“It was a spin-off of the Stage Door Canteen. We’d go out and entertain the workers during their lunch hours at defense plants and shipyards.”
“I got paid a pittance,” Jerry said, “but Danny did it strictly for the war effort.”
“What a sucker, huh?” Danny said with a wink.
“Headliners worked for free,” Jerry explained. “I’m not a headliner.”
“One of these days, you’ll be another Gershwin!”
Next to arrive was Rosey Patterson, a theatrical agent and an old pal of mine—in our respective roles as herders of actors, we’d been indirectly involved in an early-1930s murder case right there in Manhattan. He wasn’t quite as compactly built as Danny, but he was just as hyper, always on the move. I remember thinking it might be a strain on the nerves to be around both of them at the same time. Rosey embraced me in the best show business fashion and said he wanted to tell me about a great detective story he’d just read. But there were two tall men filling the doorway right behind him, and I don’t think he ever got the chance.
The older one, who had the muscular frame of a body builder, gripped my hand before waiting to be introduced and said, “So you’re Seb, Danny’s Hollywood connection. I’m Elmer Belasco.” He gestured to the younger man. “This is my worthless son, Arthur.”
“Not totally worthless,” Arthur said. “I’m a new father. Baby girl. Fresh out of cigars, though.”
“You fellows related to David Belasco?” I asked.
“When it suits us,” Arthur said. “Back in the twenties, when dad worked for Flo Ziegfeld, he figured the name helped him.”
“Didn’t help at all,” Elmer said. “The opposite, if anything.”
“More likely he reminded Ziegfeld of Sandow the strongman,” Rosey said.
Apparently, these spontaneous gatherings were a regular thing to Mildred. She knew we’d be drinking and gossiping and catching up and drinking—how we drank back then—and that what began in the late afternoon would likely extend into the evening.
It was Jerry Cordova who made it a party. He resembled his late hero George Gershwin in one respect. If he entered a room with a piano—and Danny Crenshaw wouldn’t be without one—he would be asked to play, and if he wasn’t asked, he’d do it anyway, singing along in a reedy voice something like Cole Porter’s. Shortly after he got there, he sat down at the keyboard unbidden, as if this were why he was invited, and maybe it was.
Arthur Belasco was just twenty-two. He was starting to make inroads as an actor on Broadway, though his father constantly grumbled that he had no talent. Father and son were always sniping at each other, with insults that sounded pointed but presumably weren’t to be taken seriously.
“I had to find some way to get into the family business,” Arthur said. “The old man here insisted. Medical school was a dead end, he said.”
“He could do less harm on the stage than in the operating room,” Elmer retorted. It sounded like a practiced routine, and everybody took it as harmless kidding. Except for Mildred, who had a pained look on her face every time father or son launched a zinger.
In later years, remembering Mildred, Danny would say, “She was the kindest, sweetest person God ever put on earth. Imagine a dame with no sense of humor putting up with a joker like me for as long as she did. Mildred was a bleeding heart, full of empathy, but she couldn’t see nuances.”
That day in 1946, I witnessed an example. Jerry Cordova had launched into “Who Cares?” from Of Thee I Sing, written by the Gershwin brothers deep in the Depression. Mildred listened with apparent appreciation and joined the applause when he was finished.
“That was great, Jerry,” she said, “but I’ve always hated that song.”
“Oh, dear, I’ve offended my hostess,” he said.
“No, don’t be silly. It’s a nice tune, but I hate the lyrics. They’re nasty, uncaring, mean spirited.”
“How so, Mildred?” Rosey Patterson inquired.
“You’ll be sorry you asked,” Danny said.
Mildred said, “It’s that line that goes ‘Who cares if banks fail in Yonkers?’ Well, a lot of banks failed in the Depression. We had to go to war to get out of it. When I hear that, I think about all the people I knew and those I didn’t know who had money in those failing banks, who maybe lost everything. How could you not care that banks failed in Yonkers or anywhere else?”
“I’ve tried to explain this,” Danny said with a mock long-suffering expression. “Baby, the people in that song are trying to get through difficult times, like we all were back then. They depend on the power of their love to see them through. Whatever happened, they could handle it because they were in love. That’s the point. It’s called a love song, see? It’s got nothing to do with people who lost money in banks that failed.”
“Well, it’s just not right to be so cavalier about it, that’s all,” she said. “Play something else, Jerry.”