sides, drinking and swapping stories. Sometimes they caught a fish. Lahr often found himself seeking the solitude of the boat. He liked sitting on the water and being rocked in the silence of the waves. Occasionally Mercedes came along as pilot, but she never fished. Often she was content to stay at home and sun herself or comb her hair. She found a small dog on which she lavished elaborate affections while Lahr was away. She seemed content.

Mercedes and Lahr rarely ventured beyond their group of burlesque friends. Mercedes was beautiful, and people responded well to her. She complemented him and did not try to criticize his work or his eccentricities. Sometimes during these summer months, with homemade beer and a packed lunch, they would set off down the lake in the Flying Leopold. It was different seeing Mercedes alone. It seemed more difficult to judge her, and yet, her beauty and sweetness were as real in these private moments as they seemed in public.

Together they explored the coastline of the lake, leaving their boat on the shore and sitting on the mat of rust-brown pine needles that
began a few feet from the water. They liked staring up at the vast blue sky and then down at the last row of bungalows. They savored the isolation.

Once, while they lay half covered in water, he asked her about the amulet she always wore around her neck. It was a picture of a young girl enclosed in a delicate Florentine gold frame.

“Some people carry St. Christopher for good luck. This is my St. Christopher. It's a picture of my mother,” she said. “Her father had it made when she played for the King of Spain. She gave it to me a few years ago. I remember, because Anna, my sister, was very jealous and wanted to wear it. I hid it from her and wouldn't let her have it because it was special from Mother to me. Mother always liked me best. I feel very sorry for her now. She always thought I was the prettiest.”

“What did she play?”

“She and her sister—they were sixteen then—played the piano for the King. They learned music at the Convent of St. Alphonso. They were the most beautiful and talented young ladies in Madrid. My grandmother was very rich, and Mother told me often about how lovely it was walking in the court with royalty—their fine silks, the long halls which smelled of scent and the fresh spray of water from the fountains, the cool marble floors with their beautiful patterns, and the fine paintings all cracked and old. She told me about all that, and their soft hands. Sometimes she would cry. I couldn't stand it, but I had to sit in her room and help until she stopped. It was a big change for her, Bert—much bigger than I understood when she first told me about her early life. That's why she gave me this. She didn't want any memories after my father died. She didn't want to be reminded about her wealth and that life. She is too poor now for those memories. She wants only the best for
us …
and that's all.”

He wanted her to continue, but she stopped abruptly. He remembers returning in the boat and watching Mercedes lean over the stern concentrating on the boat's wake. They would share other quiet moments, but he would never be able to recall everything she revealed about her family and herself.

The summer was a happy one. There were cookouts almost every night, and during the day there was fishing and swimming. Lahr and his friends would often get a barge and paddle it across the lake to buy applejack. The attitude of the performers at the lake is epitomized in the estate Joe Cook owned there. His dining room was like a Coney Island fun house; there were chairs wired with an electric shock and
vents in the room shooting jets of air up the women's skirts. He built a one-hole golf course that was designed so that anyone reaching the green would shoot a hole-in-one.

Lahr remembers scheming to annoy a burlesque straightman called Ned “Clothes” Norton, who slept on the porch of Lahr's nextdoor neighbor. While Norton was asleep they tied a bell to one of the pine trees with fishing line and walked fifty yards away to where they could watch him. They would ring the bell every ten minutes. Norton would shake himself awake, look around, and then try to go back to sleep. Finally, resolving to find the bell, he spent the early morning hours trying to climb every tree in search of it.

A postcard from one of the burlesquers at the lake indicates the changes taking place in Lahr's life as the summer neared its end. The card is from Frank “Rags” Murphy, a tramp comedian, and it contains pictures of Murphy in various comedy poses. It reads simply:

Lake Hopatcong, same summer: To My Pals Bert and Babe, here's luck to you both and wish you God speed as a sailor …

The good wishes were not for the skipper of the Flying Leopold, but for the new member of the Naval Reserve. Lahr had enlisted soon after he had been informed by his mother that he would be drafted in October. Lahr was not a fighting man; he was a performer. The Naval Reserve would interrupt his career and change his life for a while, but it was safer than the trenches.

Lahr's life, even without him actively willing it, had changed in other ways. He and Babe were inseparable. Friends, like Murphy, assumed they were married. Mercedes wore a small gold ring on her left hand, and no one asked any questions. It was not unusual for burlesquers to marry each other after a year of constant association, and it was even more ordinary for them to enjoy the benefits of married life without the legal responsibilities. Lahr had given her the ring at the beginning of the summer, but she never mentioned marriage to him. When asked why he didn't make the marriage legal, my father answers in quiet befuddlement, “I guess we never thought of it.” Their life was their work. Marriage represented a stasis that neither could imagine for themselves.

Lahr remembers coming home from Lake Hopatcong with Mercedes and going to the Naval Reserve Induction Center to begin his “hitch.” Just as he was about to board the bus to take him to training camp, Mercedes threw her arms around him and began to cry. She
cried after he was on the bus, and, as the bus turned the corner, he could still see her standing in the same spot. That moment is still vivid in his mind. “I guess that was the only time she showed real emotion for me,” he says now, adding cryptically, “Funny, isn't it.”

He was stationed at Pelham Bay. His time in the Naval Reserve was hopelessly unheroic. (In later years, he would elaborate on those days for me and my sister, explaining that he was a chef and making it sound as romantic as a Conrad novel. Once, in order to show his credentials as a full-fledged cook, he baked some brownies for us, “The kind I used to serve the men.” Exuberant over his creation, he tossed a piece high in the air. He miscalculated, and the fresh brownie fell on the floor. It didn't break.) He joined the Naval Reserve through the influence of a burlesque friend, Johnny Walker, who later became a movie star. The commodore of the unit was the famous theatrical agent M. S. Bentham, who would later handle Lahr in vaudeville. The unit had many performers in it, including Brian Foy, of the famous Seven Foys, the Callaghan Brothers, and Bill Gaxton. Since it was only Lahr's first year on the professional circuit, none of the veteran performers knew him as an entertainer. He could not arrange the extended leaves other better-known performers were allowed in order to play an occasional engagement.

Lahr became a politician, making curious connections. His friendship with a bouncer at the Ziegfield Roof was an important maneuvering point. Through his bouncer friend, he was detailed to the mess hall. It meant that he could have a bed, instead of a sleep-defying hammock, and also that the tedium of drilling and odd assignments were eliminated.