friend behind our bed, “the bather.” Also went Fern, who decided to marry one of her many beaux, and, most unexpected, Dore likewise threw in the towel. After six months he’d come home again, saying that the road was not for him, but before he could get himself relaunched in Hollywood, he got a call from his Aunt Bob, the one with the chicken farm outside Yuma; apparently she was ill and needed him to help her run the place for a while, and, being Dore, off he went to the desert to ride herd on a flock of chickens.
Jenny and I were the last of the old bunch to abandon North Cadman Place, but this was no time to be sad about leaving. I was experiencing a distinct pick-up of career, with a relative rise in salary per picture, so Jenny began combing the hills above the Strip for a house. She found one halfway up a charming, winding, palm-lined street—two bedrooms, with a glamorous night view of the city grid. There was neither pool nor room for one, but that was all right—we managed with a small fishpond under a ginkgo tree, two dogs, and a cat.
Every major career has its ups and downs, it’s part of show business, and when you’re the kind of superstar that Babe was, it wasn’t easy to maintain either momentum or equilibrium. Shirley Temple’s movie span was a brief eight years, if that, whereas Babe was still going strong in the 1970s. But there were those times when she had to take up the trap drums or find some other clever gimmick to keep herself in the public eye. For a while she’d become the “Prune Juice lady”—everyone remembers those ads, a svelte Babe in a clinging gown holding up a glass of juice, with a balloon coming out of her mouth saying, “I have a happy morning because I drink Purefroot Prune Juice,” the implication being that prunes were a laxative and kept her plumbing in perfect working order.
By the time the forties rolled around she’d done her last Metro films (Broadway Melody of 1942 and Millie from Piccadilly in 1943) and had gone back to the scene of her earlier triumphs, AyanBee, to make the first of her Technicolor pictures, Peaches and Cream , Mademoiselle de Paree , and her last for a while, USO Girl. One of those Hollywood all-star spectaculars, it was the bomb of all bombs and it effectively finished her off, at least for a time. She announced herself as “retired”; then the next thing we knew the U.S. government was announcing that Babe Austrian would undertake a tour of the European theatre of operation as a real-life USO girl.
When she came back home, one of the last entertainers to return from the front, the war was over and she had recovered some of her former popularity. She recorded an album of her hits—“Windy City Blues” and “Get Off My Porch” were two favorites—and she began doing clubs. She opened in Miami at the Eden Roc and was one of the first world-beaters to appear in Vegas at the Frontier Hotel. But as the years went by, Babe was yet again becoming a shopworn angel, and by 1958 she was pretty much tarnished goods. Even Winchell was referring to her as a “Gonebye Girl,” while others were proclaiming that she really was box-office poison. Luckily Frank was still her agent, and negative thinking like Winchell’s only acted as a goad to Frankie.
In the old days there used to be a joke around the business: Frankie Adonis never took things lying down but Babe Austrian always did (big laff). Both were scrappers, both could take it as well as dish it out, and neither was a quitter. What followed, therefore, in the colorful career of Babe Austrian came not as a matter of course, but as the result of hard work on Frank’s part, as well as some shrewd maneuvering. There was all this talk that Babe was slipping; talk she’d slipped; talk that she was washed up. One month, in her fan-magazine column, Parsons took Babe to task in a typical Open Letter to a star in need of chastisement. (“What Can You Be Thinking Of, Ann Dvorak?” was one of
Jenny and I were the last of the old bunch to abandon North Cadman Place, but this was no time to be sad about leaving. I was experiencing a distinct pick-up of career, with a relative rise in salary per picture, so Jenny began combing the hills above the Strip for a house. She found one halfway up a charming, winding, palm-lined street—two bedrooms, with a glamorous night view of the city grid. There was neither pool nor room for one, but that was all right—we managed with a small fishpond under a ginkgo tree, two dogs, and a cat.
Every major career has its ups and downs, it’s part of show business, and when you’re the kind of superstar that Babe was, it wasn’t easy to maintain either momentum or equilibrium. Shirley Temple’s movie span was a brief eight years, if that, whereas Babe was still going strong in the 1970s. But there were those times when she had to take up the trap drums or find some other clever gimmick to keep herself in the public eye. For a while she’d become the “Prune Juice lady”—everyone remembers those ads, a svelte Babe in a clinging gown holding up a glass of juice, with a balloon coming out of her mouth saying, “I have a happy morning because I drink Purefroot Prune Juice,” the implication being that prunes were a laxative and kept her plumbing in perfect working order.
By the time the forties rolled around she’d done her last Metro films (Broadway Melody of 1942 and Millie from Piccadilly in 1943) and had gone back to the scene of her earlier triumphs, AyanBee, to make the first of her Technicolor pictures, Peaches and Cream , Mademoiselle de Paree , and her last for a while, USO Girl. One of those Hollywood all-star spectaculars, it was the bomb of all bombs and it effectively finished her off, at least for a time. She announced herself as “retired”; then the next thing we knew the U.S. government was announcing that Babe Austrian would undertake a tour of the European theatre of operation as a real-life USO girl.
When she came back home, one of the last entertainers to return from the front, the war was over and she had recovered some of her former popularity. She recorded an album of her hits—“Windy City Blues” and “Get Off My Porch” were two favorites—and she began doing clubs. She opened in Miami at the Eden Roc and was one of the first world-beaters to appear in Vegas at the Frontier Hotel. But as the years went by, Babe was yet again becoming a shopworn angel, and by 1958 she was pretty much tarnished goods. Even Winchell was referring to her as a “Gonebye Girl,” while others were proclaiming that she really was box-office poison. Luckily Frank was still her agent, and negative thinking like Winchell’s only acted as a goad to Frankie.
In the old days there used to be a joke around the business: Frankie Adonis never took things lying down but Babe Austrian always did (big laff). Both were scrappers, both could take it as well as dish it out, and neither was a quitter. What followed, therefore, in the colorful career of Babe Austrian came not as a matter of course, but as the result of hard work on Frank’s part, as well as some shrewd maneuvering. There was all this talk that Babe was slipping; talk she’d slipped; talk that she was washed up. One month, in her fan-magazine column, Parsons took Babe to task in a typical Open Letter to a star in need of chastisement. (“What Can You Be Thinking Of, Ann Dvorak?” was one of
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