by Jerry Stahl
After the show, I locked myself in the dressing room and pulled out the stocking I'd filched from Mother's bureau after she'd passed. I pressed it to my face. I inhaled her astringent scent—witch hazel, cedar, and vinegar—and made a pledge to her loving memory: I will work harder than any boy ever worked.
When the stranger in the checked suspenders opened the door and tumbled in, I barely had time to hide Mom's stockings before he got up and dusted himself off. His look was appraising but not judgmental. A long-faced clown without makeup. "I don't know what you were doing and I don't care," the man said, in what I soon learned was an Australian accent. "I'm Leon Errol, theatrical manager and comedian, and I think you're a natural. Join up with me and I'll show you all the tricks."
I was so stunned I forgot to ask how he'd picked the dressing-room lock. Leon took me out for soup, and after five minutes I was halfway sold. Maybe there was something in my oyster crackers. I followed him from the greasy spoon back to the Orpheum and caught his act. Talk about a hodgepodge! Leon mixed up burlesque comedy, funny ditties, tumbling, black-faced monologues, and, when the spirit moved him, the odd birdcall.
We opened a bottle in his dressing room and by the time we closed it I had agreed to go on tour with him, for barely more than a third of what I was making now. Still. . . . The way I looked at it, the money I wasn't making was paying for my education. Seeing as how I'd dropped out in second grade, it was about time I went back to class.
Funny School
Starting right there in Portland I got lessons in funny dialects, in tumbling (the trick was hitting the ground without cracking your tailbone), in picking the right makeup, keeping the sweat out of your eyes, and making your stage-clothes into cutaways. All the tricks of a world-class burlesque yuck huckster. My graduation was held in Idaho, at the Last Chance Saloon.
The Last Chance featured a diva named Lilly-Bell, a big blond maneater who cake-walked across the stage like she had hot coals in her drawers—which, if her reputation was accurate, more than a few members of the audience had shoveled. The crowd was nothing but tough-as-nails miners. We even got paid in gold dust, in little sacks that tied up tight at the top. But on our second day, the Sweetheart of Boise failed to show, and Errol got as nervous as I'd ever seen him. Lilly-Bell was nowhere to be found.
Out front the natives were stomping their feet, causing a thunderous racket. Errol and I both peeked through the curtain to see what we were up against, and backed off without a word. There was no question one of these woman-hungry gold dusters was going to grab the six-shooter he checked at the door and put holes in our clothes.
Then I had an idea. Without telling Errol, I slipped into Lilly's dressing room, fished around, and managed to slip out again in a tight ruby dress and a blond wig big as a birthday cake. Call me a cat burglar. Errol saw this burly female stroll onstage and gulped. "May I help you, madam?" He had no idea it was Yours Truly. Neither did the wide-eyed miners, who began to clap and stomp all over again when I broke into my first song.
We did four shows that night with me as the opening blonde. But the next night, when I sashayed out in gown and cake wig, the real Lilly swept in and came after me with a steak knife. My wig flew off as I ran through the joint, jumping tables, careening up the aisles, scrambling back onstage, and knocking Errol over when I tumbled into the curtains. The miners thought the chase was staged, and rolled on the floor. Errol was so impressed he said we should keep it in the show till the run was over. Lilly-Bell would have none of it, however, as she felt it impugned her womanly dignity.
Errol's company zigzagged north and south, from the West Coast halfway to the East and back. One long afternoon on a train I took out a map and pencil and connected all the dots we'd visited. The result looked like a run-over porcupine. And after a couple of months of hard traveling, Errol announced he was dissolving the act. He had a chance to join with Ziegfeld in New York City, and he wanted to take it. That's showbiz. I wished him well—by then I was calling him "Professor"—and knocked around till I snagged a spot with the Ellwood Tabloid Musical Company as—never say never, you big ninny—illustrated singer.
I convinced myself it was temporary, and, besides, it was that or find a brothel that needed a towel boy. The entire run was in San Francisco—you'd have never known that whole chunks of the city had burned and crumbled in a quake—and when it was over Ellwood offered to bring me down to Southern California. We were to play the Bide-A-Wee Theater in Long Beach, with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle getting star billing.
The Professional
So here I am, free, fat, and 21. Rolling into Long Beach with a hotel bed and a slot as headliner in my future. At that moment about the only thing I was less interested in than romance was a job in movies.
Working in "flickers," as they were still being called, was out of the question. Everyone knew that the only people who'd lower themselves to step in front of a camera were stage actors who couldn't get work—or couldn't stay sober enough to keep it if they got it.
As for the romance part, love and marriage were for other people. Why would anybody who had survived my family want to even think about starting another one? How many prisoners of war reenlist?
Well, tickle my knickers! No sooner did I step onto the streetcar from Los Angeles than I spied the tiniest, sweetiest-petitiest creature I'd ever laid eyes on. I soon learned that what she lacked in stature she more than made up for in attitude. When I asked if I might help her stash her suitcase on the overhead rack, the tiny lovely acted positively indignant. "No, thank you!" Even as she shunned me, I could not help but notice those beautiful brown eyes. They were dark as chocolate-covered onyx. Though the way she glared they might as well have been matching stop signs.
"My mother warned me never to talk to strange men," she went on, standing on tiptoes to hoist her bag on to the rack.
"How do you know I'm strange?" I heard myself say, helping stash her baggage in spite of her protest. I was more surprised by my retort than she was. I've always been painfully shy around the fair sex. Up to now I'd pretty much just let them feed me. But this girl looked more likely to hit me with a brick than slip me a ham sandwich.
"Well, for one thing," she replied, her face tilted up to mine like a gorgeous pixie's, "your derby's too small for your head." Without thinking, I whipped off the offending hat, then stood there looking at it with no idea what to say next. I was tongue-tied, and felt myself flushing up, until I raised my eyes and saw that she was aiming a sly half-smile at me. Then we both burst out laughing.
The truth is, I was always self-conscious about my appearance. A lifetime of being stared at like a carnival act will do that to you. But the more abnormal I grew, the more I tried to look normal. Presentable. I never left the house—or hotel room—without making sure my shoes were shined, my suit pressed, my face and fingernails scrubbed clean, and my bowtie just so. Fat men tend to look sloppy even when they're not. So I was always careful to come off neat and dignified—especially when I was a tittle lipsy, as the great mick comic Muggles O'Reilly used to say. Happily, at this particular moment on the Red Line to Long Beach, I was sober as a dead senator.
Donning the offending bowler, I smiled, then lifted it off again, then rolled it down my arm, as Errol had taught me, and bounced it on my knee with a flourish before taking the seat across from her. "I'm going to the Bide-A-Wee Theater," I said. "Do you know it?" At this her kewpie-doll mouth opened in a little O. "Do I? That's where I'm going!" For a second she looked suspicious, but when it turned out this pint-sized beauty and I were in the same production, she extended her child's hand and curtsied. "My name's Minta Durfee."
"Minta Durfee," I repeated, the four strange syllables like candies in my mouth. I'd never had a girl curtsy at me before. I was so enchanted I curtsied back, a maneuver that turned more than a few heads. "Pleasure to meet you, Minta Durfee. I'm Roscoe Arbuckle." For the rest of the ride, we chatted away.
As I was already a bit of a stage veteran, I needed less
rehearsal. While Minta, an aspiring local who'd been in only one production before this one, was required to spend more time at the theater. Naturally, I found a reason to show up at the Bide-A-Wee every day. But the real reason was little Minta.
Fat Man in Love
I may have been 21, but I had never courted before. My experience with the fair sex was more or less limited to affectionate smooches from those women who brought me backstage snacks. I did not even know what courting was. But even if I didn't know what I was doing, the other cast members certainly did. Minta herself told me how much the other starlets teased her. We met for walks on the pier every day. By only our third or fourth seaside stroll, I realized, with a shock, that I wanted to marry her. I also realized that I'd blown nearly all my money on whiskey, new clothes, and big meals. I knew, if I was going to ask for Minta's hand, that I had better have some extra cash in mine. Maybe some guys could rely on looks. I needed some solid signs of finance. If I couldn't be dashing, I could at least be dependable.
So, without telling Minta, I held my nose and made an appointment to visit Colonel Selig, a filmmaker whose name I'd gotten from a trick yodeler at the Portola Cafe. The yodeler, a yellow-eyed son of the West Virginia hollers named Piedmont, told me over a plate of catfish what Selig had told him at his audition. "Boy, the movie business is really just the face business, and the camera ain't been built could make a mug like yours anything but terrifying. If you're lucky, you'll just scare people. Most likely you'll make 'em upchuck." I half-hoped the Colonel would greet me with similar enthusiasm, and I'd be spared the humiliation of aping emotions for cash in front of those white-hot camera lights.
Selig had made a splash after releasing a film about Teddy Roosevelt bagging a lion in Africa. I happened to catch the short when I had some time to kill in Cleveland. All I could think while I was watching was, If that's Teddy Roosevelt I'm the Czar of Tasmania . . . You'd have to be really stupid to believe—as Selig insisted—that you were actually watching Roosevelt. I've seen more resemblance between a sofa and a walrus. And Selig was considered one of the good ones!
Moving pictures, as far as I could tell, were made by hacks and peddled to idiots. Only an actor with no regard for the dignity of his own profession would let himself appear on film. Or one who needed the five bucks Selig was shelling out more than he needed professional dignity.
Hot Lights and a Grown Man
in a High Chair
Dodging the rabid dogs and dazed pedestrians Los Angeles seemed to breed in equal number, I made my way to Eighth and Hill, where the Colonel and his team worked out of a lot behind a Chinese laundry. With hardly a how-do-you-do, Selig, a man so nondescript you couldn't forget him, asked how much I weighed. When I told him 266 he seemed impressed. I'd expected the same treatment Piedmont the Yodeler received, and was surprised when I didn't get it. "You got a good fat face," Selig said, sounding genuinely glad about it, as if a fat face was something you'd want to grab strangers and brag about. But that was pretty much the extent of our exchange.
Twenty minutes later, my fat face pancaked and rouged, I was led out of the dressing room to the camera like a condemned man to the firing squad. The director was a downy-cheeked, likable baldy by the name of Francis Boggs. Before starting off, Boggs gave me a few brief directions. Chief among them, I'll never forget, was "Don't look at the camera until I tell you to, then don't stop looking at it!" After this sphinxlike edict, I went through my paces with a couple of other actors, moving from scene to ludicrous scene with a woodenness that shamed me deeply.
Mostly, I had to look surprised. An effect I achieved crudely, at the director's behest, by making my eyes go wide and holding my mouth open. I've seen trained seals display greater range of emotion than my fellow actors and I that fateful day. It was like a dumb show with hot lights and a grown man barking orders from his high chair.
That first epic was a one-reeler called Ben's Kid. About which the less said the better. For my second Selig effort, a half-reeler called Mrs. Jones' Birthday, I got a review in the New York Dramatic Mirror. "The Jones of the picture is a fat fellow"—why, thank you!—"a new face in picture pantomime, and the earnestness of his work adds greatly to its value."
I did not show the review to Minta, even though, by the time it ran, we were a lot farther along than walks on the pier. What respectable girl—let alone performer—would let herself be seen with the likes of a movie actor? Why not find somebody more respectable, like a purse snatcher?
Still, the most memorable thing about my virgin moviemaking experience was not what happened during it but what happened after.
Two months after I'd taken my money for playing japes to the camera, the Colonel's gardener, a Japanese fellow, got the heebie-jeebies and shot poor Francis Boggs dead right there on the lot. Selig took a slug in the arm, but shrugged it off and kept producing. As far as I was concerned, the mad Jap's attack on Francis was one more reason to stay away from the movie business. Nobody bothered to explain the shooting, and there wasn't much in the papers about it. All I kept thinking was, theater may be grueling, but at least you didn't have to worry about people getting murdered.
Despite this, I continued to hold my nose and make my sneaky way to Selig Studios, earning my 500 pennies a day cavorting like a monkey in front of the unwieldy camera. I'd done worse for less, but still . . . While I was courting Minta, the last thing I wanted was for her parents to find out their daughter's beau trafficked with film types. They were salt of the earth. Her Dad drove a streetcar. My profession aside, I could tell, when they first met me, it was a shock for Mom and Dad to find their pretty, 98-pound pride and joy involved with an orphan nearly 200 pounds heavier than she was. (You could see it in their eyes: My God, he'll crush her!)
Once I was able to make the old couple laugh, they seemed to get over my bulk. Mrs. Durfee even said I was "a charmer." But I knew she wouldn't think I was too charming if she found out I'd been consorting with "film people." Might as well let your daughter run off with a hobo. Though a hobo would have been preferable to a movie actor. At least no one could go to a Nickelodeon and see your hobo son-in-law jumping around on screen with a bunch of other hoboes. Not so with a film actor. Anyone with a nickel and a pair of eyes would be able to see what kind of moral leper the girl you raised left home for.
For a while, I kept mum on the movie work, and had some extra folding money in my pocket to spend on trinkets for the gal of my dreams. (Even though I never really dreamed about girls all that much; mostly I dreamed of my mother.)
Before the season closed, I asked Minta to marry me. Much to my surprise, she didn't laugh. Though she later confided that she believed me when I was said I'd drop her in the Pacific if she turned me down. (Did I mention I was holding her by the shoulders, three feet over the pier railing, when I popped the question? This sounds more sinister than it was. At least I hope.) At the suggestion of the manager, we were wed onstage at the Bide-A-Wee, after the last show.
I can hardly recall the weeks before the ceremony. Let alone the ceremony. I was extra-polluted, but back then I could hide it pretty well. I'll just tell you what happened later. I do recall an awkward moment with the mayor of Long Beach, on hand to recite the vows. "Do you, Fatty Arbuckle," His Honor intoned, "take this woman to be your lawful wedded—" etc . . . etc . . ." And I wasn't having it. The one place I did not want to be Fatty was my own wedding.
"The name is Roscoe," I corrected him, pronouncing "Roscoe" very slowly, which got a few tentative cackles, before people knew it was okay and began to laugh outright. There was a hefty crowd, on account of the publicity the manager generated—the highlight of which was a display of wedding gifts at Buffums, the crown jewel of Long Beach department stores.
Each gift had a handwritten card underneath it, describing the benefactor and the franchise they were promoting. "M'Lady's Oven Mitt courtesy of Kelso's Family Restaurant. 'Strap on your feedbag and come to Kelso's!' "
The Virginia Hotel, where the actors and cr
ew were staying, threw us a wild reception. Or so they say. I was 21, and plastered. Minta was 17 . . . and 17. Before we retired for the night, I overheard a couple of tipsy actresses kidding my new bride that she had better be careful, " 'less you wanna end up like a flat tire, honey—you make sure and ride him, not vicey-versey."
The rest of the evening the shame of those words laid me low.
Fatty, Lover
I could not perform at all on my wedding night. I kept thinking that the next day everybody would know, and the prospect crippled me. I tried to tell Minta how horrifying this was, to have everybody know. But when she asked why, I couldn't really say. Also, I did not tell her how scared I was of showing her my body. Of what the sight of fat might do to her. I'd never been nude in front of anyone but my mother. And she always looked away.
"Honey," I finally confided, "I couldn't stand everybody gaping at us. Making comments." Minta said nothing. She had a very serious expression, as if she'd just discovered something, and she had to decide then and there what to do about it.
After we lay side by side for a while, Minta quietly got up from bed. She was tiny and pale as a porcelain doll in the white lace nighty from Paris that Buffums had bestowed on her. She stepped carefully through the flower-strewn suite of the Long Beach Hotel the City Council had provided us and disappeared into the powder room for what seemed like a long time. I stared at the picture of President Wilson over the bed, wondering if she'd get the wrong impression if I got the bottle out of the suitcase. Maybe a nip would settle my hash, but I wouldn't want her to think I needed one.
Minta stepped out of the powder room, saw me on my feet, and mistook my start for the bottle as ardor. She moved dreamily closer and put her arms around me. Or as far around me as they would go.