The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

November, 1920 CIVILIAN CLOTHES Fictionized By LEWIS F. LEVENSON SHORTY PELLETIER had the floor, and when Shorty has the floor there is never any doubt as to Shorty's complete and unquestioned right to full possession. You see, Shorty used to be a barker in a circus side-show troupe — that is, before the war — and Shorty was accustomed to being listened to. And, anyhow, Shorty was more or less deaf, which made it more or less impossible to interrupt him, had anyone been willing to interrupt Shorty once his exquisite interpretation of the language of these here United States began to flow. And that's how I happen to know something about Sam McGinnis's love affair with Florence Denham. We were sitting in the back room of Finnegan's Third Avenue cafe when Shorty got started on his spiel. "D'you guys remember Sam McGinnis?" he asked. "Sam of the Sixty-Nint' ?" piped Red Lemmon. "Yep. Run into him yestidday. Happened to be passin' one of them swell dumps on Forty-Second street and he comes shinin' out all duded up. I used to think he was one of them dirty necks like Jess Hiller or Roy Mangum, but tickle me eye if he wasn't sweller than the Prince of them there Wales when he come over here last fall to slip an American queen into the deck and we took a shiner at him an' thought that as a king he'd be a good joker but as a regular hand-me-down guy he was no gypper. "Well, anyhow, I stops Sam, and I sez to him, 'wotinell Sam, wotinell?' "Same old Sam, except he'd been knockin' 'em for a goal somewhere. No more flossy lookin' weeds, no more checks, no more red neck ties, no more brown derbies. On the level, I thought at first he was a wax figure that'd walked out through the window pane of that there clothing shop next to the Grand Central. "He sees me, and he gives me the grand shake. " 'Well, I ain't seen you since the day General Pershing fired you 'cause he was afraid you'd get his job,' he sez to me, witty like. "And he flopped me into his limousine and he rode me all over town and took me to his club and fed me up on honestto-jerry good old Grandad, ninety proof and all. Then he loosened up and I sez to him. 'Sam.' I sez, 'how come?' "'How come what?' " 'Why,' sez I, 'you're the funniest gink I ever come to know since I cut my eye teeth on a barbed wire fence out in Ooskaloosa. You starts in the army as a good old oily faced buck private, and you winds up as a shiner, a second looie with Shinola legguards and a twinkler on your shoulder. Then you goes and palms your Ingersoll for a suit of clothes that musta hung in the windows of Ike Goldstein's Sevent' Avenue clothing emporium since Grant smoked his first Robert Burns at the battle of Bunker Hill, and here I meets you this afternoon walking out of Buckingham-Palace-on-the-Hudson, lookin' as if you'd fallen into a sheep trough and had come up all-wool and a yard and a half wide.' "So I sez to him, 'Sam,' I sez, 'Sam, here's where I sez to you,' I sez, 'how come?' "Well, anyhow, Sam, seein' as how I was his buddy when he was nothin' but a buck private, and rememberin' how I pulled him outa that shell-hole when a Jerry was comin' head-first in to rip off his scalp and make it into wienerwurst back home, he tells me the story. "Seems that when Sam hit Floovie or one of them there Frenchie towns after he was made a second looie, he met some kind of a jane called Florence Denham. I sorta remember her, blue eyes, fair hair, with a voice that made you think of the way your own mother used to pat you on the head before you went to bed and just before she'd send the strong-arm squad in the shape of your good old dad to spank you if you didn't say every one of your prayers. Sam was sorta lonesome, and he shined right up to her he did. No spiel or nothin'. They just looked at each other, and their eyes said: 'Here's how, old timer, me for vou, for life!' "Sam, he had a billet down the line and he was ta-kin' a blighty for a couple of days at Floovie, and he was all for rushin' things. And I suppose Florence was too, for anyhow, when he took her to Tours a couple of days later, they went and got hitched. "The Old Man, you know the Old Man, Hiller — he liked nothin' better than havin' some of his shiners get mixed up with a skirt. Of course, some windbag squealed, and Sam got his, right square in the eye.