A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940

by Victoria Wilson

  • • •

  Oscar Levant said that Fay “had an aura of shabby worldliness. He was extremely xenophobic and disliked Jewish comedians especially.”

  Fay was one day headlining the bill at B. F. Keith’s Bushwick Theatre in Brooklyn. Milton Berle was “doing twelve minutes of something, including my Eddie Cantor.” After Berle finished his act, he would stand in the wings to watch Fay work, breaking his rule that no one was to watch him from the wings. Performers were forbidden to watch the other acts from the audience in order to protect their material.

  Fay came off the stage of the Bushwick from his first bow, to much applause. Berle thought he heard Fay say to the stage manager, “Get that little Jew bastard out of the wings. I don’t want him standing there.” A few days later, Berle was back in the wings watching Fay. When Fay came offstage, Berle heard him say something about “that little kike” that made Berle so angry he took a stage brace made of wood and metal used to hold scenery together and hit Fay across the face with it, causing “the Great Faysie” to be taken to Brooklyn Hospital.

  • • •

  After Fay’s show at the Palladium, Levant brought Barbara and Walda backstage. They entered Fay’s dressing room as he was removing his makeup. He was charming and beguiling. He announced he was hungry and said that as soon as he finished taking off his makeup, he was going to a restaurant where, he said, they served the best food in town.

  “They really know how to serve food in this place,” Fay went on. “A little table in a quiet corner, soft music . . .”

  Barbara was ready to accept the invitation when the dressing room door opened and in walked a beautiful woman who said, “Are you ready for dinner, Frank?”

  “Be with you right away,” Fay said as he put on his coat. He turned to his guests and said, “You must try this place, the food is really delicious.” Fay put on his hat, reached for the door, and, as he walked out of the dressing room, said to Barbara and the others, “Drop around again sometime,” and closed the door behind him.

  Barbara was stunned. She assumed that she, Walda, and Oscar would be invited to join him for dinner. Barbara turned to Walda and Levant and said, “Let’s get out of here. But for heaven’s sake let’s not go where there is good food. The very idea of it chokes me.”

  Barbara was angry. She thought Fay might call the next day, but he didn’t, nor the next. The idea that Fay had hurt her made her all the angrier.

  Three days later Fay phoned and asked her to dine with him at Longchamps that Sunday evening. In her most polite voice, Barbara said she would be delighted and thanked him for his call. At seven that evening Barbara was home, not at Longchamps, pleased at the thought that Fay was waiting for her at the restaurant.

  She expected to hear from him the following morning. Days went by without a word from him. After two weeks of silence, Barbara asked Levant to invite Fay to a dinner that was being given at the Flippens Club in honor of the cast of Burlesque. Fay said he would attend and asked who would be there.

  “Barbara and the others,” Levant said.

  “Oh. I’m playing cards at the club until late tonight, but I’ll try to make it if I can. If I can’t make the dinner, I’ll meet you at Reuben’s afterward.”

  Barbara and Levant waited for Fay at the Flippens Club and then at Reuben’s until dawn. He didn’t show up.

  During the next two weeks, Barbara saw Fay around town, each time with a different woman. Fay seemed enthralled with each of his dinner partners and bowed politely when he saw Barbara. Levant was Barbara’s sole escort as she tried to keep track of Fay’s whereabouts. Barbara and Levant were seen together so frequently it was believed that they were a couple.

  One night they had just been seated at the Silver Slipper. Fay appeared at the table with Harry Delmar, the producer of Harry Delmar’s Revels, in which Fay was starring, and sat down at Barbara and Oscar’s table.

  “Let me congratulate you both on your engagement,” he said.

  “You know everything, don’t you?” Barbara said. They began to argue.

  Levant suggested they stop fighting with each other. “You know you like one another. Try and be nice—you know you’ll get around to it sooner or later. You might as well start now.”

  Barbara and Fay danced. Back at the table, they sat close together and talked. Fay revealed that the many occasions of their spotting each other at restaurants had not been coincidence: each time Fay had found out Barbara’s evening plans and quickly arranged for someone to accompany him to the restaurant or club where he knew she would be. He revealed as well that the first time Barbara met him in his dressing room, Fay’s excessive charm, the talk of a restaurant, the beautiful woman coming in at the last moment to take him to dinner had been a setup; Fay had planned it all.

  Barbara and Walda began to meet Fay at Reuben’s each night after the show. Fay loved to tell stories. “And we loved to listen to them,” said Walda. Barbara hung on Fay’s every word, as they all did. “He was so funny and amusing,” said Walda. “We thought he was grand; he was so graceful with his hands, those beautiful gestures that only actors can use and get away with. Sometimes Harry Delmar would join us, but mostly it was the three of us. Barbara was mad about him,” Walda said. “Frank was crazy about her but he didn’t show it as much as she did. He wasn’t demonstrative.”

  She would do anything to please Fay. Walda recalled, “Barbara had a beautiful crepe green afternoon dress made with a green velvet collar that she loved and one day put on to go downstairs to meet Frank. A few minutes later, she came back up and said, ‘Frank can’t stand this dress. He hates me in green.’ When Frank didn’t like something, that was it; it was out.”

  Frank disliked Barbara in green, though it was the preferred color for his own suits.

  Barbara gave Walda the dress and said, “Do whatever you want with it.” “I took it,” said Walda, “and I liked the dress twice as much when it was mine.”

  Barbara decided to give a dinner party for Frank. She had neither silverware nor table linens and asked her former roommate and beloved friend, Claire Taishoff Muller, if she might borrow them for the evening. Claire was only too happy to lend them to Barbara and said, “Leave it all to me. I will arrange everything.” Claire brought the silver and glassware to Barbara’s.

  A few days after the dinner party, Barbara returned the silver and linens to Claire and thanked her. Claire phoned soon after, and Barbara refused to talk with her. Claire phoned again, and again Barbara refused to talk. Claire was baffled. She couldn’t understand what she had done to hurt or offend Barbara. They had been friends for years; Barbara had lived with Claire’s family when the two young women had started out together as dancers. She, Walda, and Mae had spent years together. Claire adored Barbara and didn’t know what happened.

  Barbara’s good friend from Ziegfeld days Nancy Bernard met Fay with Barbara and didn’t particularly like him. Fay “thought he was the one and only person in the world,” said Nancy.

  Fay traveled with an entourage. He had his own tailor, his private barber, manicurist, secretary, typist, songwriter, composer, piano player, set of chauffeurs, handymen, messenger boys, and literary advisers.

  When Barbara and Walda met Frank at Reuben’s each night after their shows, “nobody drank because Frank was on the wagon,” said Walda.

  Fay’s drinking was legendary. When he was drunk, it was known that he would wend his way to St. Patrick’s for confession, though he claimed he went to Mass every day. He was known to tip his hat each time he passed a church. Fay kept a poem pasted in the inside cover of one of his scrapbooks that read as follows:

  The wonderful love of a beautiful maid,

  And the staunch true love of a man.

  The love of a baby unafraid

  Which hath existed since life began.

  But the greatest love, the love of love

  Transcending e’en that of a mother,

  Is the tender, the passionate, the infinite love

>   Of one drunken bum for another.

  Damon Runyon said that the word for Fay was “puckish,” that Fay “had always been an addict and a master of whimsy on the stage and off,” that he lived “in a world of fantasy pretty much his own, starry-eyed and never worrying a great deal.” “Faysy boy,” as Runyon said Fay generally referred to himself, “had a streak of good old Smithfield ham in him a mile wide. He was always an individualist who was happier putting on his own little vaudeville shows Sunday nights and wandering up and down the aisles chatting with the customers than when he was knocking them dead at the Palace.” “Fay was extremely well groomed and suave,” Runyon said, “and one of the greatest squires of dames that ever hit Broadway. He had a pair of marvelous hands and some astonishingly expressive eyebrows and it was always a good show to watch Frank pitch to the gals, using both with great skill.”

  Fay was Barbara’s senior by sixteen years. He was thirty-seven; she, twenty-one. Barbara was aware of the stories about Frank’s drinking and recklessness, of his smashing up cars and being charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, of his missing any number of performances and his declarations of bankruptcy. She had heard of his barroom brawls and dice games, of the many claims brought by actors against Fay for nonpayment when his productions were abandoned for lack of funds. She was aware of his three previous marriages. The first was to Lee Buchanan, an actress, who worked with him in vaudeville. The second, two years later, was to Frances White, a comedienne and dancer who, because of her five-foot two-inch height, became known as “the Diminutive Star of Broadway” and was a sensation on the stage of the Keith Palace. Frances White appeared in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolics and was a star at London’s Palace Theatre, earning the vast sum in 1921 of $3,500 a week. After only two months of being Mrs. Frank Fay, Frances White had had enough of Fay’s flirtations with other women and of supporting his extravagances and, two months later, was granted a divorce. Three months after that, Fay was in the Ludlow Street Jail for nonpayment of alimony.

  Frances (Caples) White, the second Mrs. Frank Fay, musical comedy star, one of Ziegfeld’s big draws in his Follies of 1916 and his Midnight Frolics, circa 1916. (MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK)

  Barbara had heard about Fay’s return to his first wife and their remarriage, that on becoming Mrs. Frank Fay for the second time, Lee Buchanan at Frank’s urging announced her retirement from show business.

  • • •

  Fay’s arrogance, sardonic humor, and meanness were as much a part of his legend as were his Irish humor and his ability to make an audience wild with laughter. It was said of Fay that he loved to make people suffer, that while he was stabbing someone onstage, he would have a smile on his face, enjoying it so much. Because of his cruelty he was feared.

  The vaudevillian Bert Wheeler, who appeared at the Palace on the same bill with Fay, was a sketch comedian and a big star. He knew he was no match for Fay onstage. Wheeler said of Fay that he had “the fastest mind in the business” and could “chase any comic bar none.”

  During one of Wheeler and Fay’s appearances together, Wheeler asked Fay not to bring him back out after his act. Fay honored Wheeler’s plea until one important performance—a matinee—when the talent bookers were in the audience with stopwatches in hand to time the laughs.

  Wheeler finished his act to great applause and left the stage. Fay came on as he had throughout the show and called Wheeler back onstage. For whatever reason, Fay began to talk to the audience at Wheeler’s expense. Fay was calm, controlled; he spoke in his soft, easy, slow delivery with his deadpan stare. Wheeler stood on the stage, unable to think of anything to say that could equal or stop Fay’s sarcasm. Finally, Wheeler said, “Frank, you’re a very funny man, but I predict that I am going to get the biggest laugh ever heard at The Palace.” Fay said, “Oh, really, Bert? How are you going to do that?”

  Wheeler pulled back and hit Fay in the face. The audience laughed, thinking this was part of the act.

  Years before, when Fay was appearing at the Orpheum in Brooklyn, four minutes into his scheduled performance he was still in his dressing room fixing his tie. When the stage manager went to Fay’s dressing room to find out what was going on and to say the audience was becoming impatient, Fay’s response was “Let them wait.” As a result of Fay’s attitude, the United Booking Office canceled the rest of his engagements and fined him $100.

  Fay was known to look in the mirror and say, “Who do I love? Me.”

  Fay smoked constantly and carried a gold cigarette case with him onstage. A sign backstage said, “No Smoking in the Theater.” Also backstage was a big Irish fireman. Fay went onstage and would immediately light the cigarette. When he came offstage the fireman called him “a fag.” Fay punched him.

  • • •

  Barbara didn’t care about any of Fay’s past.

  “He was a joy in our lives,” said Walda. “We thought he was the funniest man we ever saw. But Frank became possessive. He wanted Barbara all to himself. I thought it was awful that she put up with it, but she didn’t mind.”

  What appeared to be possessiveness to others was love to Barbara, mother love, father love, romantic love. As long as “she and Fay were together,” she said, “everything would be alright.”

  Barbara was willing to convert from Protestantism to Catholicism because it meant so much to Fay. She began to wear a large silver cross around her neck. Fay’s concern for every aspect of her being was like experiencing love almost for the first time. If Fay uttered a wish, Barbara obeyed.

  Barbara wasn’t comfortable wearing makeup, and Fay preferred her without it. She wore only lipstick. He suggested she not wear nail polish; she removed it. Fay didn’t like it when she smoked; she quit, except to light his cigarettes and to take a couple puffs before passing the cigarette over to him. He preferred her in clothes that were black and white; her clothes were white with an accent of black.

  In certain respects, Frank’s background was similar to Barbara’s. His formal education ended in the fifth grade; like Barbara, he’d taught himself to act, write, and sing. Fay, though, composed songs and wrote his own lyrics. Unlike Barbara, he came from the West; he was born in San Francisco in 1891 and grew up in a family of sorts. His parents were vaudevillians, and the Fay family traveled together from city to city. Fay’s mother, Marie, had had a brief career on the stage. His father was a lyric poet who had worked as a conductor on the Southern Pacific Railroad, fought Indians, and prospected in a mine. But it was as a comedian and actor that he was known as “Chicago” Billie Fay.

  Frank Fay made his debut on the stage at the age of four, appearing as a potato bug in Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland, and was carried onstage by his father in Quo Vadis.

  Long before Fay was a vaudevillian, he was part of Henry Irving’s farewell American tour, traveling with the company for two years, playing with Irving in The Merchant of Venice, Richelieu, Louis XI. “All my early training,” Fay said, “was in the classic drama.” He appeared in every Shakespearean play except Titus Andronicus and had a part in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People.

  Fay “looked forward to playing the big classical roles some day, but times changed,” and he went into vaudeville to earn a living. He still wanted to play Shakespeare and Ibsen and try his hand at the plays of Oscar Wilde. He had appeared at the old Daly’s Theatre in The Catch of the Season with Edna May and played the Savoy, the Garrick, and the Hackett Theatres. Fay understood acting, timing, simplicity. He felt he had been branded “a comedian” because of his red hair. “For that reason,” he said, “neither the public nor the managers take me seriously when I claim I would be a great dramatic actor.”

  Fay took Barbara seriously. He knew she was a great dramatic actress.

  TEN

  Having a Hunch

  First National Pictures released The Noose at the end of January 1928. The picture starred Richard Barthelmess as the young man condemned to die. Barbara had been asked to play Dot in the picture, but it
was early in the run of Burlesque. She was in the midst of a great success and had no interest in traveling to Hollywood to appear in the movie. Lina Basquette, the Ziegfeld dancer and actress, got the role of the young dancer secretly in love with the doomed man. Some thought Lina and Barbara resembled each other.

  They’d appeared in the same edition of the Ziegfeld Follies; Lina, a featured dancer by the time she danced for Ziegfeld, had already been under contract to Carl Laemmle and starred in sixteen Lina Basquette Featurettes for Universal. A few years later, when dancing with the Follies, Lina was spotted by Pavlova and was urged to break her contract with Ziegfeld and accompany the great dancer, then in her forties, on a tour and become her possible successor. Lina resisted the invitation to leave Ziegfeld, but when the youngest of the four Warner brothers saw her on the stage, fell in love with her, and proposed, Lina accepted. She was eighteen years old; Sam Warner was twice her age. Ziegfeld was furious that Lina had wed “a third-rate picture man.” By the time Lina got the part of Dot in The Noose, she had a reputation and a name all her own, but now she was also Mrs. Sam Warner.

  The Noose, just released, was breaking attendance records around the country and bringing in tens of thousands of dollars each week in admissions. Paramount Famous Lasky had just bought the screen rights to Burlesque from Arthur Hopkins for $75,000.

  • • •

  Louis B. Mayer, the general manager of the newly merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was married to the daughter of an Orthodox butcher and cantor. Margaret Shenberg Mayer was also related to Oscar Levant’s mother. When Louis B. came to New York, he stayed with Levant’s aunt and uncle. Mayer had heard about Barbara and was interested in meeting her. Oscar introduced them. “Fay was irate” that Oscar intruded on his “domain and exclusivity of property” and told Levant he was going to “punch [him] in the nose for bringing Mayer . . . here.” Fay’s concern was baseless. Barbara wasn’t interested in Mayer’s offer to go into moving pictures.