Serenade

Chapter 7

We found a little hotel, a two-dollar joint on Spring Street, and didn’t have any trouble. It was about what you would expect, but after Mexico it was like a palace, and they gave us a room with a shower, so she was happy. After she had splashed enough water to suit her, she came and lay in my arms, and I lay there thinking about how we were starting our life together in my own country, and wanted to say something about it, but next thing I knew she was asleep. We got up early the next morning, and as soon as the stores were open, went out to get that hat. Then we got a dress and a light coat. The hat was $1.95, the dress $3.79, and the coat $6. That left us $38 out of her 500 pesos. We stopped by a little restaurant, had a little breakfast, and then I took her back to the hotel and went out to find work.

First thing I did was wire my agent in New York, the one that had sent me down to Mexico. I told her I was all right again, and to see what she could do, as I wanted to get going. Then I bought a Variety, the Hollywood edition, and looked in there to see if any agents carried ads. Quite a few of them did, and the one that seemed to be what I wanted was named Stoessel, and had offices in Hollywood, so I got on a bus and went out there. It took me an hour to get in to see him, and he never even bothered to look at me. “Brother, out here singers are a drug on the market, and they’ve quit fooling with them. They’ve had them all, and how many come through? Eddy, MacDonald, Pons, Martini, and Moore — and even Pons and Martini ain’t so hot. The rest of them, flops, nothing but flops. And it ain’t only that they flop, they have a hell of a time getting stories for them. They’re through with singers. When they want a singer, little production number maybe, they know where to get him. Outside of that — out. I’m sorry, but you’re in the wrong place.”

“I didn’t mean pictures. How about theatres?”

“I could book you twelve weeks straight, right up the coast, book you in a minute, if you was a name. Without a name for the marquee, you ain’t worth a dime.”

“I’m fairly well known.”

“I never heard of no John Howard Sharp.”

“I sang mainly in Europe.”

“This ain’t Europe.”

“How about night clubs?”

“I don’t fool with that small stuff. You want to go on in a night club, there’s plenty of them around. If that interests you, you might pick up quite a little time here and there, this and that. Try Fanchon and Marco. Maybe they got a spot for you.”

I walked down on Sunset, to Fanchon and Marco. They were putting up a dance act, and a singer didn’t seem to fit. I went in a radio station. They gave me an audition, and said they’d let me have some sustaining time in the afternoon, but they wouldn’t pay for it, and I’d have to bring my own accompanist. I said I’d be back.

Around four o’clock I went in a night club on La Brea, and they let me sing for them, and then said they’d put me on, $7.50 a night, tips and meals, report in evening clothes at nine o’clock. I said I’d let them know. I found a costume place to go in and rent an evening outfit. The price was $3 a night, $10 by the week, and that would leave a little profit, but they had nothing in there that would fit. I’m six feet, and weighed nearly two hundred, and that’s an out size for a costume place. I went back to Spring Street. There was a little place still open, and I went in and bought a second-hand guitar for $5. I wasn’t going to pay an accompanist to get me on the air. With that guitar, I could do my own accompanying.

I kept that up three or four days. I parked the guitar in the radio station, and went in there every day at two thirty. I was to get fifteen minutes, and be announced under my name, but when I cut myself up into two pieces, John Howard Sharp, baritone, and Signor Giuseppe Bondo, the eminent Italian guitar player, they gave me a half hour. I’d sing a couple of numbers, and then I’d introduce the Signor, and the Signor would announce his selections in a high voice, in Italian. Then I’d try to translate, and get it all wrong, so if I said it was to be Hearts and Flowers, the Signor would play Liebestraum, or something like that. The station manager thought that was a pretty good gag, and made us a regular feature, and put our names in the paper. After the second day he got twenty or thirty letters about me, and two or three hundred about the Signor, and he got all excited and said he was going to find a sponsor for us. A sponsor, it turned out, was an advertiser that would pay us.

One of those days, after the broadcast, I took the guitar out with me and went to Griffith Park, where the Iowa Society was having a picnic, forty or fifty thousand of them. I thought if I went singing around, there might be some tips. I had never taken a tip, and I wondered how I was going to feel about it. I needn’t have worried. The Iowa Society liked me fine, but none of them dug into their pocket. But next day I went in the Biltmore, where the Rotary Club was having lunch. I marched right in with the guitar, just like I was supposed to be there, and when I got into the dining-room I went to the center of the U table that they were all sitting around, hit a chord and started to sing. I picked the Trumpeter, because you can rip into it right from the start without any waiting around for a chorus to get started on. A captain and three waiters hustled over to throw me out, but two or three of them yelled, “Let him alone! Let him alone!”

I got a hand, and piled a couple of numbers on top of it. I remember one of them was the Speaks Mandalay. Then some egg up in the corner began to yell, “Pollyochy! Pollyochy!” I didn’t think it was a Pagliacci crowd, so I didn’t pay any attention to him, but he kept it up, and then some of the others yelled “Pollyochy!” too, mostly to shut him up. So I whammed into the introduction, and began singing the Prologue. It’s not my favorite piece of music, but I do it all right, and at the end of the andante I gave them plenty of A flat. By rights, you sing A flats for dough, and for nothing else, but it had been a long time since anybody wanted to hear mine. I swelled it and cut, and then on the E flat that follows it I shook the windows. When I finished I got a big hand, and gave them some Trovatore and Traviata.

When it was time for the speeches the president, or chairman, or whatever he was, called me up, and told me to wait, and they began making up a pot for me. They borrowed a tray from a waiter and passed it around and when it came back it was full of silver. He handed it to me, and I thanked him, and dumped it in my pocket. I had taken a tip, but I didn’t feel anything. I went out in the washroom to count it.

It was $6.75, but we were getting low, getting low. Even with that, we were down to $22, and nobody showing the least interest in John Howard Sharp. Still, there was an outdoor performance of Carmen that night at the Hollywood Bowl, at a dollar and a half top but with some seats at seventy-five cents, so of course we had to go. If you want to know where to find an opera singer the night some opera is being given you’ll find him right there, and no other place. A baseball player, for some reason, prefers a ball game.

So I told her to get dressed, so we could eat early, and try to get out there in time to get some kind of decent seat. By that time she had quit playing with the shower bath to play with the hat. She’d put it on, and take it off, and put it on again, and look at herself in the mirror, and ask if she had it on right, then take it off and start all over again. I generally said it looked swell, but it was funny how dumb she was, catching on to how it worked. Up to then, I had always thought of a woman’s hat as something that she put on, and forgot about, and that was that. But the way she did it, was the funniest-looking thing you ever saw in your life. Half the time she would get it on backwards, and even when she didn’t, she would pull it down on her head some way that made it look like it didn’t even belong to her. I tried the best I could and it was better than her way, but it always looked like a man’s necktie would if somebody else tied it for him.

It was a warm night, so she wasn’t wearing the coat. She decided to wear the bullfighter’s cape. It looked pretty swell, so it was all right with me. When she had laid it out, she came over for me to put the finishing touches on the hat. I fixed it so it looked almost right and then she went over to the mirror to have a look. She gave it one last pull that made it all wrong, put on the cape, and turned around to be admired. “Am I very pretty?”

“You’re the prettiest thing in the world.”

“Yes.”

The curtain was advertised at eight thirty, and we got there at seven thirty, but I found out I didn’t even know what early meant on a night when they’re giving opera in the Hollywood Bowl. Most of those people, I think, had been there since breakfast. The best we could get was up on the rim, at least a quarter of a mile from the show. It was the first time I had ever seen the Hollywood Bowl, and maybe you’ve never been in it. It’s so big you can’t believe it. It was just about dark when we got there, and they were pouring into it through every ramp, and everywhere you looked there were people. I counted the house as well as I could, and by my figuring when they all got in there would be twenty thousand of them. As it turned out, that was about right. I sat there wondering whether they used amplifiers or what the hell they did. It frightened you to think of singing in such a place.

I looked on the program to see who was singing. I had heard of a couple of them. The José and the Micaela were second-line Metropolitan people. There was a program note on the Carmen. She was a local girl. I know the Escamillo. He was a wop named Sabini that sang Silvio in Palermo one night when I was singing Tonio. I hadn’t heard of him in five years. The rest of them I didn’t know.

They played the introduction and the lights went up and we began to have a good time. I’m telling you, that was opera that you dream about. They didn’t have any curtain. They put the lights up, and there it was, and when they finished they blacked out and came up with a baby spot for the bows. The orchestra was down front. Beyond was a low flight of wide steps, and quite a way beyond that was the stage, without the shell they use for concerts. On that they built a whole town, the guardhouse on one side, cafés on the other, the cigarette factory in back. You had to rub your eyes to believe you weren’t in Spain. The way they lit it was great. They’ve got a light box in that Bowl that tops anything I ever saw. And that stage town was just filled with people. The performance seemed to be given with some kind of hook-up between a ballet school and some local chorus, and they must have had at least three hundred out there. When the bell rang and the girls began pouring out of the factory, they poured out. It was really lunch time. Between acts, they rolled that stuff off, and rolled on the café for the second act, and the rocks for the third act, and the bullring entrance for the fourth act. The place is so big that with the lights down nobody paid any attention to what they were doing out there. They didn’t use any amplifiers. Big as it was, the acoustics were so perfect you could hear every whisper. That was the thing I couldn’t get over.

The principals were just fair, maybe not as good as that, except for the two from the Met, but I didn’t mind. They were giving a performance, and that’s enough. So when this little thing happened, I didn’t pay any attention to it. A singer can spot trouble a mile away, but I was there for a good time, so what the hell? But then I woke up.

What happened was that in the middle of the scene in the first act, where the soldiers bring Carmen out from the factory after she’s cuffed another girl around, a chorister in a uniform stepped up to the Zuniga, jerked his thumb backstage, and began to sing the part. The Zuniga walked out. That was all. They did it so casually that it almost seemed like part of the opera, and I don’t think twenty people out there thought anything of it. You would have had to know the opera to have spotted it. I wondered about it, because the Zuniga had a pretty good bass voice, and he had been doing all right. But I was listening to the Carmen, and she started the Seguidilla before I tumbled to what was up.

I jumped up, grabbed the bullfighter cape off her, whipped off my own coat and put it on her, and pointed down the hill. “Meet me after it’s over! You understand?”

“Where you go?”

“Never mind. Meet me there. You got it?”

“Yes.”

I skipped around the rim, took the ramp on the run, ducked back of the stage, and asked a stagehand for the manager. He pointed to some cars that were parked out back. I went back there, and sure enough, there was the Zuniga, still in his captain’s uniform, and a fat guy, standing by a car and arguing with somebody inside. I tapped the fat guy on the shoulder. He batted at me with his hand and didn’t even look. “I’m busy. See me later.”

“Goddamn it, I’m singing your Escamillo for you!”

“Get the hell away!”

“What’s the matter with you — are you snowed in? You called this guy off to get dressed — and he can’t sing it!”

The Zuniga turned around. “You heard him, Morris. I can’t sing F’s. I can’t do it.”

“I’ve heard you do it.”

“Transposed, yes.”

“They’ll set it down for you!”

“How? They can’t rescore a whole number between acts! They got no parts to set it down with!”

“For Christ sake! They can read it down—”

“They can like hell. It’s out!”

About that time, the man in the car put his head out, and it was Sabini. When he saw me he grabbed me and began kissing me with one side of his mouth and selling me to the manager with the other. Then he began giving me an earful of Italian, a mile a minute, explaining to me he didn’t dare get out of his car, didn’t even dare to be seen, or his wife’s process servers would get him, and that was why he couldn’t sing. Then he did get out, on the far side, lifted a trunk out of the rumble, and called me around. He began stripping me, and as fast as he got one piece off me, he’d have a piece of the Toreador costume out of the trunk for me to put on. The manager lit a cigarette and stood there watching us. Then he went off. “It’s up to the conductor.”

There was a big roar from the Bowl that meant the first act was over. Sabini jumped in the car and snapped on the lights. I sat down in front of them and the Zuniga took the make-up kit and began making me up. He stuck on the coleta and I tried the hat. It fit. When the manager came back he had a young guy with him in evening clothes, the conductor. I got up and spoke. He looked me over. “You’ve sung Escamillo?”

“At least a hundred times.”

“Where?”

“Paris, among other places. And not at the Opera. At the Comique, if that means anything to you.”

“What name did you sing under?”

“In Italy, Giovanni Sciaparelli. In France and Germany my own, John Howard Sharp.”

He gave me a look that would have curdled milk, turned his back, and beckoned to the Zuniga.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of you. And you’re washed up.”

I cut one loose they must have heard in Glendale.

“Does that sound like I’m washed up? Does it?”

“You lost your voice.”

“Yeah, and I got it back.”

He kept looking at me, opened his mouth once or twice to say something, then shook his head and turned to the manager. “It’s no use, Morris. He can’t do it. I just happened to think of that last act... Mr. Sharp, I wish I could use you. It would pull us out of a spot. But for the sake of the ballet school, we’ve interpolated Arlésienne music into Act IV, and I’ve scored the baritone into it, and—”

“Oh, Arlésienne, hey? Listen: Cue me in. That’s all I ask. Just cue me in!”

You think that’s impossible, that a man can go on and sing stuff he never even saw? All right, once there was an old Aborn baritone that’s dead now, by the name of Harry Luckstone, brother of Isidore Luckstone, the singing teacher. He had a cousin named Henry Myers, that writes a little music now and then. Myers had written a song, and he was telling Luckstone about it, and Luckstone said fine, he’d sing it.

“I haven’t put it on paper yet—”

“All right, I’ll sing it.”

“Well, it goes like this—”

“God Almighty, does a man have to know a song to sing it? Get going on your goddam piano, and I’ll sing it!”

And he sang it. Nobody but another singer knows how good a singer really is. Sure, I sang his Arlésienne for him. I got a look at his score after Act III, and what he had done was put some words to the slow part, let the baritone sing them, then have baritone and chorus sing them under the fast part, in straight counterpoint. I didn’t even bother to look what the words were. I bellowed “Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon,” and let it go at that. One place I shot past a repeat. The dancers were all frozen on one foot, ready to do the routine again, and there was I, camped on an E that didn’t even belong there. He looked up, and I caught his eye, and hung on to it, and marched all around with it, while he spoke to his men and wigwagged to his ballerina. Then he looked up again, and I cut, and yelled, “Ha, ha, ha.” He brought his stick down, the show was together again, and I began flapping the cape at the dancers. In the Toreador Song, on the long “Ah” that leads into the chorus, I broke out the cape and made a couple of passes at the bull. Not too much, you understand. A prop can kill a number. But enough that I got that swirl of crimson and yellow into it. It stopped the show, and he let me repeat the second verse.

Some time during the night I had been given a dressing room, and after the last bow I went there. My clothes were there, piled on the table, and Sabini’s trunk. Instead of taking off the makeup first, I started with the costume, so he could get away, if he was still around. I had just stripped down to my underwear when the manager came in, to pay me off. He counted out fifty bucks, in fives. While he was doing it the process server came in. He had a summons to appear in court and a writ to attach costumes. It took all the manager and I could do to convince him I wasn’t Alessandro Sabini, but after a few minutes he went. I was scared to death he would see the “A. S.” on that trunk, and serve the writ anyhow, but he didn’t think of that. The conductor came in and thanked me. ‘You gave a fine performance, and I’d like you to know it was a pleasure to have somebody up there that could troupe a little.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry about that bobble.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. When you gave me the chance to pull it out of the soup, that was what I call trouping. Anybody can make a mistake, especially when they’re shoved out there the way you were, without even a rehearsal. But when you use your head — well, my hat’s off to you, that’s all.”

“They be pleasant words. Thanks again.”

“I don’t think they even noticed it. Did they, Morris?”

“Notice it? Christ, they give it a hand.”

I sat on the trunk, and we lit up, and they began telling me what the production cost, what the hook-up was, and some more things I wanted to know. Up to then I didn’t even know their names. The conductor was Albert Hudson, who you’ve probably heard of by now, and if you haven’t you soon will. The manager was Morris Lahr, who you’ve never heard of, and never will. He runs a concert series in the winter, and manages a couple of singers, and now and then he puts on an opera. There’s one like him in every city, and if you ask me they do more for music than the guys that get their name in the papers.

We were fanning along, me in my underwear with my make-up still on, when the door opens and in pops Stoessel, the agent I had been talking to not a week before. He had a little guy with him, around fifty, and they stood looking at me like I was some ape in a cage, and then Stoessel nodded. “Mr. Ziskin, I believe you’re right. He’s the type. He’s the type you been looking for. And he sings good as Eddy.”

“I need a big man, Herman. A real Beery type.”

“He’s better looking than Beery. And younger. A hell of a sight younger.”

“But he’s rugged. You know what I mean? Tough. But in the picture, he’s got a heart like all outdoors, and that’s where the singing comes in. A accent I don’t mind, because why? He’s got a heart like all outdoors, and a accent helps it.”

“I know exactly what you mean, Mr. Ziskin.”

“O.K., then, Herman. You handle it. Three fifty while he’s learning English, and then after the script is ready and we start to shoot, five. Six weeks’ guarantee, at five hundred.”

Stoessel turned to Hudson and Lahr. “I guess Mr. Ziskin don’t need any introduction around here. He’s interested in this man for a picture. Tell him that much, will you? Then we give him the rest of it.”

Lahr didn’t act like he was any too fond of Mr. Ziskin, or Stoessel either, for that matter. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“He speak English?”

“He did a minute ago.”

“Sure, I speak English. Shoot.”

“Well, say, that makes it easy. O.K., then, you heard what Mr. Ziskin said. Get your make-up off, put on your clothes, and we’ll go out and talk.”

“We can talk right now.”

I was afraid to take my make-up off, for fear he would know me. They still thought I was Sabini, I could see that, because there hadn’t been any announcement about me, and I was afraid if he placed me there wouldn’t be any three fifty or even one fifty. I was down, that day, and he knew it. “All right, then, we’ll talk right now. You heard Mr. Ziskin’s proposition. What do you say?”

“I say go climb a tree.”

“Say, that’s no way to talk to Mr. Ziskin.”

“What the hell do you think a singer works for? Fun?”

“I know what they work for. I handle singers.”

“I don’t know whether you handle singers. Maybe you handle bums. If Mr. Ziskin has got something to say, let him say it. But don’t waste my time talking about three hundred and fifty dollars a week. If it was a day, that would be more like it.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly. I’m booked straight through to the first of the year, and if I’m going to get out of those contracts it’s going to cost me dough. If you want to pay dough, talk. If not, just let’s stop where we are.”

“What’s your idea of dough?”

“I’ve told you. But I’ve been wanting to break into pictures, and to get the chance, I’ll split the difference with you. I’ll do a little better than that. A thousand a week, and it’s a deal. But that’s rock bottom. I can’t cut it, and I can’t shade it.”

We had it hot for a half hour, but I stuck and they came around. I wanted it in writing, so Stoessel took out a notebook and pen and wrote a memo of agreement, about five lines. I got a buck out of my pants and made him a receipt for that, first of all. That bound them. But when we got that far I had to tell my name. I hated to say John Howard Sharp, but I had to. He didn’t say anything. He tore out the leaf, waved it in the air, handed it to Ziskin to sign. “John Howard Sharp — sure, I’ve heard of him. Somebody was telling about him just the other day.”

They went, and a boy came in for Sabini’s trunk, and Lahr went out and came back with a bottle and glasses. “Guy has broke into pictures, we got to have a drink on that... Where did you say you were booked?”

“With the Santa Fe, mashing down ballast.”

“Happy days.”

“Happy days.”

“Happy days.”

The crowd was gone and she was all alone when I ran down the hill, waving the cape at her. She turned her back on me, started to walk to the bus stop. I pulled out the wad of five Lahr had given me. “Look, look, look!” She wouldn’t even turn her head. I took my coat off her, put it on, and dropped the cape over her shoulders. “... I wait very long time.”

“Business! I been talking business.”

“Yes. Smell very nice.”

“Sure we had a drink. But listen: get what I’m telling you. I been talking business.”

“I wait very long.”

I let her get to the bus stop, but I didn’t mean to ride on a bus. I began yelling for a taxi. There weren’t any, but a car pulled up, a car from a limousine service. “Take you any place you want to go, sir. Rates exactly the same as the taxis—”

Did I care what his rates were? I shoved her in, and that did it. She tried to stay sore, but she felt the cushions, and when I took her in my arms she didn’t pull away. There weren’t any kisses yet, but the worst was over. I halfway liked it. It was our first row over a little thing. It made me feel she belonged to me.

We went to the Derby and had a real feed. It was the first time I had been in a decent place for a year. But I didn’t break the big news until we were back at the hotel, undressing. Then I kind of just slid into it. “Oh, by the way. I got a little surprise for you.”

“Surprise?”

“I got a job in pictures.”

“Cinema?”

“That’s right. A thousand a week.”

“Oh.”

“Hell, don’t you get it? We’re rich! A thousand a week — not pesos, dollars! Three thousand, six hundred pesos every week! Why don’t you say something?”

“Yes, very nice.”

I didn’t mean a thing to her! But when I took the cape, and stood up there in my drawers, and sang the Toreador song at her, like I had at the Bowl, that talked. She clapped her hands, and sat on the bed, and I gave her the whole show. The phone rang. The desk calling, to ask me to shut up. I said O.K., but send up a boy. When he came I gave him a five and told him to get us some wine. He was back in a few minutes and we got a little tight, the way we had that night in the church. After a while we went to bed, and a long while after that she lay in my arms, running her fingers through my hair. “You like me?”

“Yes, much.”

“Did I sing all right?”

“Very pretty.”

“Were you proud of me?”

“... You very fonny fallow, you, Hoaney. Why I be proud? I no sing.”

“But I sang.”

“Yes. I like. Very much.”