Mr Starlight

by Laurie Graham

  But I hadn’t taken it. I was eking it out. And if it hadn’t been for me he’d have had to find a way home before he starved. Intermission singer on a banana boat, that’s how he’d have ended up. Anyway, I was on my way to another audition job one morning and my route happened to take me past the Milo Freeman Agency. He was the only one who hadn’t given us a flat ‘no’, so I thought I’d look in on him. And that was what changed everything.

  It was a scruffy little place. He shared a receptionist with the private detective on the floor above him.

  I said, ‘Had any more thoughts on Mr Starlight and accompanist?’

  ‘God in heaven,’ he said, ‘I was about to pray for a miracle and you walk through the door.’

  Milo represented a songstress called Ruby Farrell, who was meant to be appearing at the Judge House Hotel, Indianapolis, except she’d suffered a ruptured appendix. He said, ‘You boys available?’

  I said we were.

  He said, ‘Sure now? You gonna call the main attraction before you commit yourself?’

  But we didn’t have a telephone, for one thing, and for another, I’d left Greely’s to become a world traveller, so I wasn’t going to turn down Indianapolis, wherever it was. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m the one who makes the decisions. We’ll be here at four.’

  I was so excited. I took those stairs two at a time when I got back and there he lay on the bed, curlers in his quiff, practising his signature. I said, ‘Get the valises out. We’re on our way.’

  Milo was offering us two weeks at the Mark Twain in Peoria, Illinois after we’d done Indianapolis.

  Sel said, ‘Where? I’m not going to some dump in the sticks. I’m holding out for New York.’

  I said, ‘In that case you’ll be holding out on your own. This is a great chance, Sel, and I’m taking it.’

  He said, ‘They won’t take you without me.’

  I wasn’t sure if they would but I called his bluff. ‘Oh, yes they will,’ I said, ‘it’s already agreed.’

  That got him to his feet.

  Milo looked so happy to see us. ‘Here they are!’ he said. ‘The Starlight Brothers! The answer to my prayers.’

  Sel said, ‘No, not the Starlight Brothers. Mr Starlight, with Cled Boff on backing.’

  Milo said, ‘Brothers sounds better. Family acts are very popular. I have the Betsie Sisters out in Nebraska singing up a storm, three big girls with faces that could turn milk, but I just had a request for them to extend their tour.’

  Sel said, ‘Nebraska! Who the hell cares about Nebraska! I’m Mr Starlight and I want New York.’

  I could see him blowing both our chances. It was lucky for him Milo was the fatherly type. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Forget New York. This town knows what it likes and saccharine is not the flavour of the month. The good news is there’s a great big country out there eager to be entertained. Millions of regular folks who see nothing wrong with being a corn ball. Now, how about “The Boff Brothers”?’

  Sel said, ‘We’ve been that. It didn’t work. He’s Cled Boff now and I’m Mr Starlight, and that’s how it’s got to be.’

  Milo said, ‘OK, OK. Maybe family acts have peaked.’

  Sel said, ‘And I get to pick the songs.’ He’d always picked the songs.

  I said, ‘I wouldn’t mind if you’d pick one of mine once in a while.’

  ‘Write one worth singing, then,’ he said.

  He was full of himself. ‘About these venues?’ he said. ‘Are they any good?’

  ‘High-class hotels,’ Milo said. ‘Businessmen. That’s who you’ll be playing to. Conventioneers.’

  Sel said, ‘Will they have their wives with them? The ladies are the ones that really go for me.’

  Milo said, ‘Is that a fact? Well, some of those guys are sure to have gotten lucky. They’ll have company even if it ain’t the married kind. But they won’t want pyrotechnics after a heavy meal. Just easy listening and some of that crazy British talking you boys do. You can’t go wrong.’

  We had to get a train Monday night out of Penn Station and change at Washington DC.

  ‘When you arrive,’ Milo said, ‘get a shave, get a shoeshine and take a cab. Don’t act cheap.’

  Sel never needed encouraging in that respect. He went straight out and bought a pair of snakeskin slip-on dress shoes to celebrate.

  I said, ‘Well, Mr Moneybags, there go your dinners for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘If I starve, my suits’ll hang better.’

  So we were back in business, thanks to Ruby Farrell’s bad luck. Dead men’s shoes, Sel called it. And it wasn’t the only time we did ourselves a bit of good by stepping into them.

  We performed two hours a night, with Sundays off if we weren’t travelling and as many steak dinners as we liked. I loved it, but Sel was frustrated. He wanted an audience that paid attention to him, not businessmen playing the big tycoon with their floozies, not lovebirds chinking their glasses and nibbling each other’s ears. ‘I’m bored,’ he kept saying. He’d sleep in till about twelve and I made it a point to have something lined up for us; a livestock show, a trolley car ride, an exhibition of quilts. But the afternoons still dragged and he started consorting with kitchen porters. He was gone for hours with one of them, reckoned they’d been in somebody’s motor out to a farm where you could pick your own pumpkins. I never did work out why. They didn’t appear to have picked any.

  Indianapolis and Peoria may have been dead men’s shoes, but Lansing, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio weren’t. We got them on our own merits, a month at the deWitt, which was time enough for me to enjoy a little liaison with the deputy housekeeper, an older woman and very appreciative, and then a month at the Maumee Criterion, with a view of the bay from our billet, if you stood on a chair and leaned out a bit.

  Then someone else’s misfortune turned to our advantage. I was called to the telephone. It was Milo. ‘The opportunity of a lifetime,’ he said. ‘Get yourselves to Chicago first thing Sunday. You’ve got two nights at the Palmer House.’

  Our next engagement was supposed to be the Allegheny in Pittsburgh. I said, ‘What about Pittsburgh?’

  Milo said, ‘I’m sending Lew Brown to Pittsburgh in your stead. I want you to have the Palmer House. The Empire Room supper club is the type of venue where Sel can really shine. It’s his birthday and Christmas all rolled into one, Cled, and I’m depending on you to make sure he realises it.’

  We were substituting for Jackie Brennan, who’d had a sudden death in the family.

  Sel said, ‘I don’t know that these dining rooms are the kind of engagement I want. I need a proper audience to work with, not punters with their snouts in the trough. You shouldn’t have taken it without asking me.’

  I said, ‘How could I? You’d disappeared as per. Driving around with some street arab, looking at vegetables, I suppose. And I took it because Milo says this is a premier venue. So what’s it to be? Chicago or back to Saltley?’

  ‘Saltley?’ he said. ‘I’m never going back there. I’d sweep the streets sooner.’ That was a joke. Still, he thought better about the Palmer House and packed his bag. He said, ‘But from now on I don’t want you accepting any more engagements without asking me. And we’re getting ourselves a map. I don’t think Chicago is anything like on the way to Hollywood.’

  That was his big new idea; if New York didn’t fall into his lap he’d go into musical films. I seemed to be hearing Hubert Conroy’s name more and more, and Sel wanted to keep heading in his direction. But according to Dolly, one of the hotplate waitresses at the Criterion, Milo was right. The Palmer House was a pretty fancy joint and not to be sniffed at. She even took the precaution of getting our autographs before we left. ‘You may be nobodies right now,’ she said, ‘but you never know.’ As a matter of fact I gave her more than my autograph.

  Dolly was right. The Palmer House was a top-notch venue. Dining rooms, banqueting rooms, ballrooms. They could seat thousands and the lobby was like a cathedra: marble c
olumns and a great big lofty ceiling covered with paintings and gold leaf. The first thing we were told was that in future we should use the service entrance and we were accommodated in an inside room where you had to keep the electric light on all day, but the piano was a Blüthner and the steaks were so tender you could eat them with a spoon.

  We were getting ready for our first night there when the lapis shirt studs reappeared, supposed to have been on loan from the shop on the Queen Mary. I said, ‘You stole them.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just forgot to take them back.’

  I said, ‘Hubert Conroy left money to guarantee them.’

  ‘So?’ he said. ‘I’ll pay him back. All the more reason to go and see him.’

  That supper club attracted a high-class crowd. Good-looking ladies in silky dresses and furs and lipstick. If we’d stayed a bit longer I’d have set my stall out. As it was, our two nights stretched to seven when Jackie Brennan’s bereavement took longer than they’d expected and we got a very nice write-up in the Chicago Tribune.

  Now here’s a thing! [it said]. A new act wowing them at the Palmer House niterie and it isn’t even home-grown! British vocalist Mister Starlight accompanied by his brother Cled

  Boff are currently replacing Supper Club regular Jackie Brennan. Mister Starlight delivers a nice line in Sammy Kaye songs, but more than that, he sprinkles them with glitter dust and serves them with those dimpled smiles no girl can resist. And not only the girls. Moms love him too. I predict a great future for this likeable songster. Mr S and his brother are appearing with the Dick Kennett Band and comic Jerry Jaspers, through Sunday. Don’t miss ’em!

  We bought three copies and clipped them out; one for Mam, one for Dilys and one for our scrapbook. We never did meet Jackie Brennan but I’d have liked her to know that her sad loss turned into a big gain for us.

  Milo came out to see our last night. ‘Now we can go places, boys,’ he said.

  Once you’d succeeded at the Palmer House, other doors opened. That winter we played the Detroit Statler and the Cleveland Grand, the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee and the Belle Rive in Kansas City. All big, fancy hotels with an elegant clientele. Milo said, ‘These are the places where you’ll get a following. Folks who’ve made a buck without growing highfalutin and know how to enjoy their money. The kind of folks who’ll take you into their hearts.’

  But Sel was never content. He didn’t like the way people walked in front of him to go to the toilet. And some places he didn’t even have a little podium to stand on. He just had to perform from the dance floor. It was a good job he had the height. ‘When I get my own show,’ he’d say, ‘I’ll give them entrances. I’ll have a drum roll and backlighting, and then there I’ll be, poised at the top of a lovely staircase in a fabulous costume.’

  His shiny jackets were gone, except for the glistenette one which he kept as a souvenir. We wore dinner suits for the supper clubs, but Sel made a feature of his ties and cummerbunds. He’d started making his own, stitching spangles on them. He was quite handy with a needle. He ’d never darn the holes in my socks, though. ‘Paint your toe black,’ he’d say. ‘Buy a new pair.’

  Spend, spend, spend, that was him. Shoes, shirts, waistcoats. He’d started out with one bag and by the time we got to Kansas City he had three. And whichever town we were in he’d go scouting for shiny beads, to individualise his accessories. ‘So I don’t get mistaken for a singing waiter,’ he’d say. And he’d end up leaving half of them behind. You could have followed our trail just looking for sequins on hotel carpets.

  ‘They call me up’, Milo said, ‘and ask for the boy with the smile and the glitter, so don’t hold back.’

  Sel never held back in his life. Except in one respect.

  The ladies were like bees round a honey pot with him, but he had no interest in romance. While we were appearing at the Peabody there was a lady sat in a ringside seat night after night and after every show there ’d be a note waiting for him, reminding him which room she was in.

  I said, ‘Go on, why don’t you? Get yourself a bit of experience.’

  As far as I knew he still hadn’t got off the mark. He reckoned he had but he’d never provide me with any details, so I didn’t believe him.

  I said, ‘There’s nothing to it, you know? It’s as natural as breathing.’

  ‘I need my beauty sleep,’ he said. ‘You go, if you’re so keen for somebody to put her out of her misery.’

  I said, ‘No thank you. I’ve made my own arrangements.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘With a turn-down maid.’

  She may have been a turn-down maid. She never turned me down, though.

  He said, ‘Cled, my mind’s on my career. I don’t want sidetracking. I don’t want complications.’

  I said, ‘One of these days you’ll meet somebody and lightning’ll strike.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  And it’s true he never did have a lot of luck in love.

  We were getting along right enough in those days. He was willing to put in some work in the afternoons, trying out new songs, then he’d go off for an hour or two with one of his new pals. A bellhop usually, or a porter. One thing about Sel, there was never any side to him. And they were nice enough boys. They had to be, to work in such high-class establishments.

  The Peabody was my favourite. I played the baby grand in the lobby every evening while the dinner crowd were coming in. There were beautiful dusty-pink settees where you could sit and get a proper cup of tea. And then, of course, there were the ducks. They brought them down in the lift every morning. Sel liked to sleep late, but I always made a point of being down in the lobby at eleven o’clock, to hear the music start up and see those little ducks come marching out for their dip in the fountain.

  It was the duckmaster who sold us our first car, an old Plymouth sedan, and it was a porter called Jefferson who taught me how to drive it, so all in all I have very happy memories of the Peabody. Memphis was a strange place, though. I went to the zoo one afternoon and they wouldn’t let me in. ‘No whites today,’ the cashier said.

  Funny town.

  Milo got us the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas for Christmas of 1951, in a very good line-up: the Desmond Trio, a Chinese illusionist and Patti Page top of the bill. But neither of us liked it there. It was too big for itself somehow, fourteen storeys high on the edge of a one-horse town. ‘A carbuncle sitting on a pimple,’ Sel called it.

  Then, a lot of the guests were there for their health, taking the waters and sitting around in dressing gowns looking sorry for themselves. It didn’t seem like Christmas.

  I said to Sel, ‘It doesn’t seem right, walking around in shirtsleeves in December.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I really miss waking up with ice on the inside of the window.’

  He didn’t seem to get homesick like I did sometimes.

  I said, ‘Don’t you ever think of Ninevah Street?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think of Mrs E peering round her curtains when they go there to film the story of my life.’

  According to Mam, Mr and Mrs Edkins were great friends of hers all of a sudden. ‘Mrs E went with her sister to see the Illuminations,’ Mam wrote, ‘so I told Mr E to come to me for his tea while she was gone. Men never eat properly if they’re left. I didn’t expect anything in return but he very kindly insisted on sweeping my chimney, so that was nice.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know. It’d be nice not to be living out of suitcases all the time.’

  ‘Don’t live out of a suitcase, then,’ he said. ‘Be like me. Wherever I am, I can make it home.’ And he would spread his stuff everywhere, photos and little knick-knacks people had given him, and he’d buy plants, even if we were only in a place for a few days. ‘Know what I think we should do?’ he said. ‘Finish this booking and go to see Hubert and Kaye. We’re practically almost there.’ Of course, that was a non-driver speaking.

  I said, ‘I don’t see how we can walk away f
rom good money.’ Milo had got us the Flame Room in Minneapolis for February.

  Sel said, ‘You’ve got to stop looking at things that way. You’re not at Greely’s now. Nose to the grindstone. Grateful to have a few quid in your pocket. You have to visualise the big picture. That’s what I do. Nice cars, swimming pools, maids, drivers. I’m a big picture person.’

  I said, ‘And I’m the little things person who got us this far. Remembering what time we have to get to places. Putting oil in the motor. Getting your trousers pressed. I’m a ruddy sight more to this outfit than a piano player, Sel. And I’m tired.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you look it. You should try the waters while we’re here. Relax a bit. Just take a back seat for a while. Apart from the motor. I don’t know where the oil goes and I don’t want to know. But I’ll take care of the trousers and stuff.’

  I should have known he was up to something. I phoned Milo to see what he had for us after Minneapolis.

  ‘Who can say?’ he said. ‘I’m surely not putting you boys up for anything else till I know you’re serious. It seems early in a career for a vacation, Cledwyn, but what do I know?’

  Sel had told him we didn’t want the Flame Room.

  I said, ‘He’s made a mistake.’

  Milo said, ‘I agree. But I can’t make him do it. I’m sending them Gene Tully. There’s a boy who deserves a lucky break.’

  I said, ‘Are you still representing us?’

  ‘If there’s anything to represent,’ he said. ‘Tell you what, Cled, give me a call when you’re through vacationing. I’ll see what I can do for you. If anybody remembers who you are.’

  Sel was out, taking a steam bath.

  I was ready for him. I said, ‘Well, now you’ve done it. Halfway across America with a drawer full of bow ties and not a pot to piss in. California! Milo would have got us something in California if you’d given him time. But you have to go and ruin everything. You’re loopy. You’re not Vic Damone yet, you know. You’re not Mario ruddy Lanza. Carry on like this and you’ll be on queer street.’