Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker by Henry Finder, David Remnick

ship-news reporters. What a break it’ll be! It’ll go all over the world! For the good of the show!”
    That always gets me. I don’t know why it should after all these years, but it does. . . . After I get vertigo reaching the top of the Paramount Building, I find that the reporters have been called away to cover a big fire and the flock of cameramen consists of two disagreeable little fellows who seem quite bored with the whole proceeding.
    “Climb a little higher,” they tell me. “Can’t you do better than that?—this will make a terrible picture.”
    They probably figure that if I climb any higher they won’t have to use their plates at all. They are right about one thing. It makes a terrible picture. Two weeks later, the press agent comes bounding into the dressing-room, waving the evidence of his genius. The picture is published on page 34 of
The Billboard.
That’s the way it goes all over the world. The caption reads:
    CLIMBS FLAGPOLE
    G. Merks, of the Three Merks Brothers, vaudeville acrobats, climbed the Paramount flagpole last month to pay an election bet.
    Let’s consider another species—the press agent who keeps phoning you: “Wait until you see what I have to show you! Articles in seven newspapers and each one different!”
    They are. He finally struts around to show you the stories. The first one starts: “
Les frères Marx, maintenant—
” (That’s all I can read—it’s in the Paris
Matin.
) The next article begins: “
Die Marx Brüder,
” and is in the Berlin
Tageblatt.
You get the idea—he gets us swell publicity in some of the world’s greatest newspapers, including the Stockholm
Svenborgen,
the Portugal
Estrada,
and the Riga
Raschgitov.
Nice little articles for the scrapbook, to read before the fire some rainy night.
    Then there is the highbrow press agent who spends weeks interviewing me. He corners me for hours at a stretch to ask me such questions as, “But, Mr. Marx, don’t you feel that Pinero was undoubtedly influenced by Aeschylus?” I’m all a-twitter when he tells me he has placed the interview. It finally appears in the
Dial,
which comes out once a month and is great for business.
    Then there is the fellow who has been a circus press agent and can’t forget his early training. He’s a dangerous character. No weather is too bad for him to lead you out to Central Park to be photographed with the animals. After risking my life trying to appear as if I were teaching a hippopotamus to sing (the press agent cleverly gets the hippopotamus to open his mouth by holding out a frankfurter—from the other side of the fence), the animal always gets the credit. The picture appears with the hippopotamus covering seven-eighths of the space and my picture looking like the frankfurter. And the caption reads:

    CHARLIE, CENTRAL PARK HIPPO, RECEIVES CONGRATULATIONS ON HIS THIRD BIRTHDAY. Picture shows Charlie receiving the best wishes from one of his admirers, a well-known Broadway hoofer.

    And then there is the press agent who
schmeichels
you into doing his work. “Mr. Marx, I could get stories about you in any paper in New York, but I know perfectly well I can’t write as well as you can. So why don’t you dash off one of your brilliant articles for the
Times,
a clever autobiography for the
Sun,
and one of your screamingly funny pieces for the
American.
I’ll take them around myself to make sure they get in.”
    Then the press agent who never gets you in the papers unless you play at least three benefits a week and appear at the opening of a new butcher shop to throw out the first chop.
    And the press agent who gets you all steamed up about the story he landed for you in the
Tribune.
    “What’s it like?” you ask, all agog.
    “Wait till you see it.”
    He finally sends you a copy. The story runs like this:

    Among those present at the dance of the Mayfair Club at the Ritz on Saturday night were Eddie Cantor, Mary Eaton, Gertrude Lawrence, Beatrice Lillie, Walter Woolf,