Flying Funny: My Life without a Net

by Dudley Riggs

  Our fortunes were never very predictable. We had to go where the work was. And we put on a lot of miles getting to some engagements that didn’t last. Doc painted a lot of signs in exchange for gas money. The Riggs & Riggs Double Trapeze Act was, however, always a center-ring presentation. Working without a net, the act always held the full attention of the audience and most of the other performers, who would watch Doc and Lil perform. But I had a better view of the act. Wearing a matching costume, I worked in the ring under their trapeze to “stand” the act where I could hopefully help them if they fell. I watched my parents risk their lives directly over my head night after night. I was nine years old.

  Home for me was truly where the work was. If there was any time off at all, we would try to spend it as close as possible to where the next job would be. “The first rule of success in show business,” said Doc, “is show up on time.”

  Traveling continually, our living conditions were almost always temporary. Sometimes we would get into an apartment for a month or two. Often, we’d buy a house, live in it for a few weeks, then lease it to someone else, and not live in it again. I was never in any of these houses long enough to claim a space as “my room.” At one time Lil was making mortgage payments on three houses we were not living in. Mother always said that someday she’d like to stay put, “at least for a while.” But she couldn’t seem to decide where. So our suitcases stayed packed year after year.

  When we played the Boston Garden, it was just another building to me. What makes these venues distinctive for local audiences is quite different from what makes them distinctive to us as performers. I remember many buildings we played based on how hard they were to rig, where the girders were, where the dressing rooms were located—a lot of these auditoriums and theaters were designed by contractors, not by artists. So, out of some two hundred towns a year—Peoria, Iberia, Kansas City, name any town—the things I remember are quite mundane, other than maybe if the audience was exceptionally wonderful, or if we had bad weather, or if there was some big crowd or catastrophe. In my mind now, all the towns merge into one big town. Sometimes I found myself in the awkward situation of having to ask a local citizen, “Excuse me, but what town am I in?” To them it was a crazy question, but not if you are a kid and you’ve been in a different “new” town every day week after week.

  The circus played mostly one-night stands. We had to load and unload daily. If there was a layoff, we’d still stay packed, ready to move all the time. Whenever there was a lull in the bookings, I’d get to go to school. Because I grew up without a hometown and without schoolmates or what could be called a hometown “team,” I never knew life as a “towner” and therefore never missed it.

  Another consequence of life on the road for an only child was that I spent my time primarily with adults. I can remember maybe a couple of names of kids from seventh grade when I got to spend all of four months at school between jobs. And there were people I met much later in college, but it’s a very small list. For show kids, usually the only other kids you see are the ones in the audience. You can make them laugh, sigh, or gasp with delight, but you never get to know who they really are.

  To other performers, I was neither quite a child nor quite an adult. All through my life Mother kept telling me never to forget that I was special. Years later she was still reminding me of that fact, even as I was married and the father of my own “very much wanted child.” My grandmother and my two uncles were always kind and loving, and they treated me like an equal, grown-up member of the troupe. As long as I didn’t blow a cue or talk too loud, I was welcome with the grown-ups. By the time I was a teenager, I had been treated like an adult for so long I thought I was one.

  There were other oddities that made my family life the reversed mirror image of a “normal” family’s. I grew up thinking that anybody not working on Christmas and New Year’s was a failure. “If you ain’t working on New Year’s Eve, you ain’t in show business.” That was the way Shorty Lynn dismissed a lot of acts that were just trying to get a start in the business. “If you’re not even good enough to get holiday bookings, then it looks like you have nothing to offer. Anybody who’s anybody in this business works on New Year’s Eve!”

  The Riggs family always had steady work during the holidays and because all of the family birthdays fell in January—family planning for circus folks meant that babies arrived during the slow period after the New Year—we usually had all of the birthdays and all of the holiday gift rituals on the first open Monday after January 24, my mother’s birthday and the usual turnaround day for vaude bookings. I always thought that combining it all into one day saved our family some of the painful holiday frustration that overwhelms so many civilian families.

  “We work so that the audience can enjoy their day off,” Grandmother Riggs said. “Christmas week is when the audience has time to experience some theatrical magic and to be transformed by art.” So that’s why we were doing five shows a day. Business is always great during the holidays.

  There were exceptions, however. For three generations the Riggs clan had kept a “Daily Route Book,” recording attendance, weather, and one or two sentences describing the “circumstances,” “conditions,” and the “social, political, and religious atmosphere.” On one page Doc had written, “The two quietest weeks in show business are Christmas and Minneapolis.” Now I live in Minneapolis, but it's no longer quiet.

  2

  Vaudeville

  We are in Variety show business. We do a Variety Act, sometimes referred to as a Novelty Act, sometimes as a Dumb Act. We are not singers or actors, although sometimes we sing and sometimes we act, most of our act is musically accompanied pantomime. Sometimes what we do is called a sight act. The Riggs Family has been performing this kind of entertainment for three generations.

  —Frank Riggs, in a letter to the William Morris Agency, 1925

  In vaudeville, with twelve good minutes, you can work for a lifetime and never have to change your act.

  —Eddie Cantor

  I received my Social Security card in 1937 at age five when I was cast in a new vaudeville act singing “Benny’s from Heaven.” It happened this way: when the Dematsiatsy Dance Troupe lost their lead dancer because of a groin injury, our advertised fifteen acts of variety entertainment ended up short-billed. The Riggs bankroll was also short, and our agent, Jack Roddy, needed something new. So they put me to work. In three weeks of between-show rehearsal, I learned how to sing a parody song, dance one new routine, and polished both a comic and a proper bow. Roddy sent me to the wardrobe lady, who built me a new full-dress suit and lined an oversized top hat with enough felt to fit me. A musical parody of “Pennies from Heaven,” scored for my five-year-old vocal range, was rehearsed for as many hours as Grandmother Riggs and Mr. Petrillo’s union would allow.

  “Remember, let the song sing you,” the music director kept saying. “The song will carry you home. Just keep your wind up and hit the back row of the balcony.” A place was found for me on the bill, a good spot right after Nikko, the Wonder Dog. I opened in a very tight pin spot, lighting only my face and the top hat to conceal my size and child identity. The first part was a spoken intro with the band vamping to the tune of “Pennies from Heaven.” I remember these words still today:

  There was a traveling salesman by the name of Spear,

  Who had been away from home, for exactly one year.

  When he returned home, he found his wife Jennie

  Had a babe in her arms, and she called him Benny.

  This always got a laugh, and then, with full spotlight, I sang:

  Now every time he asked she said, Benny’s from heaven.

  Her face turned red but still she said, Benny’s from heaven.

  I would do a circle step, eight, back to center, and then continue singing in my strongest, very deepest voice:

  I’ve asked the neighbors all over town,

  They don’t remember little Benny’s falling down.

  If it wa
sn’t for my pride, he said, I wouldn’t bother.

  But what I know about kids, I know, Benny must have a father.

  After another laugh, I would sing in my normal five-year-old register, while the band put a big brass finish on it:

  So when I look at Benny, it’s plain as can be,

  That Benny’s from heaven, but he’s not from me.

  I held the last note for a long time.

  Three and a half minutes slipped into a vaudeville lineup, a novelty song, sung by a little boy. To Jack Roddy’s surprise, I was a hit. A man never quick to give compliments, Roddy said, “It isn’t much, but someone might like it.” Many did. It was so popular the stage manager moved me to the third from closing spot in the show.

  Roddy, who was our agent for many years, called it “a sympathy act” at first, but then one of the papers ran a two-inch “nothing story” about parody and satire (two words not often connected to show business success), and suddenly I was moved even higher in the bill, to the next-to-closing spot. Some of the audience was coming to see “the little kid who sings the adult song.” All that rehearsal had paid off.

  Grandmother Riggs questioned the taste of this kind of material, and she protested the “shameful exploitation of this child” to Roddy, but, as usual, he was able to con her by offering a little more money and a better dressing room. So now I had my own announcement in the show, my own billing, and a paycheck of my own (almost always deposited into what they called “Dudley’s education fund”).

  Because Doc and Lil were on early in the same show, my mother was always there to get me dressed, made up, and warmed up for the act. And either she or Grandmother would provide support and “stand the act” in the wings and add to the applause and then tell me how great I was. It was pretty heady stuff for a five-year-old.

  Each new booking moved me into a theater classier than the last, and with a bigger orchestra, and longer rehearsals. We polished my “three good minutes.” Before long, they told me I was the “show’s little star.” I was in the big time of vaudeville. I thought it would last forever.

  In vaudeville theater dressing rooms the air was always filled with powder and cigarette smoke. It smelled of perfume, sweat, Max Factor makeup, and sometimes gin. The rhinestones and spangles flashed light from the mirror lights onto the low ceiling, and most of the chorus girls treated me like a beloved pet. Even years later, as a ten- and eleven-year-old, I would stay in the dressing room and out of the way during their quick changes, as the girls went from being drum majorettes to “Rose Pettles” to “nude” to fully dressed again for the big closing Oriental number.

  Backstage was like a birthday party all the time because my “birthday” got mentioned almost every show. After my final regular bow, the announcer would milk the audience with “Ladies and Gentlemen, today is this young man’s sixth birthday, let's give him one more round of applause.” He had me turning six until I was nearly nine.

  “It’s just show business, Dudley,” Grandmother Riggs reminded me. “It’s all make-believe. People come to the theater to forget their troubles, have a laugh, and stop worrying for a few hours. If they enjoy your song more because they think you are six or five or ten years old, what’s the harm? Miss Celeste is several years older than her billing, and she hasn’t been a ‘Miss’ for many years.”

  Everyone on the bill routinely showered me with candy, hugs, and toys—well, almost everyone. Mr. Flamarian, a famous trick-shot sharpshooter, was the only performer who cussed me out if I came into his dressing room. All the other acts, especially the distaff acts and the chorus girls, let me hang around their dressing room when they were changing, always in a hurry, talking about men, swapping advice and lipsticks, cleaning up after the show. I was learning a great deal about people and life.

  Sometimes we would playfully powder each other’s makeup, clapping hands with the powder puff, “applauding” our faces. A dozen pretty chorines would take turns playing innocently with Max Factor and me. They were exotically beautiful and healthy, and, as Mother said, “ripe.” I was in love with them all, and I was constantly smothered with affection. Maybe I was a little spoiled.

  I thought that I was a happy kid, although without any other children in the show, I really didn’t have any comparison. From the stage, I viewed the kids in the audience as snotty Little Lord Fauntleroys. I thought they were the ones who were really spoiled rotten. As it turns out, they had something I was missing. But I didn’t know what until years later.

  Miss Celeste, a sultry singer from Paris who was our headliner, who didn’t like men very much and who didn’t like children at all, started griping backstage about how spoiled I was. Miss Celeste was our greenroom agitator. There seems to be one in every stage company.

  “Mind your own affairs, if any,” Grandmother Riggs told her. And then she reassured me: “Don’t worry, there is nothing wrong with you being a little spoiled. People only knock you when they see you happier than they are.”

  And why wouldn’t I be happy? At six, I had my own car. Well, it was actually a pedal car, a red Fire Chief car that the publicity company got as part of the promotion for the show. A picture taken of me in the car was used to advertise both the show and Radio Chief Toys. I could drive that car all over backstage, as long as I stayed away from the dressing rooms of Miss Celeste and “The Great Flamarian.”

  My mother warned me about Mr. Flamarian. “He doesn’t like you,” she said. “He doesn’t like anyone or anything except gin and paregoric. Just stay away from him.” Not knowing anything about opium or liquor, I asked, “But why doesn’t he like me?”

  She sat me down on her lap. “Dudley, you need to know that not everyone has to like you. Your dad loves you. Grandmother Riggs loves you. I love you. The ladies of the chorus love you; the audience in the seats all love you. We’ve got Flamarian outnumbered.”

  “What about Mr. Roddy?” I asked.

  “He just likes you. You never use ‘love’ and ‘agent’ in the same sentence.”

  After my first season, mixed-race duets were becoming increasingly popular, so Roddy wanted to get me on the “black and tan” bandwagon. He kept most of the show intact but wanted to add another kid act without adding much to the nut. He pulled a teenage dancer out of the Crazy Legs Troupe and offered him and me an extra ten dollars a week to be in a second act. That’s how Forrest Jackson and I ended up singing and dancing to “Me and My Shadow.” I sang and danced; Forrest, who was black, danced as my shadow on the other side of the scrim. He was twice my age and could dance circles around me. (And he did!) On the shadow screen he looked ten feet tall. Through the magic of back lighting, our black and white full-dress suits appeared to reverse color as we replaced each other behind the scrim. My every gesture and dance step was matched perfectly by his, but then his steps grew progressively more complex, and he would add an extra step here and there so that by the end of the act, the shadow was stealing the scene.

  It played well, but it was never the big hit that Roddy wanted. He got us sixteen weeks’ work playing the East Coast wheel but couldn’t get us booked down South. “It’s because those damn crackers haven’t heard that the Civil War is over,” said Roddy.

  Forrest and I were always put up in separate hotels and rarely saw each other much before showtime. We both knew something about this was wrong—but it was 1939 in America and as kids we just “did the act.” When it was time to renew contracts, Forrest left with the Crazy Legs Troupe and started dancing solo and making real money touring Europe, where I heard he stayed in the very best hotels. He and I worked more than three hundred performances together, but I never really got to know him. Vaudeville was an industry that was forever bragging about being new and ever-changing, but no one was doing much about social change. I would have to wait until I was running my own show to address the world I saw from the road as a performer. It may have been one of the reasons I had to have my own theater.

  I was doing two shows a day, with three on Saturday. Gr
andma and my beloved tutor, Dolly, handled costumes and makeup. We were tending to business and had settled into the rhythm of the lineup and the mutual affection felt across the footlights. I loved performing, I loved the audience, and they loved me back. Some said even the critics almost liked it.

  I was sure that this was the big time. The money was good, and I could brag that I had my own Social Security card, and everyone was constantly telling me how great I was. I got a raise to forty dollars per week. I began to believe that I was it. I started to think that I was the big audience draw, that I was the one single act that the public came to see. Admittedly, I was not the star of the show, but I thought that most likely I was the most unforgettable act in the entire production. Wrong!

  When my “Benny’s from Heaven” was pulled from the show, I was shocked that not a single ticket holder had demanded a refund. And to make things worse, I had become the subject of front office discussion.

  “Most of the producers have seen his act by now and have passed on it,” said Jack Roddy. “The real song, ‘Pennies from Heaven,’ has had its run, so naturally the parody has no currency anymore. And, face it, Dudley has lost his cutes. He’s no longer cute enough or talented enough to sell a song that they have already heard. The novelty is gone. I can’t book him.”

  I overheard all this from the waiting room while Mr. Roddy talked to my dad alone. I guessed they left the door open so I could hear because Mr. Roddy didn’t want to look me in the eye and tell me that I was no longer good enough to be in his damned vaudeville wheel.