Laurel and Hardy Murders (2 page)

At any rate, at that particular moment, Hilary was in a good humor, thanks to Jack McCabe’s risible document. She pointed to article nine (the suggested sequence of toasts) and asked me who Fin was.

“Jimmy Finlayson. He usually played the heavy in Laurel and Hardy pictures. You must have seen him—bald, squint eye, a bushy mustache. He and Charley Hall and Mae Busch were perennial supporting players in their films.”

“And Babe? I take it that’s Ollie?”

I nodded. “The story is in McCabe’s official bio,
Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy.
When Hardy was a young movie actor, he used to go to this barber who evidently ‘liked boys’ and who always used to say ‘nice-a baby’ whenever he patted powder into Hardy’s cheeks. People started to kid him about it and call him ‘baby’ and eventually the nickname became affectionate and abbreviated—‘Babe’—and it stuck.”

“You
are
a repository of information,” Hilary said, amused and interested. She flicked off the power button of the Adler and gave the machine a rest while she recalled for my benefit the few Laurel and Hardy movies she’d seen, most of them on television.

“It’s not fair to evaluate them by what you viewed on the tube,” I remarked. “Local stations butcher them, or, even if they run the pictures intact, there are so many commercials stuck in that the timing Stan worked on so hard is totally ruined.”

“Stan? You mean Laurel directed the films?”

“Practically. He was the idea man. He invented the gags and at the end of the day, when Babe headed for the golf course, Stan would stay and work with the editor to assure the proper timing of each bit. The main reason the last few pictures the team made were substandard was because M-G-M and 20th Century-Fox forbid Stan to exercise artistic control over the product.”

“I would like to know,” Hilary said abruptly, “why you never mentioned the Sons of the Desert to me before. It sounds like a lot of fun. I might like to join.”

It was a touchy subject. I steered around it by inviting her to go to the annual banquet in June with me. She accepted with pleasure. Deciding that the time was at last ripe, I asked if she’d mind my taking off a few days to go to Philadelphia.

“Why on earth would you want to do
that
?” Her reaction was that of a typically insular Manhattanite: life anywhere but New York was a hardship. In Philadelphia, it would be positively unthinkable.

I explained that I was a newly elected delegate-at-large for the Sons of the Desert in New York. At the most recent executive committee meeting, I said, the president of the tent, O. J. Wheete, read a letter from the Two Tars tent in Philly proposing a joint regional convention sometime in the fall. “The Two Tars annual banquet is coming up next week,” I further explained, “so we figured somebody from our board should go to it and talk about their ideas for such an event.”

“But why you? Why not one of the chief officers? Or is a delegate-at-large an important Sons position by some kind of inverted comic logic?”

I shook my head. “That’s too subtle for the Sons. Sounds more like Gilbert.” As I flipped through the by-law booklet, I told Hilary that I didn’t even get a vote at committee meetings. “My main function is to take notes in case other members want to know what the executives are trying to put over on them.”

I located the article entitled “Spying customs of the delegates-at-large” and read a few choice passages for Hilary’s benefit: “Delegates-at-large...will...be free to demand large money votes be brought before the general membership. The committee will be free, however, to take exception to such demands by politely escorting the dissenting delegate to the East River.

“Once a year, at the last spring meeting, the delegates-at-large will be elected from the general membership. Nominations will be taken from the floor, where most of the Sons end up, anyway. Election will be determined by voting customs outlined below, or by bribe, whichever comes first. Because success is a rare commodity in the SOTD, delegates-at-large may succeed themselves once.

“Delegates-at-large shall be the chief communications link between members and the committee. Consequently, delegates shall make themselves available to general members for pertinent discussions, provided such demands on time do not extend to The Lambs’ rest rooms. However, should a delegate be obliging enough to discuss SOTD business even in the latter contingency, he will be entitled to call himself the Privy Counsellor.”

The last clause cracked her up. “All right,” Hilary laughed, “you can go, Gene. (Or should I call you John?)” Then she knit her brow. “But you still didn’t answer. Why did they pick you instead of the president or another chief officer?”

“Maybe because I’m an ex-Philadelphian. Or maybe because the rest of them wouldn’t be caught dead in the City of Brotherly Love.”

She shrugged. “The natives would hardly know the difference.”

The flippancy annoyed me, but I didn’t comment. The more arguments I could avoid with Hilary in the next few weeks, the better.

I knew I was going to need all the goodwill I could get when Hilary found out that the New York parent tent of Sons of the Desert positively refuses to accept women as members.

S
O:

FADE IN

Long Shot. Interior. Evening.

The main dining room of the Penn Country Club was ostentatious in its lack of ostentation. Sconced wall lights and wine-red textured wallpaper were warm and the overstuffed chairs comfortable.

The meal was at an end, and whatever coffee remained was cold in the cups. The lights were off and some one hundred members of the Two Tars tent watched Laurel and Hardy portray bumbling sailors in the film from which the chapter derives its name.

Guests of honor sat opposite the screen at the head table, which was perpendicular to two long ones; together, the three festive boards comprised a C-shaped mesa of white linen. I was seated with the other guests, feeling uncomfortable in the company of performers like Hurd Hatfield, Mae Questel, and even Wayne Poe. But as emissary from the parent tent, it was my duty to fill a chair and try to look somewhat important.

I was supposed to meet with Jerry Freundlich, the president of the tent, but since he was banquet program co-chairman, he was busy readying the show to be given live after the films, so there was nothing for me to do but relax and enjoy the entertainment.

On the screen, Stan and Ollie engaged in a ridiculous battle with Charley Hall and a gumball machine. A few minutes later, they and their dates (Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine) kicked off one of the most famous sequences in cinematic comedy, the incredibly protracted reciprocal destruction of innumerable stalled automobiles.

The film ended and a specially edited reel followed: it consisted of clips from things our celebrity guests had done. First there was a piece of
The Picture of Dorian Gray,
then a snippet from the NET-TV film
Between Time and Timbuktu
; despite the many years between the two flicks, Hurd Hatfield looked pretty much the same, and someone called out that Hatfield must
really
have a picture in his attic. Next we saw a mercifully brief part of the short-lived
Wayne Poe Show,
a series that had been canceled after six weeks. (The premise: Poe, an effeminate young man, inherited his father’s construction firm and had to boss a rowdy crew of
macho
hard-hat laborers.) The film collation closed with a Mae Questel anthology: Betty Boop, a rare “live” appearance with Rudy Vallee; two Popeye scenes, the first with her usual Olive Oyl voice-over, the second, an oddity in which (for matters of studio expedience) she actually read the sailor’s lines; the reel ended with “Aunt Bluebell” ringingly urging everyone to “Weigh it for yourself, honey!”

Everyone applauded. The lights came up long enough for the projectionist to change reels and show another Laurel and Hardy short,
The Live Ghost.
When the film ended, there was a burst of music. A three-piece combo which took its place during the blackout played a fanfare. Wayne Poe stepped onto a platform at the far end of the room and introduced himself as master of ceremonies.

Sporadic applause.

He said a few introductory things with a pasted-on grin splitting his mouth so wide I was surprised the corners of his lips didn’t crack. He was about thirty-five, not too tall, with thinning auburn hair and black hornrims that made him slightly resemble Jack Benny. Poe’s mannerisms were reminiscent of the late lamented comic, but his timing and delivery weren’t. He desperately launched one gag right after the last one, never waiting out the laugh properly—when there was one.

He began with approximately one dozen Polish jokes, followed by two Italian gags, one black story, and a pair each of Irish and Jewish anecdotes. By that time, he had offended nearly everyone in the place. Next, he bored us with seven minutes of the same impressions every comedian does—Cagney, Bogey, Lugosi, Cooper, Cary Grant—Xerox copies of carbons, twice removed from reality. Many people were shifting restlessly in their seats by the time Poe launched into a horrendously dragged-out “true” tale of a cocktail waitress he claimed he knew. These were the details, much condensed:

Joan Grablick, the waitress, supplemented her tips by giving shaves and haircuts to her men friends. One day, the owner of the nightclub where she worked heard about his employee’s tonsorial skills, so he hired her to give him bi-weekly trims and shaves each morning—all of which greatly augmented her income.

But one fateful day when she was off from work, she stopped into a bowling alley to play a few frames. There she ran into her employer, who was accompanied by a client he was trying to impress. The three of them bowled together and she bettered her boss’s score by nearly seventy points. He was so humiliated and angry that he never let her shave him again.

“Which only goes to show,” Poe proclaimed at long last, “that a bowling Joan lathers no boss.”

Up to then, Poe still had a few people on his side, but the shaggy-dog build-up and the pun finished them off. The audience broke into a chorus of catcalls, hoots, and hisses. Poe responded, predictably enough, with a barrage of insulting one-liners. He might have continued, but when he saw a few people rise, don their coats, and walk out, he decided it was time to give the band the nod for the fanfare that ended his turn.

There was very little applause.

At that moment, I would’ve wagered there was nothing further Wayne Poe could do to alienate the Two Tars tent. But I would have lost the bet.

He introduced the next act, a gangly, nervous youngster named Bryan Harper—a toothy kid with protruding ears and a ghastly smile that suggested butterflies-in-the-stomach. His black tux looked like it had been supplied by an uncle in the business on Second Avenue. Harper grabbed the mike as if he were afraid it’d slip through his fingers and shatter. He squeaked out the opening lyrics of “They Call the Wind Maria.” The choice revealed a colossal case of adolescent wish fulfillment. Not only did he lack the beefiness to color the vowels richly enough, but on the climactic high F, his voice cracked badly.

I felt sorry for the kid. He was rattled, and the audience was not in a good mood. Sparse clapping. He next crooned a simple folk ballad that was more in his range and he did it passingly well. The applause was a little healthier, and he started to relax; the jack-o’-lantern grin melted into a semblance of genuine pleasure, and I thought Harper might make it off with some degree of honor...

But when the time came for his upbeat “ride-out” number, he smiled painfully and said he hadn’t had a chance to rehearse his last song with the band, but had been advised to go ahead and sing it, anyway,
a cappella
. And with that, he plunged into a truncated version of the excruciatingly difficult Soliloquy from
Carousel
!

I winced. My God! Who was loony enough to put such a dumb idea into Harper’s head? To begin with, he couldn’t project the virility, and closing any act without the trio would be anticlimactic at best. But for an unsure tyro to attempt a dramatic
tour de force
like Soliloquy that needs the technique of a Rounseville or Tauber to bring off, the choice was artistic suicide.

He didn’t even come close. Harper found it hard to keep a steady tempo, and midway through, wandered into the wrong key and way out of his comfortable register. His voice grew shrill, as much from embarrassment as strain. He stopped finally and I thought he was going to apologize and slink away with hung head, but instead he turned to the pianist and asked for a D. The show-must-go-on-I-forget-just-why syndrome.

Somehow, Harper muddled through to the end, but by the time he got there, his eyes were moist with welling tears. He hurried offstage, head down, taking quick strides to get away as fast as possible. He didn’t dignify the fiasco by returning to acknowledge the compassionate applause.

And then, just then, before the clapping died away, Wayne Poe bounced back onstage. He nodded to the band—and I suddenly had an awful premonition of what he was about to do.

I was right: the combo hit a B-chord and stayed with Poe as he resang the last fifteen or twenty bars of the same Soliloquy. He wasn’t much of a singer, but
he
was accompanied, and anything had to sound better than the musical mayhem committed by Harper.

It was the rottenest trick I’d ever seen pulled. Another audience might have been taken in by it, but the Two Tars group is too savvy. When Poe finished, there wasn’t a single sound, not even that of one hand clapping.

And then the stony silence was shattered by a new voice, a loud, raucous one. It came from the shadows behind the platform.

“HEY, BOY! GET YOUR ASS OFFSTAGE! THE OLD MAN’S TAKING OVER!!!”

Poe swiveled, gawking at the spectacle emerging into the spotlight’s spill. It was Frank Butler, a short man with a big potbelly, massive forehead and jaw, and downturned lips from which stuck out an evil-looking, twisted stogie. Wisps of graying hair were carefully plastered over his balding skull. As he clumped onto the platform, I noticed he was carrying a large, floppy object that looked like a miniature corpse dangling its grotesque limbs.