The American Adventures of an English Actor • Part II

In an unpublished essay, Leslie Howard recounts his first journey across the Atlantic and his first impressions of America—its people, hotels, food, theatre, Prohibition and drinking clubs—along with New York's Times Square, the El-Train and its never-ceasing noise.

[Spelling and punctuation are Mr. Howard's]

Part 2:

I don't know if it was a bad omen or not, but the first taxi-cab I rode in in America broke down. When I got into it outside the White Star dock it started off with tremendous dash. Though it rattled and quivered, it tore along at a ferocious speed narrowly missing a tram. Then, quite unexpectedly, while leaping cobblestones at 53 miles per hour, it suddenly stopped, projecting me against the partition. Mildly shaken, I waited while the driver—another Irishman—tinkered with and talked to his engine in a not too polite brogue. The taxi replied with several ear-splitting explosions but remained stubbornly stationary.

'Oi'll have it goin' in a jiffy, just a jiffy,' said the driver, brandishing a screwdriver. I got out, and being no motor mechanic, stood resignedly on the pavement—or rather the sidewalk—and vaguely took stock of my surroundings. It was a street full of identical red houses covered with hideous, iron fire-escapes. They ran up and down the houses in every direction. Could there be so much danger from fires in this city, I wondered, that such ugliness must prevail to insure escape from it. Surely American ingenuity could devise a more artistic means? I noticed this was 23rd Street and wondered sadly whether the other twenty-two were similarly adorned.

My meditations were cut short by a comment from the driver that everything was now "foine' and he'd have me at the hotel in 'less than a jiffy'. His guess was pretty accurate. The taxi shot forth with redoubled vigour and landed me at my hotel with a triumphant squeal of brakes. Here my luggage was seized by the exact replica of a platoon of Sudan infantry, 'checked in' and deposited in a lift. Or, as I must henceforth name it, an elevator. It is a curious thing that, neither in England or America, does the name given to this particular vehicle properly describe it. It is apparently presupposed that the thing never descends but keeps lifting or elevating for ever. It would be just as reasonable to call it 'a drop' or 'depressor'.

Never having been in an elevator higher than the sixth floor, I had a thrilling time being shot quite casually up to the twenty-first. I asked the boy if they ever went wrong. He said they did sometimes. In fact only last week one dropped from the eighteenth floor. The management were very angry and fired the boy working it as they were tired of replacing the electric lamps which got broken.

My hotel [most likely the Hotel Pennsylvania] had been advertised as containing 2,000 rooms and 2,000 baths. I now had my first experience of the Great American Bath System, and I found it delightful. It was marvellous to think that while one wallowed in one's bath 1,999 other people were, had been or would be wallowing in 1,999 other baths in the same building. It gave a wonderful feeling of cleanliness easily attained. In England if it were ever possible to get 2,000 rooms in one building there would be approximately one hundred baths—or one to each twenty people—so that this delightful modern habit would not be encouraged by the fact that nineteen other people were fiercely waiting to attack the bathroom in which the twentieth was temporarily enjoying himself.

Having bathed I now sat down to choose my lunch for the first time from an American menu. I was startled by the size of it and still more startled by the recurrence of strange words such as 'Gumbo', 'Chow-Chow' and 'Clam'. I ordered 'Mutton Chop English style', and the waiter suggested a salad. I conjured up a vision of lettuce, cucumber, tomato. When the salad arrived my disappointment was completely overborne by sheer terror at what I saw before me. I observed strange pieces of fruit surrounded by a large canned pear—the whole being covered with a mixture of mayonnaise, nuts, vinegar and olive oil.

I found later that this was quite mild compared with many American dishes. Americans as a nation do not like things too simple, whether they be people, food or any other commodity necessary to civilisation. Consequently they take all the elementary things from ancient Europe and blend them together in an American whole. Thus they form, by a combination of old elements, new elements having a new nationality. It is a great scheme. One might go on like this indefinitely until one had completely lost touch with things as they were given to us by nature.

Having lunched I now (not daring to face the streets alone) took another taxi and proceeded to the theatre [Henry Miller's Theatre] at which I was engaged. Here, at the stage door, I found a delightful person who looked like a mixture of Sir Henry Irving and Mr Vanderbilt. This gentleman was in charge of the stage door and of him I enquired the whereabouts of the actor-manager who had engaged me. I was told quite kindly that nothing could gain me admittance to him now as he was on stage conducting a rehearsal of Just Suppose.

'But I have just travelled three thousand miles for the express purpose of playing in that piece,' I told him. 'Surely I ought to be allowed in.'

'Really! What is the name?' he enquired, and I told him. 'Not Mr Howard of England!'

'The same,' I murmured nonchalantly.

The effect was electric. He left me, rushed onto the stage and announced dramatically:

'Mr Howard of England is here!'

Now I have been known as Mr Howard of West Kensington—I have even been known as Mr Howard of London—but to be known as Mr Howard of England gave me an almost Imperial responsibility. I felt myself raised to ambassadorial rank as the actor-manager [Gilbert Miller] came out and charmingly welcomed me to the American theatre.

This first rehearsal was most enjoyable—but it gave me no idea of conditions on the American stage. The actor-manager was English—of a cast of seven, four were English [Fred Kerr, Geoffrey Kerr, Mrs. Thomas Whiffen], one Irish [Patricia Collinge] and only two were Americans [William Keighley, George Pauncefort]. One of these was a rabid anti-prohibitionist who wanted to quit America and retire to a wet country and the other a Quaker from Philadelphia who spent most of the rehearsal trying to convince the wet gentleman of the benefits of the dry laws. By the time we had finished, and I had had a Pineapple Temptation in lieu of tea with the leading lady, it was quite dark, and the young Englishman [Geoffrey Kerr] who played the hero (I was the comedian), having been in America three days and knowing the language, said he would take me for a walk up Broadway.

It is impossible to describe my sensations as we turned into this remarkable street. In lighting alone it made Piccadilly seem like the Black Hole of Calcutta. The thousands of electric signs made me dizzy. On one side Mr Wrigley hammered luminously into my brain the fact that his chewing gum was five cents and that I should like the flavour, while on the other Mr Chesterfield announced simply but mercilessly that his cigarettes 'SATISFIED'. I had hardly time to grasp these important facts when my eyes were almost blinded by letters of cosmic brilliance giving to the world such cryptic gems as 'LUCKY STRIKE — IT'S TOASTED' . . . 'SONORA — CLEAR AS A BELL' . . . 'KELLY-SPRINGFIELDS BEAT THE LOT'. Times Square was ablaze with these electric fireworks and they continued up Broadway as far as the eye could see. Moreover they were composed in a thousand colours and hopped, quivered and shook—some were like snakes chasing each other up and down and backwards and forwards. They were there one minute and gone the next. They made their announcements with a deadly reiteration that was agonising.

This was only one aspect of this amazing street. At this time of day it was literally choked with people who slowly percolated along it and then, apparently, turned round and came back again for one constantly seemed to see the same faces. There was an uncanny uniformity about them. The people of Broadway seem to differ in this respect from the people of any other street. Everybody looks strangely like everybody else, and they all wear the same clothes.

Even the traffic on Broadway has a strange conformity, a Rolls-Royce on Fifth Avenue looks like a Rolls-Royce: on Broadway it is indistinguishable from a bit of Broadway traffic. Only the street-cars are different from anywhere else in the world. I think they must be manufactured by the War Department. They are heavily armoured all round, with steel projections at front and rear. They have small, solidly barred windows and secret sliding doors. Unless you know the password it is almost impossible to board one of these cars. In London you just take a flying leap at a passing tram car and hurl yourself through the ever open door. It may be dangerous but at least it is simple.

Nothing like this on Broadway! You dodge in a nervous and futile way round the vehicle trying to find in its implacable side some means of entry. At last you find what appears to be a door handle, you fumble with it and while so doing a pair of secret doors at the extreme end of the car open mysteriously and, apparently, without human aid. You rush to the aperture with a cry of joy and at the exact psychological moment the secret doors are shut in the same mysterious way and you are face to face with a blank metal wall. However, if you are not run over in the ensuing rush for safety, you can always take a taxi!

My friend and I, for the sake of experience, decided to dine at a cabaret. There seemed to be dozens on Broadway and its side streets where one dined, saw a revue and danced. It struck me as being another instance of the American tendency to 'mix' on all possible occasions. The cabaret is an excellent way of doing a lot of things at the same time. One can entertain one's friends, eat one's meals, do one's business, see a vaudeville show and have a dance all in the same place and at the same time. I suppose the reason why cabarets have never caught on in London is that English people are incapable of doing all these things simultaneously. 

I must frankly admit the difficulty I experienced in eating my dinner while a number of glorious and alluring young women, whose frail garments would scarcely have kept them warm in the tropics, wheeled and corvetted [sic: cavorted] round in front of the table while they shrieked things about 'Mammy' and 'Alabama'. Of course, I tried to appear absolutely at home, hoping to give the impression that I never took a meal without nymph-like girls dancing and singing round me.

After the show we went to another, similar place. At the door we were stopped by a gentleman in evening dress.

'Are you members?' he demanded.

'No,' I replied with British frankness.

'Then you can't come in.'

We walked about for a few minutes and then returned.

'Are you members?' asked the gentleman in evening dress.

'Yes,' I replied with British perfidy.

'Step right in.'

This was a slightly different place to the last. As will be gathered from the above conversation, it was a kind of club. Not very exclusive, perhaps—candidates being elected to membership instantaneously and black-balling being unknown (except in the case of known Prohibition agents). Still it was a club. I never knew its name. It might have been the Hip-Pocket Club. One of its principles was that every gentleman should have an opportunity of violating the Constitution of the United States—an opportunity which was seized with alacrity by all and sundry. I suppose during the course of a year rivers of liquor must have been transported in hip-pockets to this club, the owners of the pockets having the satisfaction of committing High Treason, whereas had they consumed the same liquor in their own homes they would have been perfectly law-abiding. This would have been too boring for words! So they ran the gauntlet with half-a-pint or so and got any amount of fun out of it.

We stayed at the Hip-Pocket for several hours. A very kind member commiserated with us for being without hip-pockets. I explained that English trousers were, generally speaking, made without them. He very generously insisted that we should consider ourselves at home in his hip-pocket, which hospitality we gratefully accepted.

When we left at 2.30 a.m. the streets seemed just as crowded and busy as ever. The restaurants were open, the lights were brilliant; Mr Wrigley and his companions still continued to dazzle, and there was just as much noise. One of New York's peculiarities is that it is never completely without noise. You can stand in Piccadilly Circus at 3 a.m. thinking yourself in the ruins of Pompeii for all the noise there is. In the middle of every night London sleeps steadily and regularly for several hours. New York never seems to sleep at all.

I retired to my twenty-first floor bedroom, and went to bed. All kinds of extraordinary noises chased each other through my partly open window. Across the road they were running up a twenty storey building, and I composed myself for my first sleep in America to an accompaniment of steam-riveters like machine guns with an obligato of rumbling crashes which sounded like cartloads of bricks being thrown from the roof into the street below...In the morning I woke early. 

Trivial Fond Records, pgs. 22-27

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