Alice Faye: A Life Beyond the Silver Screen

Chapter 2: Vallée’s Satin Doll

George White’s Scandals opened at the Apollo Theatre, on Forty-second Street west of Broadway, on September 14, 1931. It was just as Alice had always imagined it would be: the sense of anticipation, the electric lights, the long, elegant cars gliding to a stop before the theater. George White, resplendent in evening clothes with his dark hair carefully slicked back in the fashion of the day, stood at the curb to greet his patrons, determined to prove that the depression had not licked him. It could count many Broadway producers among its casualties, including the great Florenz Ziegfeld, who would die broke in 1932. George White wanted to demonstrate he was different. After laying out of the game for a year, he had returned to show New York that he could still mount a review worth seeing. The great Ziegfeld enjoyed staging financially extravagant productions with elaborate costumes. George White, on the other hand, emphasized basic entertainment, enhanced by the prettiest girls available. Ray Bolger, who starred in Scandals, remembered, “He did not try to fly with, I mean try to compete with Ziegfeld at all. It was a different type of show; mostly he brought out great stars. Even through Ziegfeld did bring out great stars, Ziegfeld’s forte was the elaborate shows like you see in Vegas.” At the onset of the Great Depression, that kind of spectacle was simply impossible. As Bolger summed it up, “The difference between Ziegfeld and White, I should think, was about a couple of hundred thousand dollars.” 30 Vallée’s Satin Doll CHAPTER 2 George White’s Scandals counted as a solid, if not spectacular success , given the times, and Alice’s job was secure for the foreseeable future. The show enjoyed a respectable run of 202 performances, because, Bolger remembered, “There was no competition of any importance at that time.” The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson dubbed it a “first-rate show,” whose “principals and chorus provide the liveliest company the town had seen for some time.” He credited Rudy Vallée with winning over the Broadway cynics with the “chuckle of words and tune” in the song “This Is the Missus,” and transforming himself in the process from “a lavender myth to a likable reality.” Ethel Merman delivered “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries ” in her “inexhaustible” voice, and Ray Bolger “travestied the old softshoe dancing uproariously.” Atkinson reserved much of his praise for the sets, costumes, and the musical score, and lavished most of his attention on the comedy sketches performed by Willie Howard—“material that he can stuff full of merriment.” He concluded, “There is nothing like low comedy to relieve the imposing dullness of a big musical show.” With George White’s Scandals, he said, “Things look more cheerful in the theatre.” Even in a big Broadway show like the Scandals, Alice’s work life assumed the same routine she had known in her nightclub and movie palace days. She was one of thirty-two members of the Scandals chorus, which White had dubbed “the most beautiful girls on the stage.” In 1931 there was a surfeit of attractive young women looking for work. George White could take his pick, and did. Atkinson wrote that not only were the girls pretty, but “they dance, they sing and they look good-natured into the bargain.” Alice worked hard and she went home early, only occasionally joining in some of the impromptu company parties backstage. Ethel Merman remembered her as another kid in the chorus. “She used to spend hours talking to me in my dressing room—telling me of her ambition to sing.” A later movie magazine profile of Alice claimed that, in addition to her dancing duties, she also understudied Ethel Merman. But all the girls did. George White expected everyone in his shows to know everyone else’s part so that in case of an emergency the performance could go on. VALLÉE’S SATIN DOLL 31 Alice was no exception, although the point was moot. Ethel Merman never missed a performance in her life. Only a few weeks’ trial run in Atlantic City in August altered Alice’s usual routine and provided some variety for the sixteen-year-old. The seaside felt good after the stifling air of the city, even if the show left little time to relax and enjoy herself. By September the show...