I pushed aside items inside my pocketbook: pressed-powder compact, reading glasses, lipstick, comb, hair pins, pencil stub, and loose change. Paper money floated like debris atop an unfathomable ocean of long-forgotten days and nights. I pulled out a circular, grainy item that left a gritty mess on my fingers. It took a moment, but after a sniff I identified the cookie I’d stashed away during an afternoon tea I’d attended last month. Eventually, I found the folded sheet of paper I was looking for. “Here’s my sketch,” I said, handing it to Bunny.
“Just as I thought,” he said, bursting out with laughter.
“Don’t be a critic, Edmund Wilson, you’re no good at it!” I said.
“You have to admit, Bunny,” said Edna, “that there is a ‘Munch-ish’ quality about it.” She gurgled when she laughed, and for a moment I did hate her.
“I’d say the artist is influenced by the cubists: Braque, Picasso . . .,” said Groucho.
“I see more a melding of the surrealists with the cubists, don’chathink?” added Zeppo.
“Dada, no?” said Chico.
“Dada, no,” said Harpo, shaking his head.
“Dali, no?” said Groucho.
“Dali, yes!” said Harpo, nodding.
“Shut up,” I said, and they all fell silent. “It’s his expression that I was trying to—well, express.”
“Expressionism!” yelled FPA, jumping up from his chair.
“Laugh if you like, but if you saw the monster, you’d be hard-pressed to describe him in any ordinary way.”
“Dottie’s, right,” said Aleck. “He did have a crazed look about him, and Dottie saw his face clearly. I did not; only saw the back of him as he fled. So she will have to identify whomever the police bring in as suspect.”
“In the morning, a police artist will try to make sense of what I’ve been saying.”
Later, we all lounged around Edna’s overly decorated “cranberry-red-and-buttercup-yellow” (her description!) salon: lots of frou-frou ruffles, sumptuous velvet and silk over down-filled upholstery.
Again, I sound wretched, but the truth be known, I am happy in my rooms at the Algonquin Hotel—all right, perhaps not exactly happy, but it suits me fine. I can tumble out of bed at noon, fall into the elevator, and roll through to the dining room for our Round Table luncheon each day. If while there I’ve had too much to drink, I’m a few steps from the elevator and my rooms. At the Algonquin I need not pay for a telephone answering service, or a maid. I have room service and dog-walking service, so the ice bucket is kept full and the dog is regularly emptied. With all those benefits, Edna can keep the frou-frou.
We played word games, and then a rather rambunctious round of charades, which woke up Woodrow Wilson. He barked and ran circles around the boisterous team members before settling on my lap.
After the splendid dinner (much of which landed off the table), Edna appeared less nervous about Woodrow soiling her thick white carpet. It was more likely that one of the boys would knock over the coffee pot, or the decanter of crème de menthe brought over from the bar. With friends like ours, it’s best to hold your parties in a gymnasium.
Ira Gershwin arrived with his tall, lean brother, George, in tow. Although I see Ira occasionally at the Gonk at our one o’clock luncheons, I hardly ever see Gorgeous George. George looked marvelous in his pin-striped, double-breasted navy-blue suit, rose-colored silk tie, and immaculate white spats. He greeted the ladies with a big smile and pecked our cheeks and shook hands with the men. Aleck, stretched out on a divan with the air of a Renoir nude, but looking more like a fat frog in heat lying on a lily pad, looked up admiringly at George through his thick, round eyeglasses.
“How’s the new show going, George, my boy?”
“Working with Oscar Hammerstein—well, he’s a good lyricist, all right, but I’ll be glad when the show opens on December Thirtieth. The show looks as good as any show looks the month before opening, I guess.”
“What he means,” said Ira, “is whatever the show looks like now is no indication of what it will look like on opening night.”
“How true,” said Aleck.
“Act Two was scrapped last week, and I wrote three new numbers for Act Three.”
“What title did they decide on?” asked Edna
“Song of the Flame, with a title song by that name.”
George made a beeline to the grand piano. Groucho and Harpo made like bookends.
“Got a new song for the second act.”
“For heaven’s sake, George, play it,” said Edna.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
George’s fingers ran over the keyboard for the intro of Midnight Bells. Groucho and Harpo sat quietly as George played, proving that music soothes the savage breast. When the song had been sung, George said, “Ira and I are working on a show for next fall.” He tinkled the keys as he spoke.
“Gertie Lawrence and Victor Moore are set to star. It’s called Oh, Kay!” said Ira. “George, play them one of the songs we wrote.”
“’Do, Do, Do?’”
“No, no, no.”
“Please, please, please?” mimicked Groucho.
“Sure, sure, sure,” said Harpo.
Ignoring the Brothers, Ira walked to the piano and turned to face his audience. “George, key of G!”
George whipped off a string of notes in the key of G.
They broke into an up-tempo tune that raised our spirits from out of our postprandial stupor. Clap Yo’ Hands had us all singing the chorus; Harpo and Chico became dance partners; Groucho grabbed me for a twirl about the room, and Zeppo, Jane.
Edna refilled glasses, and watched us from the bar.
Aleck bobbed a dangling foot.
Heywood observed, puffing his cigar.
Ross picked his teeth.
Frank sat smiling, tapping his feet, and I knew he was planning how best to describe the scene in his famous daily column, “The Conning Tower,” for his paper’s morning edition.
George’s music was so reminiscent of Negro church spirituals I’d heard in Harlem. “Clap yo’ hands, stomp yo’ feet, alleluia, alleluia!” I said as much when he’d finished the number with a flourish and everyone fell back into chairs, breathless, laughing and exhilarated.
“You get it, don’t you, Dottie!” said George. “It’s the Negro prayer, born in the colored man’s church.” He beamed that beautiful smile at me, and in an instant I wished he loved me!
Ever since George teamed with lyricist Buddy Da Silva to write the score of George White’s Scandals of 1922 to include a short Negro opera called Blue Monday, which was cut after opening night, George became obsessed with the Negro influence of jazz on popular music. Although Blue Monday was what I and most critics thought a failure because it was presented in outdated blackface, with a story that was boorishly melodramatic and frankly demeaning of colored people, the musical style and the dramatic possibilities it promised were evident. In other words, the idea was sound; its execution, wanting.
Only a year earlier, a musical derived from the Harlem production, Shuffle Along, had made a hit with white audiences when it was moved to Broadway. But Blue Monday proved only a sad attempt by the producers to cash in on that popular Negro musical. George was brilliantly original, but the book was trite.
Even though the short opera failed, it brought a young, unknown Negro composer named Wil Vodery into George’s life. It was he who wrote the orchestral arrangements of the failed opera, and he and George became fast friends. George, who is always genuinely interested in the works of other composers, admires and has learned much from Wil. Paul Whiteman, who was orchestra conductor of the Scandals production, saw something unique in George’s talent. Although George’s “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” became one of the biggest hits of the day (White and Ziegfeld and other producers liked “stairs” so they could get all the show’s chorus members onstage and make a big finale number), it was the jazzy Blue Monday that prompted Paul Whiteman to ask George to writ
e a jazz symphony for a concert he was planning the following year. And what a piece George composed! Rhapsody in Blue is more than just a jazzy modern symphony: It is the sound of New York, and when a blind man hears it, the city appears in sharp focus!
“You need to write another Negro opera, George,” I said. “But next time you need a story as good as the music you write.”
“And with colored singers, no whites in blackface,” said Aleck. “Leave that to Jolson.” Then, as a thought popped into his head, he looked up over his spectacles and said with a frown, “There’s a colored actor who sings mighty good, George. Name’s Robeson. Dottie, remember that young man we saw? Real stage presence . . .”
“Paul Robeson. He sure can act and sing. Aleck’s right, you know. Blackface is just plain silly. You need a colored cast.”
“I have a story for you to consider, George,” said Aleck. “It’s a true story, and it is so current that you’ll not be able to write the ending until the trial is over.”
“Oh?”
“A man, a doctor, buys a house where he and his wife hope to raise their children and live the fulfillment of ‘The American Dream.’ Problem is, the doctor is a colored man, and the house he’s bought is in a white neighborhood.”
“And why is there a trial?” I asked. “Just because he jumped to the other side of the tracks?”
“The doctor’s father shoots a man when a mob storms his home—a white man. Because he defended his property and family, the old man is on trial for murder.”
Ross piped in, “Yes, I read about the incident. An old friend of ours from Stars and Stripes days is covering the story for the Detroit Herald. You remember Harry Nash, Aleck?”
“Sure. I know a few of the principal players, too.”
“Elaborate, will you?” said Jane.
“Arthur Garfield Hays is a friend of mine.”
“Oh, the lawyer . . .”
“Not just any old lawyer. He sat second chair to Clarence Darrow during the Scopes Trial.”
“The ‘Monkey Trial’?” asked George.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Darrow hasn’t exactly been on a winning streak,” said Ross. “The young men he defended, those kid murderers, Leopold and Loeb, were found guilty, anyway, and as far as the Scopes Trial, he lost again; they say the trial and what Darrow put William Jennings Bryan through killed the statesman.”
“Nonsense!” yelled Heywood. “Darrow saved the young killers from death sentences, and the Scopes decision is on appeal so that the law banning the teaching of science can be reckoned with. Darrow knows what he’s doing. He knows how best to lose a case, how to get it the most attention, too, in order to get the country talking seriously about important issues.”
Aleck waved his hand, a gesture of disregard for Ross’s comment. “Where was I?”
“You were talking about the Negro doctor’s father who shot a white man when—the Detroit case,” offered Heywood.
“Yes, yes, before I was rudely interrupted. Darrow has been asked to defend the case against the doctor’s father.”
“A controversial subject.”
“Political dynamite, yes it is, George.”
George thought for a moment about the idea of creating an opera around a politically volatile subject. “After what Birth of a Nation did to rile-up the Ku Klux Klan ten years ago, maybe it’s time to face our disgraces,” he said after a moment’s consideration.
Edna was smiling an unusual, rather secret smile as she listened to the conversation. The homely face shone with a light that made her almost beautiful. Aleck noticed and commented, “That Cheshire Cat over there has something up her sleeve!”
“You’re mixing your metaphors, for crissake!” said Ross.
“Oh, be quiet or I’ll mix up your face,” said Aleck. “Edna, dear?”
“Humm?” said Edna, drawn back into the room from her distant travels. “Just thinking . . . .”
“Don’t be coy, Edna dear,” I said, admittedly losing patience. “Share what little dust motes are floating around in that little brain of yours.”
“It’s just that racial prejudice is a theme in my new book.”
“You’ve been working on that tome for centuries, darling,” said Aleck.
“Yes, well, Slowpoke is finally finished. It’s done, out of my hair, out of my hands at last. The publication date is sometime next year.”
“Slowpoke?” I said. “What-in-fresh-hell kind of name is that for a book?” I said. “Is Slowpoke the name of some poor antebellum slave boy? Like “Step’nfetchit”? How shameful.”
Edna laughed, and made me look like the idiot I was. “My name for Showboat. It just took me forever to write.”
Yeah, sure, I thought, a sour taste in my mouth. She just cranks them out like pork sausage links. “Oh, the Mississippi tugboat story you were writing,” I said.
Another doorstopper, I thought, and goddammit, another Pulitzer, no doubt!
I, who have trouble writing the shortest of short stories, hoped the green hue rising along my jaw might be mistaken for gangrene. “Great,” I said, hoping my envy didn’t bleed through. “Good for you,” I said, trying again, pretending heartfelt wonder, but hearing only the strident tone of my revolting resentment.
“It’s a love story and a tragedy, and a tale of struggle and survival.”
“Sounds like a fun read,” I said, trying to lighten up. I caught Aleck looking at me; I was transparent to him, if not to everyone else in the room, except Edna.
“Well, it’s timely, anyway,” continued Edna. “A story about what happens when a light-skinned Negro tries to pass for white. What Dottie calls a ‘potboiler.’”
Forget the green, my cheeks were red. I knew the woman hadn’t read my thoughts, yet she knew my sentiments, and that the little bird who’d told on me was not so little after all, but the fat man posed like a diva on the divan. Serves me right, I thought—never tell Aleck anything you don’t want coming back to haunt you.
“What did you say, Dorothy, about my book, So Big?” asked Edna, referring to her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the year. “Something like, ‘It’s not a novel to toss aside lightly; it must be thrown across the room with great force?’”
“That was Benito Mussolini’s book, actually. I said your book was . . . ” I continued on sheepishly at first. Then, realizing I was digging myself into a deeper hole, “Now, don’t gloat, Edna. It makes you look bloated.”
I can be unconscionable.
“Not everybody can be like you, Dorothy.”
“Oh, God, I hope not,” I said, looking around the room for a rock to crawl under.
“Most people actually have to write something to be called a ‘famous writer.’”
“Touché, Edna dear,” I relented, hoping this was my chance at redemption. She was right, of course; it was always a great strain for me to write anything. And yet, I was famous for my bon mots, a few poems and short stories. Edna had invited me to dinner and had fed me the most divine meal imaginable. I needed to rein in my bitch-let-loose.
I said, “My fame is my potential, you see, dear. It might be years before I deliver on projected profits. That I should have all this one day,” I said, indicating the splendid room with a wave of my hand, “is what keeps me going. Let’s retract our claws, whaddayasay?”
Edna laughed, and refilled my glass.
It’s hard to dislike happy people, but I keep on trying.
Eight stories below, the view of Central Park had darkened to black. Balls of light from lamps along the walkways threw an ethereal glow that floated up from beneath the building. Earlier in the afternoon we had marveled at the sight of scores of wild turkeys fluttering alongside sheep that grazed the park’s Sheep Meadow, marveling that they had escaped the ax on this, their execution day.
Looking around the beautifully appointed salon, I noted that the reds and yellows of the fabrics couldn’t have been prettier and more intense in the daylight than they were now. F
irelight and soft pools from table lamps warmed the elegant space. The ebony piano shimmered from reflected light, and George’s swarthy complexion was striking against his black hair and rich brown eyes. The Marx Brothers circling Edna as she danced awkwardly was surreal, and to see Aleck beaming in reclining splendor—well, for a moment I had the odd impression that there was something very special about this gathering.
George switched tempo and startled us with a simple little melody, with lyrics by Ira, that brought tears to my eyes. It is not often that that happens! Animals make me teary; the sight of a tired hack-horse stops me in my tracks; I’m an easy mark for strays. Whether it was because I’d had too much whiskey, or because autumn days were growing colder, shorter, and darker, or because I had no man to hold me close at night, the lyrics George sang, “Someone to Watch Over Me,” tore at my heart. I truly felt like “a little lamb who’s lost in the wood/I know I could always be good to one who’ll watch over me.”
Ira is a brilliant lyricist who touched on the need in all of us to be loved, and with George’s soulful, haunting melody, it is a song that will endure a hundred years, I am sure. I think what I like most about the song is its lack of cynicism. For a woman famous for mistrust in matters of the heart, this is big.
By the time George picked up the pace with “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” I was back to my dry-eyed self. The jazziness of the tune, with its musical hesitations, prompted me to ask if anyone wanted to take a ride up to Harlem to hit a couple of clubs.
Before I received an answer, Irving Berlin walked into the room, talking a blue streak as usual, in lieu of a normal greeting. As is often the case with him, it was more as if we had suddenly moved into his space, while he was in the middle of his dialogue with whomever happened to wander across his path.
“What’d I tell you, George?” said Irving, slapping George on the back. The older man looked at the rest of the party and said, “Ain’t these boys the best you’ve ever heard!” referring to the Gershwin brothers. “This young man,” he said, indicating George, “came to me a few years ago, and he wanted work from me as a pianist. I asked him to play me something he’d written, and he did, and I said to him, ‘Whatta ya wanna work for me for, kid? You’re so good, you gotta work for yourself!’” Irving turned back to us and asked, “Was I right or what?” The National Treasure rumpled the black hair of the prodigy.
[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil Page 3