All That Glitters Page 9

  Babe certainly was having a time of it with her Tin King, and the press had a field day. Her swain lapped up the headlines gladly, seemingly bent on keeping their names and pictures in the papers. They called him “Rollo” of the Argentine, and the “Calf of the Pampas,” suitable epithets, both. No beauty, Rollo was short and plump, he had a little twist of a mustache, and he enjoyed bowing and kissing ladies’ hands, Alphonse and Gaston rolled up in one. (Maude Antrim was heard to say that he looked like a cross between a May Company floorwalker and Thomas E. Dewey.) It was reported that in one month he’d sent Babe over seven thousand dollars’ worth of flowers. Harking back to earlier days when Babe was seen up and down Broadway in the limousine belonging to the butter-and-egg man from Ho-Ho-Kus, she was now to be viewed everywhere riding in Rollo’s Rolls-Royce, an amusing euphony which got plenty of play in the world press—which was exactly what Frankie wanted. For, despite all the doomsayers of Hollywood, he was determined to star Babe in his production of Camellia, a send-up version of the Dumas classic.

  The matter of the feud between Babe and Garbo, reports of which filled the columns of Photoplay and Screenland—this, too, was the promotion of studio flacks. It all started with this hilarious take-off on Garbo’s famous Camille. If she had never played another role, her interpretation of the worldly, doomed courtesan would assure her a ranking place in cinema history, and the decision to spoof the film had obvious merits so far as the box office went. The by-now-hoary work of Alexandre Dumas fils had provided cinema fodder for the great Bernhardt when she was in her seventies; her death scene in the flickering celluloid is a moment of high camp in the way she spins her body like a top into the arms of her lover and then expires, clunk! Others had played the fated lady, too, but Greta Garbo had made it her own, and fifty years later there still is nothing dated or stagy in her performance—her every moment rings true and sure, imbued with a tragic irony. It was never Babe’s intention to hold her fellow artist up to ridicule, but merely to satirize the kind of archaic, hothouse flavor of the original work. With her familiar bag of tricks—the batting eyelashes, the rolling hips, the barroom tones—with the exaggerated curves of the period costumes, the whole overblown concept that made Camellia what it was, she produced a prodigious hit that remains the high point of her art.

  It was also one of Hollywood’s first runaway productions; not a foot of film was rolled in town but, rather, all was shot at the Charabusco Studios in Mexico City, where Frank had set the star up in the villa of an ex-president of the country who’d taken it on the lam when a four-million-dollar deficit was suddenly discovered.

  The country was delighted to play host to America’s famous blonde and gave her a warm welcome. Sí Babe! Sí-sí-sí! Qué muchacha allegra! Olé Babe!

  “O-lay yourself,” came the goof-retort.

  This “south of the border” period of Babe’s life marked the beginning of her whole later epoch, in which the canon was fully laid down that was to produce the legend. First came Camellia, then a new nightclub act, carefully planned and overseen by Frankie, and it was no shock to him at least when Variety’s report under “New Acts” hailed the appearance of Miss Babe Austrian at Las Floridianas in Acapulco as a noteworthy event.

  The review appeared on the usual Wednesday, in typical Varietyese:

  That blonde bombshell and glittering symbol of old-time show business, the intrepid and still-sexy Babe Austrian, hit the stage of Las Floridianas like a bolt of lightning. Spanked out in a blue spangled dress, coiffed and gemmed like the queen she is, she took stage center and belted number after number for a fast-paced fifty minutes that had the audience falling over itself to give her kudos. The array of flowers at the last were enough to see the Ali Khan married again. Among old faves were the Babe’s trademark, “Windy City Blues,” as well as “She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor,” “I’se a-Muggins” (a borrow from old Thomas “Fats” Waller himself), and “When It’s Bedtime Down in Boom-Boom Town,” and certainly not for the kiddies’ ears.

  Wearing a collection of dazzling gowns that would turn the eye of Josephine Baker, our Babe paraded herself before a hosanna-laden audience of international figures who were spellbound by the songs, dances, and yaks being handed them by this trouper, looking younger than springtime and twice as fresh. Her curtain speech is a masterpiece of witty rhetoric, it warms the heart and brings the act to a smash finale. Talk is she’ll next take it to London then Europe. On hand was Old Faithful himself, Frank Adonis, pulling the strings and bringing us a Babe we’ve hungered for. Oldtimers wept sentimental tears while tyro viewers applauded themselves silly. New Yorkers, cry your hearts out, ’cause the word is Babe ain’t a-comin’ home.

  The review was signed “O’Brien,” Variety’s Mexico City stringer and an astute critic. People began sitting up to take notice. If Babe Austrian had retired, or in all seriousness intended to, that retirement had now ended and she was back doing business—that’s show business, folks! And it was that same act that was to form the cornerstone of the remainder of Babe’s life and career, which to my mind were one.

  By the time Babe had fully reemerged, it was the spring of 1963. That winter I’d gone to North Africa to do a picture, and when I was finished shooting Jenny joined me in Morocco while I polished off my loops in a dingy sound studio in Madrid. Then we ventured across the Mediterranean, eventually heading for Rome, which at that time seemed to be the heart of the whole movie industry, and where Frank’s other clients, Kit Carson and April Rains, were already working on a major spectacle. It was no secret to anyone that Frank and April were seriously involved, and clearly there was trouble waiting in the wings. But as Jenny and I followed the spring north into Sicily, all was yellow daffodils and happy prospects. We put up at the Risorgimento in Taormina, waiting for Frank to arrive in Rome, where we were to join him. But first he had to stop in London to see to matters concerning Babe Austrian, the final, carefully planned step in her magical restoration.

  Those were the four months which later became known to us as The Summer of the Purple Grape, token to the amounts of red Italian Valpolicella, Barolo, and Chianti Reserva that were consumed. Taken all in all, it was an unforgettable time, as bad as it was good, and we all came in for our share of headlines. When September came round, it found me on the Dalmatian Coast making another picture. Jenny was still with me, and when we finished we headed for London, where we sublet a coldwater flat behind Harrod’s while I waited out yet another film, to begin in Paris late that Winter. In the meantime Frank had arrived in England with Babe in tow, prior to her opening at the Café de Paris. All London was geared up for Babe’s appearance, Frankie having managed his promotional work well; the advance notices from Mexico and Lisbon were sufficient to stand the town on its ear. This was the time of the Beatles’ invasion from Merseyside, the time of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “Puff (The Magic Dragon),” of miniskirts and Carnaby Street.

  And now into the very heart of swinging London stepped that artifact of another, earlier age, Miss Babe Austrian. What had Frankie done? Why had he decided to bring her into that city at just that time? The international headliners of the period were the same ones we’d been seeing for years—Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Danny Kaye, Judy at the Palladium—those surefire headliners who were like money in the bank to their managers, the scent of whom was like a sizzling T-bone steak to the public at large. Oh yes, Master Frank knew well what he was up to that winter when he came across with the Babe.

  These are some of the things he did to promote his star—the same old star, but a whole new ballgame. First, he four-walled the old Maiden Lane Cinema for a month’s period prior to Babe’s club opening. He rented the space and put on his own sensational show, bringing to London ten of Babe’s best-known films, all the way from Broadway Blue Eyes, her first hit, to Fiji Fifi and the ill-fated Windy City Blues, along with the justly famous Sheik of Araby, not forgetting the three well-beloveds with Crispin Antrim, Pretty Polly, Delicious, and Manhat
tan Madness. Also to be viewed were Peaches and Cream, USO Girl, and Mademoiselle de Paree, those latter-day efforts that showed Babe in glorious Technicolor, films that hadn’t played London since the war. (Noticeably absent was Dixie Belle, her biggest flop.) All these to play simultaneously with the opening of Camellia in the West End. And to several evening screenings at the Maiden Lane Frankie invited a symposium of cinema buffs and critics who were admirers of Babe’s film work and voluble on the subject of her special brand of comedy.

  With Babe were her pianist, Waldo Dacey, who was to remain with her for the rest of her career, along with Pepe Ventura, her new manager-cum-hair-stylist, part Mexican, part Arapaho Indian, who would also be at her side as long as she appeared in public—and after. These days she was rehearsing long hours for her club opening, but Frankie let it be known that on one or two occasions she would be on hand to reply to questions from the audience. Since the Maiden Lane was now on its last legs, having suffered considerable damage during the war from a buzz bomb, Frankie brought together a group of preservationists who formally declared the building a historic landmark. He plastered its front with the most garish display of Babe hoopla, including a ten-foot replica of the star in her costume from The Sheik of Araby, whose form both undulated and spoke in those inimitable accents. Londoners went wild.

  Next Frank got her on the BBC. Staid old British Broadcasting played host for Everybody’s Babe, she was interviewed for all to see, and the Queen Mum was quoted as saying, “She seems quite a sweet old dear to me.” Babe herself cut the piece out of the paper and stuck it to her dressing-room mirror.

  Jenny and I went to the opening as Frank’s guests. We even sat at his table with Frances, who’d flown over for the event. Among other ringsiders we spotted the Snowdons, Charlie and Oona Chaplin, Josephine Baker, in from Paris, Grace Kelly there with the Prince, Liz and Burton, the Duke de Vedura, the Marquis de Cuevas—name them, they all came. Babe Austrian was hot stuff.

  She even got away with that corniest of show-biz tricks, the sing-along. “Come on, louder, you guys, I can’t hear you!” She had them in a frenzy. Later, in the Green Room, the line waiting to pay their respects to her was as star-studded as the ringside had been. Everyone wanted to have a word with her, and the social invitations came fast and furious. Frankie was on hand, making sure the right photographs were taken of Babe with all the right people, celebrities and royals alike. It was a night of nights.

  It was the same thing all over again when she got to Paris months later. Wisely, Frankie had booked the Trocadéro well in advance, the best room Paris had to offer; and, equally wisely, Babe had been boning up on her French, and the place was flabbergasted when she waltzed out and began with her Mademoiselle de Paree brand of parlez-vous.

  Everything fit together now—it was all gravy, there for the lapping up. But, as so often happens in the best of times, it was just here that fate chose to play the lousy trick she’d been saving up for so long, the blow that was designed to knock Babe Austrian back on her uppers. Everyone remembers that terrible accident.

  Taking his cue from the reception at the Command Performance, when Babe had created such a sensation on the ramp, Frankie had worked out more or less the same staging for Paris. There was a pozzarella, or horseshoe ramp, built out into the audience, where she could really get close to the paying customers. She always loved working the pozzarella with its twin rows of bulb lights, and it was here that she met disaster. Her habit was to move out and around the ramp, accepting the flowers and tributes that enthusiastic fans and patrons thrust at her, leaning down to touch their outstretched hands, returning the flow of love and affection she received from them. Nightly it was her great moment and she always made the most of it.

  One night, a Saturday, there was a man in the audience, a beefy cheese salesman from Düsseldorf who’d had a bit too much schnapps, and when he put his big mitt out to her she accepted it as she usually did. He took her hand in his and held on tight, until she felt herself being pulled off balance; he went on pulling, and a cry of surprise and alarm filled the room as she fell forward and landed with a crash in the pit.

  Screams rang against the ceiling; the audience jumped to its feet and began to mill, and for a moment it looked as if there might be a panic and stampede. Frankie savagely pushed his way to the spot where she lay with her injured back, knocking aside one helpful man who was trying to lift her, shouting, “Don’t move her! Don’t move her!” She lay there on the floor until the house was emptied, when she could be safely moved out on a stretcher. She couldn’t talk, the pain was so great, and the doctor gave her shots to knock her out. Next morning the disheartening word flashed round the world—Babe Austrian had suffered a broken back. Her performing days were now over, she was finished. That’s what they said: show biz had seen the last of Babe Austrian, and she of it.

  Everyone believed it; everyone except Babe, that is, and the astonishing fact is that exactly nine weeks later to the day, Babe Austrian again appeared before another select audience at the same Trocadéro. She played the show in a plaster cast, starting at her neck and going clear to the base of her spine, and when she came onstage in the wheeled contraption Frankie had had constructed, she delivered the wisecrack that was to follow her the rest of her life. Slapping her hands on her hips and giving the audience a wink, she said, “Well, ya can’t say I didn’t fall for ya.” The place went wild. Josephine, La Bakair, was again in the audience and she stood up from her seat to pay Babe the tribute that by now is an old story. Paris took her to its Gallic heart, and she ran at the Troc for a total of one hundred and forty-five consecutive performances.

  It took another seven months for her injury to mend, yet she never missed a performance that whole summer. And when it came time to tape the show, as had been arranged by Frank for Euro-Television, she performed without a hitch. When it was over, she collapsed in her dressing room and Frankie sent her down to Lausanne to have the rest she deserved. And when she finally returned to the U.S.A. a year later, and put her little size sixes down on American soil, she grinned at the battery of TV cameras and said, “Find me a place to lay my head, boys,” show business was changed, too.

  “I’ve come back to separate the men from the boys and the sheep from the wolves,” she kidded. It was not merely the catch-phrase of twenty years ago, but a political referendum. Cleopatra’s triumphal entry into Rome was no more rousing an event than Babe’s reappearance in New York City on that warm spring day in 1965. And as Julius Caesar himself had engineered the one, Frank Adonis had brought off the other; it’s no secret that he was the moving force behind the wild and frantic tribute New York paid to Babe after all her years away. If people thought that Frank had lost his knack, that he didn’t have the know-how anymore, they needed only to observe the frenzy that was whipped up in the streets of Manhattan for the granddaughter of an Alsatian immigrant and a Norwegian milkmaid.

  Babe arrived in New York on May 10, 1965, when the France steamed up the Hudson and docked at the old Normandie berth, and Babe was swung from “A” Deck in a floral-decorated breeches buoy, to be deposited on the pier, where Mayor Lindsay presented her with the traditional welcoming Key to the City. “Look out, boys, Babe’s back in town,” she said, brandishing the giant beribboned key for the newsreels. “With this thing I guess I can open any door in Manhattan.”

  And she was, for a certainty, back in town. Now the lady had come home to reclaim what was rightfully hers, the hurrahs of her fans of almost forty years. The reporters were fascinated and full of their typically “of interest to our readers” questions.

  “Hey, Babe, how long have you been abroad, anyway?”

  “All my life, sonny, all my life.”

  “Just how old are you, Babe?”

  “Old enough to know better and young enough to enjoy it.”

  “Are you home for good?”

  “Good or bad, whichever turns up first.”

  Babe had arrived in New York to find Camellia playin
g all over town. The enormous success of the revival of this film could only have delighted her, and the movie box-office lines worked in concert with her new Broadway show, one of Frank’s devising, that incredibly successful one-woman evening called My Head on a Silver Platter, that opened at the Booth Theatre, the same house that had presented Bea Lillie in her famous solo run.

  Meanwhile, it got in the columns that she’d had her face done; I decided the rumors must be correct, because the next time I saw her she certainly had a new look. This was a year or so later, when she went on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, plugging her show. She looked great, had lost weight, which Frank was always trying to get her to do, her cheeks had taken on a sculptured look, her hair was better dressed, and she belted out her numbers with obvious relish. Ed himself seemed awed by her—the Babe legend was hard at work even on the Great Stone Face—and he stumbled around more than usual as he ad-libbed with her. “A ver’ great performer, ver’ ver’ great. Thank you, Babe Osterreich,” forgetting she hadn’t been that for decades. That was Ed all over.

  In this, her first nationally televised appearance, she sang two numbers, “The ABC’s of Love” and “The Windy City Blues,” and engaged in the notorious Scheherazade sketch, a naughty parody that started all the trouble with Cardinal Spellman and nearly got Ed, a staunch Catholic, taken off the air.

  That she should be censured for so mild a form of humor both irked and amused Babe, and she willingly entered into a joust with the eminent prelate, whom she and others affectionately called “Sally.” When asked by reporters why she thought the Cardinal was mad at her, she replied, “Aw heck, fellas, if the Cardinal was holdin’ anything against me, I guess I’d feel it, wouldn’t I?” And “The reason His Eminence is studyin’ my act so careful is, he wants to do me on TV. I don’t mind, honest, I been doin’ him for years.” “Sally” Spellman didn’t dignify such quips with a public reply, though it was known that in private he fumed and wanted to have the woman excommunicated until it was discovered that she’d been baptized a Lutheran.