But he does not believe Hal Roach has summoned him here to discuss a philosophy either of comedy or existence. Hal Roach has summoned him here to remind him that the screws are being tightened, and it’s not enough to tell Hal Roach a picture is about a piano.
We don’t have an action script yet, he tells Hal Roach.
—Forget the script. You don’t have a story. As far as I can see, you don’t even have any gags. You just have a piano.
—We’ll make up the gags on location.
Hal Roach begins to worry that more vodka and ginger may be required. The specter of Henry Ginsberg looms over Hal Roach, day and night. Hal Roach does not want to have to explain to Henry Ginsberg why Hal Roach has agreed to send a crew on location with no script and no gags. It is traditional that staff on Hal Roach’s lot should work for Hal Roach alone, but Henry Ginsberg owes his employment to Bank of America, and what is good for Bank of America is not necessarily good for Hal Roach. Already, Henry Ginsberg has forced Hal Roach to fire Elmer Raguse, without whom the studio’s transition to sound recording could not have been achieved, or not with such brilliant results. Elmer Raguse gets fired because Elmer Raguse does his job of installing and training and fine-tuning so well that there is no longer any need for his expertise. Elmer Raguse is heartbroken but, being Elmer Raguse, does not show it. Elmer Raguse just asks that they take good care of his equipment.
This is going to be three reels, right? Hal Roach asks.
—Yes.
—So for three reels, you need more than a piano.
—How about three pianos?
—How about I turn you and Babe Hardy into rugs for my floor?
Hal Roach is fond of this man before him. He and Babe are still the studio’s best earners, and less trouble than Our Gang, because they can work longer hours, and can grow older without needing to be discreetly replaced, like deceased pet hamsters and goldfish; and since neither of them is a Negro they do not offend Southern sensibilities, which is a problem with Our Gang since Stymie Beard is unmistakably a Negro, just like Sunshine Sammy Morrison and Farina Hoskins before him, and below the Mason-Dixon Line such fraternization between the races as is displayed in the Our Gang pictures is frowned upon, which means that Hal Roach’s pockets are being picked by crackers.
But now this man, this star, is trying to claim that a piano can be a plot, that a wooden box can contain worlds, and Hal Roach knows this to be untrue.
He lets Hal Roach protest some more. He agrees with Hal Roach politely, and disagrees with Hal Roach even more politely. It is important to disagree without being disagreeable, especially with Hal Roach, who is his boss and has generally been supportive of him, remuneration excepted. But Hal Roach has given his imprimatur to thinner ideas than this, and they have worked. He and Babe have made them work.
Hal Roach, he understands, is just letting off steam.
Your problem, Hal Roach tells him, is that you don’t see the big picture.
—It’ll be cheap.
Hal Roach gives in. The man before him is missing the point, but cheap is cheap.
Then make the picture, says Hal Roach. What do I know?
100
This he has learned from Chaplin: every creative endeavor should aspire to the condition of art. But Hal Roach is not interested in art. Hal Roach desires respectability, but Hal Roach does not want art, or not as a primary function of his studio. Productions with some class may earn Hal Roach money, but art will see Hal Roach back emptying spittoons. The comedies he and Babe make for Hal Roach are neither respectable nor, as short collections of gags, definable as art in terms familiar to Hal Roach. To hint at such a possibility in Hal Roach’s presence would be to invite mockery, or censure, or possibly even the attentions of Henry Ginsberg in order to ensure that no art is attempted, either intentionally or inadvertently, on the studio’s dime, and Henry Ginsberg already stalks the lot like a reaper. Even Babe does not wish to speak of art. Babe is happy to be earning more money than ever before, and to see his name above the title.
Therefore, as a comedian, he is engaged in a singular conspiracy to commit art.
101
At the Oceana Apartments—
At the Oceana Apartments.
At the Oceana Apartments.
At the Oceana Apartments.
There is only the Oceana Apartments, and the waiting promise of the sea beyond.
He could leave for the afternoon. Ida would take him somewhere. But a departure involves the fuss of getting ready, and of negotiating the stairs to the car, and of the ride, and of walking from the car to the restaurant, or the pier, or the sand.
Or simply walking.
He is too tired for that.
And he does not wish to disappoint the world by letting it see how frail he has become.
102
He likes the idea for Top Heavy. Or Words and Music. The title, like the picture, remains in the abstract. Babe also likes the idea: a crated piano must be delivered up a flight of steep steps. It may be a reworking of the washing machine gag, but it is simple, and simplicity is welcome in lives so complex.
He agrees on a cast with Jimmy Parrott, who is to direct.
For the piano salesman: Bill Gillespie, who is Scottish and strikes amiable sparks with Jimmy Finlayson when they are on the lot together, although Bill Gillespie is more inclined to buy someone a soda than Jimmy Finlayson, who is parsimonious to a remarkable degree.
For the cop: Sam Lufkin, who is always reliable and has, until recently, been living with his mother following the break-up of his marriage. Sam Lufkin is now married for a second time, but still misses his mother. Sam Lufkin’s life reads like a Beanie Walker title card.
For the nursemaid: Lilyan Irene, or Leah Goldwater as was. He pushes for Lilyan Irene because she, like him, is from Lancashire, and worked the music halls, and lives alone with a young son, and so can use the money.
For the professor: Billy Gilbert, who is a gagman as well as an actor, and gives good comic sneeze. Billy Gilbert owes his career in pictures to him, as he introduced Billy Gilbert to Hal Roach after catching Billy Gilbert in revue.
In another life, Billy Gilbert plans to be a boxer. Billy Gilbert is billed as Fighting Billy Gilbert, a middleweight, and goes two rounds with Jack Herrick, the inventor of the Herrick Shift, a feint and turn followed by an overhand blow that, if it lands, will end your days. In the evenings, Billy Gilbert covers up his bruises and steps on stage in a show called Whiz Bang Babies, which makes Billy Gilbert unusual by any measure. Billy Gilbert is pretty serious about the fight game until Billy Gilbert gets in the ring with Al Panzer. After what Al Panzer does to him, acting seems to Billy Gilbert like a good way of not being killed.
For the professor’s wife: Hazel Howell, spouse of Ned Norworth, Broadway’s Midnite Son, who plays the piano, and acts, and writes songs with titles such as “After You Brought Me The Sunshine” and “Sweet Sue,” and in whose shadow Hazel Howell seems forever destined to dwell. But Hazel Howell is a nice woman, and suffers well.
He and Babe also suffer. They try hauling an empty crate up the steps, but the weight and balance is clearly wrong, no matter how gamely they act as though they are under strain. The only solution is to use a real piano, but real pianos are heavy.
The crate gets damaged each time it is dropped, and it is dropped so often that replacements must always be on hand.
Their bodies sweat, and the sun burns their skin.
Their hands accept splinters, and their shins bear cuts.
The picture is now called The Up and Up. That might work.
The crew spends hours waiting for the right light, praying that Henry Ginsberg doesn’t take it into his head to come and count beans. Sunlight is required for consistency, but nobody has informed the clouds. When at last they finish filming, he eats and drinks in the cutting room, rarely breathing fresh air, trying to match the sequences to the luminosity, and sometimes sleeps in his dressing room instead of going home to bed.
When the edit is done, he gathers the cast and crew at the community theater, and even amid the clicking of timers and the scratching of pens, it is clear that something special has been created.
Three reels, one gag, and all the world in a box.
Only Henry Ginsberg is unimpressed. Henry Ginsberg wants to know if it is a real piano that is destroyed at the end of the picture. He informs Henry Ginsberg that they created it from balsa wood and old parts, but he does not think Henry Ginsberg believes him.
And Beanie Walker, over whom Henry Ginsberg’s ax now hovers, and who is growing weary of its gleam; Beanie Walker, with his cats and cigarettes; Beanie Walker, with his fine vocabulary and terse notes; Beanie Walker, who writes dialogue but struggles to carry on a normal conversation; Beanie Walker, who rarely smiles and does not laugh; Beanie Walker, who has never been happier anywhere than on this lot, and will never be truly happy again after; Beanie Walker gives them their title.
The Music Box.
103
At the Oceana Apartments, Jerry Lewis is among his more regular visitors.
Jerry Lewis is—or was—one of the Jews in hiding. The Jews may have helped to build the motion picture industry, but if they are to appear in its productions they must do so under another guise. Over at Columbia, Harry Cohn, a Jew, casts his own people as Indians, and at MGM Louis B. Mayer, a Jew, refuses to put Danny Kaye, another Jew, under contract until Danny Kaye has his nose straightened.
The Jews must pretend to be that to which they aspire. They can play anything but themselves, in life as on screen.
So David Kaminsky becomes Danny Kaye.
Julius Garfinkle becomes John Garfield.
Meshilem Weisenfreund becomes Paul Muni.
Emmanuel Goldenberg becomes Edward G. Robinson.
And Joseph Levitch becomes Jerry Lewis so that bigots and anti-Semites such as Father Charles Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith may laugh at his jokes.
He likes Jerry Lewis as a man, and is touched by his obvious admiration and solicitude, but is ambivalent about his comedy. It is too crude, too reliant on a series of fallback expressions of idiocy. It is perpetual chaos.
Babe enjoyed the work of the Marx Brothers. He did not. He finds funny only the inadvertent creation of mayhem, the gradual, unavoidable descent into disorder. It is too easy to deliberately foment misrule. The humor and the humanity arise from the doomed struggle against it.
But Jerry Lewis does not care. Jerry Lewis is untroubled by the opinion of others. Jerry Lewis is entirely without fear.
Jerry Lewis always wears red cashmere sweaters with red socks when visiting the Oceana Apartments. He finds this odd, but is too polite to remark upon it. Either Jerry Lewis owns only one red cashmere sweater and one pair of red socks, and replaces these when they wear out, or Jerry Lewis owns entire closets filled only with red cashmere sweaters and red socks. Sometimes Jerry Lewis asks him if he needs a sweater, but he always declines. Also, all of Jerry Lewis’s clothing bears the initials J.L., and he does not wish to be mistaken for Jerry Lewis in the event of an accident that leaves him otherwise unidentifiable.
Jerry Lewis no longer communicates with his former partner, Dean Martin. Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin have not spoken in years. He thinks this is a shame. Jerry Lewis is like a younger brother estranged from an adored older sibling. But Jerry Lewis is also angry with Dean Martin. Perhaps this is another reason why he is perturbed by Jerry Lewis’s comedy.
Underlying it, there is rage.
Did you and Babe ever fight? Jerry Lewis asks.
—Only about his hair.
He cannot imagine a time when he and Babe would not have spoken.
There is, for a while, some awkwardness in the background when Jerry Lewis visits, although Jerry Lewis is unfamiliar with the concept of awkwardness and so he endures the strain of it alone.
The comedian Lou Costello’s daughter, Carole, is married to Dean Martin’s son, Craig. He is friendly with Lou Costello, so he does not mention Jerry Lewis’s visits to the Oceana Apartments when he and Lou Costello talk.
During the period of his marriage to Ruth—no, his second marriage to Ruth—Lou Costello sometimes comes to the house for dinner, where he and Lou Costello commiserate with each other over their treatment at Fox. Ruth always counts the plates and the silverware after Lou Costello visits because Lou Costello is notorious for stealing from studio lots, and Ruth is concerned in case Lou Costello becomes confused and starts stealing from her too.
Lou Costello steals lamps and tables and chairs.
Lou Costello steals rugs and cushions and a buckskin canoe.
Lou Costello does not even wait for the pictures to finish filming. Lou Costello loads a truck between set-ups and sends it on its way.
It is a game, but it is still stealing.
Lou Costello is an admirer of Chaplin, and is willing to stand up and defend Chaplin’s reputation when the government and the newspapers turn against him. J. Edgar Hoover himself is a fan of Lou Costello, and even writes a personal letter complimenting Lou Costello and his partner Bud Abbott on their radio show, although this is before the Chaplin business. In return, Lou Costello invites J. Edgar Hoover to lunch next time the director of the FBI happens to be in California. Everyone in Hollywood finds this amusing, as Lou Costello is known to possess one of the largest collections of pornographic material known to man, and is therefore not the kind of company that J. Edgar Hoover should be keeping.
They are unlikely friends, he and Lou Costello. Casual acquaintances sometimes wonder what they have in common beyond their profession and their shared troubles at Fox.
But people forget.
They forget that he cremated his child after just nine days of life, and they forget that Lou Costello’s one-year-old son drowned in one-and-a-half feet of water in the back garden of the Costello home in Sherman Oaks while Anne Costello’s back was turned.
Three men, three fathers, united by dead infant sons.
Maybe this is why, when the time comes, Lou Costello stands up for Chaplin.
But Lou Costello, like Babe, is gone. They buried Lou Costello at Calvary Cemetery in March 1959, in a crypt near his son, and nine months later they buried Lou Costello’s wife beside him.
And now there is no more awkwardness when Jerry Lewis comes to call.
104
Bardy, Babe’s older half-brother, arrives in Hollywood from Georgia. He likes Bardy, who bears some passing resemblance to Babe, although he is not entirely clear what it is that Bardy does for a living. Bardy is Bardy Tant, but changes his name to Bardy Hardy while in Hollywood, which has a pleasing ring to it, and flatters Babe.
Bardy picks up a little work as an extra on the Hal Roach lot, but mostly Bardy is content to keep his brother company, and good company Bardy is, too. Bardy is fastidious about his appearance, just as Babe is, and they both like their food, although he cannot help but feel that Bardy is much odder than Babe. Bardy perceives the world in different hues from others, and from stranger angles. When he speaks with Bardy, he is not certain that each of them is engaged in the same conversation.
With Babe and Bardy both in California, their mother, Miss Emmie, decides to join them for a time. Babe finds Miss Emmie an apartment, and supplies her with a chauffeur. Miss Emmie can now disapprove of Los Angeles from the comfort of an automobile.
Miss Emmie is a piece of work.
A widow named Frances Rich lives across the street from Babe. Frances Rich is a lady of mature years, rich by name and rich by bank account. Frances Rich decides that she has never encountered a specimen of manhood quite so dashing as Bardy, and proceeds to set her cap at Babe’s brother.
The woman is terrifying, Babe tells him. You couldn’t invent her.
—And how does Bardy feel about all this?
—Bardy seems to feel all right about it.
But then, he thinks, you couldn’t invent Bardy either.
&
nbsp; Week after week, he is kept apprised of Frances Rich’s gifts to Bardy.
Fine cigars.
Government bonds.
A Cadillac.
A private suite in Frances Rich’s home, decorated to Bardy’s tastes.
A suite? he says, when Babe informs him of this latest development.
—It’s by way of being a marriage proposal.
—And how did Bardy respond?
—Bardy said yes.
—Well, you would.
—Would you, really?
—No, I wouldn’t, but Bardy would.
Bardy appears enthused by the prospect of matrimony. Babe does not mention to Bardy that, at sixty-two, Frances Rich is only a decade younger than Miss Emmie, and apparently of a similarly single-minded disposition. Bardy is as good as marrying his own mother.
He doesn’t attend the wedding—given the current state of his relationship with Lois, he might put a curse on the nuptials—but he sends a gift.
Babe arrives late at the studio the day after the wedding. Before anyone can even exchange greetings with him, Babe calls a meeting of like minds in his dressing room, and opens a bottle. Glasses are filled, chairs are occupied, breaths are bated.
Gentlemen, Babe says, I have a tale to tell.
It seems that the ceremony goes off swimmingly. Following a pleasant wedding breakfast, the bride and groom are escorted to their accommodations in the bride’s home, whereupon Babe and his family, including Miss Emmie, repair to Babe’s house to rest.
Three hours later, there comes a knock on Babe’s front door.
It is Bardy.
Bardy is distraught.
Bardy is so upset that Bardy has come out without a necktie.
—I must speak with Mama. It is a matter of the utmost urgency.
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