Authors: Thomas Tryon
These were the wide-open, lusty days of moviedom, and when Babe wasn’t at the studio, her greatest passion was playing the ponies. Each morning she perused her
Daily Racing Form
, even before she checked out her stocks and securities in
The Wall Street Journal.
She toured the racing circuit every season, from Hollywood Park to Santa Anita, and ended by making the sporting trip to Agua Caliente. (Caliente was outside scruffy, crummy Tijuana, and it was generally conceded that a prominent movie figure could go there and play fast and loose in private, or not so private, and not be pilloried for scandalous behavior.)
When the familiar Reo appeared, people would note that Babe was on hand to watch the track. Her driver and general factotum these days was the middleweight ex-prizefighter Sluggo McGurk, who’d been punched so hard so many times that his head sloshed, but when Sluggo was on tap no one messed with Babe, not if he was smart. Unless, of course, he happened to be one of Bugsy Siegel’s lieutenants, that duke by the name of Al “Vegas” da Prima, of whom Babe was rumored to be currently enamored. She and Al were known to have shacked up at the Hotel Del Coronado near San Diego on several occasions, and when his yacht, the
Black Star
, was anchored in Catalina harbor, a pair of binoculars could discern at the rail a figure that certainly resembled Babe Austrian; though no one could actually prove it was she, it was reported that way in the press.
Penned Louella:
What in the world are things coming to around here, anyway? What famous film blonde has lately been seen aboard the yacht of what friend of what well known gangland figure and real estate investor? Naughty, double naughty, little miss, you ought to have your bottom spanked!
Ironically, there wasn’t much truth in these rumors, since at that time Babe hadn’t ever been aboard a gangster’s yacht. The truth was, the woman on the
Black Star
was another person altogether.
Back in her old New York days Babe had a close friend with whom she’d appeared in a couple of shows. The friend’s name was Patsy Doyle, and the two girls were not dissimilar in looks. Men occasionally mistook Patsy for Babe, or vice versa, and once Babe even dispatched Patsy on a date in her place. When her movie career took off, Babe sent for Patsy to be her stand-in. Patsy jumped at the chance, and soon there were two Hollywood blondes riding side by side in the back of the Reo, one the star, the other not.
Patsy Doyle was a good-time girl all the way. She was made for Hollywood; maybe not stardom Hollywood, but girls like Patsy always helped fill out the fringes of the place. She was without ambition, caring nothing for the art of the cinema, though she was apparently well versed in other, less esoteric arts.
Eventually she married a high-roller type they called Snake-Hips, who wore a white fedora and took all her money for gambling. Given Patsy’s deliberate aping of Babe’s peroxided hair and flamboyant dress, it was understandable how the two women might be confused in the public eye, and Babe didn’t care enough about what people thought to clear the matter up. To hell with Louella and all her tribe!
This is how I reencountered Babe Austrian: in the spring of 1952, she returned to Broadway, an event that proved to be a triumph. The revival of
Lola Magee
was her own idea, though her career was still being masterminded by Frank. I was brand new in New York at the time, having graduated from college and playing a small part in my first Broadway show. My days of pinching movie sex symbols were long behind me, though the intervening years had done little or nothing to dull the memory of those pretty feet, those baby-blues, that shapely shape, as exhibited in the car of the Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut. (Actually, I’d encountered her one other time, on a moving train. But more of that anon.)
Over the years I’d followed her glittering career with interest, she then being the only star of magnitude with whom I had ever scraped acquaintance. I’d seen her
Lola
at a Sunday-night Actors’ Fund Benefit, a raucous evening if ever there was one, and a performance that served only to rub up a keener appreciation on my part for her comedic talents. With due respect to both Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand, I thought she was one funny lady.
Months later I was working with Tallulah Bankhead in a revival, and when I came offstage one night early in the run there were some people waiting in my dressing room. One of them was Max Hollywood (his real name), an up-and-coming Broadway hotshot agent who said he had “plans” for me. These plans involved the person of Miss Babe Austrian.
Lola
having closed, she was going to tour a new play around the summerstock barns, and she was looking for someone to fill out her cast. Max turned me over to the tall, lantern-jawed young woman, Beata Saggiter, who had just begun as his assistant.
Though it was only May, that week the temperature soared freakishly, day after day hovering in the high eighties. My appointment with the star was postponed twice, but finally Beata confirmed the date as locked in for Friday at 2:00 p.m. and said I should meet her at Sardi’s. I arrived in loafers, khaki slacks, and a navy polo shirt. “Jesus, Charlie,” Beata greeted me, “what’s this?”
“What is what?” I countered.
“You can’t go see Babe Austrian looking like Joe College. Don’t you own a dark suit?”
Sure I had a suit. One. Blue serge. Hot.
“Go put it on. I’ll wait,” Beata decreed. I hopped the subway down to the Village, pulled the suit out of the cold-storage bag, and was back at Sardi’s in forty-five minutes.
“Jesus,
Char
lie,” Beata wailed, “what is that smell?”
Mothballs.
We cabbed up to Babe’s hotel. First we waited downstairs in the lobby, then in about an hour were allowed to head on up to the suite. It was big Sluggo McGurk who greeted us, and we sat around on the horsehair sofa for about ten hours, with only a drugstore fan and a pitcher of lukewarm “ice” water for cooling purposes. I was sweating bullets while we waited; I felt nervous, my mouth was dry, I drank the water, I sweated more. Finally Sluggo reappeared and told me to get up and follow him. “Not you,” he said to Beata, and preceded me into an adjoining room.
In a large, tall-backed armchair sat Babe Austrian, looking me up and down as I trod in, wiping my brow. “Pleased ta meetcha,” she said as I approached the throne. She seemed a little nervous, even shy, as I gave my name.
“Charlie, huh? I used to know a Charlie.” She rolled her eyes and ventured a tiny smile. “Charlie Peekoe. Smoked Cubano-Cubanas. Ran a numbers bag. Good guy, had a club foot, but he was a dancin’ fool. Sit down, honey, take a load off. How you been?”
I said I’d been fine, exerting whatever charm I could muster, all of it damp.
“Max says you’re gonna be a big star. Whaddya think? You want to be a star?”
I guessed I’d like to, “if I could find the right parts.”
“You look like you already got good parts,” she replied without missing a beat. Sluggo was standing by the window, staring out at the view. The room was hot and he was sweating the same way I was, but Babe sat there cool as a cucumber. The blue eyes again raked me tip to toe and she asked me how tall I was.
I told her.
“Umm. I like six-footers. And you probably have a couple extra inches to boot, hm?” She asked me to stand up and turn around; as I obliged her she made suggestive noises. “I suppose I could get you the right part if you could come up with the right parts for me. Whadda ya think?”
Jesus.
All the time she was sitting on that throne,
vibrating
—like an Oldsmobile warming up a bad battery. I thought the whole thing was some big put-on, but no, she was dead serious. She was still a sexy dame, I was a young stud to her, and it was play and pay all the way. This was no act, this was Babe.
“You seem nervous,” she said. “Are you?”
I blamed the heat and mopped my face with my soggy handkerchief. The suit weighed ninety pounds if an ounce.
She was looking hard at me, I could tell. The long eyelashes went bat bat bat. “Haven’t we met someplace?”
No, I lied, we hadn’t met. “I’d remember,” I said blithely. She studied me some more and I could tell I was bothering her. I was sure I wouldn’t get the job.
“Say, Slug, how’s about catchin’ yourself a beer,” she told the gorilla by the window. Sluggo took the hint and sauntered into the other room. I wondered what Beata would do to him, or vice versa. Babe sat studying me some more.
“Care for a cigarette?” I asked, taking out my pack.
“I don’t smoke. It hurts muh voice. I’d prefer if you didn’t, either.”
I pocketed the cigarettes. I was sure I’d shot myself down.
“We got this show,” she said. “You ever heard of it? Sort of a little comedy. Some jokes. This guy wants to bring it in next fall. Nice little part for a young man. ’Bout your height. I like tall men, makes me look small, vulnerable, you know?”
“Windy City?” I said, trying to sound savoir-fairish.
“Huh?” she said.
“‘The Windy City Blues’? I love that Windy City where the men are tall and brown in that oh-so-toddlin’ town’?”
“Oh. Oh yeah. Heh heh.” That was her song, but my knowing a line didn’t win me any Brownie points so far as I could see. Finally I blurted out that actually she was right, we had met before. Oh? And where was that? On a train, I said. Which train? Super Chief. “Oh? Wonderful train. I take it all the time. I don’t like to fly,” she said. “This fortuneteller said I’d be killed in a plane crash. I always listen to my fortunetellers—you do that, too, you’ll live longer. How’d you say we met?” She drilled me with a look.
Oh, I said weakly, it was just sort of in passing.
She touched her hair. “Oh,
en passant
, so to speak.”
“I told you then I wanted to be an actor.”
“No kidding. Small world, isn’t it?” She was staring harder and I felt myself getting hotter. Goddamn air conditioning. Did she remember or didn’t she? I still couldn’t tell. “Yeah,” she said, looking me over again, “you’re tall all right. Dark, too.”
She sort of rocked around in the chair before posing her next question. “Just how experienced are you?”
I said I was in a show, that I’d done stock.
“Stock, huh? Who’d you work with?”
I mentioned two or three fading names—Ruth Chatterton, Kay Francis, Flossie Reed.
“She must be ninety, Flossie. This dame who’s your agent. You and she an item?”
I explained that Beata’s and my relationship was strictly professional.
“Good. Keep it that way. She says you’re with Tallulah. But Tallulah’s closing. Could you get out of Tallulah and come with me?”
Not
too
eager, but: “Sure. I think so. Yes. Very much. I’d like to work with you.”
She vibrated a little more. “Umm. The feelin’s myutchul, I assure ya.” She touched the platinum scallops in several places.
When she asked if I’d ever met a movie star before, I said I hadn’t, except Ozzie Nelson, whom I’d met with my Boy Scout patrol when we were taken to the theatre stage door—“in Hartford?” I ventured carefully. “The State Theatre?”
“Oh yeah. I played the State. You’re too young to’ve seen me.”
“I saw you.”
“No kiddin’.” She seemed to come alive slightly. “You really saw me? Betcha don’t remember what I was wearin’.”
I described her outfit as accurately as I could remember. She inspected her nails and rearranged several bracelets on her arm. “Hartfid, huh? Good town, Hartfid. They had a parade fuh me.”
I agreed Hartford was okay.
“Good place to be from, huh?” She laughed at her little joke.
“Did you enjoy the parade?” I dared ask.
“Yeah, why not? I rode with the Mayor. He was a screw. Kept puttin’ his hand on muh knee.”
“I know.” She shot me a look. “I was there.”
“You were where?”
“On the running board.”
“What were you doin’ on the runnin’ board?”
“I wanted to see you. Close up.”
“Didja? How’d I look?”
“Great. You looked swell.” There was a beat while she looked at me and I looked at her. I wanted to look away, but could not do it. “I pinched you,” I confessed.
“Get off my porch! How old?”
“Twelve.”
“Jeeze, you kids start early.”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Lotsa bozos pinch me. It’s muh type. How’m I s’posed to remember some kid with merit badges? Get serious. Time’s up, so long. Tell her we’ll call you.”
“But don’t call us,” I said, the old show-biz kiss-off.
She summoned Sluggo, who quickly showed himself. “This number’s leavin’. Show him the door.” I waited for her to put out her hand, which she did not do.
“Well? What happened?” Beata was steaming because she’d been excluded; an agent should be allowed to stay with the client.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her I’d blown it with the Hartford Pinch. “She’ll call us,” was all I said.
Beata owned some street verbiage and used it. “What’d she do? Unzip you in there? Give you some head?”
“Jesus, Beata, can it.”
I found out later that Sluggo had overheard her crude remark and it went straight back to Babe. Babe didn’t like it, not at all. And they never called about the show. I read in
Variety
that another guy—tall, dark—had the part. I thought, Screw it. It was two more months of Tallulah showing her crotch.
But as things turned out, I did get a summer in the country—of sorts. The guy Babe hired came down with mononucleosis and took to his bed, and I got this hurry-up call from Max saying I was to go right over to the producers’ office and sign a contract, then I was to go down to a Second Avenue rehearsal hall.
“Should I put on my blue suit?” I cracked; Beata used her vocabulary again.
As I mentioned, the interview in her hotel suite wasn’t the second time I’d met Babe Austrian but the third. By now I’d begun to count. If she hadn’t remembered the first time, I wondered if she’d remember the second, the time on the Super Chief, heading west at the end of the war. I was a navy signalman and had been granted liberty. While I was visiting home the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it seemed the war in the Pacific would quickly end. But before this could happen I found myself stuck in a coach seat all the way from Chicago to the Coast. It promised to be a tedious and uncomfortable trip until I chose to visit the club car.