Mr Starlight

by Laurie Graham

  He just laughed. ‘Big picture, Cledwyn,’ he said. ‘What do I keep telling you about the big picture? By the time we’re done in California, the Flame Room won’t be able to afford us.’ The thing with Sel was he wasn’t corrected when he was a bab. He wasn’t a naughty lad because he didn’t really go in for things that lead to trouble: fighting, hitting cricket balls through windows. But Mam never told him his limits. If he said he wanted to make rock cakes, he wasn’t told he couldn’t. There’d be flour everywhere and sugar underfoot, and sometimes they were burned on the bottom, but with Mam it was always, ‘Oh, they’re lovely, Selwyn. They melt in the mouth. You are a clever lad.’ In my opinion that’s why he grew up so cocky. That’s why it never occurred to him that things wouldn’t always go his way.

  Anyway, we played our last night at the Baker, packed our bags and started heading west.

  I said, ‘I hope you’re not expecting a welcome committee?’

  We were sitting in a diner in Amarillo.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I’m expecting closed doors all over again, but I intend opening them. When I had my vision and she told me to come to America, she meant California. I can feel it pulling me.’

  I said, ‘I bet Mam misses you.’

  We’d been gone nearly two years.

  ‘She’s all right,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing matters to Mam: that we’re making a future for ourselves. She always knew I’d leave. I always knew I would. Anyway, Dilys keeps an eye on her.’

  I said, ‘Not very fair on Dilys, is it?’

  He said, ‘Look, I haven’t come here to get out of looking after Mam. I’m here because it’s meant to be. And by the time she really needs looking after I’ll afford the best wheelchair money can buy. Fur-lined. With a big Gary Cooper lookalike to push her around. But right now I’m going to California, whether you’re up for it or not. We can go our separate ways, it’s up to you.’

  I said, ‘And how do you think you’re going to get there without me? Who’ll drive you if I don’t?’

  He looked around. ‘He will,’ he said. And he winked at some young truck driver sitting in the corner eating pancakes.

  He would have done too. He’d have gone off with a stranger and ended up dumped on the roadside without a pair of cuff links to his name.

  ELEVEN

  Sometimes people only tell you to look them up if ever you’re passing because they know you won’t ever be passing, but that wasn’t the case with Hubert F. Conroy. I never met a more genuine man and when we did pitch up, with our exhaust pipe hanging off and no fixed abode, he took us in and treated us like family.

  Hubert and Kaye had a beautiful home up its own private driveway in Beverly Glen. We had to stop three times to ask directions and one gent we asked, clipping the edges of a lawn, took a long hard look at our old motor and suggested we’d made a mistake with the address, and when we found it, I understood what he was getting at. It was a palace, in the Spanish bungalow style, with archways and wrought-iron doors. Cigarette lighters on every occasional table. A lady called Willa who cooked and cleaned. And a swimming pool, of course.

  Sel said, ‘This is it, Cled. This is the kind of place we’re going to have, after we get our big break. Can’t you just see Mam, sitting on a patio in sunglasses and a pair of peep-toe sandals?’

  I couldn’t imagine any such thing. Apart from His Numps, nobody in Saltley owned a pair of sunglasses. There was no requirement for them.

  I said, ‘If you can point us in the direction of a boarding house …’ but neither of them would hear of it.

  Hubert said, ‘Hotels are where you stay when you don’t have folks in town. Don’t matter how fancy they are they make a person feel lonesome and I’ve spent enough time on the road to know. Too many empty rooms in this place anyhow.’

  Kaye said, ‘Conroy’s right. Stay as long as you like. It’ll be like having Junior in the house again.’

  Hubert and Kaye had had a son, Junior, dropped dead of natural causes when he was twenty-three. I think that’s why they made such a fuss of us.

  ‘Make yourselves at home,’ Kate said.

  And Sel took her at her word. He loved to splash around in the pool, although he never did bother learning to swim. He just stayed in the shallow end. Then he’d flop on a reclining chair and study Kaye’s magazines, deciding what kind of bedheads he was going to have when he made the big time.

  I said, ‘Now we’re here we should get back with Milo. Tell him to fix us up with some hotels.’

  ‘Supper clubs!’ I heard him say to Kaye. ‘People chomping on their celery and clattering their soup spoons. A vocalist gets no respect.’

  I said, ‘I’ll tell you who gets no respect, a person who sits in a paddling pool all day and doesn’t pay his way.’

  Hubert Conroy was a man who’d started from nothing so I thought he’d back me up. He said, ‘Cled, let me tell you something. I worked hard, it’s true. There were weeks when I hardly saw Kaye and Junior. But I didn’t make any money till I started working smart. And that’s something Sel seems to understand, not to wear himself out chasing after dumb things. You have to survey the scene and spot your chances, and you ain’t likely to do that if you never lift your nose from the grindstone. So enjoy your vacation.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ Kaye said, ‘supper clubs are a thing of the past. Television. That’s the future.’

  We were familiar with television, of course, having travelled. Hubert and Kaye had three tellies even back in those days, but our mam was the first person in Ninevah Street to get one, and that was years later. Dilys and Arthur bought one so they could watch the Coronation but they always did keep abreast of new gadgets. Dilys was the first in their road to get an all-electric washtub too.

  I said, ‘I don’t see how a television show can be a patch on a class act, seen in the flesh. I can’t see it catching on.’

  Kaye said, ‘I can tell you why it’ll catch on. Human nature. Folks love to sit in an armchair. I do it myself. I sit down to watch Miltie Berle and before I know it I wasted a whole evening. Time was me and Conroy’d drive to the Ambassador, get dinner and a floor show.’

  ‘Dragging a tired working man from his rest,’ Hubert said.

  Kaye said, ‘See what I mean? Human nature. That’s why we should be investing in television. And armchairs. And snack foods folks can eat without taking their eyes off the screen.’

  That was how Kaycee Munchies got started. And that wasn’t the only thing.

  Kaye had heard about a new company that put television shows on to moving film, so you could show them any time, anywhere, and she persuaded Hubert to invest in it. ‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘If you’re starring in a Broadway show you have to turn up every night. If you get sick, they cancel or the stand-in goes on and either way the punters ain’t happy. And you’re only ever as good as your last performance. The greatest talents on earth have off days. But if you make television appearances and commit them to film the show can always go on. On and on. You can be the other side of the world, filming something else, or taking your wife on a cruise – are you listening to me, Conroy? – and your reruns’ll still be out there, keeping your face where folks’ll remember it and making you good money. You could be dead and you’ll still be earning.’

  ‘I like it,’ Hubert said.

  And one of the first things Kaycee Productions did was ask us to record something for a new show, Variety Cavalcade.

  That got Sel off his deckchair. He said, ‘I want to be backlit, so you can just see me in profile, leaning against the piano, as if I’m chatting to Cled. Black tuxedo, black tie, rhinestone cuff links. I’ll do ‘Embraceable You’, ‘Music, Music, Music!’, ‘Sugar-coated Lies’. Keep changing the mood. And I want the camera to stay on my best side.’

  It was filmed in a lot on Van Ness Avenue, nothing much there except cables all over the floor, lights and a camera and a man on a trolley with a microphone boom. Russ Berdahl was the producer. That afternoon they were fi
lming a vent act with a wooden horse, a guitar duo and Mr Starlight. Mr Starlight accompanied by Cled Boff, that is. Sel started straight in. Marking out where he was going to walk to during this song, what he was going to do during that song.

  Russ said, ‘Whoa there! I don’t want you walking anywhere. See this camera? We can’t just move this baby. So I’d like you just to choose your spot and stay there. Stand and deliver!’

  Sel said, ‘What’s going to happen when you get a knife thrower on the show?’ He always had to argue. It wasn’t enough for him we were liable to be on American television, seen by thousands of people.

  We did one run-through and one take. Berdahl said we were great, but we didn’t feel great. When you’re playing somewhere like the Empire Room, you rise to your audience and your surroundings. But the Kaycee studio was just a couple of big breeze block rooms and the only people who were there were too busy checking their dials to give you a smile or tap their feet.

  Sel said, ‘What about applause?’

  Berdahl said they’d put that in later.

  Sel said, ‘I’ll do it again. There were a few things I wasn’t happy about.’

  ‘No time,’ Berdahl said. ‘And everything was just perfect.’

  It turned out it wasn’t quite perfect. Sel had a shadow from the microphone across his chin and he looked like a dog on a choke chain, trying to remember to stand still. ‘Lesson number one,’ he said. ‘Never leave anything that matters to other people. From now on it’s going to be in the contract; staging, lighting, the lot. I’m taking control.’

  I said, ‘You can’t start laying down the law. We’re just starting out.’

  He said, ‘That’s exactly when you do lay down the law, before they get into the habit of pleasing themselves. Start as you mean to go on, Cled. And I mean to have everything perfect.’

  We went back to the Conroys and sat around the pool.

  Sel said, ‘Kaye, I don’t know if this is going to work.’

  She said, ‘It was only a try-out. Think ahead. Think of all those folk who’re going to see you at the flick of a switch.’

  ‘I am doing,’ he said. ‘But it was Mr Starlight playing in a mortuary. There was no atmosphere.’

  She said, ‘We’ll make atmosphere. We’ll hang drapes behind you.’

  I said, ‘We used to have a potted palm, remember, Sel?’

  Kaye said that could be arranged too.

  Sel said, ‘I didn’t like having to stand still either. They must be able to move the camera, otherwise how do they film cowboy films?’

  I said, ‘I can tell you that. You have to have a camera on a dolly.’ I’d read about it in Moviegoer magazine. I said, ‘And I’ll tell you what another problem was. No audience. I can play to an empty room. Often have done. But Sel needs an audience. Doesn’t have to be a big one. But he’s like a torch with no batteries otherwise.’

  Hubert said, ‘The boy’s right. When we seen you in the Starlight Club you were a real live wire. The audience never knew what you’d do next. And you seemed like you were enjoying yourself. That was the main thing about you. You were real natural and friendly and happy.’

  Kaye said, ‘Well, there y’are then. We have to get you an audience. Conroy, we’re gonna need a bigger studio.’

  Hubert said, ‘This woman won’t rest till she’s spent my last dime.’

  ‘I’m gonna make you more than I ever spent,’ she said. ‘We’ll film the whole show in front of an audience. Maybe everybody’ll perform better that way.’

  So Kaycee Productions launched Variety Cavalcade, filmed at the Topanga Ballroom. We did the first two in front of an invited audience, which actually meant the Conroys papered the place with their friends and relations, and we recorded two shows back to back. Then they gave it out on KC radio that if people wanted seats they could line up round the back of the Topanga, first come first served. By the third week they were turning people away.

  Variety Cavalcade went out after a show called Murder Mystery so we got big audiences right from the start. As Kaye said, this was one of the beauties of television. If folks watched one programme there was a very good chance they’d stay where they were and watch whatever followed on. And it was a lot easier for them than getting dressed up and driving to a club. They could sit at home in their carpet slippers. They could watch it while they were eating their tea.

  We did twelve shows and every one we did was better than the last. It was mainly ladies who queued to get tickets, housewives, and Sel had a knack with them. He’d go into the audience and start chatting to them, asking them about their frocks or their kiddies, acting like he had all the time in the world, even though everything had to be done to the split second.

  Kaye said, ‘You make it seem so natural.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘It is natural. They’re nice ladies. It’s just like leaning over the garden wall.’ Leaning over the garden wall in a hundred-dollar jacket.

  He started developing an American way of speaking too. He’d pick somebody out of the audience and bring her up to the microphone to sing along with him, just like he’d done with Kaye on the Queen Mary. He’d put his arm round her and crack a joke, to stop her feeling nervous, and afterwards he’d say, ‘Now you’re a TV star! See how easy it is?’

  We cut a promotional record: ‘Younger than Springtime’ with ‘Harbour Lights’ on the flip side, and then we were signed to do twelve more programmes, with a local firm putting up money, so the show got a new name. The Bartine Variety Half Hour. It was called sponsorship. Three times during the show Sel had to say, ‘Don’t forget, folks, spend five dollars at Bartine’s Household Linens and get a free copy of my latest record.’ ‘My latest record’ was how he always put it, ‘I’m making a new record.’ But it was always me who wrote home, me who sent newspaper clippings to Mam and then copies of our records to Dilys, so I made sure they knew. I didn’t let them run away with the idea that he was the only recording star in the family.

  That first disc did so well Bartine’s ran out after two days and there was an incident in their towel department, caused by disappointed ladies. It was the lead story on KCR News that evening, even though there was trouble brewing in Indo-China, looked like it might turn into another war, and Clark Gable had just resigned from MGM.

  Kaye said, ‘We should follow through with another disc. Bring it out in time for the next series.’

  I said, ‘And we should record some of my songs. For added family interest.’

  Sel said, ‘Cled, I can’t see Parlophone falling over themselves for “Renée on My Knuckles”.’ I’d never have suggested any such thing. That was a personal lyric composed after a disappointment of the heart. Writing that helped me pick myself up. At least I could comfort myself that I’d never followed Renée’s wishes and gone in for a tattoo.

  Kaye said, ‘The hell with Parlophone. Everybody’s knocking on their door. We’ll start our own label.’

  Hubert said, ‘Darling, the idea of business is you’re supposed to make more money than you spend.’

  ‘And I will do,’ she said, ‘if you’ll just cut me a little slack here. Mr Starlight is starting to roll. I can feel it in my bones.’

  Hubert said, ‘That’s rheumatics.’

  ‘Conroy,’ she said, ‘it’s only money. You can’t take it with you.’

  So we cut our first commercial disc with Kaycee Records: ‘Momma Knows Best’ with ‘Busy Being Lonely’, which Sel always insisted was the B side. All I know is that record got into the hit parade and if I’d been given better advice I’d be a richer man today.

  We were still living with Kaye and Hubert, and I felt the time had come for us to move out. For one thing, I’d started seeing Minnie Beck. Minnie played tenor sax in Ina Ray Hutton’s All Girl Orchestra, five feet two and eyes of blue, and we’d met on the set of Variety Half Hour. But the nature of her work meant she travelled a lot. We had to make the most of our time together.

  Sel said, ‘Bring her back he
re. Kaye won’t mind.’

  He still didn’t really understand the needs of a red-blooded man. His idea of recreation was water fights with the boy who came to clean the pool.

  Kaye said, ‘He’s a late developer. Junior was the same. He never got around to dating, he was so wrapped up in his basketball. You find yourself a little love nest. Sel has a home here as long as he wants it.’

  But then the fans started turning up. The nice ones just walked by, or stood outside for a bit, hoping to catch a glimpse of us. Some of them got cheekier, though: ringing the doorbell, peering through the windows. Willa answered the door one evening and there stood a girl wearing nothing but a cowhide duster coat.

  Hubert said, ‘How could you tell?’

  Willa said, ‘I’m saying no more. But she’ll be back and others like her, and I’m not paid to answer the door to crazies.’

  Hubert said, ‘Sel, I’m sorry, but the help ain’t happy and if the help ain’t happy I get no peace. I’d say the time has come. You have security considerations.’

  Sel said, ‘Yeah, I should have seen this coming. I’m going to have to move to a secret location.’

  Kaye said, ‘You’ll need an unlisted phone number.’

  Willa said, ‘And a pail of cold water. In case your help finds any undressed persons on your doorstep.’

  It tickled me the way they all assumed it was Sel those girls were after. ‘Busy Being Lonely’ was a Cled Boff original and I had my following. I had my offers.

  Set in a sea of laughing faces

  I read the sadness in your eyes.

  I know you from a thousand places

  Your lips that smile, your heart that cries.

  Are you busy being lonely?

  If I should cross the room to touch you

  Would you give this boy a glance?

  If I told you I could love you

  Would you take another chance?

  Or are you busy, pretty lady,

  Being lonely?