The Fun Factory Read online

  The headline act was a familiar figure, none other than Little Tich himself. Tich was a huge star in our home country, of course – Marie Lloyd used to say that the only people she would ever share top billing with were George Robey and Little Tich – but in Paris, well, he was a god.

  For this engagement at the Folies Bergère he had chosen not to employ his usual bag of tricks, not even the trademark Big Boots. Instead, he hurled himself onto the stage dressed as a grand lady in a glamorous court dress with a long train.

  “Je m’appelle Clarice!” he cried, and proceeded to chatter away in a mixture of French and English, both with his strangely deep-voiced Kentish accent, while waving a large feathery fan and becoming inextricably tangled up in his costume. His act was, as always, grotesque, yet perfect, filled with little touches and movements that kept the place in gales of laughter, as the miniature lady tried to hang onto her dignity. The little genius climaxed his spot with a wicked gnome parody of a dancer called La Loïe Fuller, who had earlier that evening cavorted around the place in a sheet with tremendous po-faced seriousness, and whom we later became accustomed to seeing in the wings, seething.

  Charlie and I hurried around backstage at the end of the show, he ostensibly to seek news of Hetty, and I because, well, backstage seemed like it might be a pleasant place to pass the time. The magic word “Karno” gained us access, and Charlie scurried off to quiz some of the regulars while I loafed against a wall in a corridor, smoking and watching the comings and goings. Dancing girls thronged, completely uninhibited by my presence. Indeed, I picked up a number of appraising glances, and seemed to be the object of some finger waving from one group in particular, who were offering, through the international language of mime, to treat me to a drink and more besides.

  I straightened myself up and headed in their direction. Just then, however, there was a tremendous screeching from one of the other dressing rooms, and the gangly singer I had felt sorry for earlier suddenly bolted from a doorway ahead of me, followed by a bottle of champagne, hurled with great force by someone inside. It hit the corridor wall right by my head and smashed, drenching me from head to foot.

  Out of the room then shot a little whirlwind of a red-faced French woman, who continued a screamed tirade at the young singer, while he cowered on the floor with his knees up to his chin waiting for the storm to pass. The woman punctuated her shrieks with angry kicks and slaps, and finally blew herself furiously up the stairs and out into the street. Faces (and more besides) disappeared back into dressing rooms, and the young singer picked himself up and dusted himself down.

  “Ah, mon ami, je suis désolé, désolé!” he cried, when he saw that I was (a) soaked in fizzy stuff, and (b) covered in broken glass.

  “All right, it’s all right,” I said, trying gingerly to brush the debris off.

  “Oh, you are English?” the singer said. “I apologise a thousand times, sir. Marguerite, she is…” His English let him down and he gave a miserably eloquent shrug. “Come, come…”

  He showed me into his dressing room and positively insisted that I borrow one of his jackets, which fitted me well enough (and was something of a step up on the one I had been wearing, truth to tell), and then he led me out to the dress circle bar, where he furnished us both with a drink.

  “I am Maurice,” he introduced himself. “Maurice Chevalier.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said. “I’m Arthur Dandoe, with the Fred Karno company.”

  “Ah!” Chevalier cried. “But you will do very well here, I think. Above all the audience loves spectacle. Danses et sports – sketches, I mean, anything where there is lots and lots to look at.” Here he made a little firework display with his fingers. “For me it is different,” he went on. “I am just one man. The manager, Monsieur Banel, he likes me, but the critics not so much, and the crowd, well, who wants to hear a sad song when there are so many pretty girls to look at?”

  “Thank Heavens for them,” I said.

  “Indeed, my friend,” Maurice said, raising a glass to that sentiment.

  “Perhaps you should find yourself a sketch,” I suggested. “Like Max Linder.”

  Just then Charlie came into the bar, looking dejected, which is to say, he looked like someone doing a pantomime of the word ‘dejected’, scuffing his feet on the carpet. I beckoned him over and introduced him to Maurice, but Charlie was barely able to force a smile.

  “Whatever’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Hetty’s troupe, the Bert Coutts Dancers. They were here last week…”

  “I remember them,” Maurice nodded. “The Yankee Doodle-doodle girls, no?”

  “That’s right,” Charlie agreed mournfully. “They left yesterday.”

  “Perhaps they haven’t gone too far,” I said, thinking they might still be playing somewhere in Paris.

  “Huh,” Charlie grunted. “They’ve gone to Moscow.”

  “Oh! And you like one of these little girls?” Maurice sighed. Charlie nodded glumly. “Ah, what are we poor fellows to do? Your girl is in Moscow, and mine throws a bottle at my head if I even look at one of the dancers. What am I supposed to do? Wear a blindfold backstage? The naked ladies are everywhere!”

  Charlie and I smirked at this like schoolboys.

  “And what about you, mon ami?” Maurice said, patting me on the shoulder. “Is a woman making of your life a misery also?”

  Before I could reply, Charlie butted in, flapping a hand dismissively. “He had a girl, but he’s lost her.”

  Maurice looked stricken. His hand flew to his mouth. He assumed the tone you assume when questioning the recently bereaved.

  “I am so very sorry. How did this happen?”

  “No, no, no, she’s not dead, he’s lost her. He doesn’t know where she is.”

  “Ah! I see! Well, in that case let me introduce you to an old acquaintance of mine, Mademoiselle Absinthe…”

  You’ll have heard, no doubt, the ancient crumbling witticism that absinthe makes the heart grow fonder. It certainly makes the time pass agreeably, although I must admit I can’t remember a great deal more about that first week, for some reason.

  Seriously, though, I do recall that Charlie would take every opportunity to watch Max Linder’s act. He liked, as we all did, Max’s onstage persona, the hopeless romantic optimist, but he was chiefly fascinated by Max’s success with the films he was making for Pathé Frères. He dragged me along to see a couple of Max’s short features one afternoon, in a right fleapit of a Parisian cinema, it has to be said, and the comedy was agreeable enough, but not a patch on watching Max onstage at the Folies, in my view.

  In the bar after the evening performances Charlie would corner Max and interrogate him about the ‘art of cinematical performance’, as he insisted on calling it, trying to get his new friend to agree that cinema could be every bit as artistically satisfying as the theatre. Max would just smile and wink at the gaggle of beautiful ladies who would clamour for his attention.

  There were plenty of distractions for a group of young men at the Folies Bergère, and some took enthusiastic advantage, particularly Ernie Stone, who could barely open his eyes to do the show by the Friday. Some of us, though, preferred to venture out into Paris and sample the nightlife, and Maurice was an effervescent and energetic guide. I think he was partly driven to stay out all night by the desire to avoid the alternative, which was being harangued some more by the fearsome Marguerite. Charlie, meanwhile, was looking for romance.

  One evening we were idly watching the ladies promenading in the circle bar. Charlie and I were wearing our Mumming Birds stage costumes (he the Drunken Swell and I the Prestidigitateur) and in consequence may have appeared to be rather more prosperous than was actually the case. Whatever, one of the more than usually spectacular ladies fluttered her eyelashes at young Charles as she glided past, and then languidly let a long white glove fall to the floor as she began to make her stately way up the staircase. Charlie leapt to his feet to retrieve it for her, a knight in shinin
g armour, and he flashed his most winning smile – the one with all the teeth, you’ve seen it – as he handed it back, no doubt accompanied by some gushing compliment. Maurice and I could see that she didn’t have a clue what Charlie was saying, and he came trotting back to us to enlist our friend’s help as she swanned out of sight.

  “Maurice!” he gasped. “This dame arouses my concupiscence!”

  “I beg your pardon?” I said, choking on my drink.

  “She … you know, she is very…”

  “Isn’t she though?”

  “You like this girl?” Maurice said.

  Charlie did an irritating little mime, in which he was both himself and Cupid, and showed us the little arrow striking him in the heart.

  “You like this girl?” Maurice said again, deadpan.

  “Oui! Tray bong!” Charlie said. “Now can you write some lines on a card in French so that I may…”

  Maurice understood, and turned the corners of his mouth down as he nodded, a very French-looking gesture.

  “…court her as a lady of her elegance deserves to be courted?”

  “But of course,” Maurice said, businesslike, borrowing a little pad and pencil from a passing waiter. “What would you like to say?”

  “I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you,” Charlie said. I was taking another sip at that moment, unfortunately, and some cognac went up my nose.

  Maurice frowned. “Vraiment? You want to say that to this girl?”

  “Yes, yes. Also write: ‘I adore you, you are a bright shining star illuminating the firmament…’”

  “Very well,” Maurice shrugged and scribbled at the same time (a French thing). “But if you like I can arrange this for you very easily.”

  “Really?” Charlie said. “Arrange what?”

  “Arrange … a liaison with this girl.”

  “That would be very… I mean, yes, yes, go, go! Oui! Tray bong!”

  Off Maurice trotted in the wake of the goddess in question, while Charlie clutched his little cue cards nervously.

  “So,” I said. “You are finally going to dip your toe in the water?”

  “This is the most romantic city in the world,” Charlie replied. “And I am in the mood for romance.”

  Shortly Maurice returned. “All is set, Charles. She will await you in the foyer at the end of the performance.”

  “Mon ami!” Charlie cried, and kissed Maurice on both cheeks, before indulging in a little jig of joy and excitement. “I must go and prepare!” He put one finger to his lips as if miming thoughtfulness. “I need to buy some flowers, of course. Adieu, my friends, wish me luck! This could be the start of one of the grand romances of our time!”

  He skipped off towards the great gilt staircase that led out to the main entrance. I watched him go, then turned to Maurice.

  “So it was just that easy? To arrange a liaison for our friend?”

  Maurice shrugged and signalled the barmaid for a top-up. “But of course,” he said. “I just hope he can afford her…”

  23

  LA VALSE RENVERSANTE

  AT the end of the first week Little Tich’s stint as the headline act was to end. On his last night an extraordinary thing happened. As Tich took his final curtain call, a man in a black cloak leapt to his feet, clambered up onto the apron and waved a broad-brimmed black hat about his head, shouting: “Get up, all of you. On your feet! Pay homage to the world’s greatest artist, a genius! Greater than Irving, greater than Lautrec!”

  The audience duly rose to their feet in a standing ovation, and in the wings I turned to Maurice, who was joining in the applause, my whole face a question.

  “It is Lucien Guitry,” he confided, as the cheers rose to the rafters. “He is the greatest actor in all of France.”

  Eventually Guitry waved the crowd’s acclaim to a hush, and kissed Little Tich on both cheeks. He had to kneel to accomplish this, looking rather like an emotional father reunited with a long-lost child, and while still down there on his knees, he begged: “Please, maître … do not leave us without letting us see one more time … the Big Boots!”

  A roar of delight went up – “Big Boots! Big Boots…!” – and what could Tich do but oblige? He sent for his great flat, narrow, clacking wooden shoes, and performed his extraordinary acrobatic routine, knocking his hat off, then leaning right forward to grab it. It culminated, as ever, in a cheeky wink, and then the mischievous dwarf rose right up onto his toes until he was nearly seven feet tall, to a tumultuous ovation.

  Charlie was utterly enchanted by all this. The very French notion that the music hall entertainer could actually be acclaimed an artist – a genius, even – seemed to strike a deep chord within him (yes, over-modesty was never a flaw of Mr Chaplin’s). He practised one of Tich’s moves – the one in which, in order to keep his toes clear of the stage, he would be obliged to change direction with a sort of swivel of the hips while his feet were level with his waist – until he had perfected his own variation on it. You’ll have seen Charlie do it many times if you’ve seen his films, which I don’t doubt that you have.

  In fact it is not too fanciful to suggest that Charlie’s Little Tramp was germinated on that trip to Paris. If you took the physicality of Little Tich and mixed it with the hopeless romanticism of Max Linder you wouldn’t be too far off, I reckon. Whether that is fair or not, Charlie’s later success did end up making life difficult for old Tich at the Folies, by the way. Once ‘Charlot’ made his name on the silver screen the word – somehow – went out that Little Tich had actually stolen Chaplin’s act and the Parisian crowds, incredibly, began to boo him. Broke his heart.

  Little Tich’s replacement for the following weeks was a singer, a great favourite, returning from out of town for a new long-term residency at the Folies. She arrived trailing an entourage of at least thirty dancers and sundry other hangers-on as befitted the greatest star in France at that time. Her act was a spectacular affair, all top hats, fans and feathers, carefully choreographed so as to direct all eyes towards the irresistibly glittering bauble at the centre. Her name: Mistinguett.

  Right away you could see that Maurice was smitten, not deterred by the fact that the lady was a good fifteen years his senior nor that there were significantly easier pickings to be had amongst her dancing chorus, all of whom had seemingly been selected for their lustrous dark hair. He hung on Mistinguett’s every word and followed her around the place like a puppy with its tongue hanging out. If she wanted a drink, or a chair, or a newspaper so she could bask in her own brilliant reviews, then Maurice would scamper off to fetch it.

  In the circle bar after the show she would be surrounded by fawning admirers, some of whom were from the finest families in Europe, and poor Maurice would be condemned to the fringes of her circle, summoned occasionally to fetch and carry while Mistinguett herself would continue to bathe in compliments and turn her radiance on the world.

  The front-runner, when it came to competing for Mistinguett’s attentions, was a rather po-faced chap in a fancy military uniform, one of those with brushes on the shoulders, whose face, adorned by a twiddly little twirling moustache, seemed to be incapable of smiling. This, as you can imagine, is not a characteristic designed to endear a fellow to a bunch of comedians at the best of times, and we all loathed him heartily. The chap’s name was Alfonso, if you please, and, yes, all right, he was the King of Spain.

  Night after night we’d sit with Maurice, watching this creature fawn solemnly over Mistinguett, vainly trying to make our friend see that he stood no chance, and to drag him off to the revels we’d enjoyed previously, but he was having none of it, not wishing to miss a moment in her company.

  Charlie was vicariously thrilled by Maurice’s romantic infatuation at first, but after a while even he began to drift off to find diversion elsewhere. He began to pursue a secret amour of his own – “pitching woo”, as he was wont to call it – encouraged by his new acquaintance, the debonair romantic Max Linder. We took a rise out of Cha
rlie whenever we could, saying we hoped he could afford her, and so forth, and wondering what the etiquette for leaving a tip might be, and so it probably wasn’t surprising that he kept the details of his activities more or less entirely to himself. Ernie Stone discovered then that Charlie had struck up a rapport with one of Mistinguett’s chansonettes, and we pretty much lost interest. Whoever it was that said: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”, well, they were onto something.

  Anyway, one heady evening things turned decisively in Maurice’s favour. Mistinguett was holding court, as usual, in the long circle bar. Champagne was flowing, and everyone was laughing and relaxing, except, that is, the tightly buttoned-up King Alfonso XIII of Spain.

  The orchestra in the foyer began to play a jaunty little waltz, and Mistinguett raised her head like a hound picking up a scent and held out her hand alluringly to her beau.

  “Danse avec moi, Alphonse!” she sighed.

  Alfonso was not keen, it seemed, to make a public spectacle of himself, even for la belle Mistinguett. He remained bolt upright with his hands behind his back.

  “Ma’mselle,” he began, “si on veut danser, je…” His Majesty’s French wasn’t up to it, and he began again in English. “Mademoiselle, if you wish to dance I shall throw you a ball the splendour of which you have never seen the like of which.”

  “Non!” Mistinguett cried petulantly. “Ici! Maintenant!”

  Chevalier leapt to his feet as though an electric shock had been passed through his chair. He stepped forward, clicked his heels and offered the fabulous Mistinguett his hand. “Enchanté!” he said, and stood trembling before her like a man at the edge of a chasm. The gorgeous creature looked at the long Chevalier for a long moment, and a smile began to play about her lips. She slowly laid her hand on his, then watched as he bowed low. You could see her wondering what she was letting herself in for.