IT’S A TIME OR a place or a universe (he’s not sure) in which manners do not exist. It is a reality peopled by a genus that has developed a brain that does not process such abstractions. Courtesy, refinement, and that most ethereal quality of all—class—are not known or even understood. Directness is the currency. Vulgarity, ugliness, and anger are on full display. But so are happiness, joy, and sentimentality. And love. This world has not learned the skill of concealment or circumspection, cannot read gesture and discretion.

In this existence, there is nothing held back. Like children who have not been taught to control their impulses, its leaders rail and condemn, and their followers rage and lash out. On the streets, people shove by each other, because each does not hold any immediate value or utility to another. In the home, family members say whatever they want the moment they feel it, without regard to the longer damage. But they also empty their hearts in no uncertain terms. Trust is a little-known state of mind, as the subtle signals of such high-function thinking go unprocessed by underdeveloped frontal lobes that are the trait of this species. But without trust there is not expectation, and without expectation there is not disappointment. These greater calculations are nuances that seem preposterously overcomplicated.

He, with his aberrant pathology, is an outlier, gifted with qualities and talents for which there is no practical use. His discomfort at speaking his mind is diagnosed as a mental defect. His withholding of blunt statement is understood to be a disability. His quips elicit only blank countenance. They’re seen as dangerous diversion. He hides from those who would abuse him for it, and when he walks in the world, he conceals any behavior that might signal it.

There’s little humor in a world where the abstractions of a joke are lost on most. There’s no room for irony or suggestiveness. The only entertainment for the masses is made of the most blunt forces to be mustered: Belittlement. Mockery. Retribution. Direct, unvarnished attack is the order of the day.

But this world somehow functions, nonetheless. People get up in the morning, go to work, come home to their families. From a distance, nothing may seem amiss, because what is missing is so subtle. What is missing is a social conceit that in other worlds seems essential.

But here and there, he detects people who seem to understand, and seem, possibly, to be like him. They’ll never admit it, for fear of being outcasts. But in the shadows, they can read each other’s signals. Like a sixth sense. And while the people of this world would not even comprehend it, those with this subtle talent appreciate it in others, and feel less alone. And in their talent for withholding, for deflection, and for subtlety. They make a small subculture where someone can feel insulated, even protected. Only those similarly afflicted can see what is the better part of him.

1922

AFTER THAT FIRST RUN in New York City, the Pender Troupe turned westward. On to the vaudeville circuit. Across the American Midwest, shows in St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and town after small town between. Train rides sleeping sitting up, and then coming into a town at dawn; napping in the seats of the empty theater before shows, then performing and eating and then back on the train. Some layovers in cheap hotels where the sleep debt was repaid in full, sometimes sprawled on beds fully clothed. Arch was in the heart of America but felt as if he’d never truly been there, only seeing it from the window of a train.

Part of the act was a dancing cow in which Arch occupied the back end of the heavy canvas costume. He and Sammy Curtis, who was all of four feet seven, did a bit called “The Long and the Short of It.” Pender was always adding something, subtracting something, and using the American laughs as his calibration.

In the bigger cities of the middle of America, he’d see double lines queued outside the theater, the white and the black; when the curtain rolled back and smiled into the light, he could see the white faces before him and the black faces in the balconies far above. He’d had no experience with all this in lily-white England, and hardly knew what to make of it, other than to think that he and his castmates just wanted to make everyone smile. It seemed the simplest philosophy he could conjure.

In his time in America, Arch had grown up. He’d turned eighteen in January 1922, something that escaped anyone’s notice because he’d been acting as if he was eighteen since he was fourteen. But now in June of that year, back in New York City, he and Billy sat in Pender’s hotel room and said they were taking their chances in America. It didn’t seem to be taken as a surprise.

“Let me give you your return fare,” Pender said. “We’ll start rehearsals in September for the winter season back home.”

The money, fifty-five dollars for a third-class berth, was substantial. Pender wrapped his arms around Arch and gave him a tight hug, and then Billy, who seemed to tighten in his embrace.

“Have your adventure, boys, and then come home safe to us,” he said.

He and Billy went back to their room to pack. Checkout time was noon and they weren’t at all sure what came next.

Arch sat on the bed and wondered if he’d made a huge mistake. He also tried to imagine what his father would have to say upon his nonreturn. But neither could he truly conclude he’d be missed by the man. Like his mother, Arch had now made his exit. He was in a hotel room in New York, and safe. He wasn’t poor doomed Charnley on a troop ship, with the trenches and cannons and poison gas up ahead. Arch was just in show business, a far-lower-stakes war that nonetheless made people into clear winners or losers.

“No time to slouch around now,” Billy said, but Arch could see that Billy was churning with anxiety as his year-and-a-half-long plan had finally come to bear. “We need to sort out how to bloody make this work.”

With their ticket money closely guarded, they found shelter with new friends, squatting with other young actors they’d known from the backstage of the Hippodrome, and who’d similarly taken those vows of poverty for the riches of the spotlight’s glare. But, as yet, their performances were impromptu and afield of the familiar boards.

Arch began to make money instantly. Stilt-walking was a lifesaver, as it turned out. Arch landed jobs for advertisers and promoters; he’d navigate the wide Manhattan sidewalks handing out leaflets and learning to watch for the malicious kick meant to take him down. The auditions had been easy: The stilts were only three-footers, made of ash, the likes of which he hadn’t worn since he was a Pender novice; he was rock-solid against any assaults.

Billy, meanwhile, was being paid a pittance to be an audience plant for some magicians, dragged to the stage but prepped on the illusion. On off nights, the two of them walked Times Square in sandwich boards promoting various bars and theaters. For recreation, they did more of the same. They sang on park benches and shuffled decks of cards endlessly. They were tumblers, so they tumbled. A hat put out for coins reaped them small royalties. They congratulated themselves on tricking the world in so many ways.

Falling down stairs started out as a lark. They bragged about falling down some of the finest staircases in New York City. The grand staircase of the Ritz-Carlton. The much-trickier Criterion Theatre on Broadway at Forty-Fourth Street, with a wide landing before a second set of stairs. They tumbled down steep aisles at the Polo Grounds, where Arch’s first glimpse of baseball enthralled him, with its Americanness.

They’d been taught by Pender how to fall without injury or risk; staircases were child’s play compared to the troupe’s more elaborate demonstrations. It was just the youthful urge to display their talents, whether people wanted to see them or not. Each tumble was a set piece, with some small plot. Sometimes they waited for pretty girls to be unsuspecting audiences, just to watch them smile and blush. Sometimes they added a bit of fun by beginning the process by bumping into some unsuspecting gent, as if that had caused the accident. It shook up a few men, and most were amused in the aftermath.

Then, one day with Billy, he tumbled down the stairs at the Biltmore. The truly grand hotels had stairways so thickly carpeted Arch felt as if he were a child somersaulting down a grassy hill, though he still registered the gasps and cries around him. He was utterly convincing. The Biltmore’s main staircase had eight and then seven steps, separated by a landing. The trick on these stairs was that at the midway landing, he pulled himself up and pantomimed wobbling knees and spinning head before taking that next errant step to pitch himself down the lower set of stairs. It was his habit of making the final flourish of playing dead, if just for a moment, before springing up with a smile and a bow. It was all a matter of honed timing, but today he found himself at the bottom, and perhaps waiting a tick too long before rising.

He’d barely brushed the white-mustached man at the top of the stairs, but that had set the fall in motion. As he rose to his feet the man came rushing down the stairs.

“Good God, are you all right, boy?” the man said.

“Well, that was a bloody muddle,” Arch said in his Fairbanks voice. “Just a small loss of equilibrium, and downwardly I went.”

“You must be in terrible pain!”

“Well, I most certainly might be . . .”

“Is anything broken?”

“I’d say I can’t say.” And Billy hovering just behind a pillar, grinning madly.

The man was shoving a ten-dollar bill into Arch’s hand.

“Take this and see a doctor,” he said. “Make sure you’re well!”

Arch was speechless. But . . . ten dollars! He and Billy went down to the Childs Restaurant on Cortlandt Street, where the fish cakes were twenty cents and boiled eggs ten cents. Even eating their fill, there was plenty of money left over, an unexpected and laughable windfall. Billy was already thinking about that, and how soon enough they would be very hungry again.

Soon enough, then, Billy made the staircases of Manhattan his primary performing venue. Arch went along with him the first few times. Billy would wait for a well-appointed gentleman to come down the chosen staircase, typically a man with his attention on his watch, or a newspaper, or his own thoughts. Billy would then step into that man as if accidentally, but harder, to make it feel real. Then he would go falling down the stairs. Arch had to admire the showmanship, for Billy’s marks believed, undoubtingly, they had caused this boy’s terrible accident. And Billy could sincerely act hurt, pushing himself up from the floor as if on the verge of cranial bleeding.

“I’d see a doctor if I had any money,” he’d wheeze, as the worried man shoved cash into his hand. It was rarely a tenner, but it all added up. Arch sometimes took the fall, but it was in those instances Billy who would play the shocked bystander, guilting the day’s marked man into forking over some doctor money. Arch refused to make the ask.

The act was highly portable, not limited to hotel lobbies. He could pick the stairs at the City Hall subway station, or the grand hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the bridges of Central Park. It had become Billy’s primary source of income, as he struggled to find anything else that paid as well.

But Arch had begun to find reasons not to join in; the joke had gotten a little tired. And while Arch could not completely take the high ground, given his own forgeries and fibs on the way to the theater, Billy had committed an inviolable sin: It was no longer about the show.

One day, with Billy feeling the need for a payday, and insistent that Arch join him and do his bit, they were back at the Biltmore.

On this autumn Saturday afternoon, Arch sauntered along the banister, assessing the possibilities. Up the stairs came a middle-aged man and his finely dressed wife, clearly of wealth and absorbed in their conversation. When Arch came by, the man didn’t even try to slip past. Arch was not inclined to defer. Their shoulders hit with convincing force. And down he went.

The sensation of tumbling was always the truest pleasure. He’d become adept at surveying the path (he didn’t want to sweep over some unsuspecting bystander) and enjoying the feeling of invulnerability. His talent was his armor. He’d caught Billy, after some of his falls, or rubbing and elbow or walking with the slightest limp. The signs of imperfect technique. So that became the competition in itself.

Falling, this time, he was dreaming of fish cakes and boiled eggs. And soon enough, he arrived at the finish, sprawling onto the lobby at the foot of the stairs.

But hands were on him, pulling him up, and behind the man in the bellhop suit was another man who appeared to be the concierge, dark suit and paintbrush mustache, looking quite alarmed.

“Are you hurt, young man?” the concierge nearly shouted.

“I think I’ll be all right.”

“Well, gather yourself. I’m here for you, sir.”

The couple he had bumped, he realized, were not coming down the stairs. He wondered if the woman had encouraged the man to keep walking. Billy had shrunk out of sight.

They stood until the people who had witnessed his fall had dispersed. The lobby resumed its business. The concierge now led him by the elbow to the hotel entrance and onto Forty-Third Street.

“Be sure you’re well,” the concierge said. “And good God, man, stay away from that staircase.” Then he clenched Arch’s arm much too tightly, and he spoke in a rougher voice laced with Brooklynese.

“You better avoid the Biltmore altogether, if you get what I’m saying.”

Billy met Arch outside.

“Well, you mucked that one up,” Billy said. “What happened?”

“It went perfectly. But the man didn’t come to see if I was all right.”

“Then you picked the wrong man!”

“Maybe so. But he was with his wife, and I was sure he’d try to be gallant.”

“It probably wasn’t his wife, Arch.”

“Yes, never thought of that.”

Billy shook his head. “What are we going to do about food? Shall we try another hotel? The Commodore, maybe?”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Arch said.

Billy was the very last connection to England, no small thing. Arch was working up to the next step, but he found himself attached to Billy out of their shared dare to stay on. On a particular Saturday afternoon months later, they entered the Biltmore’s lobby once again. Billy, in his suit and tie and polished shoes, took his place at the top of the marble-and-bronze staircase. He’d become tired, he said, of second-rate hotels with small payouts. Winter had set in and work was scarce. Billy said he was always hungry.

Arch, not wanting to be spotted, edged behind a tall potted fern in the lobby. He was only there at Billy’s behest, and ready to decamp, once a bit of food money had been procured.

And at the top of the stairway, a scream, and Billy cartwheeling hard down the steps. Four people came running down toward him, the poor injured boy. At the bottom, he lay crumpled in a fair impression of a broken leg as other guests rushed over.

Arch reflexively stepped back, and bumped against something. And the vise of a familiar hand tightening on his bicep.

“Why, that fellow is as uncoordinated as you are, my young friend.”

Arch had not actually done anything, but he suspected that didn’t much matter.

“Now, young fellow, I urged you once before, for your well-being, to avoid the Biltmore. Yet you’ve returned. And who could forget such a handsome face? Do you have a room here at the hotel?”

“I don’t even know that boy,” Arch said.

“And who said you did? You’re answering questions nobody’s asked you.”

Over at the bottom of the stairs, two men were clearing the crowd. One, a bearded man in a bowler, went to one knee and whispered into Billy’s ear. Billy sprang up, instantly, as the onlookers startled at his instantaneous recovery. But the men had their hands on him and they looked over to Arch.

“Let’s get them both in my office,” the concierge said.

“What do I have to do with any of this?” Arch said, and Billy flashed him the Judas look.

“Part of the scheme, I’d think,” the bearded man said.

In the office, Arch and Billy avoided any eye contact with each other. It was a long interlude. The bearded man in the bowler was a hotel detective. Eventually, the concierge had come in and spoken of the misfortune that would meet them if they came within a block of the hotel, ever again. “Part of my job is to remember every face,” he said. “But you know that now, don’t you?”

And after they’d been warned and released, they walked back to their shared room not speaking.

“I think it’s time to go back to England,” Billy finally said. “We’re not even getting enough to eat.”

“Suits me just fine to stay on,” Arch said. “So good luck with it all.”

“But I don’t have any money to get back.”

“Well, I’ll need to leave you to all that, Billy, and bid you goodbye now.” And he began to pack, not even sure where he was going next.

That was the end of that. Arch in his youth and ambition, out the door, erasing Billy from his mind nearly instantly, only to wonder about him years later, then eventually forget all about him again. Billy had been swept up by the magic of the stage but had suffered the worst fate of all: to be talentless in things that turned out to matter.

1959

HE’S FOUND A SPOT in the sun on the deck of a pink submarine, and he’s awaiting the dull pain of being interviewed. He’s never been one for press events, but they’re a necessary evil.

The submarine, roped up to a dock at the Key West naval station, is a 311-foot Balao-class vessel that the studio has leased for the film. Its pink paint is in keeping with the somewhat tortuous plotline: During the war, a gaggle of nurses must join the crew; the sub, painted with a mixture of the only available primer—red and white—but not yet covered in its black outer coat, must set to its mission. The pink seems a bit much, the Acrobat thinks, but it goes perfectly with Blake’s comic urges as a director: The man seems enamored with pink. “This Eastmancolor film stock will love it,” he said in one of the production meetings.

The narrow deck has been rigged with handrails and a gangway and a set of studio chairs, so that the interviews may be conducted upon this, the film’s most central and ostentatious prop. Reporters love that sort of thing. The Acrobat has set himself up in the sun to get some color while he can. The other chairs, set up by the publicity people, remain in the cool of the shade behind the conning tower.

It’s a brilliant tropical-winter day. A few reporters are coming from cold-weather cities, with the more-familiar Hollywood columnists at the end. The Acrobat steadies himself for churning out repeated answers to repeated questions; as with every picture, he will say this is likely the finest picture with which he’s ever been associated. Hardly so; but he does feel certain the film will turn a profit. He’s less sure about the film he recently completed with Hitch, tentatively titled In a Northwesterly Direction, involving a man on the run because of a mistaken identity. Today he’ll be an affable liar. But lies in support of a picture are fair play, indeed.

The first reporter is brought out, another in a line the studio’s promotion department has arranged. A nervous young woman from a Midwestern newspaper. She’s apparently paid her way down on a midwinter vacation built around this interview, and has undoubtedly spent the morning grooming herself. She’s short, with reddish hair tied back against the sea breeze, with cat-eye sunglasses and bright-red lipstick.

The publicist makes introductions: Doris Somebody from the Such-and-Such Register. It all goes by him, as they seat themselves. Facing the sun, he sees her through his Ray-Bans as a dark form in bright light, just a voice piping with questions that he’s answered a thousand times before. Why is she here? Is a standard interview with an actor a plum assignment back at the Register? Nearly on automatic, he goes on and on about the delightful film he is engaged in, the rising co-star Tony Curtis and what a fine young actor he is. But he realizes he’s saying it so blandly that he could be taken to be lying, which is untrue. The interview ends with the young woman shakily thanking him, as if she might begin to cry.

More of the same ensues: journalists from the local Miami papers, from Chicago, from Boston. An hour into it, a short break. Time for a glass of water. The publicist, a wiry man named James (last name or first remains unclear), who’s been flown out by Ed Muhl at Universal, takes the seat closest to him.

“We should talk about the next interview,” James says. “This one might be a little different.”

“Why? Who is it?”

“Do you know Joe Hyams? Hollywood correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune?”

“Sure, I know Joe. At least enough to say hello. What about him?”

“You may know he was a war hero. Parachuted into combat in the Battle of Saipan. Wounded, medals for bravery, that kind of thing.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“Just . . . this is a war picture.”

“It’s a comedy.”

“Some of these men who actually fought, sometimes they resent guys who didn’t fight . . .”

“I take your point, James.”

“I’m just making you aware.”

“If only war heroes got to play war heroes, Jimmy Stewart would be the only one making war movies,” the Acrobat said.

“Hyams is a black belt in karate . . .”

“Well, he certainly makes Duke Wayne look silly, but I’m hardly purporting to be a war hero or an expert in karate. Did Hyams suggest he was feeling this way about me?”

“No. Mr. Muhl thought it best to be careful, given, well . . .”

“Well what?”

“That you spent the war in Bel Air with the richest woman in the world . . .”

“One of the richest. Please don’t exaggerate.”

“. . . while this guy was dropping by parachute into machinegun fire. He left Harvard to enlist.”

“So he’s everything people like me only pretend to be, is that it? But that’s what we do, in the pictures, isn’t it? I’ve never claimed to be anybody’s hero.”

“I’m not suggesting there will be a problem. In fact, Humphrey Bogart loved this guy.”

“God rest Bogey’s soul. But is that meant to be an endorsement?”

James says nothing.

“I suppose my lack of a war record will always be a nuisance,” the Acrobat says. “But I was too young for one war, and too old for the other. And I did plenty helping the cause, as I could. I received the bloody King’s Medal!”

“No one is suggesting you didn’t,” James says.

“Why, what did you do in the war, James?”

“I was at Salerno with the Fifth Army.”

“All right, then, all right. So what do you want me to do?”

“Keep it light. Keep it chatty. Mr. Muhl just wanted you forewarned.”

Hyams shows up on time and is brought over by James. As they come down the dock, Hyams is smiling broadly as he looks at the submarine. The man somehow looks bigger now than the Acrobat remembers him, and coming up the gangway he smiles as he extends his hand.

“Well, get a load of this sub,” he says. “Is this supposed to be some kind of phallic symbol?”

“I personally like to think of mine as a rocket ship.”

The reporter slowly grins.

“I guess we all need to feel strong, right?” he says.

Hyams has brought a small tape recorder, which he sets up on his lap. He holds the microphone in his left hand and lays his notepad on his right leg.

They seat themselves and James says, “I really don’t think anyone had a phallic symbol in mind.”

“But Freud would tell you that’s how it works,” the Acrobat says. “Fortunately or unfortunately, Mr. Hyams, I didn’t write the script. You’ll have to take it up with Blake. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“Fair enough,” Hyams says, “but let’s talk about you, then.”

“Well, now I feel as if I should be lying on a couch.”

“I’ve got nothing that probing. But wondering why, after some of your history, you’ve chosen this film.”

“Why, what’s wrong with this?”

“Nothing at all.”

“So, by my history, you mean what?”

“Your recent roles. You’ve done To Catch a Thief, An Affair to Remember, and Indiscreet in the last few years. These set a certain tone, it seems. This seems a departure from the debonair socialite you’re more accustomed to being.”

“Well, the fact is that Tony Curtis wanted me to do this picture with him, and I wanted to. And truth to tell, I’m really no more a ‘debonair socialite’ than I was a submarine commander.”

Hyams smiles again. “Is that so?”

“More than you know.”

“Weren’t you married to Barbara Hutton?”

James leans forward now and says, “His marriages are out of bounds, Joe.”

Hyams nods. “It just seems debonair and social to me.”

“I suppose that’s the actor’s craft, isn’t it? For example, I recollect hearing that you were friendly with Bogey—God rest his soul—weren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“So there’s the inversion. Son of a prominent surgeon, raised in New York City society. At the age I was stilt-walking on Coney Island, Bogey was attending an elite preparatory school. But everyone thought of him as a working-class tough case, because of the roles he played and made his own. That’s a credit to the man, mind you.”

Hyams is looking at him, but inscrutably so. Just a smiling man with an open face and no apparent malice.

“So,” Hyams says, “this is a light comedy, which suits you.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Hyams looks up, as if not sure how to proceed.

“It’s what you do best, I’d think. You’ve made a life of these kinds of movies.”

“Yes, a life trying to entertain people. It’s what I do.”

“It sounds like it’s been a very good life.”

“Again, it may seem that way,” the Acrobat says, “but it’s a complicated life, just like with most people. I’ve finally been delving into the reality of my life.”

“Really. How so?”

“I’ve been born again.”

“You’ve gotten religion?” Hyams says, writing furiously on his pad.

“No, nothing that extreme! No, I’ve been involved in psychotherapy, aided by a wonderful medication.”

“What medication is that?”

“It’s called LSD, actually. Have you heard of that?”

Hyams looks up at him, then looks down at his tape recorder to be sure it’s running.

“I have indeed. Doesn’t the military use it as truth serum?”

“Why, Joe, you look perfectly aghast. Or at least agape.”

“I’m not judging. But please go on.”

“I have been through a psychiatric experience which has completely changed me. It was horrendous. I had to face things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn’t know were there. Now I know that I hurt every woman I ever loved. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-it-all who knew little.”

James has tightened in his chair and leans forward to intone, but the Acrobat waves him off and says, “We’re just having a conversation.”

“That’s all very fascinating,” Hyams says.

“Yes, it is. I found I was hiding behind all kinds of defenses and vanities. I had to get rid of them layer by layer. The moment when your conscious meets your subconscious is a hell of a wrench.

“Each of us is dying for affection, but we don’t know how to go about getting it. Everything we do is affected by this longing. That’s why I became an actor. I was longing for affection. I wanted people to like me, but I went about it in the wrong way. Most people do.”

“But everybody loves you,” Hyams says. “They always have.”

“Which is why we should get back to discussing the picture,” James says, weakly.

“You see, Mr. Hyams, my attitude toward women is completely different. I don’t intend to foul up any more lives. I’m aware of my fault. I’m ready to accept responsibility.”

“How does a person do that?”

“I know that a man and a woman deliberately spoil something that is beautiful between them. We cannot stop hurting ourselves and each other by destroying the one thing we’re all dying for: love and affection.”

Hyams looks at the little left of the unspooling tape and shuts off the machine.

“May I publish what you just said?” he says.

“Oh, no, not yet,” the Acrobat says. “I’ll let you know.”

To James’s relief, Hyams turns the machine back on and says, “So tell me about this movie I’m here to learn about.” And with that, the Acrobat loops back the answers he’s already given the other reporters.

At the end of it all, Hyams stands and they shake hands, and waves a farewell as he goes down the gangway.

James looks at his notes. “Lionel Crane of the London Daily Mirror.”

“Splendid. I know Lionel. He lives in Los Angeles, actually.”

“Sir, if I may,” James says, voice quivering, “perhaps best to not delve into personal history.”

“Oh, that was all just chatting,” the Acrobat says. “And it’s not as if I’m ashamed, anyway. Why should I be?”