The boy who followed him through the ropes had the kind of figure and color that made everyone want to laugh. His 140 pounds were stretched over a six-foot frame and his skin was purple-black. His face was long and thin and solemn, and the ring-wise could detect nervousness in the way his muscles twitched in his legs as his handlers drew on his gloves. Over his shoulders was a bright orange bathrobe that identified him as a Golden Gloves Champion.
The moment Dempsey saw him, he began. “Ho ho! Look what we got with us tonight. A boogie! Boy, how I like to see them boogies get it!”
The announcer was introducing them. “… and at one hundred thirty-nine and a half, just up from the amateur ranks, the Pride of Central Avenue, Young Joe Gans.”
Dempsey cupped his hands around his mouth. “Come on, Sailor, send him back to Central Avenue—in sections.” Then, like a professional comedian, he looked around for his laugh. He got it.
The stadium lights dimmed out and the ring lights came on, molding the ring and the fighters together in one intense glow. You could feel the nervous excitement in the hushed crowd, five thousand men and women crouching there in the darkness waiting for the blood.
In the white glare the fighters, the pale stocky one and the dark slender one, moved toward each other with animal caution and touched gloves in that empty gesture of sportsmanship. Gibbons was an in-fighter, strong-legged, thick-shouldered, crouching, weaving, willing to take one on the jaw to get inside and club and push and rough his man against the ropes. Young Gans was the duelist, jabbing with a long spidery left and dancing away.
“Come on, Sailor!” Dempsey bellowed. “Let’s get home early. Down below. They can’t take ’em there.”
As if responding to Dempsey’s instructions, Gibbons brought a wild right up from the floor in the general direction of the colored boy’s stomach. But Gans swayed away from it with the graceful precision of a bullfighter.
Next to me a small voice spoke out in a conversational tone. “Nice work, Gans,” Glover said.
Dempsey turned and frowned. “You pulling for the boogie? What you pulling for the boogie for? Betting his corner?”
“I like his style of fighting,” Glover said.
“Fighting!” Dempsey said. “You call that fighting? The boogie is a hit-and-run driver, that’s what he is. Ha ha ha.” He liked it so well he cupped his hands to his mouth again and gave it to his public. “Hey, ref, how about giving that shine a ticket for hit-and-run driving?”
Some of Dempsey’s fans in front of him turned around to show him they were laughing. Gibbons lunged at Gans again, and the Negro flicked his left in the white man’s face half a dozen times and skittered sideways out of danger.
“Attaboy, Gans,” Glover said. “Give him a boxing lesson.”
He didn’t say it loud enough for the fighters to hear; it was really intended as a little encouragement for himself, but Dempsey heard it and glared at Glover again. He opened his mouth to put Glover in his place but turned back and yelled at the fighters instead.
“Don’t hit him in the head, Sailor. You’ll break your hands. In the breadbasket. That’s where they don’t like it.”
The Negro feinted with his left, pulling the slow-thinking Gibbons out of position, and scored with a short, fast right to the heart. Gibbons sagged, but his face spread in a big grin, and his legs pistoned rapidly up and down to show how light on his feet he was. He was hurt.
“He doesn’t like them there, either,” Glover said. “Nobody likes them there.”
Dempsey was talking half to Glover and half to the fighters in the ring now. “But he took it. That’s the way to take ’em, Sailor. Give the boogie some of that and watch him fold.”
“I’m watching,” Glover said. “All I can see is Gans’s left in Gibbons’ face.” Suddenly he raised his voice, edged with excitement. “That’s the way, Gans, jab him. Jab his head off.” He was growing bolder as Gans piled up points.
Dempsey leaned forward, his fists tightly clenched, his shoulders moving in unison with Gibbons’ as the Sailor tried to reach Gans with vicious haymakers; the colored fighter skillfully ducked and blocked and rolled until Gibbons was charging in with the crazed fury of a punished bull.
“Come on, eightball, why don’t you fight?” Dempsey jeered.
“Good boy, Gans,” Glover answered. “He hasn’t hit you once this round.”
When the bell rang, Gans dropped his hands automatically but Gibbons’ right was cocked and while the sound of the bell was still galong-galonging through the arena, he let it go. You could see Gans stiffen and then sag as his body absorbed the pain for which it hadn’t been prepared. The blow made Dempsey laugh with excitement and relief. He always gave a short, nervous laugh when the fighter he was rooting against got hurt, but tonight he had someone special to laugh at. “That’s the baby! What’d I tell you? He don’t like ’em downstairs. Those boogies never do. One more like that and he’ll quit cold.”
“One more like that and Gibbons ought to be disqualified,” Glover said.
“Aah, you nigger-lovers give me a pain,” Dempsey said. “Always griping about those bastards getting gypped. That punch started before the bell.”
“Well, he’ll have to wait three minutes before he can hit him again,” Glover said. “The only time Gibbons can hurt him is when Gans isn’t looking.”
“Oh, is that so? What the hell do you know about it? I been sitting in this same seat for eight years. I’ll bet you ain’t even seen a fight before.”
“Do you have to see a skunk to recognize its smell?”
Dempsey tensed himself to rise. “Listen, you little shrimp, if you’re trying to call me a skunk …”
Glover looked frightened. Dempsey had at least fifty pounds on him, and Glover didn’t look as if he had had too much experience with his dukes. But the bell saved him, in reverse timing. The ten-second warning buzzer for round two made fans around us say, “Sit down. Down in front! We wanna watch the fight in the ring.”
The two fighters leaned toward each other from their stools, feet set for the spring at the bell. Dempsey and Glover anticipated the bell too, sliding forward to the edges of their seats, their legs tensing under them as if they also expected to leap up as the round started. Dempsey made his hands into fists again and they trembled with eagerness to begin punching. In the shadows just beyond range of the ring lights, Glover’s face was white and drawn. His right hand was doubled against his mouth in a nervous gesture of apprehension.
“All right, Sailor, this is the round,” Dempsey shouted. “In the belly. In the belly.”
“Come on, Gans,” Glover countered, “box his ears off again.”
At the bell, Gibbons ran across the ring and tried to nail the Negro in his corner before he was set. Glover opened his mouth in fright, like a mother seeing her child run down in the street. “Look—look out!”
Without changing the solemn expression with which he had come into the ring, Young Gans stepped aside in what looked almost like a gesture of politeness—”please, after you”—and Gibbons plunged foolishly through the ropes.
“Where is he, Gibbons?” Glover said. “You can’t even find him, much less hit him.”
“Why don’t you stand up and fight, you yellow bastard?” There was desperation in Dempsey’s tone for the first time.
Glover’s voice became shrill with combativeness. “That’s the way to fight him, Gans. Keep that left in his face.”
“Keep rushing him, Sailor. He can’t hurt you. He couldn’t break an egg.”
“What are you blinking for, Sailor? What are you stopping for? I thought he couldn’t hurt you.”
“He’s not hurt. A little nosebleed like that don’t bother him. Keep after him, Sailor. Make the boogie fight!”
Young Gans was making a monkey out of Gibbons, but I was watching the fight between Glover and Dempsey now. They were talking at each other but looking straight ahead, straining forward for every movement and moment of the bout in the ring. I didn�
��t have to watch the fight. There in the thin, hysterical voice of Glover and the bullfrog fury of Dempsey, it was more vivid than even Jimmy Powers or Bill Stern would have made it.
“How do you like that one? And that one? And that one?” Glover flicked the jabs in Dempsey’s face.
Dempsey shook them off and laughed. “Powderpuff punches. All powderpuff punches. Hey! That’s it! That’s it! Break the boogie in two!”
Glover clinched a moment to ride out the pain and danced away again. “Who says you can’t take ’em in the belly?”
Their voices rose as the tiring fighters fought harder, became more vulnerable now, more dangerous. But suddenly their shouting was lost in the giant roar that filled the place. The crowd was on its feet, screaming through its thousand wild mouths, screaming at the sight of a man, a black man, writhing convulsively on the canvas, bringing up his legs and clutching himself, twisting his long, serious face into a grotesque mask of agony.
Glover looked on in horror and futile anger. “Foul. Foul,” he said. “He hit him low. I saw it. He hit him low.”
There were others around him who saw it that way too and they took up the cry, “Foul, foul, foul …”
Dempsey was standing right next to me but his laughter sounded far away, as if the wave of voices breaking over us were carrying it off. “Ha ha ha ha ha,” he said, and his face was distorted with terrible joy. “Foul, hell. Look at him dogging it. He wants to quit.”
The referee had disregarded the cries of foul and taken up the count. Gans was fighting his sickness down, reaching out for a strand of the rope and clinging to it to keep the floor steady so he could rise from it again.
“Look at him dog it,” Dempsey hollered. “He’s yella. If that’s a foul, he’s got his crotch where his heart is.”
A few people laughed and Dempsey winked at them. His sense of humor was coming back. He was feeling on top again. He looked over at Glover. Glover was badly shaken. Some of the strain of the Negro’s torturous ascent had come into his face. “Well, wise guy, how do you like your nigger now?” Dempsey poured it on.
“All right, Gans,” Glover pleaded, “coast through this round. You’ve won it on a foul anyway.”
“Come on, Sailor, kill him, kill him, kill him!” Dempsey cheered.
The Negro was on his feet but he wasn’t dancing around any more. It plainly hurt him to move now. His skin was a curious chalky color and his eyes turned toward his corner in distress.
Dempsey was laughing. “Look at him! he’s so scared he’s white! You’re making a white man outa him, Sailor.”
Gibbons rushed the crippled fighter into a corner and opened his cheek with a hard left hand.
“Ha ha ha. One more, Sailor. One more and he’ll quit.”
Glover was too full of injury to speak. Dempsey grinned over at him. “Wha’samatter, pal, lost your voice? Why, you was just full of chatter a minute ago.”
Glover did not seem to hear. He sat back in his seat and looked straight ahead. His fighter leaned wearily against the ropes, too weak to hold his man off any longer.
“Let him drop,” Dempsey was shouting. “Stand back and let the boogie drop!”
Then there was a loud laugh, even louder than usual, and the Negro crumpled in the corner and lay still.
Dempsey stood up and pulled the seat of his pants away where it had creased into his buttocks. “What did I tell you? Didn’t I tell you he’d dog it if he got hurt? I never saw a boogie yet that could take it in the belly.”
The ring was being cleared for the next bout, the band was rendering Stars and Stripes Forever and the next pair of fighters was coming down the aisle. But Glover didn’t seem to be hearing or seeing. He just hung his head and held his hands together in his lap. How long would it take him, I wondered, to recover from this pain in Young Gans’s groin?
THE LEGEND THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN
THERE’S QUITE A GANG of us hangs out at Stage One. The moment the director says, “All right, wrap it up,” and the assistant director (that’s me) calls out, “Tomorrow morning we move over to the night-club set on Stage Seven, nine A.M. on the button,” most of the company hightails it across the street to our favorite watering place. Stage One isn’t a dive, but it isn’t Ciro’s, either. We hardly ever get a big star in the joint and that’s okay with us because we’ve seen enough of those so-and-so’s from nine till six. Now don’t get me wrong I’ve got nothing against the glamour department and a couple of those gals, Jean Harlow and Carole Lombard for two, were real good joes in anybody’s league. It’s just that in Stage One we kind of have our own crowd, assistant directors, second cameramen, juicers, grips, mixers, cutters, you know, the guys who actually do the work. I suppose if Frank Capra or John Ford came in, we wouldn’t toss ’em out exactly. It’s just that we feel more relaxed by ourselves, you know how it is, we get a couple of drinks, unwind a little and pretty soon an assistant is telling us something extra-stupid his director did that day, and then maybe I chime in with my story of how much trouble a certain star gave me when I knocked on her dressing-room door to tell her we were ready to shoot and then the second cameraman gives us his peeve about what a prima donna the head cameraman is getting to be.
Making pictures is nothing but hard work, all of it under pressure, and since we have to keep our yaps shut all day there’s nothing like bending an elbow at Stage One and blowing off a little steam.
The nice thing about the fellow who runs the joint, Larry White, Cecil B. himself could come in that place and Larry wouldn’t pay him any more mind than he would one of us hundred-a-week guys. Not as much, probably, because Larry is pretty partial to us regular customers, runs the place more like a club than a commercial saloon and most of us who live at Stage One from the time our company breaks for the day until closing time are privileged charter members. Larry used to be quite a boy in the movie game himself, back in the silent days. He was a popular leading man for First National when Jack Mulhall and Dorothy Mackail were going great guns. If you don’t believe it, just look at those stills behind the bar, that’s Larry with Sue Carol, and Phyllis Haver and Sally O’Neill. He had a nice head of hair in those days. Larry got a tough break when sound came in. He had the same kind of voice as poor Jack Gilbert, a funny little squeak of a voice and overnight he was out of the money.
But Larry’s done a lot better than most the old-timers. The way we flock around that bar, he’ll never have to check in at the Motion Picture Relief Home like a lot of old kids I know who were pulling down five thousand a week without taxes twenty years ago.
I was saying a little while ago that we didn’t have any celebrities in Stage One, but that isn’t 100 per cent God’s truth. We have Matty Moran, all right. Some of us aren’t sure if Matty has any other address besides Stage One. He’s there when we come in for a quick one at lunch and going strong when we come back at six and going even stronger when Larry finally starts locking up around one. Matty is a fixture, all right. I don’t think any of us would feel the same way about the place if he should ever leave it.
Now maybe I’d better stop right here and take a reading on how many of you ever heard of Matty Moran. Because it’s a funny thing about fame in this screwy business. One day you’re recognized if you show up on a side street in Calcutta and the next day or the day after you can walk right down the middle of Hollywood Boulevard and nobody knows you from the street cleaner.
It sure was that way with Matty Moran. It wasn’t so long ago that Matty was one of the biggest directors in the business. You said Griffith and you said De Mille and then you usually said Moran. Yes, sir, I can remember—I should, I was his assistant on a dozen pictures—when Matty was good for ten thousand clameroos a week. I’ll bet Matty would like to have a dollar now for every grand he threw away.
Matty was the original star-maker in those days. I swear, kids would be willing to work in his pictures for nothing because he seemed to have a kind of magic when he touched them. This Sue Carol and Phyllis Haver I just ment
ioned, those kids weren’t nothing till he sprinkled a little of that special Moran Stardust on them. And a lot of them who are still going can thank Matty for the start. Gary Cooper for one, Claire Trevor for another.
Matty gave Larry White his chance, too. And more than that, I guess he dug down and helped Larry over those bumps back in twenty-seven or eight. Then when things were on the other foot, Larry seemed to have an unlimited cuff where Matty was concerned. So you’d never guess that Matty was, well to put it harshly, a dead-broke bum from the way he’s treated around Stage One. The city’s finest may be looking for him for that last rubbery check, but he’s strictly Special People once he steps inside Larry’s place. And to look at the dapper way he keeps himself, you’d never know he was half a step ahead of the law and just as apt as not to spend that night as a guest of the county for drawing on a bank that has no relation to any actual bank either living or dead, as we say in those forewords.
One of the things that always got us about Matty is that he’s managed to look just as prosperous these last few years as when he was sporting not one but two white Rolls Royces, one for himself and his lady love (of the moment), the other for his own private five-piece orchestra. The only reason it wasn’t a ten-piece orchestra or a symphony-sized orchestra is that they wouldn’t fit into that Rolls. Well as I was saying, Matty still managed to show up in a flashy double-breasted (maybe not this year’s but still mighty sharp) and he’s always sporting a jaunty bow tie and if he didn’t have that fresh red carnation in his buttonhole we’d think it was some impostor. Another thing Matty always brings into Stage One with him is that mischievous red face and that cocky grin, just as if he had come straight from the Paramount lot where he was directing the most expensive production since Ben Hur. Is that amazing, a guy who hasn’t had a real job in maybe fifteen years and he doesn’t change a peg in looks or behavior? All the hard knocks and he’s had them plenty can’t stop him from acting like he owned the town. No kidding, Orson Welles in his cockiest moments (and that is something to see too) can’t compete with Matty Moran down and out and every studio door slammed in his face.
Some Faces in the Crowd Page 21
