Word: lahr
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Discovering where the laughs came from is the undeclared aim of this biography. Lahr himself professed not to know. "Put me in a jockstrap and if I entertain people for two hours-it's a good show," he once said. "I'm not an artist, I'm in business. If it's a hit, that's all I care about." Another time, speaking about his dramatic abilities, he said, "All I know is how to do it. I can't articulate." In hopes of doing better, John Lahr, his son and biographer, has endeavored...
NOTES ON A COWARDLY LION by John Lahr. 394 pages. Knopf...
...friends again gather in Oz on their annual TV rerun, only the singing of Over the Rainbow will be more fondly familiar to Americans than the sight of the Cowardly Lion in his boxer's stance, hopefully spluttering "Put 'em up. Put 'em uuuup." Bert Lahr played the lion, of course, and like all his performances, it bore the mark of a unique talent. Most comedians rely principally on their tongues, and Lahr's scratchy voice, wobbly warble and gnong, gnong, gnong earned their share of laughs. But his very special gift was a capacity...
There is no glossing over the facts of Lahr's private life, for instance. But it is so flecked with tragedy as to seem almost unreal. This is how it went: At the start, a poor Bronx childhood, dropout from school, succession of odd jobs and petty thieving. Then Lahr tries burlesque just for fun and is hooked ("I would have done 20 shows a day. It was like a shot of -dope? Adrenalin?"). He rises to vaudeville, lives with and eventually marries his act partner, reaches Broadway while at home his wife is going insane ("She laughed...
This chronicle is often retrieved from corniness by touching moments and memories that allow young Lahr to mold humanity around the trite-tragic skeleton that his father's life seems to have been. For instance, there is Lahr as a budding vaudevillian putting makeup on his collar even when unemployed so everyone will know he is in show biz. One is touched by the physical fact that his left wrist was permanently larger than the right from breaking repeated pratfalls. And a fine moment comes when a wino outside the theater holds out a dollar saying "Here, Bert...