Big Money (25 page)

He hung around cabarets doing odd jobs, sweeping out for the waiters, washing cars; he was lazy handsome wellbuilt slender good-tempered and vain; he was a born tangodancer.

Lovehungry women thought he was a darling. He began to get engagements dancing the tango in ballrooms and cabarets; he teamed up with a girl named Jean Acker on a vaudeville tour and took the name of Rudolph Valentino.

Stranded on the Coast he headed for Hollywood, worked for a long time as an extra for five dollars a day; directors began to notice he photographed well.

He got his chance in
The Four Horsemen

and became the gigolo of every woman's dreams.

 

Valentino spent his life in the colorless glare of klieg lights, in stucco villas obstructed with bricabrac oriental rugs tigerskins, in the bridalsuites of hotels, in silk bathrobes in private cars.

He was always getting into limousines or getting out of limousines,

or patting the necks of fine horses.

Wherever he went the sirens of the motorcyclecops screeched ahead of him

flashlights flared,

the streets were jumbled with hysterical faces, waving hands, crazy eyes; they stuck out their autographbooks, yanked his buttons off, cut a tail off his admirablytailored dress suit; they stole his hat and pulled at his necktie; his valets removed young women from under his bed; all night in nightclubs and cabarets actresses leching for stardom made sheepseyes at him under their mascaraed lashes.

He wanted to make good under the glare of the milliondollar searchlights

of El Dorado:

the Sheik, the Son of the Sheik;

personal appearances.

 

He married his old vaudeville partner, divorced her, married the adopted daughter of a millionaire, went into lawsuits with the producers who were debasing the art of the screen, spent a million dollars on one European trip;

he wanted to make good in the brightlights.

When the Chicago
Tribune
called him a pink powderpuff

and everybody started wagging their heads over a slavebracelet he wore that he said his wife had given him and his taste for mushy verse of which he published a small volume called
Daydreams
and the whispers grew about the testimony in his divorce case that he and his first wife had never slept together,

it broke his heart.

He tried to challenge the Chicago
Tribune
to a duel;

he wanted to make good

in heman twofisted broncobusting pokerplaying stockjuggling America. (He was a fair boxer and had a good seat on a horse, he loved the desert like the sheik and was tanned from the sun of Palm Springs.) He broke down in his suite in the Hotel Ambassador in New York: gastric ulcer.

 

When the doctors cut into his elegantlymolded body they found that peritonitis had begun; the abdominal cavity contained a large amount of fluid and food particles; the viscera were coated with a greenishgrey film; a round hole a centimeter in diameter was seen in the anterior wall of the stomach; the tissue of the stomach for one and onehalf centimeters immediately surrounding the perforation was necrotic. The appendix was inflamed and twisted against the small intestine.

When he came to from the ether the first thing he said was, “Well, did I behave like a pink powderpuff?”

 

His expensivelymassaged actor's body fought peritonitis for six days.

The switchboard at the hospital was swamped with calls, all the corridors were piled with flowers, crowds filled the street outside, filmstars who claimed they were his betrothed entrained for New York.

Late in the afternoon a limousine drew up at the hospital door
(where the grimyfingered newspapermen and photographers stood around bored tired hoteyed smoking too many cigarettes making trips to the nearest speak exchanging wisecracks and deep dope waiting for him to die in time to make the evening papers)
and a woman, who said she was a maid employed by a dancer who was Valentino's first wife, alighted. She delivered to an attendant an envelope addressed to the filmstar and inscribed From Jean, and a package. The package contained a white counterpane with lace ruffles and the word Rudy embroidered in the four corners. This was accompanied by a pillowcover to match over a blue silk scented cushion.

Rudolph Valentino was only thirtyone when he died.

 

His managers planned to make a big thing of his highly-publicized funeral but the people in the streets were too crazy.

While he lay in state in a casket covered with a cloth of gold, tens of thousands of men, women, and children packed the streets outside. Hundreds were trampled, had their feet hurt by policehorses. In the muggy rain the cops lost control. Jammed masses stampeded under the clubs and the rearing hoofs of the horses. The funeral chapel was gutted, men and women fought over a flower, a piece of wallpaper, a piece of the broken plateglass window. Showwindows were
burst in. Parked cars were overturned and smashed. When finally the mounted police after repeated charges beat the crowd off Broadway, where traffic was tied up for two hours, they picked up twentyeight separate shoes, a truckload of umbrellas, papers, hats, tornoff sleeves. All the ambulances in that part of the city were busy carting off women who'd fainted, girls who'd been stepped on. Epileptics threw fits. Cops collected little groups of abandoned children.

The fascisti sent a guard of honor and the antifascists drove them off. More rioting, cracked skulls, trampled feet. When the public was barred from the undertaking parlors hundreds of women groggy with headlines got in to view the poor body

claiming to be exdancingpartners, old playmates, relatives from the old country, filmstars; every few minutes a girl fainted in front of the bier and was revived by the newspapermen who put down her name and address and claim to notice in the public prints. Frank E. Campbell's undertakers and pallbearers, dignified wearers of black broadcloth and tackersup of crape, were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Even the boss had his fill of publicity that time.

It was two days before the cops could clear the streets enough to let the flowerpieces from Hollywood be brought in and described in the evening papers.

 

The church service was more of a success. The police-commissioner barred the public for four blocks round.

Many notables attended.

America's Sweetheart sobbing bitterly in a small black straw with a black band and a black bow behind, in black georgette over black with a white lace collar and white lace cuffs followed the coffin that was

covered by a blanket of pink roses

sent by a filmstar who appeared at the funeral heavily veiled and swooned and had to be taken back to her suite at the Hotel Ambassador after she had shown the reporters a message allegedly written by one of the doctors alleging that Rudolph Valentino had spoken of her at the end

as his bridetobe.

 

A young woman committed suicide in London.

Relatives arriving from Europe were met by police reserves and
Italian flags draped with crape. Exchamp Jim Jeffries said, “Well, he made good.” The champion himself allowed himself to be quoted that the boy was fond of boxing and a great admirer of the champion.

The funeral train left for Hollywood.

In Chicago a few more people were hurt trying to see the coffin, but only made the inside pages.

The funeral train arrived in Hollywood on page 23 of the New York
Times.

THRONGS IN STREETS

 

LUNATIC BLOWS UP PITTSBURGH BANK

 

Krishnamurti Here Says His Message Is
World Happiness

 

Close the doors

    
They are coming

         
Through the windows

 

AMERICAN MARINES LAND IN NICARAGUA
TO PROTECT ALIENS

 

PANGALOS CAUGHT; PRISONER IN ATHENS

 

Close the windows

    
They are coming through the doors

 

Saw Pigwoman The Other Says But Neither
Can Identify Accused

 

FUNDS ACCUMULATE IN NEW YORK

 

the desire for profits and more profits kept on increasing and the quest for easy money became well nigh universal. All of this meant an attempt to appropriate the belongings of others without rendering a corresponding service

 

“Physician” Who Took Prominent Part in Valentino
Funeral Exposed as Former Convict

 

NEVER SAW HIM SAYS MANAGER

 

Close the doors they are coming through the windows

    
My God they're coming through the floor

sirens bloom in the fog over the harbor      horns of all colors everyshaped whistles reach up from the river and the churn of screws the throb of engines      bells

the steady broken swish of waves cut by prows      out of the unseen stirring fumblingly through the window tentacles stretch tingling

to release the spring

tonight start out ship somewhere join up sign on the dotted line enlist become one of

hock the old raincoat of incertitude (in which you hunch alone      from the upsidedown image on the retina painstakingly out of color shape words remembered light and dark straining

to rebuild yesterday      to clip out paper figures to simulate growth      warp newsprint into faces smoothing and wrinkling in the various barelyfelt velocities of time)

tonight now      the room fills with the throb and hubbub of departure      the explorer gets a few necessities together coaches himself on a beginning

better      the      streets      first      a      stroll      uptown      downtown      along the wharves under the el peering into faces in taxicabs at the drivers of trucks at old men chewing in lunchrooms at drunk bums drooling puke in alleys what's the newsvendor reading? what did the elderly wop selling chestnuts whisper to the fat woman behind the picklejars? where is she going the plain girl in a red hat running up the subway steps and the cop joking the other cop across the street?      and the smack of a kiss from two shadows under the stoop of the brownstone house and the grouchy faces at the streetcorner suddenly gaping black with yells at the thud of a blow a whistle scampering feet      the event?

tonight now

but instead you find yourself (if self is the bellyaching malingerer so often the companion of aimless walks) the jobhunt forgotten      neglected the bulletinboard where the futures are scrawled in chalk

among nibbling chinamen at the Thalia

ears dazed by the crash of alien gongs the chuckle of rattles the piping of incomprehensible flutes the swing and squawk of ununderstandable talk      otherworld music antics postures costumes

an unidentified stranger

destination unknown

hat pulled down over the      has he any?      face

It was a bright metalcolored January day when Charley went downtown to lunch with Nat Benton. He got to the broker's office a little early, and sat waiting in an empty office looking out through the broad steelframed windows at the North River and the Statue of Liberty and the bay beyond all shiny ruffled green in the northwest wind, spotted with white dabs of smoke from tugboats, streaked with catspaws and the churny wakes of freighters bucking the wind, checkered with lighters and flatboats, carferries, barges and the red sawedoff passengerferries. A schooner with grey sails was running out before the wind.

Charley sat at Nat Benton's desk smoking a cigarette and being careful to get all his ashes in the polished brass ashreceiver that stood beside the desk. The phone buzzed. It was the switchboard girl. “Mr. Anderson . . . Mr. Benton asked me to beg you to excuse him for a few more minutes. He's out on the floor. He'll be over right away.” A little later Benton stuck in the crack of the door his thin pale face on a long neck like a chicken's. “Hullo, Charley . . . be right there.” Charley had time to smoke one more cigarette before Benton came back. “I bet you're starved.” “That's all right, Nat, I been enjoyin' the view.”

“View? . . . Sure. . . . Why, I don't believe I look out of that window from one week's end to the other. . . . Still it was on one of those darned red ferries that old Vanderbilt got his start. . . . I guess if I took my nose out of the ticker now and then I'd be better off. . . . Come along, let's get something to eat.” Going down in the elevator Nat Benton went on talking. “Why, you are certainly a difficult customer to get hold of.”

“The first time I've had my overalls off in a year,” said Charley, laughing.

The cold stung when they stepped out of the revolving doors. “You
know, Charley, there's been quite a little talk about you fellers on the street. . . . Askew-Merritt went up five points yesterday. The other day there was a feller from Detroit, a crackerjack feller . . . you know the Tern outfit . . . looking all over for you. We'll have lunch together next time he's in town.”

When they got to the corner under the el an icy blast of wind lashed their faces and brought tears to their eyes. The street was crowded; men, errandboys, pretty girl stenographers, all had the same worried look and pursed lips Nat Benton had. “Plenty cold today.” Benton was gasping, tugging at his coatcollar. “These steamheated offices soften a feller up.” They ducked into a building and went down into the warm hotrolls smell of a basement restaurant. Their faces were still tingling from the cold when they had sat down and were studying the menucards.

“Do you know,” Benton said, “I've got an idea you boys stand in the way of making a little money out there.” “It's sure been a job gettin' her started,” said Charley as he put his spoon into a plate of peasoup. He was hungry. “Every time you turn your back somethin' breaks down and everythin' goes cockeyed. But now I've got a wonderful guy for a foreman. He's a Heinie used to work for the Fokker outfit.”