"Joking on the Square" by Ron Savage
June 29thMarion Davies Convalescent CenterAnaheim, California...I am the last surviving guest of the world's most infamous party, I've become extraordinary by default. Why else would a good-looking man such as yourself come to see an old lady? But don't you worry a minute, hon, I remember it all, the whole works. My brain's the only young thing I've got left.I had just turned sixteen years old when I met the Big Boy. This was on Labor Day weekend, 1921. He'd rented a suite at the St. Francis in San Francisco. Me and the soon to be dead Miss X had gone there for a giggle. That's what she called it, a giggle. We were next-door neighbors in New York, X and I, the lower east side. I had written to her saying how I wanted to act in the flickers. She was twenty-five then and a recent winner of the "best dressed girl in pictures" award. I felt thrilled when she wrote back and said it was okay for me to come out and stay with her. Of course, if you don't count the poor child's murder, the closest Miss X ever came to fame was having her photo on a piece of sheet music. "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," I believe.We should get something straight right off the bat. During those days, the early twenties, nothing in Hollywood came close to the Big Boy. He could do no wrong. The public loved him, adored him, the first Honest-to-God celebrity.He had gone from making slapstick two reelers for Max Sennett to seven reel features with Paramount, the first film actor to get total artistic control. Paramount gave the man his own production company...and a million dollars a year. It doesn't seem like much money nowadays. But remember, this was 1921, before the murder and the trial, and nobody else had the million a year deal, including Chaplin. He was worth every penny, too. A person could walk down any street in America, I don't care if it was New York City or Podunk, Wyoming, and mention the Big Boy's name and you would find people saying, "Oh, yeah, Big Boy, now there's a funny man."He lost everything that year. Everything. The horrible fact is, I could've saved him. I could've saved the Big Boy.I saw what happened to Miss X. I saw it the way I'm seeing you now. But I didn't tell a soul. Kids get scared, you know, and one thing has a way of leading to another. Just because I came from the city didn't mean I automatically skipped the ineptitude and the fear that go along with childhood. I simply felt intimidated by it all. I'd never seen so many beautiful people gathered in one spot. Every woman at the party could've been a movie star, the makeup, the hair. Let's not forget the clothes, either. Those cute sailor suits with the little shorts, whirly cotton skirts, silk slacks, and the slinkiest sequined gowns I'd ever seen.The men were just as pretty as the women, slicked back hair and that wonderful cologne. It was something out of The Great Gatsby. Even the Big Boy looked beautiful, driving up in a Peirce-Arrow with his entourage.He defended my honor, too. A man had waltzed over and squeezed my butt like he was testing cantaloupe, a regular mountain of a guy with the tattoo of a rose on his left forearm. Behind Yours Truly, I heard the Big Boy gently chastising him. Big boy said, "Now, now, Puppy, let's pick on someone your own size." Then my protector winked at me. His smile was so wide and generous you couldn't help but smile back and want to be his friend.The suite he'd gotten us at the St. Francis was drop dead gorgeous. The rooms went on forever, beige carpets and walls, ceiling high palm trees, the sofas and chairs done up in dramatic red and white stripes. The furniture was soft and plush enough to swallow you. Here I am, this skinny pale east coast child, tossed into the middle of an extravagance that overwhelmed not just my mind but my senses. I had been transported to Mt. Olympus. I walked among the gods like Alice on the other side of Photoplay Magazine. I was too impressed.The Big Boy worked hard and partied hard. And the word "prohibition" was not in his vocabulary. Whatever you liked to drink, he had a case of it. The hell with the Volstead Act, he had two cases of it, particularly champagne. Big Boy loved his champagne. And from my first sip, I became a champagne girl for life. How could I point my finger at anyone in that glorious bunch who had, for the briefest period, allowed me a peek into their lives?Miss X was many things to me, sister, teacher, mother, friend. But let me "keep it real" like my grandboys say, sainthood never crossed her mind. She lead a vigorous life on all fronts, if you get my drift. By the time Miss X had gone halfway through her teen years, she'd had three, maybe four abortions. At twenty-five, the girl was known for drinking too much, throwing temper tantrums, and tearing off her clothes. This was definitely a wild child. But don't for a minute think Miss X didn't have a warm, caring heart. Just because a person isn't a saint, doesn't mean he or she is a villain. More often than not, people don't fit neatly into one box or the other. The Big Boy had met her on some set, I believe at the Keystone studios. He became infatuated, personally inviting her to the St. Francis as his guest.It didn't take long for everybody there to get blind-eyed drunk, except for me. I'd been nursing the same glass of champagne since ten that morning. I may have been the only partially sober individual present. Even with the windows open and three lavatories, people had been drinking and throwing up so much you could smell vomit in the air. When I finally went to relieve myself, I found Miss X on the white and black tile floor with her head in the toilet bowl. Her flowered print blouse had come undone and she'd lost her bra. God only knows how you could lose your bra. I tidied the girl up as best I could, washing that pretty face, buttoning her blouse. Then I put her arm about my neck and helped her into the adjoining bedroom."What happened to your bra?" I said. Miss X did a soft little belch and said damn if she could figure. I told her to stay put and I'd get some ginger ale to settle her stomach.On my way back I saw the Big Boy go into the bedroom. I made a beeline for the lavatory, leaning my ear against the door. Best I could tell, if you looked past the jokes and innuendoes, he was obviously interested in sharing her bed. He was doing what we used to call "joking on the square." It may have seemed amusing, but the Big Boy had been serious. Miss X did an amazing job of ducking and dodging, laughing at his jokes, careful not to bruise that fragile of all beasts, the male ego. You should have heard her, a regular Ph.D. in social skills. After fifteen minutes, everybody parted with no hard feelings.A second or two later I came into the room with the soda. I gave Miss X a sip then tucked the sheet about her shoulders. That's when the man who the Big Boy had called "Puppy" barged in and hustled me away. He shut me inside the lavatory so he could be alone with Miss X.I remember the panic I felt, the way my body had turned all hot and cold at the same time. Nothing worked, my legs, my arms, my voice. A dime store mannequin had more life than me. I finally did take a peek. He was on top of her. His pants were around his knees. He had his hand cupped over her mouth. Miss X was wriggling this way and that. She squirmed under the massive weight of the man. But if ever God had invented a losing battle, it was that afternoon at the St. Francis.I started screaming, a muted wheeze bursting into a long shriek. You should've seen Puppy hit the deck. The man pulled up his trousers like a firefighter headed for a three alarm and cursing me as he did it. Miss X was screaming, too. Then she got creative and tore off her clothes. By the time guests wandered into the bedroom, she was naked. Puppy had left the suite, the hotel, and probably California.Miss X died four days later. According to the medical examiner, her bladder had ruptured due to "an extreme amount of external force." The cause of her death was listed as peritonitis.The media went crazy, particularly a certain tabloid mogul, whose moral outrage was only surpassed by his insatiable passion to sell papers. He did to the Big Boy what Puppy had done to Miss X, though gravitated toward a decidedly different orifice. That excited the self-promoting district attorney, Matthew Brady, to press the court for a murder one instead of manslaughter. The trials lasted about a year. There were three of them: ten to two, acquit; ten to two, convict; and finally, a unanimous acquittal. The verdict should've been "innocent but unemployed" because it put an end to the Big Boy's career.Right in the middle of his trial, and adding to the public's anti-Hollywood feelings, a famous film director was shot to death. Who did it is still a mystery. The police had unlocked one of the director's closets and discovered hundreds of women's panties. Each one was labeled with the name of its former owner and the date the director had known her in the biblical sense. Between the Big Boy's trial and a murdered director's obsession with cataloging the panties of greater Los Angeles, the sanctimonious movie going public had swooned itself into a moral crisis.I'd been hiding out in New York during all of this. I was terrified and feeling enormously guilty, though obviously not guilty enough. You know how that goes. The more you stay away from whatever it is you need to do, the more difficult it is to do it. I had heard on the radio how all the studio heads got together. They hired themselves an American conscience. They called him the Movie Censor Czar. He was a former Warren G. Harding cabinet member. This czar became the new dictator of Hollywood morality, and the first thing this annoying creature did was blackball the Big Boy from ever making another film.Nine years passed. I had managed to keep my guilt under control by denying my importance in the Big Boy's trial. Then one morning I read an article about the Big Boy on page three of the New York Times. He had become alcoholic. He couldn't get a job, so on and so on. It even had a photo of the poor man who looked like what you would find in an alley.I said to myself, girl, enough, you gotta melt that cold heart of yours and go out there to crazy town and help your friend the Big Boy. I had a plan and everything. I took my current beau, Rauel, with me, too. Ole Rauel was the best photographer in the city.For one month we stalked the Czar, morning, noon, and night. He was certainly a creature of habit. He always wore a gray or brown nondescript suit and a dull solid color tie. He went to the same restaurant on the same days of the week. He ordered the same things, soft boiled egg and toast for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, and roast chicken for supper. Rauel and I decided on supper, of course. Best to do what I had in mind when it was dark.Before the Brown Derby became the Brown Derby -- I'm talking 1930 now -- it was called Willard's Chicken Inn, a place conceived by Cecil B. himself, and habitually frequented by the czar. You should have been there that night just to catch his expression. Imagine this straight-laced guy walking toward his car and suddenly seeing a naked woman running across the moonlit parking lot. I've never witnessed a man's eyes get that big or that panicky.I leaped on him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs about his waist. I gave the guardian of movie morality a kiss that would've made Miss X blush. Rauel was shooting one picture after the other, flash bulbs going off every which way. Then while I was still holding on, I whispered the magic words: "Free the Big Boy." That's all I could think to say, "Free the Big Boy... free the Big Boy."You know the story after the parking lot incident. Warner's signed the Big Boy to do six two reel shorts. The success of those films brought a longer, better contract. He died a couple of years later, 1933. Some of his friends said it was from a broken heart. I would like to think his premature passing happened the way his new wife described it in The Reporter, "...peacefully in his sleep, and smiling."