Knowing literally nothing about one another’s backgrounds, Fred and I had just a few days to “get acquainted.” He was due to go overseas in two weeks’ time, and who could know that those fourteen precious days were all we were to have together? But we made the most of them. As we bustled about our little honeymoon bower, tacking down gay oilcloth, placing fresh paper on the shelves, Fred told me the story of his life. He had been born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, nineteen years earlier, the only son of poor, but proud, French-Canadian immigrants. His parents had passed away when Fred was but a babe and he had been reared in a foster home where he learned little of love and even less of the great world outside. He had taken a correspondence course in business procedure and was an accomplished typewriter. When Uncle Sam had “called his number,” Fred was quite ready. In spite of being myopic and terribly underweight, he had passed his physical examination and had trained at Fort Sheridan, outside Chicago. I was the first girl he had ever really known and I am proud and happy in the knowledge that, as Mrs. Fred Poitrine, I gave the poor motherless boy all the love he was ever to have.
When Fred asked about my personal history, I was at a loss to know exactly what to tell him. How could a simple farm boy, sheltered from the seamier side of a cruel world as Fred was, comprehend the cruel pranks Fate had perpetrated on little me? What I told Fred about myself was true—every word of it—but am I to be blamed if there were certain omissions and lacunae in my personal history? I told him that I had come from a little Illinois town to seek my fortune in Chicago, that my few humble possessions had been stolen (as they certainly had by the hard-hearted management of the Auditorium Hotel) and that I had been alone in the world when I met him. Why tax the poor, trusting young bridegroom with unhappy information that would be neither pertinent nor beneficial to our relationship? Besides, that part of my life was now a discarded chapter, I felt sure.
Fred was not the handsomest man I have ever known. Only nineteen at the time of our marriage, he was thin to the point of emaciation with a slight tendency to stoop. He had been forced to walk at too early an age and consequently his legs were a trifle bent. Having a delicate skin, the crude army meals of “slumgullion” had taken their toll of his fair complexion. He was so nearsighted that he had very nearly “flunked” his physical examination, and the Army Dental Corps had neglected his teeth shamefully. However, he had beautiful, artistic hands, a sweet, trusting nature and he was a “crackerjack” at shorthand stenography and typewriting.
My hero — Fred Poitrine — the one great love of my life—1917
A modern Priscilla
Our fourteen days together—a lifetime of bliss in a fortnight’s furlough—literally flew by. Fearing for the fate of Fred’s five thousand dollars in a wicked city of cutpurses and pickpockets, I deposited the money in my name at a nearby savings bank except for a tiny amount which was needed to replenish my vanished wardrobe. Having a good head for practical matters, I saw to it that Fred changed his marital status with the army and named little me as beneficiary of his insurance. These mundane matters aside, sentiment reigned. I knew but little of the culinary arts and eagerly faced the challenge of cooking our own little dinners for two. Fred, however, saying that he didn’t want me to spoil my soft, white hands, preferred to dine out.
Lamb for my lamb!
One night—our last together—while enjoying a meatless repast in a little gypsy tearoom, Fred excused himself to go to the gentlemen’s convenience. While he was gone, a fortune teller came to our table. She looked at my palm and then said, “I see marriage.”
“Yes, yes!” was my reply.
“Many marriages,” the gypsy said. My heart fair stopped beating. “I see many husbands and many men. I see riches and poverty, fame and obscurity. But, above all, I see men.” With that she was gone.
“What did that bohunk say, Honeybunch?” Fred asked.
“Only that . . . only that we would live happily forever and ever,” I replied. But the magic of that evening was gone. I could hardly touch my tapioca. Later that night when Fred, quite spent, was snoring beside me (he was troubled by adenoids), I tried to dismiss the soothsayer’s prophecy and its effect on me as superstitious “balderdash,” but somehow I could not. Fred left from the old Polk Street Station the next morning. When I said farewell to him on the platform, did I know it was farewell forever? I wonder.
For a week I brooded alone in our little apartment, but I soon realized that solitude was not for me. Fred, I later learned, was in the very thick of it, doing important, confidential clerical work in the Insecticide and Fumigation Corps based just outside Glasgow. My heart was in my mouth every time I heard the doorbell ring. But after a few days of this bleak, agonizing despair I realized that I would achieve no positive good by torturing myself in lonely solitude. Besides, my little “nest egg” would dwindle to nothing if I did not seek some means of livelihood. There was a crying need for workers in the munitions factories, but I decided that it would not be fair to take a position away from a better-qualified employee. Besides, Our Lord had bestowed upon little me the great gift of bringing happiness to others. I would work where I could be the most useful in the all-out war effort. Hence, I accepted a rôle as combination entertainer and social hostess at Stanislaw Slutsky’s Shamrock Cabaret, a popular mecca for lonely “gobs” and “dough-boys.” My duties were to appear as a mannequin in the thrice-nightly “floor show” and to mingle with the clientele . This latter duty I enjoyed especially because it gave me the opportunity to inquire, of each new serviceman, whether my Fred was in any danger in the Insecticide and Fumigation Corps in Scotland. Trying to put my tortured mind at rest, they all said—to a man—that I had nothing to worry about. How gallant those simple boys in uniform were!
Although I questioned the propriety of my actions, I decided that it was my duty to show these brave boys, whose very lives hung in the breach, as good a time as possible. After all, I reasoned, wouldn’t I be grateful to some bonnie Scottish lassie for taking my poor Fred beneath her wing? Thus, of all the girls at the Shamrock, I became the gayest, the most madcap, the most devil-may-care—my painted smile concealing a breaking heart. And it was a rare evening, during those trying years of 1917–18, that I did not ask some shy, strapping boy home to our little apartment for a cup of cocoa and stimulating conversation, into the wee hours of the morn.
Somehow the days and weeks and months crept by and then it happened. On November 9 the Kaiser abdicated. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was declared. Of all the merrymakers thronging State Street, in downtown Chicago, I was the merriest. I rode on the roof of a trolley, kissed every uniformed man in sight, drank beer and champagne and wine and whiskey, laughed and cried and sang and cheered with the rest of them. But the next morning, when I returned to the little home I had shared with Fred, I found a telegram slipped under the door. With my heart and temples pounding, I opened it. My husband, it said, had passed away at the very hour of the Armistice!
Two weeks later I numbly read a letter from poor Fred’s commanding officer. Fred had died a hero’s death. He had caught his thumb in the space bar of his typewriter, but had valiantly refused medical aid or relief from his duty. With a “buddy” he had gone off to Loch Ness for a few days’ furlough from his exacting and exhausting work. Upon his return it was noticed that his whole right arm was seriously infected, swollen and painful to the touch. He had been hospitalized but by then it was too late. Life ebbed rapidly from my brave soldier-husband. As the ghastly war faded from being, so did dear Fred.
I had barely the strength to apply for Fred’s insurance money or my widow’s pension. I did so only in the knowledge that Fred would have wanted me to. Added to my paltry bank account, these last mementoes of dashing Fred Poitrine would enable his little widow to get a new start in life. But where? Certainly not in Chicago. After all, what had Chicago brought me other than two weeks of ecstasy with Fred? The rest of it had all been heartache, disappointment and disillusionment. If I were to
work for my living— and as a poor widow it was essential to earn my daily bread—I would have to do the one thing I knew how to do, perform on the stage. And what better place to seek employment than the theatre capital of the world—New York?
I knew that a position would be hard to secure if I were in widow’s weeds and that Fred, who had loved me in gay colors, would be unhappy could he but see me in sable hues. So I invested a bit of my capital in a smart travelling suit à la Irene Castle and, as a touch of somber mourning, a large black and white fox muff.
In Fred’s absence the landlord had been so persistent in his unwelcome attentions to a helpless lone woman that I chose not to inform him of my impending departure. Instead, I waited until he had gone to East St. Louis to spend Christmas week with his married daughter, then I called in a secondhand furniture dealer, sold off the entire contents of what had been our honeymoon bower and slipped quietly away from the “Windy City” on the evening train.
Seated in the dining car, I toyed with the menu as I watched the lights of Chicago slip past the window. “Good-by, Chicago, city without a heart,” I thought, “hello, New York!” Immediately I felt better. Then I smiled shyly at the lone gentleman seated across the table, who had already informed me that he was in Drawing Room A.
A travelling costume à la Irene Castle
CHAPTER SIX
THE SEARCHING YEARS
1919–1925
New York • Making the “rounds” • My meetings with the great • Films in
Astoria • California, here I come • Floyd • Heartaches in Hollywood • “Bernie”
New York and “Winnie” • Club Audubon • Cedric Roulstoune-Farjeon
“Cedie” becomes an earl • Hands across the sea
MY DÉBUT IN THE CHICAGO THEATRE had been a question of too much too soon. At a tender age I had burst like a meteor onto the stage of the Cameo. Without the arduous years of singing and dancing in the “line,” without the heartbreaking “trek” from manager to agent, agent to manager, I had begun at almost the “top,” thanks to my natural endowments, the force of my personality and the keen perception shown by Mr. Flinchy and the maître de ballet. Perhaps I was “spoiled,” perhaps I had expected unreasonably that my Chicago reputation would precede me to New York, perhaps I was simply accustomed to being the “big frog” in a “small puddle.” I don’t know exactly what the reason was, but Gotham was a tougher “nut” to “crack” than I had anticipated in my distress and naïveté.
I arrived in Manhattan at the beginning of 1919 when New York was just emerging from the dread war years. And what a season that was! The “theatre district” stretched from Sheridan Square in the “Village” all the way up to Ninety-sixth Street. There were more stars on Broadway than I could count. John and Lionel Barrymore were appearing together in The Jest, while their sister Ethel starred in Zoe Aiken’s Déclassée . Elsie Janis and her “gang” were back from the front, as was Irving Berlin, who was singing his own songs twice a day at the Palace. Hazel Dawn and Enid Markey were appearing in that hilarious farce Up in Mabel’s Room. A revival of Floradora was being prepared. Ruth Chatterton appeared in Moonlight and Honeysuckle, Peggy Wood in Buddies, Irene Bordoni in As You Were and Fay Bainter was a “sell out” in East Is West. Lightnin’ was well on its way to establishing a record run. E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe were co-starred in The Taming of the Shrew (by William Shakespeare), for lovers of the antique, and such new names as the Theatre Guild and Alfred Lunt and Helen Hayes (playing together in Booth Tarkington’s Clarence) were being heard for the first time. George White had created his Scandals, starring pretty Ann Pennington, and John Murray Anderson the Greenwich Village Follies, with Bessie McCoy, the “Yama-Yama Girl,” to compete with the Ziegfeld Follies and Shubert’s Gaieties. Even Theda Bara came East that year to try her luck on the “Gay White Way.”
Surely with so much activity in the theatre, I thought, there would be room for little me.
As all thespians will, I found living quarters with two other girls in show “biz.” They had a small flat, in an old brownstone house, on West Eighty-ninth Street, and they were more than glad to have a third member in the ménage to share expenses. Although I was grateful for any show of friendship in a city as cruel as New York, I felt instinctively, from the very outset, that these girls (they shall remain nameless) were not in my class. One functioned as a “bit” player at a film studio in Astoria. The other was a chorine at a very ordinary burlesque theatre. As I have said before, I have nothing but the greatest respect for burlesque— as it was then—but I felt that I should strive to go onward and upward in the arts rather than remaining in a “rut.” The girls laughed at me when I told them of my dreams of being a “Glorified American Girl” costumed by Ben Ali Haggin in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies, or even of assaying a dramatic rôle. They were both coarse in the extreme and, as I have mentioned heretofore, without ambition or desire for the finer things of life. They made all manner of fun of me and called me “Marilyn Miller” or “Maxine Elliott.” Yet, in the fashion of the hoi polloi, they were good-hearted and saw to it that I had no lack of attentive gentlemen escorts.
It has been said that success is not a matter of what you know but of whom you know. This is not strictly true. Yet it has long been my observation that the route to the “top” can be made shorter, smoother and swifter through valuable social contacts. Most of the “dates” procured for me by my two new confrères were distressingly vulgar and uncouth, with a large store of “smutty” stories and very little notion of how to behave in the presence of a lady. I endured their company out of politeness and because I still harbored the wan hope that one of them might be able to further my career in the realm of either pure drama or light operetta. One evening, however, my roommates introduced me to a gentleman who was “associated with David Belasco.” He did not impress me as a “force” in the living theatre. Instead, he seemed callow, ill bred and overly familiar. But he spoke with considerable authority about Mr. Belasco, his theatre, his stars and his plays (lovely Ina Claire was then “packing them in” in The Gold Diggers ), and added, “Dave is putting together a new play, The Theatre Through Its Stage Door. Why don’t you drop around to the Belasco tomorrow afternoon and I’ll give you some pointers?”
Thrilled, I put on my loveliest creation and appeared at the Belasco Theatre at the appointed time. It was dark and empty and I saw no evidence of actors or of a play in rehearsal. But my “sponsor” met me, explained that Mr. Belasco had been “unavoidably delayed” and had left instructions for him to “coach” me in the part of a young ingénue to improve my “reading” for Mr. Belasco.
The young man took me to Mr. Belasco’s office, showed me all of the interesting curios and memorabilia on display and asked me to recline on the sofa to rehearse a love scene. He would, he explained, substitute for the leading man. The “lines” were all but nonexistent. (I knew that Belasco plays had a paucity of dialogue.) But it seemed to me that this importunate young gentleman was carrying the famed Belasco “realism” to an extreme never before seen in the theatre—at least not before a mixed audience. After several hours he complimented me on my “performance,” said that I had been “swell” (an example of the sort of language he employed) and told me to return the following afternoon. The next day when I appeared, this young man explained that Mr. Belasco had wanted to see me but that he had been called upon to deal with Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske and had left instructions for me to rehearse the “rôle” once again. This I did with some trepidation. I was then instructed to return the next day when, I was told, Mr. Belasco would surely see me. He did. When I arrived at the theatre, my “patron” informed me that Mr. Belasco had been once again “detained” but that I was to rehearse the love scene on the sofa once more. I am an actress who loves to “throw” myself into a part and I have no idea how much or how little time elapsed when suddenly the office door burst open. There stood Mr. Belasco, his pale complexion white with rage. Instead of admiri
ng my performance, he flew into a rage and demanded to know how a lowly usher dared to bring his “doxie” into the producer’s private office and use it as a “place of assignation.” My tears and explanations were to no avail, I was thrown bodily out of Mr. Belasco’s office and my gentleman “friend,” who had claimed to be “associated with David Belasco,” was summarily discharged from his job as usher. Oh! The bitter humiliation! I never saw Mr. Belasco again.
I made several attempts to secure an appointment with Mr. Dillingham but he had always “just gone for the day.” Then, one freezing morning, I arrived, clutching my scrapbook, just as that great producer was marching out of the theatre. “Mr. Dillingham,” I announced, “I have just arrived in New York from Chicago.” Getting into his limousine he said, “And I am just departing for Europe.” Two ships that pass in the night! Had it not been for our unfortunate timing, who knows to what artistic heights the two of us might not have soared?
Dressed in my best one day, I went to the New Amsterdam Theatre to discuss with Mr. Ziegfeld the possibility of my appearing in his famous Follies, starring Bert Williams and Eddie Cantor. The stage doorman was most rude and uncooperative. I was just about to depart when I saw Mr. Ziegfeld approaching. He was besieged by girls, all of whom were trying, as was I, to catch his attention. On the spur of the moment I chose to faint at Ziegfeld’s feet. “She’s fakin’,” the doorman said in harsh tones. To prove that I was not, I kept my eyes tightly closed until I felt myself being carried and laid out at full length on some soft surface. Then I heard a car door close. “Ah,” I told myself, “Mr. Ziegfeld has placed me in his smart equipage and is undoubtedly taking me to his lovely home, where he and Miss Billie Burke can discuss my career in privacy.” My eyelids fluttered. “She’s comin’ to,” a most uncultivated voice announced. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was not in Mr. Ziegfeld’s limousine at all, but in a police ambulance! It was a matter of weeks before I managed to extricate myself from the psychiatric ward.
Little Me Page 6