Patrick and I loved this line. We repeated it often, cracking each other up every time. Of Richard Nixon the unspeakable, we said only, “He’s small time in his heart.”
So of course at intermission, when we met for a shot-glass-size cardboard espresso, we said the line in unison and laughed. Next to us, the weird sister with the whitest hair turned to her companion and said, “I remember the war. I was in high school. We were supposed to knit socks for the soldiers.”
“I knitted three pair,” the other said with pride. “My brother was a doughboy.”
“I only finished one sock,” white hair admitted. “And then the war was over.”
The little old man with the burgundy beret stepped into the room on light, dancer’s feet. When he saw me looking at him, he winked and did a little dance, humming “For Me and My Gal” under his breath.
He did a nice soft shoe, his leather soles gliding across the floor, no taps, just thumps of emphasis with the heel. His lithe body was perfect for the moves and the twinkle in his eye told me he was enjoying the little burst of applause that greeted his impromptu performance.
When he was finished, he bowed low and removed his beret. Long wisps of yellow-gray hair barely covered a scalp dotted with liver spots. He stepped to the counter next to me and ordered a double espresso.
Blinking lights in the lobby signaled the end of intermission and the start of the second feature. We made our way back to our seats, but the conversation, and the old man, was not forgotten.
Birch, 1972
There was that incredible voice, for one thing, and the big brown eyes and the way her face changed to show exactly what she was thinking all the time. When she sang “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me,” Birch found tears on her cheeks. The plot, Mickey Rooney, none of it mattered when Judy sang. The song went clear out of the stupid movie and into a whole world of its own, a world of love and pain and compassion, a world of someone who’d longed for love and wondered if she’d ever find it.
Birch knew that feeling. Back in her freshman year, she and her dad agreed that it was no big deal that nobody asked her to the school dance. She was only fourteen, and there was plenty of time to outgrow her tomboy stage. They both kept saying it as dance after dance came and went without anyone asking Birch (which was not her name back then but the name she took for herself when she realized she had to bend or she would break).
The junior prom was the first one that hurt. Not only had nobody asked her, but the boys she asked turned her down flat. Boys she’d known for years, gone hiking with, played baseball with, told her they wanted to ask other girls instead of her.
Then she took the dainty little watch with the real diamond chips her dad gave her for her sweet sixteen and exchanged it for a waterproof sports watch. For the first time in his life, Sam Tate allowed himself to say what Birch guessed he’d been thinking for a long time: Did she want everyone in Woodstock to think she was a lesbian, for God’s sake?
She wasn’t exactly sure what a lesbian was, but she knew it wasn’t good and it meant no boys asked you to dances.
Then she met Enid and the truth dawned. They
So that was why the tears were there, not because Judy couldn’t get a stupid twit like Mickey Rooney to look twice at her.
FRI-TUES
12:30 PM, 5:00 PM, 9:30 PM
Remember your Forgotten Man at this Depression-era classic. Powell and Keeler, Blondell and McMahon-can musicals get better than this?
2:45 PM, 7:15 PM, 11 PM
Lullaby of Broadway” makes this the only noir musical in Hollywood history. Do boo Adolphe Menjou, but not during the movie, please.
Birch, 1972
THEY DID BOO Adolphe Menjou, first when his name came up on the credits, and again when he appeared in the movie. The booing was loud, long, and enthusiastic, and Birch was determined not to ask why.
The little man in the wine-colored beret who looked like a garden gnome gave a Bronx cheer when the dapper actor came on the screen. “Right on, Pop,” someone else yelled.
Birch remembered his cheerful tap-dance in the coffee room the last time she was at Theatre 80 and wondered what would make a nice old man behave like that.
When the double feature was over and she and Scotty rejoined Patrick in the lobby, he and the little man were deep in conversation.
“Busby Berkley was a tightass little shit,” the old man said, spittle gathering at the ends of his lips. “Little tin god-the way he treated Judy was a sin and a disgrace. And no,” he added, turning to Patrick, “he wasn’t one a youse, boyo. He liked girls all right-except when they were dancing.”
Birch didn’t wonder how the old man knew Patrick was gay. Everything about Patrick, from the open way he laughed, to the theatrical gestures, to his graceful walk, to the color-coordinated scarf he so carefully arranged around his neck, to his candid, flirty blue eyes told the world who he was. Birch admired that about Patrick; he never seemed to pretend or to feel ashamed.
“Remember that number in
“ ‘I didn’t raise my daughter to be a human harp!’ ” Scotty quoted and both broke up laughing, neither bothering to explain the joke to Birch.
“Which was the one where Ruby Keeler danced on the giant typewriter?”
“
Birch turned to the old man and asked, “Were you in the movies?”
“Girlie,” the old man replied, “I started at Metro when its mascot was a parrot. The lion came later, after Sam Goldfish took over.”
Patrick’s face lit up with a combination of awe and amusement. “That’s Samuel Goldwyn to you and me,” he explained to Birch. Scotty just nodded; of course, she’d already known that.
“So you were in the Freed Unit,” Patrick said in a breathy voice. “You knew Arthur Freed? And Gene Kelly? And Vincente Minelli?”
“Freed Unit.” The old man shook his head. “There was no goddamn Freed Unit. That’s all made up by a bunch a people want to think the musical was more than it really was. Freed was a producer like all the rest, nothing special.”