One
day when I was about 14 my father decided he needed to tell me a story
about Mae Clarke’s pubic hair. According to my father, I was 14 and
coming of age, and stories like this were important for me. They were
part of becoming a man. So my father piled me into his 1949 Studebaker—a
car he kept not because he liked it but because my mother didn’t and we
went for a ride.
My father’s drives were a lot like my father’s
moods—they were impulsive, almost autistic in their focus. He decided he
wanted something, or wanted to do something and that was his complete
focus until he got that thing.
Once it was salt-water taffy from
the boardwalk in Atlantic City. It would start simply enough. “When I
was a kid,” my father might say, “me, Herbie and Peacock used to
hitchhike to Atlantic City and try to meet girls.” (This was the
Atlantic City of the early 1940s—a lower middle class beach resort about
an hour’s drive from Philadelphia where my father lived.) Twenty
minutes later my father might say, “Damn, I loved the salt-water taffy
they used to sell in those little shops along the boardwalk.” At dinner
that night, after finishing his meal, he might belch, “You know what
would cap off a meal like this one? Salt-water taffy.”
Then, the
next morning he was still at it. “You know,” he might say “the
salt-water taffy they sell around here is terrible. No flavor.” An hour
later, he might turn to me and say, “I bet you never even had real
Atlantic City salt-water taffy. Never had real salt-water taffy.” An
hour after that he might utter, “Store-bought salt-water taffy is just
like plastic. Not the real thing.” A little while after that it was,
“It’s a tragedy, not having real salt-water taffy." Before long we’d
wind up in his Studebaker, heading down to Atlantic City at 80 mph for
salt-water taffy.
With him it was never a yen or a hankering.
It was an obsession. Which of course brings me to my father and Mae
Clarke’s pubic hair.
Clarke was a 1930s vamp, a putative film
actress, the poor man’s “it” girl. Her most famous role was in “Public
Enemy,” when she’s shacked up with Jimmy Cagney and Cagney violently
pushes a half-grapefruit in her face. But even in that role, Clarke was
uncredited. I guess you could say that even though the grapefruit scene
made her somewhat iconic, Clarke never really crashed the big time.
By
the time Clarke reached her 30s, she still got work, but bit parts and
no film credits. Toward the end of her career she had a small part in
the TV show “F Troop.” I guess that qualifies as bottoming out.
Like
my father, Clarke was born in Philadelphia. Her real name was Violet
Mary Klotz and I guess you can safely say she never really transcended
her Klotzness. Despite looking pretty good in a tight sateen
flapper-style gown and having had some critical success, she was really
never anything but two-bit. She never became the star she wanted to be.
By
the time my father started cavorting with women—say when he was around
18, Clarke was already crowding 40 and the bloom was off her rose. She
had already been married and divorced three times and was spending less
time in Hollywood as Mae Clarke and more time back in Philadelphia as
the former Violet Mary Klotz.
My father starting dating Clarke
around then. It wasn’t really dating to hear him tell it, because all
they really did was schtup. That was the word my father used, schtup.
“We’d schtup for hours,” he’d tell me, “have breakfast in bed the next
morning, then schtup some more. Then I’d run off to school or to work
and maybe not see her again for a month or so.”
There aren’t many
18 year olds who can be discreet when they’re schtupping anyone—much
less a woman who used to be something of a film siren. My father
couldn’t help but brag to all his friends that he was Mae Clarke’s
gigolo. “Mae who?” they would ask, and my father would reply, “The
blonde with Jimmy Cagney and the grapefruit in Public Enemy.” He’d then,
to hear him tell it, break into his purported dead-on Cagney, “You
know, I wish you was a wishing well. So I could tie a bucket to youse
and sink ya.” And then he’d pantomime the smash.
At this point
in my father’s story his Studebaker had just about reached the corner of
Broad and Walnut in Center City Philadelphia. The Bellevue-Stratford
stood there, still a few years before it became notorious for something
called “legionnaire’s disease.”
“The last time Violet and I were
together was right here. This was a grand place, a palace,” my father
told me. “She said to me, I want you should always remember me and she
gave me a sealed small blue envelope. It was too small for money—which I
wouldn’t have taken anyway. I stuffed it in the inside pocket of my
jacket and ran off to school without even opening it. I was late for
class, and was more worried about getting there on time than the
envelope. I always figured I’d see her again.”
My father pulled
his Studebaker to a stop in front of the old hotel. Next to all the
newer cars it looked old, beaten. “You know back in the 30s, the sex
goddess of her day, Jean Harlow died suddenly when she was still in her
twenties. Kidney failure or something. She was the original platinum
blonde. More than anything else, Violet wanted to be Jean Harlow—Jean
was the star in “Public Enemy.” The one Jimmy Cagney dumped her for.
“Now
there were always rumors about Jean, gossip I guess. How she put ice
cubes on her nipples before she’d shoot a scene. Or how she never wore
panties. Or how she dyed her pubic hair platinum. Some pretty nasty
ones about the number of lovers she had. And after she died, how she had
given one of her lover's, some gangster, a lock of her pubic hair.
That’s what Violet had given me. A lock of her pubic hair tied up with a
violet grosgrain ribbon.”
We drove in silence pretty much the rest of the way home. My father was talked out. Me afraid to say anything.
When
we reached our block it was already late. My father shut off the engine
of the Studebaker to “let her coast home.” “Your mother,” he told me
“found Mae’s gift in my wallet about fifteen years ago. She never said
anything to me. Never asked about it. She just threw it out.”
He got out of the car, slammed shut the door and went up the walk. I sat there for a good twenty minutes in the dark.
