Show Business Is Murder Read online

  There was that incredible voice, for one thing, and the big brown eyes and the way her face changed to show exactly what she was thinking all the time. When she sang “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me,” Birch found tears on her cheeks. The plot, Mickey Rooney, none of it mattered when Judy sang. The song went clear out of the stupid movie and into a whole world of its own, a world of love and pain and compassion, a world of someone who’d longed for love and wondered if she’d ever find it.

  Birch knew that feeling. Back in her freshman year, she and her dad agreed that it was no big deal that nobody asked her to the school dance. She was only fourteen, and there was plenty of time to outgrow her tomboy stage. They both kept saying it as dance after dance came and went without anyone asking Birch (which was not her name back then but the name she took for herself when she realized she had to bend or she would break).

  The junior prom was the first one that hurt. Not only had nobody asked her, but the boys she asked turned her down flat. Boys she’d known for years, gone hiking with, played baseball with, told her they wanted to ask other girls instead of her.

  Then she took the dainty little watch with the real diamond chips her dad gave her for her sweet sixteen and exchanged it for a waterproof sports watch. For the first time in his life, Sam Tate allowed himself to say what Birch guessed he’d been thinking for a long time: Did she want everyone in Woodstock to think she was a lesbian, for God’s sake?

  She wasn’t exactly sure what a lesbian was, but she knew it wasn’t good and it meant no boys asked you to dances.

  Then she met Enid and the truth dawned. They were writing songs of love, but not for her, because nobody wrote songs of love for two girls.

  So that was why the tears were there, not because Judy couldn’t get a stupid twit like Mickey Rooney to look twice at her.

  FRI-TUES

  Golddiggers of 1933

  12:30 PM, 5:00PM, 9:30PM

  Remember your Forgotten Man at this Depression-era classic. Powell and Keeler, Blondell and McMahon—can musicals get better than this?

  Golddiggers of 1935

  2:45PM, 7:15PM, 11PM

  Lullaby of Broadway” makes this the only noir musical in Hollywood history. Do boo Adolphe Menjou, but not during the movie, please.

  Birch, 1972

  THEY DID BOO Adolphe Menjou, first when his name came up on the credits, and again when he appeared in the movie. The booing was loud, long, and enthusiastic, and Birch was determined not to ask why.

  The little man in the wine-colored beret who looked like a garden gnome gave a Bronx cheer when the dapper actor came on the screen. “Right on, Pop,” someone else yelled.

  Birch remembered his cheerful tap-dance in the coffee room the last time she was at Theatre 80 and wondered what would make a nice old man behave like that.

  When the double feature was over and she and Scotty rejoined Patrick in the lobby, he and the little man were deep in conversation.

  “Busby Berkley was a tightass little shit,” the old man said, spittle gathering at the ends of his lips. “Little tin god—the way he treated Judy was a sin and a disgrace. And no,” he added, turning to Patrick, “he wasn’t one a youse, boyo. He liked girls all right—except when they were dancing.”

  Birch didn’t wonder how the old man knew Patrick was gay. Everything about Patrick, from the open way he laughed, to the theatrical gestures, to his graceful walk, to the color-coordinated scarf he so carefully arranged around his neck, to his candid, flirty blue eyes told the world who he was. Birch admired that about Patrick; he never seemed to pretend or to feel ashamed.

  “Remember that number in Golddiggers of ’38?” Patrick turned toward Scotty with a nod, inviting her into the discussion.

  “ ‘I didn’t raise my daughter to be a human harp!’ ” Scotty quoted and both broke up laughing, neither bothering to explain the joke to Birch.

  “Which was the one where Ruby Keeler danced on the giant typewriter?”

  “Ready, Willing, and Able. Ruby’s last Warner’s musical.”

  Birch turned to the old man and asked, “Were you in the movies?”

  “Girlie,” the old man replied, “I started at Metro when its mascot was a parrot. The lion came later, after Sam Goldfish took over.”

  Patrick’s face lit up with a combination of awe and amusement. “That’s Samuel Goldwyn to you and me,” he explained to Birch. Scotty just nodded; of course, she’d already known that.

  “So you were in the Freed Unit,” Patrick said in a breathy voice. “You knew Arthur Freed? And Gene Kelly? And Vincente Minelli?”

  “Freed Unit.” The old man shook his head. “There was no goddamn Freed Unit. That’s all made up by a bunch a people want to think the musical was more than it really was. Freed was a producer like all the rest, nothing special.”

  The man in the beret might as well have tried to convince Patrick that Cary Grant wasn’t gay.

  “Can we buy you a coffee?” Patrick asked. “We usually go to Ratner’s after the movie, and we’d be delighted if you’d—“

  “Sure,” the little man replied. “My name’s Mendy, by the way.” His accent was deepest Bronx and his breath smelled of pipe tobacco. “Short for Mendelson.” He laughed without humor. “Of course, it was changed for the movies. Too long for the marquee, they said. Too Jewish for the marquee, they meant.”

  Once inside the steamy dairy restaurant, he ordered borscht and when it came, sipped it loudly, smacking his lips in obvious appreciation, dunking hard pumpernickel rolls into it until they softened into an orange-colored mass.

  Now Birch, her mouth nicely puckered from juicy dill tomato, asked the question she’d been trying to avoid. “Why did they boo that man? I thought he was okay in the movie.”

  The old man’s answering smile was as tart as the dill tomato. “He was a Friendly.”

  “Yeah,” Patrick said, his lips white with powdered sugar from his blintz. “He ratted on people he thought were Communists.”

  “Only most of them weren’t,” Scotty added. “And even the ones who were—I mean, being a Communist wasn’t illegal when they joined the party back in the thirties.”

  Birch spent the next five minutes being lectured to about the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist, the graylist, Red Channels, a man named Dalton Trumbo, another man named Walter Winchell, and a lot of other ancient history that meant absolutely nothing to her.

  Mendy sipped his black coffee, grimaced, and reached into his pocket for a tiny pillbox. With yellowed smoker’s fingers, he lifted the lid, took out a small white tablet, and slipped it into his coffee. He stirred, drank again, and smiled at Birch, who was watching the operation closely.

  “My grandfather had nitroglycerin pills for his heart,” she said in a low voice. “But his doctor wouldn’t let him drink coffee.”

  “These aren’t nitro, kid,” the old man replied. “Just saccharin. I’m a diabetic, gotta watch my sugar.”

  “Ginger Rogers, too,” Patrick said. “Wasn’t she a Friendly?”

  “No,” Mendy said, his sharp eyes narrowing with bad memories, “that was her ma.” He shook his head. “Poisonous woman. Had a tongue on her so sharp it’s a wonder she still had lips.”

  “I always liked that Gene Kelly tried to fight the blacklist,” Scotty said. “Him and Bogie and Bacall.”

  “Don’t forget the divine John Garfield,” added Patrick. “They all went to Washington to protest the Committee. But then the studios cracked down and they all folded.”

  “The whole thing scared the hell out of Kelly,” Mendy agreed. “The First Amendment committee, Bogie, Bacall, Eddie Robinson. They make their big statement and then come back to Hollywood and find out they’ll be fired unless they tell the world they were duped by the evil Commies. It killed Garfield, the whole mess. Friends on one side, friends on the other, people going to jail—it ate him up inside, and one day he just died.”

  Patrick asked the qu
estion on everyone’s mind: “Did you get called before the Committee, Mendy?”

  “Believe it or not, I did. Went to a couple meetings, next thing I know I’m Public Enemy Number One. They hauled me up there, wanted me to name names. I said, hell no, I wasn’t gonna rat out my friends. Never worked again in the Industry. Not one day’s shooting did I get after that.”

  “Wow,” Birch said, impressed. “But why didn’t you just tell them you were a Communist for a while but you didn’t want to name anybody else?” For some reason, she didn’t mind showing her ignorance before the old man. It was okay to know less than a guy who must be eighty years old.

  “What you have to understand,” Mendy said, “is that you couldn’t do that. Once you answered one question, you had to answer them all. That’s why the Ten took the Fifth.”

  Birch nodded as if this made sense. She supposed she knew what taking the Fifth meant, but who were the Ten?

  “The Hollywood Ten,” Patrick whispered into her ear. “A bunch of writers. They refused to answer and they went to jail.”

  “So if I’d gone in there and said, hell, yeah, I was a Commie and proud of it, or if I’d even said, I was a Commie and I’m ashamed of it now, they’d have asked me for the names of all the people I’d seen at meetings. Everybody I’d ever known in the old days would have been in trouble on account of me.”

  “So you were blacklisted?”

  “Made no sense to me. I mean, sure, some of the writers tried sneaking pinko lines into their movies, but I was a hoofer, for Chrissakes. What was I gonna do, tap Marxist slogans into my scenes?”

  “How did you feel about that?” Birch thought the question was stupid; how would anybody feel about that? But then she realized Patrick already knew the answer, wanted the emotion, not the facts.

  “Kid, what do you love more than anything in the world? How would you feel if you had that taken away from you for no good reason? Like they passed a law saying you’d go to jail if you—”

  Patrick’s blue eyes glinted. “Honey, they did pass a law. I don’t need a blacklist to feel like a second-class citizen—I’m a faggot.”

  Mendy lowered his eyes. “Sorry, kid. I kind of forgot.”

  “That reminds me,” Patrick said with a snap of his slender fingers. “Did you know a dancer named Paul Dixon? He came out to Hollywood from Broadway, they wanted to make him a big star. He started rehearsals for, I think it was—”

  “Summer Stock with Judy Garland,” Mendy replied. “Yeah, I knew him a little. In fact, he and I were up for a couple of the same roles.”

  “Wasn’t there a rumor that he—” Patrick began.

  Mendy nodded. “Yeah, that was almost worse than the blacklist, the way it killed his career. He coulda maybe beaten the Commie rap, but the other—that killed him dead.”

  “What happened?” Scotty asked the question, which meant Birch didn’t have to.

  “Westbrook Pegler—big columnist back then, not as big as Winchell, but big enough, writes a column calling Dixon ‘a mincing twerp with twittering toes.’ ” Mendy raised a bushy gray eyebrow. “I bet you can guess what he meant by that crack.”

  “I could maybe think of something,” Patrick replied, his lips in a thin smile. “It’s one way of saying ‘swishy.’ ”

  “I’m not saying that was the end of his career,” Mendy said, “but it was the end of any talk of leading roles. Your Astaires, your Kellys, your Donald O’Connors—they were all straight boys. You kept the swishers in the chorus, you didn’t team them with Rita Hayworth or Judy Garland.”

  “So we never got to see Paul Dixon show what he could do,” Patrick said wistfully. “Tragic. Really tragic.”

  WED-SAT

  Take Me Out to the Ball Game

  1PM, 5:30PM, 9:30PM

  Fun with Kelly and Sinatra as baseball player vaudevillians. Berkeley directs; Esther Williams stays dry; Betty Garrett and Jules Munshin get the laughs.

  An American in Paris

  3:15PM, 7:15PM

  The Oscar-winning, best musical of all time! Gershwin music, glorious dances, and Minnelli’s amazing color

  palette make this a feast for eyes as well as ears.

  Scotty, present

  “IF I WERE going to die in a movie,” Patrick said as we passed Second Avenue and the former Fillmore East, “I think I’d want it to be An American in Paris. Doubled with Footlight Parade: Jimmy Cagney and Joan Blondell. I love the energy of that movie, the complete conviction that putting on a show, anywhere, anytime, anyplace is just about the best thing anyone can do.”

  It was a measure of our madness in those days that nobody said, “What a sick idea.” We all gave the question serious thought.

  Stanley, Patrick’s on-again-off-again romance, opted for Pal Joey. He had a thing for Kim Novak, whom he declared the closest thing to a transvestite he’d ever seen on the screen.

  “The Bandwagon,” I said without even thinking twice. “Doubled with It’s Always Fair Weather.

  “I want Peter Pan,” Birch said, a dreamy look in her eyes. “I always wanted to be able to fly.”

  “My dear child,” Patrick said in his archest, most condescending tone, “you are speaking of cartoons, which, no matter how much music they contain, will never be taken seriously as musicals.”

  Birch thrust out her chin and said, “What about when Gene dances with Jerry the mouse in Anchors Aweigh?”

  Patrick threw back his head and laughed. “You’ve been teaching her at home, Scotty. Point taken. If the great Gene thinks cartoons belong in musicals, then you shall have Peter Pan if he makes you happy. After all,” he said, throwing out his arms in a campy, graceful dancer’s arc, “that’s what musicals are about: happiness.”

  Birch, 1972

  THE BASEBALL MOVIE was corny, although Birch had liked Betty Garrett, the lady with the husky voice who chased after Frank Sinatra the same way she’d chased after Enid the summer before. It made her blush to think of how young she’d been then, what a fool she’d made of herself. Frank Sinatra looked so different, young and skinny and kind of innocent and sweet, not like he was today, all tough-guy.

  In the intermission she waved at Mendy, who raised his espresso to her. It was too crowded to get to him so she mouthed “Ratner’s” at him several times. He gave a vigorous nod and she turned away, satisfied.

  She hoped it would be okay with the others that she invited him, and then decided, hell, she was as much a part of the group as they were and she could invite whoever she wanted. And besides, they liked hearing his stories, so what was the harm?

  Scotty, present

  THE OLD MAN stood out the first time I noticed him. Not that being old called my attention to him; many old people loved Theatre 80 for taking them back to a time they’d been young and in love.

  But that was what set him apart: He didn’t look happy to be there. He looked grumpy, as if his wife had dragged him to see a musical and he’d grumbled all the way, telling her he couldn’t understand what she saw in a lightweight like Gene Kelly, not a real man like John Wayne or Kirk Douglas.

  I had the whole dialogue worked out in my head. I knew this guy; he was my father, a man who never admitted enjoying anything if he could help it.

  Funny part was, no wife ever showed up to sit next to him.

  When the twenty-minute ballet that closed American in Paris ended, there was silence for a solid minute, and then the theater erupted in loud, sustained applause.

  All except for the man in the last row. He sat stolid, his face a mask of indifference.

  So why had he paid three-fifty for a seat? If he only wanted to warm up, the subway was seventy-five cents.

  Then I noticed something else. His eyes were fixed, not on the screen, but on a man who sat three rows in front of him.

  Mendy. The man’s attention was wholly occupied in watching Mendy, who clapped with apparent enjoyment, oblivious to the fact that he was being stared at so persistently.

  The curtain’s close had
us racing for the lobby, hoping to beat the crowd. The boys were already there, putting on leather jackets and wrapping scarves around necks in preparation for the cold October evening. Patrick was gesticulating, showing Stanley something he’d noticed in Gene’s dancing. Unusually clumsy in his exuberance, Patrick bumped into the man who had stared, and received an unusually harsh epithet in return.

  “Pardon me, Mary,” he said with an archness I would have advised against.

  The old man glared and replied, “You stupid fool. You made me—” He broke off, and I realized with a shock what he’d been about to say: “You made me lose the man I was following.”

  It was true. Mendy, easily visible earlier in his wine-colored beret, had disappeared. I’d had my eye on him, hoping he’d come out with us again for coffee, but he was gone. Had he slipped out to avoid the man who was following him?

  And why would anyone follow him?

  Roberta

  TUES-FRI 11AM, 3:30PM, 8PM

  “Smoke gets in your eyes” when Fred and Irene Dunne run a dress shop in Paris. Ginger’s “hard to handle,” but oh, so much fun to watch.

  Funny Face

  1:15PM, 6:15PM, 10:15PM

  Yes, Fred’s too old for her, but Audrey Hepburn makes us believe. The real gem is the elegantly butch Kay Thompson and the Gershwin score.