Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [25]
Shelton must have been fifty then. That would make him older than God by now. But they still don’t come any sharper. He still plays a great blues on the piano and he can make you laugh your sides apart.
With all this acting experience behind me, Shelton thought I was ready for a crack at the movies. Not Hollywood, just Astoria, Long Island. He got me a part out there playing mob scenes in a picture with Paul Robeson. From that I got a real part in a short featuring Duke Ellington. It was a musical, with a little story to it, and it gave me a chance to sing a song—a real weird and pretty blues number. That was the good thing about the part.
The rough part, of course, was that I had to play a chippie. Opposite me there was a comedian who’ll kill me because I can’t remember his name. He played my pimp or sweetheart. He was supposed to knock me around.
He knocked me down about twenty times the first day of shooting. Each time I took a fall I landed on the hard old floor painted to look like sidewalk. And there was nothing to break my falls except the flesh on my bones. The second morning when I showed up at the studio I was so sore I couldn’t even think about breaking my falls. I must have hit that hard painted pavement about fifty times before the man hollered “Cut.”
I saw a little bit of this epic one time at the studio, but that was all. Mom, of course, thought I was going to be a big movie star and she told everybody to watch for the picture. I don’t know if anybody else saw it, but we never did. It was just a short subject, something they filled in with when they couldn’t get Mickey Mouse. We’d have had to hire a private detective to find out where the hell it was playing.
Most of the ofays, the white people, who came to Harlem those nights were looking for atmosphere. Damn few of them brought any along. One of them was a doll named Jimmy Donahue. Sure he was a millionaire, but he knew how to live. He didn’t let his money drag him like some people do. He learned how to live it up. He knew how to get his kicks.
One night right after I closed in the early morning, I took Jimmy up to Small’s after-hours joint. The place was jumping and it was just Jimmy’s speed. He felt like he was home. He made a deal with the owner to close the place and he took over for a private party. He started hosting. He got into the act the first thing. And you’ve never seen anything like it before or since. When the chorus ponies got out on stage doing their stuff, Jimmy got right out there with them.
“Play the music,” he told the band.
Then he grabbed a big tablecloth, soaked it in champagne, and started swinging it around like a circus ringmaster at Madison Square Garden. While the band played “I Can’t Get Started,” Jimmy cracked that whip for two choruses. And that boy cracked it on beat, too. He flipped those little dancing girls around while the audience howled.
And he never hurt anybody. When he was through, he kissed all the girls, gave them fifty bucks apiece, and drank toasts to all of them with champagne.
Another thing about Jimmy, he didn’t cut up that way and let his hair down only in front of Negroes because they weren’t his equals or nothing like some cats did. No such rot. He acted the same way on his own home ground. I know. I saw him once when he put a dog of a party on its feet at Libby Holman’s house in the East Fifties.
Libby’s husband had been dead awhile and she was giving a party to celebrate her baby’s birthday. She really did it up right. Benny Goodman’s band was playing the Hotel Pennsylvania then. She hired the whole deal, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton, Helen Ward, and me. Everybody was there. We all met them all. I remember Mrs. Clark Gable was there,