Tycoon (5 page)

Herb was only two years older than Jack but had the look of a man ten years older. He shared with Jack the tendency to baldness, but his was far more advanced. He wore round, goldrimmed eyeglasses and looked pedantic and timid. His appearance was deceiving because he was aggressive and outspoken.

“Wait'll ya hear these guys! Wait'll ya hear these guys!”

Jack was accustomed to Herb's exuberance. He lit a cigarette and regarded the trio—all dressed in identical double-breasted tan suits—with skepticism.

“Listen to this!”

The trio opened by striking a note: “Hmmmmmm.”

Jack covered his eyes. “Don't do that. Just sing some thing.”

They did:

I'm Geraldo Cigarillo, and men all say,

I'm the finest cigarillo you can buy today.

With the choicest tobacco, I will please you,

You can't find better, and that is true.

For the finest smoke that can't be beat,

Buy a pack of Geraldos and enjoy the treat!

“Jesus
Christ!
Herb! What have I done to you to make you do this to me?”

“You don't like it? I don't like it. The audience that hears it won't like it.
But they'll remember the message!
Geraldo Cigarillos are best! They'll remember the goddamned message. Merchandising by irritation, Jack!”

“Irri—Are you out of your mind? Make your potential customers mad at you?”

Herb grinned. “The Levy brothers like it.
They
see the point. Your potential customers may be irritated by the message, but they'll goddamn well
remember
it. The Levys will sign a six-month contract to sponsor a
Geraldo Cigarillo Hour.
These guys sing the message, they sing another song or two on each show, and we fill in with a band and somebody like the Wisecrack Guys and Betty.”

“Six—Well . . . what do you call this kind of shit? I mean singing the message. What do you call it?”

Herb shrugged. “The musical message, say. Why just have some mellifluous announcer
intone
the message when you can have—”

“All right, all right! Have you signed these guys?”

“Fifty dollars a week.”

“Okay.”

“Apiece.”

“Apiece?”

“They sing for us. Messages. Songs. Whatever. Not just on
The Geraldo Cigarillo Show.”

“What are they called?”

“The Bronson Brothers.”

“Jesus
Christ!”
Jack exclaimed. “From now on they're . . . the Harmonics, the Tone Brothers, the Mellow Fellows. Something. Mellow Fellows. How you like that, guys?”

The Bronson Brothers nodded solemnly.

“Okay. And put the ‘hmmmm' back in, at the beginning and the end. If we're going to be memorable, we may as well be
memorable.
”

A
BOUT SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE BABY WAS DUE
, K
IMBERLY'S
belly grew and she began to look pregnant. Her mother started to spend a lot of time at the house. And they found a nanny, an English girl from Lambeth named Cecily Camden. She moved
into a room the Lears prepared for her on the third floor of the house.

The house, unfortunately, had only one bathroom, on the second floor, plus a toilet and a basin in a closet off the kitchen. Cecily would use that closet except when she bathed, which she could do only in the second-floor bathroom. She had been in the house less than a week when Jack accidentally walked into the bathroom and saw her in the tub. She smiled and grabbed a towel to cover herself but didn't shriek, and Jack apologized and backed out in no great hurry.

“I've got to go to New York this week,” he told Kimberly over dinner the same evening. “If you weren't so far along, I'd take you with me.”

“What's the occasion?”

“Well, you know how Herb's a man of enthusiasms. His latest is for a vaudeville comic who's playing in the
Earl Carroll Vanities.
He thinks we should try to book the guy to come up to Boston and do a weekly radio show, half an hour of his jokes and routines. He doesn't work cheap, and I can't even think of signing him until I see his act.”

Kimberly shrugged. “You've got the Wisecrack Guys. How many comics can you use?”

“Herb says they're a pair of amateurs compared to this guy.”

“Why would he leave the
Earl Carroll Vanities
to come and work on a Boston radio station?”

“Being in the
Vanities
is great. But it's not permanent. The guy's bread and butter is vaudeville, but the movies and radio have all but killed vaudeville. Like a lot of vaudevillians, he's been casting a nervous eye on radio.”

“You think it's really worth your time to go all the way to New York to catch this act?” Kimberly asked skeptically.

“I promised Herb I would.”

“What's this comic's name?”

“Jack Benny.”

K
IMBERLY INSISTED HE PACK WHITE TIE AND TAILS, PLUS HIS
collapsible top hat, to wear to the theater in New York. There, where she couldn't see him, he went to the
Vanities
in a darkgray double-breasted suit.

Herb went with him. He'd reserved seats down front.

Benny was the lead comedian. He appeared in a number of sketches, then did a monologue.

“Herb,” Jack said quietly as they walked up the aisle to the exit, “that man is not funny.”

“I disagree with you, Jack. I think he's the funniest man I've heard in a long time.”

“Is there any way to get out of this dinner?”

“I don't see how. That'd be very awkward.”

Forty-five minutes later they sat down at a table in the Stork Club with Jack Benny.

Benny had just celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday. Jack saw a certain appeal in his innocent, open face and in the flat, hesitating manner in which he delivered his gags; but he simply could not see that the man was funny.

“Two Jacks,” said Herb. “That makes conversation a little awkward, doesn't it?”

“You can call me Ben,” said Jack Benny. “My real name is Benjamin Kubelsky.”

The Stork Club was a speakeasy. The proprietor, their host, was an ex-convict named Sherman Billingsley, who had served time in an Oklahoma prison before he came to New York and became the bootlegger to café society. He knew Jack Benny and came to the table to welcome him and his friends.

“Pleasure to see you here, Jack,” said Billingsley. “And to see you, too, Mr. Lear, Mr. Morrill.” He nodded toward the bottle of Johnnie Walker sitting on their table. “That's on the house, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, Sherm,” said Jack Benny. “Anybody interesting in the joint tonight?”

“You might be interested in the gentleman over there,” said Billingsley, nodding discreetly at a table where a tall, distinguished-looking man sat smoking a cigarette and talking earnestly to a diminutive girl.

“Who's he?” Benny asked.

“That's General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff, United States Army. The girl is his mistress. She's a Filipina.”

Jack Benny shrugged. Apparently General MacArthur didn't interest him.

“Don't turn around and look, whatever you do,” said Billingsley, “but the swarthy fellow two tables back—the one with the eyes of a wolf—is Lucky Luciano.”

“Who's Lucky Luciano?” asked Jack Lear.

Billingsley's chin and brows rose, as if he could not believe anyone did not know the name of Lucky Luciano. “He's the head man of all the mobs in the States. He and his guys took over everything not long ago. They just killed off their rivals.”

Jack Benny did not turn and look at Luciano. He didn't seem any more interested in the gangster than he was in General MacArthur. His focus was on showbiz people, and nobody else made much difference to him.

“Tell ya what, Jack,” said Billingsley. “Look to your left. Lucille LeSueur, lately known as Joan Crawford.”

“Aha,” said Benny, and he turned and looked, catching her eye.

“Aha is right,” said Jack Lear.

“Ask you something, Mr. Lear?” said Jack Benny. “Radio. I got in trouble with the following joke. What would happen if I told it on your radio station? I come onstage carrying a girl in my arms. I say to the man in overalls, ‘Mr. McDonald, your daughter fell in the river, but don't worry, I resuscitated her.' And the farmer says, ‘By golly, you resuscitate her, you gotta marry her!'”

Jack chuckled. “I'd get shrieks and tears from the Legion of Decency. But off the record I'll tell you how I feel about the Legion of Decency. Fuck 'em.”

“Saying ‘Fuck 'em' and making it stick are two different things,” said Herb. “The Babbitts of this country are really taking over.”

“I'm not sure I agree,” said Billingsley. “I predict that Prohibition will be repealed within two years.”

“What happens to you then, Sherm?” asked Jack Benny.

“Respectability,” said Billingsley. “Well, gents, I've got to move. Uh . . . if any of you feel a need for a first-class, clean young girl for the night, just say the word.”

As they left the club, Jack shook his head. “Maybe I should've taken Billingsley up on that offer—so the trip to New York wouldn't have been a
total
loss.”

I
N MID-
A
PRIL
H
ERB CAME INTO
J
ACK'S OFFICE, GRINNING HAP
pily. “Looka this,” he said. He handed Jack a copy of
Variety.
A headline read:
BENNY TO BE STAR COMIC ON CANADA DRY HOUR ANOTHER VAUDEVILLIAN IN THE LITTLE BOX.

Jack glanced through the story. “I don't care, Herb. The man is not funny. He's simply not funny. The show'll be a bust.”

“Whatta ya bet?”

“‘A funny thing happened . . . on the way to the
theater.'
Not funny, Herb. I especially don't like a comic who starts a routine by telling you it's going to be funny. I—”

He was interrupted by a ringing telephone. He picked it up.

“Something . . . ?” Herb asked.

“I'm going to be a daddy. I have to get out of here and over to the hospital.”

Kimberly gave birth to a boy. Even though he was named for his father, he was named John, not Jack. John Wolcott Lear.

1933

J
ACK AND
K
IMBERLY LOVED THE HOUSE ON
C
HESTNUT
Street, but its modest size imposed too many limitations on them. Their ability to entertain was severely hampered by the bathroom facilities: one bathroom on the second floor and a toilet closet off the kitchen. Cecily, the nanny, occupied all the servant quarters the house afforded. Kimberly had hired a maid and a cook, but neither of them could live in, so she was deprived of maid service after early evening, when she had to let the girl leave for her home in Southie. Also, the house had no garage.

In the fall of 1933 a much larger house, facing Louisburg Square, became available. Jack reviewed their financial situation and decided he could buy it. He sold the Chestnut Street house for $67,500, making a profit of $7,500 on his investment. Refusing to deal with real estate agents, Jack insisted on dealing directly with the seller, and he bought the new house for $135,000.

This house was neither as old nor as elegant as their first house, but it would better suit their needs. From the foyer guests entered a living room or could turn right into a library. There was a formal dining room, and the kitchen was large and fully equipped. There was also a small handsome guest bathroom on the first floor.

Four bedrooms occupied the second floor. The master bedroom opened on a sitting room and on a bathroom. An additional bath served the other bedrooms. On the third floor there were three small bedrooms for servants, a little parlor for them, and their own bathroom.

The bathroom off the master bedroom had an immense clawfooted tub. Jack liked to joke that it was so big he was afraid he might drown in it. The bathroom's most interesting feature, which both Jack and Kimberly showed off to their close friends, was a marble-walled shower room big enough for five people to shower together if they were so inclined. The nickel-plated shower head, as big around as a dinner plate, was so high above that a person standing in the shower couldn't reach it. Three of the walls of the shower room were surrounded by nickel-plated pipes perforated with tiny holes, forming what was called a needle shower. A bather using the needle shower was stung by tiny streams of water under high pressure, which stimulated almost to the point of pain. A bidet on a hinged pipe swung out and would emit a stream upward.