The easy, lazy, mildly gossipy talk resumed. I heard about a vaudevillian called Sparrow; they all seemed to know or had heard of him. His act was unique. He stood up on the stage and tossed oranges, tomatoes, and other soft fruit out to the audience. Then he’d put a fork in his mouth, and the audience threw all that garbage back at him while he tried to catch it on his fork. He’d miss, and in no time his suit and face were dripping. And always, some of the audience knew his act, and brought along hard stuff like potatoes and turnips and threw them. Threw good, a lot of them, fast, hard, and right at his face. So he had to catch it. On his fork. If he missed, as he sometimes did, too bad; black eye, bloody nose. He carried his own floor cloth, and wore a dress suit made of black and white oilcloth. And when he came off, walking along backstage toward his dressing room, he got a clear path.
Another act was Sherman and Morissey, who did a comic trapeze act in funny costume. What they did was fall. Off a six-foot-high wire onto the stage. Singly and together. Then they’d get mad, and knock each other around, and fall some more. And the falls were real, no way to fake them. They hurt so much that they couldn’t take it for more than eight minutes; the shortest act in vaudeville, Ben said. Back in their dressing room, it was liniment, bandages, and pulling splinters out of each other, getting into shape for the next show.
I must have looked astonished, and Dolores smiled and said, “It’s vaudeville, Si. And it’s better to be in it than out.” That led the talk into failures, people who could no longer get bookings, the worst thing that could happen. A man most of them knew had gradually slipped from medium- to small-time, and then into no bookings at all. Friends had coached him then into being a store-window dummy. He’d stand in store windows, face whitened and rouged, motionless as a real dummy. Then he’d rap on the window at a likely passerby, who would stop to stare, and he’d make a stiff mechanical bow, with a jerky mechanical smile. Then absolutely still and motionless again. People would gather, rapping on the window at him, boys making faces trying to force him to smile, and he’d point to a sign in the window advertising something inside. “It wasn’t show business,” Al said, “but it was close as he could get,” and everyone nodded.
Something strange happened then. Young Van Hoven began to talk, and he went on and on and on, no one interrupting. As well as I can remember, this is what he said. I wouldn’t have blamed anyone who got up and left, though no one did, but I listened and could have gone on listening all night long.
“It’s hard,” he murmured, voice genuinely sympathetic to the ex-vaudevillian store-window dummy. “I was in the show business and I wasn’t putting it over either. Misery loves company, so I joined a partner who also didn’t have any money. I was broke all winter, and it was one of Chicago’s hardest. We roomed in South Clark Street near the alley of the stage door of the old Olympic, and talk about Ding Bat not knowing the family above—it’s a joke!” (I have no idea what that meant.) “The landlady never saw us, and we never saw her: when you look like we looked, you didn’t want to see anyone.
“We rehearsed a burlesque magic act, and put it together in a couple of days in our room by the aid of gaslight. That was the only way you could even find yourself in our room night or day, and we slept all day to try to forget we ought to eat.” Dippy smiled. “Now sometimes when I’m eating big meals I wonder if I’m awake.
“My partner, Jules, poor old Jules! He was sick and he was getting bald-headed. He wanted to give up, but one day I landed a job for three days for twelve dollars for the team, and our supper Sunday night. It was a German joint, and Jules was German, so we put it over. And on Sunday I ate like I eat now.
“The next week we played a joint on the far north side, got our money, paid a few debts, ate a couple of times, and were broke again. Couldn’t even get our laundry. Got a job then, supposed to pay us twenty dollars a week, and we had to walk to it; no carfare, nearly five miles. When we stepped into the place the bartender said, ‘Harding sends me two men? I don’t want men, I won’t play men, I want women, my audience wants women!’ Well, I don’t want to say I’m so stuck on show business that tears came to my eyes, but they did—for another reason! I begged this big dub to please play us, as I was sick and Jules was sick, and I showed him Jules’s hair. I did everything until finally he did play us. We flopped and the two old soubrettes he had on the bill with us were a knockout. So I knew the fellow was right, and I hurried out to a place on North Halsted Street and I actually begged for a job. He gave in, and I rushed back to get Jules.
“Well, we went to work for eighteen dollars for the team, and supper on Sunday night again. Booked direct, no commission. The place had a small German stock company. Our double-up magic act was a riot, but my own single was a fliv. I felt pretty blue because the manager wanted to keep Jules, and join up with the stock company. But I almost knew Jules would stick with me, and he did. But the next week was the finish: we both got canned. It was the first time since we were together. I’d often gone it alone, and when I saw the stage manager talking to my partner with some money in his hand, I knew it was finished with the two of us as a team. I stepped outside, on that cold rainy April night, and it just seemed I never could make good, and my good suit and cuff buttons and everything were in soak. I was desperate, and went back into the front of the house where Mr. Murphy, one of the owners, was sitting with two ladies. I pleaded with him to please keep both of us boys, and I showed him my clothes. He could easily see I didn’t have on all a human being should have. So he let me finish the week out alone, at twelve dollars.
“I did it, and did it hard. I drew fifty cents every night, and Jules would meet me after his turn, and we’d eat, and just go to sleep back at the boarding house. The next day I’d walk back to save carfare. Well, the next week Jules and I split up; he thought he could do better with a soubrette. So I was flat in Chicago once more. Jules went with a turkey burlesque. He took my muffler and a shirt, and all I had left was a summer suit of old clothes, and my trunk.
“Well, Williams of Williams and Healy put me next to a wagon-show job, and another friend bought my ticket. I jumped to Boswell, Indiana, to Adam Fetzer’s one-ring wagon show, and believe me, it was some bum circus. The room where we slept was upstairs, and the big top, or the big tent, was laid out on the floor, and it was full of ropes. Well, you can see what a chance you had to sleep lying on a lot of ropes, so I decided to move out. Now, Fetzer’s had a lion in a big cage with two partitions in it, and only one lion. So I slept in the empty partition. I got some horse blankets and all was fine. The other fellows thought I was swellheaded because I was sleeping outside with a lion instead of them.
“Fetzer was afraid I was a lemon, though, and I thought I was, too. So he made me do extra work like shining harness, painting wagons, and doing everything he could think of. And he was a good thinker. So I did as he thought best, because I was up against it. Nine dollars was the limit with that show, and all I got was seven. But I did my best. I fed the lion, and he wasn’t like a regular lion that got up early. He was old and nearly ready to die. Still, he was the best thing in the circus, so you can see what kind of circus it was. I used to have to wake him up to eat, and grind his meat, too, and when we gave a special show in the sideshow, I used to have to poke him with a hot iron to make him growl a little. A couple of times we nearly got run out of town for doing that. I felt sorry for poor old Jake, but I was in no position to pity a lion.