Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries)

by Ed Ifkovic

  But in that moment I noticed Bella narrowing her eyes at Ellie, her mouth set in a grim line, though she immediately turned and touched Roddy’s elbow, so quick a gesture as to seem accidental. Lawson, buttoning his coat, stepped toward her.

  Suddenly, jarringly, there was a confident rat-a-tat on my door, just as Rebecca stepped back into the room. “Mr. Harris is here to see you, Miss Edna. Joseph told him you were back. I insisted you’d just got back…” She paused. “Well, he…”

  The rapping on the door swelled, insistent. An impatient man, this Jed Harris, a man used to getting his way. Rebecca hurried to open the door, and Jed stood there, one knee slightly bent, one hand cradling his feathered fedora against his chest, the other fanning a sheaf of papers. For some reason there was a scowl on his face. He stepped into the foyer, barely glanced into the room, his back turned away from the staring young folks, dismissive. “Edna, I was gonna leave the dialogue changes downstairs but the doorman said you’d returned.” He frowned. “You didn’t tell me you were coming back so soon.”

  I made a joke of it. “You didn’t get my wire?” But his face was tight, the eyes unblinking. “I was tired, Jed. I…”

  He kept frowning. “Thought I’d hand them to you, explain the changes. I think my changes are important.” A sly grin covered his face. “I know you don’t like changes to your words, but Ann Andrews can’t deliver some of your complicated…” He stopped and for the first time turned to look at the young folks in the living room, all of them staring at him. He wasn’t happy. “But it looks like you’re having a party.” He fairly snarled the line.

  “Parties only begin when you arrive, Jed.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “That’s because I’m the only person I enjoy talking to.”

  One of the young girls laughed—I think it was Harriet—and Jed flinched, threw a smoldering look in her direction.

  “Leave the pages with me,” I told him. “We’ll talk later.”

  He didn’t like that. He stepped back, deliberately lit a cigarette, and proceeded to blow thin wisps of blue-gray smoke into the air, purposely creating crude circles that escaped from his lips and drifted to the ceiling. A performance, I thought—one from a pouting child. “Sure,” he whispered, and I knew from experience that his whispers were dangerous.

  Jed was the brash, young producer of The Royal Family, and already he’d provided George and me with frayed nerves, bilious indigestion, and the occasional insidious migraine that puts me in bed for a day. The new and improved wunderkind of Broadway, Jed Harris had experienced an unparalleled string of recent SRO hits with the likes of Coquette and the urbane Broadway, and he insisted that The Royal Family was the ultimate hat trick.

  An insomniac, he also had the misguided habit of phoning me at three or four in the morning to discuss cast changes, the disgruntled stage crew, his detestation of the actors—he famously announced that intelligence was wasted on actors—and his disaffection with my co-playwright George Kaufman. I put up with it a few times, but finally demanded he stop. With someone else, I’d have slammed down the receiver the first time he called, indignant; but Jed Harris, with the low tantalizing voice, had a way of charming me. Glib, suave, using that mesmerizing voice, he kept me on the line. Foolishly, I let him. He wooed me. I let him. I disliked the power the man had over me, and I disliked the fact that I found him—well, appealing. No one else liked him, a situation he relished. He cultivated hostility like a gardener who coveted only weeds. Ina Claire once resoundingly slapped him in the face, which immediately qualified her for Great White Way sainthood. People feared him.

  But a whole part of me got quiet and scattered whenever he was around. I was too old for such puerile shenanigans. The man was a destructive imp, slick and devious. Meshugenah, George Kaufman insisted. Plain crazy.

  Jed pushed the papers at me, but made no move to leave.

  You saw a small man standing there, wiry and compact, slender as a pencil but with the suggestion of taut, high-strung muscles. Looking at him, you sensed that he was hairy, some simian creature loosed on fashionable Broadway. His dark face, that chiseled chin, and the perpetual grainy beard stubble, cast him as a faintly dissolute speakeasy dandy from a Damon Runyon tale, a man whose sartorial splendor was always impeccable, the creases in his trousers just so, cascading over his shoes just so; the shirt collar crisp; the fedora worn with the jaunty calculation of a Broadway prima donna, inclined on the small head so that it suggested an appendage acquired at birth. Worse, the hooded eyes possessed no humor, though he’d wisecrack like a smart aleck schoolboy. Not only that but, frighteningly, those black onyx eyes had a hard quartz-like polish, as though squinting at a sun no one else saw. They were the eyes of a man who was purposely evil—or just plain mad. Which didn’t matter because the result was the same. “To be sexy,” he once purred at me, “you’ve got to have menace.” You avoided men like Jed. I, on the other hand, looked forward to his visits, though I hated to admit it.

  He was just twenty-seven. I…well…wasn’t.

  While I was glancing at the typed sheets he handed me, something was happening in the room. Waters and his friends had become quiet, slipping back into their seats though most now wore their overcoats. Of course, I figured they all knew who Jed Harris was, his ferocious power on Broadway, this golden boy—but Waters, a gutsy seventeen-year-old, said something to him about seeing Coquette—how much he loved Helen Hayes, how much…

  He stopped, sputtered, and I looked up, bothered.

  Jed’s icy expression stopped him cold. I found myself looking from Jed to the young folks. Jed’s eyes swept over their faces, and there was nothing welcome about the look. I said something about the group of young writers and actors, talented men and women, but I realized something was wrong. A raw buzz of electricity hummed in the room. No one moved, yet everybody seemed to be in motion. Facing them, rigid, this small man took them all in. As I watched, Jed’s glare moved from Roddy to Lawson to Ellie, but finally caught the eye of the beautiful Bella, tucked into a side chair, her presence partially obscured by Lawson, who was leaning forward. A tense moment, Jed and Bella holding eye contact for a brief moment—and I knew at that second that the two of them knew each other.

  “Have you met…” I began, but Jed backed up, swagger in his step, and turned to leave. “Jed?”

  Without saying a word he was gone, the door slammed.

  The mood of the room shifted. When I glanced at Bella, she pushed herself back into the cushions of the chair, folding her body in, her long arms wrapped around her chest as though she were a child defending herself. Her striking face was flushed. She was staring across the room, seemingly fascinated by the German pewter candlesticks on my fireplace mantel. What she was doing, I realized, was avoiding Lawson, who’d turned his body so that he now faced her. His lips were drawn into a straight, disapproving line, yet when he raised a hand to his face, I noticed his fingers trembling. And the look in his eyes was both sad and curious.

  At that moment Roddy stood up and hurriedly buttoned his overcoat. He glanced from Lawson to Bella, sarcasm lacing his words. “Ain’t you the brave guy though?” For a moment I was confused. Yes, it was a line from the popular play Broadway, a tag line with faddish currency among theatergoers. Cartoon characters used it in the funny papers. It made everyone laugh. No one laughed now.

  Odd, I thought, that quotation coming from this young man, and said so bitterly. A pause. Then he mentioned Jed’s name, not friendly. Bella glanced at him, a sideways twist of her head that attempted to be coy but came off as apologetic. A sliver of a smile crossed her lips, but just as quickly disappeared, a feeble gesture, a little flirtatious, that told me that she liked Roddy. Lawson, meanwhile, was trembling. While I was watching this little drama, Ellie bounced up, made a dismissive grunt that seemed to take in the others, and picked up a glove she’d dropped to the floor. She turned, colliding with Freddy, standing there with hi
s arms folded over his chest. Everyone stammered goodbye, over and over, and thanked me as they scrambled to the doorway, their arms holding bundles of their writing. In a flash, they were gone, with Freddy and Harriet doggedly following the others out the door.

  Jed Harris had said not one word to any of them.

  Waters, looking the baffled schoolboy he was, shot me a worried look.

  “Well,” I began.

  In a squeaky voice he asked me, “Did something just happen here?” He opened his eyes wide, wide.

  I grinned. “And I was thinking on the train ride back that it would be nice to return to my apartment where nothing ever happens.”

  Something had, indeed, happened.

  Chapter Two

  The phone woke me from a deep sleep. I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand: four in the morning. Good Lord, I thought, no one in Manhattan gets up at this absurd hour. Some folks were just going to bed. Someone had better be dead.

  “Edna.” Blunt, thick, a cigarette smoker’s midnight voice.

  I sighed. “What did I tell you about calling in the middle of the night, Jed?”

  He ignored that. “You know, I’m gonna fire the cast.”

  My mind reeled. I sat up in bed, felt a chilly draft from the windows, wrapped my wool blanket snugly around me. What absurdity was this? “No, you’re not.”

  A raspy chuckle, too loud, as if he held his mouth on the receiver. “I’m the producer.”

  “And I’m the writer.” I paused. “Though your persistent and silly dialogue changes might suggest the contrary.”

  Again the thick unpleasant laugh. “Edna, the cast is all wrong.”

  “Jed, it’s four in the morning. At this hour everything is wrong.”

  “Ann Andrews is horrible as Julie Cavendish.”

  True, I thought, but the wonderful actress Ethel Barrymore, on whom most believed George and I based the glamorous, enthralling Julie, not only refused to play the part, as we’d fervently and naively hoped she would, but also now planned on suing, as she’d thundered to the press on more than one occasion. We’d supposedly maligned the august Barrymore clan. Theatrical royalty. Legendary Broadway luminaries. And because of Ethel’s strident pronouncement, no veteran actress would touch the central role, so we’d reluctantly settled on Ann Andrews, an old blowsy trooper who was blond and tall and filled with static—and thus all wrong for the part. A vaudeville stereotype, best at playing bawdy barkeeps. Feebly, I said into the phone, “It’s too late to find someone new.”

  “That’s why I’m closing the play down.”

  “No, you’re not.” I was getting a headache. I joked, “Isn’t it bad enough that the Marx Brothers plan to sue because they suspect we based the play on their lives? We’re becoming laughing stocks.” I sighed. “Jed, I’m going to the theater this morning. We’ll talk then. I haven’t even looked at the changes yet.” Then I added, “And then I have to be at the Ziegfeld for a meeting about Show Boat. Meet me at…”

  “I’m headed home now, dear Edna, so I won’t get up till two or three.” Loud voices in the background, the tinkle of glasses, a whisper of a laugh, and a few bars of music. Jed at some mid-town honky tonk—maybe the Del Ray Club or the Hotsy Totsy.

  “Some people keep normal sleeping hours, Jed. I, for one, require a solid eight hours when Manhattan lies under darkness…”

  He interrupted me. “Nothing good happens in Manhattan during daylight.”

  I was ready to hang up the phone. “I suppose you do look better in shadows, Jed.”

  He chuckled. “I’m closing the play.”

  “Meet me first.”

  “I’ll be there at three. We’ll have lunch.”

  “I have lunch in my workroom at one. Rebecca serves me a sandwich and…”

  “I’ll have lunch. You can watch me eat. I know how it thrills you.”

  I was shaking my head. “Don’t do anything rash, Jed.”

  “Everything I do is rash. That’s why I’m a millionaire at twenty-seven. I’m the hottest ticket on Broadway. Me, Edna. Little Jacob Horowitz from the Lower East Side. Me…”

  I broke in. “Goodbye.”

  “Edna.” A sudden change in tone, hesitant, quizzical.

  “What?”

  “Those Negroes in your living room. What’s that all about?”

  Surprised, I waited a second. “Rebecca’s son Waters wants to be a writer and he’s made friends with other like-minded young folks. Up in Harlem. I sat with them twice last summer, read their poems, stories, plays. I enjoyed their…exuberance, Jed. So I told Waters he could meet here when I was away. They’re good sorts who…”

  He whispered into the phone, a hissing that chilled me. “I wasn’t pleased.” He breathed in, and I could hear the intake of cigarette smoke. “I don’t like Negroes.”

  “Good God, Jed, it has nothing to do with you.” I ran my tongue over my upper lip. “You know. I had the feeling that you actually know…some of them.”

  He didn’t answer. The lazy hum of music in the background disappeared.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “You shouldn’t encourage people to write, Edna. It’s an ignoble profession practiced by malcontents and idle dreamers.”

  “They have talent…”

  “They have this white lady who fawns over them and promises lives they’ll never have.”

  “Goodbye, Jed.” I hung up the phone.

  ***

  It was going to be a hectic day, though I knew all the days ahead of me were going to be frantic, especially the next couple of weeks through Christmas and the days immediately following, a kaleidoscope of panic, tension, and, doubtless, rising bile. Most of it would center on Jed. Show Boat was to open on December 27 at the new Ziegfeld Theater; one day later The Royal Family would open at the nearby Selwyn Theater, assuming Jed didn’t slam shut the doors. Unfortunately, Jed Harris controlled its wobbly destiny.

  Show Boat, the musical based on my best-selling romance of life on the turbulent Mississippi, was a very rich stepchild, though producer Flo Ziegfeld and the talented duo of Hammerstein and Kern had asked me to consult—a deplorable and empty word that meant, obviously, sit quietly in the theater and applaud and look for egregious errors that might embarrass the producer. As it turned out, Hammerstein and Kern, the imaginative creators, actually listened to me—sometimes. It was good press to have me in attendance, the winsome author lurking in the wings. Not that I minded: theater, to me, was exhilarating, vital, a life pulse. The moment a curtain rose I’d feel my heart race, my head swim. They couldn’t keep me away if they wanted to. Ziegfeld would grandly escort me to Sardi’s, and the tall, handsome man with the dreadfully flat voice would listen as I prattled on and on until, quite finished, he’d signal for the check and stand up, done with me.

  So in the morning I didn’t linger over breakfast with the Times, as I liked to do, nor did I take my obligatory mile-long stroll up Central Park West and down Madison or Lexington Avenue. No, Jed Harris’ middle-of-the-night call propelled me into the theater at mid-morning. I sat with David Burton, director of The Royal Family, impatiently waiting for George Kaufman to arrive, while we discussed Jed’s latest madness. Burton, a dour, serious man with a slight Russian accent, wasn’t happy, but he hadn’t been happy since day one when Jed, imperious and grouchy from lack of sleep, informed him that directors were lackeys in the employ of the producers and, like all lackeys throughout history, were expedient and entirely forgettable.

  “He’s not closing the play,” Burton told me when I gave him Jed’s declaration. “I’ll kill him first.”

  “Take a number.” I stood up. “Tell George I can’t wait. I’ll be back later this afternoon. When Jed swaggers in, beard stubble and all, with a Lucky Strike cloud over his head and cognac on his breath, tell him I need to see him.”

  Burton
shrugged.

  Outside, I rushed through Schubert Alley, feeling closed in among the jostling walkers and the dim midday light. Unlike the Selwyn, where the orderly and mechanical rehearsals ran from eleven till five daily, the Ziegfeld Theater was frantic with noise and movement, with crews scurrying all over the place. Show Boat was now being installed in the new New York theater. I had a brief meeting scheduled with Flo Ziegfeld’s assistant who wanted to review some notes I’d assembled after watching tryouts on the road. I hoped to be back in my apartment by early afternoon.

  But the minute I arrived, one of Hammerstein’s aides told me, out of breath and avoiding eye contact, that the assistant was still in Philadelphia, horribly and apologetically delayed because the trains weren’t running, and my meeting had to be rescheduled.

  Grumbling, I turned to leave, but found myself observing the hurly-burly activity in the new, gleaming theater. In the middle of this delightful chaos, the musical director was reading notes to a group of young hopefuls who were auditioning for replacement parts in the Negro Chorus. Illness had plagued the traveling chorus, along with difficulties booking Negro singers into segregated hotels in Washington and elsewhere.

  One hefty baritone, off to the side, was loudly practicing the majestic basso profundo of “Ol’ Man River,” sitting in a straight-backed chair, rocking back and forth. A young girl, thin as a rail, was humming to herself in a corner. Fascinated, I watched as the auditions began, the musical director standing alongside a gaunt, hook-nosed piano player. I was thrilled knowing that Broadway finally allowed Negroes and whites on the same stage, though the pairing still was not commonplace—nor sanctioned. Of course, blacks and whites, in some quarters, still could not share a scene together, insane as that struck me, but thanks to Eugene O’Neill’s insistence and resolve, that was changing. With All God’s Chillun Got Wings he hammered down the barrier, despite protestors on the sidewalks who thought American civilization was now in jeopardy. I remember George Kaufman’s wry comment to me: “All God’s chillun may got wings, but on the American stage only light-skinned folks are allowed to fly over the proscenium.”