…writer Robert Benchley, 32, is relieved.
He’s just come off stage after performing his one-man skit, “The Treasurer’s Report,” in his friends’ one-off revue, No Sirree! That went well, he thinks.
Preceding Benchley on stage was a chorus line of short women, including Tallulah Bankhead, 20, and Helen Hayes, 21, dancing around his friend, 6 feet 8 inches tall Robert Sherwood, just turned 26, singing “The Everlastin’ Ingenue Blues,” written by their drinking buddy and former co-worker when they all worked at Vanity Fair, Dorothy Parker, 28.
We’ve got the blues, we’ve got the blues,
We believe we said before we’ve got the blues.
We are little flappers, never growing up,
And we’ve all of us been flapping since Belasco was a pup.
We’ve got the blues, we mean the blues,
You’re the first to hear the devastating news.
We’d like to take a crack at playing Lady Macbeth,
But we’ll whisper girlish nothings with our dying breath.
As far as we’re concerned, there is no sting in death
We’ve got those everlasting ingénue blues.”
The show is for an invited audience and going well, but thank God they decided to do it as a joke for just one night. They named it after one of the hottest revues currently on Broadway, La Chauve-Souris.
Expected to contribute something, Benchley had finished off writing his part in the taxi on the way over. He thought it was pretty funny; the audience liked it. Right now, he’s just really glad he won’t have to do it again.
Robert Benchley filmed doing The Treasurer’s Report
Here is a link to the short film, The Treasurer’s Report, for Fox Movietone (1928): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edlpn3CnqaQ
In the film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), there is a scene showing parts of No Sirree!, including a short piece of “The Everlastin’ Ingenue Blues”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMX6BubBwmM
Again this year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ during and after their times together.
Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.
To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’
SuchFriends Blog 