Notes on a Cowardly Lion
Page 19
Richard:
What is it?
Pater:
Gambling debt.
Richard:
Gambling debt?
Pater:
Can’t pay it, broke?
Richard:
Borrow?
Pater:
Can’t borrow, no credit.
Richard:
One thing to do.
Pater:
Right. Honor of family.
Richard:
Other way out?
Pater:
Not sporting.
Richard:
Right, stout fellow.
Pater:
Got a bite here.
Richard:
Poison?
Pater:
Right.
(Butler enters with glass on tray.)
Richard:
Here you are.
Pater:
Thanks. (Pater raises a glass.) Give you the Duchess.
Richard:
How jolly.
(Pater drinks.)
Richard:
Does it hurt?
Pater:
Rawther.
Richard:
Well, chin up.
Pater:
Chin up.
Richard:
Stiff upper lip.
Pater:
Stiff upper lip.
Richard:
Honor of family.
Pater:
(prone) Honor of family. Cheerio, my boy. (Head drops.)
Richard:
Cheerio, Pater. (Glances at watch.) Must dress.
The transition to new comic terrain in Life Begins at 8:40 was eased for Lahr by the buoyant, tasteful overseeing of John Murray Anderson, an energetic Broadway director. Lahr speaks of Anderson with words he rarely uses for directors. “He had tremendous taste.” Anderson’s kindness and confidence helped Lahr control his material. The director had nicknames for everyone in the show. Harburg was “Zipper” (as opposed to his usual “Yipper”), Ira Gershwin was “Rock of Gibraltar,” Arlen was “Old Man River,” and his wife, Anya, was “Schmanda Fair.” “I used to call him ‘Punch,’” recalls Lahr, “because he had a chin like the Punch and Judy shows.” Anderson referred to his clown as “Euripides.”
The combination of the fine performers and inventive score had created great excitement on Broadway, and one of the wittiest sketches, “C’est La Vie,” had originated on a Lahr impulse. “I said to Yip, I’d love to do something with an Inverness cape. It gave him the idea for his song and sketch on the bridge. Being known as a low comedian to do something that was directly opposite made it funny. It’s the same thing I gave Jimmy Durante for his nightclub act. I said, ‘Jimmy, why don’t you come out in your act with a toupee under your hat. Just take your hat off, and say, “You can’t fool your friends.”’He’s kept it in ever since.” In the Harburg sketch, Lahr and Ray Bolger are found staring gloomily into the Seine from one of the picturesque Paris bridges. As they chat, both realize they have been jilted by the same girl. They decide to end it all and leap into the Seine. Suddenly, there is a screech of brakes and their goddess (Luella Gear) enters.
Luella:
Pierre. Jacques. What is it that you do.But non.You must not do it.
Both men:
You do not love me. You do not love him.
Luella:
You do not understand. I tell you I do not love you because I love you each so much and if I tell one, I hurt the other. But wait. I have a solution. Tonight before I get your terrible note I am in zeee cinema. I see la talkie “Design for Living.”
Bolger:
Ah, yes, it is by Noel Coward, non?
Luella:
But yes.
Lahr:
It is where the woman and the two men love each other and the other each?
Luella:
(smiling warmly) But yes. And they live happily together after, for evermore. And I think to myself—Pierre, Jacques, me, why not we so?
(Pleased with the idea, they all embrace. The men lift Luella Gear onto the wall of the bridge and harmonize—Lahr and Bolger begin a soft-shoe and sing—)
Life is gay, we agree*
When a heart it is big enough for three.
Night and day, ma chérie,
Me for you, and you and you for me.
We’re living in the smart upper sets,
Let other lovers sing their duets.
Duets are made by the bourgeoisie—oh,
But only God can make a trio.
(With that, they dance again as Luella Gear laughs at their romantic antics. As they glide past her, they push her off the bridge.)
(Blackout)
Brooks Atkinson’s reaction to Lahr’s comedy in Life Begins at 8:40 is a sound barometer of the public’s understanding of his development. Atkinson, whose subtlest criticism focuses on comedy and clowns, was reporting the beginning of a change he would analyze more critically in The Show Is On (1936). In 1934, new dimensions in Lahr’s comic personality were emerging.
When he [Lahr] turned up in “Hold Everything” and a crimson edition of the “Scandals” several years ago, he roared, and pranced and mugged like a demented elephant. He is a low comedian. Most of the material in “Life Begins at 8:40” is too subtle in manner to release his native exuberance. Having more than one stop to his instrument of comedy, he does remarkably well with what he has.
The uniqueness of Life Begins at 8:40 as a revue and the new content added to Lahr’s comic façade were in large part due to the songs and sketches of E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen. At a time when Lahr was groping for a laughter to match the times, Arlen and Harburg appeared—with an appreciation of his comedy and a genius of their own. Arlen and Harburg provided Lahr with some o£ his finest comic strategies. In his voice, they saw a wonderful opportunity to satirize the romantic and operatic stage clichés. Since they appreciated Lahr’s theatrical acrobatics and his wit, Lahr’s grimaces and grunts neatly punctuated their comedy songs. In Life Begins at 8:40, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Harburg managed to give verbal terms to the buffoon’s self-deception and even capture the fundamental business of Lahr’s leering good spirits. “I could say so many things through Bert’s voice that I couldn’t with my own,” says Harburg, who saw Lahr in a completely different light from the songwriting company who had precipitated his stardom. “When DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson were writing for him, they saw Bert as the low-down comic, the average ‘gnong-gnong’ guy. He was the patsy; and implicit in that was the attitude of a semi-idiotic guy who always gets things wrong. I understood Lahr in a different way. In his comedy and personality I saw the little man; the pathos of a human being who is stuck with his society, who is put upon and exploited by it. His laughter is the laughter of a poor humanity, a sorry little guy who happens to be born looking like a comic and therefore everyone reacts to him not as if he were a human being, but simply a joker. All his reactions are those of a man society doesn’t accept, but laughs at.”
For Harold Arlen, the show was an important one, and Lahr helped him make a point to the Broadway world. The man whose rich and original music has produced “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Stormy Weather,” “Let’s Fall in Love,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and “It’s Only a Paper Moon” wanted to write comedy with the inventiveness he had already exhibited with the blues. “This show [Life Begins at 8:40] really meant something,” Arlen says. “I wanted to set sail into Broadway. I wanted people in the profession to know that I could write things they didn’t expect of me.”
They lavished attention on Lahr’s comedy, finding just the right song for his stage personality. They came up with a take-off on a Metropolitan Opera baritone, singing a beautifully inarticulate song, entitled “Things.” It was to be sung straight with no emotion and certainly no delicate phrasing. When Arlen thinks of the song, he cannot help smiling at the idea of Lahr standing regally in front of a Steinway, his hand resting pompously on it. “Anything
he sings becomes absolutely asinine.”
When Lahr sang in burlesque and even in the early Broadway productions, his wild, truculent movements were more important than his mangling of the lyrics. The humor in his rendition of “Peggy O’Neill,” for instance, was its unabashed inarticulateness. With the Arlen-Harburg songs, the situation was reversed. The laughter came from his attempt at being coherent. In Life Begins at 8:40, Lahr was able to take advantage of the inconclusive lyrics and stiff operatic pose, joining the low comic bits of business with his monotone vibrato. The song was high parody. As Arlen recalls, “He fussed and fumed and was frustrated, and extemporized to get gimmicks into ‘Things’—for instance, his toupee falling a certain way. It was an endless game for him, until he finally got as many laughs as possible out of it.”
Lahr came on stage in a tuxedo and sporting a brown hairpiece that brought his hairline, like a dorsal fin, to an abrupt point on his forehead. A piano player sat beside him, elegantly poised for the recital. Lahr turned graciously to the small audience on the stage and began:
Ladies and Gentlemen, the first number of my second group was written in a little garret on the left bank of Giaconda Canal and is entitled “Things,” simply “Things.”
Before he begins, Lahr’s pinky shoots up to his tooth. He vibrates his finger like a tuning fork in the side of his mouth. He signals the piano player and smiles widely at the audience. His lips curl under, exposing an expanse of salmon-colored gums. His teeth are straight and clenched tight as if he were holding on to some terrible truth.
When I was but a little lad**
I used to think of things
The only joy I ever had
I had because of things.
But now that I’m to manhood grown,
Fond memory always brings
The utter, utter, utter
Loveliness of things.
His voice quavers with profound feeling at the word “things.” His hand is outstretched in emphatic declamation. “Things …” Suddenly, the wig falls down over his eyes. He pushes it back quickly in exasperation. The readjustment is unsuccessful. The toupee sits like a sparrow’s nest on his head. He continues nervously:
Let others sing of Mandalay
Let others sing of trees,
Let others sing of mother,
And the busy, busy beeeeezzz …
But I’m happier far than a million kings are
When my soul sings of things.
Things, sweet happiness of things.
Things that ease the rocky way,
Things that look at God all day,
Things, sweet misery of things.
From birth bed to the grave,
Aren’t we all to them a slave
What makes all the ocean wave
Things (ah, ah), things (ah, ah, ah) …
The piano player, carried away by Lahr’s own emotional improvisations, embarks on an elaborate solo. Lahr scowls at the pianist as if to say, “I’m the artist.”
When the frost is on the punkin’,
And the sun in the west is sinkin’,
Can’t you hear those paddles chunkin’…
His wig rebels again, falling completely over his face. His hands grope in front of his nose trying to locate the hair that has covered his eyes. He finally gets hold of it and tries to smooth it in place. He tries the last line again. The pianist forgets again and goes into a strenuous solo. Lahr picks his teeth delicately and waits for the conclusion.
Lickity split and to beddy for things
Fit as a fiddle and ready for things …
When he says “ready,” he winks at a woman in the front row of the stage audience.
You can have your smoke pipe rings,
Your Saratoga Springs,
But give me …
The trombonist in the pit hits a long note, so that he cannot finish the line. He turns and glares down at him. “Why don’t you use a bellows!” After the statement, he forgets his lyric and looks helplessly at the accompanist, “Where the hell …” The piano player goes back to “smoke pipe rings.” Lahr counters angrily, “I did that!”
You can have your smoke pipe rings,
And your Saratoga Springs,
But give me …
This time the violinist plays off key. Lahr yells down to the orchestra, “You must have a bad gut!”
Give me …
The saxophone drones on again. Lahr, finally determined to finish the song despite the outrages of the orchestra, throws his hands up in despair, “Oh, go home!” And in a crescendo of baritone lyricism, he finishes emphatically,
Give me things!!
The woman on stage at whom he has winked and directed his suave innuendoes rises at the sound of the last tremulous note and hits him in the face with a pie. (Blackout)
“I always wanted to do ‘Things’ so that when the baritone came out on stage his fly was open. The accompanist keeps pointing to it, and when he turns around to zip himself, his shirttail is out. But I never got to do that.” When John Charles Thomas, one of America’s most famous baritones and a friend of Lahr’s, came to the show, the parody took him by surprise. “I remember he laughed so hard that he got up out of his seat and left the theater. As he stood up, I could see him laughing. He yelled up to me, ‘You son-of-a-bitch’ and left.”
“I thought up the pie-in-the-face,” says Lahr, as if that touch were some cultural refinement. The pie was a good indication that Lahr’s burlesque instincts were not eroded by his new image; but by underplaying them, the elements of surprise and shock were even greater. Both Arlen and Harburg conceived their songs for Lahr with a mental picture of his face, in the same way that Herbert Berghof would keep photos of Lahr pasted in his script of Waiting for Godot many years later. They knew instinctively the possibilities for his voice; but, more important, they understood the philosophy behind Lahr’s clowning. Arlen, a modest man, maintains that “no one could write for him better than E. Y. and myself.” Many outstanding writers created material with Lahr in mind—S. J. Perelman, Abe Burrows, George S. Kaufman, William Saroyan—but none came as close to his buffoonery as Harburg and Arlen did. And although the Arlen-Harburg collaboration would not go beyond 1939, their special material for Broadway and The Wizard of Oz remained Lahr’s trademark.
Even in satire, Lahr’s humor found its way back to basic, physical situations. When the Arlen-Harburg lyrics were aiming their verbal dexterity at a serious idea, they used Lahr’s foolery to give the songs the comic resonance that their intellectual sleights of hand lacked. In Life Begins at 8:40, this combination was most effectively used in “Quartet Erotica,” in which four famous writers bemoan their decline in popularity. Originally subtitled “Rabelais, Balzac, de Maupassant, Boccaccio,” the alignment was switched so that Lahr, as Balzac, was at the low comic end of the list. Donlevy was the stylish de Maupassant, Ray Bolger the gay Boccaccio, and James MacColl played Rabelais. When Lahr mugged at the audience and announced his nom de plume the emphasis was always on the first syllable. “I was really saying ‘Balls,’ so I’d say BALLsac.” His eyes gleam at the idea of saying “balls” to any audience. The song is an interesting contrast to the hokey, curiously passé material Lahr used the following year in George White’s Scandals (1936).
We once won all the glories***
For writing dirty stories;
Sophisticated people thought our bawdiness immense.
We stopped all the traffic
With stories pornographic—
But we can see the handwriting on the fence.
Refrain
Rabelais, de Maupassant, Boccaccio, and Balzac—
Once we were quite the lads:
We thought that our erotica
Was very, very hotica—
But now we’re only four unsullied Galahads.
Rabelais, de Maupassant, Boccaccio, and Balzac
Babes in the wood are we.
The dirt we used to dish up
Sad to say
Of today;
A volume like “Ulysses”
Makes us look like four big sissies—
Rabelais, de Maupassant, Boccaccio, and Balzac—
Lost all our TNT.
We’re not what we used to be.
In the early thirties, the performing moments were more vivid than the private ones. Lahr’s son, Herbert, was already showing the scars of growing up without a mother and with a father who could not handle him. Lahr tried. He was responsible in financial matters, but Herbert’s face brought back his guilt. There was a Greenwich summer house for Herbert, a good school, fine clothes. But when he confronted his son, the boy seemed unruly and unpredictable. His son would imitate him not only in his voice but also in his gestures. When Lahr brought him to the theater, Herbert invariably would get himself involved in ludicrous escapades. He entered the girls’ dressing room in Life Begins at 8:40, shut the door behind him, and then, knocking on the closed door, asked, “Are you proper?” Some of them were not.
Lahr could give nothing from his heart to his young son. In the same way, no one really shared Lahr’s successes in those restless years, although two women tried. The marital pattern that seemed to be part of Lahr’s material on stage was much easier over the footlights than away from them.