But when the number was over, and Anthony rushed backstage, he tackled me in his sweaty costume, pushed me up against a wall, and kissed me with all his might and glory—and I forgot, for just a moment there, about my fears.
“I’m the best,” he growled. “Did you see that out there, baby? I’m the best. I’m the best there ever was!”
“You are, you are! You are the very best there ever was!” I cried, for that is what twenty-year-old girls say to their boyfriends when they are desperately in love.
(To be fair to both Anthony and me, though, he was pretty damn electrifying.)
Then Celia did her striptease—singing plaintively in that gruff Bronx accent of hers about how bad she wanted to have a baby—and she had the audience simply netted. She somehow managed to look adorable and pornographic at the same time, which is not easily done. By the end of her dance, the audience was hooting and hollering like drunks at a burlesque show. And it wasn’t just the men who had hot pants for her, either; I swear I heard some female voices in the cheers.
Then there was the pleasant hum of intermission—the men lighting cigarettes in the lobby, and the press of satiny women in the bathroom. Billy told me to go out and mingle among the crowd, to get a feeling for their reactions. “I would do it myself,” he said, “but too many of them know me. I don’t want their polite reactions; I want their real reactions. Look for real reactions.”
“What am I looking for?” I asked.
“If they’re talking about the play, that’s good. If they’re talking about where they parked their cars, that’s bad. But mostly, watch for signs of pride. When an audience is happy with what they’re watching, they always look so goddamn proud of themselves. As if they made the play themselves, the selfish bastards. Go out there and tell me if they’re looking proud of themselves.”
I pushed my way through the crowd and examined the happy, rosy faces all around me. Everyone looked rich, well fed, and deeply satisfied. They were chattering nonstop about the play—about Celia’s figure, about Edna’s charm, about the dancers, about the songs. They were repeating bits of jokes to each other, and making each other laugh all over again.
“I’ve never seen so many people looking so proud of themselves,” I reported back to Billy.
“Good,” he said. “They damn well should be.”
He gave another speech to the cast before the second curtain—a shorter speech this time.
“The only thing that matters now is what you leave ’em with,” he said. “If you drop this thing in the middle of the second act, they’ll forget that they ever loved you. You’ve gotta earn it all over again now. When you hit that finale, it can’t just be good; it’s got to be stupendous. Keep it zinging, kids.”
Act 2, scene 1: The law-and-order mayor has come to Mrs. Alabaster’s mansion, intent on shutting down the illegal gambling operation and bordello she is reputed to now be running. He comes in disguise, but Lucky Bobby is onto him, and gives warning. The showgirls quickly put maids’ costumes over their spangled leotards, and the croupiers disguise themselves as butlers. The customers pretend to be visiting the mansion for a garden tour, and lace tablecloths are thrown over the gambling tables. Mr. Herbert, as the blind pickpocket, politely takes the mayor’s coat and then helps himself to the man’s wallet. Mrs. Alabaster invites the mayor to join her for a spot of tea in the solarium, discreetly dropping a stack of gambling chips down her bodice in the process.
“You’ve got yourself a pretty high-grade house here, Mrs. Alabaster,” says the mayor while peering around the place, looking for signs of illegal activity. “Real fancy-like. Did your family come over on the Mayflower, or something?”
“Dear me, no,” says Edna in her highest-tone accent while fanning herself elegantly with a deck of poker cards. “My family always had their own boats.”
Toward the end of the show, when Edna sang her heartbreaking ballad, “I’m Considering Falling in Love,” the theater was so silent it could have been empty. And when she finished the last wistful note, they got up out of their seats and cheered for her. They made Edna return to the stage for four bows after that song, before the play could continue. I’d heard the word “showstopper” before but had never really understood what it meant in actual practice.
Edna Parker Watson had literally stopped the show.
When it came time for the big-finish number of “Let’s Make Ours a Double,” I grew annoyed and distracted by watching Arthur Watson. He was trying to keep up with the dance steps of the other cast members, and making a poor job of it. Thankfully, his awfulness didn’t seem to disturb the audience too much, and you couldn’t hear his tuneless singing over the orchestra. Anyway, the audience was singing and clapping along with the chorus (“Sin babies, gin babies / Come right on in, babies!”). The Lily Playhouse glittered with a sheen of pure, shared joy.
Then it was over.
Curtain calls followed—so many curtain calls. Bows and more bows. Bouquets of flowers thrown upon the stage. Then finally the houselights came up, and the audience gathered their coats and were gone like smoke.
The whole exhausted lot of us, cast and crew, wandered out on that empty stage and just stood there for a moment in the dust of what we had just created—speechless in the staggering incredulity of what we had just seen ourselves do.
—
From Nichols T. Flint, in the New York Daily News:
Playwright and director William Buell has made a sly move to cast Edna Parker Watson in such a light role. Mrs. Watson throws herself into this candy-coated but clever play with the cheerful spirit of a natural-born good sport. In so doing, she has covered herself with glory while elevating the players around her. You cannot ask for a more entertaining spectacle than this—not in these dark times. Go see this play and forget your troubles. Mrs. Watson reminds us why we should import more actors from London to New York—and perhaps not let them leave!
—
We spent the rest of the night at Sardi’s, waiting for the reviews to come in and drinking ourselves half blind in the process. Needless to say, the Lily Players were not a theater group normally accustomed to waiting for reviews at Sardi’s—or to getting reviews at all—but this had not been a normal show.
“It all depends on what Atkinson and Winchell say,” Billy told us. “If we can nail down both the high-end praise and the low-end praise, we’ll have a hit.”
“I don’t even know who Atkinson is,” Celia said.
“Well, babycakes, as of tonight he knows who you are—that much I can promise you. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”
“Is he famous? Does he have money?”
“He’s a newspaperman. He’s got no money. He’s got nothing but power.”
Then I watched a remarkable thing happen. Olive approached Billy, carrying two martinis in her hands. She offered one to him. He took it in surprise, but his surprise only deepened when she raised her glass to him in a toast.
“You’ve done ably well with this show, William,” she said. “Very ably well.”
He burst out laughing. “Very ably well! I will take that, coming from you, as the highest praise ever given to a director!”
Edna was the last cast member to arrive. She’d been mobbed at the stage door by admirers who wanted her autograph. She could have dodged them just by going upstairs to her apartment and waiting it out, but she’d indulged the populace with her presence. Then she must have taken a quick bath and changed clothes, because she walked in looking clean and fresh, and wearing the most expensive-looking little blue suit I’d ever seen (only expensive looking if you knew what you were looking for, which I did), with a fox stole thrown casually over one shoulder. On her arm was that good-looking idiot husband of hers, who had almost ruined our finale with his terrible dancing. He was beaming as though he were the star of the night.