Notes on a Cowardly Lion (12 page)

While he couldn't get leave to perform, his rating as a chef's assistant proved profitable. He gave the guards on the base extra food. They in turn gave him extra leave without reporting his absence. When he wasn't mixing the soup and preparing the meats by formula, Lahr was detailed to other jobs. For a time, he was made storekeeper, a task he also turned to his advantage, managing to filch cans of apple butter to take to his mother on weekends. Also, since he had to check in the large amounts of meat that arrived every few days, he would slice off the tenderloins for his friends and himself. “We ate very well up there.”

Lahr the sailor never got farther than a few forays up the Long Island Sound. After nine months he was discharged, in time to highlight the summer-run burlesque show
Folly Town
(1919), which
brought the cream of the Columbia Circuit to Broadway for two months. It was an honor for the performers, a chance for them to be seen by the big-time theatrical managers and producers. Lahr was second comedian, with Frankie Hunter again in the first comedy slot, and his friend from the Navy, Johnny Walker, the “third banana.”

Lahr cannot remember his boisterous enthusiasm at the first rehearsal, but others, who worked with him, can. Blutch Cooper was on stage, his hulking 250-pound frame towering above the performers. Wells was there also with a handsome young singer whom he had induced to come down from Boston to play the light comedy parts in the show. When the youth walked on the stage and saw the three seasoned comedians it was apparent that he would have to settle for his usual juvenile or straightman role. He was talking with Frankie Hunter when Lahr came up to them and with unusual brashness asked, “Have you ever been in burlesque before?” When the boy answered that he had not, Lahr turned to Hunter, exclaiming, “Will
we
put sand in
his
make-up!”

The boy was Jack Haley, and the immediate dislike he felt for Bert Lahr was soon erased when he realized that the high-spirited comedian was only a one-year veteran himself. They became close friends. Haley's shrewdness and his aloofness gave him time to assess his new associates. Two things impressed him about Lahr: his body and his love of the stage. He often kidded Lahr about his “washboard chest” after watching him box with friends on the stage each morning before rehearsal. Lahr could not stay away from the theater even for exercise.

After the show opened, Lahr's immediate success won him the first-comic rung. Hunter was dropped to second comedian. But Haley recalls Blutch Cooper stopping a rehearsal in the second week of the Broadway run to reproach Lahr in front of the entire cast. “It was an empty theater, after the show had opened. Cooper tore him apart with horrible insults. I could sense it was to mollify the feelings of the top comedian. Lahr just stood there. I was never sure that Bert didn't know Cooper's motives and kept silent to help Cooper make his point to Hunter. This is the sly facet of Bert's personality, one moment he's brilliant and the next rather dull.”

After the summer run of
Folly Town
Lahr moved directly into the
Roseland Girls
(1920-1921), another Wells concoction. He was first comedian, and his new salary was an amazing sixty-five dollars a week.

As first comedian Lahr began to take on certain production responsibilities. Since no general manager traveled with the show, the first comedian was in charge. He kept the cast in line and the sketches tight, not a difficult task for Lahr because he was so engrossed and successful in his work. The reviews emphasized his importance in carrying the show, and the troupe, whether they liked him or not, preferred to eat regularly rather than complain. Sometimes, however, they could make it difficult. When they played near New York, Lahr took trips to the city to see his family. The members of the cast suspected him of informing on them to Blutch Cooper. He returned a few times to cold shoulders, and finally had to call the cast together to assure them that his business in New York was strictly personal.

The performers held to a code of etiquette that reflected a communal dependence lost in the modern theater. Lahr considered himself a professional and carried himself accordingly. To be considered “professional” meant following the code of the burlesque performer, thus being able to exist for long periods of time with the same people. It fostered independence and selfishness; but it kept friction to a minimum. The most damning thing that could be said to another performer was that he “was not professional.”

A professional never borrowed anything. If he needed anything, he would either buy it or go without rather than ask a cohort. The actor might have given him what he wanted. However, to ask was considered “unprofessional” and an invasion of privacy. Sometimes Lahr carried Mercedes's bags, but often she would not allow it, for a burlesquer was responsible for catching trains on time and carrying his own baggage. The burlesque life was hard, and any extra effort in the tedious process of going from town to town was kept to a minimum. The ethic of independence has had its effect on Lahr. He still believes in every possession being in its place, and untouched except by the owner.

Lahr and Mercedes existed very easily with this independence of spirit. From the beginning, he could come and go as he pleased. Often he would ask her to come out with him and some of the cast, but she would refuse, preferring to sit alone and read.

As first comedian, Lahr was able to spend more time working with Mercedes, improving her dance numbers and teaching her a few comedy tactics of her own. “She looked beautiful out there,” he says now. He speaks slowly, trying to fill out the image of that jaunty body as it swung into her solo dance routine in the
Roseland Girls
. In
December, their efforts were rewarded. A clipping from the New York
Telegraph
announced the results:

Babe Lahr, wife of the featured comedian Bert Lahr has been promoted from the chorus to a real second soubrette principal this season, and it is now Mercedes La Fay she is soubretting under, if you please. Boss Blutch Cooper likes the work of Mercedes so well that he is going to present her as a first soubrette next season. Looks like another Flo Davis, Stella Ward, and Babe LaTour, all in one.

During the New York run of the
Roseland Girls
, Mercedes took Lahr home to meet her family. It had taken a long time to engineer this meeting. Lahr purchased a new Palm Beach suit, which, unlike the one he wore on stage, fitted well. He can remember only the mother's white hair and the tenderness with which she held her daughter's hand as they talked. Mercedes had spoken often to her about Lahr. Her mother's replies were always ambiguous; a good Catholic, she viewed her daughter's affection for a Jewish boy with silent skepticism. Isabel Delpino assumed a stoic pose for her family. She accepted the fate the Lord had dealt her in claiming her husband Roberto when she was thirty-five. Everything—Roberto's death, her arthritis, Mercedes's new boyfriend—became part of His design. When Mercedes announced that she and Lahr had been married, producing the gold band to prove it, Isabel exclaimed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, protect us.”

But by the end of their first and only meeting, Lahr had won over Mercedes's mother. They sat for more than two hours in the parlor of her apartment chatting over tea about the stage. Lahr took great pains to elaborate Mercedes's success. Isabel would often interrupt, adding, “She does have a beautiful figure, doesn't she. A beautiful figure.” She would look at Mercedes and squeeze her hand.

Leaving the apartment, Mercedes confided, “She liked you very much.” There was no more talk of family sentiments. Lahr remembers feeling proud, amazed that Mercedes, with her reticence, shared such a small privacy with him.

In
Roseland Girls
, Lahr performed the “Lord Onion” sketch, among the funniest of his burlesque scenes and one of his favorites. The scene depicts an anxious lover (Lahr) trying to outwit his mistress's husband by convincing the cuckold that they are rehearsing a dramatic scene in which he uncovers them embracing. The husband agrees. He enters to find them in passionate embrace. They stop, drink
to his health, and send him out to run the scene again. Lahr gets progressively drunker. With Prussian mustache and powdered wig, Lahr lampooned Prohibition strictures as well as his idea of aristocracy. He also discovered a sodden rendition of “Peggy O'Neill,” a sprawling, outrageous sound that he later fitted into his vaudeville cop act.

During
Roseland Girls
, Lahr began a quiet program of self-improvement. Dreaming of a time beyond burlesque, he worried about his Bronx inflection and his limited vocabulary. He began to work crossword puzzles; he read the classics, focusing on Dickens and comic situations he knew intuitively from the stage. In Albany, he underwent his first press interview, a document whose formal colloquialism and selfconsciousness attests to the ponderous weight of Lahr's new learning. When the reporter asked him if it was easier to make people laugh since prohibition, Lahr salted his reply with clinical observations on the burlesque audience of the twenties.

… Their smartness sometimes ran to kidding the players and their remarks sub rosa disturbed others near them.

There were some who became dull and did not get the jokes quick enough. They'd start laughing a few seconds after the line went over and put the whole audience out of gear. Sometimes the whole audience would get to laughing at them and pay no attention to the stage. It's different today. Their coming is not part of an impulse born of a good time down town. They want to be entertained.… If you have the stuff, they'll get it before it goes over the lights.

A few weeks later in Montreal, a drunk interrupted Wells's famous “Lord Onion” sketch. When Lahr began the scene, he noticed a man in the first row sitting, exposed, in his seat. The man next to him took a newspaper and covered his lap. They began to argue. The audience guffawed as the drunk got up and began urinating in the aisles. Lahr muttered to his actors, “Keep mumbling dialogue.” He did not have to whisper instructions; the audience's laughter drowned out every furtive word. The police were called; but in their anxiety to get the drunk out of the theater, they faced him toward the audience, compounding the ruckus. The man was finally removed; the scene began again.

Soon after the performance resumed, the police returned to scour the aisle with cleaner fluid. The actors waited three minutes on stage before the policemen let them complete the sketch.

In
Keep Smiling
(1921-2), Lahr achieved his greatest burlesque success. He confided to a reporter that year, “When I was a boy, my aim in life was to be a burlesque comic; now that I have attained that, I am the happiest man in the country.” Lahr very rarely talked about happiness, especially in relation to his comedy. But his burlesque notoriety gave him an inkling of maturity. His performance changed with self-confidence. “I was a scene stealer,” he admits now. “If the scene wasn't written my way, I'd find ways of turning the attention to me and improving my part.” His urgency to please became a theatrical joke. Lahr, who claims to have coined the term in his burlesque days, performed under a continual “flop sweat.” He worked his fellow performers and himself tirelessly. Sometimes his friends took advantage of his seriousness. Once, they kept him playing pool until five minutes before opening curtain. When he went to apply his stick of greasepaint, it wouldn't go onto his face. He went on stage with no make-up. He discovered afterwards that his friends had wrapped a transparent condom around it.

Lahr sometimes had an easier time controlling his audiences than headstrong members of the cast. In
Keep Smiling
, his direction of the comedy scenes could not cope with the eccentricities of a certain Broadway performer who had moved back to burlesque. Her style and comic ability once earned her jobs with George M. Cohan. However, her Broadway days came to a disastrous conclusion when, cast as a queen in one of Cohan's productions, she fell off the throne drunk. The burlesque wheel was more relaxed; even if drinking was strictly prohibited, the stakes were not as high.

In
Keep Smiling
she and Lahr did a vampire skit, burlesquing the fashion for horror films that catapulted Theda Bara to stardom. In the sketch, Lahr is lured away from his fiancée by the actress and convinced by her to steal money and then flee with her to the Riviera.

In Milwaukee, Lahr spoke his lines about a getaway to the Riviera and looked to the wings. There was no response to the cue. When the actress finally staggered on stage, she stood with her back to the audience, muttering, “Take the revolver to the Riveera” and “To the Riveera take the revolver.”

Lahr ad-libbed an exit and went off stage to cue the musicians to go into the soubrette's number, which was next on the schedule. In the meantime, he brought his inebriated co-star back to her dressing room. The house manager was waiting backstage. He wanted to fire her on the spot and threatened to report the incident to the Scribner office.
The show went on as usual. At intermission, she seemed fine, a nap having sobered her. Lahr went to the manager and urged him to allow her to continue the show because of the important finale number, “Greenwich Village.” He agreed.

“Greenwich Village” was highlighted by a song and dance to the tune of “Ballin' the Jack.” The woman sang; Lahr worked up the song with comedy dances. It was a show-stopper, a routine they interpolated for five or six encores. However, between intermission and the finale number, she found a bottle. When she came on stage, she was drunker than before.

They began the song, with Lahr singing the lyrics and the actress pantomiming the actions. She raised her skirt and brought her shapely legs close together. With that, she tried to swing her legs, now close together, and fell on her face. The manager brought down the curtain. The performance was not allowed to continue.

The comedian's responsibility for the troupe was important to Lahr's sense of theater; it also bred revenge. When he caught a chorus girl parodying his gestures in drunken irreverence, he told her to leave the show and go home for the day. She cursed him, but obeyed. The show went on until the “Operating Room” sketch at the end of the first act, a sketch featuring Lahr examining painted ropes as veins and sweeping arms and legs out from under the operating room table.