Notes on a Cowardly Lion

by John Lahr

  As my father explains it, “I went over to their theater and talked to Gaxton and Moore. I was furious. I said, ‘How do you like this son-of-a-bitch doing this to me.’ And they were steaming me up, saying ‘It’s awful when you see this guy why don’t you punch him in the nose.’ And I said, ‘Why I’m going down there and …’” His face shrivels up like a prune and his nostrils gape at me in mock defiance. “Finally Lois Moran came to me and said, ‘Bert, this is a frame-up. This reporter is a friend of mine and we were out one night with the boys—Gaxton and Moore—and they framed you. He never even saw the show.’”

  Lahr said nothing for a week. Of Thee I Sing was moving to Cleveland, and the night before the big move Lahr waited up until four in the morning for his moment of triumph.

  “Gaxton went to sleep very early in order to make the jump. I got the operator at the Lord Baltimore Hotel, and I said, ‘This is a matter of life and death. You must put me through to Mister Gaxton.’ ‘Why?’ she says. ‘Oh, I can’t tell you, it’s just so …’ Finally she put me through, so I said ‘Billy, Billy, is that you?’

  “‘Yes,’ he says.

  “‘Billy, how’s Madelaine, Billy?’

  “‘Who’s this?’ Gaxton asked.

  “‘Howard.’” Lahr imitates the tremulous voice he used.

  “Billy, can you come down to the lobby for a few minutes. If you could bring Madelaine I’d appreciate it too,” he continued.

  “‘Who is this,’ Gaxton demanded.

  “‘Howard!’

  “‘Howard who?’

  “‘How would you like to go fuck yourself!’

  “As I hung up, I heard him say, ‘You dirty son-of-a …’” His eyes tear as he chuckles at his revenge. “Now I know it wrecked his sleep because about a month later I’m walking along Fifth Avenue and I meet his wife, Madelaine. She says to me, ‘Remember what the boys did to you in Baltimore?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘But do you remember what I did to Billy … remember him getting a call around four in the morning …?’ ‘Did you do that?’ she said. ‘He blamed it on one of the chorus boys and punched him in the eye.’”

  Although Brown’s version of Hold Everything was well-received, it did not hurt the show’s business on the road. Lahr brought his son and a nurse on the tour, allowing Mercedes and her sister to vacation in Europe as the doctors had suggested. Their trip cost ten thousand dollars—an indication of Lahr’s urgency for a cure and the guilt he felt toward his wife. He was responsible and oppressed, sad yet seeking alleviation in others. On the road, he was in as much emotional turmoil as ever.

  The trip to Europe proved a disaster. Anna returned a few months earlier than expected because Mercedes had not only remained indifferent to the beauty of the European summer, but, in her silent anxiety, had also taken to drink. “When we went to Rome, a reporter got us passes to have an audience with the Pope—and she didn’t even want to go. She stayed in the hotel drinking wine. She wasn’t exactly drunk, but she wasn’t exactly sober either.” Mercedes had some memories from the trip—she recalled the churches with their towering spires, the gondolas of Venice, and the endless horizon of glistening blue ocean. But after her return to the States, she seemed more agitated than before. Her speech and memory had deteriorated. She had difficulty readjusting to her son, and, if there had been any motherly instinct in her before she left for the Continent, it had vanished completely on her return. When Lahr met her at the pier in the spring of 1930, two things had changed in his life. He had a contract for a new show, and a lease on a Murray Hill apartment for another woman.

  Rachel M. was a curious manifestation of the muddle in Lahr’s mind. “I don’t know why, John, you see I was reaching for something, reaching …” He wanted affection and beauty—neither of which Mercedes, in her illness, could offer. The girl he chose was an unlikely symbol of his own personal inadequacies. Typically unable to judge people, he did not realize when he began dating her that she was notorious. Rachel was a beautiful, Southern girl who had managed to make her way in New York by catering to out-of-town businessmen. “She was a nymphomaniac and a lesbian,” says my father confidentially, like Dick Tracy on the scent. Although friends hinted at her reputation, he found himself drawn back to her. “We’d argue. I’d walk out on her, and then, ten minutes later, I’d be back at the door.” He had nowhere else to go.

  Whatever his private problems were, his stage career was bright. Although his relations with Aarons and Freedley were strained because they would not let him out of his contract to do the movie, the producing team was already planning to star him in a show called Girl Crazy with a new young singer called Ethel Merman. Lahr’s talent, however, had attracted the attention of George White, who wanted to get him on Broadway in one of his own money-making vehicles. There was a hassle over contracts and legal action taken, but Lahr ended up in the company of White, a garrulous peacock who prided himself on getting what he wanted.

  (When my father reminisces about this time with the few friends who are left from those ancient campaigns, he speaks wistfully about a Broadway whose entertainment centered around the comedian. “They’re just not writing for me any more,” he says, talking to his old friend and lawyer Abe Berman, who sits like a kindly panda bear nodding in agreement. “Remember the old days, I’d be playing in one show, and they’d be writing another for me. DeSylva would say, ‘Let’s write a show for Bert!’ And somebody would say, ‘How about a musical on flying?’ And then, they’d do it.” It was almost that easy—but not quite.)

  White began litigation to free Lahr from his contract with Aarons and Freedley before he had a play in which to star him. He did not tell DeSylva or McGowan of his plans to use Lahr for a show when he commissioned them. According to McGowan, “All he told DeSylva was ‘I want to do a show on aviation.’” McGowan, ironically, had just completed the Girl Crazy book for Aarons and Freedley. He had written the comedy part for Lahr and even typed his name on the list of dramatis personae. He never suspected he would be creating another show that would prevent Lahr from being part of one of the best remembered comedies in the first half of the century.

  When The Big Three and McGowan took their ritual trip to Atlantic City, they drew a blank. They could not come up with either a story or songs. “We stayed there ten days,” explains McGowan, “Then we came back and told George, ‘Call it off—all we’ve got is a title, Flying High.’” White was astounded. As McGowan recalls it, he exclaimed, “For the love of God, I’ve got forty thousand dollars invested in contracts already for this.” It was then that White intimated that Lahr might be a possibility for the new show. When DeSylva balked at the idea of continuing and urged White to get someone else to dream up a script, White would not hear of it. He finally prevailed. Brown and Henderson returned to Atlantic City to create the songs. McGowan and DeSylva went to McGowan’s farm in Connecticut to write a story.

  The story for Flying High, a cross-country airmail race with Lahr as the pilot, evolved from a sketch McGowan had written for the Lambs Club and then forgotten. His satire lampooned the craze for flying and an actual situation where a Broadway starlet had attempted to fly the Atlantic with a male friend. The plane crashed off the coast of England. McGowan gave the idea to DeSylva one evening after their first few days of writing were unproductive. The next morning at breakfast DeSylva exclaimed, “We’ve got it.” The idea which evolved from that little scene was not the sex angle that McGowan had originally used in his burlesque of the incident. DeSylva had conceived a comedy situation where a man gets into the air and breaks the flying record because he cannot get down. With McGowan writing the first draft in one room, and DeSylva embellishing the construction and adding bits of business in another, the team was able to put together a script in three weeks.

  Lahr had his contract soon after the play was completed. It was the highest sum he had ever been paid—$1,750 a week. “I remember coming in and showing Mercedes the contract. It was what we had been working for. The highest salary we’d receiv
ed. She just laughed at me.” Her reaction overwhelmed him. He began to spend more time with Rachel and was seen frequently in nightclubs with her. “She had him in full dress suit every Saturday night—a full dress suit!” says Nicky Blair, a friend. “We used to go to the Mayfair together. She was drunk half the time. She had him drinking, and, you know, he could never drink. She kept him going around … He never knew what to do in the woman department.”

  When my father thinks about the woman from Savannah, his voice lowers to a whisper, and he talks with a surprising objectivity about his lapse of judgment. “I knew in my heart what she was doing to me and what she was like, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it. You know how you do when you’re stuck on someone. It was all sex.”

  Rachel dragged him everywhere, and kept him from Mercedes and the child. “I was looking for something …” is all he can say to explain her allure. She even followed him to Boston during tryouts of Flying High.

  One night in Boston, Rachel and Lahr got drunk after the show and ended up calling all over the country announcing to groggy voices who answered the phone, “This is Western Union. There will be a carton of eggs delivered to your door tomorrow morning …” When the person asked where they were from, Lahr would bellow, “From the chicken’s ass, you bastard,” and hang up.

  They decided to call George White, who was in conference with The Big Three and McGowan about the book of the show that had stalled badly in Boston.

  “This is the hotel clerk,” Lahr said, disguising his voice in hollow, official tones. “You’ll have to stop that noise, or we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  McGowan phoned downstairs to ask the operator where the call had come from. When she told him Mr. Lahr’s suite, McGowan retaliated immediately. An Irishman of wide vocal range, he could produce a delightful falsetto voice. He called the hotel manager and in his most feminine tone, whined, “Please come up to room 409. This man is going to kill me … Please … Please. Hurry!”

  The clerk, responding to the cry, got a house detective and policeman and rushed to the room. They rapped on the door, but Lahr, assuming it was a joke, did not answer. Finally, they broke the door down. Rachel ran into the bathroom. When the policemen pushed their way into the room, they demanded to see the woman who had just called them.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Where’s the woman you’ve been beating?”

  “I haven’t touched any woman!”

  At this point Ray Henderson and Lew Brown came down the hall to see the outcome of the prank. The policeman stopped them. Lahr pointed to his friends. “These fellows will vouch for me.” The policeman looked at the writers, who shook their heads. “We’ve never seen this guy before.”

  The manager made Lahr leave his room at once. They promised to send his theater trunk any place he desired, but they gave him and the woman who still refused to come out of the bathroom fifteen minutes to get out of the hotel.

  With baggage in hand, Lahr left the hotel. It was five in the morning. He tried four other hotels, but each time he entered a hotel lobby the night clerk would not give him a room. McGowan had phoned all the neighborhood hotels explaining that Lahr had been evicted from the Ritz and had caused a tremendous disturbance with Rachel. No one would take him.

  As a result, Lahr and Rachel sat in the park outside the Ritz Hotel until nine in the morning, when Lahr called the owner of the hotel and explained the prank. The owner checked the story, and finally let him back into the hotel on the condition that Rachel move to another floor.

  There were more humiliations in store for Lahr when he got to New Haven. Rachel’s sexual activities and her histrionics were not a well-kept secret. One night after Lahr had finished making love to her, he heard a volley of applause outside the door. A voice that sounded distinctly like George White’s kept yelling, “Bravo, encore, encore!!” He put on his bathrobe and dashed to the door in a rage. When he opened it, he realized White had invited the cast to hear him make love. They had brought their pillows and sat outside listening to the performance.

  As if the women in his private life were not enough of a burden, Lahr also courted trouble with one of his leading ladies, the popular Kate Smith. Miss Smith’s large voice matched her figure, and her aggressiveness and jovial sense of humor combined to make her an effective subject for caricature.

  In an interview with The New York Times (August 22, 1965) Miss Smith reflected on that period of her life:

  It was 1930 and I awoke the unhappiest girl in the world. I was 21 and in my third Broadway show. I should have been on top of the world but I wasn’t. My claim to fame was as the helpless stooge of all the ad-lib remarks of the comedians.

  If there was one comedian she despised and to whom this seems pertinent, it was Lahr. Kate Smith was a young actress and her lack of experience grated against Lahr’s professionalism. Looking back to his relationship with her, he is penitent about his actions. “I was feeling my oats then. Laughs are very sensitive and having been in burlesque I knew what to do and what I was contending with. Kate and I didn’t work well together, and she inadvertently hurt many laughs. She could have fed me my lines much better. When I tried to show her what to do one day out of town, she was furious with me. Lahr’s vindictiveness must have been intense. “I didn’t do anything to her, just called her ‘Etna’ under my breath when we were on stage.” McGowan, who watched the feud from the stalls, concludes, “She was mad, but she didn’t feel it the way he did.”

  One of the reasons for Lahr’s anxiety was that the show was going badly on the road. White’s friends had suggested he close it in Boston, but instead of chalking it up to experience, White doubled his bet and sent for Joseph Urban, the famous designer, to create a completely new set and costumes for the show. White himself took over the direction, and, being an old dancer, also took charge of the choreography. He not only suffered with the show, he also staged it, helped rewrite it, and kept the cast and production staff in their places. His iron will and staggering egotism managed to shape Flying High into a delightful evening. It was so eagerly awaited in New York that the show was the first to command a $6.60 seat on Broadway.

  One sketch in the show caused McGowan and DeSylva quite a lot of annoyance. DeSylva had suggested a medical examination scene, and McGowan protested the gag on the grounds of bad taste. White liked it, and the joke remained in the show. McGowan, however, bet his collaborator five dollars that the bits of business DeSylva had conceived would not get laughs. This was his usual custom, and on opening night a lot of cash changed hands.

  In Flying High Rusty Krause (Bert Lahr) is the exuberant and incompetent mechanic who gets up in the air and wins the race because he cannot get down. (Krause’s trepidation is minuscule in comparison to Lahr’s own fear of heights and planes.) The scene that McGowan was betting on took place at the end of the first act of Flying High, when Rusty is lured into the doctor’s office by the wise-cracking, freelance photographer, “Sport,” who sees the possibility of a good story and a better laugh in Rusty’s plight. Rusty does not want to go, but with a love-lorn Amazon chasing him, he sees no alternative. “Lindbergh wouldn’t take his cat,” he shouts to Pansy who wants to come with him in the previous scene. She chases him off the stage for an explanation. In the next scene, Rusty finds himself in the doctor’s office, trading quips with him. “Nationality?” asks the doctor summarily. “Scotch by absorption,” Rusty replies. The doctor tries to push Rusty into a spinning machine or, as he describes it, a “tail-spin test.”

  Doctor:

  Now I’m going to whirl you around several times. I’m going to have an object in my hand, and when I stop I want you to tell me what it is. You understand?

  Rusty:

  I don’t want to be an aviator. I want to be a miner.

  Doctor:

  Now, if you feel sick, let me know.

  Rusty:

  Don’t worry. You’ll know it.

  (The doctor pushes his head down and whirls the drum severa
l times. A low moan comes from inside the cylinder. When the drum stops, Rusty’s head emerges, wobbling from side to side. His eyes are hopelessly crossed. The doctor holds up a pencil in front of him.)

  Doctor:

  What’s that!

  Rusty:

  It’s a picket fence.

  Doctor:

  (disgusted) Oh, my god—now we have to do it all over again.

  Rusty:

  Let me out of here.

  (The doctor pushes his head back into the drum and gives it a whirl. He goes to his desk and gets a banana. Meanwhile Sport comes in and sees the drum going and gives it a couple of extra whirls and exits. The doctor returns to the drum. Rusty is moaning fiercely. When it stops, his head lops out of it and hangs over the rim. The doctor holds up the banana in front of him.)

  Doctor:

  WHAT’S THAT?

  (Rusty looks nauseated. His hair is disheveled. He tries to move his head, but it lies limp on the side of the drum.)

  Rusty:

  (shading his eyes) Take it away. Take it away.

  Doctor:

  You’re absolutely impossible. Come on, get out of there.

  (Rusty staggers out of the contraption. He takes two steps and drops to his knees. And then gets up slowly. He staggers around the stage.)

  Rusty:

  Gimme a lemon and seltzer! Gimme a lemon and seltzer!

  (The doctor goes to his desk and gets a graduated glass for a urine sample.)

  Rusty:

  Oh, there you are, bartender.

  Doctor:

  (handing him the glass) You know what to do with that.

  (Rusty takes the glass, still staggering from the machine. The doctor turns to his desk and sits with his back to the patient. Rusty looks at the doctor, and then at the glass. The doctor expects him to urinate; Rusty doesn’t understand. His eyes widen in befuddlement. Suddenly, a glimmer of comprehension flashes across his face. He reaches confidently into his back pocket with a quiet, knowing laugh. He takes out the flask and measures three fingers of the liquor in the glass. He staggers over to the doctor and hands it to him.)