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All was not well with Irene, and in late January 95, she vanished from the cast of Watch Your Step at the height of its early popularity. Was she sick? Was she in a snit? Were she and Vernon on the verge of a split? Newspapers put forth all of these theories, as Vernon stated that she was “resting” at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in New York, “not seriously ill,” but suffering complications from her appendectomy a few months previous. Her doctor “advised that she go into the hospital and forbade her from dancing for the present.” Vernon showed a rare flash of temper to one reporter bold enough to question him on marital strife. “It is scandalous rubbish, this talk of a separation . . . . There is no sense in any suggestion of a break. Mrs. Castle is exhausted, that’s what the matter is. When she is strong again she will come back to the cast of Watch Your Step.” What of the cast of Watch Your Step? Fortunately, Vernon recalled a dancer he’d worked with in his first show, About Town: tiny blonde Mae Murray,now about twenty-five years old,was still kicking about New York. She’d appeared in several shows, including Ziegfeld’s 908 Follies, and was gaining a name as a dancer in the wake of the Castles’ success. Her most frequent partner at this time was tall,elegant Clifton Webb who,like Murray herself, would go on to Hollywood fame. In her deliciously surrealistic memoirs, Murray recalled that Vernon and Irene “were visible proof that a man and wife could dance through life.” As a fan, she was thrilled when, according to her version of the story, Irving Berlin approached her at the club where she was performing and raced her through the cold streets to the New Amsterdam, where Vernon was waiting. “This is little Mae Murray,” he told the assembled cast. “She’s going to see we’re not dark tonight.” Lucile’s fitters arrived to make some “MRS. CASTLE IS EXHAUSTED”  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 131 emergency costume alterations while Murray rehearsed her few lines of dialogue and song. All accounts agree that Murray was a last-minute stand-in. A contemporary article stated that she was contacted at 4:30 P.M. on the day in question and went onstage at 8:00, after meeting with Vernon for only one hour’s rehearsal. “It was the proudest moment of my life,” said Murray a week or two later.“Mrs. Castle is the premiere dancer in the country; to be chosen as her substitute was an honor that made me very happy.” Vernon, she said, “is an ideal partner, he doesn’t seem to touch the floor, he seems rather to fly through the air than to dance.”The partnership of tall, elegant Vernon Castle and tiny, doll-like Mae Murray (barely five feet tall) must have been a sight to behold. Newspaper releases insisted that Mae Murray and Irene Castle sent each other sweet little notes and flowers and thanks and compliments. “She kept sending messages to me from the hospital,” said Murray, “and I kept sending messages back to her. Foolish, feminine messages like, ‘what do you do when you strain a tendon?’and ‘do you prefer adhesive plaster to pumice stone for calluses?’” Reviews stated that Murray “made a decided hit and received round after round of applause.”Her fame was a tonic for the Sans Souci (not the Castles’shuttered club of that name, but another night spot where she was performing). After the Watch Your Step curtain fell, half the audience followed her in cabs to watch her dance and congratulate her. Irene Castle returned to Watch Your Step within a week. The Castles whipped up a little added interest upon her return by debuting a new dance, the pigeon walk (which, unfortunately, failed to gain much of a following). Vernon and Irene kept busy as she recovered from whatever her illness may or may not have entailed. In the last few days of January, they performed at benefits for the Actors’ Fund (alongside Montgomery and Stone, Ethel Barrymore, George M. Cohan, Frank Tinney, and Lillian Russell) and the Newsboys’ Benefit (with Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Frank Tinney, Nance O’Neil, Valeska Surratt, and Singer’s Midgets). The Castles ventured into Brooklyn in April 95, agreeing to dance at the Claremont Avenue Rink, and got totally lost on...

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