Pluck and Luck

by Robert Benchley

  Another phase of the degradation inflicted on early Twentieth Century bridegrooms was the wedding reception. This took place after the ceremony, usually at the home of the bride. Here the groom, already in a weakened condition after his nightmare in the church, was propped up in a reception line consisting of the bride, her father and mother, an aunt or two, the groom’s father and mother (the bars were let down for this occasion and the groom’s relatives given passes), and the groom.

  Finally, in 1925, a young groom named Arthur Hershey, of Cleveland, Ohio (1903- 1958), touched the spark to the revolt which had been smouldering for decades. Hershey had been engaged to be married to a young lady named Wabton. They had been engaged for two years and in that time Hershey had spent some three thousand dollars on gifts, suppers, taxis, etc., all in the nature of upkeep. When finally the date was set for the wedding (June 4, 1925) the young man got tacit notice that now would be a good time for him to build that boat he had always wanted, or to go into some other form of personal retirement, as nothing would be needed of him until the day of the wedding when they would tell him what to do at the church.

  “At the church?” asked the young rebel.

  “Yes, it is going to be a big church wedding,” explained the girl. “We are going to have Uncle John come on and read the service, little Dorothy and little George are going to be flower-girls, and invitations are going to be sent out to about fifteen hundred. You can come in and help address the envelopes if you want to.”

  “To answer your statements in the reverse order,” said Arthur Hershey, who was a lawyer: “(a) I address no envelopes, (b) if five people attend our wedding they will be lucky, (c) little Dorothy and little George will be fifty miles away at the time of the nuptials, probably drugged, (d) Uncle John leads nothing at my wedding, and (e) it is not going to be held in a church. You and I are going to the city clerk’s office and take hold of hands and the whole thing is going to be over in five minutes, including the time consumed in sobering me up so that I can stand. Is that clear?”

  Miss Wabton and her mother started to laugh, as was the custom of the country at that time, but the fun got no farther, for young Mr. Hershey held up his hand.

  “We’ll have no silly business, please,” he said, in a voice that rang ’round the world. “Either you meet my terms, or you marry someone else. Take them or leave them. And do it quickly.”

  At first the bride-to-be attempted the old bluff of flouncing out of the room and saying that very well she would marry someone else, but young Hershey had done his work well. For months he had been planning this coup and had pledged young men all over Cleveland and throughout the State of Ohio to rally to his standard when the time came. At Miss Wabton’s gesture he called up Henry Mills, who was to have been his best man (Henry Mills was born in 1902 and died in 1946), and said:

  “Well, Henry, the blow has fallen. Tomorrow will see whether we are a nation of free men or a galley-full of slaves. Have the boys ready to march at three-thirty.”

  And at three-thirty that afternoon every eligible young man in Cleveland marched simultaneously with parades of eligible young men all over Ohio, bearing standards reading: “No Big Church Weddings,” “We Furnish the Money – We Want Fair Play,” “No Weddings Without Representation,” “Down With Receptions,” “Whom Are You Marrying, Us or the Caterer?” “The Florists Must Go,” etc., etc.

  The revolt spread like wildfire all over the country. Branches of the Bridegrooms’ International sprang up in Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, Detroit, and in every small town. There was a slight attempt at struggle on the part of June brides who had their trousseaux all made with big church weddings in view, but it didn’t amount to anything. The young men had the upper hand and they knew it. For years the tradition had been built up by the women folk of the country that it was the men who were anxious to get married and that the girls were doing them a favor. Hershey enunciated the principle that it was fifty-fifty to a man whether he got married or not, and that if the women didn’t want to be married they didn’t have to. Out of three million prospective brides, two million, nine hundred and eight thousand gave in. The battle was won and the young men of the country held their heads up again. That is why June fourth is now known as Hershey Day.

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  How One Woman

  Kept the Budget from the Door

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  There are several ways in which to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory. In our home we have hit upon the most unsatisfactory of all – the budget. If any worse system is known, I hope that my readers will write in and tell about it. Send communications to the Editor of the Worse-than-Budget Department.

  Here is the way we work it. Fred (Fred is not my husband, and a perfect darling he is, too) brings home his pay on Thursday night. “Where is the other seventy-five dollars, Fred dear?” I say. “What other seventy-five dollars?” Fred asks. “Don’t try to pull any of that ‘what other seventy-five dollars’ stuff on me,” I reply, stroking his forehead. Fred loves to have his forehead stroked, and before I know it he has dropped off to sleep, murmuring, “I must have been robbed.” That cleans up the pay situation.

  With what is left, we make up our budget. If there isn’t enough left for a good budget, we piece it out with string and an old skate-strap.

  Here is how we do it. We first figure out what we are going to need during the week: meat, fish, food for the fish, eggs, recreation, and whips. We write these items on little slips of paper and put them all in a big hat. Then I pull the hat down over Fred’s ears and we both laugh.

  Sometimes, in making out the budget, we get to fooling like that and it is awfully hard to be serious, especially as once in a while Fred makes my nose bleed. A good way to get around this difficulty is to divorce your husband. “But,” you may say, “I have no clothes to get a divorce in.” If other women had said that, where would the institution of divorce be today? I don’t know, I’m sure.

  We had a lot of trouble at first in making out the budget because we didn’t have any pencils – sharp pencils, at any rate. Then Fred remembered that there was an old linotype machine up in the attic that had been sent us as a wedding-present; so we dragged that down and had it redecorated and in no time were turning out budgets at a great rate.

  Here is a typical budget, copied just before we tore it up:

  Week of 1924

  1 roast of some sort $ 1.10

  Fixin’s 2.50

  Opium 3.75

  Extra vests 4.00

  Fred’s bail 50.00

  Heigh-ho! 7.50

  W. L. PC.

  New York 64 25 .640

  Pittsburgh 55 42 .567

  Chicago 56 44 .560

  $44.50

  This particular budget worked out very well, because Fred was sent to jail that week; so there was no bail to pay for him and only one mouth to feed. We probably wouldn’t have another bit of luck like that again in a year.

  As an alternative plan for adjusting your expenses to fit your income, the following is fairly practicable:

  Buy a second-hand automobile. Never mind repainting it. Just start it going as it is. You and your husband jump in and drive very carefully to the end of the dock at 72nd St. and the Hudson River. Then keep on going.

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  Gay Life Back-Stage

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  At the very mention of the word “back-stage,” especially back-stage at a musical show, your Wise Boy murmurs “slicky-slicky” and begins shuffling his feet. There is a fairly prevalent notion that if you have been behind the scenes where the chorus girls are, you ought to go to confession right away, but that it is worth it.

  In my long career on the stage (five months now) I have found that the only danger back-stage is that of having something drop on you. I went into the thing rather hoping that I was going to be tempted. Not only have I not been tempted; I have been stepped on, and an
yone hanging around with other things on his mind than getting out of the way as soon as possible will get stepped on too.

  Right at the stage door, you get your first big setback. The doorman has been chosen for the job because, when he was quite young, he had his heart taken out. He is also quite likely to be hard of hearing. It is only after you have been working with a show for two weeks that he will let you in at all. Until then, you have to bring your mother or your pastor along.

  Furthermore, the space between the stage door and the next portal is just large enough for a medium-sized rabbit to turn around in, and while you are standing there, fourteen people have to get past you on their way downstairs under the stage. Some of these are beautiful young ladies dressed as mackerel or bunches of figs, but there is a certain businesslike manner in the way in which they brush past you that makes you sure you are not being tempted; not right at that minute, anyway.

  The next division of floor space that you step into is a little larger. A father-rabbit would have it pretty comfortable here, provided he didn’t try to do any tricks. A flight of stairs leads from here up to the dressing rooms and these stairs are crowded at all hours of the day and night with people in a great hurry to get dressed or undressed. If you want to go up, the best way is to cling to the outside of the banisters. You will find that everyone is very pleasant, so long as you let them get to where they are going. Otherwise, you are out of luck. If any organization of tired businessmen worked as hard or as fast on their jobs as the chorus girls in a big musical show, they would die of apoplexy.

  Let us turn from the stairway leading to the dressing rooms and go into the region which is directly behind the scenes. First we step through a doorway, where we are hit on the head by a large boat which is being hauled up into the roof. Everything except the actors is hauled up into the roof when not in use. So when you walk across any space between the back walls of the theater, you stand a good chance of having the top of your head crashed in with almost anything from a table to a jolly old replica of the Sphinx.

  The only thing that saves you from this is the fact that you aren’t in one place long enough to have anything drop clean on you. From one direction comes a couch being pushed by four union men; from another, a gondola being dragged by four more union men; while the floor beneath you starts to heave as a trap opens to let eight union men shoot up some orange trees in full bloom. Anything that is going to hit you on the head has got to move fast to keep up with you.

  And now for the gay life back-stage and the girls! How about a little revelry! Here comes a bevy of them now, dressed as several of the warmer months of the year. They look promising, and seem to be laughing at something. What do you suppose it is? Well, it turns out to be you. You discover this after they have walked over you on their way to their entrance. Heigh-ho! A good laugh never hurt anyone.

  And who is this pretty little miss sitting all alone on the top of a bookcase? A peek over her shoulder discloses the fact that she is reading “Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States,” waiting for the signal which is to start her up on a plunger as the Andiron Girl in the big Home-Building number. It would be best to tip-toe away before you get “Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States” thrown at your head, my little man.

  With the prevalence of trick numbers in our musical revues, in which young ladies and vegetables and small buildings are shot up through the stage on plungers, there is the increasing danger to the visitor or casual actor of stepping on a trap and either dropping down into the cellar or being elevated up into the middle of a scene.

  A young man once came for the laundry to the “Music Box” while the performance was in progress and, in order not to disturb the show, he went down and under the stage to get to the dressing-rooms on the other side of the theater. While under the stage, he tried to engage in familiar conversation with one of the girls and was encouraged to a point where he became engrossed in his task and not a little pleased with his prowess as a man-about-town. Suddenly someone shouted, “Right!” and there was a grinding of machinery, and the young man, dressed in a natty sack suit and derby, was projected with his lady friend up through the stage floor and into the big Fish number. She was supposed to be a goldfish. The audience couldn’t quite figure out what his role was, but they sized him up as a pickerel in a derby hat and gave him a big hand. The success of his first appearance went to his head and he decided that the stage was the career for him, and that, my friends, is how James K. Hackett got his start.

  The people back-stage who really have the gay time are the stage-hands. All being good union men, there are ten of each on hand for every job calling for one, and so they have plenty of time for gaiety, and a dandy crowd of congenial boys to make merry with.

  Consider the life of the carefree members of the stage crew of a big show. Arrive at the theater at 7:45 and have a good smoke, just to start the evening off right. Then, if you happen to be third assistant curtain man, you walk with the first and second assistant curtain men across the stage at 8:15 and shake the corner of a big portiere three times. After the overture you pull your end of it halfway across the stage and then go out and take another smoke. Then you go down beneath the stage and help a young lady stand on a plunger and ask her a couple of snappy questions about her health. You may, if you know her well enough, or even if you don’t, pull a couple of wise cracks about life in general.

  Then for another good smoke and a cozy half hour around the circle with fifteen or twenty others of the boys who haven’t anything in particular to be doing at that moment. And many a good story will come out then in the course of conversation. Perhaps a smoke will top off the evening, after you have given the curtain another good tug at the conclusion of the performance.

  So when you hear about the carefree, bohemian life of theatrical people behind the scenes, dismiss the picture of romping chorus girls and visiting Johnnies in full-dress suits from your imagination, and drink a toast to the man in overalls with the gay smile, for he is the Pet of the theater at a handsome consideration per hour, and a handsome consideration-and-a-half for overtime.

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  The Young Folks’ Day

  A Child”s-Eye View of the Whole Thing

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  Stephen is two and a half, and has certain very definite reasons for wanting to complete the process of slipping an old iron washer over the stem of a broken Ingersoll watch. He has been working on it in his crib since five o’clock in the morning, and here it is barely six-thirty when the Head of the House comes in, dressed very unbecomingly in bath robe and slippers, and says, with forced gaiety:

  “Well now, sir, how about going downstairs and seeing what Santa has brought?”

  There has been a lot of talk about this “Santa” for several weeks past, none of it particularly interesting. It seems that he comes down the chimney or something, obviously a falsehood. And even if he does, what of it?

  However, the Head of the House and his Wife appear to derive a great deal of innocent merriment out of talking about the event; so it is best to humor them and simulate an interest.

  This is a bit too thick, though, to be dragged away from important work with the iron washer and taken downstairs on a purely speculative hunt after what this “Santa” may or may not have brought. It has been emphasized in the preliminary conversations on the subject that this “jolly old soul” reserves considerable leeway to himself in the question of whether or not certain boys are to receive any presents at all, the whole thing being contingent on whether or not they have been what is technically known as “good boys” during the two weeks previous. A glance back at Stephen’s behavior during the past two weeks convinces him that his chances are hardly worth while getting out of bed to go downstairs for.

  There is no other way, however, as he is picked up bodily (a cowardly thing for a great big bully like the Head of the House to do, simply because he has the size) and carried downstair
s to where a large, brilliantly lighted tree is standing by the fire-place. A tree in the house is ridiculous in the first place, but there is unquestionably something nice about those lights. Do you suppose that by squeezing one of them the color could be made to ooze out into the hand, and from there be transferred to the face, like marmalade or paints? Well, there is no way to find out like trying, so here goes.

  “No, no, Stephen! Mustn’t touch lights!” (Why will these people insist on leaving out definite articles when talking to anyone ten years younger than they are? Do they think it makes it any easier to understand them? They just make fools of themselves, that’s all.) “Here, see this dreat big booful doggie that Santa brought Stephen!” (Sickening, isn’t it?) The “dreat big booful doggie” turns out to be a flat failure. It is too big, to begin with. Then, too, there is nothing about it with a hole in it, like that washer (by the way, where is that washer?) which can be slipped over the stem of the Ingersoll. In this world, everything stands or falls by its ability to be slipped over the stem of the Ingersoll.

  Then the Head of the House drags out a sort of mechanical banjo-player which you wind up and watch jump. The Head of the House thinks it is great. He winds it up and then says, “Look at that, will you, Doris!” Stephen tries to have a go at it, but it appears that it must be wound up by some older person. And if you can’t wind a thing up yourself, what is the sense in fooling with it at all?

  “Well, I guess Santa Claus was pretty good to you,” says a neighbor who has come in to see Stephen with his toys. “I just love to watch their faces when they see all the new things,” she says. Anyone watching Stephen’s face, however, would detect nothing more inspiring than a slight expression of disgust at the Head of the House making such a show of himself over the mechanical banjo-player.