by John Lahr
Mercedes tried to follow her husband’s activities. Sitting stonelike in her room, she kept stacks of the Daily News by her bedside. In the spring of 1932, she was allowed to leave the sanitarium for a day to see Hot-Cha!
… She went to see her husband’s show at the Ziegfeld Theater. After coming home she made little comment except to say “Buddy Rogers is a hot number.”
Lahr meant to see her, but the memory of her lithe figure swollen now to nearly 170 pounds and the sudden stupor of her eyes kept him away. The doctors’ reports verify the problem:
Mrs. Lahrheim has anticipated a visit from her husband for the past one week. He had just returned from Hollywood [Flying High] and had been telephoning her, but for some reason or other has not ventured to call on her ….
… She very often meets relatives, including her baby, indifferently and this disconcerts them. The more they prod her, the more stubborn she appears. She looks blankly into space, as if in a trance. When permitted, she wears old clothes and accumulates things …
… Husband says he calls her frequently on the phone but cannot see her because it is too upsetting. He wants her to be allowed to go to the movies or have any clothes or comforts within reason …
… The patient was visited by her husband today, and was much relieved when she was told that she was comfortable, happy, and more free from worry than he.
… She is inclined to answer most questions with a nod or interpretive facial expression. She says, “It is hard to get hold of Bert these days, he is so busy; “he said he wanted me to stay here for a couple of weeks more.”
“When she was in the hospital, I did the best I …” Lahr stops, weighed down by an anxiety he can never verbalize. “I was reaching for something. She was confused. She was sick—mentally sick. There was nothing you could do about it. Later on, you’d censure yourself, but …” Even talking of himself in the second person cannot put Mercedes at a safe distance.
What made it doubly difficult for Lahr to respond to Mercedes was the companionship that had developed between himself and the quiet, moon-faced blonde whom everyone called “Mil.” Lahr met her soon after Mercedes had been committed. He saw her first in George White’s Scandals (1931). At that time, he had asked to meet her. Although nothing was arranged, White did not forget Lahr’s request.
Four months later, Lahr formally met Mildred Schroeder at a cocktail party given by White at his penthouse apartment at the Warwick in 1931. The chorus girls usually came alone, because White wanted them to be a decoration to his party, although he loathed the thought of them having any permanent attachment to his friends.
White liked Mildred. She was straightforward and simple. She combined a good-natured innocence with a well-scrubbed exterior. Once, they met accidentally in a bank where she was depositing her week’s wages. White affected to be so impressed by this level-headedness that he matched the sum. Only twenty-six years old, Mildred was gullible, sincere, and parochial. She had been educated in a convent in Cincinnati and came to New York on a wave of confidence inspired by a long skein of first prizes in beauty contests. Sometimes when she felt insecure around the supersophisticates at parties like White’s she would take a small clipping from her pocketbook and read it to herself:
Miss Schroeder has, in less than two years in Greater Cincinnati beauty shows, won eight firsts and three seconds, a record which is said to be unequalled in this section …
In her first Broadway show, Fine and Dandy, the brashness of the actresses shocked her. Dave Chasen, who gave up a successful career as a comedian to open a restaurant that made him world famous, remembers befriending her after finding her crying on the backstage steps. “Those girls could really push you around. I just wasn’t used to those aggressive types. I wasn’t brought up that way.”
When Lahr met her at White’s party, he was immediately attracted to her. She was not like the others there. She was nervous, twisting a lace handkerchief and smiling too easily at what he said. She was one of the most beautiful girls in the room, but one of the least polished. Her sincerity and shyness made her seem surprisingly oldfashioned.
Her features were stunning—a full, languid mouth, sharp, laughing eyes, and a body that was supple and energetic. Her voice was at once sweet and vibrant. Secretly, she only vaguely wanted the career that could so easily have been hers. A product of a broken, emotionally impoverished family, she longed for the kind of red-brick security that no actor could give. In fact, entertainers or anyone on the periphery of show business were not the people to whose company she aspired. Lahr was the first actor she had ever considered dating after two years on Broadway. “I never believed in marrying an actor. I thought that one should marry a businessman. I found Bert so different from my picture of an actor. He was a shy person, and that, I think, attracted me. I think he gave me his number, and I think I called him.”
On their first date the contrast between Mildred and the other woman Lahr had been seeing was apparent to him. Mildred wore a long white pleated Grecian dress, with a small pillbox hat. It was her lucky outfit. They went to the Mayfair Club. As she sat talking with Lahr, Rachel M., whom Lahr had not seen since walking out on her six months before, approached their table. She was drunk.
“Got another bitch, Bert? Another easy trick like me?”
She spat on his dinner jacket. Mildred rushed from the table. Lahr followed her out in the street and tried to explain. They finished the evening at another nightclub. “From then on, he was never away from me.” Lahr had found a companion.
Mildred, who believed in holding “good thoughts,” who liked long walks and dancing, enjoyed looking nice and being a fine hostess, was a change for Lahr. She was a girl whose gaiety could be tapped at any moment, whose physical resources of energy were as deep as her will power. She was affectionate without being vulgar and warm without being scheming. She gave Lahr what no other woman had ever offered him—her complete devotion.
From the beginning, there was no question of competition. To Mildred, the bumbling clown was a “gentleman,” a kind, soft, strange person who was in trouble. She did not stop to analyze him or understand his complexities. But faced with an emotional rapport she could not deny, Mildred accepted Lahr—his genius and his obsession.She liked the idea of being able to contribute something besides her good looks. She was a kind of straightman—a stable center around which he could radiate. “He hasn’t ever been funny with me. I don’t think he’s ever said any great things to me, either.”
Mildred was always there, after each performance, after the endless thirty-six-hole golf days, after the sad trips to see Mercedes. It was more than love that compelled her to stay with him. He was kind to her, but not thoughtful; gentle, but not spontaneous; loving, but strangely set apart.
Neither of them can remember any soft, romantic moments and only a rare present. What is recalled is the onus of worry that hung over Lahr and the kindness with which Mildred dealt with his continual “problems.” Inconspicuously, she handled his fan mail, paid bills he left unopened on his desk, and listened quietly while he explained new laugh lines or pondered what the next season would bring. She persuaded him to visit Mercedes more often and urged him to take more of an interest in his son. When she first met Herbert, he threw a bottle at her. But, as with everything else, she persisted. She was the mother, the organizer, the mirror for all ideas. In a short time, Lahr began to have a confidence in her that he had never felt with a woman before. He respected her taste in clothes and liked the way she dressed. Occasionally, she would help him pick out a suit or a tie—a gesture of real affection to a man so conscious of appearances. His friends responded better to Mildred than they did, sometimes, to him. She was thoughtful and kind, never boisterous in public, always good-spirited. She asked few questions, satisfied to be a part of an undeniable and difficult genius.
Ziegfeld had asked her to join the Ziegfeld chorus line for Hot-Cha!, but an attack of appendicitis kept her from signing with the producer and complic
ations left her bedridden for several months. Lahr, who always regarded hospitals the way most Americans regard black cats, visited her daily. “He was very kind to me when I was sick. He came to see me every day, and he’d bring flowers or something.” That surprising attention was a debt of the heart that Mildred wanted to repay. She longed for the softness and understanding her own home life had lacked. In this comedian she saw a hint of it.
Mildred was healthy enough to make the trip to Washington, where Hot-Cha!’s opening was front-page news. Her exuberance about being with Lahr was hard for her to conceal. She had never dated any other actor, so the public approval of Lahr’s ability and his fantastic success filled her with apple-pie wonder. In a wire to her mother, the excitement of the experience is reflected in her overstatement. The trip to Washington sounds more like the final chapter in the Lewis and Clark journals:
FEBRUARY 16, 1932
MOTHER DARLING AT LAST I GAZED ON THE CAPITOL STOP WASHINGTON IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE STOP CAME ON HERE FOR BERT’S OPENING IT WAS THE BIGGEST HIT EVER KNOWN IN ZIEGFELD’S LAST TEN SHOWS STOP I HAD A LOVELY BIRTHDAY WILL WRITE SOON.
Sometimes, Mildred’s openness had its childish moments. Lahr’s genuine affection for the eccentricities of Lupe Velez vexed her. Her unabashed sensuality made Mildred jealous. Once, after she and Lahr had passed hastily through a revolving door to greet Miss Velez, Mildred fell into a “faint.” Lahr was by her side immediately and never realized that Lupe had been upstaged.
They had an easy relationship, but there were small fits of possessiveness from Bert that showed her that she was strictly his property. Once in Bimini, while dining on Harry Richman’s yacht, a burly, bearded man made conspicuous overtures. “They were overtures—not exactly a pass, but an overture.” Lahr was annoyed enough to speak up to the man who, somewhat embarrassed, introduced himself as Ernest Hemingway. In 1934, Sam Goldwyn, casting his film version of the Ziegfeld Follies, asked Mildred and her showgirl friend, Lucille Ball, to come to Hollywood to be in the picture. To her surprise, Lahr begged her to stay in the East. She remained willingly. “I think I could have made it in movies, so many of the girls who were with me like Lucy and Alice Faye did well out there.” But at a moment crucial to her career, she stayed with Lahr.
Her allegiance had its rewards. She worked with Lahr on radio and did a few one-reelers with him that even now can be seen on old-time movie cavalcades. When he did vaudeville in the off season, she played the “other woman” (Marie) in his cop act, and was even in the chorus of Life Begins at 8:40. Between the work and a continual round of café society at Billy La Hiff’s, the Stork Club, the Mayfair—memories filter down to long, gay evenings of talk and drinking—these were happy and, for her, anxious times.
Mildred, the girl who made Lahr wait before going out to dinner while Bing Crosby sang “A Penthouse for Two” on the radio, wanted a family and the kind of soft romance that Crosby’s crooning implied. She asked Lahr about marriage. In her curious, unreflective way, she never expected that a divorce or annulment of his marriage was anything that could not be handled in a few days with the lawyers. “I was tired of being Bert Lahr’s girl, I didn’t want to have that label on me. I’d been brought up better than that.”
Lahr tried to explain to her that it was legal to file for an annulment only after Mercedes had been in a mental institution for five years. This was true, but Mildred seems to have disregarded it and seen Lahr’s explanation as a decoy. “I thought he was scared of getting married again.” Her statement may have some validity, although Lahr denies it now. In any case, the problem was conveniently out of his hands, at least until the end of 1936.
Just before Lahr went into rehearsals for George White’s Scandals (1936), Mildred came to him with an ultimatum. “I told him that unless he did something to make it possible for us to get married within a certain time—I think six weeks—I was going to date other men. I was pretty, I’d given him four good years, and I expected his intentions to be honorable.”
“I thought she was kidding” is all that Lahr can recall about his reaction. Mildred’s legal adviser had informed her that he would never be able to get a divorce or annulment on the grounds of insanity in New York State. This was true to the extent that there was no precedent up to that time. The six weeks came; nothing was resolved. “He said he was trying” is all that Mildred will say. She felt that where there was a will there was also a way.
In late January, while Lahr was in Pittsburgh with the Scandals and Mildred was in a show on Broadway, she had one of her friends arrange a date for her. Within days Mildred found herself deliriously in love with love. After six weeks of courtship, she and the man were discussing marriage.
Mildred saw Lahr often. He was upset, but not disconsolate, about the situation. Once she found him standing in front of the Barbizon-Plaza, where she was staying, waiting to catch a glimpse of the man.
Lahr did not need any more complications, especially not from the woman who had salvaged some of his peace of mind and happiness. He had showed his love with signs she could not read, involving her in his act, giving her a small diamond ring, the very same kind (perhaps more expensive) that he had saved for so long to buy Mercedes.
On March 28, a wire came to his hotel. There was nothing for the imagination to misinterpret:
IT SEEMS THAT OUR FATE IS NOT IN OUR HANDS WAS MARRIED TODAY SATURDAY TO MR JOSEPH, ROBINSON ATTORNEY WE ARE ABOUT TO SET SAIL ON OUR HONEYMOON SOON WILL BE AT SEA AND BERT I LOVE YOU AND HAVE A GREAT ADMIRATION FOR YOU AS ONE MIGHT HAVE FOR A FATHER NOT A HUSBAND SO ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT DECIDED TO GET MARRIED THOUGHT IT BEST FOR ALL CONCERNED BERT DARLING TAKE IT LIKE A MAN I KNOW YOU WILL I AM TAKING YOU AT YOUR WORD I TRUST WE SHALL ALWAYS BE FRIENDS KINDEST REGARDS AND VERY BEST WISHES SINCERELY
MILDRED
He reached for the phone. He wanted to call his lawyer, Abe Berman. But then he put it back on the stand. He was crying too hard to talk.
Buffooneries
If love … is a function of man’s sadness, friendship is a function of his cowardice; and if neither can be realised because of the impenetrability of all that is not “cosa mentale,” at least the failure to possess may have the nobility of that which is tragic, whereas the attempt to communicate where no communication is possible is merely a simian vulgarity, or horribly comic, like the madness that holds a conversation with the furniture.
Samuel Beckett, Proust
“ALL I CAN TELL you is that it wasn’t pleasant. I can’t remember much about the telegram except that it said something about ‘take it like a man.’ Let’s just forget about that period of my life, O.K.?” Lahr wants to rearrange his life as if he were plotting a sketch, but the pieces do not fall together comfortably. His previous refusals to permit his biography to be written center on these humiliations of the heart.
“Sure I was hurt. It was a terrible thing, but I never missed a performance. It wasn’t the end of the world.” He has forgotten his frenzy. His acquaintances were not as easily fooled.
Because his sweetheart of many years ran away to Miami and married another guy, friends of one of the most famous comedians are watching him day and night … sort of a spy system to see that he doesn’t commit suicide … before the gal skipped away she pleaded with the comedian to divorce his wife who had been seriously ill for a long time … and marry her … He informed the gal that it was impossible to get a divorce in New York State. That it would ruin him, anyway under existing conditions. The actor was with a party of friends in a Broadway club when the news came in of Paul McCullough killing himself … All said it was a pity, a tragedy … All but the comedian, who sitting like a ghost, knowing his sweetheart was getting married (but no one else knew) spoke up and said, “Why shouldn’t a man kill himself when he has nothing to live for?… I think McCullough was right!” McCullough too had lost a girl of whom he was exceedingly fond. When the story broke about the Miami marriage, the club gang remembered the comedian, as they knew his sweetheart well, and wh
at she meant to him and how he worshipped her.… So now the gang never lets the broken-hearted man alone … They are afraid of him following McCullough’s example.
Bill Farnsworth,
Journal American, 1936
“I was terribly upset, it was trouble on top of trouble. Naturally, if it happened now and I was older, I could cope with things. But I was inexperienced with women. I guess I acted irrationally. But men kill for love. It’s with you all the time.” Lahr was, in fact, forty, and had lived with two women for half of those years. Off stage, life caught him by surprise; it refused to be dismissed with the robust gaiety that scored so well on stage. “You don’t sleep. You wake up in the morning and the walls close in on you. You walk and walk … I suffered. I anticipated marrying Mildred, but she didn’t believe me.”
A letter to A. L. Berman dated January 5, 1936, from the clinical director of the sanitarium, indicates that Lahr inquired about a divorce at least two months before Mildred’s marriage. Lahr knew about the letter. It would have helped his cause with Mildred, but he hadn’t shown it to her. Muddled by Mercedes’s plight and a life that had suddenly become intolerably complicated, he remained silent.
The letter makes it clear that Lahr could never expect a recovery.
Her [Mercedes’s] reaction, which I append will show you what Mrs. Lahr’s thoughts are about her future …
“I’ll see that the child [her son] is taken care of properly. I intend to live with Bert Lahr. That is the only thing to do. He’ll have to stand for it. I am going back to show business. I can’t be without money. You know that. If I can’t get it, nobody else will. Maybe I’ll go in a play. I have a couple of thousand dollars worth of paraphernalia. Sure I have. My boy isn’t being brought up properly. I don’t like his appearance.”
