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Page 75
"Oh, I don't think much of the few little steps I take," said Mac, with
hypocritical lightness.
"Don't talk like a package of self-raising buckwheat flour," said Del
Delano. "You've had a talent handed to you by the Proposition Higher Up;
and it's up to you to do the proper thing with it. I'd like to have you
go up to my hotel for a talk, if you will."
In his rooms in the King Clovis Hotel, Del Delano put on a scarlet house
coat bordered with gold braid and set out Apollinaris and a box of sweet
crackers.
Mac's eye wandered.
"Forget it," said Del. "Drink and tobacco may be all right for a man who
makes his living with his hands; but they won't do if you're depending
on your head or your feet. If one end of you gets tangled, so does the
other. That's why beer and cigarettes don't hurt piano players and
picture painters. But you've got to cut 'em out if you want to do mental
or pedal work. Now, have a cracker, and then we'll talk some."
"All right," said Mac. "I take it as an honor, of course, for you to
notice my hopping around. Of course I'd like to do something in a
professional line. Of course I can sing a little and do card tricks and
Irish and German comedy stuff, and of course I'm not so bad on the
trapeze and comic bicycle stunts and Hebrew monologues and----"
"One moment," interrupted Del Delano, "before we begin. I said you
couldn't dance. Well, that wasn't quite right. You've only got two or
three bad tricks in your method. You're handy with your feet, and you
belong at the top, where I am. I'll put you there. I've got six weeks
continuous in New York; and in four I can shape up your style till the
booking agents will fight one another to get you. And I'll do it, too.
I'm of, from, and for the West Side. 'Del Delano' looks good on
bill-boards, but the family name's Crowley. Now, Mackintosh--McGowan, I
mean--you've got your chance--fifty times a better one than I had."
"I'd be a shine to turn it down," said Mac. "And I hope you understand I
appreciate it. Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of getting a
try-out at Creary's on amateur night a month from to-morrow."
"Good stuff!" said Delano. "I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, the
booker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after my
dance. And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and
quarters. There wasn't but nine penny pieces found in the lot."
"I ought to tell you," said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, "that
my cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We've always been what you might
call pals. If you'd take him up instead of me, now, it might be better.
He's invented a lot of steps that I can't cut."
"Forget it," said Delano. "Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays
of every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I'll coach you.
I'll make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you. My
act's over every night at 10:15. Half an hour later I'll take you up and
drill you till twelve. I'll put you at the top of the bunch, right where
I am. You've got talent. Your style's bum; but you've got the genius.
You let me manage it. I'm from the West Side myself, and I'd rather see
one of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the
Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I'll see that Junius
Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don't climb over the
footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll let you draw it
down from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on the
level or am I not?"
Amateur night at Creary's Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same
pattern as amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance the
humblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management, make
its debut upon the public stage. Ambitious non-professionals, mostly
self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along
the broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort,
recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of
Art. From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals
that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage.
Press-agents delight in recounting to open-mouthed and close-eared
reporters stories of the humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whose
orbits they control.
Such and such a prima donna (they will tell you) made her initial bow to
the public while turning handsprings on an amateur night. One great
matinee favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening singing
coon songs of his own composition. A tragedian famous on two continents
and an island first attracted attention by an amateur impersonation of a
newly landed Scandinavian peasant girl. One Broadway comedian that turns
'em away got a booking on a Friday night by reciting (seriously) the
graveyard scene in "Hamlet."
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