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SHOWMAN
tumble fights which were always going on got too noisy and too extensive. At that point we'd ring down for a moment while the house-bouncers cleared out the antagonists, and then ring up again to carry on. Often enough the audience would decide to participate in the action of the play, although none of them had very much idea of what was going on. Once a drunk stole the show from the heroine, who was supposed to be rescuing the hero by leaping on the stage, untying the hero himself, and doing his spifflicated best to put out the fire that had been threatening his life— the fire being red paper with a light behind it and smoke puffed up through cracks in the stage floor. The performance was always being punctuated with uncued revolver shots as some founding father of Oregon whipped out his gun and loosed it off into the top of the proscenium arch with appropriate whoops and yells. And it was by no means uncommon for a patron, up to the chin in redeye, to decide to bombard the villain for mistreating the heroine. Fortunately this impromptu defender of female innocence was usually too drunk to shoot very straight. Even so they'd come pretty close. I've often seen the villain ducking into the wings, very pale under his makeup, because a .45 bullet had cut a neat hole in a flat six inches above his head. Night after night it was pandemonium— the toughest audience to play to I ever met yet, and that is saying a great, great deal.
To make it all the worse for me as the comedian of the company, I had fallen head over heels in love with
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