Stanley Elkin - Boswell

Indeed, as a stranger, I had their attention. I saw the man from the Emporium eying me. Too big for a traveling salesman, he was thinking. Maybe a lettuce farmer. Has money for a movie. Maybe the talk about drought is premature. It might be a better year than they say. Have to talk to Margot about the fall line.

I walked off and bought some popcorn from the high school girl at the candy counter. She was a thin little thing with no makeup except for some heavily applied Johnson’s Baby Powder over her pimples. She handed me the popcorn and smiled nervously. She lays, I thought triumphantly. I breathed in deeply, smelling the popcorn, the butter, the salt, the waxy paper around the candy, the spilled soda bubbling down the drain of the Coca-Cola machine, the rust around the handle of the water fountain. Filling my lungs with the pleasant mediocrity of the place, I could settle down here, I thought. A nice place to raise children, hey, Herlitz? They would let me play in the band, go to the dances in the community center. (It was all center, this place, for the inner man.) Just forty-five minutes from Broadway, oompa, oompa pa. I actually whistled it and Mrs. Emporium, Margot herself, looked up and smiled at me. Mother Hubbard smiled at me. They don’t whistle songs like that any more, I thought. Who eats real home cooking these days? I winked at her and she blushed. Blushed! Fool, idiot, fall guy, I should have thought. A setup. A shill. The whole town’s a shill. They don’t eat home cooking any more! Main Street’s a novel, not a place. They’ve money in the bank, kids on Fulbrights. In the summer they go to Rome and have audiences with the Pope. Some guy in New York writes copy for Mother Hubbard’s soup. The factory is behind the shoppe (not the parlor). It’s served in Rosenthal bowls in executive suits from here to London. There are no people any more. Everybody’s a personage. Interview them, interview them all!

I went into the auditorium and sat down. (I sit toward the front. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I want to see everything. Everything!) The place was filling up rapidly. I was breathing heavily. At last it was sinking in that I wasn’t safe. But then the house darkened and Pathé News came on. It was safe, after all, I thought. The newsreel was two weeks old; I had seen it ten days before in a town in Nebraska. That’s right, drown me, ye backwaters!

Blissfully I watched for the second time some floods in the Ohio Valley. It was cute the way the narrator described it. (When no one is killed in a disaster the narrator is cute, though he gets serious when there’s a lot of property damage.) I saw a demonstration in Frankfurt, Germany, of a new kind of roller skate. The shoe part of the skate was about two feet off the ground. The wheels were attached by powerful springs to the shoes and every time the skater made a stride he’d bounce up high in the air. Then some girls tried it and of course they couldn’t do it very well and they fell down and you could see their underwear. Then there was a Press Club luncheon in Washington for President Truman. (Some people behind me applauded. A bad sign — in the real small town, in Nebraska, there had been boos.) A reporter asked the President about his plans for November and Truman smiled and was coy. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” he said and everybody laughed. (I could find out. I could.)

There was a Bugs Bunny at which I laughed contentedly. (The only time I am really at ease in a movie is during the cartoon. There is no Bugs Bunny. There is no Mickey Mouse.) And then, the worst time for me, the coming attractions, all those stars to look at. I stuck it out, and actually it didn’t go too badly. Science fiction and second-rate westerns and I hadn’t heard of many of the actors.

Then, at last, the picture came on.

It was just as grand as I remembered. It’s about three old bachelors who own different department stores and have to live together in the same Manhattan apartment because each distrusts the other. It shows how their lives are changed when Sabu, the Elephant Boy, comes to live with them. Sabu is an orphan whose parents have been eaten by tigers back in his native India and Edward Arnold hears about it and brings him to the States for Christmas. He’s got it worked out that this will help his sales figures, and Eugene Pallette and S. G. “Cuddles” Sackell have to go along with him because if they don’t they think it will hurt their sales figures. Of course none of them is really thinking about Sabu, and everything is so strange and new for him that he gets a little nervous and has to run off from time to time to the Bronx Zoo and climb in with the elephants and talk it over. But if it gets out that Sabu isn’t happy it will hurt everybody’s sales figures, so the three old men make up amongst themselves that they’ve got to be better to Sabu. Well, it’s a wonderful movie. Edward Arnold was never suaver, Eugene Pallette was never fatter, nor his voice more husky. They play curmudgeons, even S. G. “Cuddles” Sackell. The three of them are very shrewd, very stuffy — all anybody could want in a father.

After a while, though, although they don’t dare let the others see it, they really begin to like Sabu for himself, and then they start to outbid each other for his affection. They know he likes animals and there’s a scene where Edward Arnold sneaks out during the night and brings back a baby elephant for Sabu. When Eugene Pallette sees it the next morning all he can say is “Hmph, you call that an elephant?” and that night he goes out and brings back a bigger one. S. G. “Cuddles” gets it all mixed up and brings Sabu a beautiful pair of matched tigers. This bothers Sabu because of what tigers have done to his parents, but he doesn’t let on. As a matter of fact he gradually begins to forgive the tigers. Listen, why not? These old men can’t do enough for him. I’ve never seen anything like it. They turn on the love. They pour it all over him. What don’t they give that nut-brown orphan! Pajamas, robes, electric trains, radios! They have three different department stores to choose from! And at night Sackell sings Rumanian folk songs to him and Edward Arnold recites poetry. Even Eugene Pallette comes in and croaks out something at bedtime. They tuck him in all night long.

It’s marvelous — all those people breaking their necks for him, the economy of the City of New York contingent on Sabu’s happiness — all those daddies. He even has a kind of kid sister in Margaret O’Brien, who lives next door and comes in mornings to teach Sabu manners and how to be a good American. Actually, the only person not taken with Sabu is Margaret O’Brien’s cousin (and this I resented, seeing it as a deflection from the real meaning of the picture), played by Dickie Dobber. This was a snotty kid, a real curmudgeon. That sort of thing doesn’t look good on a child and I was glad when Sabu’s elephants turned on him.

Then comes the best part of all: the scene where they give Sabu the marvelous birthday party on the day he’s legally adopted by the three magnates and becomes an American citizen. This is where José Iturbi (playing himself) is one of the entertainers and Carmen Miranda (playing Margaret O’Brien’s maid, but really more like Sabu’s aunt than hired help) tries to get him to play some snappy rumba. Everyone is shocked, of course, because José Iturbi is an irascible Latin genius and believes only in serious music, but in the middle of the concerto that he’s composed for Sabu’s birthday he gives a sly wink and goes into a jazzy riff that leads into the rumba. Dickie Dobber unbends and nods at Carmen Miranda as if to say, “Hey, José Iturbi’s all right!” but of course Carmen Miranda knew it all along. (After all, José Iturbi really is a Latin. Like Carmen Miranda herself.)