well-practiced “suave” Fairbanks look and dress with a Zeppo-like fancy bowtie (called a jazz-bow, or jazzbo, during the Roaring Twenties) and copied his brilliantine hairstyle, adding Dixie Peach, the favorite pomade of American black performers and show business leads, by the palmful to his thick dark mop, to give it a molded, comb-streaked blue-black Zeppo sheen.
THE KEITH CIRCUIT TOUR ended in January 1922, just days shy of Archie's eighteenth birthday, which roughly coincided with the expiration of his original contract. After four years in America, Lomas was exhausted by all the traveling, especially by the long distances between stops that made touring much more difficult in the States than back in England. He was ready to bring the boys home and assumed that Archie and the others would be eager to depart as well. To his surprise, not only Archie but most of the others chose to stay in America. Lomas agreed, gave them all the equivalent of their passage money and some additional funds to help settle in, and bade them all a warm farewell. He then sailed with his family back to England and obscurity, never again to achieve the level of popularity there he had enjoyed prior to his voyage west. In his absence the world of British music hall had all but vanished, its theaters converted to accommodate the working public's newest favorite form of entertainment, feature-length motion pictures.
BACK IN AMERICA , Archie, who quickly split from the others, was, for the first time, now on his own in New York City and loving it. Freed from thenever-ending regimentation and grind of traveling and performing, he now intended to relax and enjoy the city. He loved traveling around in open-air buses down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, then back uptown in the enclosed ones that went up Broadway all the way to Harlem. He marveled at the tall residential apartment buildings all along the West Side that were so unlike the one- and two-family dwellings that dotted Bristol. He also enjoyed riding the IRT subway all the way to the Bronx and then back to the Battery. On sunny days he liked walking through Central Park, or visiting Grant's Tomb, or taking the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty up close.
All too soon, however, the little money he had left ran out, and in the fall of 1922 he found himself broke and out of a job. He reluctantly moved out of his single room at the hotel and into the apartment of another struggling artist, George (Jack) Orry-Kelly, who had a small loft on Barrow Street in the Village, situated behind a legitimate theater.
Orry-Kelly, originally from South Wales and named by his mother after her favorite garden flower, was one of the few new friends Archie had made in America, although exactly when and how remains unknown (Grant makes no mention of Orry-Kelly in his “autobiography”). When Archie told him of his current situation, the set designer offered to let him share his living space, and the out-of-work actor quickly and gratefully accepted. It is not difficult to understand why Archie liked him. At twenty-four, Orry-Kelly was seven years Archie's senior, smart, sophisticated, city-seasoned, tall, and good-looking. He dressed impeccably, presented himself with confidence, and benefited from a quick and verbal wit. Like Archie, Orry-Kelly was the son of a tailor (Archie's father, primarily a presser, had done some tailoring for the military while he lived in Southampton). Like Archie, he had migrated at an early age to America to find work in the theater. But unlike Archie, he was extremely effeminate and openly and unashamedly gay. During all the time they lived together, Archie would try to cherry-pick those qualities he most admired in Orry-Kelly, even as he struggled to deal with an undeniable physical attraction to his new and charismatic roommate.
With time on his hands, Archie began to frequent the National Vaudeville Artists (NVA) Club on West Forty-sixth Street, a gathering place for
THE KEITH CIRCUIT TOUR ended in January 1922, just days shy of Archie's eighteenth birthday, which roughly coincided with the expiration of his original contract. After four years in America, Lomas was exhausted by all the traveling, especially by the long distances between stops that made touring much more difficult in the States than back in England. He was ready to bring the boys home and assumed that Archie and the others would be eager to depart as well. To his surprise, not only Archie but most of the others chose to stay in America. Lomas agreed, gave them all the equivalent of their passage money and some additional funds to help settle in, and bade them all a warm farewell. He then sailed with his family back to England and obscurity, never again to achieve the level of popularity there he had enjoyed prior to his voyage west. In his absence the world of British music hall had all but vanished, its theaters converted to accommodate the working public's newest favorite form of entertainment, feature-length motion pictures.
BACK IN AMERICA , Archie, who quickly split from the others, was, for the first time, now on his own in New York City and loving it. Freed from thenever-ending regimentation and grind of traveling and performing, he now intended to relax and enjoy the city. He loved traveling around in open-air buses down Fifth Avenue to Greenwich Village, then back uptown in the enclosed ones that went up Broadway all the way to Harlem. He marveled at the tall residential apartment buildings all along the West Side that were so unlike the one- and two-family dwellings that dotted Bristol. He also enjoyed riding the IRT subway all the way to the Bronx and then back to the Battery. On sunny days he liked walking through Central Park, or visiting Grant's Tomb, or taking the ferry to see the Statue of Liberty up close.
All too soon, however, the little money he had left ran out, and in the fall of 1922 he found himself broke and out of a job. He reluctantly moved out of his single room at the hotel and into the apartment of another struggling artist, George (Jack) Orry-Kelly, who had a small loft on Barrow Street in the Village, situated behind a legitimate theater.
Orry-Kelly, originally from South Wales and named by his mother after her favorite garden flower, was one of the few new friends Archie had made in America, although exactly when and how remains unknown (Grant makes no mention of Orry-Kelly in his “autobiography”). When Archie told him of his current situation, the set designer offered to let him share his living space, and the out-of-work actor quickly and gratefully accepted. It is not difficult to understand why Archie liked him. At twenty-four, Orry-Kelly was seven years Archie's senior, smart, sophisticated, city-seasoned, tall, and good-looking. He dressed impeccably, presented himself with confidence, and benefited from a quick and verbal wit. Like Archie, Orry-Kelly was the son of a tailor (Archie's father, primarily a presser, had done some tailoring for the military while he lived in Southampton). Like Archie, he had migrated at an early age to America to find work in the theater. But unlike Archie, he was extremely effeminate and openly and unashamedly gay. During all the time they lived together, Archie would try to cherry-pick those qualities he most admired in Orry-Kelly, even as he struggled to deal with an undeniable physical attraction to his new and charismatic roommate.
With time on his hands, Archie began to frequent the National Vaudeville Artists (NVA) Club on West Forty-sixth Street, a gathering place for
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