Chapter 5
“Without a Song”
M
arian walked to the stoop of Jimmy Blanchard’s five-story house on 26th Street. It was a little warm for the fur coat she’d donned before leaving her apartment, but she was determined to look stylish for her meeting with Jimmy.
Clyde, Jimmy’s secretary, let her in and led her to the third floor before depositing her near a sofa and leaving again. Through the whole transaction, Clyde didn’t say a word. Marian sighed and waited near the sofa, mildly concerned that Jimmy wasn’t even home. It would be just like Clyde to just leave her there for an hour.
She slid her fur coat off and draped it over the arm of the sofa. She crossed her arms and waited.
Jimmy walked in a few minutes later. Marian was struck at first the way she always was by his handsomeness. He had curly dark-blond hair washed with gray that he kept cut short, a rectangular face, and a lean body that he often kept covered up with one of the many neatly tailored dark suits he owned. Today was no exception; he wore a gray suit with a red tie and he looked every inch the slick professional that he was. He smiled at her as he entered the room.
“Hello, my dear,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m just lovely.” She uncrossed her arms and ran a hand down the front of the red day dress she’d put on that morning. She’d had the dress made for her, modeled after a design by Coco Chanel that she’d seen in a magazine. It had been an extravagant purchase, but she liked how it skimmed her body. Marian considered 1927 a good time for fashion; it was so much more accommodating of her boyish figure than the previous decade had been.
Jimmy stepped forward and took her hand. He raised it to his lips and lightly kissed her knuckles. “You are lovely,” he said.
Marian wondered at the protocol. Would it be appropriate to jump into his arms? Should she make polite conversation? “Is anyone else here?” she asked. Jimmy did a lot of business at the house on Saturday mornings.
“I just had a meeting with Walter Rhodes, but he left a few minutes before you arrived. He’s a composer. You’d like him. He’s writing a few songs for next year’s
Le Tumulte
, real showstoppers.” Jimmy grinned. “I asked him to write a song for you.”
“For me?”
“Yes, dear. You do that clown act with Cotton very well, but I think it’s time for you to shine on your own.”
Marian laughed in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous. Eddie and I have a good act going. I’ve never had a solo before. What’s all this?”
Jimmy stepped away and started to pace. “You fashion yourself a comedienne, I realize, like that Fanny Brice. But you have something Fanny Brice doesn’t have.”
“What’s that?”
“You, Marian dear, are beautiful. Brice is a hag. Plus, you do that honking thing in your act with Cotton, but I know that you’re capable of so much more than that. You have a silvery voice under all that nonsense. Rhodes is a genius with lyrics. He’ll write some very clever things for you. I think a ballad. Something that shows off how talented you are.”
Marian shook her head. “Forget it. I do the act with Eddie.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Eddie Cotton is a sideshow. He can dance, sure, and he has great comic timing, but that man is not destined for greatness, not the way you are. Why, you could go to Hollywood! They’re making motion pictures with sound now. You would look so marvelous, up on the big screen, where everyone could see your gorgeous face.”
“Jimmy, that’s crazy. I don’t have any business in Hollywood.”
“Forget Hollywood, then. You could be the star of
Le Tumulte
. You, Marian dear. You are my muse! Yours and Eddie’s act is everyone’s favorite part of the show, and you know why? It has nothing to do with Eddie Cotton, I’ll tell you that.”
“You flatter me.” Marian felt heat flood to her face. Jimmy exaggerated, but she didn’t mind him buttering her up.
“It’s the truth. You can do great things.” Jimmy stopped pacing and turned to face Marian. “Just humor me, all right? I’ll get a few songs from Rhodes, you can take a look at them, and then we’ll decide.”
Marian sighed. “Yes. Whatever you say, Jimmy.”
“I know you like Cotton . . .”
Marian walked over to the couch and sat down. She was aware that Jimmy had a bizarre jealous streak where Eddie was concerned, and she didn’t know how to assure him that nothing would ever happen on that score. Marian had known for a long time that Eddie’s preference lay with men, though that hadn’t stopped her from developing a bit of a crush on him shortly after they’d met. Once it became clear that there were no sparks between them, they’d settled into an easy friendship that translated pretty well into their act, where they often played a long-suffering married couple who sang ridiculous songs about the particulars of a long relationship. Marian often took the part of the nagging wife who wanted her hard-drinking husband to just wash the darn dishes.
“Things with me and Eddie—”
Jimmy waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. You can continue your act with Cotton, no one said you couldn’t, I just thought, maybe what you need is a signature song. That would be good, right?”
“Sure, Jimmy.”
Satisfied, Jimmy walked over to the couch and sat beside her. “I’m glad you came by the other night. Even if you did go out with Eddie first.”
“We agreed that it would be good for the show if Eddie and I were seen in public together. It added to the act, or made it more convincing. No?”
“You’re right, of course you are, dear, but, well, you know.”
“You have no reason to be jealous of Eddie Cotton. You know that.”
Jimmy draped an arm around Marian. “Thank you, dear. It soothes my old bones to know that a woman as delightful as you can still find someone such as myself attractive.”
Marian sighed and sank into Jimmy’s side. “You know I do.”
“Would you like to go out for dinner tonight? They just opened a new place down the block.”
“Can we just sit here for a few minutes? I feel like I need the world to stop turning for just a moment.”
Jimmy chuckled. Marian felt it vibrating through his chest. “That we most certainly can do, my dear. That we can do.”
Eddie was on the stage of the James Theater at three in the afternoon. He moved through some new steps for the act again. Forward, forward, back, back, to the left. He thought that if Marian mimicked his movements and held her hands out just so, that could look pretty good. To the right, to the left, turn, turn. He’d hold out his cane here and lift his hat there. He pictured the whole act, how Marian would look dancing beside him, how the audience would gasp when he tried this new move, how they would stand and applaud when they finished. He was so absorbed in the routine that he didn’t notice he wasn’t alone until he heard a man clear his throat.
Eddie stopped abruptly and turned to see who had interrupted. It was Jimmy Blanchard. He was dressed in a slightly out-of-fashion gray suit, but his shoes were shined to perfection and there was not a hair out of place on his head.
“Sorry to barge in, Cotton.” Blanchard didn’t look sorry at all.
A man with brown hair and a greasy mustache walked up behind Blanchard. He also cleared his throat.
Blanchard led the man onto the stage. “Eddie, this is Walter Rhodes. He’s a songwriter.”
Eddie shook the new man’s hand. He was familiar with Rhodes. Between Doozies seasons, Eddie always took it upon himself to walk through Tin Pan Alley, talking to songwriters and musicians to get ideas for his act for the next season. Although Blanchard had ultimate creative control, Eddie found it greased the wheels a bit if he presented a lot of ideas first and then let Blanchard decide what he liked best. Plus, Eddie just liked Tin Pan Alley, liked listening to the various musicians pound out songs on old pianos or sing little melodies as inspiration struck. Eddie had met George Gershwin that way, in fact, a few years before when he’d been trying out some new songs, hoping to sell a few to one of the revues on Broadway. Eddie had heard that Gershwin was writing opera these days, which Eddie thought a damn shame. Opera was on its way out, he would have argued. Popular music and jazz, that’s where the future was headed.
Rhodes was a composer in the same mold as a younger Gershwin. He was ambitious and creative, and Eddie knew a few of his songs had become big hits. He was surprised to find him talking to Blanchard, actually, because surely Rhodes could have sold songs to better producers.
“Nice to see you again,” Eddie said to Rhodes.
“Likewise,” Rhodes said, shaking Eddie’s hand enthusiastically. “I’ve enjoyed your act this season. You’re an Oliver Twist, moving the way you do on that stage. Marian France is a hot dancer, too.”
“Yes, Marian is great,” Eddie said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Blanchard grinned and slapped Eddie on the back. “That’s what I like about you, Eddie. You never beat your gums. You’re direct but always polite.” Blanchard laughed. “I’ve asked Walter here to come up with a couple of songs for next season, although I’ve told him that if he comes up with something really swell, we’ll let him try it out later this season. In fact, I, uh . . .” He glanced at Rhodes, and then looked back at Eddie. “I’ve asked him to write a song for Marian.”
“All right,” Eddie said. That struck him as odd, but he was willing to entertain the possibility. Marian had a lovely voice when she wasn’t honking like a goose.
“A ballad,” Rhodes said. “I want to write the song for Marian that is like ‘My Man’ was for Fanny Brice.”
That confused Eddie. “You mean a ballad
just
for Marian? Not part of the act?”
Blanchard threw an arm around Eddie. “Now, Ed, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not breaking up your act. You and Marian still have one of the most popular bits in the show. I just thought we might try something different. Show off Marian’s singing chops. What do you think?”
Eddie knew he didn’t actually have a say, so he shrugged. “I guess that would be all right. What about me?”
The smug expression on Blanchard’s face lasted a mere moment, but it told Eddie all he needed to know. Blanchard had little interest in Eddie besides as a means to make money, but Marian was the pretty girl, the ingénue. Eddie sighed. He let Blanchard offer him some platitudes, but knew not much would come of it.
“I don’t have quite the song yet,” Rhodes said, “but I have some ideas, if you would care to hear them?”
“Surprise me when it’s done,” Eddie said.
As Rhodes and Blanchard retreated, Eddie glanced at his watch, and then surveyed the theater. He’d have to clear out and get changed soon. For show, he tried a few more steps, did a turn, and then sauntered off the stage. A wave of exhaustion hit him as he walked toward his dressing room.
He wondered when it would be his time. When he’d shine like an Eddie Cantor or a George M. Cohan. Not that he begrudged Marian her success—she was obviously talented and he loved her like a sister—but he was getting a little tired of playing the fool on stage every night, and besides, he knew if he were just given the right opportunity, he could rule Broadway.
If, that was, anyone was willing to take a chance on him, which he suspected they’d be less inclined to do if they knew who he really was, the queer Jew dancer from the Lower East Side, whose immigrant parents hadn’t approved of a life in the theater and so had pretty much given up on him when he’d started taking dancing lessons. Thus he’d reinvented himself, no longer Elijah Cohen but Eddie Cotton, with feet as free as Fred Astaire’s and comic timing like Charlie Chaplin’s, if only someone would give him enough space to move.
He sat down on the old wooden chair he kept in his dressing room and wondered for a brief moment if he was destined to remain an also-ran. The odds of him actually finding the success he craved were slim. It was, as were most things Eddie most greatly desired, just out of his reach.
Lane stood in the kitchen at the Marigold, watching his men carry in a dozen or so large wooden crates. They stacked them near the oven. Lane looked at Mook, who had been the one to show up with this delivery. Mook was a chubby man of vague ethnicity, and no one knew what his name was aside from “Mook,” which Lane was pretty sure was a nickname some girl had given him. Lane found Mook extremely unpleasant and untrustworthy, but the man had connections to hooch deliveries that Lane couldn’t get to otherwise. That, and Epstein’s connection had gotten himself arrested the week before, and this was what Lane could get on short notice.
He grabbed a crowbar and walked over to one of the crates. “You got the real stuff this time, right? I’m not going to open one of these cases and find out that you’ve brought me bottles of sacramental wine some rabbi in Brooklyn made in his bathtub.”
“Gen-yoo-wine article,” Mook said, gesturing to the crates. “Got a shipment from Canada. Rum and gin. It ain’t the greatest, but it’s real. And I’m givin’ you a deal, Carillo, because I like you so much.”
“How much?”
Mook quoted him a figure that was about twice what Lane really wanted to pay.
“That’s not what we talked about,” said Lane.
Mook walked over to one of the crates and ran his hand over the top of it. “I ran into a little extra trouble with this shipment,” he said. “I got some applesauce about unauthorized boats at the docks.” He shrugged.
“You didn’t have this delivered directly to the city, did you?”
“No, New Jersey. You think I’m stupid?”
Lane did think Mook was stupid, but he held his tongue. He named a compromise figure. “And that’s assuming I can sell this to my customers at a decent mark-up. No one’s gonna pay for bad moonshine.”
“Aw, come on, Carillo. I worked hard for this. I got kids to feed.”
“Not my problem. You want the money or not?” For show, Lane put a hand on his hip, whipping his jacket back enough to give Mook a flash of his shoulder holster.