The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 22

Chapter 22

That night in Washington, Walter Winchell was largely oblivious to the reaction of the rest of the audience.  It was a relief to leave the bustle of Broadway behind and indulge himself at the Casino Royal.  As far as he was concerned, Bobby was performing solely for Walter’s benefit.  He applauded each song loudly and shouted an occasional encouragement.  But he would not think of attempting to climb up on the stage here.  He did not know the manager except to exchange hello’s, and he would not impose his presence into the act, where it might not be welcomed by the locals.  This in no way dimmed his enjoyment of the show that he never tired of seeing.

After the closing, Winchell made his way backstage to congratulate Bobby and the band.  It had been barely a day since he had last seen Darin, but a lifetime of things seemed to have happened in that short while.  Things he had been putting off thinking about for a long time, matters that he had starved for attention and hoped to put behind him forever.  But it was easier to dash down to Washington than to put his own house in order.  To be seated ringside at Bobby’s show, nothing could compete with it!  He needed to hear those songs again, and he had been able to indulge his whim and follow Darin down to DC.  And, there were always other bits of business he could see to while he was in town.  Tomorrow he would have a private meeting with J. Edgar Hoover himself!  Winchell was definitely feeling better about the world in general.

After a day that included travel to Washington and a hasty rehearsal for the show, Bobby Darin was calling it an early night.  Winchell offered to walk with Darin down the end of the block to the band’s motel.  Bobby was feeling tired as he left the Casino Royal with Winchell (Dick was staying behind to take care of some business, chiefly trying to avoid further contact with Walter), but not too tired to hear something he rarely heard at home, the chirping of crickets!  He hoped they would not be loud enough to keep him awake, but nothing would be loud enough to distract him that night.

Winchell, on the other hand, still on his New York schedule, seemed to be ready to make a night of it, though it would have been difficult to say where the action was in a town like Washington.  He was still glowing from the effect of Bobby’s show that evening, and for the first time in memory, Walter Winchell was moved to burst into song.  He sang the very first thing that came into his head, a number from his Vaudeville days, If I Was a Millionaire, by his old boss, Gus Edwards.  Winchell stepped out into the empty street before Bobby so that he could get the full effect of this performance.  He sang in a pleasing tenor voice a boy’s musing about what he would do if he were a millionaire.  His bounty included vacations of six months twice a year for schoolchildren, and a decree that there would be no school on either rainy days or sunny.  It was a sentimental ditty that appealed to both childhood and adult fantasies of freedom from the daily grind of school and other responsibilities that cut into precious playtime. 

Winchell not only sang, but executed a credible soft-shoe dance with appropriate hand gestures to whip up his audience of one.  He strolled to the right, then the left and back again, defining his stage on the empty street.  His eyes would pop open wide for emphasis on the last word of a line.  On the final word, “mil-lion-aire,” Winchell threw his arms out wide in the direction of the street, then bowed his head to receive the listener’s approbation.  Bobby leaned up against the side of a building with his arms folded as Winchell belted out this old ditty with the vigor of a performer half his age.  The old man, Darin had to admit, was actually not bad!  At the end, Darin heartily applauded Winchell’s performance, thinking that, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, he had now seen everything. 

“Ah,” said Winchell in satisfaction, as he rejoined Darin on the sidewalk.  “Haven’t thought of that song in years!  Those were the days for sure!”  He was viewing those days through the haze of memory, certainly.  He was not thinking about the grueling travel to hundreds of small towns across the country to places where Vaudevillians were not welcome in “polite” society, the chiseling theater managers, drafty hotel rooms, and the meager wages.  He was remembering the songs, the laughs, and one special partner in his act, Rita Greene.  He had been crazy about Rita!  And she certainly had been in love with him.  When he began to make a name for himself (no money, merely a name) writing for theater trade papers, Rita had gone back out onto the road, and Walter had stayed in New York, where it seemed he had more of a chance.  Their act was actually taking off and showing some signs of rising to the top of the bill, but Walter was afraid to stick it out any longer.  Rita was never afraid, however, and there was simply not enough work to keep her in New York.  And so they had parted.  Unbidden memories of that early love washed over him now because he had sung that old song.  Was every happiness in life always tied to some great pain, Walter wondered to himself?

Winchell said to Darin as they walked up to his hotel, “I should have stayed in show biz, Bobby, that last act I had, you know, it really could have taken me places.”

“So why didn’t you?” Bobby asked.

Winchell shook his head sadly.  “I got worn out by the traveling.  I had a chance to stay in New York and write a column about Broadway, and I jumped at it.  I’ve been jumping ever since.  I had a friend in this racket, Don Marquis was his name.  He left the paper to write poems and novels, which suited him better.  He said something about newspapering that was true, and I’ve never forgotten it.”

“What was that?”

“He said that writing a newspaper column was like digging a twenty-three inch grave every day.  And you know what?  He was right!”  A spasm of pain suddenly shot through Winchell’s right back molars, causing him to grimace and massage his jaw for relief.

Bobby asked him, “Walter, why don’t you just have those teeth out?  It sounds like they are nothing but trouble for you.”

Winchell blinked back a tear caused by the pain.  “Can’t do it, Bobby.  I don’t want to have to wear dentures, because I wouldn’t be able to make with the lightning-fast radio announcer delivery without my natural choppers.  I make more money these days from that than I do from the column!” 

Bobby exhaled a sigh as he looked up at an antique-design street lamp in front of his hotel.  “It’s all about money, isn’t it?”

Walter nodded in agreement, “When you have a family to support, it is.”

The two men stood in silence for a moment before Bobby spoke again.  “You know, they have me doing three shows a night here.”

“Yes, I saw that on the marquee, I know that’s always been the schedule there.”  ‘Three shows a night!’ thought Walter to himself.  ‘Why don’t they just take out a gun and shoot him?’  He looked at the young man before him who had simply exploded on the bandstand an hour ago.  Now he looked thin and small and tired before him.  Winchell appreciated the energy that Darin put into each performance.  At times, he felt as though he were up on that stage next to Bobby, imitating every move, singing every note.  It was a tremendous effort.  Two shows a night was a physical impossibility, and yet Darin did it, somehow, gave of himself until there was nothing more to give, then dug down and found a little more to pull out that second show of the evening.  But, three shows!  What leeches these nightclub owners were.  Winchell could not imagine sleep for himself at this point, but he hoped that Bobby would now be able to rest.

They said goodnight at the hotel lobby, with Bobby heading for his room, and Winchell off to look up some chums at the Bureau.

Dorothy could see that she had delivered a heavy hit to Walter Winchell’s psyche.  As far as she was concerned, she had scored all of the points she needed to on this matter.  Walter Winchell would never doubt her abilities from here on out.  Nina had supplied Dorothy with the missing piece of the puzzle, something very unlikely that Dorothy could have discovered on her own.  For that, Dorothy was willing to bury the scoop.  But it would not be easy to get Walter to let go of this story.  He had confirmed his own information independently, after all, and he owed nothing to Nina.

Walter finally pulled himself together to reply, “Well, Dorothy, that doesn’t mean I have to stop looking for the man, just because you had a heart to heart with Nina about him.”

“Why should you keep looking, when I can publish the name at any time?”

Now Winchell found it possible to smile again for the first time since coming back to his office.  “But you seem to be saying that you have no intention of publishing, so why should I not keep looking?”

“Because,” Dorothy said evenly, with great patience, as though she were talking to a child, “I’m going to show you the name now, so that you can stop your manhunt.”  She flipped her notepad open to the page upon which Nina had written the name in her firm handwriting.  She turned it in Winchell’s direction so that he could read it.  As he did so, his face assumed the same expression as Dorothy’s when she first read the name.

For a long moment, Walter said nothing.  Then he emitted a low whistle.  This name was also known to him.  “Hoo boy Nina,” he said at last, “you do get around!”  If he had been in the company of another man, he might have been tempted to pass a comment he did not even allow himself to think in Dorothy’s presence.  Of his own conduct with Nina, he could not bring himself to think at all.  This lack of self-reflection was one of his great strengths as a gossip columnist, even if he did possess a crude code of ethics.  He would certainly never knowingly put another person into a dangerous position through anything he reported.  But when he had last talked to Nina, he did not even know what she was Bobby’s mother!  Winchell was ethical to a certain point, but to a greater point he was stubborn.  He had done some honest legwork on this story, and by God, he was not about to let it go without a fight. 

Winchell pushed the note pad back in Dorothy’s direction.  “It makes no never mind,” he told her.  “I’ve been developing an independent source for this story, and I’m certainly not bound by anything that you promised Nina.”

Continued in the next chapter

ID: 1473687   (Rated: 13+) The File on Bobby Darin, Chapter 23  Bobby gets a woman, and Dorothy gets the upper hand by Gisele