Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1935)

Something or Other." The ringmaster pronounced the French prefix "Millie" and one stern Kansas sister exclaimed as Fred teetered across the tightrope, "What a shame! Sending that poor little girl away up on that dangerous rope." Fred paused in his prancing and leaned on his parasol. His nine-year-old cheeks flaming, he yelled indignantly: "I ain't no girl — I'm a boy!" He felt that he left Wellington in disgrace. But years later on one of his early flights across the country to see his pal, Will Rogers, out in Hollywood, Fred landed at Wichita, Kansas. The folks at Wellington forty miles away, proud of the boy who had started his path to glory in the town, even if he had disguised his sex, urged him to fly up for a visit. Fred accepted and landing on the golf course was surprised to discover a large crowd formed for a parade with a brass band. Th?y marched back through town, band blaring. It was a fine parade. Fred said so. "But," he observed in puzzlement, as they passed down empty streets, "where is everybody? Nobody's watching it." "There ain't anybody left to watch it," explained the grand marshal, "they're all in the parade!" YOU read the rise of Fred Stone from a colorful page of the history of American variety. Tent shows, circuses, traveling vaudeville troupes, stock theaters, novelty stands, black face minstrels, show boats — all stream through those early, rough, precarious trouping days. Often he ran across an Oklahoma rope spinner with a shy smile and wise eyes, who called himself Will Rogers. While Fred did one thing, he learned another. When he tumbled, he learned acrobatics on the side; when he danced, he learned to sing and do comic antics. He took up Australian whip cracking and became an expert. He carried a bicycle with him in a bicycle trunk; for a time his only suit besides his costume was a cycling outfit. He found hardships all the way, but he thought they were fun, even when he had to live off free oysters in New Orleans although he hated oysters. Two things stand out in the early kaleidoscope of Fred Stone's story-packed early adventures. One was the day he saw the parade of Haverly's minstrels in Galveston, Texas, and shouted to an old friend, Dave Montgomery. Montgomery wanted him to quit his job in the variety show and join the minstrel. "You ought to go Fast, Fred," Montgomery told him. "Fver been East?" "Sure," said Fred, "to Chicago." "I mean clear East," explained Dave, "how much you making?" "Twenty-five dollars," said Fred. "Well — we don't pay salaries," said Montgomery, "but we can promiseyou twenty-five." From then on for over a score of years the team of Montgomery and Stone was a tradition in the show world. It ended only when Dave Montgomery passed away in the third year of the run of "Chin Chin." There was never any business arrangement — it was always fifty-fifty. The second significant event took place some time after their teaming in a Boston burlesque house, whare Fred and Dave had been booked by their contractors, "Gus Hill's World of Novelties." Montgomery and Stone went through their black faced song and dance. They couldn't see the audience for the tobacco smoke. The audience couldn't see Montgomery and Stone for anything. They wanted off-color jokes. "We'll keep our act clean," said Fred Stone to his partner, "no matter what they want. Let's go back to New York." For all the years that Fred Stone captured Broadway there was a saying around town that Fred Stone's shows were the kind that "parents could take their children to see." Or as Fred wittily warped it, "the kind children could take their parents to see." "The Wizard of Oz" started Fred Stone's unique reign on Broadway. Fred played the scarecrow; Dave the tin man. It ran four years. There was a little girl from Denver in the show. She was Mrs. Stone before the showclosed — and she still is, by the way, and the mother of Dorothy, Paula and Carol Stone, three as talented girls as you've ever seen. "The Red Mill," "The Old Town." "Lady Lovely Anita Louise, the youthful Warner Brothers' star, radiates a glowing animation. "Enemy of Man" is her latest starring production of the Slipper," "Chin Chin," "Jack O' Lattern," "Tip Top," "Stepping Stones," "Criss Cross" — the very names that spell Fred Stone's saga seem different somehow now — as of a past age. They were. They were fanciful, gay, delightful shows telling whimsical stories of make-believe. They were before the hardboiled, clanging sarcastic revues, the sexy, sadistic and pathological spectacles staged for a desperate generation. It was the week before rehearsals started for "Three Cheers" that Fred Stone took off in his latest love, his own airplane. Restlessly active, he had always fiddled on the side in polo, ice skating, trap shooting, baseball. Aviation was his pet. He had practically pioneered it in the show world. He had his pilot's license and hours to his credit. He could do spins and loops and wing overs. Over New London, Connecticut, Fred leveled off too close to the ground that day. They picked him up with "everything that could break" in his body broken. Thigh, legs, shoulder, ribs, ankle, jaw. They carried him gently to the hospital. One foot was badly shattered. The doctor thought it might have to come off. Perhaps he read the terror in Mrs. Stone's eyes. "Is he a drinking man?" he asked. "Because if there's any alcohol in his system, I won't dare leave that foot on." "The only thing he ever drinks," said Mrs. Stone with a sigh of profound relief, "is milk." Fred Stone lay for months in the hospital mending his broken frame. His old friend, Bill Rogers, came back from out West to pinch hit for him in "Three Cheers." They decided to ship Fred to Florida to get well. Before he left he asked the doctor: "How bad am I hurt?" The surgeon was frank. "You'll never dance again," he informed him, "and I'm afraid you'll never walk." "When I come back," said Fred Stone. " I'll run up these stairs to your office." You can bet that it was the most astounded physician in the country some months later who watched his patient actually race up the stairs to grasp his hand. Fred had made a special trip up from Florida just to make good his promise! It was a miracle of grit and courage and faith and patience that allowed the comeback of Fred Stone. He had spent days of tedious effort regaining the use of his limbs. Even while he was still on crutches he was so impatient to dance that he hobbled out a routine on the props. In " Ripples," his comeback show on Broadway with his daughters Dorothy and Paula, he featured "the crutch dance" and the audience thundered. BUT "Ripples" didn't run for three and four years as the old shows had done. Things had happened to Broadway. Ziegfeld was gone, the Erlanger theaters were breaking up. The days of his old producer, Charles Dillingham, for whom he had worked since 1906, were numbered. The old order had changed. And the new swift, brazen, sophisticated era of Broadway wasn't for Fred Stone. When "Ripples" closed he went to his home in Forest Hills and stayed there. They called him for vaudeville and for radio. But it wasn't the same. He couldn't tolerate the passiveness of the microphone. He'd make gestures at it, shake his fist and dance before it. But that didn't register. It was funny to watch him broadcast — funny and sad. The years had slipped by somehow — but not enough of them to let him sit in peace at home. Here was Carol now going to dramatic school and seeing producers about parts. One day she went to see about a part in "The Jayhawker," a play about early Kansas that Sinclair Lewis had just written. "You know, I think Daddy might be interested in a part in a play," she ventured. "Do you mean that?" asked Lewis. He called up Fred Stone. "Let me come out tonight and read this play to you." "All right," said Fred. Sinclair Lewis came out ft) Forest Hills. He read his drama of Ace Burdelle and early Kansas politics to Fred Stone. "I don't know," said Fred, "I've never done any real acting. It sounds pretty heavy for me." "Heavy?" cried Lewis. "Why man, you are the Jayhawker." Yes, come to think of it, Fred Stone was the Jayhawker, if anybody was. Wasn't he 102