The ticket booth was closed, as were the front doors. No performances were scheduled until the afternoon. I went into the alley next to the theater and knocked on a side door.
After a few minutes, the door was answered by a man looking like a sultan who’d been interrupted from a date with his harem. A gold turban was wrapped around his head and decorated on the front with a huge ruby. He had a small pointed black beard and enormous mustaches with the ends twisted up. His round beaming face was a deep unnatural bronze color, and he had dark green makeup around his eyes. He was only half dressed, with an unbuttoned undershirt and loose trousers that he held up with one hand.
“Yes?” he said.
I stared at him. His throat was pinkish white, and I looked for the stitches to show where the head had been attached to the neck. I mumbled, “My name’s Mickey Rawlings.” Too late, I realized there was no need to give my real name. He didn’t recognize it anyway. “I ... uh, I’m a reporter for the New York Press.”
“A New York paper!” He sounded delighted and not at all foreign. “Well I suppose word is getting around about our little theater here.”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “In fact, I was having dinner at the Lambs Club the other night and several people were talking about it.” I laid it on thick, and he went for it.
“Well, come on in. Let me show you around. We’re doing
Kismet
now, you know.” He stroked his little beard with his fingers.
“Yes, I saw the posters outside.” They showed somebody wearing an outfit like the one I saw before me.
He led me past a backstage that made the Vitagraph studio look neat in comparison. Then he took me on a tour of the dressing rooms and the auditorium. He talked proudly, as if he had personally laid every brick in the wall and put every seat in the auditorium. It was clean and attractive, and I could see reason for his pride, but an empty theater wasn’t something I could get excited about. But then an empty baseball stadium probably wouldn’t look like much to an actor.
“You’re an actor, I take it,” I said, interrupting his tale of the theater’s construction.
“I am indeed. And the owner and the manager. Harry Gardiner’s the name.” He stuck out his hand, and as we shook he added, “That’s with an ‘i’ between the ‘d’ and the ‘n.‘’ Aren’t you going to write this down?”
I had no paper or pencil; I’d have to remember to bring those the next time I impersonated a reporter. “No need,” I said. “I have a good memory.”
“Ah, very well.”
“That’s your makeup for the show?” I asked.
He chuckled. “Oh no. I am a
bit
player.” He said “bit” with a pride I wished I could match when I told people I was a utility player. “Actually,” Gardiner went on, “the only reason I even get bit parts is because I own the place.”
“But if you own it, why not take the starring role?”
He laughed loudly, then bent forward as if sharing a confidence. “Because I would soon find myself with no audience at all.” He slapped his thigh and laughed again. “Truth be known—and I’m afraid it is—I’m not much of an actor. But I love it. The theater’s in my blood. So I opened my own place where I can always have a role. But I try to bring in big names for the featured parts.” He patted the turban on his head. “Although I do on occasion allow myself the pleasure of
dressing
for the main role.”
I suspected the occasions were many. And I decided that actors were even more eccentric than baseball players.
“Arthur V. Carlyle was one of the big names, wasn’t he?” I asked. “I understand he performed in
Hamlet
here.”
“Yes he did. He’s the biggest star we’ve had here. I was lucky to get him.”
“Last winter, wasn’t it? When did it open?”
“January first, New Year’s Day. I have the poster in my office, if you’d like to see.”
“Certainly,” I said, although it didn’t matter now. On New Year’s Day, the world baseball tour was in Japan, halfway around the world.
As Gardiner led the way to the office, I said, “I hear Carlyle is planning a movie version of
Hamlet,
so I was curious to know how his last stage performance was.”
“Well ...” Gardiner hesitated. “He did draw crowds. People remembered him from his younger days. Especially the ladies—they threw flowers at him on the stage. Of course they were old ladies—they had to be to have seen Carlyle when he was in his prime—but he loved the attention.”
We arrived in a small office that had photos and posters taped to the walls. Gardiner pointed to a poster that showed a young Arthur V. Carlyle in a black costume holding a skull; Carlyle appeared to be talking to it.
“How did he do?” I prodded. I didn’t really care, but Gardiner’s evasiveness piqued my interest.
He looked uneasy. “Let’s say that his memory is not quite what would be desired in an actor. Dropped a lot of lines. And ad libbed horribly when he forgot them. It got worse every week. Usually if a fellow’s rusty with his lines, he’ll get better as he goes. But he spoke in very good voice . . . until the laryngitis.”
“Laryngitis?”
“Yes, it forced him to end the engagement early. Actually, maybe a film version is a good idea. You don’t need to remember lines, and of course you don’t need any voice at all. It was terrible for me though. He was playing to packed houses.”
To maintain the reporter ruse, I asked Gardiner a few more questions, and he did a lot more talking.
Before I left, Gardiner said, “If you see Arthur Carlyle when you get back to New York, tell him I’d love to have him again. His fans are still asking for him. I don’t care if he reads the telephone directory up there. If he brings in an audience, I’ll hire him.”
“I’ll tell him,” I promised, with no intention of keeping it.
Chapter Fifteen
A
jangling bell shattered my sleep. In reflex, my right hand shot out and slammed down on the alarm clock. The harsh sound stopped. I grabbed hold of the clock and looked at its face: a quarter after seven. When the ringing started again, I realized it wasn’t the alarm, it was my telephone.
I hopped out of bed and winced when my left leg hit the floor. After hobbling to the parlor, I answered the phone with a groggy, “Hello.”
“Hi, Mickey,” a cheerful female voice greeted me. “It’s Margie. I saw in the paper about you being spiked. Are you okay?”
“Oh, that was nothing. Happens all the time.” As I spoke, I looked down at my bare legs. My left calf was swollen and red and had bled through the bandage during the night. I gently poked it with my forefinger; it was hard as a Louisville Slugger, and I wasn’t so sure about it being “nothing.”
“Thanks for the flowers,” Margie said.
I’d almost forgotten that I’d sent her flowers before leaving for Boston. “Oh, you’re welcome. Did you like them?”
“They’re lovely.” Margie must have noticed the sleepiness in my voice because she added, “Did I wake you?”
“Mmm ... a little bit. We got in late last night.” Actually, our train from Boston didn’t get into Grand Central until two in the morning.
“I’m sorry to call so early, but I’m at the studio and we’re going out on location in a few minutes. We’re filming at Coney Island today—Steeplechase Park. I thought you might want to come along. You don’t have a game today. I checked the schedule.”
I was tempted, but a few hours of additional sleep was even more appealing.
Before I could answer, she went on, “I packed a picnic basket. I thought we could have lunch on the beach.”
A picnic with Margie on Coney Island.... Suddenly I felt awake, and I agreed to go. I didn’t even mind that she was so sure of herself that she’d already packed the lunch.
A motley fleet of Vitagraph vehicles was parked along Surf Avenue in front of the toothy Funny Face that marked the entrance to Steeplechase Park. Everything but a stagecoach had been used to transport cameras, props, costumes, and about a hundred studio employees to the site.
The weather was clear and dry, and a warm sun shone above. Thousands of vacationers were taking advantage of one of the last perfect days of summer by visiting the Pavilion of Fun. A throng of them gathered on the sidewalk to watch the doings of the movie people.
Tom Kelly stood on the front seat of a fire engine, waving to the crowd and basking in their attention. As usual, he ignored his wife, who sat on the back of the hand-pumper, with her legs hanging down and waving in the air. She was dressed in a girlish frock of soft pink and looked frightened by the commotion. I didn’t remember seeing Esther Kelly at the studio before, only at the party. The party.... I looked up at Tom Kelly again. I had yet to talk to him about Florence Hampton; maybe I would get a chance today.
Arthur V. Carlyle stood near the Kellys, rummaging through his makeup kit perched on the back of an ice truck. I felt guilty at the sight of him because I had falsely suspected him in William Daley’s death. And I felt sorry for him, too, having seen at the Lambs Club that he wasn’t the big shot he thought himself to be. Maybe the poor guy needed his huge ego to make up for being slighted by reality. I’d decided not to tell Margie anything that I’d found out about Carlyle. Leave him in peace, I figured.
Margie was dressed in a red skirt and white shirtwaist. As she adjusted a flowered pink bonnet on her head, it struck me that the outfit looked familiar, though I couldn’t remember when I’d seen her in it before.
Elmer Garvin passed by us, pacing the sidewalk, and the onlookers parted before him. His hands were deep in his pockets, and I could hear the metallic rattle of coins over the noise of the crowd. Garvin was barking orders to the cameramen and assistants as if he was planning a great battle.
“How has Garvin been?” I asked Margie. “Is he still mad at you?”
“No, I don’t think so. I asked him if you could come today, and I think he liked that. He treats us like children, so he likes to be asked permission for things. Besides, he’s short of actors for the picture, so he might ask you to do a few scenes.”
Oh, yeah, McGraw would love that. I’d have to stay away from Elmer Garvin. “How can he be short of actors with all these people here?”
“We’re going to be shooting scenes all over the park, so he’s using some of the actors to fill in as directors. So he needs other people to fill in as actors . . . like you!” Margie tapped me playfully on the chest. “Even Esther Kelly is going to be in the picture,” she added. “She’s never been in a picture before. Hasn’t even been on the stage for the last few years.”
That would explain her frightened look, I thought. “Is
everybody
going to be in this movie?”
“Everybody from Studio B. This is going to be feature length. Mack Sennett is making a six-reel comedy called
Tillie’s Punctured Romance
with Charlie Chaplin. Mr. Garvin’s trying to get this picture shot and released ahead of him. It would be the first feature comedy ever. And a feather in Mr. Garvin’s cap, of course.”
“What’s it going to be about?”
“Mr. Garvin is calling it
Coney Island Capers.
I think that’s about the whole story. We’re just going to film a lot of scenes and then he’ll edit them together. Maybe they’ll come up with a plot when they do the titles. You can turn almost anything into a decent movie with the title cards.”
I hadn’t had breakfast and started to give some thought to grabbing a Coney Island red hot. I asked, “When’s lunch time?”
Margie laughed. “Twelve noon. Maybe earlier if we’re between scenes.” She led me to a pie truck. I was relieved to see there were no pies in it, just box lunches for the crew. And one wicker picnic basket. She pointed to the basket and asked, “Do you think you can wait?” The basket was large enough to hold a feast for ten people. I could wait.
Garvin climbed atop the fire engine with a megaphone, and all the Vitagraph personnel gathered around him. He split them up into smaller companies, each with its own director and cameraman. Garvin sent a crew with Tom Kelly as its director to shoot scenes at the Human Roulette Wheel; Arthur Carlyle was to direct filming at the Funny Stairway; other crews were sent to the Earthquake Float, the Falling Statue, and the Eccentric Fountain.
He then led the largest Vitagraph contingent, including Margie, with me tagging along behind her, to the Steeplechase ride itself.
The Steeplechase was an eight-horse racetrack that ran for half a mile around the park. The horses weren’t real, but painted metal miniatures that rode on iron rails. Each one held two people, usually a man in back and a woman in front. Propelled only by gravity, there was no talent involved in winning, and it didn’t matter who won because the main purpose of the ride was simply for a man to hug the young lady seated in front of him.
When we got to the platform at the top of the course, Elmer Garvin asked me, “Mr. Rawlings, would you be so good as to join Miss Turner for a ride?”
“Sure,” I said. Then I remembered John McGraw. Then I thought of the excuse it would give me to wrap my arms around Margie. I decided to hell with McGraw—I was going on the Steeplechase.
Garvin had a camera set up at the bottom of the track. Margie straddled a horse, and I got on behind her. I wrapped my arms around her waist, hugging her firmly.
A lever was pulled and the race was on. As we bobbed along the hills and drops, I maintained a tight protective grip around her. Halfway down, I suddenly thought of a way to protect myself from McGraw; I leaned forward, burying my face in her hair, effectively hiding it from the camera.
At the end of the five-minute ride—far too brief I thought—the cameraman ordered, “Go back up! We’re going to set up for another shot.”
After five or six more trips, none of which we won and all of which we enjoyed, Garvin said, “Okay, go out the exit and stick around. We’ll take the blowhole shots in a little while.”
Margie and I left with the rest of the crowd to run the gauntlet of the Blowhole Theatre. While a seated audience howled with laughter, a cackling dwarf and an evil clown scurried about tormenting the steeplechasers as they tried to leave. The dwarf would charge at a woman until she was positioned over a hole in the platform floor; a blast of air would then shoot upward, billowing her skirt and exposing her underclothes. Meanwhile the clown chased the men around, shocking them with an electric cattle prod. I was lucky to get through with only one jolt.
Margie fared better. When the dwarf made a run at her, she calmly lowered her head and charged at him until he backed off. Then she stepped directly on the blowhole to block the air and walked off the platform.
Suddenly I thought of Florence Hampton. I could picture her doing the same thing. And I remembered where I had seen Margie’s outfit before—it was just like the one Miss Hampton had worn at Ebbets Field.
I thought maybe it was time to find Tom Kelly and have a little talk with him. Besides, getting zapped by a cattle prod wasn’t something I wanted to repeat for the camera. Elmer Garvin would just have to do without me.
I said to Margie, “I think I’m going to walk around for a while.”
“Okay,” she said. “But be back for lunch.”
“I will.”
I sought out the Human Roulette Wheel where Tom Kelly had been assigned, and that’s where I found him. He wasn’t directing though. He was leaving that to the cameraman. Kelly apparently preferred to stay in front of the lens, where his face could be captured on celluloid and later projected on a movie screen for the benefit of his adoring fans.
The cameraman was up in a rafter, taking an overhead shot of the action below. The wheel was a large disk about fifty feet across. A dozen or so people would cluster in the center of the wheel before it started turning. When it began to spin, some would be propelled out to the rim. As the wheel picked up speed, others would be flung out, skidding ignominiously on their bottoms, and cheerfully whooping their lungs out.
I couldn’t help noticing that the humans in the Human Roulette Wheel were having a lot more fun than those who’d been playing the real roulette wheels at Kitty’s.
Even Tom Kelly looked like a boy at play. As the wheel spun again and people struggled to stay near its center, Kelly slid out on his back, his arms spread and his legs kicking in the air. Only one person remained; it was Esther Kelly, who sat dead center on the wheel, her arms clasped around her knees, smiling broadly at her victory.
The cameraman kept taking more shots and moving his equipment to new locations, so I never did have a chance to talk to Tom Kelly.
At a quarter to twelve, I went back to the Blowhole Theatre. Garvin greeted me angrily, “Where the hell you been?”
“Around,” I said evasively. John McGraw was enough to answer to. I didn’t work for Elmer Garvin.
“I had to use somebody else for your close-ups,” he said.
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
He glowered at me, then shook his head and pulled out his watch. “Lunch everybody!”
We all went out to the cars and trucks. While the others got their box lunches, Margie pulled out the picnic basket. She handed it to me and I hooked it over my arm. “Let’s eat on the beach,” she suggested.
I agreed and we walked away. Garvin hollered after us, “Be back here by one sharp!”
We found a spot on the beach far back from the water, where the bathers were somewhat sparser. Margie pulled a red plaid blanket out of the basket; we stretched it out on the sand and sat down with the basket between us.
While my stomach growled with anticipation, Margie started to unpack the food, announcing each item: ham sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, dill pickles, cherry pie. A bottle of ginger ale and a couple of glasses were next to emerge. Then she dug in once more. “Oooh .... look what we have here,” she cooed. And she pulled out a bottle of champagne. Oh no.
I’d sworn to myself that I would never drink the stuff again. But it was meant to be a treat, so I’d have to suffer through it. “Would you like me to open it?” I offered. I figured that was supposed to be my job. She nodded and handed me the bottle.
Margie unwrapped the sandwiches and laid them out on top of the closed basket drawers as if it was a dining room table. I struggled to peel the foil from the neck of the bottle, then twisted off the wire around the head of the cork. The cork shot off with a blast, and champagne bubbled over onto my trousers. I must have swung the basket too hard on the walk over.
“Sorry,” I said as I tried to brush the puddles off my pants. Then I checked the bottle; it was still two-thirds full. Maybe I should have shaken it harder.
I filled one of the glasses and held it out to Margie.
“No, I better not,” she said. “Mr. Garvin said he might want me to do some stunts this afternoon. You go ahead though.”
Gee, thanks. “Let’s save it,” I said. I hopped up and walked over to retrieve the cork. It had landed on the blanket of a dozing man who was tanning his abundant belly; he was also risking arrest—going barechested on a public beach could cost him a weekend in jail.
After returning to Margie, I sat down and tried to put the cork back in the bottle, but it wouldn’t go. So I slipped the cork in my jacket pocket and resigned myself to drinking the champagne.
We nibbled at the sandwiches, Margie drank her ginger ale, and I sipped my champagne. It tasted as good as I remembered, but its aftereffect was vivid enough in my memory that I drank very little of it.
Staring at the waves rolling onto the beach, Margie said softly, “I wonder what the beaches are like in California.”
I had no idea, which didn’t inhibit me from giving an opinion. “They’re about the same,” I said. “Except they face the other way.”