Looking for Mabel Normand

The mystery of the ukulele player

 

Marilyn Slater

“Looking for Mabel”

August 28, 2009

Mabel Normand and Thomas Meighan were very good friends, that said, she was also a friend to Buddy DeSylva and even Eddie Cantor.  There is a story that Eddie Cantor told while Walter Winchell was on vacation and Eddie was the guest columnist on August 8, 1940. 

 

During the summer of 1916 Eddie was in Los Angeles appearing in Oliver Morosco's "Canary Cottage".  After a performance, around midnight, he was sitting in a cafe with his back to the door when suddenly someone threw a coat over his head, lifted him from his seat and took him to a car outside.  Eddie found himself in a speeding car with a coat over his head and was not able to see who was with him; he was convinced he was being taken for a “ride.”

 

 

 

When the car stopped and they arrived at the destination, he was relieved to find that his kidnappers were Thomas Meighan and Mabel Normand.  They had taken him to Baron Long's Hawaiian Village, a night club adjacent to the Vernon Country Club; so he could hear a ukulele player by the name of Buddy DeSylva part of a group called "the Hawaiians." 

 

Buddy DeSylva was another of Mabel’s discovery, perhaps not as important as Charlie Chaplin but a discovery is a discovery, it wasn't long before Buddy began writing songs for Al Jolson, and had 2 big hits on Broadway – “Louisiana Purchase” and “DuBarry.”  William M. Drew remained me that DeSylva was part of one of the greatest songwriting teams in the history of American music--DeSylva, Brown and Henderson, which was formed in 1925; they are to be thanked for their feel-good hits:

STAIRWAY TO PARADISE - BUTTON UP YOUR OVERCOAT - CALIFORNIA HERE I COME - SOMEBODY LOVES ME - APRIL SHOWERS - AT HALF PAST SEVEN – AVALON - BEST OF EVERYTHING - BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE - THE, BIRTH OF THE BLUES - BLACK BOTTOM - BLUE GRASS – IF YOU KNEW SUZIE - BLUE MONDAY and hundreds of others.  

He was the Executive Producer at Paramount Pictures producing a number of happy films including, “The Little Colonel”, “The Littlest Rebel” and “Poor Little Rich Girl”.  The 1956 movie “The Best Things in Life Are Free” was loosely based on his life. He went on to be co-founder of Capitol Records along with Johnny Mercer and Glenn Wallichs.

 

The whole prank has Mabel fingerprints all over it, poor Tom, poor Eddie.  I have been told that Tommy-boy didn’t even know how to drive so Mabel may have just needed his muscles, after all, she could have driven the getaway car or perhaps they had a chauffeur.  It makes a better story if Mabel is behind the wheel.

 

(Tom Meighan)

Buddy DeSylva really must have impressed her to face kidnapping charges just to introduce him to Eddie Cantor. Eddie was already a star on the Orphum vaudeville circuit in 1912 and later he became a Broadway star, he had appeared in both the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic and the Follies with Will Rogers. Eddie Cantor idolized Will Rogers; trying to use the style of his friend when telling stories.  

 

There is a marvelous tale told of Tom Mix driving his car into the Vernon Club and buying everyone a round of drinks. And than a story when Mabel won a loving cup for her waltz there is a small piece in The Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1914, “Mabel Normand, Keystone star, won a the first prize for best waltzer of the hesitation variety at the Vernon Country Club last week.”

 

Mabel and Baron Long the owner of the Vernon Country Club must have known each other very well as she frequented all his nightclubs including the Ship Café.  Abbot Kinney had opened Venice Beach, his very own fantasyland by the sea; it opened in 1905.  The Southern California historian and author, Delores Hanney has made a study of this marvelous magical community on the edge of the Golden State.  She tells terrific stories about Venice, if you get the chances you need to read her work. 

When Eddie wrote the column both Mabel Normand and Thomas Meighan were gone but as he wrote, they were part of the “pleasant little happenings out of the past that make the present so warm in recollection.”

     

 

How did Buddy DeSylva get his start?

 

 

DAVID BUTLER

By Irene Khan Atkins

(An oral history)

 PAGE 86-

Buddy (DeSylva) was my friend from school, than later I met him at the beach, at Ocean Park in Santa Monica.  He would bring a ukulele and we’d go out there to swim.  We got to be friends thought Buddy’s ukulele.  He used to play and sing, “Oh what a time I had with Minnie, the mermaid.”  He’d sing songs that he wrote, and a crowd would gather around.

 

In summertime (pre 1914) we always used to go over to Avalon and dive off the pier for dimes.  They’d throw them from the boat when they came in.  We were kids and doing that stuff.  The way Buddy really got started in song writing – he wrote “Avalon.”  Vince Rose wrote the music.  Buddy wrote the lyrics.

 

Buddy lived at Alvarado and Eight, and I lived at Arapahoe and Eight, which was up further but we would always get together somehow.  He went to USC and graduated from there.  Buddy’s uncle was the sheriff of Los Angeles for many years.  His mother lived in the Alvarado Apartments and worked for the county.  Buddy and I got to be very good friends.

Baron Long, my friend from the Vernon country Club, used to go to Ocean Park every weekend.  He and his wife Martha would take the top of the Ocean Park Hotel.  He’d get up about ten o’clock, have breakfast and walk down the beach.  One time they were out there – they hadn’t been there for a long while – and when he opened the curtains of the bedroom in the morning, he didn’t see anybody on the beach.  He called Martha to the window.  Then they looked down half a mile and there were about 150 people in a circle on the sand.  So before they had breakfast, they put their clothes on and walked down the beach.

 

In the middle of this group was Buddy DeSylva playing the ukulele.  After the thing broke up, he said to Buddy, “Why don’t you come out to the club and I’ll put you in the Hawaiian orchestra?”  Buddy was dark and he looked like a Hawaiian, so they brought him out there and put a lei around him and he played the ukulele.

 

I was working at the theatre and a Friday or Saturday night I would take a streetcar to Vernon.  Buddy would say, “Come on out, and we’ll go home together.”  I’d go out there and Vernon would be at the door shaking hands with everybody – but he didn’t know me. Of course, when he turned the other way, I’d sneak in.  I didn’t have any money to be spending for drinks out there.  I was getting twenty dollars a week.  But I’d always meet somebody I knew and they’d say, “Have a drink.”  After they finished work at two o’clock in the morning, all the help would go in the kitchen to have something to eat.  Mike Lyman, who later had a restaurant was there singing.  Chris Schoenberg was at the piano.  And Vince Rose was playing.  I’d go out and eat with the help.  Finally Baron saw me, and he said, “Are you here again?  Who’s this?”  Buddy said, “That’s my friend, Mr. Butler, and we shook hands.

 

Buddy and I were writing a show together.  We’d write on the streetcar going home from Vernon or in the morning if we weren’t busy.  We were writing a show about Prohibition.  We were going to call it Noah’s Ark.  It was about a houseboat that was twelve miles out from New York.  We were going to get FATTY ARBUCKLE to be the man who ran the night boat.  It was going to be a musical.  We had about two acts of this thing, with dialogue and everything.  Later on they made a picture at Warners called Noah’s Ark.  We had registered the title so they had to pay us to use it.

 

 

In 1916 during the nights when Mabel Normand and Tom Meighan, were being entertained  Mabel was starting to create Mickey, when the movie was released the song Mickey became a huge hit. By 1919, Tatler, explained how a song gets you “Eddie Cantor, who is playing in the Follies in Chicago and who is the best judge of songs ever, heard it and put it on at the next show. It was a knockout. Ray Samuels, the clever vaudeville girl, and a great friend of Cantor's was appearing in Seattle. Eddie called her up and told her about the great song.

“How does it go?” asked Ray.

“Oh, Lord,” said Eddie, thinking of the telephone toll, “get a copy of it.”

“I can't wait,” answered Ray, “you've got me so excited I must hear it now.”

Eddie was game. He sang it through a couple of times and Ray said: “Great. I'll put it on to-night,” and she did. She took the melody in her head to the orchestra, rehearsed it before the show, and was the hit that evening. Eddie was so excited about it all that be forgot to have the telephone charge reversed.”  The Mickey music is in the Smiling So Beguiling section at Looking for Mabel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 DeSylva, Brown and Henderson music can be heard on You Tube and you can judge for yourself if it was worth a long prison term, another example of the impressive spirit of Mabel, (no harm done)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9VkR95f2tA

1924

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0zKqiClt1k

 

 

Baron Long, a friend of Mabel's and anyone that needed a drink or a place to dance.

I wonder if Baron Long knew that he had a criminal class in his place. In 1908, Baron Long came to California and organized the Jeffries Athletic Club in partnership with boxer James J. Jeffries.    Baron Long was still considered a boxing promoter when he opened the Vernon Country Club at 49^th Street and Santa Fe Avenue; it was believed to be the 1^st real night club in Los Angeles and a regular haunt of Mabel Normand and other, Keystone comedians, a Mecca for Hollywood’s pioneer film industry. As it was located just outside the city, it evaded the local liquor laws and was outside the restrictive blue law district. The "Blue Laws” forbade dancing and most forms of entertainment on Sundays, and there was heavy lobbying during this period to end all forms of drinking.

 

The moviemakers had migrated to Los Angeles and were setting studios; the industry became a real factor in area, not in the Hollywood district at first but in the area just north of downtown, called Edendale. Downtown, was the center of social activity being crammed with burlesque halls, and bars on Main and Spring streets had restaurants including Al Levy’s Oyster Bar.

 Then followed the Sunset Inn at Santa Monica, where Aby Lyman and Gus Arnheim lead the dance orchestra in the all-night session where Mabel danced until dawn, next Baron was involved with the Nat Goodwin Café on the Santa Monica pier.  The Ship Café in Venice came later and still later the Tavern in Watts. 

 

Minta Durfee in an interview spoke of Mabel getting dress up to go out to the Sunset Inn, “I will never will forget this outfit she wore; we went down to Sunset Inn, and the whole thing was too much for a little girl, a little beautiful thing. This was all those Egret’s (feathers) that cost so much money, and they'd been given to her, so she had this turban made.”  The Sunset Inn in Santa Monica is in 2009 where the IVY at the Shore is located.

In 1905 the Ship Café was built near the Venice pier just the same year after Abbot Kinney dream was realized. It was Carlo Marchetti that originally ran the popular night spot.   It was first called “Cabrillo" and shaped like a Spanish galleon, with a hotel, restaurant and with a private salon on the second deck.  The staff dressed in sixteenth-century costumes.  Venice was outside the Los Angeles city limits so liquor was served.  Baron Long commandeered this fashionable and elite establishment and the clientele included Mabel and her friends; Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, and Ala Nazimova.  There is a story that Baron fired Rudolph Valentino, Baron once said, “I became dissatisfied with the male member of a dancing team I had hired and let them go. Later I found out that I had fired Rudolph Valentino.” 

 

In 1920 before national Prohibition was about to become the law, it was reported that Baron Long’s Ship Café was jammed with tables at $300 each, which is the equivalent of $3,500.00 in 2009 dollars and the place was filled to capacity.  The café’s sometimes ignored the law by advertising "Bring your own" — and many featured gambling in back rooms. A real speakeasy!

  

 

A fire in 1924 closed the Ship for reconstruction and when it opened again it was under the management of the Lyman Brothers. For a time, it was called the Showboat Café. In 1933 Tommy Jacobs spent around $50,000 to remodel it but the Depression was on and Prohibition was over.  By 1946 the Ship was gone.    

Baron probably built the 1^st Hawaiian theme night club on the mainland, when in 1916 he opened Hawaiian Village adjacent to his Vernon Country Club.  Buddy DeSilva was the host and entertainer when he was just starting out in show business Baron Long became a legendary hotel operator in 1918 when he purchased the Van Nuys Hotel, then the US Grant Hotel in San Diego in 1920. He took over the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 1934.

 

Baron Long’s passion was horse racing and in 1916 he and his associates built the  Tijuana Race Track, later the colorful Ague Calienta gambling spa and race track.  He owned Rancho Valle de las Viejas, one of the outstanding horse breeding ranches in southern California.   A week before he died Baron attended the races at Santa Anita; he had a heart attack at the age of 78, February 19, 1962.