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Show Fiction ENTERPRISE PAYS I IL1J1I Richard H. Wilkinson Corner "All right," he said. "All right, wise guys, I'll show you." The hecklers booed at him, shouted catcalls. Paul's face went livid. He suddenly galvanized into action. T HAVE SEEN some good trick 1 dancers in my day, but I've never seen anything to equal the antics of Paul Sparrow that night. Thoroughly aroused, he became a contortionist. He performed feats that were unheard of in the art of dancing. He threw himself around that stage like a madman. It was marvelous to watch. Superb! Paul came out for three encores. He was a man inspired each time, and each time the audience gave him an ovation. They clapped for five full minutes after his last appearance. ap-pearance. After a while I strolled back to Paul's dressing room. The manager was just leaving. Inside, Paul was happily folding up a sheet of paper. I could tell by the expression on his face that it was the contract. "Hello, feller," I grinned. "You killed 'em. I guess the thing to do if you want to stay In vaudeville these days is get mad." "Why," he said, surprised. "Did you think I was mad? I wasn't." "Don't kid me. Those hecklers had you down for the count." "Well," grinned Paul, "if you're serious that's fine. I mean, if my little gag took in an old trooper like yourself, it even worked better than I thought it would." "Wait a minute," I said, beginning begin-ning to feel funny. "What are you getting at?" "It was a gag, old horse. I hired three hecklers to do the job you know, make the audience feel sympathetic sym-pathetic toward me by having scathing scath-ing remarks hurled at me. Then I pulled my trick. My new step. It really wasn't much of a step, you know. It only seemed that way. The audience was sympathetic. They would have liked anything I did." He grinned broadly. "You see, I was on the skids. I had to think of something. I tell you, friend, if you want to stay in vaudeville these days, you've got to be enterprising." i PAUL SPARROW'S vaudeville act wasn't especially good, nor was it especially poor. He did a couple of trick dance steps, told some fairly funny stories and sang a couple of songs. There were dozens doz-ens better than he. Yet Paul always played the big time, always got the best money. We who were in show business at the time, wondered. The answer was simple when you stopped to think about it. Paul was enterprising. He gave himself a build up. For one I thing he selected 3 -Minute, his music with Fiction c.ar?- e to" I structed the or chestra what to play and how to play it before he came on. He made a stooge of the drummer. He sold the idea, generally, general-ly, that he was terrific. We all expected that Paul would be among the first to go. But he wasn't. I didn't see him for almost a year, then one fall up in San Francisco, I ran across him again. It was rather a unique experience, because the gag he pulled that night was epic. It seems that, despite his enterprising enter-prising faculties, Paul was due to get the air. He had exhausted his bag of tricks. Managers were getting get-ting wise to him. On this night he was trying out at the Olympia Theater. Most of us thought it would be his swan song. On the other hand, if he went over big with his audience it would mean a 40-week contract. There wasn't a chance. We watched him come out from the opposite side of the wings. He was doing a quick little dance step. There was a smattering of applause that almost instantly died away, t 1 IvP "Well," grinned Paul, "If you're serious, that's fine . . . if my gag took in an old trouper troup-er like you, it worked better than I thought it would." Paul hesitated, then went into a routine. It was pitiful, because the step was rotten and he had apparently appar-ently lost his self-confidence to boot. I was standing so 1 could see Paul's face. For the first time since I'd known him I saw anger in his eyes, a red flush In his checks. lie stopped dancing. |