Stanwyck Is A Star
Monday, September 5, 1927
Our train pulled into New York Tuesday night after three weeks on the road. It was a short respite, just two days, then we jumped right back on board for a pair of games in Philadelphia before heading to Boston for a three-day series with two doubleheaders.
While we were in New York we were scheduled to play two games against the Red Sox, but the second was rained out, so we left the city early on Thursday afternoon. That meant that Schoolboy and I missed the opening night of Stanwyck’s new play, “Burlesque.”
Her new show is about a showbiz couple. Like almost every play and movie produced these days, the plot boils down to a simple formula:
“Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.”
In the case of “Burlesque,” the details of the formula, according to the script Stanwyck let me read, go like this:
Skid Johnson is a comic and “song and dance” man who’s got talent, but his lack of drive has him going nowhere on the vaudeville circuit. His wife, Bonny Johnson (played by Stanwyck), used to be one of the girls in Skid’s chorus line, until her own talent, looks and drive made her Skid’s leading lady on stage and off. (Boy gets girl.)
Bonny’s ambitious, but not for herself — she believes Skid can be a Broadway star. With her guidance, Skid hones his act and becomes the toast of Broadway. But Skid can’t handle the fame of the Great White Way. New York’s speakeasies, booze and broads prove too much for him, and infidelity and alcohol destroy his marriage. By intermission, Bonny files for divorce. (Boy loses girl.)
Stanwyck’s Bonny doesn’t stay single for long, of course. In fact, just after the curtain rises after intermission, Bonny is already on her way to a new marriage with a wealthy cattle rancher who wants to take her away from the evils of the big city and showbiz. But before she can skip town the producers of Skid’s new Broadway show beg Bonny to help sober up Skid and get him back on the boards.
Of course she does it, and in the process, Skid falls back in love with Bonny. On the opening night of Skid’s new musical, Bonny’s standing in the wings cheering him on, giving Skid the strength to stay sober and perform like a star. By the time the final curtain comes down, Skid’s back on his sober dancing feet, Bonny’s saying “adios” to the wealthy cattle rancher, and Bonny and Skid are living happily ever after. (Boy gets girl back.)
Stanwyck’s been in rehearsal for “Burlesque” for almost two months, since right after our July 4th mauling of the Senators. Her rehearsals ran from ten in the morning until late at night, six days a week, so I haven’t seen or heard much from her, except for an occasional postcard.
Boy, does she love postcards. There’s a newsstand right inside the Empire Hotel where she lives on Broadway and 63rd Street, and since she’s got the manager of the hotel wrapped around her fingers, he’s always ordering new cards for her.
Sometimes she writes her own captions on the back, but frequently I’ll get a card with only “Barbara” on the back. As part of her preparation for stardom, Stanwyck’s been working on her autograph, so some days I’ll get three or four of the same card, all of which just say “Barbara,” each with a slightly different signature.
I haven’t told Stanwyck about losing my spot in the rotation, or any of the other insanity — certainly nothing about Capone or Rothstein — and she never reads the sports section, yet somehow when I checked into my hotel in Chicago two weeks ago, I found this postcard waiting for me.
It’s the Statue of Liberty at night with a swell gent steering a small sailboat. In broken verse the swell’s lamenting:
I calculate, I’ve lost my way.
I dunno if it’s night or day.
All things around seem
And the man inside the moon I see.
I know how the guy feels. Especially when I’m alone, pulling a Bix and riding on top of the train.
Stanwyck’s last postcard arrived two weeks ago, when we were in Cleveland at the Hollenden House hotel. It was a picture of Broadway at night. On the back she wrote, “One day one of me is going to have my name up in lights over this street!”
And she signed it, “Barbara.” “Barbara.” “Barbara.” Three times. Three different ways.
After what I witnessed last Wednesday, no matter which signature she settles on, it shouldn’t take long for her name to be on the marquee.
Wednesday night, Schoolboy and I go to the final dress rehearsal of “Burlesque,” since we’re going to be on the train to Philly on opening night.
There are only a handful of other people in the audience at the rehearsal — Stanwyck had told us there would be producers, investors and other theater folks watching the final run-through. I’ve also brought along Bix, whose band is playing a few blocks away at the Roseland ballroom this month. The three of us sit in the back of the orchestra to keep out of everyone’s way, Schoolboy and I smoking cigarettes, while Bix happily tokes on his Mary Janes.
Even without the energy of a full house we see an astonishing performance. Stanwyck is so good, so natural, that I don’t think once about the whole crappy formula of Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. She has a formula all her own.
Back in August, Stanwyck wrote me that her director “knows what he’s doing. He’s directed John Barrymore and Lynn Fontanne! But he doesn’t give us a lot of direction, instead he makes us experiment, so we can discover our characters. First I was lost — now after a month of rehearsals I’m not sure if I’ve become Bonny Johnson, or if she’s become me.”
Now I can’t tell them apart, either. I know it’s Stanwyck who is supposed to be on stage, but I keep forgetting I’m watching her. She’s made herself into a different person. At one point, Schoolboy just looks at me and says, “Where’d Stanwyck go?”
(Bix is so stoned, he just asks, “Which one’s Stanwyck?” about a dozen times during the show.)
I know this sounds funny, but it’s like watching Gehrig. Lou is a completely different person in the batter’s box and on the basepaths than he is off the field. When he’s batting or running, all of his neuroses leave him, and he’s both comfortable and powerful.
Just like when I’m watching Gehrig this season, all the time I’m watching Stanwyck I can’t stop thinking, “This is what greatness looks like.”
After the show, we hang around inside the theater while the cast, the director and producers, and the other theater people all gather around the stage and congratulate each other.
Bix stays in his seat, but Schoolboy and I walk down near the stage, where we can hear everyone telling Stanwyck how swell she is in the part. We wait patiently for the crowd to thin out. But it never does.
As I watch her in the middle of it all, she looks like a different person than the one I knew before our road trip. Just as she has become Bonny for the play, she has become someone else, even when the stage lights are off. She seems older. More mature. More sure of herself. But still Stanwyck.
At one point she looks out toward us and gives us a quick wave before going back to her conversations with the poobahs of Broadway.
“What was that?” asks Schoolboy. “What are we, her third cousins from the sticks? What’s with the wave?”
“That wasn’t a wave,” I tell him, as I turn to exit the theater. “That was a final postcard.”
- July 5, 1927: “74,000 Watch Yanks in Double Victory”. New York Times article and Box Score (Game 1); Box Score (Game 2).
