Westbrook Pegler
Cleveland Plain Dealer/April 3, 1929
Expected Receipts Vanish as Saxophones Are Stilled and Dancers Languish
The small town authorities along the route of the second transcontinental bunion Marathon seem to be picking on Mr. C. C. Pyle. His band of limping bunioneers parked in North Philadelphia this evening, at the end of the third stage of the goofy journey from New York to San Diego, and, for the first time Mr. Pyle was permitted to finger the keys of his cash register at the entrance marquee of his show tent.
Accustomed as he is to being tossed lightly about by rural constables and deputy sheriffs, Mr. Pyle was in a temper against the commissioners of the city of Trenton, who refused to sanction the performance of his 21 dancing debutantes from wholesome home surroundings and the solo rendition of Miserere by La Belle Irene, a Chicago artiste, claiming to be the lady champion slap tongue baritone saxophone player.
If this official ruling of the Trenton city commissioners could be regarded as the first firm stand of an American governing body against the playing of the saxophone, slap-tongue or otherwise, one might applaud them for their courage.
But local saxophonists performed as usual, if not more so, in the night life centers of the New Jersey state capital, and, moreover, there was bitter logic in La Belle Irene’s words about their permitting the New Jersey Legislature to hold open debate in town while forbidding C. C. Pyle’s refined divertissement. The New Jersey Legislature is not refined.
Sheriff Snatches Sedans.
Two of Mr. Pyle’s small second-hand sedans remained in the custody of the sheriff when the ladies of the entertainment piled into the omnibuses and the runners, shivering miserably in their underwear in the cold wind of the morning, answered roll call for the run to North Philadelphia. The sedans had been detained under a writ of attachment for $800 and Mr. Pyle was advised to relinquish them entirely, on the ground that if the complainant got them it would only serve him right.
There was some disquiet among the ladies of the entertainment as to the whereabouts of Mr. Pyle. He had been missing and unaccounted for nearly twenty hours. The adventurous children of Madam Duvall’s dashing, dazzling, dancing debutantes, girls apparently between the ages of seventeen and twenty, were sewing sequins onto their costumes as the bus rolled along, and asking Madame Duvall if she thought everything would be all right about Mr. Pyle—and, you know—the payroll.
Worry About the Payroll
Madam Duvall, an English lady with the remarkable fortitude and the strange capacity for domesticity under difficulties which characterize the tent show trouper, assured them that everything undoubtedly would be all right about—you know—the payroll. The dancing debutantes are under her charge and even in the loose organization of a rolling show company, she kept them close by her and was constantly chattering at them to keep their coats tight about them in the cold.
None of the debutantes has been under canvas before and they were setting out on a 3,500-mile, 90-day migration through bitter cold, fog, rain and the hot blast sandstorms from the American deserts as though for a picnic. There were to eat hot dogs from the grease-joint concession and stuffing themselves with candy and peanuts from the road stands wherever the bus pulled up to wait for the runners. There will be children down with common cold if not with pneumonia before C. C. Pyle’s cross-country follies reach San Diego, but they are young and the road ahead is the future to them.
Philadelphia was cordial to Mr. Pyle and company, and, at the end of his third day on tour he had excellent prospects of bearing down hard and heartily on the rustling keys of his cash register.
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