Notes on a Cowardly Lion

by John Lahr

  Dropped in on Mother and Dad today. Dad was in rare form. “This dog is a pest. Stop it, Merlin! All he wants to do is nip … Stop it!… Oh … Merlin, cut it out!”

  We talked about his new movie, and he mentioned my criticism. “When you write the word ‘hooker,’ it sticks out like a sore thumb, John. Use classical language—‘harlot’ or ‘woman of the streets.’”

  I apologized for not visiting more frequently. He tried to listen while patting the dog.

  “Don’t be silly. You’re young and active. We don’t expect you to be around all the time. We can’t do that. We go out. We come home. We sit—that’s our life now … Stop that, Merlin! God, this dog’s a pest.”

  A Beginning and an End

  “During the last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one’s own management, but today that is quite Impossible …

  …Are you still fasting?” asked the overseer. “When on earth do you mean to stop?” “Forgive me, everybody,” whispered the hunger artist; only the overseer, who had his ear to the bars, understood him. “Of course,” said the overseer, and tapped his forehead with a finger to let attendants know what state the man was in, “we forgive you.” “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hungry artist. “We do admire it,” said the overseer, affably. “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hungry artist. “Well, then we don’t admire it,” said the overseer, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?” “Because I have to fast, and I can’t help it,” said the hungry artist. “What a fellow you are,” said the overseer, “and why can’t you help it?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer’s ear, so that no syllable might be lost, “Because I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.…”

  Franz Kafka, “The Hunger Artist”

  AUGUST 12, 1967.We are going on an outing. Dad is taking me to the park. We are not visiting Central Park, which is right outside his apartment, but Carl Schurz Park, six blocks east on the River at Eighty-sixth Street. It is nearly sixty years since he has seen it. We are going by cab because he can’t walk very far, and this will be the longest walk he’s taken in a week. Our trip will take three quarters of an hour.

  As we start for the elevator, I notice Dad is carrying his camera. “I’m gonna take pictures of where I lived.”

  We get into the cab. He says in his adenoidal tone reserved for headwaiters and cab drivers, “I want to go to Eighty-first and First; then to Eighty-eighth between First and York. Hold your flag, Bill, I want to take a few pictures.” He always calls cabbies “Bill,” and I look at the real name of the driver: Seymour J. Million, number 4907.

  “I’m lookin’ at your face,” says number 4907. “You’re very familiar. You’re in the pictchahs?”

  Lahr waits for a second. “I’ve done some pictures.”

  The cabbie stares into his mirror. “I just can’t place the face. You know I had Steve and Eydie in here last week … One of your ranks died a while back—Clara Bow.”

  “I was never in silent pictures. I didn’t know her …” But Clara Bow isn’t so easily dismissed. Dad’s eyes stop focusing on the storefront signs and people, and solidify somberly into a quiet thought. Clara Bow has been dead for two years. He didn’t know her, but others, many others who represented his theater world, have passed away. Buster Keaton, Spencer Tracy, Sherman Billingsley, Louis Shurr—all dead, all younger than he. Now he prefaces all prospects for the future with a rap on wood saying, “God willing.”

  The cab comes to a sudden stop, and Lahr peers out at a brownstone walk-up whose first floor is now a Chinese laundry.

  “That’s where I was born, John. I think it was—let me see. It was the second floor in the back, or was it the first?”

  “It was the top floor in the back, Pop.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was—the top floor in the back.”

  He slithers out of the cab carefully and slowly, grunting as he pushes himself with his camera—a Japanese model with an instant light meter and automatic lens adjuster—out into the sunlight.

  A minute or so later he is back. “Eighty-eighth and York.”

  “Right down here, John,” he points due north on First Avenue. “Right down here, is it on this block?—No. Right there is where I went to school.” He is pointing to a vacant lot, soon to be covered by a modern apartment building.

  He looks at the lot. “I guess it’s been torn down.”

  The façades have changed on First Avenue. “That used to be a candy store, where we’d load up before school. It was called ‘Cheap Jack’s.’ “

  We are at Eighty-eighth Street now; and he is pointing in amazement at a corner bar now under Irish management. “That used to be Schmidt’s.”

  We stop in front of another brownstone walk-up with dark green iron lattice work on the doors and an elaborate fire escape that cannot camouflage the building’s drab exterior.

  “We lived on the first floor in the back.” He stares at it from across the street. He has no desire to get nearer, but paces back and forth getting a good angle for his camera shot. Crouching low with his camera propped on the top of a parked Chevrolet, he focuses. The rim of his hat, usually tilted at a rakish angle over his face, is pushed upward like a press photographer’s. He takes the picture, and then checks the intricate adjustments to make sure. The building has been recorded; he can file the picture away in the large wooden box of slides he keeps near his desk. He is satisfied; picture taken, mechanism checked—we move on. Grit from the hot summer day irritates his eyes; tears trickle down over the large pouches. He bends his head over the camera to examine the lens. The flesh beneath his chin expands in fine layers like pizza dough.

  We have come to see the places of Old New York he has mentioned so often with his family at dinner. We have come here finally to pinpoint the store where, for a nickel, you could carry off a pail of beer and for the same price get a night’s entertainment at the nickelodeon. Two blocks east is the park, bordering the river. He has reminisced about swimming the muddy currents and diving from the wooden pylons. He played in the park; he practiced tapdancing before he ever went on the stage. We have come to see all this.

  We walk slowly down Eighty-eighth Street. He carries the camera in the crook of his left elbow like a baton. He can still remember the names of the friends he has not seen in sixty years, but not what they looked like.

  “Tommy Lark lived right there, and Solly Abrahams lived across the street.” He points to the large corner building on York Avenue.

  “Now the nickelodeon was around here.” He stops to survey the two corner stores. “It could have been that one there, too,” he says pointing to a butcher shop on the corner of Eighty-ninth.

  “This must be the place,” he says, deciding on the butcher shop. “It cost five cents at night, three cents in the daytime. It was run by a contortionist called ‘Snakerino.’ He dressed in snakeskin and performed between shows. They played silent movies, and there was a piano. We sang along as the pictures flashed on the screen. That’s about all I can … oh yeah, and they had planks for seats—just wooden planks.”

  He points to the white traffic line down the center of York Avenue. “They had trolley cars here and right there is where I was hit. I had to have fourteen stitches.” He taps his forehead.

  “Let me see, I can’t remember this street so well, but I know I came here often … it’s all changed so much. I just can’t visualize it …”

  As we come to the park, he is looking for the ferry slip where he used to dive. He can remember the water and how he hid his clothes behind the rocks and spent hours leaping off the mossy logs, fighting the strong current.

  “See, it was over there. It was right where the highway goes, I guess. I remember it used to be right down by t
he House of Good Shepherd … right over there.” He stops and smiles. “It was a home for wayward girls. They used to throw us money on a string and ask us to get cigarettes for them … Sometimes they used terrible language.”

  As we walk into the park, he comes to a halt. “Let’s stop here. I want to rest a minute.” He looks at his legs. He doesn’t say anything about them except, occasionally, to recognize their independence from his body by announcing, “Legs!” and then shaking his head in disgust.

  We pass Gracie Mansion, the residence of the mayor. It is being repaired so we have to detour around it.

  “Now this was not here when I lived at Eighty-eighth … No, I don’t remember this at all.”

  I lead him back to the front of the house where a tarnished bronze plaque gives its history. “Built in 1799.”

  A boy, palming a football, yells to his friend who bobs and weaves a few feet ahead of him. “Go out ten and cut to the trash can.” He completes it. Lahr watches.

  “I was never very good at football. I used to make believe I threw the discus down where the ferry used to be. I mean I really threw it, but it was only a rock, you know.”

  We continue through the park, looking for the bandstand. He follows slowly. “It was a bandstand. On Sundays, they used to have concerts there … I used to practice tapdancing when it was quiet …”

  I lead him to a large, somnolent plaza at Eighty-sixth Street. An old woman walks abruptly into the space and, without looking around, begins to distribute breadcrumbs from a large paper bag. The wind expands the baggy calico sleeve of her dress like a buzzard’s wing.

  “This must be it, Pop.”

  He glances around. “It wasn’t here. It couldn’t have been here. There was kind of a gazebo, you know …” He scans the circumference of the park. “Well, then, I guess it’s all gone. It’s pretty here now.”

  We walk out of the park, glancing at the beautiful bit of old New York that has been turned into fashionable townhouses at Eighty-sixth Street, Henderson Place. “It all used to be pretty bad in this section here. Not quite middle class, except for these houses on the river. Let me see, who lived here? I used to know him when I was a kid. I think his name was … he passed away later on …”

  The Eighty-fourth Street baths are our next stop. Dad doesn’t expect them to be there, but he turns the corner anyway. He wants to make sure.

  But when we approach the spot there are only luxury apartment buildings. He looks eagerly for the baths where he swam all day for fifteen cents.

  “No. They’ve built this place up. It’s not here. It used to be right here. Geez, I haven’t any picture of what was.” We gaze at the Triborough Bridge, strung like a massive skein of wool against the full blue sky. He points to the island, which still remains. “That’s Blackwell’s Island.” He turns around unexpectedly and starts back toward Eighty-sixth Street.

  He begins to mutter to himself, “Frankie … Frankie … Frankie … Frankie?”

  “What did you say, Pop?”

  “I’m trying to think of his name, the kid I used to know here.”

  We pass the plaza again. The old woman now stands in animated conversation with some pigeons. They are pecking at her outstretched hands for breadcrumbs. A group of people have collected.

  “How about that for a picture?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to take it.” The professional photographer’s hauteur. He has already planned the shot. He cocks his camera and takes aim, poised like a skeet shooter with his weight on his front foot. He squints and focuses on the woman who is too involved with her birds to notice him. But the people watching begin to look away from the birds and concentrate on the familiar face. They don’t interrupt; they just stare. He takes one shot, but a bird flies across the old woman’s face. Not satisfied, he tries another angle.

  “Got it that time.” He ambles toward the cab stand with his camera strung like a St. Bernard’s flask around his neck. A park attendant who has been watching him follows behind us. Dad pretends not to notice.

  “Say, Mister?”

  There is no reply.

  “Is that Bert Lahr?” he says quietly, moving next to him.

  Dad turns slowly and gradually begins to smile.

  “I was born in Yorkville too, Bert. My old man was always talking about how he used to know you when you lived around here.”

  The park attendant extends his hand. “How are you, sir,” Dad says, shaking it and noticing the drab gray park uniform.

  We walk on. “Do you remember ‘Schneider’s Miracle,’ John? I wore a costume just like that.” He is tired now and he walks slowly. He squints at his camera before putting it back in the leather case. He examines it closely again, and then suddenly looks up in fierce disgust.

  “For chrissake, I forgot to put the camera on automatic. I’ll have to take all the pictures again.”

  Maybe, he says, he’ll do it next week. Maybe he will never do it. We hail a cab. As he bends inside, he groans to himself, “Aaaaah! if I could only walk …”

  Back at the apartment, a script of Minsky’s has been delivered and placed, businesslike, at the center of his desk. Near it are his radio, the dictionary, and a fly swatter imported from the kitchen. He sits silently at his desk.

  Mother pulls me aside to ask if I’ve sent Dad a birthday card. Tomorrow he will be seventy-two; and I’ve forgotten.

  When I come back to the room to see him, he is still at his desk preparing to read the movie.

  “Hey, Pop, what do you want for your birthday?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Save your money, John. I don’t want any more birthdays. It’s sort of stupid, don’t you think. What are you celebrating. Like Beckett says, a child is born and immediately he’s dying. It’s stupid.”

  A fly strafes his head and Lahr pans around the room looking for it. He puts on his glasses and reaches for the fly swatter as the pest lands on his dictionary. Raising the swatter slowly, he comes down on the book with a butcher’s menace. The fly glides with infuriating ease to the other side of the desk.

  “The son-of-a-bitch! He’s been hit before.”

  He turns on the color television, a golf tournament. He adjusts the portable set on his desk for the baseball game, and fits the earphones in place. The radio plays Jerome Kern.

  He laughs at the script. I say something, but there is no answer.

  “I think I’ll go home, Pop. Thanks for the walk.”

  I kiss him on the top of his bald head. It is beaded with summer sweat and smelling like the inside of a baseball glove.

  Richard Avedon’s picture of him as Estragon bears down on me as I leave the room. In it, my father’s hands are pressed to his chest with a novitiate’s urgency; his face swollen with a nameless, punishing despair.

  “See ’ya, Pop.”

  Without looking up he mumbles, “Okay, kid.”

  I shut the door quietly. He is silent: sitting surrounded by noises and the flickering images of television. He is waiting.

  Avedon’s photograph evokes Estragon’s words—Dad’s words—“Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!”

  Epilogue

  BERT LAHR DIED in the early morning of December 4, 1967. Two weeks before, he had returned home at two a.m., chilled and feverish, from the damp studio where The Night They Raided Minsky’s was being filmed. Ordinarily, a man of his age and reputation would not have had to perform that late into the night, but he had waived that proviso in his contract because of his trust in the producer and his need to work. The newspapers reported the cause of death as pneumonia; but he succumbed to cancer, a disease he feared but never knew he had.

  For the few days that he teetered on the brink of consciousness the family was with him—talking, listening to his demands, concentrating on muffled words. He told me for God’s sake to get a new suit of clothes because they knew him in this hospital; he mentioned his project to update A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, which he wanted E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen to write for him. He kept imagining he was still at work. “Mildred,” he said, “why aren’t my clothes laid out, I’ve got a seven o’clock call.”

  I heard him singing in bed. The nurse thought he was calling for help, but bending over him, she saw he was doing an old routine. The words were inaudible, but the rhythm was musical comedy. His last word, whispered two days before a quiet death, was “hurt.”

  At the end, they had to strap his hands, which kept jutting out in illness, as they had vigorously in life. He clutched at the air—hopeful and bewildered.

  Many praised his art. Editorials throughout the nation mourned his death: his leering humanity had become a part of America’s heritage. In an age of uniformity, Bert Lahr remained unique. His voice never lost its range; his statement never lost its hard truth. He told us about the limitations of the body, about the isolation and humble beauty of the soul.

  He made a most gorgeous fuss.

  He made us laugh, until, at times, we cried.

  Appendix 1

  “The New Teacher,” a Kid Act

  Based on the Avon Comedy Four

  by Joe Smith and Charlie Dale (c. 1900)

  The Kid Act reflected the good-humored anarchy and vague frustration of an immigrant New York population. The dialects and stereotypes are taken off the streets and put on the stage. Obstreperous students bait the overbearing, incompetent teacher. Bert Lahr grew up in such conditions; his own truncated schooling bore the scars of the nation’s indifference to its poor. The Nine Crazy Kids based their act on this prototype of urban farce.

  Teacher: I’ve just received a message from my brudder asking me to come down and take charge of de schoolroom vhile he’s layin’ home sick in bed. He says dere are a lot of nice boys and girls. I must see who dey are.(He takes the cow bell from the table, goes to the door, and rings it. Enter Reginald Redstocking.)