Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I took a picture of you and the child. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll send you a copy if you like.”

  “It would be a fine thing to have a photograph of wee Joanie and me,” she said.

  “I’m Nora Kelly from Bridgeport,” I said.

  “I’m Hannah Sullivan from Indianapolis,” she said.

  “You came a long way,” I said.

  “It’s closer than Ireland,” she said.

  Mayer had finished interviewing the little girl’s father. His wife was speaking to him very urgently while the other two children fidgeted.

  “Come on, Ma,” the man said.

  “Where in Ireland are you from?” I asked.

  “Kerry,” she said. “The Kingdom. The Magharee Islands and you?”

  “I was born here. But we’re a Galway family. I did go back and find our home place,” I said.

  Hannah leaned over, put her arm around the little girl’s shoulder and pulled her close to her legs. “This little one likes to hear my stories. My dream would be to show her Ireland. Take her to my home place. Although the government is forcing people to leave the island. There’ll be no home to go to.”

  “Granny, Daddy wants us,” the little girl said. “Mommy and the other kids are getting mad.”

  “My son married a lovely girl,” Hannah said, “but she’s German and all this”—she gestured at the whitewashed cottage—“doesn’t mean much to her. We’ve already visited the German village. Very modern with a big beer hall and polka dancers.”

  Now her son took his mother’s arm and moved her away.

  Mayer walked over to me. “You took her picture?”

  “I did.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” he said to me. “One of the rules of the Chicagoan, no unattractive old women.”

  I spent the rest of the day taking straight-on unimaginative photographs of his interviewees, to be developed and printed by Andy, the darkroom technician. But after he finished with the shots for the magazine, Andy let me work on my own photographs, glad to take a cigarette break. Oh dear God, I thought when the print came swimming out at me, I got it—the longing in Hannah Sullivan’s face for Ireland, for the past. Her desire to somehow connect her granddaughter to the life she’d led. Their cheeks pressed together, the two sets of eyes looking through the window and yet seeing each other, the light from the fire. I found myself humming “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” as I hung the five prints up to dry. They never would go home, these crowds of Irish people packing this manufactured Ireland.

  “Nice,” Andy said when he saw the prints.

  But Miller said “trite” and Quigley added “depressing” when I laid the photos out on his desk.

  “I told you, Martin,” Miller said. “She’s a sob sister. This sentimental dreck is not of the magazine’s caliber.” Miller had followed me into Quigley’s office, anxious to see the photos I’d taken on my trial run. Quigley approved the shots of the people Mayer had interviewed but he pushed the candid shots away.

  “This woman is trying to share her past with her granddaughter,” I said, “somehow make Ireland real for the next generation.”

  Miller just picked up the photographs and tossed them into Quigley’s waste basket.

  “Sorry, Nora,” Quigley said. “George is not only our chief photographer but the photo editor too. What he says goes. I’ll pay you fifty dollars for the ten interview shots but well … You just don’t seem to understand the Chicagoan style.”

  “Mmmm,” I said, “he got his dawn exclusive as agreed. The mayor expects me to have a job here.”

  “I’ll call Ed and explain,” he said.

  “Too bad that you didn’t get a picture of that floozy you were having breakfast with,” Miller said. “At least she had a little pizazz.”

  “A performer?” Quigley asked.

  “No,” I said. “She does costumes and makeup for Sally Rand and the other fan dancers. I did talk to her about doing portraits of the girls but she said no one is allowed to take photographs. But maybe if I just shot their faces the girls may consider it.”

  “What?” Quigley said. “You think the crowds are piling into the Streets of Paris nightclub to look at their mugs? Come on, Nora, don’t you even have one journalistic bone in your body?”

  “Is that how an usher at the noon Mass thinks?” I asked but Quigley ignored me.

  “That woman’s an important contact. If you could bring me a shot of Sally Rand and the fan dancers, well.…”

  “She won’t do it,” Miller said and then spoke to me. “You’re too old to change. Another maiden lady afraid of life and the human body.”

  “Go to hell, Miller,” I said. I took the prints from the wastebasket and left.

  * * *

  “Only your faces,” I said to the twelve girls Lola had arranged for me to photograph. I’ll show you, Mr. Miller, I’d thought. I hated the thought of going back to Ed as a failure.

  It was noon and the girls were in their dressing room inside the domed building meant to suggest what? The Pantheon? Sacre Coeur? A central tower anyway. Two sets of buildings enclosed a kind of patio crowded with tables under colorful umbrellas that matched the awnings on the buildings. Chicago’s idea of a French café—bigger than any in Paris. There was even a church in the background. I wondered if the patrons glanced up and requested a dispensation as they entered the nightclub.

  “Mademoiselles de la Dance starring La Magnifique Sally Rand.” The first show was at two o’clock, so I didn’t have much time with the girls. They all just stared at me deadpan. I have to make some connection, I thought, so “Where are you from?” I asked. Four of them mentioned small downstate towns, Decatur, Clinton, Alton, and Polo.

  “Paris,” one of them shouted. “Paris, Illinois,” which got a laugh. Two had found their way here from Ohio. They’d been touring in a vaudeville show and landed in Chicago in time to try out for the Fair. Two were from New York. They sat together at the far end of the long dressing table. “This is temporary,” one said. “We were in Flo Ziegfeld’s last show and are headed west to Hollywood.”

  “You’ve been ‘headed’ for quite a while,” said another girl, a redhead. “I’m from Chicago,” she went on. “St. Gabriel’s parish in Canaryville. And these are my sisters.”

  Three other girls waved at me.

  “We’re the McNultys but we call ourselves the Reveille Sisters, our dancing wakes you up.”

  The others laughed.

  “Well, I’ll start with you,” I said.

  “I’m Agnes McNulty,” the redhead said, “and these are my sisters Alice, Anna, and Alma.”

  Lola took us through a doorway onto a small stage at one end of the nightclub. “Light them up, Bill,” she shouted and the colored spots came on. Each sister grinned at me as I moved close to take their portraits. Irish faces, upturned noses, wide-set eyes. I finished snapping and stepped back. Each girl wore a pink silk kimono tied around the waist. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?” Agnes asked. “Don’t you want a full view?”

  “I promised Lola faces only,” I said.

  “Faces won’t sell tickets. Get our fans, Lola,” Agnes said.

  So. I must say the sisters knew how to hold the three-foot-tall ostrich feather fans in exactly the right place to cover their bodies. Though when they showed me the steps of their dance and whirled themselves and the fans in tight circles, more was revealed.

  “You want these photos published?” I asked the girls. “What about your parents? The parishioners at St. Gabriel’s? The priests?”

  “My father told our pastor that his girls are earning two hundred dollars a week. There’s food on the table. The rent is paid and he’s looking to buy a two-flat in South Shore. Dad hadn’t worked in three years and there are four little ones in our family. We’re heroes at St. Gabriel’s.”

  “Hurry up if you want to photograph the rest of the girls,” Lola said. I brought in the farm girls next.
Much more serious expressions in their close-ups and not so careful to block their breasts and buttocks with the fans.

  “When you grow up on a farm, you’re used to bodies,” one said, as she pulled up her leg while the others kicked. One of the two New Yorkers had her own dance using a fringed shawl, while the other gave me a back view facing the fans.

  “And you really want these full body shots published?” I asked the girls when I’d finished.

  “Yes,” they said.

  “Alright.” I turned to Lola. “And is Miss Rand ready for me?” Sally didn’t appear until after the girls did their dance.

  “Bad news I’m afraid,” Lola said. “Sally decided not to meet you after all. She’s been very strict about banning outside photographers and she can’t make an exception. She said you’ll just have to be satisfied with the Mademoiselles. That should be enough.”

  It was—almost. “These are great,” Andy the technician said. He insisted on processing the shots himself after he saw a print of the first McNulty girl. George Miller approved too.

  “Not much technique in these shots,” he said when I brought the prints to him, “but the subjects speak for themselves and we’ll be the first publication to show the dancers nude.”

  “And that’s a good thing?” I asked.

  “Martin,” he called to Quigley who was walking down the hall toward his office. “Look at these.” I was half hoping that Quigley would be shocked. I mean he was a devout Catholic and while maybe the McNultys could brazen their way through ten o’clock Mass at St. Gabriel’s, I doubted if Quigley’s buddy, the cardinal, would approve of these pictures. But Quigley was nodding.

  “We’ll give them three pages,” he said, “following the main feature on Sally Rand. Where are those shots, Nora?” he asked me.

  “Well, my, uhm, contact couldn’t deliver Sally Rand after all. She just won’t allow photographers.”

  “That’s a laugh,” Quigley said. “Sally Rand called every newspaper in town to cover her Lady Godiva stunt.” Sally had been refused a featured place in the Century of Progress at first. She’d waited until opening day and then, wearing a long blonde wig and nothing else, rode a white horse straight through the Century of Progress crowds onto the Streets of Paris led by a young boy dressed as a page shouting, “Lady Godiva returns.” The photograph had made the front pages and Sally got the job. But now she’d pulled back.

  “Without Sally Rand these pictures mean nothing,” Miller said.

  “You’re right,” Quigley agreed.

  “But I promised the girls,” I said. “This is the first time anybody’s taken an interest in them. They’re going to use this piece as a way of getting a raise. I can’t disappoint them.”

  “Then get Sally Rand,” Quigley said.

  * * *

  “But I know her,” Margaret said.

  “You know Sally Rand?” Margaret and I had met coming into the building. Ed’s radio speech had not only gotten him support from the voters, but the reporters and photographers who had taken to staking out our building were gone. I wondered if Hearst himself might not have called them off. After all FDR was becoming the most popular president in history. No point in going to war with his friends. Okay for Margaret to be seen with me now, too. I guess. I’d decided not to be annoyed about her role in my exile. Why?

  The twins and Steve were out for a walk on the new pathway along the lake with Nancy, who had become an honorary big sister. Margaret asked me up for tea, though I could have used a martini. She didn’t keep liquor in the apartment. Ed was still on the straight and narrow but why tempt him? We settled ourselves on the table near the window overlooking the lake, while Lu brought us tea and cookies. The Davises were planning to go away for the summer and Margaret would be leaving for Eagle River next week. I told her about the situation at the Chicagoan and how I’d probably lose my job if I couldn’t deliver Sally Rand.

  “She’s from Kansas City,” Margaret said. “Helen Beck is her real name. She danced at the Empress Theater, not with fans, but she was good and caught the eye of Goodman Ace when he was the critic for the Journal-Post. Gave her a great review. She was young—I’d say fifteen or so. My mother sewed beads on her costumes. I guess Helen figured she could find a good seamstress through Nellie Don, who employed her Irish neighbor in her dress business. Nellie recommended my mother. Helen came to our house for fittings. A nice girl who knew she’d hit it lucky with Goodman Ace.”

  “Wait a minute. Goodman Ace? Isn’t he the fellow on the radio?”

  “The same. Helen changed her name to Sally Rand when she went to Hollywood.”

  “Do you think she’d remember you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you ever write her a note, mention the Kansas City connection, ask her to meet me?”

  Margaret shook her head. “Oh, Nora, I couldn’t. Ed’s not at all pleased that Sally Rand is getting so much attention when it’s the scientific exhibitions that are the important part of the Century of Progress.”

  Poor Ed. I sympathized. Spending the last few days at the Century of Progress made me realize just how extraordinary the Fair was. I’d watched people walk onto the grounds with the same closed look on their faces that we’d all been wearing for the last three years as the Depression took hold. Fewer people were getting married. How could you risk setting up housekeeping when your job could end at any moment? Turn any corner downtown and there was the reminder of what could happen to you. Bread lines. St. Mary’s on Wabash and the Pacific Garden Mission gave out soup. Soup!

  Plenty of my granny Honora’s generation were still living and remembered the Soup Kitchens in Ireland during the Great Starvation. Some were run by Protestant missionaries who required conversion in exchange for food. At least in Chicago we’d gotten beyond that. This generation of Kellys wasn’t actually starving. But what if I couldn’t get my job with Ed back? I’d always assumed that he’d rehire me after the press moved on to other targets and I wasn’t news. But what if he didn’t … how long would my savings last? No trip to Ireland. Would I end up as the poor relation living off Ed’s generosity? He’d resent me sooner or later, and what respect would I have for myself? No guarantee that I wouldn’t join the community of homeless living in shanties down by the Chicago River. Don’t be dramatic, I told myself, but really nothing was certain anymore. Ed had finally been able to start relief payments to the most desperate now that Roosevelt was in office, but sweet Mother of Jesus imagine if some reporter got wind of me, Ed Kelly’s cousin, applying for relief. Humiliation all around. I understood those closed grim faces. But step through the gates into the Century of Progress and all was changed. We smiled. We laughed. Here was hope. Here was the future. Progress. Technology that would do everything from transporting us through space to saving the lives of premature babies. Actual newborns on display in a machine called an incubator. Living and breathing right before our eyes.

  “Where there’s life there’s hope,” Ed had said in his opening address, and the crowds attending the Fair agreed, coming in huge numbers. Except when the people left the grounds what did they talk about? Not innovations but the entertainment, especially Sally Rand. I tried to say all this to Margaret and tell her that I understood why Ed was annoyed that a woman dancing got more attention than science, but he was the one that sent me for this job and I just couldn’t bear to tell him I’d been fired. Margaret nodded. Then she said, “Of course if Sally Rand herself talked about how important the scientific exhibits were that would really help Ed wouldn’t it?”

  “It would,” I said. “It would. And I’d make that part of the article.”

  * * *

  Margaret gave me a letter addressed to “Helen Beck” that I took to Lola. Two days later I was in Sally Rand’s dressing room.

  “I remember Mrs. Noll,” Sally said.

  She’d been making up her face when Lola brought me in, seated in front of what must have been a six-foot-by-three-foot mirror that hung ov
er a marble table. “Of course in those days I needed sparkly costumes. Now I can rely on these.” She gestured to a row of at least a dozen ostrich feather fans carefully hung on the dressing room wall.

  “Funny enough I got the idea of dancing with them when I realized my costumes were falling apart and I couldn’t buy new ones. I was here in Chicago with a musical group, Sweethearts on Parade, in burlesque. I’d torn one costume and lost the bugle beads off another. I was walking by a pawn shop on Wabash and saw these two ostrich feather fans in the window. I thought, hmmm, I could cover the rips in my costumes with these. Had to change my act. I used to do the splits and all kinds of things. Remember I had been an acrobat with Barnum & Bailey,” she said. “Can’t move around too much with the fans.”

  “I didn’t realize you were a circus performer,” I said.

  “I left Kansas City with the circus, ended up in Hollywood.”

  “And you did do well in Hollywood, didn’t you?” I said.

  I was taking careful notes—I would write the article too. Take that, Miller!

  “I did. Worked for Cecil B. DeMille himself. He’s the one gave me the name Sally Rand. Got it off a book of maps. Cast me as a slave girl on the King of Kings. My mistress was Mary Magdalene.” She laughed. “You’re Irish aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “I acted in a film called Braveheart with Tyrone Power. It was a cowboy movie. He was the handsomest man I ever saw. He told me all his people were actors in the old country, going back for generations. Poor fellow died young but his son is trying the acting game now. Supposed to stop by and see me this afternoon so we’d better get this show on the road. Now, for these photographs I’m stepping into my second skin.” Sally Rand picked up a flesh colored body stocking and stepped behind the screen in the corner of the dressing room.

  “Oh, Sally,” I said when she reappeared. “So you’re not naked?”

  “Only in the imagination of the audience.”

  The waiters were setting up the tables for the next show and didn’t even look up as Sally stepped onto the stage for our photo session. She was only about five feet tall and had looked tiny in her dressing room, but now, wearing extra high heels and posing with the fans, I could see why one critic called her “a Greek goddess come to life.”