Down the same corridor, a right turn into another, wider corridor of dressing rooms, running parallel to the stage—I think; this was a little disorienting.
Corridors and dressing rooms were alive with people—tonight’s performers, I supposed. I walked along, glancing into the dressing rooms, edging past and around the people in the corridor, fascinated. Mostly they ignored me, but nodded if our eyes met. Was it okay to glance into their dressing rooms? I didn’t know how else to find the Dove Lady. Then—sitting at her dressing table, her back to the corridor but watching for me in her mirror—here she was, dressed for the street. Against a wall stood three large cube-shaped birdcages covered with a cloth. I stopped at her door, she said, “Come on in,” and I thanked her for seeing me. “And what can I do for you?”
“There’s a vaudeville act supposed to be in New York this month sometime. I have to see it, but I don’t know where they’ll be. Or when. Or how to find out.”
She waited a moment to see if there was any more; then: “You know what the act’s called, I trust.”
“Tessie and Ted.”
She thought about it, shook her head. “Don’t know them. What’s their act?”
“Well, she sings, I think. And he plays the piano, and dances.”
“And how come you picked me?”
“Well, I had to choose from the cyclists, Joe Cook, Kraus and Raus, and the rest. Your photo looked the kindest.”
“Oh, it does! And I am!” She smiled now. “Well, shouldn’t be hard to find out.” She picked up a copy of Variety from her table, opened it, turned pages, then folded it back to a page packed with small type, and handed it to me. “Take a look; you can see for yourself if they’re on.”
Bills Next Week in Vaudeville Theaters Playing 3 or Less Shows Daily. All houses open for the week with Monday matinees when not otherwise listed. Below this the page was dense with small type, and compact with symbols. Theaters listed as Orpheum without any further distinguishing descriptions are on the Orpheum Circuit. Theaters listed with S-C following name and in brackets, usually Empress, are on the Sullivan-Considine Circuit . . . (P) Pantage Circuit . . . (Loew) Marcus Loew Circuit . . . An entire world I knew nothing about.
New York was the first heading, naturally. And the first theater listed was this one, the Fifth Avenue. Beginning this last Monday: The Doyle Family . . . Kraus and Raus . . . Smith, Smith, Smith and the Smithies . . . Vernon and Vera . . . The Back Fence Banshees . . . Madam Zelda . . . The Dove Lady . . . Joe Cook . . . Merlin the Great.
At the American (Loew), another long list of acts . . . another at the Colonial (U.B.O.) . . . and on and on, dozens and dozens of vaudeville acts on this week in New York, Brooklyn, the Bronx. But no Tessie and Ted. Following New York, the listing became alphabetical, acts opening this last Monday in Atlanta, Georgia . . . Atlantic City (Young’s Pier), and in Oakland, Plattsburg, Portland, Pueblo . . .
The listing continued onto the next page . . . and onto still a third: hundreds and hundreds—thousands, for all I could tell—of vaudeville acts playing this week all over the United States, more than anyone could read.
“Find them?”
“Not in New York.” I offered her paper back.
“Keep it if you want, I’ve read it.”
“I never imagined there were so many vaudeville acts. And I’d like to see every one of them.”
“Oh no you wouldn’t. Those are the big-time listings, the two-a-day or three-a-day. There are even more small-time acts—six, seven shows a day. Which is murder, believe you me. And there’s medium small-time”—she was leaning toward her mirror, turning her face, lifting her jaw, inspecting—“that’s four, five shows a day. And big small-time, little big-time, medium big-time, big big-time.” She laughed, glancing at me in her mirror. “I’m kidding, but there’s something like two thousand vaudeville houses in the U.S. of A. and that means all kinds of vaudeville, and a lot you don’t ever want to see. New York gets the best, naturally. If you like vaudeville, you’re in the right place. You sure your act got to New York?”
I nodded.
“Well.” A final glance at her mirror; then she turned off its lights and stood up, leaning forward to brush off the front of her dress. “I’m going home now. Meaning my New York boarding house. If you want to come along, somebody there may know about Tessie and Ted.”
“I’d like to,” I said. She lifted a corner of the cloth covering the cages, I heard a kind of rustling, and she said, “Good night, chickees,” and we left. Outside, she walked straight across the sidewalk to a waiting hansom cab. “Evenin’, Miz Boothe.”
“Good evening, Charley. It’s home sweet home tonight.” And she climbed in while I trotted around to the other side. The driver clucked his horse awake, flicked the reins, and we pulled out into Twenty-eighth Street, heading west. “I don’t like the automobiles,” the Dove Lady said. “They stink.”
“Yes. But so do the horses.”
“They stink nice, though.”
“Yeah.” I thought so too. “I like the hansoms. Nice and slow so you can really see things.”
“And they give you time to think. What’s your name?”
“Simon Morley. Si.”
“Okay, Si. And I’m Maude. Maude Boothe.”
We clattered over the bricklike stone paving blocks under the Sixth Avenue El and its overhead station, then over to Seventh Avenue, and as we turned into it, I think my face must have shown something, because there up ahead stood Penn Station in all its majesty. I sat forward to take it in, great tall windows shining on the night. “Lovely, isn’t it,” Maude Boothe said, and I nodded yes, oh yes. “I came in there last time,” she said, “and it’s beautiful inside. It makes you feel good, proud to live in New York.” I nodded again: we were passing it now, my head turning to watch its white newness slide by.
Somewhere in the Thirties we turned west into a long block of four-story brownstones all more or less identical. We stopped in front of one, beside a streetlamp, and I sat forward making motions of paying. She waved me away, and I got out under the light, waiting to help her down. Two men in button sweaters and caps sat on the stoop watching us: one elderly or old, the other maybe forty. The cab clopping away, Maude Boothe turned to them. “Either of you ever hear of an act, Tessie and Ted?”
They thought, then shook their heads. “Knew Tessie Burns once,” the old man said. “Burns and Burns, the House-Afire Act. No Tessie and Ted. What’s their act?”