I had obtained a trial week without pay at the Forester’s Music Hall, which was a small theatre situated off the Mile End Road in the centre of the Jewish quarter. I had played there previously with Casey’s Circus and the management thought I was good enough to be given a chance. My future hopes and dreams depended on that trial week. After the Foresters’ I would play all the important circuits in England. Who knows? Within a year I might rise to be one of vaudeville’s biggest headliners. I had promised the whole Fields family that I would get them tickets towards the end of the week, when I was thoroughly at home with my act.
‘I suppose you won’t want to live with us after your success,’ said Phoebe.
‘Of course I will,’ I said graciously.
Twelve O’clock Monday morning was band rehearsal for songs and cues etc., which I carried out professionally. But I had not given sufficient thought to my make-up. I was undecided how I should look. For hours before the night show I was in the dressing-room experimenting, but no matter how much crêpe hair I used I could not hide my youth. Although I was innocent of it, my comedy was most anti-Semitic, and my jokes were not only old ones but very poor, like my Jewish accent. Moreover, I was not funny.
After the first couple of jokes the audience started throwing coins and orange-peel and stamping their feet and booing. At first I was not conscious of what was going on. Then the horror of it filtered into my mind. I began to hurry and talk faster as the jeers, the raspberries, and the throwing of coins and orange-peel increased. When I came off the stage, I did not wait to hear the verdict from the management; I went straight to the dressing-room, took off my make-up, left the theatre and never returned, not even to collect my music books.
It was late when I returned home to Kennington Road and the Field family had all gone to bed, and I was thankful they had. In the morning at breakfast Mrs Fields was anxious to know how the show went. I bluffed indifference and said: ‘All right, but it needs a few alterations.’ She said that Phoebe had gone to see me, but had told them nothing, as she was too tired and wanted to get to bed. When I saw Phoebe later she did not mention it, neither did I; nor did Mrs Fields or any of the family ever mention it again, or show any surprise at my not continuing the week.
Thank God Sydney was in the provinces, so I had not the painful ordeal of telling him what had happened – but he must have guessed, or the Fields might have told him, because he never did inquire about it. I did my best to erase that night’s horror from my mind, but it left an indelible mark on my confidence. That ghastly experience taught me to see myself in a truer light; I realized I was not a vaudeville comedian, I had not that intimate, come-hither faculty with an audience; and I consoled myself with being a character comedian. However, I was to have one or two more disappointments before landing on my professional feet.
At seventeen I played a juvenile lead in a sketch called The Merry Major, a cheap, depressing affair lasting only a week. The leading lady, my wife, was a woman of fifty. Each night she reeled on to the stage smelling of gin, and I, the enthusiastic loving husband, would have to take her in my arms and kiss her. That experience weaned me away from any ambition to be a leading man.
Then I tried authorship. I wrote a comedy sketch called Twelve Just Men, a slapstick affair about a jury arguing a case of breach of promise. One of the jury was a deaf-mute, another a drunk and another a quack doctor. I sold the idea to Charcoate, a vaudeville hypnotist who would hypnotize a stooge and make him drive through the town in a landau, blindfold, while he sat in the back throwing magnetic impulses at him. He gave me three pounds for my script, providing I directed it. We engaged a cast and rehearsed over the Horns public house clubrooms in the Kennington Road. One disgruntled old actor said that the sketch was not only illiterate but silly.
The third day, in the middle of rehearsals, I received a note from Charcoate to say he had decided not to produce it. Not being the valiant type, I put the note in my pocket and went on rehearsing. I had not the courage to tell the cast. Instead, at lunch-time, I took them home to our rooms and told them my brother wished to talk to them. I took Sydney into the bedroom and showed him the note. After reading it he said: ‘Well, didn’t you tell them?’
‘No,’ I whispered.
‘Well, tell them.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I just can’t, after their having rehearsed three days for nothing.’
‘But that’s not your fault,’ said Sydney. ‘Go and tell them,’ he shouted.
I lost courage and began to weep. ‘What can I say?’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ He got up and went into the next room and showed them Charcoate’s letter, explaining what had happened, then he took us all to the corner pub for a sandwich and a drink.
Actors are unpredictable. The old chap who had grumbled so much was the most philosophical, and laughed when Sydney told him of the awful state I was in. ‘It’s not your fault, sonny,’ he said, patting me on the back. ‘It’s that bloody old scoundrel, Charcoate.’
*
After my failure at the Foresters’, everything I attempted met with disaster. However, a most formidable element in optimism is youth, for it instinctively feels that adversity is pro tem and that a continual run of ill luck is just as implausible as the straight
