Rags to Riches

by Nancy Carson

  At first they occupied three rooms in a cheap hotel in Pell Street on the Lower East Side. It was not the most glamorous of places, especially after the excesses of comfort they’d enjoyed on the Queen Mary, but at least it was centrally heated. Maxine continued to share a bed with Brent and he instructed her to get fixed up with a Dutch cap. He hated using those damned smelly French letters. It was like trying to have a bath wearing a mackintosh, he said. Maxine said okay, she would, and sought help from Dulcie as to how and where in New York she might fulfil such a promise.

  In mid January 1937 the band did their first radio broadcast in the USA on the Saturday Dance programme that was sponsored by the National Cereal Company. They received rave reviews for it weekly. Maxine wrote more songs especially for the show, for which Brent did the musical arrangements, and these were being picked up by other artists who wished to record them. John Fielding negotiated attractive terms with music publishers for royalty payments, and these were poised to net her a tidy sum of money if the ensuing records sold well.

  January also saw The Owls and the Pussycats performing at the Hotel New Yorker and in February they were booked to appear at the Grill Room of the Waldorf for six weeks, at which hotel they were also allocated three bedrooms. Late February also brought the band’s first session with Victor Records when they recorded ‘Destiny Jests with Me’. It had become the band’s most requested number and Victor wanted to release it and promote it heavily. In the middle of March the living arrangements and work moved to the Roosevelt Hotel for six weeks.

  As their fame increased, so the money started pouring in. It seemed to come from everywhere. The fees for a season at an hotel threatened to run into five figures, the radio broadcasts made them famous in every state of the Union from California in the west to Maine in the east. By the end of the first thirteen weeks, fan mail was arriving at the rate of five thousand letters a week. Their faces began to appear in every music magazine and fashion magazines were beginning to feature Maxine. Sheet music and record sales boomed and you could hear ‘Destiny Jests with Me’ blaring from every jukebox in every café and honky tonk in every city and backwater. Other artists began to demand Maxine’s songs and the royalty payments from those were due to substantially pile up very soon.

  It was in April that Brent proposed marriage. ‘Destiny Jests with Me’ was both the best-selling record and best-selling sheet music in the United States that week; Maxine’s imminent wealth from royalties promised to far outstrip what he himself had accumulated so far. It rendered her all the more attractive. She was an asset he must secure for himself. Since it looked as though they were set to become US citizens he had ideas of buying a house in the city and a holiday retreat at either Rhode Island or Martha’s Vineyard. What was the point in having money if you didn’t use it? It was also eminently satisfying to spend the bonus money a new wife brought to a marriage, especially a wife who was destined to become outrageously wealthy. Infinitely better, in fact, than having no money at all and running up insurmountable bills, as he had in the past. Besides, he was making new friends every day, fashionable, influential people – musicians, A and R men, movie stars even. He had to impress them, and owning somewhere appropriate to entertain them lavishly would do him and Maxine a power of good.

  ‘So how do we go about getting married in New York?’ Maxine asked as they relaxed in the armchairs of their suite at the Roosevelt.

  ‘We just go along to a judge or a priest, I imagine, and ask him to marry us.’

  ‘Won’t they want proof of who we are?’

  ‘We have our passports.’

  ‘But what if passports aren’t enough? They might want birth certificates and God knows what else. You know what a bureaucratic lot they are, the Yanks. They love paperwork. Papers for this, papers for that.’

  He shrugged. ‘You may be right. I don’t know.’

  ‘You could always ask somebody. You keep telling me you know lots of people now.’

  ‘I don’t want to ask people I know.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because that would draw attention to the fact. Our marriage should be a low-key affair. So much the better if we could keep it secret…I’m thinking about your singing career, Maxine. You’re far more attractive to the American music-loving male as an innocent single girl.’

  ‘Huh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Innocent is an optimistic adjective these days, especially when applied to me.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and rolled his eyes. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you? We have fun, don’t we?’

  ‘Oh, Brent, I’ve never had so much fun. Parties galore, all this adulation from people, playing the music I love for people who really appreciate it. Of course I’m having fun. I never imagined anything like this could ever happen to me. It’s a dream.’

  ‘It’s a dream that I knew would come true, Maxine,’ Brent said seriously. He lit another cigarette. ‘You have talent, sweetheart. You have looks and an innocence about you that appeals to these Yanks. I always knew we – you – would make it to the top. We’re a good team, you and I. The best. We’re on track to make a fortune together. We’re a business. Getting married will complete the tie. Drink?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks.’

  He got up from his chair and held his cigarette in his mouth while he reached for the bottle and a glass. ‘I’m having a scotch. Are you sure you don’t want anything?’

  ‘It’s too early…Don’t have too much, Brent. Don’t forget we have to play tonight.’

  ‘Oh, leave off, Maxine. I know how much I can drink. I know when to stop.’

  ‘I’m just reminding you…’ she responded softly.

  He recapped the bottle and took his drink with him to his chair.

  ‘Fancy…’ she said dreamily, ‘and I always imagined myself having a white wedding.’

  ‘Did you ever imagine yourself a queen of swing? Did you ever imagine you’d be making thousands of dollars as a singer and songwriter in America?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Well that’s happened. You’re one in ten million, Maxine. So don’t be too disappointed if your wedding day doesn’t afford you the glamour and sentimentality you always thought it would. Life’s had its compensations.’

  She watched motes of dust dancing in a slanted sunbeam that penetrated the window and smiled enigmatically, ignoring the acid sting of his reproach. Every girl dreams of being a radiantly smiling bride in her beautiful white dress and her mother looking proudly on. There was nothing wrong with that. Besides, she could afford whatever wedding she wanted now that money was no object.

  ‘Maybe we should send for our birth certificates, you know, Brent,’ she said. ‘I bet they would want to see them.’

  ‘For proof that we’ve been born, you mean?’ he answered sarcastically.

  ‘For God’s sake, stop sneering,’ she complained. ‘You know what they’re like here…I’ll write to my mother anyway and ask her to send mine. I won’t say why, otherwise we’ll have no chance of a quiet wedding. My family will be here in droves…’ Actually that was not such a bad thought…

  ‘You won’t need a birth certificate, Maxine. What’s the point in writing?’

  She shrugged. ‘All the same…’

  It had not been a tremendously romantic proposal; not the type of proposal she’d imagined she might be blessed with. He had not taken her in his arms and said, ‘Darling I’m so in love with you and I want to spend the rest of my life in eternal bliss with you.’ He had not gone down on one knee and said, ‘Will you please marry me?’ It had been a more prosaic statement: ‘It would make financial sense if we got married, Maxine, in our position’. Well, she was not opposed to it and, whilst she’d agreed, she could just as happily have continued with the present arrangement for all the difference it was likely to make. Lately, Brent had taken to going out with Kenny to sleazy nightclubs in Harlem after their concerts. He’d actually deigned to take her to some. She’d met and talked w
ith Fats Waller, heard him play; a fantastic musician; his records didn’t do him justice. Brent said he could introduce her to Duke Ellington; he said he was on first name terms with him at the Cotton Club…Hi, Duke…Hi, Brent. He had drunk with Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey, he said. Even Benny Goodman had made himself known when he knew Brent Shackleton of The Owls and the Pussycats was in the Cotton Club one night, he said. Brent assured her that he had to befriend these people. It was not what you knew, but who you knew that mattered. He could persuade these important musicians to record her songs, he said. Think of the money! ‘I’m working for us when I go to these clubs,’ he said.

  It did not promise to be the cosy kind of marriage she’d always envisaged; a nice house in Oakham Road, like Henzey’s, had always been her ideal. A husband who went out to a steady job at eight in a morning and returned at six, like Will, was what she had always anticipated; perhaps two or three children over a span of six or eight years…Still, she could hardly complain. The nicest dreams inevitably did not come true. She was living another dream now with money in the bank; the sort of money she’d never dreamed of. It would take years of striving to accumulate that sort of wealth if she married an ordinary working guy. And there was no sign of it abating; only increasing. Brent deserved to share it if anybody did. He was the one who pushed her when she was reticent, who protected her when she was vulnerable, who lifted her when she was down. He was the one who loved her when she needed affection and emotional support.

  Yes, it made sense to marry Brent. They were indeed partners in business; a highly lucrative business. Swing was the big thing; swing, and all the thousands of dollars that they could make from it. Money was there for the taking. It made a lot more sense to be a hard-nosed businesswoman than a dewy-eyed, small-town girl with pie-in-the-sky fantasies about white weddings in draughty old English churches, and the unpleasant business of having babies.

  She and Brent were less romantically inclined these last few months; this business and trying to promote it had made them like that. Yet, she still yearned for romance. She had not lost the knack of igniting occasionally that spark of tenderness in Brent, when the muse took her. They had not been sleeping together so long yet that the novelty had completely worn off. True, they did not make love as frequently as they used to at first – sometimes she could not get him going anyway. Some nights he stayed out all night, not returning to their suite till morning, but she did not mind. In some ways, she was thankful. Better than the twice daily exercise he’d taken on her on the Queen Mary when she was half drugged by the effects of the sea and the time zones they passed through every day – and in that sleazy little hotel in Pell Street. She had got little rest in those days, having to perform for her audience on stage and for him in bed later. And she needed her beauty sleep.

  Well, she was getting her beauty sleep now.

  She wondered what her destiny might have been if she’d stayed in Dudley or moved to be near Howard in Norfolk. It’s doubtful they would have been talking about marriage quite so soon, but it would have happened eventually. She would have become a vicar’s wife…A vicar’s wife! God! How far removed from that was she now? But she would have been happy. She knew, without question, that she would have been very happy. She had loved Howard with all her heart and soul; tenderly; somehow differently to the way she loved Brent. In the frantic and sometimes fraught excitement of life in the music business, in another country, it was so easy to forget that. She tried to imagine herself greeting parishioners at a vicarage she had never seen, dealing with their problems, trivial and profound. She would be arranging the rota for the altar flowers, organising the team of cleaners after every service, attending beetle drives. There would be Young Wives one evening a week, the Mothers’ Union. She would have to join the Women’s Institute, perhaps even teach at Sunday School. There would have been no end to it. Yet she would have done it all with a glad heart, for Howard.

  A lump came to her throat. Did he miss her? Did he ever regret not writing to her? Funny how fate had intervened…No, not funny…Sad, really…What was Howard doing right this minute?…

  The band immediately followed up the success of ‘Destiny Jests with Me’ with a recording of a sensitive love song written by Maxine called ‘From Tears to a Kiss’. It had occurred to her that Howard might feasibly hear her music back in England when they released their first record there and, if so, might listen to the words. She hoped he would realise that the message was meant for him, that it reflected the sadness she still felt over losing him. Whether Brent sussed her lingering emotions she did not know, for he made no comment. It was doubtful whether he did; he was too wrapped up in himself, and in his unfailing confidence that Maxine could be besotted with himself only, to realise any different.

  The recording session lasted a couple of hours in a small cluttered studio studded with sound-proofing material, wires running along the floor that was strewn with cigarette ends, and a few chairs scattered randomly. The band members and their instruments were placed strategically around a microphone and the distance each member sat away from it determined the balance. Maxine sang into a different microphone and played piano simultaneously, and it took only four full attempts before the most languid, sensuous version of the song was captured in wax. The A and R man, Wes Johnson, could barely contain himself with excitement when they listened to the final playback together. ‘From Tears to a Kiss’ could not fail to be a smash hit, he told them, as he crooned the chorus along with the recording.

  My life has drifted from smiling to sighing,

  From sighing to crying,

  Please lead me from tears to a kiss.

  Lizzie wrote regularly to Maxine. Always, though, she had to refer to Maxine’s last letter to check what address she was supposed to mail the next letter to. It was in May that Maxine received a letter, which suggested that Lizzie evidently did not comprehend the financial success her daughter was enjoying. The letter read:

  My Dear Maxine,

  It’s grand to hear you are doing so well in America and I have enclosed, as you will see, your birth certificate as you asked me to and a pound note. I didn’t have a clue what I could get you for your birthday, so I have sent you the pound note and hope you won’t waste it on softness.

  Yesterday, I was all of a tiswas because I heard that record of yours played on the wireless. I was that proud. Straight away I phoned our Henzey and told her to switch the wireless on, but by the time it had warmed up you had finished and they were playing something by Jack Payne which wasn’t half as nice. So it looks like Jesse is going to buy a gramophone so we can buy your record and listen to it. I’m writing to the BBC to ask them to play it as often as they can on the wireless. There was a bit in the paper about you and the band and how well you are doing in America as well. The Dudley Herald want to come and ask me some questions so they can print an article on you.

  Everybody here is well and they send their love. Our Henzey and Will miss you. The children are fine and they miss you as well but I don’t know what’s happening to our Alice. She and that Charles fell out some months ago and she doesn’t seem to want to go out anymore. She doesn’t seem interested in chaps anymore which is a load off my mind but I hope she’s not ailing for something.

  How is your new boy-friend going on? I hope he’s treating you nicely. Henzey tells me he’s a nice-looking chap, because she’s seen him, hasn’t she. She said he was good to you when you was in the orchestra in Brum. I hope as you’re keeping away from those gangsters as well. They should lock them all up. By the way, Henzey had a letter from Howard who you used to go out with, wondering if she knew how you were. That was nice of him, wasn’t it? I thought he was a lovely chap considering he’s a vicar.

  It looks as if our Herbert and Elizabeth are going to get married next March. That’ll give you plenty of time to organise things so as you’ll be able to come to it. They send their love as well.

  Well, Maxine, I must close now as I have to get Jesse’s tea rea
dy and Richard and Edward are mythering me for a piece of jam and a glass of pop. Look after yourself and keep well and I look forward to getting your next letter.

  All the love in the world,

  Mom.

  So Howard Quaintance had written to Henzey asking about her! Fancy that! After all this time. Maybe he had heard her record. Funny how she kept thinking about him; not that that was significant, of course. After all, you have to think. You can’t help thinking. It was hardly surprising he cropped up in her thoughts from time to time, especially since he was the inspiration for her songs. But why did she still feel such a sense of loss when he did?

  Brent returned with the news that he had just left John Fielding and that The Owls and the Pussycats had been booked for a month in Chicago at the Congress Hotel.

  ‘Chicago? That will be a change,’ Maxine said. ‘When do we go?’

  ‘Beginning of July. John’s rearranging our schedule. There’s also talk of doing some NBC broadcasts from the Congress Hotel. Some tie-up with a big local firm as sponsors.’

  ‘Shall we be married by then, Brent? Or shall we wait till we come back?’

  ‘The sooner the better,’ he replied brusquely. ‘Let’s get it over and done with. And the studio’s booked next week at Victor for another recording session. That new song you wrote…’

  ‘You mean “It’s Not Your Fault”?’

  ‘Yeah, that one. Good job we finished the arrangement early. We can start dropping it into the stage shows already. It’s a nice song. Should do well. You’re writing some good stuff, Maxine. I’m proud of you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘I like it.’

  Brent went to the bathroom and Maxine sang the song to herself.

  ‘It’s not your fault I love you like I do

  It’s not your fault I’m lonely without you…’

  Miss Maxine Kite forsook all others and privately became a June bride in a very quiet civil ceremony on Friday 18th of that month in 1937. Members of The Owls and the Pussycats only were present, plus Miss Dulcie Fielding who acted as witness together with Miss Pansy Hemming. Brent swore everybody to secrecy. Afterwards, the couple entertained their colleagues at a very private lunch at the Ritz-Carlton where champagne flowed in abundance. The new Mrs Shackleton clearly enjoyed herself and was very affectionate towards her husband.