So Emma and I bought ourselves a love nook in Great Neck, christened it “The House of a Dozen Candles” and are now devoting most of our time to keeping the house in order, no small task when your ménage consists of five servants, six children, four rooms and bath, a police dog, three mechanics and a full-grown leopard.
In my spare moments I devised a scheme which for a time revolutionized the musical comedy business in New York. In those days it was customary for producers of revues and other musical plays to seek to attract patronage by having their performers wear hardly any costumes.
The tights worn by chorus girls in old time burlesque shows came to be regarded as too cumbersome and various committees on public morals were at their wits’ ends for methods to compel the theater men to observe what they called the elements of decorum and attire their dancers and coryphees in something more tangible than a square inch of gauze.
It was Mayor Walker who called me in to make suggestions. After a day’s thought I concocted the following plan: To make it compulsory for all members of the audience to disrobe utterly before entering the theater.
At first, the Mayor could not see that this would make matters any better, but I quickly convinced him. As soon as the ordinance was passed, attendance at shows fell off so lamentably that most of the productions were obliged to close. It was really surprising, even to me, to note the number of citizens who refused to undress before presenting their seat checks to the ushers. Most of them complained that the play houses were too drafty.
At any rate, the producing managers’ association soon petitioned the Mayor to have the ordinance wiped off the books and a compromise was readily effected whereby the audiences were permitted to remain clothed again provided the actors did likewise.
A banquet was given with me as the guest of honor and David Belasco, often referred to as the Master because he occupies the Master’s bedroom at the Belasco home, presented me with a lock of his hair.
In the concluding chapter I will tell of my declining years in Great Neck and the accident that resulted in my death.
A Postmortem Message
Before recounting the accident, it will be necessary to describe the locale of our Great Neck home and to name and picture a few of our then neighbors. As is perhaps known to a few of my less dumb readers, Great Neck is something of a literary and theatrical center.
Not far from us, on Cow Lane, lived Ed Streeter, author of the Dere Mable letters, for which I received many congratulations. In “the Estates” resided Sam Hellman, writer of short stories and inventor of the popular dessert, “Rind Wine,” consisting of watermelon soaked in champagne.
Up the hill was the home of Gene Buck boasting a living room of such dimensions that fifty or one hundred guests often visited the Bucks in a single evening, each thinking he was the only one that had come. Mr. Buck had formerly lived in a hovel of sixteen rooms, but when the first baby came, decided it was necessary to branch out. A second little Buck has since been added to the family and Gene is negotiating for the purchase or rental of the Paramount Building.
Our next door neighbors in the summer time were the H. B. Swopes. H. B. (Silent) Swope was the executive editor of The New York World. He and his madam had Company every weekend, Company being used in the military sense, full strength.
It got noised about that Emma and I had chow every Sunday about one o’clock and three or four platoons of our neighbors’ Company, having gone breakfastless owing to the sleeping prowess of mine host and hostess, acquired the quaint habit of dropping in at our haunch at about that hour and making complimentary remarks about our children. When this ruse had been seen through at the expense of several fragments of chicken and cups of coffee, Emma stamped out the practice by posting a sign which read, “Try Our Table d’hôte $3.00.”
In other parts of our village lived Bobby North, of the original Floradora Sextette; Ed Wynn, female impersonator; Raymond Hitchcock, soft shoe hoofer; Joe Santley, trap and drums; Arthur Hopkins, eccentric dancer; Sam Harris, the bridge authority; Ernest Truex, the Welsh comic; Oscar Shaw, gigolo; Frank Craven, the Tattooed Man; Bob Woolsey, proprietor of the Flea Circus; Tad Dorgan, designer of farm implements, and Thomas Meighan, “Is It a Man or Wolf?”
To say nothing of one of the Marx Brothers, who had recently bought a house, and Eddie Cantor, who had done the same and it was said that neither of them had come anywhere near paying cash.
It was doubtless as a result of this environment that the thing happened to me. I got up one morning and after my customary plunge down the staircase, I took my finger exercises, consisting of pointing first one finger and then the other at my wife. She made the remark that it would be a nice day to go out in the bay and fish for hake.56
Getting into my rowboat, I put on a No. 2 bait, a combination of a cockroach and the kind of salad they serve you in hospitals. I thought perhaps a hake would eat it, as nobody else would. I had hardly made my first cast when—57
It seems there were two New Yorkers, C. L. Walters and Ernie Fretts. They met on a train Florida bound. Fretts was in the insurance business, over in Brooklyn.
“I’m in the insurance business, over in Brooklyn,” said Fretts. “Handle all kinds of insurance.
