Notes on a Cowardly Lion

by John Lahr

  Mercedes: (looking haughtily at him) Are you speaking to me?

  Lahr: Yeah to you. (And looking at her breasts) and to you too.

  Mercedes: Well, what was I doing?

  Lahr: You was violating the law.

  Mercedes: Law? What law?

  Lahr: Nineteenth Amendment, Section Six, Upper 7, which says it’s a public nonsense to shimmy or vibrate any part of the human astronomy. And it’s punishable by a fine of one year or imprisonment for two years of E pluribus Aluminum.

  Mercedes: But what was I doing? I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  Lahr: You wasn’t doing anything wrong? Gnong, gnong, gnong! I saw you. I was standing right down there, and the second I saw you I said to myself, “This has got to stop at once.” So I watched you for ten minutes.

  Mercedes: (wide-eyed) But what was I doing?

  Lahr: Well, if you was wearing license plates, the numbers would be all wiped off. Come on to the station house. (He reaches out to grab her arm, but she pushes him. His hat falls over his eyes. Lahr pushes the hat up on his head and looks at her, puffing his cheeks and swaggering around her in his crouch. He passes his nightstick from hand to hand, and then makes a few flourishes with it, like a baton twirler with broken wrists. He tries to throw it up from under his leg. He cannot do it; the club and his hand get lost somewhere in the back of his knee. He staggers and turns back to her in a huff. He holds the cuffs of his jacket with his hands.)

  Mercedes: Don’t touch me! (She pushes him again.)

  Lahr: Here, stop pushing the City Hall around. Where do you get that stuuuuuuuuffffff? Where do you get that stuuuuuuuuuffffffff?

  Mercedes: I believe you’re intoxicated.

  Lahr: Well, if I ain’t, I’m out seven bucks.

  Mercedes: Now see here, if you don’t stop annoying me, I’m going to call the station house and tell the captain you’re drunk. Understand me? Tell the captain you’re drunk!

  Lahr: Go ahead. What do I care? Do you want to know something? The captain’s drunker than I am. Besides, the captain has my seven bucks. I think I’d better get the petroleum wagon.

  (He stands sideways, pouting. His arms are crossed. He cradles the club in his arms. Mercedes comes up to him and pulls his coattails. He jumps away as if he’d been pinched.)

  Mercedes: (pulling his coat) Now look here!

  Lahr: What’s the idea? What’s the idea? Don’t get so personal. Was we properly introduced? You know you’re fooling with the government?

  (He breathes heavily. He points to his breast pocket and looks down at his badge. It’s not there. He feels the periphery of his pockets and checks his cuffs, and then looks back at her perplexed, exclaiming) Lost the government.

  Mercedes: Now see here! (She pulls him again by the coat.)

  Lahr: What do you think this is—ecclesiastic? (He picks up the bottom of his jacket and examines it.) Why this is genuine fluff. Why it’s imported. Smell the ocean. (He holds it up to his nose.) No that’s lobster bisque—here’s the ocean. I think I’d better serve you with a subpeanuts. What’s your name?

  Mercedes: In English, my name is Nellie Bean.

  Lahr: Nellie Bean. And your mama’s name is Lima Bean?

  Mercedes: Yes.

  Lahr: And your papa’s name is String Bean?

  Mercedes: Yes.

  Lahr: Nellie, look at me. I’m your Uncle Succotash. (They embrace.) I’m glad to see you, Nellie. I didn’t saw you since your infantry. My goodness how time flitters! Tell me, Nellie, what are you doing now?

  Mercedes: I’m an actress.

  Lahr: Oh sure you’re an actress. Ain’t I the dumb bell? Why it’s in the blood. Your mama, she was an actress. Your papa, he was an actress too. And say, I wasn’t such a bad actress myself. Want to hear something?

  Mercedes: Yes.

  (Lahr drops down to a duck crawl and screams out) ’s Peggy O’Neill. (Turning to her he asks) Pretty good, isn’t it.

  Mercedes: Wonderful. Is your voice trained?

  Lahr: No, it’s still running wild. It took me two days to learn that song.

  Mercedes: What’s the name of it?

  Lahr: “Peggy O’Neill.” Do you like it?

  Mercedes: Yes, indeed.

  (Lahr sings the song again. This time he sings louder, and flaps his arms as he exaggerates his duck walk.)

  Lahr: Sure, every night from station P-UN-K, and I get letters from the people who listen, see. (He takes several letters out of his pocket and begins to read.) This is from a hospital. “Dear Sir, last night five of our patients who were at death’s door heard you on the radio. Your singing pulled them through!” … Here’s another. “My dear friend, last night I heard you sing. Something tells me, I’ll meet you in the near future.” Signed John Nutt, Superintendent of the State Insane Asylum.

  Mercedes: Wonderful. I wish I could sing like you.

  Lahr: Try it. I’ll help you out.

  (Mercedes sings “La Soldata.” Lahr watches her for a moment, and then throws his hand behind his head and starts a gyrating parody of her movements. He dances with his elbows pointed out at his waist and moves in his baggy-pants crouch. He does a very simple time step, but looks at his feet with the confident arrogance of a tightrope walker. As he does the simplified step, he takes a hand from his hips, yelling proudly) One hand. One hand!

  Mercedes: (stopping the orchestra) Just a moment.

  (Lahr is carried away with his performance. He begins to sing “Peggy O’Neill,” and in his effort to put more punch into the number begins boxing with his back to Mercedes.)

  Mercedes: In a forest you’d be considered a marvelous tree.

  Lahr: (turning to her) Why?

  Mercedes: Because you’re one hundred percent sap.

  Lahr: Thank you, I—come to the Station House.

  Mercedes: Ah—you wouldn’t arrest me, would you?

  Lahr: Yesatively! Come on!

  (Lahr tries to arrest her, but Mercedes vamps him, dancing around him and touching him seductively around the ears. He cringes in delight, pursing his lips and swaying his shoulders. He grips the cuffs of his oversized coat to control himself. Finally she says)

  Mercedes: You wouldn’t arrest me, would you?

  Lahr: Certainly not, who made that crack?

  Mercedes: Oh, you’re just the grandest thing.

  Lahr: And you’re the granderest girl!

  (A sergeant enters from the right and strolls across the stage.)

  Lahr: Cheese it, Nellie here comes the sarge. I’ll see you around the poolroom. (He taps her on her buttocks. She exits.) Hi ya Sargie. How’s everything down at the station house? (Lahr starts to pass his nightstick between his hands, but on the second fillip he misses his hand completely. The club shoots across the stage, with Lahr fanning the air, thinking he’s manipulating it. He does a double-take and retrieves the club.)

  Sergeant: Don’t try to get yourself out of this. What were you doing with your arms around that woman?

  Lahr: I was frisking her. She’s a very dangerous character.

  Sergeant: Why didn’t you pinch her?

  Lahr: I did! I mean, I gave her a ticket.

  Sergeant: Speaking of tickets, officer—did you sell your dozen tickets for the Policeman’s Ball?

  Lahr: I always go to the Policeman’s Ball. I never miss the Policeman’s Ball. (Enter a woman, right, and a man and woman, left.)

  Marie: Pierre!

  Pierre: Marie, you!

  Marie: Yes.

  Pierre: (speaking to the girl holding his arm) Come my dear.

  Marie: Wait! So this is the woman who has taken my place in your heart. You did forsake me for her—me who worked and slaved for you. Oh, Pierre, think of the past. Think what I’ve been to you. He belongs to me. You must give him up. I love him. I love him.

  Dorothy: And so do I! He doesn’t love you, and he never would. You cannot take him from me.

  Marie: Very well then, I’ll take you from him. (She draws a revolver from her fur co
at and shoots the other woman.)

  Pierre: You fiend. You’ve killed her. (Marie shoots Pierre.)

  Marie: Oh what have I done? I’ve killed him! My Pierre. There’s nothing left to live for. (She shoots herself.)

  (Lahr and the sergeant look at the carnage that lies at their feet. Lahr turns to the sergeant, and taking his arm says:)

  Lahr: Were you at the Policeman’s Ball last year? (They walk off stage.)

  (Blackout)

  When he came out on stage to take his bows, Lahr would defy the audience, slapping his club on the ground and yelling out at their approval, “What’s the idea? What’s the ideeeeaa?”

  No matter how successful burlesque performers had been on the Wheel, there was no guarantee of immediate or similar success in vaudeville. The act had to prove itself. It meant adapting to a different format of entertainment and caliber of audience. The sketch usually went well, but in a nation whose tastes had not yet been made uniform by television, Lahr’s raucous fooling sometimes infuriated local taste. His comic stance could make the self-conscious middle class bristle.

  Comedy of a slightly lower type is offered by Lahr and Mercedes … The act is designed to appeal to the masses, but the classes can find plenty of things to be amused at …

  Los Angeles

  Occasionally, Lahr’s mugging left the vaudeville audiences puzzled. In Chicago, a city accustomed to sophisticated entertainment and a wide variety of performers, one vaudeville reporter observed:

  The audience was slow in getting the humor Bert Lahr tried to put across.… By the finale, however, the former burlesque comic held the audience in a fit of laughter.

  The act completely eluded Texans when he played the Interstate Circuit there. He has no clippings from those bookings, and with good reason. “We did so bad,” he says, smiling, “they hissed us on the street.” The audience was confounded by the polyglot inflections and urban eccentricities of the act. My father refers to those nights when he had to milk a single curtain call, as “laying a cake—twelve eggs.”

  The manager of the Houston theater had spotted Lahr and Mercedes after another comedy act, the “Hickey Brothers.” “I got finished putting on my make-up and I heard tremendous laughs from out front, but I didn’t know enough about vaudeville then to realize that one comedy act right after another always hurts the later act. So I said to Mercedes, ‘Gee, that’s a great audience.’ Now I was made up in a putty nose and misfit clothes. I went upstairs to the wings. On the stage were two comedians, one was hitting the other over the head with a steel tray. They were wearing steel-plated wigs; their teeth were blacked out, and they had boards in their back to give them broad shoulders. I looked like a straightman compared to them. They were a riot.”

  When Lahr’s turn came, the situation changed immediately. His sure-fire opening drew absolutely no response from the audience. “I said, ‘Stop in the name of the station house, stoooooooooppppp!’ Nothing happened. I said it again. I couldn’t imagine anybody not laughing at this.”

  But the audience remained tight-lipped. Lahr worked hard, pressing for laughs, taking a few more pratfalls than the situation demanded. “Half way through the act it was almost like clairvoyance—I realized that somebody hated me. It’s hypnotic. When they hate you, somehow you find them out. I looked up in a box and there is this girl with this man. She’s pointing down at me. I imagine she was saying ‘This guy is awful.’ Nothing was happening. I’d look up to those boxes, and there she was—incensed. When I sang ‘Peggy O’Neill’ I’d crawl around and do it with the vibrato and everything. I did it a second time during the act. When I did it again, the woman stood up in the box and yelled, ‘You can’t sing either!’”

  Talent was not the only prerequisite for laughter; the environment was also important. “Sometimes climatic conditions could hurt comedy; if the people in the audience weren’t comfortable. I loved to follow a big hit singer in vaudeville. The audience was set up for me. Once, I played the Hippodrome. It used to have extravaganzas. Animals would be paraded on the stage; you could see girls swimming in transparent tanks. We had to fill three to four thousand seats without microphones. I followed Houdini, and I didn’t get on until six o’clock in the evening. After Houdini, everyone wanted to go home for dinner. When I came out, all I could see were backs.”

  Lahr’s most stringent critic was his father, who came to see him at the Hippodrome. “I said, ‘Pop, how’d you like it?’ He said, ‘The horses were good.’ He didn’t get my humor. Later, when I did more of the vibrato, he’d take me aside and say, ‘Why don’t you stop that gnong, gnong, gnong—it’s undignified.’” But despite such criticism, the first year was successful. Vaudeville audiences and critics were taken by surprise:

  Bert Lahr and Mercedes are the real hit of the bill. Their coming was not heralded by the program and their sudden descent upon the unwary audience was somewhat of a surprise. The title of their act is “What’s the Idea,” which is just about what the audience thought when they began their nonsense … Lahr as a comedy cop proves himself one of the most amusing comedians in vaudeville.…

  Cincinnati

  The act was so successful that bookers were asking them to play more than their forty-week circuit. They were popular enough to work every week of the year, and for their first two seasons on the Orpheum Time they nearly did. Yet, with each successful review, Lahr’s passion for perfecting his performance and his dream became stronger.

  “If anything went wrong in the act with Mercedes and myself, I never blamed myself, I always blamed her.”

  This is his guilt and his burden. He never talks about it.

  As he speaks about Mercedes now, he is eating a dinner that my mother prepared. He loves her and knows the care she takes to feed him. It is her pleasure, and she does it well. He takes a bite. “The meat’s tough.” Mother looks up in nervous disgust. “Well, Bert, mine’s all right.” He chews another piece. “I just got a tender one.” His face lights up; and he talks with his mouth full until he drips something on his pants. He has hurt Mildred in the same unthinking way he must have hurt Mercedes. He screws up his face to express his sudden pleasure. It is humorous, but also disconcerting. He can perceive a situation with chilling accuracy, and yet with those closest to him he often acts as if the person were simply an appendage of himself, responding to the same drives and demands. He shared his dream only once, and that was with Mercedes. In time, it destroyed her. This is the torment of his vision; it is totally his and no one—no matter how intimate—can ever share it again.

  He still cannot assess the nature of his relationship with Mercedes.

  “Did you get along, Dad?”

  “I guess so. I mean, we had our fights, but we were a team. We were together nearly twenty-four hours of the day.” This is as much as he will volunteer. I try to cue him. “I never saw it. I never saw it,” is all he will add.

  Their friends, however, have different recollections. Haley remembers meeting Lahr in Montreal at two in the morning. Lahr had a suitcase in hand. “Where are you going at this hour, Bert?”

  “Babe and I just had a fight. I’m going to a hotel.” Haley laughs at the memory of Lahr in such a rage that he didn’t even bother to take another room in the same hotel.

  Jean Dalrymple, now the general director of the New York City Center, appeared one week with Lahr and Mercedes in Minneapolis during the 1924 season. Lahr’s sketch followed her one-act play. She recalls standing in the wings and watching the act. “I felt I could learn something from him. He was rather taciturn even then. His mind was on the act. I know that I told him how much I admired him and how great I thought the act was and how amusing it was. He never was particularly ebullient about it.”

  Miss Dalrymple remembers that week because the ten-foot snowdrifts kept people from the Christmas Eve show, and the cast had to have their dinner sent into the theater. They ate on stage. Mercedes did not eat with everyone else. Lahr brought her food to the dressing room. They had been arguing
about the act. Their relationship made an impression on Miss Dalrymple. “They had a hard time getting along. I didn’t really hear them quarrel, except for a few gruff words. It was mostly about her performance or his performance. I remember the people on the bill said they quarreled like cats and dogs.”

  “I guess I was too demanding” is the only explanation my father gives for his disagreements with Mercedes. “We never fought about anything but the act.” However, since the act encompassed almost all of their experience, Lahr found himself not only monitoring her performances, but also taking charge of her wardrobe and appearance. He accompanied her to buy clothes and make sure she did not indulge her inclination for steaks and chops.

  Later, her fantasies would try and reshape the pressures.

  Sept. 15, 1933

  Mrs. Lahrheim is naturally fond of jewelry and fine clothes. At present, however, she is wearing only a diamond ring on the third finger of the left hand. She says she has always liked to spend money for clothing, and when in the RKO and Keith-Albee Circuits frequently spent $20 for a pair of shoes, and bought sable fur and coats.

  Despite their problems, in less than a year Lahr and Mercedes vaulted into the vaudeville limelight. By June of 1925 they were listed among the Keith-Albee All-Star acts. When they played the Palace in New York, the supreme test for every vaudeville performer, the critics knew that the act had found its pace and maturity. Lahr played the Palace for five hundred dollars a week; five years later he played it three times in one year for five thousand dollars a performance. The effect of his first Palace appearance was hard to misread.

  “What’s the Idea” created sensational moments of comedy. Lahr drawing some of the most deep-seated laughs imaginable …This is their first appearance at this house, and they surely showed ’em something.

  With his growing stature, Lahr began to move outside the chrysalis of his work. He joined the Friars Club and spent much of his free time with comedians whose friendship he had never had time to indulge on the road: Bert Wheeler, Eddie Foy, James Barton, and Jay C. Flippen.