Madeline confronts her prejudice

This is an abridged excerpt from Madeline Gets Life in which Madeline Webb comes face to face with the racial intolerance she grew up with in Oklahoma. It’s the late 1930s, Madeline has been living in Los Angeles for a couple years, and she frequently goes on dates with actors and other Hollywood figures.

Eddie Norris asked Madeline out. Norris was preparing for a role in Boys Town as the brother of Mickey Rooney’s character. He took Madeline to see jazz violinist Stuff Smith at the Famous Door Café on Vine Street in Hollywood. Madeline wore a white sharkskin suit accessorized with a jangly charm bracelet and a red carnation tucked behind an ear.

Norris led the way through the crowded, smoky room to a tiny table for four next to the bandstand. They were double-dating with another actor and a girlfriend of Madeline’s from her theater group. Norris waved to Smith, and the two shouted greetings over the hubbub. Norris knew the musician from New York.

Smith and his band launched into their first set. Beneath his bow, Edward MacDowell’s slow piano melody To a Wild Rose leaped and sizzled. When the band played Bugle Call Rag, Smith’s violin became a clarinet. He wowed the crowd with It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing and I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

When intermission came, Smith stepped off the bandstand and Norris introduced him to the others. Everyone but Madeline and Smith went out to the parking lot for fresh air.

“Are you going?” Smith asked Madeline.

“No,” she said.

He was still holding his violin. He nestled it under his chin, looked down at her, and said, “I’m dedicating this to you.”

He played a new song, So Rare, which Guy Lombardo and other artists were making famous. Other guests were watching the Black musician with the short wavy hair perform for the pretty young White woman. The three-minute solo felt like fifteen minutes to Madeline.

Smith finished, and Madeline searched for words.

“Thank you,” she said, “but I didn’t appreciate that. You rather embarrassed me.”

Smith told her that was not his intent.

“Part of it is that I’m from the South,” she said, “and I’m not used to that sort of thing.”

Smith knew not to ask what “sort of thing” she meant. He apologized. The band and the patrons returned from the parking lot, and the second set got underway.

The nightclub closed at 2 a.m., but Norris was not ready to call it a night. He exchanged words with Smith, who invited them to a jam session in the Black part of town.

Madeline’s mother, Vera, was visiting from Oklahoma, and Madeline called to tell her not to wait up. “I’ll see you sometime when I come in. Don’t worry about me.” She did not tell Vera where she was going.

The group piled into a taxi and Norris directed the driver south to the Central Avenue district, where most of the 50,000 Black inhabitants of Los Angeles were clustered.

They pulled up to a large frame house, porch lights aglow, from which spilled the unmistakable high-speed playing of pianist Art Tatum. A large woman in a splashy, flowing print dress with hair tied up in a matching scarf greeted them when they came in. Madeline and her friend made a beeline for two easy chairs in the living room where they could listen to the music and watch the other jazz devotees. Madeline passed on a bottle of beer and stuck with water.

Tatum was on fire that night. Still in his twenties and mostly blind, the musician could play at an astonishing tempo. This was his milieu: he would perform at a club and then move to a private location to play until dawn. Madeline watched as Tatum drank enormous quantities of beer. Every so often, he would stop playing, lean down and sniff something. Whether it was cocaine or snuff, Madeline had no idea.

“Good evening! Hello!” Three well-dressed Black women entered and greeted everyone before passing through to the back of the house. Three men were with them. Madeline assumed the women were the large woman’s daughters, or perhaps boarders, accompanied by their husbands. She wondered how they could possibly sleep with all the music and get enough rest to go to work in the morning.

Smith had not started playing yet. He approached Madeline.

“Do you like to dance?” he asked.

She nodded her head.

“Are you a good dancer?”

“I’m okay,” she replied, fearing where this was going.

“Show me,” he said. “Dance with me.”

Madeline froze. She looked around for Norris, but he was mesmerized by Tatum’s playing.

“I just can’t,” she stammered. “I told you at the Famous Door I just haven’t been used to this sort of thing. I really and truly would like to dance with you, but it is just utterly impossible. It’s something I simply cannot do. I’d just be paralyzed.”

“No, all right,” Smith said.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t love and admire your music,” she said.

He told her he understood.

“The piano and violin are my two favorite instruments,” she said, babbling now. “I don’t know a note on the violin. My mother made me take piano lessons, but it didn’t work. I’m just happy I can be here and hear you play.”

Smith thanked her and withdrew. When he played that night, he frequently sought out Madeline’s eyes. One of his signature songs was You’se a Viper, an ode to marijuana.

Madeline and her friend asked the large woman where the bathroom was, and she directed them to the rear of the house. They passed through a dining room, another room, and the kitchen, and finally found it. The bathroom was immaculate, and large. And hanging from the walls were several douche bags, with a name written above each one.

“Oh, my God, we’re in a whorehouse!” the friend screamed. Madeline thought it was hilarious.

Dawn was breaking as the jam session ended. Smith asked Madeline where she lived.

“What does it matter?” she said.

 “I just want to send you some flowers. It would give me great pleasure.”

Madeline tried a joke: “I tell you, I get so many flowers I don’t know what to do.”

That didn’t work, so she tried again.

“Actually, my mother is with me. We shouldn’t do this.”

She thanked him, but she never watched him play again at The Famous Door.

Madeline ran into Smith at a club in New York about a year after moving there from Los Angeles. He didn’t ask her to dance but teasingly inquired if her mother was with her. Madeline laughed and said no. A bouquet arrived the next day.