by John Lahr
He wanted her to continue, but she stopped abruptly. He remembers returning in the boat and watching Mercedes lean over the stern concentrating on the boat’s wake. They would share other quiet moments, but he would never be able to recall everything she revealed about her family and herself.
The summer was a happy one. There were cookouts almost every night, and during the day there was fishing and swimming. Lahr and his friends would often get a barge and paddle it across the lake to buy applejack. The attitude of the performers at the lake is epitomized in the estate Joe Cook owned there. His dining room was like a Coney Island fun house; there were chairs wired with an electric shock and vents in the room shooting jets of air up the women’s skirts. He built a one-hole golf course that was designed so that anyone reaching the green would shoot a hole-in-one.
Lahr remembers scheming to annoy a burlesque straightman called Ned “Clothes” Norton, who slept on the porch of Lahr’s nextdoor neighbor. While Norton was asleep they tied a bell to one of the pine trees with fishing line and walked fifty yards away to where they could watch him. They would ring the bell every ten minutes. Norton would shake himself awake, look around, and then try to go back to sleep. Finally, resolving to find the bell, he spent the early morning hours trying to climb every tree in search of it.
A postcard from one of the burlesquers at the lake indicates the changes taking place in Lahr’s life as the summer neared its end. The card is from Frank “Rags” Murphy, a tramp comedian, and it contains pictures of Murphy in various comedy poses. It reads simply:
Lake Hopatcong, same summer: To My Pals Bert and Babe, here’s luck to you both and wish you God speed as a sailor …
The good wishes were not for the skipper of the Flying Leopold, but for the new member of the Naval Reserve. Lahr had enlisted soon after he had been informed by his mother that he would be drafted in October. Lahr was not a fighting man; he was a performer. The Naval Reserve would interrupt his career and change his life for a while, but it was safer than the trenches.
Lahr’s life, even without him actively willing it, had changed in other ways. He and Babe were inseparable. Friends, like Murphy, assumed they were married. Mercedes wore a small gold ring on her left hand, and no one asked any questions. It was not unusual for burlesquers to marry each other after a year of constant association, and it was even more ordinary for them to enjoy the benefits of married life without the legal responsibilities. Lahr had given her the ring at the beginning of the summer, but she never mentioned marriage to him. When asked why he didn’t make the marriage legal, my father answers in quiet befuddlement, “I guess we never thought of it.” Their life was their work. Marriage represented a stasis that neither could imagine for themselves.
Lahr remembers coming home from Lake Hopatcong with Mercedes and going to the Naval Reserve Induction Center to begin his “hitch.” Just as he was about to board the bus to take him to training camp, Mercedes threw her arms around him and began to cry. She cried after he was on the bus, and, as the bus turned the corner, he could still see her standing in the same spot. That moment is still vivid in his mind. “I guess that was the only time she showed real emotion for me,” he says now, adding cryptically, “Funny, isn’t it.”
He was stationed at Pelham Bay. His time in the Naval Reserve was hopelessly unheroic. (In later years, he would elaborate on those days for me and my sister, explaining that he was a chef and making it sound as romantic as a Conrad novel. Once, in order to show his credentials as a full-fledged cook, he baked some brownies for us, “The kind I used to serve the men.” Exuberant over his creation, he tossed a piece high in the air. He miscalculated, and the fresh brownie fell on the floor. It didn’t break.) He joined the Naval Reserve through the influence of a burlesque friend, Johnny Walker, who later became a movie star. The commodore of the unit was the famous theatrical agent M. S. Bentham, who would later handle Lahr in vaudeville. The unit had many performers in it, including Brian Foy, of the famous Seven Foys, the Callaghan Brothers, and Bill Gaxton. Since it was only Lahr’s first year on the professional circuit, none of the veteran performers knew him as an entertainer. He could not arrange the extended leaves other better-known performers were allowed in order to play an occasional engagement.
Lahr became a politician, making curious connections. His friendship with a bouncer at the Ziegfield Roof was an important maneuvering point. Through his bouncer friend, he was detailed to the mess hall. It meant that he could have a bed, instead of a sleep-defying hammock, and also that the tedium of drilling and odd assignments were eliminated.
While he couldn’t get leave to perform, his rating as a chef’s assistant proved profitable. He gave the guards on the base extra food. They in turn gave him extra leave without reporting his absence. When he wasn’t mixing the soup and preparing the meats by formula, Lahr was detailed to other jobs. For a time, he was made storekeeper, a task he also turned to his advantage, managing to filch cans of apple butter to take to his mother on weekends. Also, since he had to check in the large amounts of meat that arrived every few days, he would slice off the tenderloins for his friends and himself. “We ate very well up there.”
Lahr the sailor never got farther than a few forays up the Long Island Sound. After nine months he was discharged, in time to highlight the summer-run burlesque show Folly Town (1919), which brought the cream of the Columbia Circuit to Broadway for two months. It was an honor for the performers, a chance for them to be seen by the big-time theatrical managers and producers. Lahr was second comedian, with Frankie Hunter again in the first comedy slot, and his friend from the Navy, Johnny Walker, the “third banana.”
Lahr cannot remember his boisterous enthusiasm at the first rehearsal, but others, who worked with him, can. Blutch Cooper was on stage, his hulking 250-pound frame towering above the performers. Wells was there also with a handsome young singer whom he had induced to come down from Boston to play the light comedy parts in the show. When the youth walked on the stage and saw the three seasoned comedians it was apparent that he would have to settle for his usual juvenile or straightman role. He was talking with Frankie Hunter when Lahr came up to them and with unusual brashness asked, “Have you ever been in burlesque before?” When the boy answered that he had not, Lahr turned to Hunter, exclaiming, “Will we put sand in his make-up!”
The boy was Jack Haley, and the immediate dislike he felt for Bert Lahr was soon erased when he realized that the high-spirited comedian was only a one-year veteran himself. They became close friends. Haley’s shrewdness and his aloofness gave him time to assess his new associates. Two things impressed him about Lahr: his body and his love of the stage. He often kidded Lahr about his “washboard chest” after watching him box with friends on the stage each morning before rehearsal. Lahr could not stay away from the theater even for exercise.
After the show opened, Lahr’s immediate success won him the first-comic rung. Hunter was dropped to second comedian. But Haley recalls Blutch Cooper stopping a rehearsal in the second week of the Broadway run to reproach Lahr in front of the entire cast. “It was an empty theater, after the show had opened. Cooper tore him apart with horrible insults. I could sense it was to mollify the feelings of the top comedian. Lahr just stood there. I was never sure that Bert didn’t know Cooper’s motives and kept silent to help Cooper make his point to Hunter. This is the sly facet of Bert’s personality, one moment he’s brilliant and the next rather dull.”
After the summer run of Folly Town Lahr moved directly into the Roseland Girls (1920-1921), another Wells concoction. He was first comedian, and his new salary was an amazing sixty-five dollars a week.
As first comedian Lahr began to take on certain production responsibilities. Since no general manager traveled with the show, the first comedian was in charge. He kept the cast in line and the sketches tight, not a difficult task for Lahr because he was so engrossed and successful in his work. The reviews emphasized his importance in carrying the show, and the troupe, wheth
er they liked him or not, preferred to eat regularly rather than complain. Sometimes, however, they could make it difficult. When they played near New York, Lahr took trips to the city to see his family. The members of the cast suspected him of informing on them to Blutch Cooper. He returned a few times to cold shoulders, and finally had to call the cast together to assure them that his business in New York was strictly personal.
The performers held to a code of etiquette that reflected a communal dependence lost in the modern theater. Lahr considered himself a professional and carried himself accordingly. To be considered “professional” meant following the code of the burlesque performer, thus being able to exist for long periods of time with the same people. It fostered independence and selfishness; but it kept friction to a minimum. The most damning thing that could be said to another performer was that he “was not professional.”
A professional never borrowed anything. If he needed anything, he would either buy it or go without rather than ask a cohort. The actor might have given him what he wanted. However, to ask was considered “unprofessional” and an invasion of privacy. Sometimes Lahr carried Mercedes’s bags, but often she would not allow it, for a burlesquer was responsible for catching trains on time and carrying his own baggage. The burlesque life was hard, and any extra effort in the tedious process of going from town to town was kept to a minimum. The ethic of independence has had its effect on Lahr. He still believes in every possession being in its place, and untouched except by the owner.
Lahr and Mercedes existed very easily with this independence of spirit. From the beginning, he could come and go as he pleased. Often he would ask her to come out with him and some of the cast, but she would refuse, preferring to sit alone and read.
As first comedian, Lahr was able to spend more time working with Mercedes, improving her dance numbers and teaching her a few comedy tactics of her own. “She looked beautiful out there,” he says now. He speaks slowly, trying to fill out the image of that jaunty body as it swung into her solo dance routine in the Roseland Girls. In December, their efforts were rewarded. A clipping from the New York Telegraph announced the results:
Babe Lahr, wife of the featured comedian Bert Lahr has been promoted from the chorus to a real second soubrette principal this season, and it is now Mercedes La Fay she is soubretting under, if you please. Boss Blutch Cooper likes the work of Mercedes so well that he is going to present her as a first soubrette next season. Looks like another Flo Davis, Stella Ward, and Babe LaTour, all in one.
During the New York run of the Roseland Girls, Mercedes took Lahr home to meet her family. It had taken a long time to engineer this meeting. Lahr purchased a new Palm Beach suit, which, unlike the one he wore on stage, fitted well. He can remember only the mother’s white hair and the tenderness with which she held her daughter’s hand as they talked. Mercedes had spoken often to her about Lahr. Her mother’s replies were always ambiguous; a good Catholic, she viewed her daughter’s affection for a Jewish boy with silent skepticism. Isabel Delpino assumed a stoic pose for her family. She accepted the fate the Lord had dealt her in claiming her husband Roberto when she was thirty-five. Everything—Roberto’s death, her arthritis, Mercedes’s new boyfriend—became part of His design. When Mercedes announced that she and Lahr had been married, producing the gold band to prove it, Isabel exclaimed, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, protect us.”
But by the end of their first and only meeting, Lahr had won over Mercedes’s mother. They sat for more than two hours in the parlor of her apartment chatting over tea about the stage. Lahr took great pains to elaborate Mercedes’s success. Isabel would often interrupt, adding, “She does have a beautiful figure, doesn’t she. A beautiful figure.” She would look at Mercedes and squeeze her hand.
Leaving the apartment, Mercedes confided, “She liked you very much.” There was no more talk of family sentiments. Lahr remembers feeling proud, amazed that Mercedes, with her reticence, shared such a small privacy with him.
In Roseland Girls, Lahr performed the “Lord Onion” sketch, among the funniest of his burlesque scenes and one of his favorites. The scene depicts an anxious lover (Lahr) trying to outwit his mistress’s husband by convincing the cuckold that they are rehearsing a dramatic scene in which he uncovers them embracing. The husband agrees. He enters to find them in passionate embrace. They stop, drink to his health, and send him out to run the scene again. Lahr gets progressively drunker. With Prussian mustache and powdered wig, Lahr lampooned Prohibition strictures as well as his idea of aristocracy. He also discovered a sodden rendition of “Peggy O’Neill,” a sprawling, outrageous sound that he later fitted into his vaudeville cop act.
During Roseland Girls, Lahr began a quiet program of self-improvement. Dreaming of a time beyond burlesque, he worried about his Bronx inflection and his limited vocabulary. He began to work crossword puzzles; he read the classics, focusing on Dickens and comic situations he knew intuitively from the stage. In Albany, he underwent his first press interview, a document whose formal colloquialism and selfconsciousness attests to the ponderous weight of Lahr’s new learning. When the reporter asked him if it was easier to make people laugh since prohibition, Lahr salted his reply with clinical observations on the burlesque audience of the twenties.
… Their smartness sometimes ran to kidding the players and their remarks sub rosa disturbed others near them.
There were some who became dull and did not get the jokes quick enough. They’d start laughing a few seconds after the line went over and put the whole audience out of gear. Sometimes the whole audience would get to laughing at them and pay no attention to the stage. It’s different today. Their coming is not part of an impulse born of a good time down town. They want to be entertained.… If you have the stuff, they’ll get it before it goes over the lights.
A few weeks later in Montreal, a drunk interrupted Wells’s famous “Lord Onion” sketch. When Lahr began the scene, he noticed a man in the first row sitting, exposed, in his seat. The man next to him took a newspaper and covered his lap. They began to argue. The audience guffawed as the drunk got up and began urinating in the aisles. Lahr muttered to his actors, “Keep mumbling dialogue.” He did not have to whisper instructions; the audience’s laughter drowned out every furtive word. The police were called; but in their anxiety to get the drunk out of the theater, they faced him toward the audience, compounding the ruckus. The man was finally removed; the scene began again.
Soon after the performance resumed, the police returned to scour the aisle with cleaner fluid. The actors waited three minutes on stage before the policemen let them complete the sketch.
In Keep Smiling (1921-2), Lahr achieved his greatest burlesque success. He confided to a reporter that year, “When I was a boy, my aim in life was to be a burlesque comic; now that I have attained that, I am the happiest man in the country.” Lahr very rarely talked about happiness, especially in relation to his comedy. But his burlesque notoriety gave him an inkling of maturity. His performance changed with self-confidence. “I was a scene stealer,” he admits now. “If the scene wasn’t written my way, I’d find ways of turning the attention to me and improving my part.” His urgency to please became a theatrical joke. Lahr, who claims to have coined the term in his burlesque days, performed under a continual “flop sweat.” He worked his fellow performers and himself tirelessly. Sometimes his friends took advantage of his seriousness. Once, they kept him playing pool until five minutes before opening curtain. When he went to apply his stick of greasepaint, it wouldn’t go onto his face. He went on stage with no make-up. He discovered afterwards that his friends had wrapped a transparent condom around it.
Lahr sometimes had an easier time controlling his audiences than headstrong members of the cast. In Keep Smiling, his direction of the comedy scenes could not cope with the eccentricities of a certain Broadway performer who had moved back to burlesque. Her style and comic ability once earned her jobs with George M. Cohan. However, her Broadway days came to a disastr
ous conclusion when, cast as a queen in one of Cohan’s productions, she fell off the throne drunk. The burlesque wheel was more relaxed; even if drinking was strictly prohibited, the stakes were not as high.
In Keep Smiling she and Lahr did a vampire skit, burlesquing the fashion for horror films that catapulted Theda Bara to stardom. In the sketch, Lahr is lured away from his fiancée by the actress and convinced by her to steal money and then flee with her to the Riviera.
In Milwaukee, Lahr spoke his lines about a getaway to the Riviera and looked to the wings. There was no response to the cue. When the actress finally staggered on stage, she stood with her back to the audience, muttering, “Take the revolver to the Riveera” and “To the Riveera take the revolver.”
Lahr ad-libbed an exit and went off stage to cue the musicians to go into the soubrette’s number, which was next on the schedule. In the meantime, he brought his inebriated co-star back to her dressing room. The house manager was waiting backstage. He wanted to fire her on the spot and threatened to report the incident to the Scribner office. The show went on as usual. At intermission, she seemed fine, a nap having sobered her. Lahr went to the manager and urged him to allow her to continue the show because of the important finale number, “Greenwich Village.” He agreed.
“Greenwich Village” was highlighted by a song and dance to the tune of “Ballin’ the Jack.” The woman sang; Lahr worked up the song with comedy dances. It was a show-stopper, a routine they interpolated for five or six encores. However, between intermission and the finale number, she found a bottle. When she came on stage, she was drunker than before.
They began the song, with Lahr singing the lyrics and the actress pantomiming the actions. She raised her skirt and brought her shapely legs close together. With that, she tried to swing her legs, now close together, and fell on her face. The manager brought down the curtain. The performance was not allowed to continue.
