peculiar quality of entertainment which is wholly light-hearted and
everything else is added unto her. Of this special quality nothing
can be said; one either sees it or doesn’t, savours it or not.
Fanny arrives on the scene with an indescribable gesture--after
seeing it twenty times I believe that it consists of a feminine
salute, touching the forehead and then flinging out her arm to the
topmost gallery. There is magic in it, establishing her character at
once--the magic must reside in her incredible elbow. She hasn’t so
much to give as Jolson, but she gives it with the same generosity,
there are no reserves, and it is all for fun. Her Yiddish Squow (how
else can I spell that amazing effect?) and her Heiland Lassie are
examples--there isn’t an _arrière-pensée_ in them. “The Chiff is after
me ... he says I appil to him ... he likes my type ...” it is the
complete give away of herself and she doesn’t care.
[Illustration:
AL JOLSON
]
And this carelessness goes through her other exceptional qualities
of caricature and satire. For the first there is the famous Vamp, in
which she plays the crucial scene of all the vampire stories, preluding
it with the first four lines of the poem Mr Kipling failed to throw
into the wastepaper basket, and fatuously adding, “I can’t get over
it”--after which point everything is flung into another plane--the
hollow laughter, the haughty gesture, the pretended compassion, that
famous defense of the vampire which here, however, ends with the
magnificent line, “I may be a bad woman, but I’m awful good company.”
In this brief episode she does three things at once: recites a parody,
imitates the moving-picture vamp, and creates through these another,
truly comic character. For satire it is Fanny’s special quality that
with the utmost economy of means she always creates the original in the
very process of destroying it, as in two numbers which are exquisite,
her present opening song in vaudeville with its reiterations of Victor
Herbert’s _Kiss Me Again_, and her Spring Dance. The first is pressed
far into burlesque, but before she gets there it has fatally destroyed
the whole tedious business of polite and sentimental concert-room
vocalism; and the second (Fanny in ballet, with her amazingly angular
parody of five-position dancing) puts an end forever to that great
obsession of ours, classical interpretative dancing.
Fanny’s refinement of technique is far beyond Jolson’s; her effects
are broad enough, but her methods are all delicate. The frenzy which
takes hold of her is as real as his. With him she has the supreme
pleasure of knowing that she can do no wrong--and her spirits mount and
intensify with every moment on the stage. She creates rapidly and her
characterizations have an exceptional roundness and fulness; when the
dæmon attends she is superb.
It is noteworthy that these two stars bring something to America
which America lacks and loves--they are, I suppose, two of our most
popular entertainers--and that both are racially out of the dominant
caste. Possibly this accounts for their fine carelessness about our
superstitions of politeness and gentility. The medium in which they
work requires more decency and less frankness than usually exist in our
private lives; but within these bounds Jolson and Brice go farther, go
with more contempt for artificial notions of propriety, than anyone
else. Jolson has re-created an ancient type, the scalawag servant
with his surface dulness and hidden cleverness, a creation as real as
Sganarelle. And Fanny has torn through all the conventions and cried
out that gaiety still exists. They are parallel lines surcharged with
vital energy. I should like to see that fourth-dimensional show in
which they will meet.
_These, Too ..._
THESE, TOO ...
Remy de Gourmont has propounded, somewhere, an interesting theory. If
life is worth anything _per se_, is the substance of the argument,
then we do wrong to live it in a series of high moments separated by
long hours of dulness. We ought to take the _amount_ of energy, or
ecstasy, we possess, and spread it as thin as possible, relishing each
moment for itself, each being as good as any other. (I do not mean that
Gourmont endorsed this philosophy; he discussed it.) It is, of course,
the logical conclusion of burning _always_ with a hard gemlike flame,
for if one is to be always _anything_ it is more likely to be calm and
languorous and reserved; that is the difference between burning and
burning up--of which Pater was aware.
We have all had these days of halcyon perfection, when the precise
degree of warmth was a miracle, when the aroma of a wine seemed to
have the whole fragrance of the earth, when one could do anything or
nothing and be equally content. In the presence of great works of art
we experience something similar. We are suspended between the sense of
release from life, the desire to die before the image of the supremely
beautiful, and a new-found capacity for living. Our daily existence
gives us no such opportunity; we cannot live languorously because we
have no leisure, and we are compelled to be intense at rare intervals
if life isn’t to be entirely a hoax and a bore. In the preoccupations
of daily life a tragic incident or an outburst of temper or a
perfectly cut street dress or the dark-light before a storm, may give
us, apart from our emotional lives, the intensity we require. We rather
defend ourselves from the impact of great beauty, of nobility, of high
tragedy, because we feel ourselves incompetent to master them; we
preserve our individual lives even if we diminish them.
The minor arts are, to an extent, an opiate--or rather they trick
our hunger for a moment and we are able to sleep. They do not wholly
satisfy, but they do not corrupt. And they, too, have their moments of
intensity. Our experience of perfection is so limited that even when
it occurs in a secondary field we hail its coming. Yet the minor arts
are all transient, and these moments have no lasting record, and their
creators are unrewarded even by the tribute of a word. A moment comes
when everything is exactly right, and you have an occurrence--it may
be something exquisite or something unnamably gross; there is in it
an ecstasy which sets it apart from everything else. The scene of the
“swaree” in the _Pickwick Papers_ has that quality; nearly the whole
of _South Wind_ has it (I choose examples as disparate as possible).
The whole performance of _Boris_ by Chaliapin (the second time he
sang it at the Metropolitan on his second visit to the United States)
had precisely the same exaltation--and Conrad Veidt as Cesare had one
comparable moment: the breathless second when the draperies seem
to cling to the ravished virgin in the hands of the Somnambulist. It
is an unpredictable event; but there are those on whom one can count
to approach it. All of those I am writing about here have given me
that thrill at least once--and my memory goes back to these occasions,
trying to catch the incredible moment again.
[Illustration:
(_Courtesy of A. and C. Boni_)
LEON ERROL. By Alfred Frueh
]
It will be impossible to communicate even the sense of it unless
the material be dissociated from the event. Surely there is nothing
exquisite in the roaring charwoman created by George Monroe. He had
to an inspiring degree the capacity to be one of those vast figures
in Dickens--Mrs Gamp to perfection--and it is odd that another
impersonator, Bert Savoy, should have created, in Margie, Mrs Gamp’s
own confidante and admirer, the devoted Mrs Harris. George Monroe’s
creation was huge and cylindrical--more like a drainpipe than a woman
in shape. There was no effort at realism, for Monroe roared in a deep
bass voice, and his “Be that as it ma-a-y” was a leer in the face
of all logic, order, and decency. There was in it an unrestraint,
a wildness, an independent commonness which rendered it immortal.
The creation of Bert Savoy is at the other extreme. It is female
impersonation and the figure is always the same--the courtesan whose
ambition it is to be a demi-mondaine. Savoy makes capital of all his
defects down to the rakish slanting hat over one eye. His repetitions,
apparently so spontaneous, are beautifully timed and spaced; the
buzz and pause in the voice--“you muzzt com’over ... you don’t know
the ha-ff of it, dear-ie” fix themselves in memory. He is remembered
for the excellent stories he tells, and they are worth it, but the
interpolations are funnier than the climax. The audacity is colossal
and disarming. The occurrence of a character out of Petronius on
our stage is exceptional in itself, that it should at the same time
be slightly vicious and altogether charming, funny and immoral and
delicate, is the wonder.
Last year there was an added touch, when Savoy danced while he sang a
stanza about the Widow Brown. It was as delicate, it passed as quickly,
as breath on a windowpane.[15]
I repeat the material doesn’t matter. For Leon Errol has nothing but
the type drunkard to work with, and is wonderful. In his case it is
easy to analyse the basis of the effect--it is in the loping dance
step into which he converts the lurch of the drunkard. The tawdry
moment--funny enough if you can bear it--is always Errol’s breathing
into someone else’s face; the great moment comes directly after, when
the lurch and the fall are worked up into a complete arc of dance
steps, ending in three little hops as a sort of proof of sobriety.
Jimmy Barton has the same quality in his skating scene--he uses less
material and the movement round the rink is beautiful to watch. But of
him it is useless to speak. Someone has pointed out that he can slap
the bare back of a woman and make that funny!
It is interesting to see how many of the people who give this special
quality arrive out of burlesque. Harry Kelly is another. I recall him
first with Lizzie the Fish Hound in _Watch Your Step_ and last in a
quite useless musical comedy, _The Springtime of Youth_ (textually that
was the title--and in 1922!) For two acts he was wholly wasted. In the
third he was magnificent. He was playing the obdurate father: “No son
of mine shall ever marry a daughter of the Baxters” was his line. He
was informed that she was, in fact, an adopted daughter and that her
uncle had left her the bulk of his fortune. For precisely a minute and
a half Kelly played with the word “bulk”--one saw it registered in his
brain, saw an idea germinating, felt it working forward to the jaw
before the cavernous voice gave it utterance--and again one felt the
inner struggle _not_ to say it a third time, one felt the conflict of
pride and avarice. It was remarkably delicate and fine--so is all of
Kelly’s work when he has a chance. His spare figure, long hands, and
unbelievable voice always create a character--and it isn’t always the
same character.
Bobby Clarke’s scene with the lion comes at once to mind (it is another
burlesque act), and Bert Williams--in many scenes--always soft spoken,
always understanding his case. There were five minutes of Blanche Ring
and Charles Winninger, once, at the Winter Garden; to my surprise,
there were more than that for Eugene and Willie Howard at the same
house, but they were gained in spite of the Winter Garden technique
which underestimates even the lowest intelligence. Willie is rather
like Fanny Brice at moments; when he cuts loose one has an agreeable
sense of uncertainty. Joe Jackson,[16] actually a great clown, although
one doesn’t recognize this in the highly developed medium he chooses,
has exactly the opposite effect--he doesn’t cut loose at all; he
develops. Everything he does is careful and nothing exaggerated, so you
think at first that, although he will be funny, he will not quite reach
that top notch on which an artist teeters perilously while you wonder
whether he will fall over or keep his balance. Yet Jackson gets there.
As the tramp cyclist his acrobatics are good, his make-up enchanting;
but his expressed attitude of mind is his most precious quality. It
becomes almost too much to watch him worrying with a motor horn which
has become detached from the handlebars and which he cannot replace. He
tries it everywhere; at the end he is miserably trying to hang it up on
the air, and when it fails to catch there he is actually wretched.
His movements are full of grace--like those of the grotesque, Alberto,
among the Fratellini--and the ecstasy he gives comes by a surexcess
of laughter. Another moment of great delicacy, without laughter,
however, is that in which Fortunello and Cirrilino swing about on the
broomstick. They are a lovely pair, and the little one seated on the
palm of the other’s hand is a beautiful picture.
[Illustration:
BERT SAVOY
]
Either few women are brought out of burlesque, or women haven’t the
exceptional quality I care for. In any case they have seldom given me
the excess of emotion by what they have done. Their beauty is quite
another matter on which I fail to commit myself. Ada Lewis, in her
broad and grand way, has the stuff, and Florence Moore. And once in
each performance you can be sure that Gilda Grey will utter a sound
or tremble herself into a bacchanalian revel. For the most part her
singing is undistinguished, and I do not care for the anxious way in
which she regards her members, as if she fancied they would fall off
by dint of shimmying. Yet I have never gone to a show of hers without
hearing some echo of the nymphs pursued, or seeing a movement of
abandon and grace. The dark shuddering voice is sub-human, the movement
divinely animal.
Different in every way, but exquisite in every way, was Gaby Deslys.
It is good form now to belittle her; she was so vulgar; she came so
much on the crest of a revolution, she was such a bidder for our great
precious commodity--news space. Ah, well! we have given publicity to
less worthy causes. For she was perfect of her type, and in her hard,
calculating, sublimely decent way she made us like the type. It was
gently vicious--the whole manner. It was overdone--the pearls and the
peacock feathers. But behind was a lovely person--lovely to look at
and enchanting to all the senses. No, she couldn’t act--how pitiable
her loyal efforts; she sang badly; she wasn’t one of the world’s great
dancers. But she had something irreducible, not to be hindered or
infringed upon--her definite self. She was, to begin with, outcast
of our moral system, and she made us accept her because she was an
independent human being. She had a sound and accurate sense of her
personal life, of her rights as an individual. Nothing could stand
against her--and it is said that when she was at grips, at the end,
with something more powerful than popular taste, she still held her
own, and died rather than suffer the spoiling of her beauty. If that
were true one could hardly wish even her beauty back again.
_The “Vulgar”
Comic Strip_
THE “VULGAR” COMIC STRIP
Of all the lively arts the Comic Strip is the most despised, and
with the exception of the movies it is the most popular. Some twenty
million people follow with interest, curiosity, and amusement the daily
fortunes of five or ten heroes of the comic strip, and that they do
this is considered by all those who have any pretentions to taste and
culture as a symptom of crass vulgarity, of dulness, and, for all I
know, of defeated and inhibited lives. I need hardly add that those who
feel so about the comic strip only infrequently regard the object of
their distaste.
Certainly there is a great deal of monotonous stupidity in the
comic strip, a cheap jocosity, a life-of-the-party humour which is
extraordinarily dreary. There is also a quantity of bad drawing and the
intellectual level, if that matters, is sometimes not high. Yet we are
not actually a dull people; we take our fun where we find it, and we
have an exceptional capacity for liking the things which show us off
in ridiculous postures--a counterpart to our inveterate passion for
seeing ourselves in stained-glass attitudes. And the fact that we do
care for the comic strip--that Jiggs and Mutt-and-Jeff and Skinnay and
the Gumps have entered into our existence as definitely as Roosevelt
and more deeply than Pickwick--ought to make them worth looking at,
for once. Certainly they would have been more sharply regarded if they
had produced the counterpart of Chaplin in the comic film--a universal
genius capable of holding the multitude and exciting the speculations
of the intellectuals. It happens that the actual genius of the comic
strip, George Herriman, is of such a special sort that even when he is
recognized he is considered something apart and his appearance among
other strips is held to be only an accident.
It is by no means an accident, for the comic strip is an exceptionally
supple medium, giving play to a variety of talents, to the use of
many methods, and it adapts itself to almost any theme. The enormous
circulation it achieves imposes certain limitations: it cannot be
too local, since it is syndicated throughout the country; it must
avoid political and social questions because the same strip appears
in papers of divergent editorial opinions; there is no room in it for
acute racial caricature, although no group is immune from its mockery.
These and other restrictions have gradually made of the comic strip a
changing picture of the average American life--and by compensation it
provides us with the freest American fantasy.
In a book which appeared about two years ago, _Civilization in the
United States_, thirty Americans rendered account of our present state.
One of them, and one only, mentioned the comic strip--Mr Harold E.
Stearns--and he summed up the “intellectual” attitude perfectly by
saying that _Bringing Up Father_ will repay the social historian for
all the attention he gives it. I do not know in what satisfactions the
social historian can be repaid. I fear that the actual fun in the
comic strip is not one of them. _Bringing Up Father_, says Mr Stearns,
“symbolizes better than most of us appreciate the normal relation of
American men and women to cultural and intellectual values. _Its very
grotesqueness and vulgarity are revealing_” (italics mine). (Query: Is
it vulgar of Jiggs to prefer Dinty’s café to a Swami’s lecture? Or of
Mrs Jiggs to insist on the lecture? Or of both of them to be rather
free in the matter of using vases as projectiles? What, in short, is
vulgar?) I am far from quarreling with Mr Stearns’ leading idea, for
I am sure that a history of manners in the United States could be
composed with the comic strip as its golden thread; but I think that
something more than its vulgarity would be revealing.
The daily comic strip arrived in the early ’nineties--perhaps it was
our contribution to that artistic age--and has gone through several
phases. In 1892 or thereabouts Jimmy Swinnerton created _Little
Bears and Tigers_ for the San Francisco _Examiner_; that forerunner
has passed away, but Swinnerton remains, and everything he does is
observed with respect by the other comic-strip artists; he has had more
influence on the strip even than Wilhelm Busch, the German whose _Max
und Moritz_ were undoubtedly the originals of the _Katzenjammer Kids_.
The strip worked its way east, prospered by William Randolph Hearst
especially in the coloured Sunday Supplement, and as a daily feature
by the Chicago _Daily News_, which was, I am informed, the first to
syndicate its strips and so enabled Americans to think nationally.
About fifteen years ago, also in San Francisco, appeared the first work
of Bud Fisher, _Mr Mutt_, soon to develop into _Mutt and Jeff_, the
first of the great hits and still one of the best known of the comic
strips. Fisher’s arrival on the scene corresponds to that of Irving
Berlin in ragtime. He had a great talent, hit upon something which took
the popular fancy, and by his energy helped to establish the comic
strip as a fairly permanent idea in the American newspaper.
The files of the San Francisco _Chronicle_ will one day be searched by
an enthusiast for the precise date on which Little Jeff appeared in
the picture. It is generally believed that the two characters came on
together, but this is not so. In the beginning Mr Mutt made his way
alone; he was a race-track follower who daily went out to battle and
daily fell. Clare Briggs had used the same idea in his _Piker Clerk_
for the Chicago _Tribune_. The historic meeting with Little Jeff, a
sacred moment in our cultural development, occurred during the days
before one of Jim Jeffries’ fights. It was as Mr Mutt passed the asylum
walls that a strange creature confided to the air the notable remark
that he himself was Jeffries. Mutt rescued the little gentleman and
named him Jeff. In gratitude Jeff daily submits to indignities which
might otherwise seem intolerable.
The development in the last twenty years has been rapid, and about two
dozen good comics now exist. Historically it remains to be noted that
between 1910 and 1916 nearly all the good comics were made into bad
burlesque shows; in 1922 the best of them was made into a ballet with
scenario and music by John Alden Carpenter, choreography by Adolph
Bolm; costumes and settings after designs by George Herriman. Most
of the comics have also appeared in the movies; the two things have
much in common and some day a thesis for the doctorate in letters will
be written to establish the relationship. The writer of that thesis
will explain, I hope, why “movies” is a good word and “funnies,” as
offensive little children name the comic pages, is what charming
essayists call an atrocious vocable.
Setting apart the strip which has fantasy--it is practised by Frueh and
by Herriman--the most interesting form is that which deals satirically
with every-day life; the least entertaining is the one which takes over
the sentimental magazine love-story and carries it through endless
episodes. The degree of interest points to one of the virtues of the
comic strip: it is a great corrective to magazine-cover prettiness.
Only one or two frankly pretty-girl strips exist. _Petey_ is the only
one which owes its popularity to the high, handsome face and the
lovely flanks of its heroine, and even there the pompous awkwardness
of the persistent lover has a touch of wilful absurdity. Mrs Trubble,
a second-rate strip unworthy of its originator, is simply a series
of pictures dramatizing the vampire home-breaker; I am not even sure
she is intended to be pretty. When nearly everything else in the same
newspapers is given over to sentimentality and affected girl-worship,
to advice to the lovelorn and pretty-prettiness, it is notable that the
comic strip remains grotesque and harsh and careless. It is largely
concerned with the affairs of men and children, and, as far as I know,
there has never been an effective strip made by, for, or of a woman.
The strip has been from the start a satirist of manners; remembering
that it arrived at the same time as the Chicago World’s Fair, recalling
the clothes, table manners, and conversation of those days, it is easy
to see how the murmured satiric commentary of the strip undermined our
self-sufficiency, pricked our conceit, and corrected our _gaucherie_.
To-day the world of Tad, peopled with cake-eaters and finale-hoppers,
the world of the _Gumps_ and _Gasoline Alley_, of _Abie the Agent_ and
_Mr and Mrs_ serve the same purpose. I am convinced that none of our
realists in fiction come so close to the facts of the average man, none
of our satirists are so gentle and so effective. Of course they are all
more serious and more conscious of their mission; but--well, exactly
who cares?
[Illustration:
(_Copyright by the Star Company. By permission of the
publishers of the_ New York Journal)
MIKE AND MIKE. By T. E. Powers
]