Plentywood herald. [volume] (Plentywood, Mont.) 1908-current, 1930-04-03

the girl who had danced alone after
Bakers singing.
sure, honey, if you want to listen
again. Sing 1T again for Miss Lee"
Baker commanded, just as if Joe were
ms pet performing monkey and not
the man who had come back stage to
make INN all the trouble he possibly
could.
Joe started to say that he wouldn't,
then he caught Miss Lees eve and
capltulated instantly. There was some
thing so friendly and so eager about
the way she looked and smiled that
scarcely any could have resisted
her, surely not bashful Joe Herman.
SO he started the introduction again.
Before he had finished the preliminary
bars Miss Lee, Amber Lee, he remem-
bered from the program, had swung
herself noiseleSsly from the floor to
the top OF the piano, where she sat
facing him, her slim, Silken legs tucked
under her 20 as to be out of the way.
Joe ~resolutely avoided looking at her
and sang through the chorus.
Again, again, please she begged.
"Al, are you getting these words?"
oh, I've got 'em, all right" Baker
admitted. Il guess I "a sing any
song I've heard twice"
Then sing it this time. your way;
you know, like you did Dixie GAL"
Al Baker did as requested. Even
then Joe Herman sensed that Baker
did practically anything that Amber
Lee wanted him to-.
He put it across. AS he dug into
the lyric for himself Baker found new
possibilities in it that even Joe had not
suspected. He started softly, sadly,
changed midway to pleading, and fin
ished madly triumphant.
Before Joe left the theater next
morning the entire number had been
~rearranged. Al Baker was singing it
as he had never sung anything before
in all his life, which you must admit
was some singing, and Amber Lee was
putting the poetry of savage motion
to the climbing melody that followed
her with crashing footsteps up the
stairway.
That was how Joe Herman got INTO
the show business.
You stick with me on a salary"
Al Baker had offered a week or SO
later. Il can't very we'll give you back
your song. It'll sell up in the million
class with my name on it, but it
| wouldn't be worth a nickel with yours.
But III give you a hundred a week to
be a ghost writer for me and you prob
ably won't have to turn out another
number until the run of this show is
over, and that ought not to be for two
years, anyhow. What do you say?"
loo mould hoxra cold thot ha uOrl1
see him in hell first had it not been
fer the fact that two things had gotten
under his skin and had become as i'm
portant in the continuance Of life as
heartbeatS and breathing. One of these
was the show buSineSS-the necessity
of being in a theater at overture time.
The other was Amber Lee.
So Joe stayed with the show. first as
a sort of a barnacle, and then, later,
as q member of the orchestra when
they found out that he was a very fair
violinist. Joe had only one objection
to sitting in the orchestra pit during
the show-he was partly under the
stage apron and could not see Amber
when she danced. Joe, in fact, did not
see his "Ol' Man Mountain number
for nearly three months. He heard AL
Baker do magic tricks with it and he
listened alphabetically to the thunders
of applause that the other man received
for his own work, but never saw what
Amber had done with the dance on
the steps.
Never saw it, that is, until, quite I'M
expectedly one night, he found him.
self leading the Sphere theater Or
chestta. Harry Sanderson, the regu-
lar conductor, had been called away
by an impending death in his family
and the house leader was i'll. Joe did
not know it, but it was Amber herself
who had suggested to AL Baker that
he try Joe out at the job.
"Humph!" grunted the manager-star.
How come? Have you adopted this
pint pocket bozo? He wouldn't have
the nerve to handle that crew of wops
in the pitt
Eyes he will. He'll forget everything
but the music, and me-" she concluded
modestly.
"Oh, you know he's in love with
your"
Eyes. But isn't everybody?"
Help! Some of us conceal it,"
"You don't" She sat on his lap
and kissed him eight times.
At the seventh kiss he promised to
give Joe a trial. The eighth was by
way of thanks.
So Joe was allowed to play on the
mightiest instrument yet devised by
man-an orchestra. True, 1t was not
a symphony orchestra, but it consisted
of twenty-six men, which is a lot for
a theater organization, and 1t was
capable of thrilling diapasons.
And besides that he saw Amber Lee
as he was ever after to visualize her
he looking up and she smiling down
at him. No matter how little passed
between them at other times, no matter
to whom she belonged elsewhere, there
was always this nightly period during
which they were united in a COM
munion that was more satisfying to Joe
! than any mere physical embrace coulc
ever be.
Another result Of giving Joe a bator
to WELD was the discovery that he wa
not a shy misfit in the world, after all
Up to then he had never found a place
where he could use his power, tha'
was all. Now, with a powerful ma.
chine under him, he became a sor'
of demigod. He could get more out o.
that orchestra than even Harry San
derson, the veteran director, had.
/ How much the show depended OF
Baker was proven during the secon(
season when, for a week, he was on
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