“Give me a minute while I run through all the lyrics in my head,” the pianist said.
Everybody laughed. Mildred didn’t—she seldom did—but she was a good enough hostess not to throw a wet blanket on the evening, even providing an improvised meal from a nearby deli when it became apparent nobody was going anywhere till well after nightfall.
I’m sure we covered a lot of subjects that night. Did we touch on peacetime transition, the bomb, our relationship with the Soviet Union, prospects for the returning veteran, President Truman’s job performance, the Yankees and the Giants and the Dodgers? Maybe. But these were Broadway folks, so mostly we talked about Broadway. Could Tennessee Williams duplicate his great success with The Glass Menagerie? Opinions were mixed, but most thought he couldn’t. How did Maurice Evans’s current production of Hamlet stack up against his predecessors’? Rosey Patterson swore nobody ever topped Barrymore, but Danny made a case for Gielgud as the dean of Danes, and Mildred mentioned Leslie Howard. Who was the greatest composer of Broadway musicals? Jerry loyally argued for Gershwin, others countered with Jerome Kern or Richard Rodgers, and Elmer Belasco shocked everybody by insisting it was Kurt Weill. Was Adele Astaire really a greater talent than Fred? Danny said so with a straight face, and a lot of old-timers agreed with him, but when he claimed Gummo was the funniest Marx Brother, I doubted he was serious.
One topic was inevitable for theater people that particular day. I was surprised we’d been there for two or three cocktails before anybody mentioned it.
“So, I guess you all heard about Claude Anselm,” Rosey said.
Heads all nodded.
“What happened exactly?” Arthur Belasco said. “I mean, was he murdered?”
“Papers say he was mugged,” Rosey said. “Back alley thing late at night. He’d been to see some avant-garde artist who was staying with all the other bohemians at the Chelsea Hotel down in the Village.”
“Anton LeMaster,” Danny supplied. “Anselm wanted to get him to design a set for his next production, thought his surrealistic style would fit the creative concept.”
“More important,” Rosey said, “he’d work cheap.”
“Yeah, old Claude would have made a lot of promises, appealed to the vain artist’s ego and the starving artist’s wallet. I think somebody had warned LeMaster what a bastard Anselm was, and he’d turned him down. Not two blocks from the Chelsea, somebody clubbed Claude to death.”
“The poor man,” Mildred said. “I know what he did to people, but even so.”
“Nobody here’s going to mourn that guy,” Jerry Cordova said, picking out the melody of “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You” but sparing us his Louis Armstrong imitation.
“Most hated man on Broadway,” Danny said.
“In the running, anyway,” Rosey said. “Who cheats my client cheats me. And he didn’t just cheat actors. He cheated backers, playwrights, theater managers—and always got away with it. Wanted to add a scenic designer to his trophy case, I guess.”
“I used to see Anselm on the golf course,” Elmer Belasco said. “Never played a round with him, thank God.”
“Too good?” Arthur kidded. “Dad can hit the ball a mile, but you should see the yardage he gets on his putts.”
“Hey, why don’t you go learn your lines or something and not smart off at your elders?”
“What do you mean? I’ve memorized the whole play.”
“It’s true,” Elmer told us. “Kid has a photographic memory. He could do Hamlet for you right here if he’d ever learned how to act. Anselm was as bad a golfer as the kid is an actor. Couldn’t play worth a damn, but for some reason he kept at it. I think he looked for opponents who were even worse than he was. Or were motivated to pretend they were.”
“Too bad some anonymous mugger got him,” Danny mused. “Lot of people on Broadway wish they could have done the job.”
“I can just see the full obits in the papers tomorrow,” Rosey said. “ ‘Broadway’s lights grew a little dimmer with the shocking death of a beloved man of the theater.’ And they’ll be able to get plenty of quotes from mourners who are secretly cheering.”
Elmer nodded. “Scoundrels die, but deals live on.”
Rosey had a mischievous gleam in his eye. “Here’s an idea. Let’s say I was the person who bumped off Anselm, revenge on behalf of my clients and all the bastard’s other victims. I wasn’t seen, covered my tracks, managed to make it look like a routine mugging.”
“Congratulations,” Jerry said, playing a snatch of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
“Yeah, great, but I think I’d feel something was lacking.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. Rosey loved to have a straight man to feed him cues.
“It wouldn’t be enough that the guy was dead. I’d want to claim credit.”