A Girl and Five Brave Horses Page 11

  To the back of the stage and our tower a high wall was built which screened off-duty performers from the eyes of the audience. It was the equivalent of Broadway’s “greenroom,” and here they took sun baths, read, did fancywork, practiced their tricks, gossiped or gambled. Poker and crap shooting were the most popular games with the men, since a player could leave without breaking up the game.

  The horses were quartered in special stalls that faced a wide corridor toward the front of the pier. Here people passing on their way to the grandstand were able to see them. The horses were protected by walls of glass so that no one could feed or tease them, and our groom was quartered there both day and night. When a horse was ready for his act, he was led from his stall along the pier to the rear of the stage, from where he mounted the ramp.

  I was tremendously pleased with the arrangements and wrote a detailed report to Arnette. She replied at once, saying that she knew I wouldn’t let her ride but couldn’t she come and stay with us that summer and find something else to do on the pier? This appeal was irresistible and I wrote her to come. I then made some arrangements for her to see the manager of a water-sports act consisting of swimming and diving and riding on water skis. Arnette had never done any water skiing, but I felt confident that it wouldn’t take her long to learn.

  After the manager interviewed her and watched her swim and dive he agreed she would do as one of the two girls in the act. Thus there began a series of summers at Atlantic City—1929,1930,1931, and 1932.

  Twelve

  The first year at the pier there were only a few regular acts: the diving horses, a human cannon ball who was shot into the ocean instead of a net, a troupe of Hawaiian divers, an aerial-ladder act, and the water-sports gang. We had special acts on weekends which included some big-name bands, and a trio of musical clowns appeared for a couple of weeks, but the show was largely unpretentious. The following year Mr. Endicott, the manager, decided to go all out and get big names. He proceeded to sign up famous performers.

  Johnny Weissmuller, who won the gold medal for freestyle swimming at the 1928 Olympics, was at that time moving from amateur to pro and putting on swimming exhibitions across the country. He was signed up for six weeks at the pier. Eddie Cantor and George Jessel were to come down from New York on successive weekends, and in the band category Paul Whiteman and John Philip Sousa (who had appeared one weekend during the previous season) were scheduled.

  Sousa and his band had been so popular that Mr. Endicott booked him for several weeks running this time, in the course of which he and Al became good friends. He was a genial old fellow who loved to spend his time backstage talking with the performers, and he often told stories about the old days to which we listened eagerly. Although he must have been about seventy by that time, he was lively as a cricket and had snow-white hair and white mustaches and always wore a snappy white cap with his bemedaled navy-blue uniform. He directed the band with a quick flick of the wrist which miraculously seemed sufficient to co-ordinate the whole enormous band. His famous marches filled the air every afternoon and evening to the delight of enthusiastic audiences.

  In addition to the celebrities, the program contained a number of acts with names less widely known but considered by people in show business to be tops. Some of these had joined us from circuses, to which they returned after their Atlantic City engagements were finished. One of the best was Oscar Babcock and his loop-the-loop bicycle act, and another was “The Globe of Death.” Both acts were gravity-defying stunts, the latter being one in which a man and his wife rode motorcycles round and round inside their globe until they worked up sufficient momentum to carry them up over the top. Oscar put his bicycle through a metal figure eight with a wide gap in it at one point so that for a moment he was not only defying gravity but actually flying free.

  There was also a comedy routine based on the comic strip “Barney Google” in which two men, Douglas Wright (better known as “Sparkey”) and Kelsey, his partner, did a clown act inside a big baggy cotton horse made up to look like Spark Plug, even to the enormous feet and patched blanket. Among other things, they did a zany bandy-legged waltz which always brought shouts of laughter.

  Several animal acts, notably the Pallenberg bears, appeared during the summer. Mr. Pallenberg trained the bears and Mrs. Pallenberg put them through their paces. They juggled and danced and, as a finale, got into boats and rowed around in our tank.

  Three holdovers from the previous season, who were to become a hard core of veterans at the Steel Pier, completed the roster: the diving horses, the Hawaiians (four men and a woman who dived from a 105-foot tower), and the water-sports gang (five men and two women). An aerial act, made up in part from the troupe which had been there the year before, was also on the bill. It was called “The Fearless Falcons,” namely Irene Berger and Orville and Roxie LaRose.

  We met Orville and Roxie in 1928 while appearing at the Cotton Palace in Waco, Texas. At that time Roxie, a beautiful blue-eyed, fair-skinned, titian-haired woman, had been working alone atop a ninety-foot perch while Orville, dark, slight, but unusually strong for his size, had combined the duties of manager and rigging man. The contrast between them was not limited to their physical appearance. Roxie was a rather serious-minded person, whereas Orville was a natural clown. His humor was not really original, but his gift for remembering jokes and the timing of his wisecracks enabled him to make almost any situation amusing.

  The year before we had encountered the third Falcon. Irene was then one of the “Four Verses,” aerialists working on a two-ladder rigging 104 feet high. The first thing I noticed about her was a gorgeous pair of glistening, long-lashed brown eyes. She weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds but looked smaller because her flesh was compact. Her muscles were developed to such an extent that off stage she appeared slightly muscle-bound, but in the air, where she could bring her muscles into play, she proved to be the most exciting aerial performer I had ever watched.

  After her first season at the Steel Pier, Irene left the Verses troupe and joined Orville and Roxie. The new act consisted of Roxie and Irene up on perch poles in what is termed a “double.” Orville had spent the winter personally designing and building special rigging for the act. The rigging included two poles about five feet apart and about 125 feet high—the height of a twelve-story building—and they never worked with a net.

  Both women were experts at their business, but Irene was more than expert; she was an artist. Watching her, I had the feeling that she had been only half alive on the ground and not until she reached the top of the rigging did she find her native element. Roxie was clever and graceful, but she moved about in the rigging as if well aware that death lurked in the background, not fearfully, but simply determined not to tempt fate too far. On the other hand, Irene worked with an abandon that seemed deliberate, taunting, as if she were figuratively thumbing her nose. As one member of the Bonelli troupe (a revolving ladder act brought over from Europe for a brief appearance) said, “When I watch Irene, she makes my heart fall down into my pants.”

  We began our 1931 season about the middle of May, just as in previous years, and the summer moved forward into July at its usual pace. When the night of July 14 came around it was like a hundred others. Crowds swarmed the boardwalk and spilled out onto the beach, and music drifted across the water from Steeplechase Pier, where lighted Ferris wheels spun giddy circles of light. Tired children dragged at their parents’ hands, their faces sticky with cotton candy, and the smell of fresh sea air was wonderful as it came in off the water.

  Walking along to my dressing room, I was vaguely aware of the Atlantic City boardwalk atmosphere the way a person is aware that an old and familiar song is playing in the background. There was nowhere any sense of impending disaster.

  In my dressing room I went through the motions of putting on my bathing suit and draped a shawl over my shoulders. When I finished putting on my make-up I went outside to a bench near my door where I often sat in the evening to listen to the
music. I was always conscious of the music because it provided my cue for getting ready to go on. As I listened to “Springtime in the Rockies” I knew that Roxie and Irene were reaching the climax of their act on the perch poles and would soon be coming down. Our act was the finale and always followed theirs.

  Then I got up and walked over to where some of the other performers had congregated and spoke briefly to Tommy Kao, one of the Hawaiians. From where I stood I could see the front and rear ends of the horse costume Sparkey and Kelsey had just taken off and laid over a bench. A long-lashed eye looked up coyly at me.

  In a moment Dempsey, the little fox terrier we had recently acquired, ran around the comer. He was barking fiercely, which meant that Red Lips was coming. Dempsey had taken it upon himself to escort Red Lips from the stalls up to the ramp, seeming to announce to everyone, “This is my horse! Get out of the way!”

  George appeared with Red and led him to the bottom of the ramp, and as the music swung into “The Stars and Stripes Forever” I went over to them.

  The Falcons always swung down on “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” Roxie by means of an iron jaw (that is, by clamping her teeth tightly on a special grip at the end of a long rope paid out by men on the ground) and Irene in a arabesque above Roxie on the same rope, a position that resembles a swan dive and is very beautiful. There was a “Ta rah!” and I knew that they were down. A burst of applause followed as they made their bows, and when it became scattered I took off my shawl and laid it over the railing.

  I tried to time my arrival at the top of the platform with Al’s final words, for this was the most effective moment. I heard Al say, “Ladies and gentlemen, all eyes cast atop this lof-ty tower,” and began to climb. Just as he said, “And so we present for your entertainment the most exciting act in show business today—Miss Sonora and Red Lips, the famous diving horse,” I stepped onto the platform and the spots lit up behind me.

  The audience burst into applause in the grandstand below and I waved to them. Then I seated myself on the railing and, when I was ready, signaled George to send Red up. Immediately he circled the horse and then sent him onto the runway at a gallop. The heavy drum of Red’s hoofs vibrated on the ramp as he came up, and then he was dashing past me. Instantly I reached out and in a single motion grabbed the harness and slid across his back.

  Red had a little dance he performed before he kicked off. He would lift first one foot and then the other, as if he couldn’t make up his mind which one to use; then he would slide both feet over the edge of the platform and dive.

  Tonight he went through his routine and the kickoff came as usual, but for some reason he seemed to go into an unusually straight-down nose dive. Normally I would have ducked just before hitting the water and would have entered the tank head foremost, but this time his body was in such an extremely perpendicular position that I was afraid of throwing him over on his back. Several times before on a nose dive I had struck the water in an upside-down position, a method of landing that can be both painful and dangerous, for even if the rider escapes without serious injury she gets a severe shaking up. I had to make a split-second decision, and in a desperate effort to avoid turning him over I stiffened my arms and held my weight back, hoping to maintain our balance. I was successful, but that position caused me to strike the water flat on my face instead of diving in on the top of my head. In the excitement of the moment I failed to close my eyes quickly enough, and as we hit I felt a dull stinging sensation. A second or two later, when the horse and I emerged from the water, I was still on his back. As I dismounted and reached for the sugar to reward Red, Al said, “That was a toughie, wasn’t it?”

  I said, “Yes, it was. I took it right in the eyes.”

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes, it stung like the mischief for a minute, but I’m all right now,” and as I turned to go to my dressing room I thought that I was.

  I had almost finished taking off my wet suit and putting on a dry one in preparation for my second appearance that evening when my vision suddenly clouded. Patchy bits of white fog floated before my eyes. As I came out and closed the dressing-room door, Al, who was waiting for me, asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but that dive gave me more of a slap in the eyes than I thought. I feel as if I were trying to peer through fog.”

  “In that case,” he said, “you’re going to a doctor.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. My personal experience with doctors had not been extensive, but I suspected that a favorite medical trick was to immobilize a patient, and no one was going to put me off my horse because of patches of fog. “I’m all right. Whatever’s the matter, it can’t be very serious because it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  Although Al kept insisting, I rode again that night. I also rode the next day and the one following. I still saw pieces of fog, but aside from the momentary sting I had felt when I hit the water I had no pain whatsoever. I reassured myself with the theory that if a small cinder in the eye could cause intense pain, then any truly serious injury to my eyes would have been unbearable. This homemade diagnosis enabled me to continue riding with a clear conscience.

  After several days the fogginess began to vanish but was supplanted by another condition which developed rapidly. I had the peculiar sensation that I was wearing a yellow eye-shade, but when I looked up in an effort to find out what caused the sensation, the effect disappeared. Since it went away so easily I decided it couldn’t be very serious either and continued diving, not saying anything to anyone. Then on August 1, at the nine o’clock show, I had an extremely rough ride on Klatawah. Back in my dressing room, I became alarmed, because for the first time a smoky gray curtain blanked out all but the largest and brightest-colored objects in the room. I automatically changed into another suit, ready to make my second ride, and opened the door to get a breath of fresh air. Then I sat down and with my head on my arms faced up to some belated worrying. George, our groom, who had been drying and blanketing Klatawah just outside, noticed me sitting there and asked, “Is anything wrong, Miss Sonora?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was a tough ride but I didn’t get hurt. Still, I can barely see anything at all. It’s like looking through a thick screen of smoke.”

  I hadn’t told Al that I had landed again on my face because I didn’t want to worry him, but George took it upon himself to summon Al. Immediately he was at my door, full of concern and questions. In spite of his objections, I insisted on making another ride that night; he could summon no arguments strong enough to talk me out of it. By this time I was behaving under some insane compulsion that had nothing to do with common sense. “The show must go on,” I told myself. “There’s no one but me to ride,” but in effect what I was doing was denying that anything was wrong. I was also protecting my pride. No one had ever had to take my place on my horse and no one was going to.

  As Red Lips galloped up the ramp later that evening I thought to myself, “Thank God he’s got a lot of white on him. I could never have seen Klatawah’s dark coat against the night background.”

  After the last dive we went home and I went to bed. I refused to have any discussion of my eyes, still insisting that I was all right. The next morning brilliant sunshine penetrated the gray curtain and made it seem less sinister. I told Al and Arnette to go ahead to the pier, since they had to be there earlier than I did, and promised to come along later. Then I dressed, had my breakfast, and set forth.

  I covered the four blocks from our apartment to the pier and there had a mishap, seemingly unimportant in itself, that frightened me more than anything that had happened so far. At the entrance I became confused and walked through the main gate instead of the one reserved for employees. I recognized my mistake almost immediately, for I heard people moving all around me and realized I was in a much more heavily populated place than our private walkway. What I had done thoroughly upset me; I knew that if I could get lost in such familiar surroundings I must hardly be able to
see at all.

  Warily I made my way backstage, feeling my way along, and crept into my dressing room and began to search for my suit. Even after the shattering experience at the gate, conflict was still raging between my common sense and my vanity—and vanity was winning out. But just as I began to get undressed Al burst into my room.

  “She’s coming!” he announced, waving something yellow in front of me. “Marie says she will come.”

  Marie was a girl who had tried riding for a short time in 1929 but had been persuaded to give up after a series of injuries culminating in a broken collarbone. She was a girl who had an amazing amount of courage but lacked real skill for riding diving horses. Although she was hardly an ideal substitute, Al (who had been having a rough time with me and my hardheaded insistence on riding when he felt I shouldn’t) was relieved to get anyone at all. I didn’t share his reaction. He had wired her without my knowledge, and the news of a substitute brought tears to my eyes. This blow to my pride was more severe than physical pain. In the eight years I had been riding I had never once needed a substitute, and with each season my pride in my stamina and ability had grown.

  Al then told me that Mr. Endicott had heard of my trouble and had telephoned to say that the act could be canceled until Marie arrived. But I said I was going to ride anyway. It was Sunday and thousands of people swarmed on the pier. They expected to see a rider on the diving horse, and I was not going to disappoint them. A few more rides, I argued, couldn’t make much difference. Al reluctantly agreed to let me ride. He left, saying, “All right, but this is the last day.”

  My only concession to my impaired vision was in the choice of a horse. Usually we worked the two horses alternately, but since I had discovered that dark objects showed up better in daylight and light ones better at night I asked that Klatawah be used during the day and Red Lips that night. There was some commotion among the water-sports gang when they heard I was going to continue riding until Marie could get there, because they thought Al was making me do it. That false notion was quashed quickly via Arnette. She delivered a message to them from me saying that I was riding at my own insistence, not Al’s.