And the next night Toby would be on stage again, doing his imitations, telling jokes, trying to win over the people before they turned on him and attacked.
He would smile at them innocently and say, “This man was in love with his duck, and he took it to a movie with him one night. The cashier said, ‘You can’t bring that duck in here,’ so the man went around the corner and stuffed the duck down the front of his trousers, bought a ticket and went inside. The duck started getting restless, so the man opened his fly and let the duck’s head out. Well, next to the man was a lady and her husband. She turned to her husband and said, ‘Ralph, the man next to me has his penis out.’ So Ralph said, ‘Is he bothering you?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Okay. Then forget it and enjoy the movie.’ A few minutes later the wife nudged her husband again. ‘Ralph—his penis—’ And her husband said, ‘I told you to ignore it.’ And she said, ‘I can’t—it’s eating my popcorn!’”
He made one-night appearances at the Three Six Five in San Francisco, Rudy’s Rail in New York and Kin Wa Low’s in Toledo. He played plumbers conventions and bar mitzvahs and bowling banquets.
And he learned.
He did four and five shows a day at small theaters named the Gem and the Odeon and the Empire and the Star.
And he learned.
And, finally, one of the things that Toby Temple learned was that he could spend the rest of his life playing the Toilet Circuit, unknown and undiscovered. But an event occurred that made the whole matter academic.
On a cold Sunday afternoon in early December in 1941, Toby was playing a five-a-day act at the Dewey Theatre on Fourteenth Street in New York. There were eight acts on the bill, and part of Toby’s job was to introduce them. The first show went well. During the second show, when Toby introduced the Flying Kanazawas, a family of Japanese acrobats, the audience began to hiss them. Toby retreated backstage. “What the hell’s the matter with them out there?” he asked.
“Jesus, haven’t you heard? The Japs attacked Pearl Harbor a few hours ago,” the stage manager told him.
“So what?” Toby asked. “Look at those guys—they’re great.”
The next show, when it was the turn of the Japanese troupe, Toby went out on stage and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great privilege to present to you, fresh from their triumph in Manila—the Flying Filipinos!” The moment the audience saw the Japanese troupe, they began to hiss. During the rest of the day Toby turned them into the Happy Hawaiians, the Mad Mongolians and, finally, the Eskimo Flyers. But he was unable to save them. Nor, as it turned out, himself. When he telephoned his father that evening, Toby learned that there was a letter waiting for him at home. It began, “Greetings,” and was signed by the President. Six weeks later, Toby was sworn into the United States Army. The day he was inducted, his head was pounding so hard that he was barely able to take the oath.
The headaches came often, and when they happened, little Josephine felt as though two giant hands were sqeezing her temples. She tried not to cry, because it upset her mother. Mrs. Czinski had discovered religion. She had always secretly felt that in some way she and her baby were responsible for the death of her husband. She had wandered into a revival meeting one afternoon, and the minister had thundered, “You are all soaked in sin and wickedness. The God that holds you over the pit of Hell like a loathsome insect over a fire abhors you. You hang by a slender thread, every damned one of you, and flames of His wrath will consume you unless you repent!” Mrs. Czinski instantly felt better, for she knew that she was hearing the word of the Lord.
“It’s a punishment from God because we killed your father,” her mother would tell Josephine, and while she was too young to understand what the words meant, she knew that she had done something bad, and she wished she knew what it was, so that she could tell her mother that she was sorry.
5
In the beginning, Toby Temple’s war was a nightmare.
In the army, he was a nobody, a serial number in a uniform like millions of others, faceless, nameless, anonymous.
He was sent to basic training camp in Georgia and then shipped out to England, where his outfit was assigned to a camp in Sussex. Toby told the sergeant he wanted to see the commanding general. He got as far as a captain. The captain’s name was Sam Winters. He was a dark-complexioned, intelligent-looking man in his early thirties. “What’s your problem, soldier?”
“It’s like this, Captain,” Toby began. “I’m an entertainer. I’m in show business. That’s what I did in civilian life.”
Captain Winters smiled at his earnestness. “What exactly do you do?” he asked.
“A little of everything,” Toby replied. “I do imitations and parodies and…” He saw the look in the captain’s eyes and ended lamely. “Things like that.”
“Where have you worked?”
Toby started to speak, then stopped. It was hopeless. The captain would only be impressed by places like New York and Hollywood. “No place you would have heard of,” Toby replied. He knew now that he was wasting his time.
Captain Winters said, “It’s not up to me, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Sure,” Toby said. “Thanks a lot, Captain.” He gave a salute and exited.
Captain Sam Winters sat at his desk, thinking about Toby long after the boy had gone. Sam Winters had enlisted because he felt that this was a war that had to be fought and had to be won. At the same time he hated it for what it was doing to young kids like Toby Temple. But if Temple really had talent, it would come through sooner or later, for talent was like a frail flower growing under solid rock. In the end, nothing could stop it from bursting through and blooming. Sam Winters had given up a good job as a motion-picture producer in Hollywood to go into the army. He had produced several successful pictures for Pan-Pacific Studios and had seen dozens of young hopefuls like Toby Temple come and go. The least they deserved was a chance. Later that afternoon he spoke to Colonel Beech about Toby. “I think we should let Special Services audition him,” Captain Winters said. “I have a feeling he might be good. God knows the boys are going to need all the entertainment they can get.”