Once we got past San Bernardino, the crowds thinned out and we were able to relax. There was a double set of facing seats in our men’s car, so Elizabeth joined us, sitting next to me and across from Snyder and Figgins. I did not know either of the men very well, although I’d met them at parties and studio functions. The studio’s selection of its male stars was sensible, for both of these men—who were in their late thirties—were too old to enlist, and I, of course, was ineligible.
I’d heard that Snyder was a rather private man, a genuine former cowboy whose success in Hollywood had not altered his basic plainness. He’d been discovered years before at Gower Gulch, and it was said that he still roped cattle and raised horses and sheep on his ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Figgins was more of an enigma. He had that lovable, self-deprecating big-man persona, and yet out of the public eye he was unpredictable. His given name was Eugene, but he’d earned the nickname Tuggy at a party on the pier in Santa Monica. The story was that there’d been a footrace, several drunken men barreling blindfolded down the pier, and when Figgins broke the ribbon at the finish line, he kept going and flipped over the rail. He took the ribbon, several balloons, and the wooden barriers they’d been tied to down into the water with him. And as he swam back to shore with this load trailing behind him, someone leaned over the rail and said, “Hey, he looks like a tugboat!” This eventually got shortened to Tuggy, and the nickname stuck. So did his talent for attracting misadventure. There was talk about drunken fights at questionable night spots and arguments with the studio—talk that might explain his presence on the Victory Train, which could have been an attempt to repair his image. He did not appear to be getting off on the right foot, however. Less than an hour into the trip, he sighed heavily and said, “Well, howsabout a little drink?”
David Rosenberg was on the train too—he’d been sent by Leonard Stillman to keep an eye on us—and at this, he sat up straight in the seat behind me. “Little early, Tuggy, don’t you think?”
It was early—only 10:30 a.m.—but this didn’t seem to deter the comedian. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his coat—which barely closed over his soft, bulky frame—and said, “I’m boiling, sport. Need a spot of something cool. Now be a good boy and rustle up some beer.”
At this, Elizabeth, who’d kicked her shoes off and crossed her legs on the seat, said, “One for me too, David, if it’s not too much of a bother.”
I tried to give her a look, but she avoided my eyes. Then I turned to Snyder, who shrugged. Unconcerned, he lit a cigarette and gazed out the window. When I glanced at David, though, he was pressing his lips together and furrowing his brow. He must have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of fighting, because he left and came back with the beers.
Despite this beginning, there was a general sense of excitement about the trip. The distributors and theater owners kept knocking on our door, wanting to meet us, and Rosenberg would shoo them away. The train’s service staff would come in with our food, trembling with excitement, and then we’d all read their descriptions in the next day’s papers of our clothes and eating habits.
At our first stop, in Phoenix, we held a rally at a football field, led by a contingent that included the mayor and the U.S. senator from Arizona. One by one, we climbed up on the stage to yell through megaphones on behalf of Liberty Bonds.
“Every bond you buy will help save a soldier’s life!” shouted Snyder.
“Every bond you buy is a hammer in the Kaiser’s coffin!” called out Elizabeth.
Figgins and I expanded on these general themes, as did everyone else who took to the stage.
After we’d finished exhorting the crowd, we each retreated to our booth to sell bonds. All proceeded smoothly until a young redhead reached into my booth and threw her arms around me. I returned her embrace briefly, but when I attempted to pull away, she tightened her grip around the back of my neck. Three policemen appeared, and after their repeated commands to let go of me went unheeded, they had to pry her loose. “Jun, Jun, I love you!” she sobbed, as the police began to pull her away. Before they succeeded, she took something out of her pocket and threw it at me. It was a pair of lacy underwear, and all the men grinned as I plucked it off my shoulder. Figgins, from the next booth, shook his head in amazement. “Normandy told me you were popular with women. But jeez, I had no idea.”
Each official stop was a variation of the first—large crowds that grew as we progressed across the country, smiling politicians, fans crushing through police lines to get to us. We each had our own particular brand of followers. Elizabeth, of course, was loved by all the men—some of them shyly passed her flowers or love letters; more than one asked her to marry him, and a man in Cleveland paid $10,000 in cash for a clump of her chestnut hair. Young women loved her too—not society girls, but girls in waitress outfits and mothers old before their years, women who knew where Elizabeth had come from and who believed her success gave them hope for their own lives. Figgins’ fans were portly or scrawny boys and their adult equivalents, people who yearned not for heroic figures but for reflections of themselves. The working men were drawn to Buck Snyder, who was the archetypal Western hero. The men who liked me were the sophisticates, the urban men who liked elegant clothing and good
