In this bit...You were never meant to be a comic. You worked best with your hands, which is why you signed on at one of the town’s many “leg-shows” as the prop man, crouched in the wings, fixing whatever broke. Small-time or cheaper venues often ran under a demanding continuous policy, which meant a non-stop cycle of shows from matinee to midnight. Scenery, props, and comics alike were ground down in the churn.
Tonight, you were patching the battered gag from the hotel-lobby blackout called Peace & Quiet. The third banana had crashed into the bell stand last show, half drunk, half careless, and splintered it like a cheap stool in a Bowery saloon. You had nails in your mouth and a hammer in your hand when the toothless top banana lumbered over, pacing a groove in the floorboards and muttering.
“So the lobby’s a racket… bellhops barking, phone ringing, sleepwalking dames… and we button it with ‘peace and quiet’ and nobody laughs. Dead air.” He flicked a glance at the wobbling bell stand. “You’ve been hanging around long enough… what would YOU say to the people clamoring in loud?” He tossed it like a rhetorical, never expecting an answer.
Without looking up, you said, “If they had a little piece every now and again, they'd be quiet.”
The drummer, half listening, snapped a reflex rimshot. The comic froze, then roared, derby shaking, eyes wet. He slapped your back hard enough to scatter the nails. “Kid, that’s it. That’s the perfect ending! Get over here. You’re now the Concierge and you’re on in fifteen.”
So TWENTY FIVE minutes later, you were under the footlights, glue still tacky on your fingers, patched bell stand at your side like a reluctant partner. No rehearsal, no script. Just heat, eyes, and the drummer watching your lips. Burlesque rules were ironclad. Women danced. Comics talked. Tonight, you weren’t the prop man. You are one of the comics.
It went okay... I mean, the laughs weren’t huge, but they were true. Enough to buy another three minutes of improv, pulling from previous shows that have come and gone. You feel bad, that you resorted to using others jokes. But, it was a one time thing, so no harm.
Backstage, someone clapped your shoulder: “Hey, you're pretty solid. After show meet-up: ...Lindy’s.”
By ’37, Lindy’s had already earned its mythology. Leo and Clara Lindy opened the first place in 1921 and it quickly became a Broadway haunt. Damon Runyon immortalized it in print as “Mindy’s.” Al Jolson once told Lindy to add tables so the chorus girls from the Winter Garden wouldn’t have to stand with their cake and coffee. Sophie Tucker still stopped in, Eddie Cantor too, and the gamblers darkened the booths. The name Arnold Rothstein floated like a ghost, the night he left for the Park Central and never came back.
Tonight was your first taste of something you feel could drive you in another direction. The work wasn't hard and it felt kind of natural. Walking into Lindy's you had a new vibe. A realization in that the evening went on entertaining, even when the audience filed out. Instead, you are at a table sticky with coffee rings, walls quilted with headshots, bowls of half-sours sweating under fluorescent light. Here was the real show. A waiter is overheard dropping a couple of comedic snarky comments. Another busboy picks up the comment and mimicks a dancer’s walk and suddenly it was a game of tag. Right here: Bits were tested, reshaped, borrowed, returned like coats passed along a rack. Nothing was new, not really. What mattered was who made it land that night, with LaGuardia’s censors always hovering just outside the door. This realization made you feel better for rip[ping off another comic's one-liner earlier.
You listened as comics argued over stolen routines, swearing they’d invented gags older than the wallpaper. You watched house comics tune timing between sips of coffee. They were the pulse. Every blackout, every fan dance, every bump needed their patter to keep the house alive. And here, under the hum of lights, they tested the glue that held it all together.
It's 1937 and the city was tightening. Rumors of raids. Padlocks. Jokes were cleaner on paper, and dirtier in performance. Dancers were always erfecting "the almost." Managers watching the door. Still the napkins kept filling, half gag, half banter choreography.
By the time you left, your coat smelled of cigars and brine, your pocket carried a couple punchlines someone had tossed your way. You understood then: the show didn’t end with the curtain. It schlepped from stage door to deli table, from spotlight to fluorescent hum.
A place that at a given moment after a show you would find a folded feather fan leaning in a booth’s corner, forgotten in a rush, later during the breakfast crowd when visiting Manhatten, was reclaimed by a 9 year old who wouldn’t keep the fan for herself, but for posterity. It was her first time to "The Big Apple." There was something about the old burlesque prop fan. Something that couldn't be explained. The same person who, years later, would grow into Jennie Lee, the collector who saved bits of costumes and props until they became the burlesque hall of fame / Exotic World museum.
... but that is another story.
Archival interior photo via docstudio.org; other images courtesy Burlesque Bits.