Movieland. (1946)

HERE COMES HARRY (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 411 “No. Of course not,” he replied. “She’s just not going to work as hard as she did, going from one pro¬ duction to another without a break. “You know,” he continued, “there was a time when she was working all day, and I was working with the band at night, and we never saw each other. She’d get up at six and go off to the studio, come home at seven and kiss me goodbye before I left for the bandstand, and I’d work un¬ til three or four in the morning while she went to bed. That’s a silly way to live, and I hope from here on in we can get our schedules clicking a little better. We’re all going to New York in June — Betty, the baby, the nurse, Betty’s mother. I’ll be play¬ ing at the Astor but Betty will get a real vacation. Then we’ll all come home and make movies again.” Movies have become almost as big a part of Harry’s life as of Betty’s. And the Hollywood kids now know from experience how much the words, “With Harry James and his Musicmakers” mean on a marquee. The day I saw Harry, in fact, the news had just come that Fox was paying the group $166,000 for “Kitten on the Keys.” And that ain’t tin, in any language! Harry explained one reason why the amount was so much — skipping the fact that he can blow a horn, of course. “I have a part in ‘Kitten,’ a big part,” he said. “And the band has only three or four numbers. But I’ll have to keep the boys on salary while I do my scenes without them, maybe for five or six weeks. And, with an outfit like mine — a 30-piece band, arrangers, copyists, a manager, a pub¬ licity man, a secretary, a prop boy, an auditor, and a few other guys — it costs about $7500 a week, just for the pay-roll alone. That mounts up,” he added, wryly. I knew about the expense he had every week, even before he told me. What I was interested in was that he is really going to be given a chance to act, in “Kitten on the Keys.” And, for my dough, it’s high time. For Harry, as against other band leaders, has always had a certain relaxed charm on the screen. He has never been merely a character who blew a horn at stated intervals; he was a definite personality. I asked him if he wanted to become an actor. “I don’t think I’d ever be completely happy, divorced from music,” he said. “But I’d like to make a nice blend of the two.” From the subsequent conversation, I doubt if Betty would ever be satis¬ fied if Harry gave up his trumpet, either. For, as you know, another of his activities is making records, now that the ban has been lifted on recording. And Betty is really the jive kid. When Harry had his first date here, she went to the studio with him, sat down on a rolled-up rug at eight p.m., and didn’t move until he and the band were finished at twothirty in the morning. And then she asked that they play the last tune back for her once more. That is really taking an interest in your hus¬ band’s w'ork! Outside of movies and records and playing at hotels and doing strings of one-nighters across the country, Harry also has the field of radio to complicate matters. He’s on the air now with Danny Kaye, in a halfhour opus which delights him. He and Kaye are two of a kind: vastly talented guys who admire each other’s work and get enormous kicks labor¬ ing together. And they really labor. You don’t just toss out thirty minutes of music and comedy like frying an egg, you know. It takes time and worry and endless rehearsals before a show goes on the air. And, besides all these things, there are the hours which Harry and his men donate to the one group in the world they applaud most, the service¬ men. “We play hospitals whenever we can,” he told me. “I think that’s our particular job. When we go across the country, for instance, we arrange to give some shows en route. I’d say we do an average of one hospital ap¬ pearance a week, whether on the road or in Hollywood. And we wouldn’t give them up for anything.” The army and navy wouldn’t have Harry and his gang give them up, for the services know the value music has where sick men are concerned. They have seen the new sparkle which appears in the eyes of maimed and tired kids when they hear the bright, exciting notes of Harry’s trum¬ pet, when they feel the beat of the band behind him. People have called Harry “The Modern Gabriel.” May¬ be, in this case, they aren’t far wrong. And, besides hospitals, Harry plays benefits. For the China Relief. For Bond Drives. For everything and anything they ask him to work for. He was reminiscing about a show he did for China in New York. “The thing was held at the Music Hall,” he recalled. “And we got into an elevator to go below stage. It seemed we went miles before the man finally stopped the car. Then they put us on the platform and told us we would rise into position when our turn came. We were in the cen¬ ter of the stage. At one side of us was the entire Don Cossack Choir of about fifty men. We were thirty — which is a big band, you know. Well, we rose into that gigantic hall and felt like pygmies! I have never been so lost. It seemed we would have to blow our lungs out for half of the people to hear us!” He didn’t bother to tell me that the thousands in the theatre nearly tore the place apart when he started play¬ ing. All sorts of things happen on the road, of course. There was the time he and the boys were doing a onenighter in Norfolk, Virginia. “Anything can happen in Norfolk,” Harry said. “In our case, it did. “We had just climbed on the stand and started the first number when every light in the building went out. All the electricity was gone, and that meant the public address system was off, too. I had my old band then, and the boys knew the arrangements, so we played for forty-five minutes in the dark. I was lighting matches for Helen Forrest, when she came up to sing, so the people could see her. It was quite a night.” Then there was the time that the special bus the band travels in, ran out of gas twice coming back from San Diego, a performance which was only topped by its breaking down completely. At that point, it was every man for himself, and Harry and the boys hitch-hiked home at five o’clock in the morning. You try do¬ ing that in Hollywood sometime! Working as hard as Harry does, in even one of these fields, would kill the average guy. But Harry seems to thrive on knocking himself out. And, strange and impossible as it may seem, he does have some leisure and knows what to do with it. There’s baseball, for instance. He hasn’t gotten around, to buying a pro¬ fessional team as yet — though he’d like to — but he is one of the greatest active fans in the business. And by the way, not a bad shortstop. He’s so nuts on the subject that he has been known to hire musicians who could play first base, or pitch, besides wielding a sax or drumsticks. And 8etty has turned to songwriting. Make movies? She'd rather tour with Harry’s band. 51