by John Lahr
During one performance he turned by chance to the woman playing the scene with him. She was tinkling a champagne glass just as he was about to deliver the punch line. He was livid; at the same time he knew he couldn’t let the audience see his fury. He spat out his line, changing its rhythm, surprising the actress, who understood that she had been caught.
She blushed, and then, in her embarrassment, forgot her lines. “What do I do now, Bert; what do I do?” she whispered.
“You got yourself into this, baby—now get yourself out.”
He waited on stage without moving or saying a word until finally someone from the wings gave her the lines.
Sympathy was also the emotion he longed for off the stage. Lahr knew many of the tricks to create it on stage; but it has taken him fifty years to learn how to express his knowledge in words.
Interviewer: Is it harder to make people laugh than to make them cry?
Lahr: Well, you’re equipped for both. Let’s put it this way, if you’re equipped for both, they’re both easy. But you will find that a comedian—a good comedian—has to be a good actor. And the reason for a comedian being a good comedian, he creates sympathy. He immediately creates a warmth in his audience, so once you do that, and the audience roots for you, it’s a very simple matter to make them cry. I think you laugh at a great comedian because you want to cry. Laughter is never too far from tears.
Interviewer: What is your secret of getting sympathy from an audience?
Lahr: I think it’s a physical and chemical thing, the same as if you go to a party and somebody comes in a room and immediately attracts you. So a person comes out with a manner on stage that makes you say “Aah, he’s a sweet guy”—do you see? Which I don’t think you can acquire, and I don’t think you can acquire good taste—I think you’ve got to be born with that. I know what not to say, what not to do. I think it’s his manner, his general attitude, a humbleness.
Interviewer: You must have done something to cultivate this. Let’s start with the fact that you have the basic equipment.
Lahr: It isn’t a question of cultivating. You cannot cultivate humbleness, it becomes phoney. He’s either a humble fella or a brash fella …
Actors Talk About Acting
Lahr learned quickly that the audience responded to individuality and that the imitator’s staying power in burlesque was short. Critical reaction reinforced his theatrical eccentricity. He was noticed immediately by reviewers.
[Lahr performs] in a most pleasing and different way than is usually seen … He is a newcomer to burlesque and a welcome one.
New York Clipper on
The Best Show in Town
As a low “Dutch” comic, much of his spoken humor came from malapropisms. He had grown up with this aspect of dialect humor; few had a keener ear for the funny sound or the ludicrous innuendoes of words. Lahr and Wells would discuss various elaborate word plays, with Lahr improvising on Wells’s script. Wells, perhaps more than any other writer besides S. J. Perelman and Damon Runyon, was a master of the mangled phrase.
Lahr’s singing was another source of comedy. His voice could never be trained to stay on key. He had never tested the real possibility of the comedy song in the school-act days. The Best Show in Town brought the comedy song into his act. Sometimes it would be a rendition of a popular ballad complete with malapropisms and thick Dutch dialect such as he had used on Wilkins Avenue. Later in his career he found that he could create more laughter with his voice when he tried to sing seriously than when he launched into a wildly athletic and raucous spoof (as he did in The Best Show in Town). There is no better example of the burlesque malaprop song than the one he did in The Best Show in Town, a number introduced a few years earlier by Sam Bernard. Frederick Morton wrote, on hearing Lahr’s version years later, that the sound “was indescribable. Perhaps a Wagnerian tenor could achieve it, if in the midst of wooing Kriemhild, he were given a hotfoot.”
Lahr’s delivery was fast, his hands froze at the peak of their excitement to emphasize the delight of each statement in the song.
Ououououououoouch—how dot voman could cook!
His eyes rolled in dumbfounded ferocity. His voice strained in its passion so that the veins around his temples swelled perceptibly.
Her zoop had a flavor like—like bitches and cream
Her pancakes—ah!—Vhat a bootiful dreaeaeaeammm!
His hands suddenly shot out in front of him as if he was feeling his way along an imaginary wall. They trembled. He closed his eyes as he spoke; his nostrils dilated until they became the fulcrum of his face, teetering between delight and disgust.
And her oyshters and fishes
Were simply … (he pauses in sensuous reverie)… malicious.
Ach, Gott, How Dot Voman Could Cook, Jawohl.
This was a subtle version of the word-murdering potential of his comedy. A year earlier, before he had signed on to the Cooper shows, Lahr did a stint with Joe Woods’s College Days, once again replacing his friend Jack Pearl.
The program of the performance, featuring such characters as Heinrich Hasenfeffer, manufacturer of excited oats, Charlie Horsely, and Ivy Green, gives an indication of the playful simplicity of the humor. The song Lahr performed in this two-act farce was less sophisticated than his later misuse of the language.
Ve’re two ignorant Germans just arrived from College,
And our geographical language is just supreme.
Ve have learnt to speaking English in a bar room
And that is vhy ve don’t know whose the reason …
He is embarrassed now at the nonsensical, hokey quality of the humor; but in 1916 it was a big success.
After College Days, Lahr had worked himself up to burlesque and The Best Show in Town, which became one of the season’s choicest burlesque offerings. It played to rave reviews and packed houses for its full forty-week tour. After the fourth month, the program for the show ran an advertisement announcing that “Bert Lahr, eccentric Dutch [was signed] three years more with Blutch Cooper.”
The gaiety of this time is reflected in a picture of Lahr in his tattered first scrapbook. It shows him and Frank Hunter mugging with the soubrette of the show. They are dressed in children’s clothes complete with pillows for paunch and little skullcaps. They are being embraced by a zoftig beauty wearing a rhinestone star in the middle of her forehead. It is the only picture he has kept that depicts him clowning off stage.
During the run of The Best Show in Town there was little leisure time. Performers worked two shows a day, seven days a week in the towns west of Chicago. When they were in the East, Sunday was a day of rest, but any free time was spent sleeping or planning new material. At every circuit theater, rehearsals would be held at 9:30 each morning and the chorus and routines overhauled.
Lahr thrived on the work. He did not waste time at rehearsals. His earnestness made him the brunt of much good-natured joking. During the first tour he incorporated new kinds of comic movements into his performance, adopting many of the antics of the acrobats, who fascinated him. He developed a neck fall and a backward flip that he worked into the memorable Flugel Street Union scene (see Appendix 2) he did with Hunter.
Wells’s burlesque was high-level entertainment. The audiences appreciated his skill. In cities like Detroit and Cincinnati, the local theater buffs announced that it was the best burlesque to come their way in a long time. Cincinnati offices reported that The Best Show in Town was “the most successful season of burlesque in the city.” And Dayton, where burlesque houses had been languishing because of a dearth of talent and suitable material, saw Wells’s show as heralding a new type of burlesque. One critic was outspoken on the subject:
By this time, Dayton has learned that burlesque is not so black as it is painted. It has been pretty well cleaned up. Rot and coarseness, the solid foundations upon which the old burlesque was built, have been amputated and what remains is no worse than that which is found in almost any musical comedy. To be sure it is no show for b
abes in arms … But then the average man or woman can see it without being any the worse for the experience. It is spectacular and diverting and musical and its principal exponents comprise some of the cleverest people on the stage.
Lahr’s reviews continued to be outstanding. He was “a coming Teuton” in almost every critical appraisal. He pasted each clipping in his book.
Now the scraps of paper are brown with age. Many of them disintegrate at the touch. They tell little of the enthusiasm of those performances, but they include a few random entries that are not about him. These are mysterious and touching inclusions in a book that represents so much of his early dream and the beginning of his future. One clipping from a Charleston paper is about a show called Katinka (1916). A paragraph in that review is marked with a thin red line of lipstick:
Katinka brought a large and capable cast to Charleston and yes—one really pretty girl; the petite little brunette, and there was only one. Too bad she was in the chorus, because there are better things ahead of her, much better things.
A few pages later in the book there is another mention of someone other than Lahr:
The chorus is both beautiful and energetic. Even a sober-faced young woman who is a good chorus girl “because she is so different” won applause from the enthusiastic Sunday crowd.
These clippings are the only indication that someone shared his theatrical dreams. Nameless in these notices, she used many aliases. She may have been looking for the right stage name, or perhaps the right personality. Mercedes La Foy, Elizabeth La Fay, Mercedes del Pino. Her real name was Delpino.
My father had seen her at rehearsals, but he was ashamed of his shabby clothes, fearful of his unattractiveness, and he did not dare speak to her. The first words that passed between them were in Philadelphia, at a candy store across from the theater. He offered her some candy and began to talk about the show. As he talked, he kept looking down at his pants. He had a large hole on the side of his trousers.
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Bert,” she said, “I have those too.” She lifted up her long skirt and showed her stockings—they were ripped. She smiled at him. They laughed, and Lahr forgot his feelings of awkwardness.
Their meetings had been infrequent, although Lahr thought of her often on the road. When he met Pearl in Portland for College Days (1916), Lahr asked about her. Pearl, who knew Mercedes from other kid acts, mentioned that she was going into a show called Katinka. It was not until the end of the summer that they met again in New York. Pearl recalls her. “She was the most beautiful Spanish woman you have ever seen in your life. Beautiful, beautiful, God …”
She never spoke of her past, although Lahr talked about his family affectionately and puffed up his cheeks to imitate his father when he was in a rage. She spoke modestly about her dancing, which was the only thing that elicited her excitement. When she talked about it, her eyes, beautiful against the rich olive smoothness of her skin, would widen with intensity. Her hands, which usually lay placidly on her lap, became animated; and she continually raised them to smooth back her hair. He was amazed at how passionate she became about the theater. She was usually so quiet and unassuming, but when she spoke about herself and her work she took on a strange aggressiveness. It was unexpected. It made her mysterious.
When Lahr went into The Best Show in Town Mercedes auditioned and got a job easily. She was very popular with the girls in the troupe. They called her “Babe” and flattered her. Although she was the most attractive of the girls, they did not look on her as a competitor. She showed little interest in men except for Lahr. She did not respond to the camaraderie of the cast, but she was friendly and never rude about the wisecracks they made. She took care of her body; her hair was always carefully combed and her lips painstakingly drawn. But in her clothes she showed a curious lack of imagination. The girls always had to remind her that her clothes did not match and that red and yellow—her favorite colors—did not go well together. It was as though she could concentrate only on one part of her body at a time, and could never see herself as a unity.
At rehearsals Mercedes worked with the same ferocious energy in her dancing that Lahr put into his comedy. She practiced her new steps in the shadows of the large stage, working late on routines until her body responded without effort to the tempo of the music. (Her success had won her the unofficial title of “Miss Pep” from the performers and the press.) She was proud of her gracefulness. She knew how her legs tightened and relaxed when she beat out a rhythm on the stage. And when she was working well, she had the wonderful sensation of being apart from her legs and admiring them for their supple strength and smoothness. She always said she had beautiful legs. When she mentioned this in public people glanced down at them in amazement, because her face and raven hair usually captured their complete attention. Occasionally, Lahr wandered out on the stage while she was rehearsing. She would smile at him, but when he tried to talk with her, she would cut him short, saying, “Can’t you see I’m working?” She never lost a step.
When The Best Show in Town went on holiday in the last week of May, Lahr and Mercedes pooled their savings (four hundred dollars) and headed for Lake Hopatcong, a New Jersey vacation haven for burlesque performers. With Lahr making forty-five dollars and Mercedes sixteen as a chorus girl, the sum represented a rigorous and dreary struggle to economize. The hotels they chose had been the dingiest; they limited their meals to one a day. As a result, Lahr often complained about his legs aching. “I didn’t know it then,” he explains now, “but I was suffering from malnutrition.” However, with the savings and a three-year contract on the Wheel, life was exhilarating. Looking back at it now, my father pauses in his speech to make sure he’s telling the truth, but finally maintains, “I think those were the happiest days of my life. I felt secure in my business. I knew I could always get a job …”
Lahr, Mercedes, and a few of their friends from The Best Show in Town found bungalows in a village called Northwood, along the lake. Many other famous burlesquers, such as Joe Cook, Jim and Betty Morgan, and Rose Seidel spent their holidays there too.
Lahr and Mercedes lived in a two-room shack, which he describes as “just four walls and a bed.” There was no electricity, and their cooking was done either on sterno stoves or at a stone fireplace overlooking the lake. The closest telephone was a half mile away, and the greatest novelty of all was lugging provisions by boat to the house. Whereas the months in burlesque had been hectic, limited to one dressing room after another, Lake Hopatcong offered an exotic adventure that they explored with childlike curiosity. It only cost them a dollar a day, which made it an even happier time.
Lahr’s first acquisition was a boat. He dubbed it the “Flying Leopold” because its engine was always sputtering to a standstill. It provided them with a great deal of fun. It was this boat in which he took his first fishing trip, setting out with a few friends to still-fish for bass and grass pickerel. They spent the day with feet jutting over the sides, drinking and swapping stories. Sometimes they caught a fish. Lahr often found himself seeking the solitude of the boat. He liked sitting on the water and being rocked in the silence of the waves. Occasionally Mercedes came along as pilot, but she never fished. Often she was content to stay at home and sun herself or comb her hair. She found a small dog on which she lavished elaborate affections while Lahr was away. She seemed content.
Mercedes and Lahr rarely ventured beyond their group of burlesque friends. Mercedes was beautiful, and people responded well to her. She complemented him and did not try to criticize his work or his eccentricities. Sometimes during these summer months, with homemade beer and a packed lunch, they would set off down the lake in the Flying Leopold. It was different seeing Mercedes alone. It seemed more difficult to judge her, and yet, her beauty and sweetness were as real in these private moments as they seemed in public.
Together they explored the coastline of the lake, leaving their boat on the shore and sitting on the mat of rust-brown pine needles that began a few feet from the wa
ter. They liked staring up at the vast blue sky and then down at the last row of bungalows. They savored the isolation.
Once, while they lay half covered in water, he asked her about the amulet she always wore around her neck. It was a picture of a young girl enclosed in a delicate Florentine gold frame.
“Some people carry St. Christopher for good luck. This is my St. Christopher. It’s a picture of my mother,” she said. “Her father had it made when she played for the King of Spain. She gave it to me a few years ago. I remember, because Anna, my sister, was very jealous and wanted to wear it. I hid it from her and wouldn’t let her have it because it was special from Mother to me. Mother always liked me best. I feel very sorry for her now. She always thought I was the prettiest.”
“What did she play?”
“She and her sister—they were sixteen then—played the piano for the King. They learned music at the Convent of St. Alphonso. They were the most beautiful and talented young ladies in Madrid. My grandmother was very rich, and Mother told me often about how lovely it was walking in the court with royalty—their fine silks, the long halls which smelled of scent and the fresh spray of water from the fountains, the cool marble floors with their beautiful patterns, and the fine paintings all cracked and old. She told me about all that, and their soft hands. Sometimes she would cry. I couldn’t stand it, but I had to sit in her room and help until she stopped. It was a big change for her, Bert—much bigger than I understood when she first told me about her early life. That’s why she gave me this. She didn’t want any memories after my father died. She didn’t want to be reminded about her wealth and that life. She is too poor now for those memories. She wants only the best for us … and that’s all.”
