by Jerry Stahl
I tried to tell Booker that I didn't even know the girl. She was some stranger who jumped me out of nowhere. "Sounds like my first wife," he said, with surprising good humor, considering. As we stooped to scoop up the strewn chops and flank steaks, I thought I was off the hook until my employer added, almost as afterthought, "I'm not accusing you, Roscoe. I'm firing you."
Now I'm no Hindu, but this was the second time I'd been blamed for doing something with a woman that I didn't really do. The first, of course, was when Daddy blamed me for breaking Mom's "vageena." (That's how he pronounced it, if that tells you anything: "vageena" like "Pasadena")
If a swami'd walked up and told me that I'd been a tight girdle in a past life, and that's why women in this one kept making me miserable, I would not have called him crazy. I would not have said anything but "Thank you, O Mahubba Bubba. Where do I sign up for my monk-suit?" Because that's exactly how it felt—like I'd done something I didn't know I did, and now I was being punished for it.
Still, this being my story, bad always leads to good—before it leads to more bad. I walked straight from the hotel to the Empire Theater. The manager, a seedy Brit named Thurwell who affected a monocle, saw the ratty suitcase in my hand and immediately made me an offer. "I'll give you the Friday night slot and a fin, but if you want to kip here, you gotta pluck gum off the seats and scrub floors."
Deal!
Top Billing
The night after I moved my worldly goods to the Empire dressing room, I pulled a Woolsey. I was shining the spittoons when the unicyclist—my old friend Meyers, King of the Unicycle—staggered into the lobby clutching a torn-out newspaper page, tears streaming down his hatchet face. "Calamity Jane died," he wailed, and turned around and staggered out again. The manager ran after him, then ran back in the theater, literally pulling his hair, and started screaming that his opening act was too distraught to perform. "The idiot wrote letters to that cowgirl. He thought Calamity Jane was gonna jump off her Palomino and hop on his uni."
Well, sure I felt bad, but when you're broke you always look for an angle, so I told Thurwell I could fill in. At first the manager said no. "Opening act they want acrobats. Ring-spinners. The unicycle act was the best I could do—and now he's murphied out on me." Then I said I could sing, and Thurwell said he'd think it over. And that's how, much to the consternation of the other acts, "Roscoe Arbuckle, Boy Singer of Illustrated Songs" ended up on the marquee.
I'd waltzed in and pulled a Woolsey—stolen top billing from more established acts. And I'd have to pay.
As an illustrated singer, I offered up popular songs against a screen on which happy scenes and lyrics were projected. My job was to get the audience to sing along. Of course, I didn't mention that I had never actually experienced such happy and romantic scenes myself. Never frolicked with my sweetheart in a wooded glade. Never been the boy in the straw boater on the porch swing beside his special girl. Never snuggled close to Sally Cinnamon on a moonlit hayride. But, thanks to Pansy, I had memorized five songs which could be sung while tableaus depicting a kind of happiness and romance I'd never known flickered behind me.
All I had to do was remember the lyrics. A task made harder, on the occasion of my first marquee appearance, by the stagehands' savage scenery-banging—punctuated by the overloud farts and whinnies of my fellow performers from the wings.
Lesson learned. Soon enough, I learned something else. After I'd been opening for a couple of weeks, ladies began to visit me backstage. Ladies my mother's age. I'd tell them how Mama died and they'd bring me picnic baskets stuffed with poundcake and beef buns. They'd tap the sofa for me to sit beside them and then talk to me about church. They'd get dewy-eyed, pull me close to their fragrant bosoms, and tell me how much they'd like to have me as their own son. Sometimes one would put her tongue in my ear.
Girls from the troupe would come giggling into my tiny room after these ladies left. Irene, the box-jumper in a magic act, told me that if I'd "give 'em a good bomp," these Backstage Betties would give me a lot more than supper and a cuddle. When I mentioned this to Thurwell before a Saturday matinee, he worked his lips up and down and spat tobacco juice into the spittoon I'd just polished. "All actresses are snatch-peddlers, kid. Don't listen to 'em."
I never went any farther than cuddling. Not because I thought that was bad, but because I still didn't know there was any farther to go. The most I received from one of these backstage ladies was a whole meatloaf and a brush-and-comb set monogrammed with the initials LLR. I'd never seen a monogram before. The letters stood for Lucky Little Roscoe, she told me. And I believed her.
A Big Thirteen
I was as close to happy as you can get if you're a homeless pre-pube the size of a polar bear. Every day I'd learn a little bit more about juggling, or a new dance step, or a line of patter from one of the Hungarian, Italian, or German dialect comics. I even met celebrities.
Cy Young worked the Empire on a swing through the West. He demonstrated the pitches he used to beat the Pirates twice and help win the first World Series for Boston. The second part of his presentation focused on physical hygiene, and at one point I was supposed to come onstage and ask him how I could get to be as strong as him. The gag was, Cy tells me I should get more exercise and cut out sweets, and I pretend to faint.
That same night I nearly fainted for real. I was setting out a chair for my legs before going to sleep—I'd gotten used to catnapping sitting up between shows, and had taken to spending my night that way—when I heard a voice that made my milk curdle. I knew before the door swung open.
"Hey, fat-ass?"
"Daddy?"
"Shut up and pack. I'm taking you away from these people. It's a good thing I saw your name on that marquee poster, or we might never have found you."
I felt like a runaway slave tracked down and dragged back to the old plantation. Except the plantation was a dirt farm outside Santa Clara, and the massah was a mean drunk who cursed the day I tore his wife's innards coming hiney-first into Kansas. I couldn't meet anyone's eyes as Daddy led me out. The whole troupe ran up to watch my kidnapping, but nobody could muster the courage to say a word about it. Daddy's glare dared anybody to step in his path and challenge his authority over his wayward heifer. I kept my eyes on the ground in front of me, a habit I'd acquired as a child in the face of Daddy's rage.
Turns out Daddy had remarried. Once he got me to his ragged farmhouse, he pinched my neck until I raised my eyes from the earth long enough to see his mealy-mouthed new wife and called her "Mother." I was used to quick changes, but not like this. I'd gone from performing and sleeping on theater chairs, surrounded by show folk, to sharing a moldy bed with a gang of rangy "brothers." They were athletic and good-looking and hated me from the gitgo. Or did, until the next week, when I won a county fair pie-eating contest and came home with a blue face and a trophy. The following Saturday I consumed 43 hot dogs in 10 minutes, a local record. After these triumphs my perfect stepbrothers began to brag about me. I had my sport, and I was a champion. The sport just happened to involve shoving a week's worth of food down my throat in five minutes.
Beyond the glory of pie-eating, farm work was mostly just trudging around in the mud digging up boulders. Miserable as it was, it was still better than going to school. Onstage I could charm an audience of strangers twice my age, but in the classroom I got nothing but scorn. So Daddy and I made a deal—without ever saying that's what it was. In return for me staying home (the name of this play is Unpaid Day Laborer) Daddy didn't belt me when I snuck off to San Jose to moonlight as a singing waiter at the Pabst Beer Cafe. At the Pabst I served all the beer I couldn't drink, and warbled for the clientele till the wee hours.
One night Sid Grauman, whom I'd met with Pansy, ambled into the cafe for a drink with his Daddy, David. Grauman Senior heard me sing and asked if I wanted a job at the Unique Theater in San Jose. "You got connections?" I asked, playing the rube. Like I didn't know who Dave Grauman was! But the old character played it straight. "I don
't need connections, Slim. I own the joint."
Just like that I was back where I swore I never wanted to be again—in the Illustrated Song biz—and d-double e-lighted to be there. But this didn't mean I was free from Daddy's business. He let me spend my evenings working in the theater as long as I spent the rest of the night working for him—at his new hash house.
Seeing the cash that floated around the Pabst, the old man decided the real money was in all-night eateries and sold the farm. When he wasn't ranting about how Orville Wright gypped him of his biplane plans, or the time Hank Ford—it was always, for some reason, Hank—drunked him up on rotgut and pinched his idea for the assembly line, Daddy liked to lecture his stepsons about Where the Real Money Was. Not that he ever found it.
Much as I grew to hate the work, slinging hash to hacks and insomniacs in Daddy's dive did not make me nostalgic for agriculture. Sometimes a theatrical company would troop in after their last show and I'd pretend my restaurant job was an act. I learned to flip pancakes behind my back, which always snagged a lot of laughs—and came in handy down the road.
Every night I'd die a little, watching the troupes head to the station while I returned to serving burned biscuits and fatback. I'd learned a bit about meat in my hotel days, and knew enough to tell that whatever Daddy was slapping on his plates and calling T-bone had probably started off life as a pony. From then on, I shaved a year off when people asked how old I was. I didn't count the year I spent breathing grease and serving Man O'War at Daddy's 24-hour ptomaine parlor.
Goodbye, Pig-in-a-Blanket
One night, after I finished my rendition of "Darling, I Adore You (But Mother Does Not Approve"), old Mr. Grauman showed up in my dressing room at the Unique. Owners did not often frequent their own venues, unless they were on fire. So I hoped this meant my pig-in-a-blanket days were over. When Grauman asked if I'd want to sing at the Portola Cafe, in San Francisco, for $18 a week, I did a jig on the spot. I'd have signed on as a talking dog if it meant getting out of the horse-frying business—and away from my jackass of a Daddy.
I'd been San Francisco's favorite light-on-his-feet-fat-boy singing waiter for a year before I considered writing the old man with my whereabouts. Eighteen bucks was 11 more than the 7 Daddy was supposed to pay me every week and never did. Even better than the greenbacks was the mattress. After sleeping rough for so long—on sod as a kiddie, on chairs in theaters—I still got giddy at climbing into a real hotel bed every night. This was the best sleep I'd had since my stint in the department store window with Marvo the Magnificent.
The Portola attracted all kinds of big names. One evening Jack Johnson stopped by. I pretend-sparred with him and got a laugh when I "knocked myself out" with my own roundhouse. Jack London came in knee-walking drunk at least once a week, and a couple of times we got rubber-legged together, passing a flask of Tokay after hours. Drunk as he was all the time, I don't know how the man could sign his own name, let alone crank out White Fang.
Then Mr. Grauman turned up again, with the richest-looking man I'd ever seen. The man's skin was golden—a shade I wouldn't see again until I met old money in Hollywood. Even his eyebrows looked rich. The pair planted themselves at one of my tables, and Mr. Grauman crooked his finger for me to come over.
"Roscoe," Grauman crowed, "shake hands with Alexander Pantages."
Pantages! I was so flummoxed my fingers felt like turkey legs. Pantages had his own vaudeville circuit, as prestigious as the Orpheum, Paramount, or the Hammersteins'. He owned theaters all over the country, plus smart cafes in lots of the same towns.
A job with Pantages was the biggest break you could get—if you could get it. When Mr. Pantages himself complimented me on my singing and asked how I felt about traveling, I told him I took my best naps in train stations. Grauman chuckled like an expensive game hen and said he couldn't pay for my napping, but he'd start me at $25 a week for using my other talents. The next morning I headed north from S.F. to Oregon.
For the next few months I got to play theaters from Eugene up to the top of Washington, then all the way south to Arizona, where I finally scratched out a letter to Daddy. I made sure to tell him I wasn't plucking the gum off theater seats, I was filling them. I did not tell him I'd gotten a raise, to $50 a week. I wanted to impress him—not give him a reason to grift me. Why risk the old man tracking me down to some hall in Bisbee or Speonk and putting the tap on?
Daddy was the one who spent his life scheming about Real Money, and now I was the one making it. I had no doubt that, just as he'd done with Hank and Orville, he'd find a way to convince himself every dime I made was rightfully his. Until I turned 18, he could legally take it, too. I'd seen lots of young performers lose their wages that way. One reason so many folks starting out made up new names to go with their acts—they were runaways. That, or they had warrants out. Or both.
A Frisco Shaker and a Big Decision
Come 1905 my Pantages stint was up, so I got together a little troupe—employing myself as singer, comedian, and manager—and started us swooping up and down the West Coast again. By this time I had to look at a newspaper to know what city I was in. You never notice how many states have towns called "Liberty" until you've played matinees in eight of 'em.
Round about April 1906, my road days nearly came to an end. And not because an irate customer threw a bottle from the balcony, either. (Though that happened, ladies and gentlemen. One Saturday late show in Tucson, a Polish comic named Paps Krakow insulted a cowboy who kept belching during his act. "Gee," Paps snapped after the umpteenth interruption, "I heard you ranch hands sometimes snip your balls off accidental-like—I didn't know it made you burp!" Before the crowd even got the joke, Ten Gallon up and brained the Polack with a dead man of rum. I sent Krakow home to convalesce with his mother and filled in with a local Comanche who did rope tricks.)
But back to that April—the 18th to be exact. I'm in my hotel room in San Francisco when I feel the walls wobble. Now that's a hangover, I remember thinking. I figured a little peach brandy would steady things. Before I could get hand to flask, the floor started to shimmy. The pitcher tumbled off the nightstand and the most ungodly sounds of mayhem rose up from the street.
I ran down 10 flights in my dressing coat and breached the sidewalk in time to see a three-story building collapse a block away. I can't describe the sound, the wave of choking dust and rubble that sprayed up to the sky and blotted the sun out. The haze was so unnatural, some people had to remember to scream. A frantic girl with twin babies and a table lamp in her hands ran right into me, shouting "Earthquake!" at the top of her little lungs. Before I could see if she was all right, the young mother careened off again, dragging her lamp and babies in the other direction.
Pretty soon you couldn't move for all the terrified citizens scrambling for their lives. I still wonder what that good mother was thinking when she grabbed a table lamp along with her offspring. At the time I imagined she was simply panicked. In my dopey dotage, I realize that she probably looted the thing while passing a lamp store. (Life is bound to do something to your view of human nature.) Either way, a fire had begun to rage in the wreckage of the fallen building, spewing smoke thick enough to make your hair gray. Genius that I am, my first thought was to run back into the hotel. My money clip and my brandy were upstairs. But no sooner did I step inside than I felt a hand grab my shoulder, followed by something hard and round, jammed with no politeness into my back. "Stop right there, suet."
I turned to see an Army fellow with a handlebar mustache spotted white from plaster. Behind him was a colored boy dragging a wagon full of shovels. The soldier grabbed one and shoved it in my hands. "I could shoot you right now for intent to loot," he barked. "Dig or die!"
The soldier pointed his revolver somewhere between my belly and my bellringer. "Happy to help," I heard myself yelp. So, for the next 24 hours, I dug, along with every other man around with matching arms and legs. Including, I am told, the great John Barrymore. It was the first and last occasion i
n which I'd get to play the same role as a Barrymore. Had I known, at the time, scared stewless and digging up bricks at gunpoint, I could not have found a moment to gloat. Debris seemed to be falling out of the sky. Screaming came from all directions. Worse than the screams were the muffled cries from under the chest-high piles of rubble. The way they died out. . . . By my 20th hour on the job, arms heavy as coffin lids, all I could think, stupidly, was, San Francisco can be a dangerous town.
If I had any idea how dangerous, I might have asked Sergeant Shovel to shoot me on the spot.
PART 2
Yuck Huckster
MY MOTHER'S favorite saying was "God can stand on one leg longer than you can." I never did figure out what that meant, but one day, back in Portland at the Star Theater, I was halfway through an illustrated rendition of "Silver Threads Among the Gold" when I noticed an amputee in the front row. One trouser leg had been trimmed to the hip. A stump like a puckered fist poked out of it. I took that as a sign—as if Mama herself was telling me, "Look, Son, one leg! That could have been you!" Then and there I made a decision I'd been wrestling with since surviving the San Francisco shaker.
I was done being the Illustrated Singer! This time I meant it.
Illustrateds made a fine career when I was a young sylph. Now they just seemed old-timey. But to be a cracker jack comedian, a high-tone actor . . . that was the new thing. There was a future worth pursuing. You could come up with your own acts. You could do some soft shoe, tell a joke in wiener-schnitzel German, or fall off the stage. I'd seen enough of the greats to know how much I had to learn. But I would devote myself.