Six Rounds

Front matter

II — III — IV — V

By A. M. Chisholm Author of “The Man of Two Packs,” “Little Fish,” Etc.

“Butch” McShane and “Chuck” Wilson sure got a lot of punch into their acting

II II

In the days when the moving-picture business was in an embryonic state and the present stellar system had not evolved, a concern known as “Brownstone Films, Inc.,” was born of a union of the monetary resources of one Isaac Braunstein and the ideas of a certain Martin O'Hara, who possessed an extensive experience of the managerial end of the theatrical business, and thought he possessed an accurate knowledge of the tastes of the great American public.

“Look ut, now,” Mr. O'Hara was wont to say on such occasions as he aired his views in the premises: “What is it the public gives up to see? Is it a circus or a wild-West show? Once a year, mebbe, yes. Is it these here 'problem' plays wrote by erotic hopheads where the seventh commandment is always busted or goin' to be? Not unless ye can get pulpit publicity, the preachers boostin' for ye by tryin' to knock. Is it the 'spectacular' kind? Most of them go broke. I'm tellin' ye the show the public says it wants, as proved by its steady patronage year after year, is the one that represents the life and the people it knows, mixed up and opposed to the life and the people it knows only by hearsay.

“It's settled that pictures are to be popular-priced; which means they have to be made with popular-priced audiences in view. Now, the backbone of the popular-priced audience is the workin' lad and his gyurl. When the rich lad defies his haughty parents, puts on overalls and marries the foreman's datter they're tickled to death; and the same when the young heiress marries the husky young mechanic.

“As a recipe for a good, dependable show on the stage, the wise ones have always taken a workin' lad and a workin' gyurl, a millionaire with a marcelled wife, a haughty datter and a wild son, a smooth, gamblin' crook to lead the son astray and ruin everybody else; and for seasonin' added an English butler, a parlor maid named Nora O'Shea, and a cop called Dinny Hogan. Then they had a show that would run for years. Ye can name them runnin' now that's playin' to the sons and datters of the b'ys and gyurls that saw them first. And why? Because they have the rock-bottom ingrediencies that never fail to raise the dough, because they're based on human nature. Shakespeare gets by four hundred years after for the same reason. He wrote plays for the folks who went to see them.”

With these guiding principles, which seemed sound enough then, Brownstone Films proceeded to live, movie and have its being, and for a time did very well with a public to which the picture itself was so novel that it did not demand novelty in the picture. It had no high-priced stars and it paid no exorbitant salaries. It produced no special feature films, but it did turn out real—or almost real—human stories that appealed to a public not yet emancipated from traditions of the spoken drama. Its plays were made by a solid, dependable cast. Its leading lady, Georgia Dale, and its leading man, Ned Baxter, had good experience in “stock.” “Stunts ”were not required of them. Brownstone Films thought in terms of the stage, and its productions ran along lines delimited and limited by stage limitations.

But there came a day when the public palate, tickled by more highly seasoned food, refused to be satisfied by the plain, wholesome, but slightly stodgy Brownstone fare; a fact sadly if somewhat belatedly recognized by Braunstein and O'Hara.

“You can lead along a horse to the water a halter by, Marty,” was the way the former put it, “but you can make him drink nix. We got to change our policy. We got to produce special-feature stuff—something with a punch to it.”

“True for you,” O'Hara admitted frankly. “I own up I didn't see the possibilities of the picture business. But one thing I do know—you got to give the public what it wants.”

Braunstein nodded agreement.

“Our productions will cost more, and like we got to get some new people—that can jump off a runaway locomotive into a river and go around the paddle box of a steamer, and ride buck horses and all them stunts.”

“I'd hate to can Ned Baxter,” said O'Hara. “We're friends.”

“On a pay roll,” Braunstein stated, “friendship is out of place—like truth on a epitaph.”

“Well, it isn't his fault if we've been producing the wrong stuff lately,” argued O'Hara, who possessed the virtue of loyalty. “He does that as well as anybody could, and we'll always have to have somebody for the line he's been doing. Stunt actors are in a class by themselves. If we have to get one we will, but I won't can Baxter.”

Braunstein, being fair-minded, nodded. Baxter made love beautifully and was equally at home in evening clothes and overalls.

A week after, Braunstein handed O'Hara a scenario which it appeared had caught his fancy. In due course O'Hara read it. The title was “A Man of His Hands.” The general plot is immaterial, but it had several features, among them a ring contest in which the hero for good and sufficient reasons defeated the champion—class unspecified—a human brute and cave man, to the confusion and financial disaster of the villain and the alternate fear and joy of the heroine who, disguised as a reporter, occupied a ringside seat. There were training scenes and plenty of action. It was close enough to the old stuff to appeal to O'Hara, and it had enough of the new to conform to the new policy. He knew it would film well, but he found himself up against an initial difficulty, for if he had pugilists in his company he did not know them. He hunted up Baxter.

“Ned,” he said, “can you box at all?”

Baxter was a clean-cut, fair-haired man who looked younger than he was, and in make-up looked positively youthful.

“It depends on the other fellow,” he said frankly. “I can if he'll let me.”

“At that youre no worse than some fighters,” said O'Hara. “Could you get away with a fight scene?”

“What kind? Barroom, street, or what?”

“Ring. You knock out the champ.”

“No, I don't,” Baxter returned regretfully. “I'm not good enough to put it across. What's the idea?”

O'Hara told him. Baxter shook his head.

“Well, of course, not everybody can be a boxer,” O'Hara admitted. “But Braunstein likes this thing, and so do I. Only I don't know where the divil I can get an actor who can scrap or a scrapper who can act.”

He put this problem up to Braunstein. The latter was determined, but not helpful.

“You should get an actor who is also a fighter,” he said sagely.

“Give me the name of one,” said O'Hara. “And we need two.”

“Plenty of fighters go on the stage.”

“Old Peter Jackson made a good Uncle Tom,” said O'Hara, “and Jim Corbett gets away with it. Outside them, show me! The public goes to see the fighter himself, not to see him act. Fighters on the screen—murder! The only thing I see for it is to switch the story around so that the hero doesn't fight. Then I can get a couple of pork-and-beaners for the ring scene.”

“The ring scene has to be good,” Braunstein pointed out. “Two bums in the ring will be two bums on the screen. We got to give the public the real goods, Marty.”

O'Hara admitted it sadly.

“Well, I'll do my best to find somebody for the part the way the script reads now,” he said. “If I can't, I'll get a couple of scrappers and shoot the ring scene, anyhow.”

“Get good scrappers,” Braunstein advised.

“How good?” O'Hara demanded. “How much do you want to pay for this ring scene?”

“Understand me,” said Braunstein, somewhat apprehensively, as the high cost of realism obtruded itself, “I ain't saying you should get real champeens. The fighting game is dull just now, account of these here laws against fights. You should pick up two good fighters cheap in a dull market.”

But O'Hara, after diligent search, failed to find two actors who could make even a bluff at a championship contest. He fell back on the alternative of changing the story to conform to the necessities of the situation. It was difficult to eliminate the hero from the ring scene and make everything else fit; but at last he did it. Then he went hunting for two lightweights to go a limited route to a fake knock-out.

Leading exponents of the manly art objected, he learned, to being filmed with an opponent of anybody else's selection; and the necessity for a knock-out, real or pretended, settled the matter definitely for reasons succinctly stated by a gentleman of near-championship caliber, known as “Kid” Slade.

“I don't have not'in' to do wit' no fake kayos, see,” Mr, Slade announced through the southwest corner of his mouth. “S'pose I'm boob enough to let some guy put me out in a pitcher, what happens? Why, of course, he claims he does it on de level, an' dere goes me rep! Maybe some day I lose a fight, an' de papers says I'm layin' down like I done in de movies. Or if de odder guy lets me hang it on him, it's a frame, ain't it? An' a pitcher showin' me in a frame don't do me rep no good. No, bo, not'in' stirrin'!”

O'Hara's pugilistic acquaintance was not extensive, and he soon exhausted his prospects, for the amounts they demanded as a condition precedent would have given Braunstein heart failure. He spoke of his troubles to a friend and this friend advised him to see one Honest John Costigan.

“Who's he?” said O'Hara. “And not knocking him if he's a friend of yours, most of these Honest Johns you run across would have slugged the widow of Scripture for her mite.”

He got a brief account of Mr. Costigan and made up his mind to see him. When he knocked at the latter's door in the River House the owner opened it a mere crack.

“Mr. Costigan?” said O'Hara.

“I'm called that,” Mr. Costigan admitted in a tone which implied that he could deny it successfully if necessary, but he admitted his caller. O'Hara stated his business without circumlocution, and Mr, Costigan assumed an expression of grave doubt.

“Good boys are hard to get now,” he observed, shaking his head.

“They shouldn't be,” said O'Hara bluntly.

“Have you tried?” Mr. Costigan queried.

“Not to mention,” said O'Hara, who had no intention of bulling the market by doing so.

“What would these boys have to weigh in at?”

“Weights don't matter—except that they've got to look about evenly matched.”

“Do they have to look like anything at all?” Mr. Costigan asked. “I mean do they have to have good looks? Because beauties are scarce in the business.”

“If one looks like a human being,” O'Hara replied, “the other can be a double for the missing link for all I care. In fact, the less looks he has the better.”

“You mean the human being knocks out the link,” Mr. Costigan deduced sagely.

“Virtue and good looks always triumph—in plays,” said O'Hara.

“The public's a funny proposition,” said Mr. Costigan, who knew something of the animal himself. “How good do the boys have to be?”

“In the scenario the fight is for a championship,” O'Hara explained, “so you can see I can't use dubs. They've got to put over about six rounds of real fast, rough milling—the real thing short of a knock-out. That comes in the sixth.”

“I see,” said Mr. Costigan. “I might be able to get you two real good boys—if you'll pay what they're worth.”

“What's that?” O'Hara asked.

“Well, times are hard just now,” said Mr. Costigan. “Say about five hundred.”

“Try one of my cigars,” said O'Hara genially. “They're milder than that one you're smoking.”

“I thought you wanted good boys,” Mr. Costigan returned. “I can get you pork-and-beaners for twenty apiece.”

“I do want 'em good,” said O'Hara. “But I'm not hiring them by the month. Only six rounds.”

“Now, see here,” said Mr. Costigan earnestly, “I don't claim to be doing this for nothing. I want a little myself. These boys are good. Each of them has about everything a champ has—as high as the ears. What they ain't got above that, and the fact that the right man never got hold of 'em, it what's kept 'em from being contenders. They've got the speed and the punch. They're as fast and tough as they make 'em, and they can put your fight scene across right. If that's worth five hundred to you, say so. If not, it's all right with me. You're the doctor.”

O'Hara reflected and in the end capitulated. He suspected that he was being held up, but the quotation was cheap compared with others he had had, and if these fighters came up to this advance notice they would be well worth the money.

“I'll want to see for myself what they're like,” he said.

“Sure,” Mr. Costigan nodded.

“You understand,” O'Hara_ explained, “we're going to stage a real fight. We're showing training quarters and so on, and the preliminary work. Then we have to show the arena, the crowd—everything. Of course, I've seen a few fights, like everybody else, but I'm no expert. They tell me you know a good deal about the game.”

“A little,” Mr. Costigan admitted.

“You've refereed fights, I'm told.”

“Not for a long time,” said Mr. Costigan. Modestly he neglected to state that his retirement from the arduous duties of a referee had been accompanied by a nimbus of beer bottles and other missiles, expressive of popular disapproval of his humane efforts to nullify the soporific effects of a right hook by taking twenty seconds to count ten. “But any dope I can give you is yours.”

“This is business,' said O'Hara. “I'll pay you a hundred to supervise the setting—look after details of the ring and so on. That satisfactory?”

“Suits me,” Mr. Costigan agreed.

“All right,” said O'Hara. “And now when can I see these boys?”

Mr. Costigan, after a glance at his watch, thought that they could be found working out in a gymnasium back of a saloon owned by an ex-pugilist known as “Happy” Morgan.

“If they work together they're friendly,” O'Hara commented. “Remember, I don't want a love scene—I want a fight.”

“Don't worry,” Mr. Costigan grinned. “If you're satisfied they got the goods, I'll fix it with them. You'd better leave that to me. If they heard you were in the movie business, they might try to hold you up.”

“One holdup is enough for me,” said O'Hara.

The small gymnasium back of Morgan's place was tenanted by a young man with a lowering, ferocious countenance who was skipping a rope industriously; and a second who was putting a bag through its paces.

“Butch McShane skippin'; Chuck Wilson punchin' the bag,” said Mr. Costigan succinctly. “Come over here, boys, and meet me friend, Mr. O'Hara.”

O'Hara reflected that Butch would need no make-up whatever; but when he got a fair look at Chuck he barely stifled an exclamation. For Chuck's natural likeness to Ned Baxter was remarkable. The fighter was some years younger, some pounds lighter, and naturally his costume or lack of it made a difference. He was not Baxter's double, but O'Hara thought that Webb, his make-up man, would have little difficulty in turning Baxter into Chuck or Chuck into Baxter. Which fact naturally was fraught with all sorts of possibilities.

Butch and Chuck were quite willing to spar a round or two for Mr. Costigan's friend.

“Make this good, boys,” Costigan whispered as he laced on their gloves. “There may be something in it.”

“Zat so!” said Butch. “All right, Chuck?”

“Sure,” Chuck nodded. “Let's go!”

Now, Butch and Chuck could give an imitation of murder good enough to deceive the average referee. The three rounds O'Hara saw were apparently faster and harder than some paid-admission bouts he had witnessed between alleged topnotchers. Actually they were “pulling” their punches and “slipping” them with roll of head and give of body. But, nevertheless, it took condition and cleverness to put up the exhibition.

The best of it, from O'Hara's standpoint, was that they were contrasted types. Butch was the brutal prize fighter to the life. Chuck, the fair-haired, straight-up boxer, was the logical—screen—victor. And if the latter was not the dead spit of Baxter, Webb could make him so. O'Hara, at times somewhat skeptical of Providence as an institution, took it all back. It was great luck.

“Will they do?” Mr. Costigan asked, knowing the answer in advance from O'Hara's face.

“They'll have to,” said the latter, who considered it prudent to disguise his satisfaction. “Fix it up with them.”

“When do you want them?”

“Not for a few days.”

“All right,” said Mr. Costigan.

III III

One of Mr. Costigan's rules of life was to get his as he went along, and as much of it as he could. He hated to see in retrospect a bet he had overlooked. Hence he was accustomed to consider all the possibilities of a situation before action, and this seemed to present several.

“You wanted a fight,” he said to Butch and Chuck a couple of days later, “and I think I can fix it. Only it's got to be kept quiet.”

“Sure!” Butch agreed eagerly.

“Not a peep out of us,” Chuck confirmed.

“It's a new stunt,” said Mr. Costigan, “and it ought to work—once. That fellow I brought in to see you the other day—he's a movie man.”

“You're wantin' us to fight for the movies!” Butch exclaimed.

“Chees!” said Chuck.

“Do you think you're heavyweight champs?” Mr. Costigan inquired with dampening sarcasm. “Fight for the movies? Nothing like it. This movie thing is a stall. Fights are barred, but a ring scene for the movies is different; so we pull the fight that way. There'll be a camera with a guy turnin' the crank, and to make it binding somebody'll maybe tell you what to do in the ring. We can get away with it—once.”

“Do we fight on de level?” Chuck inquired.

“If you can,” Mr. Costigan returned, “for about six rounds. Then one of you takes the high dive.”

“Which of us?” Butch asked.

“I'll tell you later.”

“What do we get out of it?” Chuck asked practically.

“A hundred,” Mr. Costigan replied experimentally; “and fifty,” he added, warned by the expression of Chuck's face.

“Apiece?” Butch asked in the interests of clarity.

“Are you crazy?” Mr. Costigan countered.

“Not enough to fight Chuck six on de level for half of a hundred and fifty,” said Butch.

“Well, make it apiece,” Mr. Costigan conceded generously. “It's more than I intended, but2”

“And before we go in the ring,” Chuck interrupted with determination.

“Say, what's the matter with you?” said Mr. Costigan indignantly. “When I say you get it that means you get it, don't it?”

Chuck refused a direct answer. “When we got it, we got it,” he stated. “And I get mine before I draw on a mitt, see? Cash money. In me hand.”

“Me, too,” Butch backed him up.

“Oh, all right,” Mr. Costigan agreed. “For two guys that's broke you're mighty particular.”

“When you're broke you got to be,” Chuck returned. “I could use about fifty of that now.”

So could Butch. Mr. Costigan obeyed the plain hint with obvious reluctance.

“Now, don't go and blow it,” he advised.

“Do you mean on automobiles and yachts?” Chuck returned. “Not me. I was thinkin' of takin' a trip around the world with it, but just as you say.”

“You got a bright mind,” Mr. Costigan observed. “When this fight's over I'll try and get a job for you tellin' jokes in vaudeville.”

He informed O'Hara that the fighters would be ready when he was, and showed a keen interest in details of the fight set.

“How would it be,” he asked, “if I got a real ring crowd of fight fans? There's a lot of them in this town.”

“What would it cost?”

“Not much. I think I can fix it so it won't cost you anything.”

“Go as far as you like that way,” said O'Hara.

This apparently valueless concession appeared to please Mr. Costigan, who repaired to a job printer, and subsequently interviewed various sports of his acquaintance, winding up with an interview with the chief of police, from which he emerged smiling.

Now O'Hara was not overlooking the resemblance between Baxter and Chuck, which might make it possible to use the scenario in its original form. Baxter could get away with everything but the training camp and ring scenes. In the former, Miss Dale as Betty Harrington visited the training quarters of her lover, Jack Somerville with whom she had a pretty little love scene and, disguised as a newsboy, she spied upon the training of the brutal champion. There was also an impromptu rough-house between Somerville and the champion. The question in O'Hara's mind was whether Chuck could make even a bluff at the love stuff cut down to a minimum, and the only way to find out was to give him a trial. Naturally any make-up would suffer in the ring scene, but the solution of that was to make up Baxter in the other scenes, and allow Chuck to step into the ring au naturel.

O'Hara thought it all over and decided to retain the original version if he could. When he told Costigan to bring the fighters around the next day that gentleman did not appear pleased.

“This is different,” he said. “All you told me was that you wanted these boys to go six rounds. That's what I told them. Now you want them to act as well.”

“I'm paying for it,” said O'Hara. “Where does it grind you?”

Mr. Costigan found difficulty in answering.

“Well, let it go,” he said at last; and with Butch and Chuck he did the best he could.

“You'll spar the six rounds,” he told them; “but O'Hara wants some pictures of training camps, and you're to make them. So you're movie actors.”

“Us!” Butch gasped.

“Chees!” said Chuck.

“I had a hard time landing the job for you,” said Mr. Costigan, “but I told O'Hara you could do it, and it's up to you to make good.”

“Movie guys drags it down in bunches,” said the progressive Chuck. “We'd oughta get more coin.”

“You'll get maybe a five-spot a day extra,” Costigan informed him. “But don't get all swelled up about it, because the only reason they want you at all is because you look like an actor named Baxter who can't box. The stuff he ought to do and can't, you do for him. They'll fix you up to look like him so the audiences won't spot you for a ringer. So you keep quiet, and don't tell anybody, and there may be a little more in it for you. I'll speak to O'Hara.”

When he had gone the fighting men were more apprehensive than elated. Fighting was their business; but acting was a nervous job. Chuck felt premonitory symptoms of stage fright. He took a vicious right-hand stab at the bag and turned to Butch, who was perched meditatively upon the vaulting horse.

“How do they fix me up to look like that actor guy, huh?” he queried.

“There was a bird tellin' me about a friend of his that had it done,” Butch replied. “This bird's friend is a yegg, see, and the bulls is runnin' him ragged. So he goes to a doc; an' the doc saws some bone out of his nose, an' trims up his ears2”

“Tell!” the startled Chuck ejaculated.

'An' cuts his map open t'ree or four places an' draws it up diff'rent wit' catgut stitches an' leaves 'em in till it sets that way,” Butch pursued, with cheerful relish. “Then he jerks out some teeth, an' scalds his face all over wit' boilin' water till the skin peels off so it'll grow on new. That's all he does. This bird says the yegg says there's not'in' to it.”

“There ain't, huh!” Chuck commented, with strong distaste.

“It don't hurt much, this yegg says,” Butch encouraged. “All the time he's shot full of dope.”

“You can try it, if you want to,” Chuck offered generously.

“They don't want me,” Butch returned with cheerful resignation. “It's youse.”

Chuck was in a state of nervous tension when they presented themselves to O'Hara, but steadied when he learned that beyond a possible touch of pencil and grease paint no liberties with his face were contemplated. He shook hands with Baxter, and surveyed Miss Georgia Dale with a tongue-tied admiration which was shared by Butch, for Miss Dale was not at all hard to look at.

Webb, the make-up expert, had no doubt that he could make Baxter and Chuck indistinguishable for screen purposes, and O'Hara proceeded to instruct his recruits.

“Now,” he said, “here's the idea; this is what you boys have to do. It ought to be easy for you, but get it clear in your heads. Butch, you're the champion, 'Bulldog' Hogan, a man-killer. Chuck, you're Jack Somerville, a college athlete, and your old man's a millionaire, only he's gone broke, and you've quit college and gone to work in a garage2”

“But I don't know not'in' about cars,” Chuck interpolated.

“Nobody in a garage does,” said O'Hara with some bitterness. “Anyway, Baxter will do that overalls stuff. I'm just giving you the plot. You're working in a garage, and all your old society pals give you the go-by, because you're broke and working for wages. You're in love2”

“Huh!” Chuck ejaculated in alarm.

“With Betty Harrington, the datter of the guy that put the skids under your old man,” O'Hara went on, unheeding. “Miss Dale, here, is Betty, and her old man would take a shotgun to you if he could, but Betty's true blue. You've got to make some money, and you've boxed a lot at college, so you challenge the champ and make a match.”

“Vou don't get no crack at a champ like that,” Chuck objected. “You got to have a rep.”

“And not too much of a rep or he sidesteps you,” Butch amplified.

“Shut up and listen to me!” O'Hara snapped. “This isn't real life. You challenge the champ and start training. Betty visits you in your training quarters. You're in love with her, and you have a love scene that2”

“I do—what?” Chuck gasped. “Say, I ain't2”

“You do the best you can,” said O'Hara soothingly. “She'll show you how, won't you, Georgie?”

“Of course I will,” Miss Dale nodded. “I'm easy to make love to.”

“Y-yeah!” Chuck admitted.

“She wishes you luck and so on,” O'Hara proceeded. “You've got to win the championship for her sake, understand.”

“Ain't they no purse?” Chuck asked practically.

“Dammit, can't you get it that this is a play?” O'Hara rasped. “There's a purse of a million or more, stage money, if you want it. Well, then, Betty gets tipped off that the champ has a new man-killing punch, and she gets into boys' clothes and goes to his camp as a newsboy, selling papers.

“Now, Butch, Betty, as the newsboy, makes a hit with you by giving you a con talk about how good you are, and how she's bet her hard-earned nickels on you, and fought another newsboy who says you're a cheese. This tickles you, and you sort of take her for a mascot and she's around your camp a lot. She gets you to show her the punch you're going to use on the other fellow. Then, of course, she wises him up.”

“The skirt double crosses me, huh!” said Butch. “I getcha.”

“That's it,” O'Hara nodded. “You show her the new punch several times, till she's wise to it.”

“But there ain't no new punches,” Butch stated. 'There ain't a new punch since they barred the La Blanche pivot. The old-timers, like old Jack Dempsey an' Georgie Dixon an' even 'Yankee' Sullivan had 'em all. Why, Sayers an' Heenan had 'em!”

“Well, you show her something, old or new,” said O'Hara. “You're not taking any chances with this Somerville. You know he must be good because he's a college champion2”

“Cheese!” said Butch with contempt. “Soon as they see Chuck on the fillum they'll know he ain't no amateur. Amateurs ain't no class. There never was an amateur champ that could last three rounds with a dub perfeshnal, unless he was let.”

“This isn't real life, as I told you before,” said O'Hara impatiently. “You fake up some punch. Then, some days later, you're doing road work and you meet Betty. She's in her own clothes, but you know her, and you get suspicious. You stop her and try to make her tell what her game was. She won't, and you get a little rough. Then Somerville, doing his road work, comes along and interferes. You're starting to mix it when a car full of sports comes along and stops you.

“You're sore, Butch. This mix-up shows you that he'll be a hard man to beat, and you're pretty sure that Betty has given away your pet punch, So you frame it with your sparring partner to quit you, and go over to Somerville's camp and get a job.”

“Who's me sparrin' partner?” Butch queried.

“That's so,” O'Hara admitted. “I never thought of that. We'll have to get somebody. For effect I'd like to get a colored boxer.”