Actorviews (1923)

The Twenty-Second Street Ziegfeld 105 blocking traffic. What a wreck! I was out seventeen thousand and almost flat. But I got him in his rags into Albany in front of the newspapermen and the cameras. “And next day the printer brought me the red letterheads reading, ‘Jimmy Ward, the world’s greatest and youngest (he wasn’t forty yet) flyer,’ and within thirty days I’d cleaned up $38,000 worth of summer park engagements. All told, I cleaned a hundred thou. “And this hunch,” he goes on, “for an all-night show in the old place, with Society clamoring for front seats instead of dark sneaks and behaving itself as it would at home (it was always the society people who made my New Year’s Eves rowdy) — well, I’m going to play this hunch out if it takes my whole string. I’ve just telegraphed Eva Tanguay at Atlantic City to say there’s five thousand for her to come and head the new bill, and I’ll not stop there. I’ll stick till I put this over if I have to do it with Mary Garden !” Mr. Bloom sees me to the door, where a few cabs are now awaiting the “Home, James.” “Anything else on your heart, Ike?” I say. “Yes,” says he — “since you ask: that pipe. It’s the first one that’s been smoked in the place in twenty years. I hope you enjoyed it!” About some things Mr. Bloom is still a prude.