John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“I recall a barrel-jumper being injured—”

“Amazing! One of the Deonzo Brothers, on opening night.”

“Stanny is a first-nighter,” says Barrymore, “an every-nighter, and an all-nighter.”

Teethadore sees Mansfield passing near, and wonders would he prefer to be extolled for his Dick Dudgeon in the Shaw play or for the sensation he made with the first American Cyrano .

“Mansfield!” Barrymore calls out. “What do you think of our Teddy here?”

The man is, in fact, not a hair taller than Teethadore, stopping to appraise him with raised eyebrow.

“ ‘Honest vaudevillian’ is, I believe, an oxymoron. As for Roosevelt — inviting the original to visit has always struck me as questionable, and here we have a fac si mile. What will be next, bicycling chimpanzees?”

With that he makes for the exit. Teethadore declines to call out that he has in fact appeared several times with bicycling chimpanzees, an act so popular that not a performer on the bill is willing to follow them.

“He’s rather more Mr. Hyde than Dr. Jekyll, our Dickie,” Barrymore apologizes.

“Arrogant little prick,” concurs the architect. “But a marvel on the boards.”

David Warfield approaches then, Warfield who he knew as a fixture at Weber and Fields’s Music Hall, with whom he has shared many an alleged “dressing room,” moving toward him with David Belasco in tow.

“Briz!” he smiles, employing Teethadore’s erstwhile nickname. “You fooled even me!”

They clasp hands. He resists the urge to ask the comedian how he snuck in the door.

“This is David Belasco.”

“Of course. An honor, sir.”

“Wonderfully done,” enthuses the Bishop of Broadway. “You had us all going.”

“Mr. Belasco is going to make an honest man of me.”

The producer smiles. “A small enough penance, as I shall never make an honest woman of anyone.”

Teethadore allows himself a smile. Belasco’s “casting couch” is notorious.

“There’s a play called The Auctioneer and I’m to be the lead in it,” beams Warfield.

“You’ll be a smash,” beams Teethadore. They make an odd pair, the writer-director-producer, dressed always in clerical black, some sort of a Spanish Jew, and the resolutely Christian comic noted for his portrayal of East Side shylocks, sporting a false nose even larger than Cyrano’s.

“I agree wholeheartedly,” says Belasco. “There is no reason David’s talents cannot shine in the legitimate theater.”

“As they have in the illegitimate.”

Both men laugh, but Teethadore regrets saying it. He is a guest in their club and understands that though distinctions are adhered to, they must not be mentioned.

“If you ever have a role that requires someone of my — of my a bil ities—” he adds, feeling suddenly very small among the giants of the theater, “I do hope you will think of me.”

“I will keep you in mind,” smiles Belasco, and they drift away. So many company managers, so many directors in New York are presently keeping him in mind it is a wonder he doesn’t burst into flame from the concentrated mental energy. But if it has happened to Warfield, who is a deserving fellow after all, perhaps—

He finds himself unattended for a moment and strolls through the luminaries with drink in hand. It is still difficult to accept that he has penetrated this sanctum. The Grill Room is another long enclosure, with pewter drinking mugs, those not presently employed by the members, hanging from hooks at his eye level all around the rectangle. Old playbills decorate the walls, deer antlers hang on the chandeliers and heads with horns are mounted over the mantels of the delft-tiled fireplaces set at either end of the room. It is against one of these that he is pinned by the illustrators.

He recognizes some by sight — Remington, of course, wider now than any three of his leathery cow-punchers, Gibson of the haughty, long-necked beauties and square-chinned swains, young Howard Christy, Gibson’s rival in defining feminine allure, whose rendering of TR at Siboney and the San Juan Hill were surely a factor in the feisty politician’s present success — and once introduced to the others, knows and admires their work. There is Reginald Birch, whose drawings for Little Lord Fauntleroy condemn small boys to velveteen torture, Howard Pyle, King of the Pirate Illustrators, and the cartoonists A. B. Frost and Fred Opper, all of them studying his face as if it is a first effort in a sculpture class.

“You must be rather pleased with the election results,” ventures Gibson, a gin-soaked pearl onion floating in his glass.

“Yes and no.” It is damned hard to keep still with them all peering at his physiognomy. “Though I would have been chagrined had my lookalike lost by a single vote.”

“You didn’t go for him?”

The irony of it did strike him in the booth, his career, so to speak, at a crossroad. But, son of a fervent Populist, he pulled the bar for the straight Democratic ticket and stepped out through the curtain feeling absolved of sin.

“Some men vote from their pocketbook,” he answers, “others from their heart.”

“A Bryan man,” laughs Gibson. “Astounding.”

“At this distance it’s still disturbing,” frowns Christy, angling his head to look behind Teethadore’s prop spectacles. “I mean I’ve drawn the man from life !”

“A good, solid likeness,” observes Fred Opper with the tiniest hint of a German accent. “But not ob vious enough to be funny.”

“They flashed a good deal of your work up on the Journal building last night,” says Teethadore, feeling as if even the stuffed buck on the wall is staring at his face. “The crowd loved Teddy as an eager beaver.”

“The man is a walking caricature,” says Frost. “He’s more fun to draw than a mule kicking an aristocrat.”

“A shame to have him buried in the second spot,” muses Remington, who immortalized TR back in his Montana ranching days. “I imagine they’ll be keeping our boy on a very short leash.”

The illustrators restrain themselves from actually taking his flesh in hand and eventually the crowd in the Grill Room starts to thin. The event began at five, actors’ dinner hour, and no doubt many here have shows to perform or attend. Teethadore will not, he knows, be invited to become a member. Their class, despised by polite society though it may be, is nevertheless several stations above his own. This is but a fleeting glimpse, a visit to a mountaintop he shall never dwell upon. He is planning his exit when he takes note of the lanky older gentleman ensconced in a chair in the far corner.

It is Joseph Jefferson, no other. Jefferson who trod the boards with Junius Brutus Booth, whose adopted daughter was the great Edwin’s first beloved wife, who breathed life into Our American Cousin , associated more now with the Lincoln murder than with its phenomenal success, veteran of hundreds, perhaps thousands of performances of Rip van Winkle , a breathing reliquary of American theater history—

Teethadore gathers his nerve and sits beside the legend.

“Sir—”

“That was very entertaining, young fellow. You kept your head.”

“Why thank you, sir.”

“An interesting character. Rather exhausting to portray him for any length of time, I should imagine.”

“He keeps me on my toes.”

“If you weren’t on your toes,” says the old man, “the patrons in the rear would not be able to see you.”

Teethadore smiles his own, less dentally revealing smile. Jefferson’s admo-nition that “there are no small roles, only small actors” has been applied often to him, appended with further comments regarding his lack of altitude.