menu_book Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII Well, Dorothy had never learned how to dress, and at a time when most girls ought to be wearing either pink or blue, Dorothy selected red, which gave her such a violent appearance that gentlemen knew at a glance she was not the kind of a girl that needs any aid. For red may make gentlemen look, but nothing holds their interests like pink or blue. And instead of

trying to make gentlemen acquaintances herself that would broaden her out, Dorothy spent most of her time on the train going to New York listening to a Pullman porter tell him using experiences in a colored dialect, so that when Dorothy arrived in New York she had not made a single gentleman acquaintance to give her a helping hand. But Dorothy was full of confidence, and she did not know she did not look like other girls. And the worst mistake she made was that

instead of carrying a small valise or a vanity case or even a pocketbook, Dorothy had all of her things in her armadillo basket. Well, when Dorothy came out of the Grand Central Station, she got over onto 45th Street and started to look for a hotel, and the first one she came to, she started to go in. But the taxi starter out in front took one look at the armadillo basket and detained her, for he said they did not allow animals in that hotel. So Dorothy told him that

it was nothing but a dead armadillo that couldn't have harmed him in its palmiest days. But he told her that they had never had an armadillo in their hotel, dead or alive, and who did she think she was to break the ruling? Well, Dorothy loves nothing so much as an argument, so she told him that if his hotel allowed alligator valises, where did they get off to discriminate against an armadillo? But Dorothy says she couldn't make him realize that he didn't have a leg to stand on,

and quite a crowd began to gather, so she had to move on. Well, the next hotel she came to was a very refined hotel for middle-aged ladies. And there were quite a few elderly ladies in the lobby when Dorothy went in. Well, Dorothy hung the armadillo basket on the arm of a chair while she was awaiting the hotel clerk, and one of the elderly ladies happened to go over to the chair and take a seat. But just as she was taking it, she suddenly seemed to catch sight of the

armadillo and fainted. And after the confusion was over, the hotel clerk gave Dorothy quite a dark look and told her that all of their rooms were occupied. So then Dorothy went around the corner to try her luck on 44th Street. But I really believe that she never would have found an exclusive hotel to accept her, but that fate always helps a girl like Dorothy. Because the next hotel she arrived at was the Algonquin Hotel, where all the famous actresses and movie stars

live. And just as Dorothy arrived at the front door, it happened that Buster Keaton and his motion picture company were just coming in from some location, and they were still in quite amusing comedy make-ups. So when Dorothy went into the lobby, the room clerk thought that she belonged to the comedy company and gave her a room, and he never discovered his mistake until everybody else had cleaned up for dinner. But then it was too late to put Dorothy out, because possession

is ten points of the law. Well, when Dorothy came down for dinner, she seemed to note that she was the center of regard. So she says she gave them all a large dirty look for being so rude as to stare at a girl merely because she is well dressed. And she walked quite haughtily into the special dining room that is reserved for nobody but famous actors and literary people. And when George, the famous head waiter, saw her, he became so dazed that he showed her to a table.

So Dorothy ordered lobster salad and chicken salad and fruit salad for dinner and decided that she was a woman of the world at last. Well, Dorothy began to get friendly with her waiter as usual, and the first thing she told him was that she had come to New York to go into the follies. So the waiter told George, and when all the famous people asked George who Dorothy was, and George told them that she was a girl who thought she was going to get in the follies,

they were all quite amused. And finally, Dorothy became the joke of the whole Algonquin Hotel. And the literary roundtable of famous critics were really more amused than anyone, because one of their most literary writers, Mr. Peter Hood himself, was trying to get a girl that he knew into the follies who really had something to offer. And he had learned how hard it is to get to Mr. Ziegfeld with an introduction. Well, this girl was a beautiful tall imitation Russian countess

of the vampire type. And she had black hair and black eyes and quite a desperate kind of an anti-Bolshevik expression, with a leaning towards long antique earrings. And Dorothy says you had to give her credit, because she had almost solved the problem of how to look well-groomed without the use of water. And wherever she went, people simply had to look at her and ask one another who she was. And what was even more unusual, she was also full of brains, for she could talk for hours

and hours on almost any kind of subject. But the best thing she knew how to do was to hold conversations with gentlemen about love. I mean with one gentleman at a time. And she could really be just as talkative on the subject of love as the girl in the great novel called The Green Hat. Well, of course, she was really much too dramatic to go into the follies. But she could not act in a dramatic drama on account of quite a heavy European dialect. But as soon as she learned to talk more

like an American, she was going to show we Americans her interpretation of what famous writers like Mr. Strenberg meant. And she could hardly wait to get into the follies and meet wealthy brokers who are fond of art and would finance her own company. Well, it was no wonder that the whole roundtable thought she was divine. And Peter Hood, who made her discovery, could never seem to get over it. Because the first night he met with her, he brought her to one of those literary parties,

where all the Algonquin writers who rack their brains hard all day being amusing, keep right on racking their brains hard all night doing a thing called charades, because they never seem to sit down and relax. Well, in the midst of one of the amusing charades, one of the great writers who thought it up became excited over his success and dropped a lighted candle onto some of the cute kind of paper caps that come out of bonbons. So the paper caps caught fire, and

everybody had to run out in a panic. But after they all got down in the street and counted themselves over, they found out that one of them was missing. Well, they finally realized that it was the Russian Countess, and Peter Hood decided that, as long as he was her escort, he really ought to save her life. So he ran back into the building, and when he reached the apartment where the fire was, there sat the Countess, gazing at it in a reverie and saying in quite a distant voice,

is not flame beautiful? Well, when Peter Hood heard her say a little thing like that at a time like that, he knew that she was not like other beautiful girls, for she was full of soul besides. And he stood there in a daze and looked at her, but by this time all the cute paper caps had dwindled down to cinders and the fire was out. Well, from that moment, they all realized that she was a genius, so she was the girl that the whole round table was raving about when Dorothy arrived

at the Algonquin. And they all kept making engagements with Mr. Ziegfeld to meet her, but he always seemed to be out, so it was no wonder they had to laugh at a girl like Dorothy. Well, the first morning, Dorothy called up the broker friend of Charlie Breen, and told him that she had a letter of introduction to him. Well, when his broker talked to Dorothy over the phone, he was more than delighted, because there is nothing a broker enjoys so much as

getting a girl an introduction to Mr. Ziegfeld. So he said he would be right over to get Dorothy over to get Dorothy and take her out to luncheon at the Ritz. But when he met Dorothy in the lobby of the Algonquin, he looked at her and looked at her, and he really began to lose some of his interest. Because by that time, Dorothy had discovered the imitation jewelry department at Bloomingdale's, and her appearance was even more unusual than usual. So he ended up by taking

her to an artistic tea room, where the way she was dressed would not be noticed. But Dorothy does not know how to hold the interest of a broker, because Dorothy always seems to want to make a broker laugh, which is fatal in itself. I mean, the only time that brokers really want to laugh is at a show, or when they are telling each other risque stories on the stock exchange. For when a broker meets a girl, he always wants to be more serious and give her good advice.

So the first thing this broker did was to tell Dorothy that New York was a very, very wicked place. But instead of listening to him with reverence, Dorothy asked if he could give her some good addresses. So that really brought the conversations to quite a halt. But the broker finally overlooked her error and got to feeling better. So then he told Dorothy that she should be very, very careful about what gentleman she met and to always ask him first whether she

ought to or not. So Dorothy told him that the only one who had given her a tumble was the elevator boy at the Algonquin, but she said that if he had any objections to the elevator boy, she would take to using the staircase. So the broker began to feel very uncomfortable with a girl who did not have any awe, but he finally concentrated on his friendship for Charlie Breen and said that he would try to help her. Well, it turned out that this broker's only real connection with Mr. Ziegfeld

was that both he and Mr. Ziegfeld used the same lawyer. So he invited Dorothy and the lawyer to dine, and they went out to Arrowhead. Well, this lawyer looked Dorothy over during the dinner, and then he told her that he had just recommended a bootlager to Mr. Ziegfeld, whose scotch turned out to be full of wood alcohol, so it would do no girl any good to have a letter of recommendation from him. So that all came to nothing. Well, Dorothy finally reached the point where her money had run

out, but Dorothy's poverty always seems to consist in not worrying about bills, so she went right on, as usual, spending most of her time in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel, becoming more and more of a chum to the elevator boy. And everybody who went in or out of the elevator always used to stop and say to Dorothy, well, Miss Shaw, when do you go to work for Mr. Ziegfeld? Until really Dorothy began to feel quite annoyed. So one morning she walked over to Mr. Ziegfeld's offices at the new Amsterdam

theater and became friendly with the office boy and asked him if he could get her an introduction to Mr. Ziegfeld. Well, the office boy told Dorothy to wait while he went into Mr. Ziegfeld's office. And finally Dorothy noted a crack appear in the doorway, and the crack finally disappeared, but the office boy came out again and told Dorothy that she could enter. And that was how Dorothy came to meet Mr. Ziegfeld. Well, what happened to Dorothy really seems like

almost a miracle, because Mr. Ziegfeld got her to stand up in quite a good light, and he looked her over and over, and he smoked his cigar and smoked his cigar, and then he finally wrote an order to Mr. Gene Buck to give her an engagement and told her to report for rehearsal on Monday. But after all, it was really not so much of a miracle as it was the genius of Mr. Ziegfeld, because Mr. Ziegfeld can see through all of a girl's bad points and pick out her good ones.

And Dorothy says that most of the girls in the follies would be passed up by practically every broker in New York before Mr. Ziegfeld has glorified them. Because when brokers are left to themselves, they always make a mistake and pick out some sophisticated girl that is quite well-groomed, and then keep on wondering what is the matter with her. Because hardly any broker seems to have enough psychology to realize that the real ideal of his dreams is some small-town village

belle that he used to weave a romance around when he was the age of 16. But Mr. Ziegfeld knows all about psychology, so that is the kind he picks out. And Dorothy says that about all Mr. Ziegfeld does to glorify them is to get them to comb the hay out of their hair and give up starch in lingerie. And as far as their street gowns are concerned, Dorothy says that Mr. Ziegfeld would always rather have a girl get her models from Paris, Kentucky, than Paris, France. Because nobody knows better

than Mr. Ziegfeld that there is much more glamour for brokers in dotted Swiss than there ever is in Crepe de Chine. And the result of it is that a crowd of Follies girls off of the stage looks like nothing so much as a small-town Sunday school picnic. And it really is a waste of time to get letters of introduction to Mr. Ziegfeld, because he gets over 20,000 of them every year. And Dorothy says that a composite photo of the whole 20,000 wouldn't even be blurred, because they practically

all say, Dear Mr. Ziegfeld, this will introduce Miss Blank, in whom I have no other interest except to assist a little girl who is full of ambition and helping to support her family. So Dorothy says that when Mr. Ziegfeld gets any such letter, it generally means that the little girl arrives in a Rolls-Royce and that she has already been glorified with the aid of Mr. Bendel or Mr. Tappé, to a point where she has lost all of her own identity. And Dorothy says that Mr.

Ziegfeld's best girls wander in on their own from 42nd Street, just like she did. Well, after Dorothy got her engagement, she went back to the Algonquin Hotel and in the lobby, she met Mr. Hood, the discoverer of the famous Russian Countess. So he came up to Dorothy as usual and said, Well, Miss Shaw, when do you start in to rehearse for Mr. Ziegfeld? So when Dorothy said, Monday, he did not believe his ears. And so Dorothy showed him Mr. Ziegfeld's note to Mr. Buck.

Well, then he nearly fell dead. So the news got all around the lobby and they all nearly fell dead. But when the Russian Countess heard about it, she really nearly fell dead, because she had spent eight weeks in Mr. Ziegfeld's office with ten letters of introduction and had never even got past the office boy. But Dorothy found out afterwards that whenever anybody sends Mr. Ziegfeld some girl who is intellectual, he takes quite a good look at her first through the crack of a door.

And if she happens to be a vampire type in addition, they hardly ever meet personally. Because nobody knows better than Mr. Ziegfeld that the vampire type of a girl never really gets anywhere. And there has never been a vampire type in the whole Follies. I mean, even the famous Dolores, who was a very striking type of a beautiful tall Burnett, was not a vampire type. But she was really a Madonna.

And so it turned out that all of the Russian Countess's temperament and brains never got her anywheres. Because that type of a girl may interest literary gentlemen, but they are just the reverse with a broker. I mean, no broker ever really feels at home with any girl who wants to talk about such a risque subject as love. And girls who talk about love are generally more famous for the way that gentlemen try to avoid them. And the way everything turned out only proves that Mr.

Ziegfeld is always right. For after all, Dorothy has become one of the most famous girls in New York in spite of all her faults, while that Russian Countess has turned out to be one of the ones who is an extra girl whenever the theater guild puts on some peasant drama about low life in hungry. Well, when Charlie Breen's broker friend learned that Dorothy was rehearsing in the Follies, he was nearly dumbfounded. But when he got over it, he began to realize that Dorothy was quite

cute after all. And Dorothy really did start in to become cuter, because it did not take Dorothy long to realize that something was wrong somewheres. So she gave all of her imitation jewelry and her red satin dress to the chambermaid, and bought herself a pink gingham model on Sixth Avenue, and she finally got to look just like all the other girls in the Follies. So then it seems that Charlie Breen's broker friend started in to send telegrams to Charlie

out in California, boasting about how he got Dorothy into the Follies. So that seemed to make Charlie quite angry, because he sent him quite a sarcastic telegram which read, You make me sore. Give credit where credit is due. Who picked her out? Charles Breen. Well, Charlie started in to send Dorothy telegrams every day congratulating himself for picking her out. And it seems that he had to stay in California for the polo, and he finally won the

international polo match. But he telegraphed Dorothy that the proudest day of his life would be the party he was going to have when he got to New York in honor of picking out a girl that got into the Follies. Well, while Charlie was straining every nerve hurrying to New York, Dorothy was rehearsing in the Follies. And the first thing she started out to do was to select herself a chum. But instead of becoming acquainted with famous girls who went out socially like Peggy

Hopkins for instance, of course Dorothy started in to look farther. Well, in the Follies there are practically always 18 tiller girls who are in English ballet, which is noted for nothing but hard work. And they never go out anywheres socially because they have to practice all of the time, just like soldiers. And the result is that they are just like one girl, on the stage and off of it. So when Dorothy was looking around for a girlfriend, that was what she picked out. I mean,

Dorothy did not even pick out one tiller girl. And I really think it was very undignified to go walking around the streets of New York with a whole English ballet when she might just as well have been writing in the Rolls Royce of some girl with a future. But Dorothy says that one tiller girl never goes out alone without yearning for the other 17. And the only reason Dorothy could think up for her selection is that she had never in her life heard English girls talk cockney, so she would

listen to that English ballet for hours and hours and never get through marveling. Well, one morning Charlie Breen finally arrived at New York. So he took Dorothy to lunch in, and then he had to hurry to their country estate to see his father, who was very, very low with pneumonia. But he apologized to Dorothy and told her he would be back at 10 o'clock in the evening to escort her to the party he was giving in her honor. Well, after rehearsal was over,

instead of going to her room and relaxing for the party, Dorothy took a bus with her 18 tiller girl chums and went to Coney Island. And she was having such a delightful time riding on all the concessions that she forgot to look at the clock. And she never got back to the hotel until after 12, where Charlie Breen had waited in the lobby for two hours and had gotten so nervous that he was almost ready to scream. And he finally had to escort Dorothy to a refined party full of brokers

and cute girls in evening gowns, with large holes in her stockings from sliding down the devil's slide and practically a dislocated hip. End of chapter 8 you