American Rose_ A Nation Laid Bare_ The Life And Times Of Gypsy Rose Lee Part 4

Louise and June met vaudeville's characters and learned its rules. They recorded everything, taking mental snapshots and filing them away. Certain memories resonated only later. The kindly stagehands who acted like uncles hung pictures of Klan rallies and lynchings backstage. One of them hoisted June on his lap and presented her with a gold pendant etched with the letters "KKK"-an image that "chilled" her, though she didn't yet understand why. The sisters noticed that the colored and foreign vaudevillians disappeared after the shows, heading to their own "special" bars and restaurants and hotels. They heard the colored artists talk about a separate vaudeville circuit, as well, an organization known formally as the Theater Owners Booking a.s.sociation and informally as "Tough on Black a.s.ses."

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Dainty June and Co., top billing on the vaudeville circuit. (photo credit 12.1) (photo credit 12.1) They encountered the strangest hotel mates along each of their stops: the man who sold leeches as a cure for black eyes; a brash, redheaded hooker and her pimp; a man who carried tiny dead babies in gla.s.s bottles. "Look at the umbilical cord hanging on this one," he boasted. They met a performer named Gentle Julia, who one day made a bold proclamation neither girl ever forgot: she was pregnant and saw no reason to tell anyone who the father was, not even the father himself. They learned that proud and true vaudevillians turned to decla.s.se burlesque only if bookings on the circuit were scarce. And it came to them, piece by broken piece, that they would never be normal, everyday people, and that they had lost their childhoods while they were still children.

The act had steady offers now, just as Gordon had promised, including a booking in Buffalo for $750 per week, about $32,000 today. Rose clutched the contract to her chest and wept. It was unclear whether she was moved by the astonis.h.i.+ng sum of money, or the shock that a man had finally kept his word to her. From now on, Gordon said, they would ride to the theaters in taxicabs instead of streetcars. And instead of just one hotel room, they would rent a suite. Still, Rose haggled over prices, once arguing with a hotel manager for an hour when the bill was $7 more than expected. "It's not the principle of the thing," she explained. "It's the money."

Rose vowed to follow each rule of the contract (no profane language, no intoxication, no impromptu lines or jests interpolated into the dialogue) and began packing the props and costumes and animals, an ever-growing and ever-s.h.i.+fting menagerie that included, at one time or another, Mumshay, her favorite dog, June's beloved NeeNee, Bootsie the poodle, guinea pigs, rabbits, chameleons, white mice, rats, turtles, a poisonous horned toad, a goose, a lamb, and Louise's monkey, Gigolo, who kept constant vigil on her shoulder, turning heads wherever she went.

The guinea pigs and rats slept in dressing room drawers or in the girls' pockets, leaving them wet and filled with droppings-"licorice b.u.t.tons," Rose called them. When a pet died on the circuit, Louise and June insisted on great pomp and ceremony, and tiny makes.h.i.+ft graves were scattered across the country. Mumshay was one of the more spectacular casualties, squashed in the crevice of a folding bed in Syracuse, and June's elderly guinea pig, Samba, perished after a nightlong threesome with a magician's lady pigs. (June cried for hours, and Rose pressed cold towels onto her eyes to reduce the swelling before her performance.) The animals, more than anything else, gave Louise, June, and the boys a sense that every budget hotel and cramped train car was home, even if windows never offered the same view twice.

Most of their fellow vaudevillians loved Louise and June and the boys, but there were exceptions. Some of the other kiddie acts grew suspicious when, seemingly out of nowhere, things began to go wrong: props were destroyed, wigs and wardrobes disappeared, the sheet music got lost. Rose expressed sympathy and joined in the search, and occasionally found the missing item-always too late. "They shouldn't have left the things lying around so carelessly," she'd scold. One performer known as "The Darling Devina-Female Adonis" warned others not to breathe too deeply when pa.s.sing by their room and called Louise and June "imitation children." Another played on the same bill with them several times and insisted that Dainty June was a midget, since no actual child could dance that well. Rose took a particular dislike to her, and conferred with her daughters over coffee.

"She needs a lesson," she said. "A good scare, that's what she needs."

"She's mean," Louise said. "I don't think you ought to tackle someone so mean."

Mother smiled, and she spoke her next words in a blunt whisper. "Tackle? Oh, no...I'll write a letter she won't forget. I'll say, 'Someone is following you, and within two weeks your body will be found floating in the river.'"

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Louise was the only child who'd spent any time, no matter how brief, in a formal cla.s.sroom, but Rose believed the circuit taught everything they-and she-needed to know. Consistency was the key to success in vaudeville, polis.h.i.+ng an act until it became the prettiest, s.h.i.+niest version of itself. Consider how many times Chaz Chase, the "Eater of Strange Things," consumed lit matches in order to make the trick appear effortless, or the practice schedule of Hadji Ali, the master regurgitator, famous for swallowing a gallon of water followed by a pint of kerosene. After his a.s.sistant set up a small metal castle a few feet away, Hadji Ali spat the kerosene in a six-foot stream and set the structure ablaze. He then opened his throat and, with the aim and velocity of a fire hose, purged the water and killed every flame.

These sorts of acts dominated the circuit, vaudevillians possessed of talents invented rather than innate. The man who guzzled hot molten lava and belched up coins, the man who swallowed a goldfish and a baby shark and asked the audience which should reappear first, the man who lit gunpowder on his tongue, the man who discovered that his sneeze made audiences laugh and worked it into his routine, honing, over the course of a year, the mechanics of twitching his nostrils and cranking his jaw, the exaggerated intake of breath and sputtering of lips. A performer called "The Human Fish" ate a banana, played a trombone, and read a newspaper while submerged in a tank of water. Another had a "cat piano," an act featuring live cats in wire cages that meowed Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Miserere when their tails were pulled (in reality the performer yanked on artificial tails and did all the meowing himself). Alonzo the Miracle Man lit and smoked a cigarette, brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and b.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt-miracles since he had been born without arms. Louise and June were particularly fond of Lady Alice, an old dowager who wore elegant beaded gowns and performed with rats. The runt settled on the crown of her head, a miniature kazoo clenched between teeth like grains of rice. He breathed a tuneless harmony while the rest of the litter began a slow parade across Lady Alice's outstretched arms, marching from the tip of one middle finger to the other. The girls never understood how Lady Alice controlled the rodents-their own animals weren't quite so obedient-until one day she revealed her secret: a trail of Cream of Wheat slathered on her neck and shoulders. when their tails were pulled (in reality the performer yanked on artificial tails and did all the meowing himself). Alonzo the Miracle Man lit and smoked a cigarette, brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and b.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt-miracles since he had been born without arms. Louise and June were particularly fond of Lady Alice, an old dowager who wore elegant beaded gowns and performed with rats. The runt settled on the crown of her head, a miniature kazoo clenched between teeth like grains of rice. He breathed a tuneless harmony while the rest of the litter began a slow parade across Lady Alice's outstretched arms, marching from the tip of one middle finger to the other. The girls never understood how Lady Alice controlled the rodents-their own animals weren't quite so obedient-until one day she revealed her secret: a trail of Cream of Wheat slathered on her neck and shoulders.

Vaudevillians called these signature bits "insurance," gimmicks they kept tucked away in their repertoire, always close at hand if a new routine failed. (Fred Astaire once learned this lesson the hard way, when he was replaced by a dog act.) Child performers were considered the surest bet of all; "kids," June said, "were an automatic gimmick." Her mother sifted through ident.i.ties for the Baby and added layers to her history, each more impressive and fantastic than the last. Once again Rose renamed the act, settling on "Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters." They were playing the big time now, the Orpheum Circuit. It meant something when Martin Beck, the Orpheum's manager, believed in an act; he had discovered Houdini and booked the phenomenal Sarah Bernhardt at the New York Palace for $7,000 per week. No more lodge halls or the indignity of decay, the frayed traditions of worn plush and peeling sequins, the old piano just barely in tune.

June was now the "sophisticated little miss" of the Orpheum Circuit, dubbed "Pavlova's Own" by the famous diva herself, at least according to Rose; an "infant prodigy"; both "the greatest of all juvenile screen notables" and star of "the greatest juvenile musical comedy on the American stage." One columnist-aided, perhaps, by suggestions from Rose-could barely contain his exuberance. "I have seen and talked with the Eighth Wonder of the World! She is a tiny creature, weighing about 75 pounds when all dolled up." Three nuns went blind sewing her $1,000 dress, which blinked with the brilliance of a million rhinestones. When she wasn't dazzling audiences with her preternatural talent, Dainty June dabbled in politics, advocating on behalf of a proposed bill that would raise wages for postal workers. Carrying the bill to every stop on the Orpheum Circuit, she vowed to collect enough signatures to present the pet.i.tion to Speaker of the House Frederick Gillett. Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters would soon set sail on the SS Olympic Olympic and tour abroad in England, France, Belgium, South Africa, and Australia. When the time came, Rose would know exactly how to doctor the pa.s.sport applications. and tour abroad in England, France, Belgium, South Africa, and Australia. When the time came, Rose would know exactly how to doctor the pa.s.sport applications.

She encouraged Gordon to contribute to June's persona, as well. "She is the most tender-hearted child you ever saw," he said. "It distresses her to see anything suffer." Sometimes June spoke for herself. "I love everybody," she announced, and the papers a.s.sumed she meant her mother most of all, who "taught her virtually everything she knows." Dainty June, in fact, had become such a hot commodity that she needed a patent: "DAINTY JUNE (Hovick), The Darling of Vaudeville, Reg. U.S. Patent Office." Even the p.r.o.nouncement of the patent became part of June's official persona.

It was the surest advertising paradigm, which Gordon knew by trade and Rose by instinct: discover what could make you famous, and then proclaim that it already has. In Rose's opinion, her own image was just as crucial to the act, and with that in mind she began inserting herself into the newspaper stories, telling reporters she once taught acting to the members of "Our Gang." She bought a beaver fur coat and insisted there was no other in the country like it. She had designed it herself, selecting the skins and taking just a few at a time to the furrier. As a further guarantee that the furrier wouldn't switch skins, each one had Rose's name written on it, in indelible pencil.

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Advertis.e.m.e.nt for Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters. (photo credit 12.2) (photo credit 12.2) "You know I wouldn't pay that much money for a coat," she reasoned, "unless it was to put up a front." A stack of new diamond baubles adorned one finger, complements to her engagement rings. The rings could be p.a.w.ned if they ever ran out of money, and besides, she said, "they do impress the managers." No objections, no arguments-Gordon wouldn't want her asthma to act up, now, would he? She also took to carrying money in a grouch bag, a gray suede pouch worn around her waist that bulged oddly under her dress, although she often insisted that there wasn't much hidden inside.

The most crucial change, however, was to her name; the public would know her, from now on, as "Madame Rose." Still not satisfied, she tagged on a suffix: "The Developer of Children."

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Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters traveled for months at a time, performing at theaters across the country, Chicago to Minneapolis, Pittsburgh to Detroit, Indiana to Salt Lake City, three cities a week, two shows per day, more on weekends. Louise and June split the burden of packing a cretonne bedspread, a trunk cover, a coffeepot, and a lampshade for every trip. As soon as they checked into their hotel, Louise said, "We started fixing our room to make it look homey." Every Christmas, Louise lugged a half-dead, needle-deprived tree aboard the train that dwindled to skeletal by the time they retrimmed it for her January 9 birthday. Musty green curtains enclosed the sleeping cars, each one a dank, gloomy cave. June slept alone in the lower bunk, her neck smeared with Vicks VapoRub and sheathed in a stocking, while Louise shared the upper with two of the younger boys. Sometimes she cried at night, uncertain of her age but certain enough to know she should no longer be bunking with the opposite s.e.x. With her heavy rubber boots, tweed cap (which doubled as a bed for her guinea pig), and bluntly cut dark hair, Louise couldn't blame the porter for thinking she was one of them.

"I just can't stand it any longer," she confided to her guinea pig, wiping her tears on his fur. "Not if I never sleep again. I can't. I can't."

She mostly kept to herself during layoffs and lulls, reading and rereading Gordon's birthday gift, a book t.i.tled Dreams: What They Mean Dreams: What They Mean. She studied the various interpretations and incorporated her own occult visions. "You can charge a nickel a dream," Gordon said, but Rose shushed him. "Don't go putting ideas into her head," she muttered. "People will think she's a Gypsy."

Louise also devoured every book supplied by their tutor, Olive Thompson: Painted Veils, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Painted Veils, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Honore de Balzac's Droll Stories Droll Stories. Miss Thompson, no relation to the family, had joined the troupe at the reluctant behest of Rose. She hated to spend the money, but frequent inquiries from the police and child welfare agencies didn't leave much choice. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called the "Gerry Society" after its founder, Elbridge Gerry, was especially zealous in monitoring child performers under the age of sixteen. "These child slaves of the stage," Gerry wrote, "[are] subjected to a bondage more terrible and oppressive than the children of Israel ever endured at the hands of Pharaoh or the descendents of Ham have ever experienced in the way of African slavery."

Officers kept slinking backstage and cornering the girls, asking them all sorts of ridiculous questions: Who was the vice president under Woodrow Wilson? Under Warren G. Harding? Who killed Cain? Louise and June could no sooner answer such inquiries than they could recall, without hesitation, all the years in which they might have been born. Most of the time the officers nodded grimly, scratched some notes on a pad, and warned that they'd be back, but in January 1923, on a bitter Sat.u.r.day afternoon in Rochester, New York, they kept their word.

Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters were in the middle of the matinee finale, a military number featuring a gun drill, when a whistle pierced the orchestra's cheery tune. No questions this time, just two officers marching down the aisle, motioning for everyone to exit the stage. They wrapped Louise and June in coats and herded all eight members of the company into the back of a police van. Through the windows, Louise watched her mother in the taxi behind them, weeping on Gordon's shoulder.

"They won't make me talk," Sonny whispered, squeezed between the girls. "My father talked once, and the gang busted two of his ribs and almost poked his eye out."

The other children at the station were all cases of neglect or abuse and June noticed she stood out even among them, with her prop badges of honor and face painted like a watercolor. What a relief, she thought, that the officers did nothing more than lock them in a stuffy room that smelled of bleach. But Louise hoped they would fingerprint or interrogate or at least throw them in a cell-something exciting to make for a good story. She hushed the others and listened to Rose plead with the officers. Would they please let the children go? They had another show scheduled for that night, and the contract...fine. Well, would they at least let her contact her father in Seattle? He could straighten out this whole mess right away.

The officers consented, and Rose sent a Western Union wire to Charlie Thompson: GO IMMEDIATELY TO MASTER OF YOUR MASONIC LODGE TELL HIM TO WIRE HORACE OLIVER MASONIC TEMPLE ROCHESTER NY THAT HE KNOWS YOU AND ME TO BE OF GOOD CHARACTER AND PROPER GUARDIANS FOR LOUISE AND JUNE DO THIS IMMEDIATELY BECAUSE LABOR AUTHORITIES HOLDING CHILDREN FOR INVESTIGATION.

Twenty-six hundred miles away, Grandpa Thompson read his daughter's plea. He sighed and did as Rose asked. The lodge master hurried with a response: SEATTLE WASHHORACE OLIVERCARE MASONIC TEMPLE ROCHESTER, N.Y.HAVE KNOWN CHAS J THOMSON AND DAUGHTER FOR PAST 5 YEARS THEY ARE OF EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD CHARACTER AND WORTHY GUARDIAN OF TWO CHILDREN NOW PLAYING ORPHEUM CIRCUIT NAMELY JUNE AND LOUISE YOUR EFFORTS IN THEIR BEHALF WILL BE GREATLY APPRECIATED SAMUEL A. c.o.x WORs.h.i.+PFUL MASTER IONIC LOGE NO. 90.

The judge, an active and honorable Shriner, dismissed the case with the stipulation that Rose hire a tutor immediately.

A graduate of the Minnesota State Normal School, Miss Thompson was formally certified to possess the "character, skill, and experience required by law." The girls liked their tutor immediately, but Rose thought her too pretty. To dowdy her up a bit, she suggested that Miss Thompson wear horn-rimmed gla.s.ses, flat, sensible shoes instead of black patent pumps, and a black dress with white pique collar and cuffs-proper attire for a governess. Newspapers were intrigued by this insight into troupers' lives, the strange logistics of a migratory cla.s.sroom. Rose arranged real school desks in the dressing room, hid the makeup mirror behind a large blackboard, and stole a prop globe from another act on the bill. Gordon encouraged the press to come see for themselves how stars were educated on the Orpheum Circuit, a vaudeville act in its own right.

Math and spelling made June nervous. Between acts, the stagehands taught her the alphabet and how to sound out words phonetically. They listened as she read vaudeville advertis.e.m.e.nts aloud and corrected her p.r.o.nunciation. Slowly she was learning, although she much preferred the "See for Yourself" field trips Miss Thompson organized in each city, tours through carpet plants and steel mills and salt mines. But Louise, for all her trouble memorizing dance steps, remembered everything her teacher said. She tried on new words as if they were her mother's gleaming rings, recoiling at June's "hideously" thin arms and proclaiming her sister "gauche." June couldn't tell if she should be flattered or offended, but she envied Louise's brilliant, facile mind, the way it left nothing unexamined or unclaimed.

By now Rose's grouch bag held at least $25,000 and swung pendulously between her legs. She did not believe in banks. Once, June watched while her mother fanned piles of bills across the floor, counting them one by one.

"It's a trillion dollars, I bet," June whispered to Louise that night. They had made a pretend tent, pulling the bedspread taut over the foot posts. "Even more than a trillion, maybe. So I don't see why I can't have a doll that goes 'Mama' wiff a buggy to match. I could even have a live pony if I wanted it, and a stove wiff a real oven-"

"I want a boat," Louise interrupted. "A boat that's big enough for me to sit in with a sail and oars."

"What is the meaning of this?" Rose said, standing in the doorway that connected their two rooms. She threw on the light and whisked up the bedspread, ruining the tent. "We're taking an early train tomorrow, and here you are talking all night. What are you talking about?"

Louise kept quiet. This was June's game, and she was obligated to explain herself.

"We were saying what we'd do wiff the money in the belt," June said.

A pause. Rose stepped closer and calibrated her words.

"Who told you about any money?" she asked.

"n.o.body," June replied, quick and adamant. "I seen-I mean I saw it."

Rose sat down on the foot of the bed. The windows were open, and the wind gusted her flannel nightgown around her hips. Her cheek bore deep creases from her pillow.

"Remember the story about the poor little match girl?" she asked.

Louise and June nodded, waiting.

"Well," their mother said, "her mother was a very foolish woman. She gave all her money to a bad wolf and the wolf left her alone with her little girl to starve. Remember how hungry she was? And how cold? And how they found her dead one morning, all frozen?"

June began to sob. "Please don't tell any more," she whimpered. "It's too sad."

Rose patted June's foot. "Mother doesn't want that to happen to her her babies," she said. "That's why she hides the money away so no one can find it. That money belongs to the three of us. You mustn't tell a soul that we have it." babies," she said. "That's why she hides the money away so no one can find it. That money belongs to the three of us. You mustn't tell a soul that we have it."

June studied her mother. "Not even Uncle Gordon?" she asked.

Rose yanked the bedspread up tight, pulling the top around her daughters' necks. She kissed them both, and the room went dark again.

"Not even Uncle Gordon," she said, closing the door gently.

It was quiet until June rustled and turned. Louise felt her sister's breath soft against her cheek.

"That wasn't the story about the poor little match girl at all," June said. "There was no wolf in that story."

Neither girl questioned Rose about the grouch bag again.

Each afternoon during break, Louise and June took one dollar apiece from Rose, a sum expected to stretch for all three meals. They strolled to the local Woolworth's, by now used to stares from the civilians. Look at the little blonde dressed cap-a-pie in dirty white rabbit fur, the pumpkin-sized m.u.f.f encasing her hands, the missing b.u.t.tons, the tattered hems, how precious and peculiar she was, all at once. And the taller one, with knickers tucked into boots and-could that be?-a monkey monkey perched on her (or was it his?) shoulder. It was easy for June to distract the clerk with her blond curls and eager little face and talk of how she loved "Woolworff's," while Louise skulked up and down the aisles, grabbing here and there, nothing she wanted or needed. A tin spectacles case, a compa.s.s, a jar of pomade, a can opener, a tea strainer. Then they switched places and, once safe outside, compared their booty to see who won. After one such trip a pair of flat, sensible shoes appeared next to their pile, and they looked up to see Miss Thompson glaring down. perched on her (or was it his?) shoulder. It was easy for June to distract the clerk with her blond curls and eager little face and talk of how she loved "Woolworff's," while Louise skulked up and down the aisles, grabbing here and there, nothing she wanted or needed. A tin spectacles case, a compa.s.s, a jar of pomade, a can opener, a tea strainer. Then they switched places and, once safe outside, compared their booty to see who won. After one such trip a pair of flat, sensible shoes appeared next to their pile, and they looked up to see Miss Thompson glaring down.

"Where did you children get those?" she asked. Clamping a hand on each girl's shoulder, she turned them around, guided them back into Woolworth's, and made them confess. "I'm sowwy and I'll never steal again," June said. Louise repeated that line, her voice sounding hollow and far away.

An hour later, back in the dressing room, the story came tumbling out. June began to cry and Rose joined in, a raspy gasp chasing each sob. Louise cried into the dip of her mother's neck and they all rocked back and forth. "We were together," Louise said. "We were warm and safe from outsiders who didn't understand us."

Without warning Rose unclasped Louise's grip and pushed June aside. She took a step toward Miss Thompson. Her face took on an expression of terrifying calm, those violet, coin slot eyes, that fault line of a mouth.

"How dare you?" she said. Even the pauses between words carried a threat. "How dare you subject that little bundle of nerves to such a strain?"

June sniffed from the corner. Miss Thompson knew better than to defend herself.

"Get out! You're fired!"

The door shut behind her. The next time a reporter visited their dressing room, his camera captured the children bent over desks and Rose standing before the blackboard, posing as Miss Thompson, complete with proper governess uniform and horn-rimmed gla.s.ses.

Louise conducted her own private lessons, updating her reading list, carving out private niches of time to scavenge for unfamiliar phrases and exotic words. She replaced Sarah Crewe, Tanglewood Tales Sarah Crewe, Tanglewood Tales, and A Child's Garden of Verses A Child's Garden of Verses with Boccaccio's with Boccaccio's Decameron, Indian Love Lyrics Decameron, Indian Love Lyrics, and Das Kapital Das Kapital, always carrying one or another under her arm. June regarded her with unabashed awe and the boys mocked her playfully. Look at this bookish, haughty version of plain old Louise, the clumsy girl who couldn't even carry a tune-"The d.u.c.h.ess," they now called her. She taught herself to sew, too, a gift pa.s.sed on from Big Lady, and made costumes for the entire company during long train rides from town to town. They all read tea leaves, a popular pastime for troupers, but Louise insisted she had a true gift for seeing the future; the veil over her face at birth, which Grandma Dottie had pressed between the pages of her Bible, had marked her as special.

"I'm going to marry a king or somebody," she boasted to June. "In any case, I'll be rich." As reinforcement, she doodled just one word, "Money," in her careful child's cursive script, until the page was filled edge to edge with her intent.

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By now, Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters were so successful other acts spied on them, memorizing Sonny's solos, imitating June's steps. There was even a rumor that the Pantages Circuit was developing a new young starlet named "Baby June" to follow Dainty June's act across the country, a ploy Rose grudgingly admired. Gordon occasionally altered the roster of boys; they succ.u.mbed to the grueling schedule or demands of their families back home, but new talent waited in every city. Dainty June played after intermission, a coveted position on the bill, much preferable to opening or closing (called "playing to the haircuts," since the audience typically began exiting the theater). One of their programs featured a cover image of June clad in angel wings, so high on her toes that her feet arch perfectly, improbably, like crescent moons.

[image][image] Dainty June Dainty June[image] (HOVICK) (HOVICK)"The Darling of Vaudeville"(Reg. U.S. Patent Office)and Her Newsboy Songsters[image]OPENING: Dainty June Dainty June and andHer Newsboy Songsters"Dear Mary" Dainty June Dainty June"Just a Step" George Trailord"Duet" Dainty June Dainty June and Danny Montgomery and Danny MontgomeryNOTE: The Rhinestone Dress worn by Dainty June Dainty June contains 24,000 imported stones and cost $1000. contains 24,000 imported stones and cost $1000."Ballad" Joseph Dare, "the boy Caruso""n.o.body's Darlin'" Dainty June Dainty June"The Dumbells" Danny Montgomery and George Trailord "Sole Mio," sung in Italian, Joseph Dare "Two Little Wops" Dainty June Dainty June and Sonny Sinclair Fast Eccentric Dancing: George Trailord and Sonny Sinclair Fast Eccentric Dancing: George Trailord"h.e.l.lo! Mag!" Rose Louise, Danny Montgomery and Dainty June Dainty JuneFINALE: Dainty June Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters and Her Newsboy Songsters[image]

Not one false note in any of their performances, according to the critics. George's dancing was phenomenal-not surprisingly, since he performed before the royal court in Italy, according to Rose. The skit done in blackface by two boys named Nixon and Sans was "hilarious." Another boy's solo was made more "interesting" by the fact that his cracking, p.u.b.escent voice slid between tenor and ba.s.s. Louise displayed a flair for comedy and character acting, especially during her "excellent" Scandinavian singing impersonation and "Frances, the Bowery Tough" number. They loved everything about Dainty June, especially her rendition of the melody "Won't You Be My Husband?," during which the star, "still in her babyhood," crossed the footlights to find an elderly gentleman with a gleaming bald head. Reaching into "parts unknown," she produced a ma.s.sive powder puff and caressed the man all over, performing as if for him alone.

No one seemed quite sure of June's age-the guesses ranged from eleven to fourteen to sixteen-and despite the "wealth of chuckles" and "world of laughter," there was something disturbing, something off, about the whole spectacle.

"Dainty June and Company," one critic noted, "are not very childish, with their uncomfortable sophistication. The more meager is the period of childhood, the hastier, relatively, does withering old age creep on."

It would not be long before Dainty June had her first nervous breakdown.

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Outside the insular world of vaudeville, the 1920s were updating everything America knew about itself. Sigmund Freud introduced the idea that all people are born bis.e.xual. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as a.s.sistant secretary of the navy, got enmeshed in a scandal when young sailors went undercover to collect evidence against h.o.m.os.e.xuals in Newport, Rhode Island. President Warren G. Harding met with his mistress, a pretty young blonde named Nan Britton, in clandestine corners of the White House. There was, she said, "a small closet [where] we repaired many times, and in the darkness of a s.p.a.ce no more than five feet square the President of the United States and his adoring sweetheart made love." America had finally completed her n.o.ble task overseas and now antic.i.p.ated a promising future.

But the future had ominous undertones. The deaths of more than 15 million people, 130,000 of them Americans, ushered in an era of violent change-the great turning point of modern history. A postwar malaise gripped the country. People felt untethered. Their traditions were uprooted, their belief systems unmoored. Two Chicago boys named Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered a neighborhood boy "just for the thrill of it." On a cloudless September day, a brown wagon draped in canvas and pulled by an old bay horse stopped at 23 Wall Street, the headquarters of J. P. Morgan in lower Manhattan. The driver crept away, and as the clock on Trinity Church struck 12:01 p.m., a blast rattled the entire district. Shards of iron shot through the air, shattering pedestrians' skulls. Windowpanes blasted out as far as ten blocks away and clerks in sixth-floor offices suffered severe burns. The property damage neared $3 million, 39 people died, and 130 were injured. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. soil to date, and the perpetrators would never be discovered. In this new world of random bombings and genocide and poison gas and machine guns that fired six hundred rounds per minute, it wasn't difficult to believe that young men could kill each other over a truckload of booze.

Drastic change was encroaching on vaudeville, too, and even the best insurance bits were no guarantee against the growing new threat. Since KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast the 1920 presidential election returns, radio, though still an inchoate and primitive medium-one would be lucky to tune in and hear a harmonica played by whomever, wherever-seemed poised to revolutionize every aspect of daily life. It could cure disease, solve crimes, soothe the lingering tensions with Europe. And to say nothing of the entertainment possibilities! Mme. Luisa Tetrazzini, standing in her apartment in Manhattan's Hotel McAlpin, gave an opera concert for hundreds on board naval s.h.i.+ps cruising the Atlantic Ocean. The Park Avenue Baptist Church, where John D. Rockefeller, Jr., wors.h.i.+ped every Sunday, had an evening service broadcast by station WJZ. An engineer in Ossining, New York, hosted a "wireless vaudeville" performance from the comfort of his own home. Music and comedy soared invisibly across prairies and lakes to reach audiences in Connecticut, Illinois, Arkansas, Ohio, and Colorado. A family could enjoy a night out without paying a single dime for admission.

"Those earphones will never take the place of vaudeville," Rose insisted, but she consented to tweak the act. A cow would join them, she announced. Yes, a cow. It had appeared to her in a dream and told her exactly what to do. Gordon understood that such omens were not to be ridiculed, and immediately ordered the cow to be made. It had a papier-mache head with nostrils the size of rabbit holes, a brown-and-white body made of felt, trousers for legs, and leather spat hooves. One boy occupied the head, two crouched inside its torso, and one controlled the hind legs. Louise, contrary to the myth she would one day create, never played any part of the cow's body. In June's opinion, "she couldn't dance that well."

"I've got a cow and her name is Sue," June sang, while the cow pranced and dipped alongside her, "and she'll do most anything I ask her to." The cow became an Orpheum headliner in its own right. "Bring the kiddies," the advertis.e.m.e.nts exhorted, "to see Dainty June and the Funny Dancing Cow."

The cow helped, but Rose still relied on her own version of insurance: stealing from other performers' acts (although she was now more selective about who was worthy of the effort). When she learned they would be on a bill with the great f.a.n.n.y Brice, on break from the Ziegfeld Follies Ziegfeld Follies, during an upcoming stop in San Francisco, she reminded the girls to watch every single show, and closely.

f.a.n.n.y Brice was a star not easily copied, a true original with a honed philosophy about her craft, and she would have scoffed at Rose's plan to spy on her act. "Every successful artist, no matter what his medium," f.a.n.n.y wrote, "has his own individual methods of getting his result, and anyone who attempts to borrow another's method becomes a mere impersonator.... You never can tell what an audience is going to do. That is what makes the search for the feel of the audience such a fascinating and lucrative pastime."

But Rose forgot her spying scheme when the manager of the Orpheum in San Francisco approached her. Did Madame Rose have anyone in her act who could do a scene with f.a.n.n.y Brice? The role called for a teenage girl, able to speak five lines, and he needed her right away.

She decided that Louise, now thirteen, would do the part. Not a natural like June, but she handled herself reasonably well onstage and knew how to deliver a joke. Besides, June was still a baby and could never convincingly play a teenager, not even when she became one.

Louise could scarcely believe her luck. All those nights spent ducking in the shadows of the stage, resenting June's talent and her own irrelevance. All those rehearsals where it became clear she was interchangeable, her characters not truly her own. All that time wasted hating the act simply because it could carry on, indefinitely, without her. And now, finally, performing was an opportunity rather than an obligation, a chance to prove she was an intrinsic part of their future, that Mother had been wise not to leave her behind.

A dozen years later, when Gypsy Rose Lee considered f.a.n.n.y Brice her mentor and best friend, she would recall nearly everything about the day they first met, the day she had her first solo without June or the Newsboy Songsters. f.a.n.n.y looked different than she'd expected, clothed in a plain black dress, no bustle or fur or feathers, not even a glint of jewelry. She invited Louise to sit in her dressing room so they could discuss the scene: Louise is the drunken flapper, a know-it-all kid named Mary Rose, and she struggles while a cop tries to arrest her. f.a.n.n.y talks him out of it, then steps in and delivers a lecture about her gutter ways. Louise listened to every word f.a.n.n.y said, each one amplified in the intimate s.p.a.ce of the dressing room, and told her she was sure she could do it, even though she wasn't sure at all. dozen years later, when Gypsy Rose Lee considered f.a.n.n.y Brice her mentor and best friend, she would recall nearly everything about the day they first met, the day she had her first solo without June or the Newsboy Songsters. f.a.n.n.y looked different than she'd expected, clothed in a plain black dress, no bustle or fur or feathers, not even a glint of jewelry. She invited Louise to sit in her dressing room so they could discuss the scene: Louise is the drunken flapper, a know-it-all kid named Mary Rose, and she struggles while a cop tries to arrest her. f.a.n.n.y talks him out of it, then steps in and delivers a lecture about her gutter ways. Louise listened to every word f.a.n.n.y said, each one amplified in the intimate s.p.a.ce of the dressing room, and told her she was sure she could do it, even though she wasn't sure at all.

She tried on her costume, a bejeweled orange chiffon dress with a floaty skirt of feathers. "I can't wear this in front of an audience," Louise whispered. "It isn't modest." f.a.n.n.y shook her head, and noticed that the girl looked scared to death. "Look, kid," she said. "You can't be too modest in this business." Louise slipped into a pair of gold brocade heels that pinched her growing feet-so badly she had to retrieve the clunky oxfords from her newsboy costume, and hope the feathers would hide them.

She felt June watching her and heard her sister's question-"Does Mother know you're wearing a dress like that?"-accompanied by a wise little smile; for once, the Baby played the big sister. With each moment an internal shutter clicked, imprinting everything: the numbness in her legs; the grace of the conductor's hands, waving like "pink wax birds" over the black expanse of audience; the remote, untamed sound of her voice as it recited each line. What Louise remembered most of all was how the spotlight felt hotter, somehow, when it had only her to s.h.i.+ne on.

Chapter Thirteen

If only you knew how difficult it is to strip one's heart clean, and to tell you boys how proud I am of you for the fine service you are giving to your country and to the strengthening of the a.r.s.enal of Democracy.- GYPSY ROSE LEE, IN AN OPEN LETTER TO SERVICEMEN GYPSY ROSE LEE, IN AN OPEN LETTER TO SERVICEMEN New York City, 1942 A few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, while 2,500 j.a.panese residents are being rounded up and s.h.i.+pped to Ellis Island, Gypsy receives a phone call from Michael Todd.

While walking along 42nd Street, he tells her, he was struck by an idea. He wants to revive burlesque, transform the tired old b.u.mp and grind into a flashy, expensive Broadway musical-a brilliant marriage of Minsky and Ziegfeld on a grand and opulent scale; Americans crave nothing in times of hards.h.i.+p so much as the distractions of beauty and noise. He'll call the production Star and Garter Star and Garter and stage it at the Music Box Theatre. Mayor La Guardia won't dare interfere with one of Broadway's most prestigious venues. and stage it at the Music Box Theatre. Mayor La Guardia won't dare interfere with one of Broadway's most prestigious venues.

Gypsy is intrigued. She'll be the lead in her own Broadway show as well as a producer, roles she never played before. Even better, she'll get to work with Mike again.

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Souvenir program from Star and Garter Star and Garter, 1942. (photo credit 13.1) (photo credit 13.1) They stay up nights perfecting skits and sharpening jokes, but as the June 24 premiere date approaches, he is still $25,000 short. He knocks on Gypsy's dressing room door to tell her Star and Garter Star and Garter is finished before it even starts. is finished before it even starts.

"You have to open," she protests. "I bought two gallons of body paint. Two gallons, Mike. That's enough for years!"

"One of my backers, Herb Freezer, wants his G's back. And I'm tapped out."

"I'll buy Freezer's interest," she says, casually.

"I said G's, not G-strings."