Public Burning (75 page)
JACK
:
What
contest?
DENNIS
: A Tom Mix Pie contest!
(
Laughter.
)
JACK
: A Tom Mix Pie contest! Well, I neverâ!
DENNIS
: Bang, bang, yummy, yummy, Mr. Benny!
(
Laughter, whistles, enthusiastic applause.
)
DENNIS
: Are you going to the contest, Mr. Benny?
JACK
: Well, yesâ¦yes, I am, Dennis. But I'm going to do a more
dramatic
reading, something on the order of John Barrymoreâ¦
DENNIS
: Playing it for laughs, hunh?
(
Laughter and applause.
)
JACK
: Now, stop that, Dennis, that's quite enoughâ!
DENNIS
: Well, I gotta go now, Mr. Benny! Betty Crocker's waiting for meâ¦
JACK
: Betty Crockerâ!
DENNIS
: Yes, she's gonna help me with my crusts, Mr. Benny. My top crust's light and flaky, but my bottom's a bit soggyâ
JACK
: Dennisâ!
(
Laughter, whistles, prolonged applause
.)
DENNIS
: So long, Mr. Benny! I'll see you at the contest!
(
Farewell applause.
)
JACK
: That boy! A Tom Mix Pieâthat's the silliest thing I ever heard of! It
was
a cute costume thoughâ¦
(
Light laughter.
)
Probably
I
ought to have somethingâ¦hmmmâ¦what do spies wear, I wonderâ¦? Oh, Rochester! Where is thatâ
? Rochester!
ROCHESTER
: Heah, boss!
(
Welcoming applause.
)
JACK
: Rochester⦠Rochester, go get me those old wire-rimmed glasses, and my black gloves andâ¦let's seeâ¦a black eyepatch, and my old trench coat!
ROCHESTER
: Trench coat? You ain't got no trench coat, boss!
JACK
: Of course I have! The one I wore in the war!
ROCHESTER
: They didn't have no trench coats in the Spanish-American War, boss!
(
Laughter.
)
JACK
:
NOW
cut that out, Rochester, and go get my trench coat! The Spanish-American Warâ!
MARY
: What coat is that, Jack?
JACK
: Oh, hello, Maryâ¦
(
Welcoming applause.
)
You know, Mary, the one I wore in the warâ¦
MARY
: With the gold buttons and fancy shoulder boards?
JACK
: That's right. You see, Rochester? Mary remembers the coat! Now, youâ
MARY
: The one that had âRemember the Maine!' stitched on the collarâ¦
(
Laughter.
)
JACK
: Yes, itâwhat?
MARY
: Oh, Jack, I gave that coat away to a poor old man during the last Depression!
JACK
: Youâ¦
gave
it away?
(
Laughter.
)
MARY
: Yesâin fact, look out there: isn't that your coat that old panhandler is wearing?
JACK
: Hmmmâ¦yes. Well, it
does
look like my coat at thatâ¦
(
Laughter.
)
Oh, Rochester!
ROCHESTER
: Yeah, boss?
JACK
: Rochester, go give that man a dime and make him give you my coat back!
ROCHESTER
: A whole dime, boss? Ain't you gittin' a little loose wit' your change?
(
Laughter.
)
JACK
: It's worth it, Rochesterâif I wear that coat, I'm
sure
to win the thousand dollars!
ROCHESTER
: Well, okay, bossâ¦
JACK
: And Rochester⦠Rochester, tell the man that if I win the prize I'll give himâ¦well, I'll⦠I'll let him have the coat back!
(
Laughter.
)
ROCHESTER
: Yassuh, boss!
JACK
: Providingâ¦
ROCHESTER
: Yeah, boss?
JACK
: Providing he gives me my dime back!
Out front, a hundred million mouths open wide, a hundred million sets of teeth spring apart like dental exhibits, a hundred million bellies quake, and a hundred million throats constrict and spasm, gasp and wheeze, as America laughs. At much the same things everybody laughs at everywhere: sex, death, danger, the enemy, the inevitable, all the things that hurt about growing up, something that Americans especially, suddenly caught with the whole world in their hands, are loath to do. What makes them laugh hardest, though, are jokes about sexual inadequacyâa failure of powerâand the cruder the better, for crudity recalls their childhood for them: the Golden Age. Grandpa Jones delivering lines to Cousin Minnie Pearl about dammed-up passions cracks them up. So does Stan Laurel telling Oliver Hardy (sitting deadly serious in the electric chair with his suit and derby on and one of Ethel's skirts stretched around his fat belly, split ludicrously down one side) in his soft singsong voice: “Your smile, Bunny, your warm kiss, your sweet voice and your understanding mind are my greatest treasure and pleasure!” (Oliver winces and glances irritably at Stan on hearing this last phrase, cocks his head thoughtfully, repeating the words under his breath, then resumes his poseâ¦) Or the brash little puppet Charlie McCarthy, nothing but a small polished knurl between his wooden legs, fantasizing doing a Rosenbergs sketch with Marilyn Monroe, in which he slips into her cell at night disguised as the prison chaplain (Mortimer Snerd, the sucker, plays the husband, of course)â¦
BERCEN
: I can't see one little reason why we should ask Marilyn Monroe to be in this skit with us, Charlieâ¦
CHARLIE
: I can see two pretty big ones, Bergen!
BERGEN
: (
through the laughter
) Now, Charlieâ¦!
CHARLIE
: Say, Bergen�
BERGEN
: Yes, Charlie?
CHARLIE
: That chair works by electricity, doesn't it?
BERGEN
: Yes.
CHARLIE
: Well, what'll happen if it doesn't kill 'em? They're only singers, you know, not conductorsâ¦
(
Laughter and light applause.
)
BERGEN
: (
chuckling loosely
) Well, I don't think you have to worry about that, Charlie. Even if they did survive the chair, there are other waysâ¦
CHARLIE
: You mean, there's more than one way to cook a crookâI mean, juice a gooseâ¦!
(
Laughter and appreciative applause.
)
BERGEN
: Yes, Charlie, only twenty-six states use electrocution. Thirteen prefer hanging, and eight use lethal gas.
CHARLIE
: I get it, Bergen: you either yoke 'em, choke 'em, or coke 'em!
(
Prolonged laughter and applause.
)
BERGEN
: Yes, that's the idea, Charlie. But I confess I find it rather depressing to talk about it. Somehow, ever since I passed my fortieth birthday, Iâ
CHARLIE
: Fortieth! The last time you passed forty, Bergen, they were still using Roman numerals!
BERGEN
: (
through the laughter
) Now, Charlieâ¦!
CHARLIE
: Well, chin up, Bergen, we all have to go some time.
BERGEN
: Yes, I suppose soâ¦
CHARLIE
: Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, sawdust to sawdustâ¦
BERGEN
: (
through the loose laughter
) Yes, wellâ¦
CHARLIE
: When it comes my turn, Bergen, I hope they give me a choice. If I gotta croak, I don't wanna be smoked, broke, soaked,
or
choked to death!
BERGEN
: No? Then howâ?
CHARLIE
: I wanna be
stroked
to death, Bergenâby Marilyn Monroe!
BERGEN
: (
through the uproar
) Charlieâ!
The naughty boy who gets away with it, the old man who needn't try, the dumb broad who doesn't know what's happened when it's happened, plus a little danger, a little violence, anticipation and surprise: these are the things that open the Whale's mouth. As when Buster Keaton, sitting deadpan in the electric chair, calmly turns and throws a custard pie at the Executioner just as he's about to throw the switch: SPLAT! Some have contended that it was America's love of pie-throwing that led the nation to develop the atomic bomb. This may or may not be true, but certainly it does help explain the country's current panic over the possible proliferation of the bombs to unfriendly nations: it's a cardinal rule of the act that one custard pie leads to another, and he who throws one must sooner or later face one coming from the other direction. Which is what's happening to Buster Keaton right now, though he seems unaware of it. The Executioner, forgetting his office, has grabbed up another pie and is rearing back to hurl it at Keaton, who has meanwhile settled back in the chair to await, stonily, his electrocution. One foot, however, is loose from its strap, and after thinking about this foot for a moment, Keaton leans forward to buckle it inâjust that split second before the pie would have hit him: it hits the prison chaplain instead. Buster, apparently oblivious to what's happening at either side of him, satisfies himself that his foot is securely buckled to the chair, then sits back once more like a patient bridegroom to await the shock. But now the chaplain has a pieâ¦
While this is going on, the countdown has begunâ55 minutes to Zero Hourâ¦54â¦53âand backstage there is a frenzied shuffling about as Betty Crocker, wielding a soup ladle, lines up all the bigwigs for their Grand Processional. All the major officials who are assigned, according to the Dead Sea statutes, “to attend to the burnt-offerings and the sacrifices, to set out the incense of âpleasant savor' for God's acceptance, to perform rites of atonement in behalf of His congregation, and constantly to clear away the fat ashes which lie before Him on the âtable of glory,'” must now be introduced and guided to their respective places, and who better to set this table than America's matron saint of the kitchen? Sprung full-formed and all buttoned up from the fat fertile head of General Mills in 1936, Betty is everything one would want in a Holy Mother: sober, efficient, old-fashioned, unblemished, bountiful, and the only undoubted virgin in all America (indeed, it's been said she hasn't even changed her corset since '36), as protective as Athena, as merciful and mild as Mary, as resourceful as the pioneer women who settled Americaâshe is, it could be said, their reincarnation. Her name, which sounds like bullfrogs burping on soft prairie nights, suggests crockery, Crockett, rocking chairs, rockets. “Betty” is a down-home version of traditional majesty, a country nickname for the Mother Country's greatest monarch and now her newest one. A pie, flung from the stage into the wings, slaps the wall inches from her face, causing Cabinet members and their wives to shriek and duck, but Betty, unruffled, only gazes at it with her cool imperturbable blue eyes, sticks a finger in it and tastes the filling: mm, as she suspected, too much cornstarch.
Virtually every significant political figure in the nation is back here tonight, ready to go on, ready to demonstrate their wholehearted enthusiasm for Uncle Sam's purification-by-fire spectacularâ¦all but a few like Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Black, boycotting the show from his hospital bed, is a lousy loser, just about everybody's given up on him long ago, but the absence of that old rocking socking Phantom-fighter and Early Warning Sentinel Dick Nixon is a more disturbing matter. Uncle Sam himself, backstage briefly during the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland act, is heard to mutter: “Maybe a boxcar of pussyfooters woulda been better after all!” Which is all Harold Stassen needs: “I say, let's dump the sonuvabitch! Nobody likes him anyway, he just drags us all down! I don't want anything for myself, of courseâI'm only thinking of what's good for the country⦔ This provokes a lot of harsh nervous laughter, and the next time a pie comes flying into the wings, everybody ducks and lets Stassen take it on the snoot.
Out front meanwhile, a lot of famous people have had a go at the prize money, but the performers who steal the show (and anything else they can get their hands on) are the fabulous Marx Brothers. Partly it's their act, catching the mood of the night; partly it's the deep affection felt toward these local boys, downtrodden city Jews like the Rosenbergs, but without their crybaby ways; and partly it's simply the astonishing cartoon resemblance Groucho and Harpo bear to Julius and Ethelâso real that people gasp when they first appear onstage, Harpo (Ethel) sitting in the electric chair and writing desperate letters to Groucho (Julius), which Chico (the Executioner) reads aloud in his Jewish-Italian accent as Groucho goes stalking restlessly about the set in his famous bent-kneed crouch, puffing a cigar and bobbing his eyebrowsâ¦
CHICO
: “Canna we ever forget da turbulence and struggle, da joy and beauty uvva da early years of our relationship whenna you courted me?”