Notes on a Cowardly Lion by John Lahr

comes in a room and immediately attracts you. So a person comes out with a manner on stage that makes you say “Aah, he’s a sweet guy”—do you see? Which I don’t think you can acquire, and I don’t think you can acquire good taste—I think you’ve got to be born with that. I know what not to say, what not to do. I think it’s his manner, his general attitude, a humbleness.
Interviewer :
You must have done something to cultivate this. Let’s start with the fact that you have the basic equipment.
Lahr :
It isn’t a question of cultivating. You cannot cultivate humbleness, it becomes phoney. He’s either a humble fella or a brash fella …
    Actors Talk About Acting
    Lahr learned quickly that the audience responded to individuality and that the imitator’s staying power in burlesque was short. Critical reaction reinforced his theatrical eccentricity. He was noticed immediately by reviewers.
    [Lahr performs] in a most pleasing and different way than is usually seen … He is a newcomer to burlesque and a welcome one.
    New York Clipper on
    The Best Show in Town
    As a low “Dutch” comic, much of his spoken humor came from malapropisms. He had grown up with this aspect of dialect humor; few had a keener ear for the funny sound or the ludicrous innuendoes of words. Lahr and Wells would discuss various elaborate word plays, with Lahr improvising on Wells’s script. Wells, perhaps more than any other writer besides S. J. Perelman and Damon Runyon, was a master of the mangled phrase.
    Lahr’s singing was another source of comedy. His voice could never be trained to stay on key. He had never tested the real possibility of the comedy song in the school-act days. The Best Show in Town brought the comedy song into his act. Sometimes it would be a rendition of a popular ballad complete with malapropisms and thick Dutch dialect such as he had used on Wilkins Avenue. Later in his career he found that he could create more laughter with his voice when he tried to sing seriously than when he launched into a wildly athletic and raucous spoof (as he did in The Best Show in Town) . There is no better example of the burlesque malaprop song than the one he did in The Best Show in Town , a number introduced a few years earlier by Sam Bernard. Frederick Morton wrote, on hearing Lahr’s version years later, that the sound “was indescribable. Perhaps a Wagnerian tenor could achieve it, if in the midst of wooing Kriemhild, he were given a hotfoot.”
    Lahr’s delivery was fast, his hands froze at the peak of their excitement to emphasize the delight of each statement in the song.
    Ououououououoouch—how dot voman could cook!
    His eyes rolled in dumbfounded ferocity. His voice strained in its passion so that the veins around his temples swelled perceptibly.
    Her zoop had a flavor like—like bitches and cream
    Her pancakes—ah!—Vhat a bootiful dreaeaeaeammm!
    His hands suddenly shot out in front of him as if he was feeling his way along an imaginary wall. They trembled. He closed his eyes as he spoke; his nostrils dilated until they became the fulcrum of his face, teetering between delight and disgust.
    And her oyshters and fishes
    Were simply … (he pauses in sensuous reverie)… malicious.
    Ach, Gott , How Dot Voman Could Cook, Jawohl .
    This was a subtle version of the word-murdering potential of his comedy. A year earlier, before he had signed on to the Cooper shows, Lahr did a stint with Joe Woods’s College Days , once again replacing his friend Jack Pearl.
    The program of the performance, featuring such characters as Heinrich Hasenfeffer, manufacturer of excited oats, Charlie Horsely, and Ivy Green, gives an indication of the playful simplicity of the humor. The song Lahr performed in this two-act farce was less sophisticated than his later misuse of the language.
    Ve’re two ignorant Germans just arrived from College,
    And our