The Broadway Anthology | Page 7

THE HEADLINER
I was not raised for vaudeville.?Father and mother were veteran legits;?They loved the Bard and the "Lady of Lyons."?I was born on a show boat on the Cumberland;?I was carried on as a child?When the farm girl revealed her shame?On the night of the snowstorm.?The old folks died with grease paint on their faces.?I did a little of everything?Even to staking out a pitch in a street fair.?Hiram Grafter taught me to ballyhoo?And to make openings.?I stole the business of Billy Sunday?And imitated William Jennings Bryan.?I became famous in the small towns.?One day Poli heard me--?He's the head of the New England variety circuit.--?"Cul," he said, "you are a born monologist.?Where you got that stuff I don't know,?But you would be a riot in the two-a-day.?Quit this hanky-panky?And I'll make you a headliner."?Well, I fell for his line of talk?Like the sod busters had fallen for mine.?Aaron Hoffman wrote me a topical monologue;?Max Marx made me a suit of clothes;?And Lew Dockstader wised me up?On how to jockey my laughs.?I opened in Hartford;?Believe me, I was some scream.?I gave them gravy, and hokum,?And when they ate it up I came through?With the old jasbo,?Than which there is nothing so efficacious?In vaudeville, polite or otherwise.?The first thing I did I hollered for more dough,?And Poli says:?"That's what I get for feeding you meat,?But you are a riot all right, all right,?So I guess you are on for more kale."?I kept getting better.?I got so's I could follow any act at all?And get my laughs.?And he who getteth his laughs?Is greater than he who taketh a city.?At last the Palace Theatre sent for me?And I signed up for a week.?They kept me two.?I am a headliner;?I stand at the corner of Forty-seventh Street?And Little Old Broadway;?Throw out my chest,?Call the agents and vaudeville magnates?By their first names.?I am a HEADLINER with a home in Freeport.
MURDOCK PEMBERTON
THE SCREEN
From midnight till the following noon?I stand in shadow,?Just a splotch of white,?Unnoted by the cleaning crew?Who've spent their hours of toil?That I might live again.?Yet they hold no reverence for my charms,?And if they pause amid their work?They do not glance at me;?All their admiration, all their awe,?Is for the gold and scarlet trappings of the home?That's built to house my wonders;?Or for the gorgeous murals all around,?Which really, after all,?Were put in place as most lame substitutes,?Striving to soothe the patron's ire?For those few moments when my face is dark.?Yes, men have built a palace sheltering me,?And as the endless ocean washes on its stretch of beach?The tides of people flow to me.
All things I am to everyone;?The newsboys, shopgirls,?And all starved souls?Who've clutched at life and missed,?See in my magic face,?The lowly rise to fame and palaces,?See virtue triumph every time?And rich and wicked justly flayed.?Old men are tearful?When I show them what they might have been.?And others, not so old,?Bask in the sunshine of my fairy tales.?The lovers see new ways to woo;?And wives see ways to use old brooms.?Some nights I see the jeweled opera crowd?Who seem aloof but inwardly are fond of me?Because I've caught the gracious beauty of their pets.?Then some there are who watch my changing face?To catch new history's shadow?As it falls from day to day.?And at the noiseless tramp of soldier feet,?In time to music of the warring tribes,?The shadow men across my face?Seem living with the hope or dread?Of those who watch them off to wars.
In sordid substance I am but a sheet,?A fabric of some fireproof stuff.?And yet, in every port where ships can ride,?In every nook where there is breath of life,?Intrepid men face death?To catch for me the fleeting phases of the world?Lest I lose some charming facet of my face.?And all the masters of all time?Have thrummed their harps?And bowed their violins?To fashion melodies that might be played?The while I tell my tales.?O you who hold the mirror up to nature,?Behold my cosmic scope:?I am the mirror of the whirling globe.
BROADWAY--NIGHT
I saw the rich in motor cars?Held in long lines?Until cross-streams of cars flowed by;?I saw young boys in service clothes?And flags flung out from tradesmen's doors;?I saw some thousand drifting men?Some thousand aimless women;?I saw some thousand wearied eyes?That caught no sparkle from the myriad lights?Which blazoned everywhere;?I saw a man stop in his walk?To pet an old black cat.
MATINEE
They pass the window?Where I sit at work,?In silks and furs?And boots and hats?All of the latest mode.?They chatter as they pass?Of various things?But hardly hear the words they speak?So tense are they?Upon a life they know begins for them?At 2:15.
Within the theatre?The air is pungent with the mixed perfumes,?More scents than ever blew from Araby.?And there's a rapid hum?Of some six hundred secrets;?Then sudden hush?As tongues and violins cease.
The play is on.
There is a hastening of the beat?Of some