Maisie Pals With Fanny Brice in the Ziegfeld Follies
Maisie in Hollywood / Part Two / Ziegfeld Girl
Read Part One–The Dancing Fool– here
Maisie, Maisie, Maisie. How I miss you.
My best friend, thirty years gone. I’ve grown old. I’m an old woman. Age is not too much a burden, aside from ever worse aches and pains. I do a lot more sitting, a lot less gardening. Some my age sit and knit. I sit at my Mac. I am researching Maisie’s event-filled life. I intend to tell her story, as much as I can unearth of it.
We spoke of it, of course. I didn’t dare take notes (that annoyed her). I jotted prompts regarding the gist of the conversations. Some of the material below will be made up, but what I invent will be true to the spirit of what was said. I won’t make any baseless allegations, to gin up drama, that click-bait thing. My title for Part Three could be:
The Lesbian Affair That Ended a Big, Going-Places Career.
No. I won’t play that game. It was not the affair (with the wife of oneof of filmland’s hottest stars) that brought her down. Her arrogance did her in. She ruffled feathers. Even more problematical, she could not compromise. She had to have her way, a trait of hers from birth.
I’m on my last legs, I don’t care anymore. I don’t give a damn if people think I’m batty. She was an extraordinary creature who needs to be remembered. I’m determined to tell her tale and to do it justice.
Kansas to Broadway was her first huge leap.
Hoofers on Broadway, gorgeous hoofers, were a dime a dozen. She had the additional disadvantage of being a mouse. Did she conquer the Great White Way through her bright-and-bushy-tailed personality? Did she have a hand up? (She had many hands up, as you’ll see.)
She hung out backstage at the Follies, hoping to catch Ziegfeld’s eye, doing cartwheels when he walked by. Instead, she captivated Fanny Brice, one of Flo’s top stars.
She spoke offhandedly about Brice: Fan-this, Fan-that. I’d assumed it was a casual relationship–her reminiscence, some magnitude of puffery. She resented probing questioning, so any prying I did (ha!–attempted to do), answered with her cutting-est look, I dropped immediately.
Mulot was a take-no-prisoners type, as I learned, to my discomfort. When she and Brice had a falling-out, it was for good and all. Fanny ceased to exist for her. Years later, she fallen on hard times, her big-name friends disappeared into the woodwork, Brice was the one figure from her hey-day who was kind to her. She placed a standing order with La Côte Basque to send a fine meal Maisie’s way every Friday evening, which she was pleased to share with me. After Brice’s death in 1952, her daughter Frances carried on with the tradition.
I was on the curb outside her building every Friday at seven to receive the delivery and carry it upstairs. The meals continued to arrive after I moved her in with me on Jane Street. (An unexpected perk of being her friend. I could never have afforded that cuisine on my meager income.)
My take on it all–this is the most graceful explanation for her refusal to dish on her time on Broadway–is that the experience counted for little in terms of how she saw herself. She was far more forthcoming about her film work.
In 1922, at an astonishingly young age, she’d joined the Denishawn Dancers,
a pioneering modern dance school whose members included dance legend Martha Graham and actresses Lillian Gish and Myrna Loy. In her second season she was advanced to featured performer. Did it go to her head? She rubbed Ruth St. Denis the wrong way. St. Denis fired the youngster, telling her: “I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver.”
She took the dismissal badly, but she rebounded: I’ll show her. I’ll show them all. She pulled herself together and found a new home with the legendary Ziegfeld Follies, alongside the likes of W.C. Fields and yes, Fanny Brice.
She struck up a close friendship with Brice. To the outrage of the other chorus girls, she was moved into the star’s dressing room, quite an insult to the long-legged beauties who were central to the reputation of the show.
Word was she’d co-written some of Brice’s routines. Hard to swallow? I believe it. She was a wonderful phrase maker. She memorably described dancing with the lardy but fleet-footed Fatty Arbuckle (the disgraced comedian who directed her in a forgotten film called Windy Riley Goes To Hollywood) as being “like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut”.
In 1924, Brice headlined the Follies. According to Mulot, they two were working up a duo-bit that they intended to present the following season, except for, fate intervened.
Brice was under tremendous pressure. Her husband Nick Arnstein, involved in a raft of scams, was in and out of jail. The lovesick Fanny visited him weekly in Sing Sing. At one point he went into hiding, leaving his wife to face a hysterical press and police harassment alone. When he finally surrendered to the authorities, he fought the charges on every possible technicality for four years — while she worked like a dog to pay off gargantuan legal bills.
With the world, she kept up a front. She shared her pain with her new gal-pal, whom she trusted not to blab about her struggles to the press. The odd relationship began to be noticed, by Arnstein, and by Ziegfeld. Brice was on the verge of a crack-up. She needed a rest, pronto.
Arnstein was more than willing to arrange a demise, but the trouble-maker had to be gotten rid of gently. Ziegfeld couldn’t risk word getting back to Brice of a hit, further unhinging his troubled property. He enlisted Bill Fields to arrange a nonviolent exit.
Bill (W.C.) Fields recommended her to the producer Walter Wanger for a try-out in one of his two-reel films. Fannie was hustled away to a New Jersey sanitarium. Maisie was installed at the Famous Players studios in Astoria, Queens.
Fields being one of the top talents at Famous Players-Lasky’s, his recommendation carried a good deal of weight. Introduced to the little ball-of-fire, seeing potential in her, Wanger took a chance. She was signed to a contract and began her silent film career.
Mulot made her screen debut in 1925, playing an uncredited role in ‘The Street of Forgotten Men’.
She was soon elevated to central spots in a string of comedies including It’s the Old Army Game (1926), and The Show-Off (1926). She held her own alongside such major stars as Adolphe Menjou, Evelyn Brent and Wallace Beery, who became a good friend later, out in Hollywood.
In 1927, Mulot was receiving more than 2,000 fan letters a week. She had danced with Martha Graham, hung out with the Algonquin Roundtable, had a fling with the Rodentinos (Rudolph and his wife Natasha), and partied with Marion Davies and Willian Randolph Hearst. Having proven herself on film, she was making a huge salary. She was on top of the world. It would not last.
She possessed ravishing good-looks, talent, and smarts–she could have achieved so much more–but because of a knack for self-defeating behaviors, she would end up in a shabby apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan.
She told me once, in a (rare) mood of self-pity, “Somehow I have avoided the glory that was predicted for me. I was deemed to have an unmatched presence.” An unmatched presence, yes, indeed.
Brice had an interesting story also.
She appeared at age thirteen in a talent contest at Keeney’s Theatre in Brooklyn, where she sang “When You Know You’re Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can’t Forget”. In 1910 Florenz Ziegfeld heard her singing in a burlesque house and hired her for the Follies.
She attained stardom in the 1921 edition, appearing with such major Broadway performers as Bill Fields, Eddie Cantor, and Will Rogers. She had introduced the character of Baby Snooks, a smart-mouth brat, in vaudeville in 1912, but had retired the character as she matured. In 1925 she made a decision to revive it.
She was looking to steer her career in a new direction. She had Hollywood in her sights. Her My-Yiddishe-Mama accent went over big in New York. It might well fall flat in the land of stretch-touring-cars and endless sunshine.
I’ve told you that Mulot seldom spoke of that period. From comments made over our six years together, I feel I knew her as well as anyone on the planet. I’ve cobbled my impression of how the wheels came off that friendship. Here’s my take on that final blow-up, that put the kibosh on the connection.
Fanny was a headliner, with clout. Maisie begged her to convince Ziegfeld to give her a specialty number in the show. She knew she could not be one of the celebrated showgirls, she was too short for that honor. But she could dance up a storm.
“I choreographed my routines for Ted Shawn,” she said. “Let me see what I can whip up for Ziggy. I designed my own costumes too. I have a few ideas that will knock your eyes out.”
“Let me sleep on it,” said Brice.
She’d not gotten the go-ahead but, as usual, Mulot went to work full steam, but without letting on what she was up to. She wanted it to be a surprise.
A week later, she hid behind a screen in their dressing room, waiting for her friend to come off stage. When Fannie showed, Maisie popped out, costumed as we see her above (on the left).
“What ’cha think?” she asked.
Fannie stood, hand over mouth. Then she said, “Out of the question. So this is what you’ve been chuckling over all week. Yikes! Could ya gunk it up any more? How’s about a few more bows? Kid, that headdress, it’s half your body length. You look ridic-uuu-lous.”
“This is very similar to what the girls wear and you know it.”
“Girlies five-foot-eight can wear that kind of thing. Not you, you midget.”
“Exactly. I have to add height, so people see me. You said it yourself.”
“Help me out,” said Brice. What was your idea here?”
“Elegant. I want to be elegant. Marie Antoinette, not your dumb-ass Baby Snooks.”
“Look, kid. I’m the star here. You’re what I say or you ain’t in the show, it’s that simple.”
Maisie never shied from speaking her mind. “You came up through Vaudeville. Cornball humor has been your path to the top. That hokey accent you do, revolting!”
“The audience eats it up.”
“I danced with Denishawn. I’m an artist. I require a level of dignity.”
“Dignity, that’s a good one. You’re begging to join a line of half-naked floozies. By the way, what’s that god-awful ruff around your neck? That’s what a dog wears jumping through hoops in a circus.”
“I have no flowing locks framing my adorable face, like the others do. I saw Lili Damita the other day in ‘Red Shoes’. She wore a huge ruff, and she looked terrific in it. I said, Ha! There’s me answer. A ruff, but in blue, to bring out the blue in my eyes.”
“Blue? You’re off your rocker! You got no blue in your eyes.”
“Mama said I do, said I have blue highlights, in a certain light.”
“You’re quite something, ain’t ja? Where’d you get them glad-rags? Some piece of work there.”
“From Wardrobe. Where else?”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I drew up my idea, jotted notes on fabrications, signed your name. They had my measurements on file from the Dolly Dingle joke. Easy as pie.”
“Well you ain’t wearing that get-up on stage with me. You’re my Snooks dollie or you’re out the door. Look, dance up a storm. Have a ball with it. Chit-chat even, let go with a few of your zingers. The audience will think it’s marvelous stagecraft.”
“Fanny, please! I can’t be Baby Snooks. I can’t! The Denishawn tribe hears of it, they’ll be laughing their asses off. Ruth St. Denis will be rolling on the floor. Ted and me, we had a rapport. It drove her wild. The snot brat she tossed out on her ear has her comeuppance. She’ll talk it up all over town.”
“Oy! The snot brat refuses to play a snot brat. That’s rich!”
Maisie acted out this scene (and others) for me more than once. I don’t doubt she captured Brice’s tone and mannerisms to a T. She was a delicious mimic.
She poked fun at creeps in my building who terrorized me, shoving me aside on the stairs because I moved too slowly. When I was down, the imp picked me up, in an instant.
If she’d bent a smidge, if she’d consented to go out on stage as Baby Snooks’ Baby Snooks, she, with her ability to duplicate any bit of business and fling it back at you (followed by a look at the audience that said, Folks, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet), she would have brought the house down, I guarantee it.
Fields had hinted he could promote her to Wanger. No promises, but he’d do his best.
He came through, as we will see in Part Three: Stars in Her Eyes–Queens to the Camera Coast. Read it at:
