Showman (1937)

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SHOWMAN theater, it was all right. But, if he ever tried to come back to the stage, our contract still had some years to run and I'd make him complete it if I had to have him shanghaied from Timbuctoo. So he got married and his father-in-law set him up in business— which was, of all things, the soap business. I forget the brand of the stuff, but, while it lasted, it was brilliantly advertised on the big electric sign at the head of Longacre Square and everywhere else— they must have spent hundreds of thousands on advertising. A year or so later the cotton-market had one of its private panics— father-in-law was wiped out— the soap business was all washed up when father-in-law's support was withdrawn— and here was son-in-law back prospecting for a paying job in the theater. We resumed our association in a new play by Thompson Buchanan called "The Cub," after my lawyers had made sure of him. It was in "The Cub" that he first made conspicuous use of his acrobatic ability. In one scene he had to run upstairs in a two-level set and save somebody's life — probably the heroine's. "Run?" he said, when he first saw the set, "what's the matter with jumping?" I eyed the twelve-foot gap between stage floor and upper floor and expressed some doubts. "Why, that's simple," he said, took a little run, caught the edge of the flooring by the stair-opening and pulled up as easy as an alley-cat taking a fence. 264