The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  30

  JIMMY THE FEARLESS

  THE very next morning I sat in a rehearsal room at the Fun Factory, my good knee bouncing up and down with nervous energy.

  Charlie sat opposite me, with Tilly. He was perplexed to see me there, you could tell that, and his toe was tapping out an agitated rhythm on his chair leg. Tilly, meanwhile, squinted at me, puzzled.

  I looked levelly at Chaplin, enjoying his discomfiture. He had reminded me that it was war. How could I have forgotten?

  Also present, and on tenterhooks, were Stan, Mike Asher and Ernie Stone, Albert Austin, the taciturn fellow I knew from Jail Birds, Bert Williams and his wife, and Emily Seaman, who was already fluttering her pretty eyelashes at Mike across the room – her husband George was touring in Scotland, I think, at the time – and a couple more I didn’t know yet, Harry Daniels and Willy Parsons.

  We were waiting for the Guv’nor.

  Right at the end of the previous afternoon a large part of the wedding party had been breaking up. The omnibuses were there, loading up with passengers to spread laughter out all over the capital once (or twice) again. Some were staying on, the lucky few who were important enough to be able to take a night off. Suddenly a bunch of well-wishers had dispersed and the bride-groom was by himself for a moment. At last! I’d darted in to take advantage.

  “Congratulations, Alf!” I’d said, pumping his hand heartily.

  “Thank you, Arthur,” he’d replied. He’d seemed distracted. It was his wedding day, after all, and rice had begun to rain down on both of us from the top deck of the nearest bus. I’d decided to get straight to the point.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” I had said. “I feel privileged.”

  “The least I could do,” he had said, keeping hold of my hand. “And if there’s ever anything else I can do for you, you only have to ask.”

  “There is one thing, as it happens.”

  “Name it,” Alf had said earnestly.

  “I want to come back.”

  As we waited, I thought about the gossip I’d picked up about Charlie. The thing about him, you see – one of the things, anyway – was that he was a truly masterful mimic and mime. Ask him to express an emotion or a fleeting thought even using just the body God gave him, and he was something of a marvel. If you asked him to speak, however, he was simply not impressive at all. It was his misfortune, then, to discover that many of the number-one roles he was now expected to shine in required him to master dialogue, and it was eating away at his confidence. It was getting to a point where there were serious mumblings about his position, and his bumptious and annoying confidence of the day before had been masking his very real concern.

  Then the door banged open, and in came the Guv’nor, as if propelled by a hurricano. When he saw me there he half-stumbled on the threshold, but then pressed on regardless.

  “All right you lot, listen to this,” he said, gathering us to him. “It is to be an entirely new show, and you are to be the first to play it.”

  He clutched a script in his hand – I say a script, it was barely more than a few jottings on the back of a receipt for something or other, but that’s all his scripts ever amounted to – and he had clearly been in the grip of his legendary creative power. Stan grinned at me. This was exciting. Charlie looked as though he’d been given a week to live.

  “The name of the piece is…” He scrabbled for his notes. It was so freshly baked that he could hardly hold onto the thing without oven gloves. “There, that’s it. Jimmy the Fearless.”

  We raised our eyebrows at each other as though those three words conveyed the whole scenario, which of course they didn’t. Charlie looked pale.

  “Chaplin? You will be Jimmy,” the Guv’nor went on, hauling Charlie to his feet and putting his arm round his shoulders as if to walk him through it. “Now Jimmy here … is a dreamer. He likes nothing more than to lose himself in a penny dreadful, a penny blood, you know the sort of thing. Drives his folks up the wall. His father – that’s you, Dandoe…” he said, pointing at me, but not looking at me, “…wants him to settle down, take things a bit more seriously, but no, it’s all stories for Jimmy. With me?”

  We all nodded vigorously. I closed my eyes and gave silent thanks, to God and to Alf Reeves.

  “Right here’s the nub of the whole thing,” Karno said, and we inched closer in anticipation. “Jimmy falls asleep, and he begins to dream of t’ things he has been reading about. Pirates, Red Injuns, bandits, gunfights, swordfights, and so forth. Suddenly…”

  “The dreams come to life!”

  We all looked around to see who had dared to interrupt the Guv’nor in full flow. It was Stan, the light of enthusiasm shining in his eyes.

  “Yes, exactly!” Karno cried, pointing at Stan, not at all put out. In fact he seemed galvanised by Stan’s excitement, and began to pace around, waving his arms in the air. “We shall need backdrops painting, so we can switch locations in a flash, and it will be a tremendous adventure at breakneck speed, blah blah blah. You…” – here he indicated Bert Williams – “…are Alkali Ike, the leader of the bandits.”

  And he went on round the room allocating roles hither and thither. Albert Austin was the Injun chief, Washti-ni Wampum (or Wampum na-Washti: it varied from night to night), Stan and Mike were in the cowboy gang, and also pirates, Ernie would play the bartender in the bar where the big showdown was to take place, and Tilly the beautiful maiden who was held to ransom, and rescued by The Boy ‘Ero himself.

  The company broke into delighted applause, eager to get started, to flesh out the scheme the Guv’nor proposed. All but Chaplin. He shrugged and sniffed air out from his nose dismissively. He and Karno looked daggers at one another for a moment, then the Guv’nor turned to the rest of us.

  “All right, there it is. Get on with it!” He turned on his shiny-shod heel and stalked out.

  We threw ourselves into the rehearsals with a will. I had never played in a sketch with Stan before, and was amazed by the way ideas just streamed out of him. Gags here, bits of business there, and we all were carried along by the flow. The piece seemed somehow to be assembling around Charlie, who, in contrast, was a great leaden lump of disinterest bringing the whole thing down. I don’t know what was the matter with him, but he seemed to have convinced himself that the whole idea was a bust, and just couldn’t get himself up to the starter’s mark.

  Well, the Guv’nor could hardly fail to notice this when he stopped by to see how things were shaping up, and there was a bit of a scene between the two of them that was more diverting to watch than anything Charlie was contributing to the sketch itself.

  “Injuns?” Karno said, after watching us run through what we had so far. “Very good. More of that dancing, that’s funny. Alkali Ike? That’s all funny too, you and your cowboys. We’ll get some more shooting in there, we’ll work on that scene when we get the firing caps.” He turned to Chaplin. “Jimmy? We need more from you. The whole thing comes from you. We need more energy, more fizz, and we need to find a bit of the old wistful from somewhere too. At the moment you just look like you want to be somewhere else.”

  “Perhaps I do,” Charlie said. The whole room froze and held its breath.

  “What?” Karno said icily.

  “Perhaps I think the whole thing is just a bit … silly…”

  “Silly?” the Guv’nor said, sticking his chest out.

  Chaplin looked at his fingernails languidly. “Yes, silly. Cowboys and Injuns. Like something you’d put on for children. I don’t know why you reckon so much to it, frankly.”

  “Well perhaps, then, you’d rather not take part in this silly children’s show at all.”

  Chaplin shrugged, as if it was a matter of supreme indifference to him.

  “In that case,” Karno said, cold steel in his voice, “it is fortunate indeed that there is someone already in t’ company right now who is ideally suited to take your place…”

  My heart stopped.

  Here it comes,
I thought, all of a sudden. Unbelievably.

  Out of absolutely nowhere.

  Vindication.

  Victory.

  All around the room, eyes were darting at me in anticipation. Everyone there remembered the showdown at the Oxford, so if Charlie was being shoved aside, who was the next cab off the rank? Why, yours truly…

  “Stan Jefferson,” Karno said. “You’re Jimmy. Chaplin? Take a fortnight off. Unpaid.”

  And he strode out of the place. A beat and a half later Charlie picked up his hat and followed, his footsteps echoing in the shocked silence.

  No one was more surprised than Stan at his sudden elevation. Having said that, though, we were all pretty surprised. Staggered, actually.

  “I want you all to know,” he said, breaking the stunned silence, “it isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference.” He turned to me. “You, fellow, bring me tea, just a splash of milk, and be quick about it!”

  This was followed by a huge Stan grin, and a great roar of laughter from everyone, which Charlie must have heard as he exited the building in his huff.

  Stan was a crackerjack, coming up with gags for everyone, business loaded upon business, and without the dead weight of Charlie’s disdain for the whole idea pulling us down, the thing began to fly. To give you just one idea as an example: Karno’s brief notes called for Jimmy, the ‘Boy ‘Ero’, to demonstrate his prowess with a six-shooter.

  “’Tis not for naught I have been called the dead shot of the plains!” he would cry. “I have never been known to miss!”

  And then, the idea was, he would shoot the topmost feather from the headdress of Washti-na Wampum (or possibly Wampum na-Washti, depending on which version Albert Austin had used when first introducing himself). The feather, of course, was tricked to vanish when the smoke cap in the gun was fired off.

  Stan liked this effect well enough, but then he started to think. That feather is really small. What about the fellows up in the gods? What if the whole feathered headdress were shot off. In fact, what if the whole feathered headdress and the Injun chief’s hair beneath were shot off, leaving him suddenly bald as a coot?

  So Albert was tricked out in a bald wig to cover his own hair, then the Injun chief’s hair, with two large plaits hanging down, and then the big multi-coloured feathered headdress, and the whole lot was attached to an invisible line. The first time Stan tried it in a rehearsal, he fired off the gun with a tremendous bang and a puff of smoke, and in an instant Albert was standing there, his head as bald as a baby’s behind, a look of pop-eyed astonishment on his face.

  Everyone was caught up in the excitement. I stayed behind after everyone else had gone and painted the backdrops. It was a labour of love, actually. I was able to bring to life the America I had read about in my penny bloods since I was a boy. Mighty snow-capped rocky mountains, great sweeping, bear-laden forests, dusty, sun-baked main streets, just ripe for a gunfight.

  Tilly, too, was full of enthusiasm, partly because the fact that Charlie had opted out meant that she was there on her own merits and not just by his patronage. And although we didn’t get round to discussing it, she must have noticed that having once chosen Karno over her, and once dropped her because of Karno, now I was braving Karno for her.

  Come the first night, Stan was on pins with nerves, as he’d every right to be, of course. We were playing the show twice in a night, once in Ealing, and then again up in Willesden, huge Hippodromes both.

  We assembled along with the other Karno companies that were playing the capital that week at the Fun Factory, to be ferried off in the Karno omnibuses. It was cold, especially for April, and Stan and I had bought ourselves hot potatoes from a street brazier, which we shoved in our pockets to keep our hands warm – an old Fun Factory trick.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Stan grinned. “Me! A star comedian with a Karno show.” I grinned back. I was happy for him. Really I was.

  The buses arrived, and Stan and I made to go inside on the lower level, which was a prized perk of the lead performers, but Frank O’Neill barred our way.

  “What’s up, Frank?” I said. “He’s a principal, isn’t he?”

  “Not yet he’s not,” O’Neill growled. “Up top, you two.”

  Nothing could take the wind out of Stan’s sails, however, and we rode to West London, he and my teeth both chattering away in the late winter chill.

  Stan still seemed to be shivering when the curtain went up at the Ealing Hippodrome, and I was a trifle alarmed as I watched him begin, waiting in the wings ready to join him onstage. He was reading his penny blood at the kitchen table, and slicing a crusty loaf of bread at the same time without taking his eyes from the page. In his nervousness he cut the loaf into a sort of spiral, so that when he came to pick up a slice to eat the whole thing was all still in one piece. I saw him realise what he had done, and smile at himself. Then he grabbed the ends of the loaf and pulled it in and out, playing it like a concertina, doing a little jig around the table all the while. The audience hooted with glee.

  I didn’t worry about him any more after that, because I knew full well what I’d just seen. I’d seen the Power.

  The crowd at the Ealing Hippodrome quite simply loved little Fearless Jimmy and his adventures. I had time to take a peek out at the audience, and what do you know? I caught sight of a familiar face slap bang in the middle of the front row. It was Charlie, of course, dressed to the nines like a dude, and with a face of stone. I guess he still didn’t think much of the idea. He was in a minority of one, though, that night.

  The climax of the whole thing was a bit of business Stan and I devised between the two of us. Jimmy’s dad (yours truly) would find Jimmy (Stan) asleep on the kitchen table, still clutching the forbidden volume, and would administer a fearsome thrashing with his belt. Stan would begin to cry, a particular effect all his own, and it brought the place down.

  The audience were on their feet, cheering and stamping. All except Charlie, who sat there in his seat in the middle of the front row, stock still, his arms folded, his face grim as a rock, his purple eyes locked on Stan. I watched him as the curtain came down for the last time, watched as it wiped him from sight.

  Then I turned to join in the celebrations. It was so thrilling, suddenly, the feeling that we had created the thing from scratch, and made such a hit of it. I forgot myself entirely and threw my arms around Tilly. After a moment I realised what I was doing, but she did not seem to object, and was hugging me back. We broke apart a little awkwardly then, and smiled at one another shyly. And then we turned and each hugged someone else. It was that sort of a night.

  If possible, the second show at Willesden went even better. Three thousand people were packed in there – it was a real monster of a hall, the sort of place where you sometimes were caught out by a big laugh taking its own sweet time to roll in from the back – but they loved Jimmy too.

  And there, in the middle of the front row once again, arms folded, impassive, unmoved, was Charlie Chaplin.

  The next night, he was there again, at Ealing and Willesden both, sitting smack in the middle of the front row, not laughing. And the night after, same thing.

  Some comedians, you know, find it impossible to laugh at other people working. There’s just too much going on in the old brainbox. Thinking how they would do such and such a thing differently, how they’d have left more of a pause there, or less of one. All sorts of things rattling about between your thinking equipment and your laughter machinery, getting in the way, fouling up the works.

  I asked one comedian (who shall remain nameless on account of the fact that I’ve forgotten which one it was, but believe me there are several it could have been) why he wasn’t laughing at an act that had the rest of us in tucks.

  “It’s too good,” was his reply.

  Anyway, after a few days of this, and having ample reason besides to want to put Charlie’s nose out of joint, I decided to do something about it. Knowing that he and Tilly were still seeing one another, I
contrived to sit next to her on the Karno omnibus one evening as it trundled to the theatre.

  “Stan is doing well, don’t you think?” I began brightly.

  Tilly smiled at me, a smile which warmed my cockles more than any hot potato ever could.

  “Isn’t he?” she agreed. “He’s a little marvel, that boy.”

  “I think this could be the making of him, you know,” I said, laying it on with a trowel. “I’ve heard lots of people say it. He could be the next big thing.”

  “Do you think so?” Tilly said.

  “Oh yes. Charlie made a terrible mistake getting out of this sketch, you know.”

  “Well, good for Stan, I say. He deserves it. He’s made it what it is.”

  “That’s right,” I said, loving her then for not suggesting Charlie would have been better than our friend. However, I wanted her to be sure to pass on the meat of this conversation to him, so ended with a topper. “Actually, you know, I’ve heard people say that now he’s got Stan … the Guv’nor won’t be needing Charlie any more.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t say. Coo!”

  I wished I could have seen Chaplin’s face when that one arrived. There was something else on my mind, of course, and she seemed relatively kindly disposed to me just at that moment, so I found myself blurting out: “You remember when we were pretending to be married, don’t you?”

  “Of course I remember,” she said, pursing her lips and looking at the floor. “But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  She gave every impression of wanting to quit this conversation, but we were on the omnibus, so there was nowhere else for her to go just then.

  “Do you never wonder why it came to such a sudden end, that time in Warrington?”

  She frowned, puzzled. “Well, Syd Chaplin found out about us, didn’t he, and put a stop to it.”

  “Yes, but we never knew, did we, how Syd got to find out about us?”

  “Well, he must have… I suppose I thought…” she tailed off. Like me, she’d been so dumbstruck by the speed of events back then that she’d never tried to work it out. It seemed an insignificant point compared to the collapse of our happy idyll.