Naughty New York
Doug and Mary and Charley almost made Broadway forget to curse the landlords.
The wildest crowd I have seen in New York since Armistice Day was the gang that jammed into Forty-second Street the day that Fairbanks’ movie, “The Musketeers,” opened. Taxi cabs had to stop a block away and let the passengers fight their way into the theatre if they could.
I saw two girls shove Jack Dempsey out of the way to get a look at Doug and his wife. They just dug their little elbows into the illustrious ribs of the Champ, and rough housed him to one side out of their line of vision. I guess the Fairbanks family can consider this to be about the summit of human fame. I once saw a big crowd run away from a reception to the President of the United States, leaving that august personage talking to the empty air in order to see a heavy weight champion; but I never imagined that anything could take a crowd away from a champ. Compared to Doug and Mary as rival attractions, Dempsey was nothing but a broad back that was difficult to see around.
I’m telling you the truth, children. The day that Doug and Mary went to Boston, the crowds lined the railroad track at every station as though it were the Royal Mogul passing by.
Charley Chaplin didn’t register very heavily—except in the newspapers. The truth is painful, but must be told. Charles was lost in the shuffle. It wasn’t “his stuff” as the newspaper men say.
The night the show opened, Douglas, finding it hard to make a way through the crowd, picked Mary Pickford up on his shoulder and bucked his way through like a football half back. Charley couldn’t very well pick up Jack Dempsey on his shoulder so he played second fiddle.
I don’t know what’s the matter with Charley. His divorce suit must have been a shattering experience. His hair is growing gray around the edges, and his nerves seem on the raw edge. One day he was being interviewed by a gang of reporters in his suite at his New York hotel, and nearly chewed off the head of one of the newspaper men who asked him with what American he compared Lenin, the Bolshevist.
Without warning, Charles tore into the reporter and handed him a cutting rebuke for his stupidity. He talked scornfully about “you Americans”—which is poor stuff for Charley.
To tell the truth, I thought he was going to cry. And I guess he wasn’t far from it. Charley told me afterward that his nerves are in such a condition that he weeps at the slightest excuse.
He should have taken a lesson from his former bride, Mildred Harris.
One of the actors told me about the weeps of the former Mrs. Chaplin. Not long ago she was working in a picture under one of the De Milles. Finding her exasperating, the director lost his temper and fairly lashed her with his tongue. Through the tirade, Miss Harris calmly kept on “making up.” While he was generally going over her sins of omission and commission, she was carefully penciling her eyebrows, looking sidewise into the mirror, the way they do. When he got down to purple-faced bellows of rage, she was going over her lips with the lip stick. When he was generally giving an explosive review of the ground he had already covered, the lady was giving a final dab just over her eye lids. Having given herself a final and critical survey in her pocket mirror and finding the job was worthy of her O.K., she proceeded softly to cry at the director’s remarks. She believes in taking up things in their systematic and proper rotation.
Chaplin speaks bitterly of his married life and at the same time glares with melancholy rage and dismay at his first gray hairs. The first time the newspaper photographers took his picture on his arrival in New York, he asked them with alarmed solicitude to retouch the plates so his gray hairs would not show.
The movie people in New York feel somewhat dismayed because of Charley’s interview with a British newspaper man regarding Fatty Arbuckle and the killing of Virginia Rappe in San Francisco.
The disposition of the movie actors on Broadway is to pile the guilt of every movie scandal that has occurred since the beginning of time upon Fatty’s robust shoulders and let him sink.
I was amused, however, when “Pathe” Lehrmann rushed into the New York papers after the killing and raved for a couple of columns upon the deplorable condition of Fatty’s morals in relation to women. It seems that “Pathe” was engaged to the deceased young lady. He is now Owen Moore’s director at a studio in this city.
Among the several things, that “Pathe” says about Fatty Arbuckle is that Fatty used to clean spittoons in Arizona. “This,” remarks “Pathe” witheringly, “Is what happens when we take people out of the gutter and make them millionaires.”
Well, maybe so; maybe so. But I have a distinct recollection of “Pathe” Lehrmann before he got into the Rolls-Royce class.
In an east side lodging house, Lehrmann is not so very convincing as the one to stare coldly at Fatty across the cold chasm of class inferiority.
As far as Fatty Arbuckle goes—Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well! He is neither the frightful monster painted by the agitated Herr Lehrmann, nor yet the “clear white inside” person described by the emotional ex-husband of Miss Harris.
Fatty is an ignorant fat boy with a natural impulse to be funny. As a clown, he is there a million. As a millionaire, he is about as convincing as a louse on the shoulders of a decollette heiress. He just doesn’t belong there.
As to the spittoons of the Arizona saloon, well, somebody had to clean ’em. I hope he cleaned them well.
It was Fatty’s misfortune that he was not able to hush up his scandal as the scandal of Zelda Crosby was hushed up recently in New York.
Zelda Crosby was a young scenario writer. When she was about fifteen years old she happened to be invited to a jazz party given by a well known movie star in New York. One of the guests at the party was a “fillum” magnate known over the world for his campaign for purity, etc., in the films.
He took the little girl under the protection of his influence. She developed a flare for writing and he gave her an important job as a scenario writer.
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This row of stars means the usual thing that they mean in romances.
Well, after a while, the girl, who was now in her twenties, realized that he was slipping away from her. She accused him of having met another girl for whom he cared more than for her. Incidentally, he was a married man, but that didn’t count.
The film magnate renewed his protestations to her; but began to find fault with the quality of her scenario work. Then one day the little girl went into the bath room and tipped up a bottle of poison and that was the end.
Well, not quite the end. A girl friend of hers began to talk at a party. She began to tell some very dangerous things she knew of. It happened that this girl’s name is the same as that of a great screen star.
In a panic the film magnate heard what was said at the party. He hurried off to the astonished star a telegram threatening openly to ruin her entire screen career if she ever opened her mouth again about this scandal. Her indignant reply disclosed to the magnate that he had sent a telegram to the wrong girl by mistake.
Then, brethren, there was truly a fine howdydo, and it all came out in the papers—at least some of it did.
One young man—a journalist hanging on the ragged edge of decency, stated that he had some inside facts and intended to bring the whole thing out in a grand jury investigation. But he never got to the grand jury and the whole thing was suddenly hushed up. I leave it to you to imagine what happened.
It looks like a rotten year for the theatre business—and perhaps for other business.
At this writing there is not one legitimate show in New York doing any business. “Six Cylinder Love,” a comedy about a family which buys an automobile before they can really afford to do so, is supposed to be the one big hit of New York and it has already been forced to take blocks of its tickets over to the reduced rate ticket office to be sold at a discount.
Already, with the season hardly started, the beach is strewn with wrecks. One month, after the opening of the season, some nineteen shows had gone broke and had been taken off.
To be honest about it, I think most of the nineteen richly deserved it. For some unaccountable reason, nearly all the shows are infernally talky this year. The curtain goes up on a pair of people who gabble at you over the footlights until you have the blind staggers. When they—and you—are groggy, another pair take up the talk fest. Nothing ever happens but chatter. This is supposed to be the new “literal” and “realistic” school.
The high brow authors contend that their characters gabble over nothing for hours in real life; therefore, they should gabble by the hour about nothing in mimic life. By the same token I dare say they will show them putting hair lotion on their bald spots and trimming their corns and performing the other manifest, but not thrilling or interesting, duties of life.
If we are going to be realistic, b’gosh let’s be really so.
One of the few real successes of the theatre season is a coy and refined young comedy for the pure and young; it is called “Finding Gertie’s Garter.”
Al Woods, the promoter thereof, cheerfully admits all the rough things the papers and the preachers say about it. Al says that last year he listened to the critics who spurred him on to do his duty toward art and refinement. Result, he lost $75,000 on two high-brow plays. Hereafter, he is for bedroom farces “first, last and alla time” as politicians say.
Which brings us to Irving Berlin, the song writer who is just about to blossom out as a producer with a beautiful theatre of his own.
Irving began where Fatty Arbuckle did—or nearly there. He was a waiter and song shouter in a tough cafe on the East Side.
In Berlin’s case, however, he went steadfastly to work and began writing songs. At first he sang his own songs in the cafe; then he got them published. Now he is a millionaire and has the additional distinction of being one of the men who were engaged to Constance Talmadge before she was carried off by a fascinating Greek millionaire.
In fact, Irving was the last of the jilted ones. He got his dismissal from Connie down in Florida. When he came back nursing bruised and broken love hopes some one asked him about the climate in Florida.
“Fine air I hear, Irving?” said the friend.
“Yes” said Irving, “And I got the air.”
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