In God We Trust (32 page)

Then, finally, three quick Mighty Mouse cartoons in succession as a capper for the road, and it was all over for another week. Back out in the real world at last splinter bands of bloated, sticky, Tootsie Roll-filled kids drifted homeward, recounting in absolute detail every labyrinthine twist and turn of each feature, reliving each fistfight and walkdown, each ambush and thunderous escape in the embattled stagecoach as the ideological arguments began. The Ken Maynard faction snorting derisively at the lesser Bob Steele contingent. An occasional Roy Rogers nut
would sing nostalgically, nasally, “On The Streets Of Laredo.” A few holdouts for Tim Holt, outnumbered but game, all united finally in
UNIVERSAL
distain for the effete Dick Foran and Gene Autry.

The great day was almost over. We all had to face the ordeal of trying to stuff down baked beans and spare ribs at supper, which was not easy on top of four Milky Ways and a rich compost heap of other assorted indigestibles drifting like some great glacier down through our digestive systems.

The uproar on Saturday afternoons at the Orpheum was as nothing compared to the constant hoopla and razzmatazz of the rest of the week, when Mr. Doppler’s Orpheum would rise to a fever pitch of excitement. Very little of it had anything to do with actual movies, although the Orpheum pretended that it was in the Film business and so did the customers.

Monday night, immediately after supper, the Faithful—or at least one contingent of them—would scurry through the darkening streets toward the sacred temple to play Screeno. I have heard that in other movie houses this was called Keeno, but Mr. Doppler was a Fundamentalist. As the Judy Canova fans pushed through the turnstiles, they would be handed a crude sheet of cardboard ruled off in squares, with the great black letters:

SCREENO! EVERYBODY HAS
A
CHANCE TO WIN! WATCH YOUR NUMBERS
!

Next to the door was a wastebasket filled with corn kernels. Each lover of the Cinematic Art would grab a handful on his way in to the humid arena of the Fun Palace, slide down in his seat, and wait for the action.

About 7
P.M
. on would come the Movietone News, with the bathing beauties and the horse races, funny goose-stepping comic soldiers wearing scuttle helmets marching in phalanxes to the sound of
“Deutschland Über Alles,”
Westbrook Van Vorhees and the Voice of Doom. Ten minutes of previews of coming attractions, featuring music by the Coming Attractions Band, and the first feature would begin, with Ben Blue chasing Judy Canova around a haystack as the mob rustled their cards
and crunched on corn kernels in keen anticipation of the delights that were to follow.

By the time Judy had deafened the multitude and the eighth reel spun out, the moment of exultation arrived. The house lights would go on; the popcorn bags stashed, and there would be a moment of suspended animation while the real reason all were there was getting under way. On stage the great white screen stood empty. Mr. Doppler could be heard—himself!—testing the PA system, his rich, dynamic voice:

“Hello, test. Hello, test. One-Two-Three-Four. Can you hear me up in the booth, Fred?”

And then, silence. Next on screen a great blue and red numbered wheel appeared, with an enormous yellow pointer, and Mr. Doppler would get right down to business.

“All right, folks, it’s time once again to play the Fun game, Screeno. Anyone filling out a diagonal or horizontal line with corn kernels wins a magnificent grocery prize. Yell out ‘Screeno.’ Be sure to check your numbers. And now, here we go!”

A spectacular fanfare would wow into the sound system, since Doppler really believed in Production all the way, and the evening would start. On the screen the pointer, a yellow blur, spun as band music played softly behind. Everyone leaned forward in their seats, their cards held at ready as they waited for the call of Fate and Riches to lay its golden breath on their fevered, movie-loving brows. The pointer slowed, and stopped, and Doppler’s voice intoned:

“The first number is B Twelve.”

Rustlings, creaking of seats, muttering. Some steel-mill wit up in the gloom hollers:

“Screeno!”

The crowd titters and the pointer spins again. A constant obbligato of dropping, rolling, and scrunching corn kernels and excited mumblings played like a soft flame under the great pot of edible gold that all pursued. Finally someone inevitably shouted:

“SCREENO
!”

And the first prize of the evening was snagged. Doppler, his voice trembling with emotion:

“And now the first Screeno gift of the evening, a five-dollar bag of groceries from the Piggely-Wiggely store on Calumet Avenue, Credit Extended, Superb Meats and Groceries; We Cash Checks. This five-dollar bag of superb vittles goes to.…”

The usher would hurry down the aisle with the winner’s Screeno card and his name, the audience shifting restlessly, distractedly waiting for the next game to begin, and somewhere off in the middle distance the sound of celebration as the winning party, already tasting the Piggely-Wiggely bacon, celebrated the great coup.

The pointer whirled; the action roared on. The kids, not eligible to participate under the strict International rules of Classical Screeno, spent most of the time throwing corn kernels at the balcony and the silver screen.

To the right of the stage glowed a magnificent smoked ham and all the other grocery gifts for the Screeno crowd. During the Depression a seven-pound ham was good for at least four months in the average family, not including 800 gallons of rich, vibrant pea soup, so Screeno was a very serious game. Rising above the usual Orpheum aroma, a rich mixture of calcified gum, Popcorn, hot leatherette seats, steamy socks, and Woolworth Radio Girl perfume and hair oil, was the maddening scent of smoked bacon, fresh pickles, and crushed corn kernels.

Screeno was played for at least forty-five minutes, until the last can of Van Camp’s Pork & Beans had been won. The excitement rising upward until the final great moment, the Grand Award—a year’s supply of Silvercup Bread, provided by the local A & P store. Bread truly was the staff of life to a dedicated Screeno addict. A year’s supply of bread! The very bread that the Lone Ranger lived on and that Tonto used to make the French toast and to sop up the gravy of the Lone Ranger’s solitary chuck wagon beans.

Immediately after the Grand Award, which of course Doppler masterfully squeezed for every last drop of dramatic tension, the
lights would go out and on would come somebody with a rich Bavarian accent saying:

“Munngeys iss der cwaziest peebles.”

And once again Culture marched on into the next feature. There was never a recorded instance of a Single Feature playing the Orpheum.

And so went Monday. Tuesday was known as Bank Night. Bank Night was for the really Big Time movie fans, and that crowd usually avoided Screeno like the plague. Every week the Bank Night jackpot rose by hundred-dollar jumps, and every week Tuesday night at Zero Hour, amid a deep hush, the spotlight on stage, the sinister cage containing the Bank Night registration slips was spun as the world perceptibly slowed in its orbital flight around the sun. Mr. Doppler, standing solemn and straight—no razzle-dazzle on Bank Night—waited beside his silver microphone as a shimmering white card was drawn by one of the audience. A moment of agonizing hesitation and in a quiet voice Mr. Doppler would say:

“Tonight’s Bank Night registration drawing for
seventeen hundred
dollars.…”

A pregnant pause at this point to let the 1700 bucks sink even deeper into the souls of the harpooned congregation, most of whom hadn’t seen a whole ten-dollar bill for five years running.

Seventeen
hundred
dollars! Everyone in the house had followed the progression of Bank Night from the first 100 dollars to its present astronomical height, and each week Mr. Doppler would change the great red figures on the marquee, and all week—seven long days—the feverish Bank Night dreamers passing back and forth on their aimless errands were constantly reminded. Seventeen hundred dollars! And next week—eighteen hundred dollars!

As each week rolled into history, the sweat, the nervousness, the fear that someone else would strike it big grabbed at the very vitals of each registrant. He scrabbled and scraped week after week to scratch up the price of a ticket, until finally, at the 1700 mark, it had become almost a compulsive nightmare.

The movies shown on Bank Night unreeled before uncomprehending,
glazed eyes, their pupils contracted to pinpoints glowing in the darkness, their breath coming in the telltale short pants of the near-hysteric. Seventeen hundred dollars meant the difference between actual Life and gnawing, grubbing, penny-scrabbling, bare Existence. On Bank Night there were
no
friends, only solitary sparks of human protoplasm—alone—plotting, scheming, hoping against hope that no one else would win.

“…  is Number Two-Two-Nine-Five!”

Silence. A stunned, watchful, waiting,
fearful
silence. Will the $1700 be claimed? Is Two-Two-Nine-Five here? A single thought in each Depression-ridden mind. Judy Canova, Jack Oakie, and even Clark Gable drowned in a dark, swirling sea of anxiety.

“Is the holder of that card in the house?”

Silence.

“I repeat, Number Two-Two-Nine-Five. Is the holder of that card in the house? Once.”

An usher on the right of the stage, in a blue spotlight, raised a padded mallet and struck a gong.

BOOOONNGGG

The clangorous boom rolled out over the multitude like some cataclysmic death knell, echoing and re-echoing from Coke machine to gilded cherubim, high above the arched stage and down into the depths of the hearer’s subconscious, a sound that must be something like the one that will be heard on Judgment Day before the great trumpets blow and Gabriel rises to summon the Faithful from their graves.

“Once.”

A dramatic pause.

“Twice.”

BOING!

Another dramatic pause.

“TWO-TWO-NINE-FIVE
. Three times and out.”

BOING!

A deep collective sigh of relief, blessed, numbed, tremulous relief rose from the darkness. The audience settled back into
their seats. Already plans were under way in fevered minds on how to grub together next Tuesday’s admission.

Somewhere, someplace, in some dark mortgaged hut, Number Two-Two-Nine-Five, who had decided to stay home this one night in order to save the forty cents’ price, tossed uneasily in his sleep, unknowing, as the great ship of Fortune sailed by him, unseen, unheard, into the darkness forever. The bedsprings creaked as he shifted in his sleep. He slept on.

Mr. Doppler played on the vast organ of human emotions like a master musician, twittering on the Acquisitiveness stop as one possessed of an evil genius.

Wednesday night was Amateur Night. Between features a long file of banjo players, mouth-organ virtuosi, clog dancers, Bing Crosby imitators, and other Talented out-of-work steelworkers would engage in mortal artistic combat for another list of Grand Awards, including a free, all-expenses paid two-day trip to Chicago, a full thirty miles away, ten vocal lessons at the Bluebird Music School—Accordion Our Specialty—and fifty dollars top prize, as determined by the applause of the audience. At least that’s what the poster in the lobby called it—applause. Applause is not exactly the word that described the pandemonium, acrimony, catcalls, distain, obscene noises of enormous variety and general commotion that accompanied each act as claque battled claque. It set the earth to jiggling so that the vibrations alone could be felt over a radius of thirty miles.

The Orpheum on Amateur Night gave many of us who were fortunate enough to be in attendance at these cabalistic rituals a glimpse of Life that left us with a vague understanding of that thing, that stuff of which riots and great historical movements are made.

One night stands out in particular. A bulky bricklayer clumped onstage. In the pit the piano player began a flower intro to “Neapolitan Nights.” The bricklayer pursed his lips wetly and began to whistle in a high, thin, bird-like trill, his hairy chest perspiring, cheeks popping, eyes bulging. An instant wave of pseudo-feminine whoops rolled out from the audience and
crashed like a riptide of derision around the Hod Carrier. He stopped in mid-trill.

“Awright, ya bastards! Who’s the smart ass?”

His fists were like two giant clubs at his side. Another great roar, more of a snort actually, from the audience en masse. The sweat gleamed on his forehead as he dredged his visceral depths with a quivering, snorting hawk, and the offended artist let fly a large silver oyster into the void. To a man, cut to the quick, the outraged critics arose and rushed over, under, around, and beside the seats, thousands of kids cheering and bird-whistling, goading the battlers on. It was the first time that Mr. Doppler called the police in order to get the second feature under way. It was not to be the last.

Thursday was Sing Along Night, and it was the one night of the week that Mr. Doppler was forced to book a real movie. It was on Thursdays that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby traveled their eternal Road, panting and leering after Dorothy Lamour. It was on Thursday that Gary Cooper sat tall in his dusty, worn saddle. It was on Thursday that Andy Hardy, better known as Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland decided to put on a show to buy the serum for the Widow’s boy, dying of a strange, unnamed Hollywood disease while Donald O’Connor, the wise-guy freshman, made passes at Andy’s girl in the gym between tap dances. Thursday was Serious Picture Night, and in keeping with the solemn occasion Mr. Doppler also presented the Orpheum Sing Along.

As Bob and Bing rode their camel off into the sunset and the Paramount mountain shimmered hotly on the beaded screen, rising from the cavernous darkness of the pit, electric motors humming, the mighty Orpheum Wurlitzer rose, sparkling and glowing, sequins shimmering and catching the light. A massive, brilliant white, multi-tiered instrument, it rose like some specter, and seated before the impressive, arching keyboard, golden, wavy hair shimmering, white tuxedo coat spotless, sat the famous Orpheum organist, booming out “Chiribiribim” as on screen a slide appeared with a scene of gypsies caught in mid-fandango, tambourines raised, eyes flashing hotly, in eye-searing
Technicolor. The organist spun on his twirling seat, unveiling a grinning set of dentures that made anything that Liberace was to do later along the same lines pale to insignificance. The slide changed: