Fosse by Sam Wasson Read Free Book Online Page B

for the navy. She could do that because they were both underage. But I don’t think Bob wanted to get an annulment. He wanted a girl he could write letters to.” Married or not, Fosse wrote letters anyway.
    There had been so many out-of-town shows—Peoria, Springfield, Dubuque—not even Charles Grass could be sure where his seventeen-year-old Riff Brother met the older stripper who arrived, pregnant, on Sadie Fosse’s doorstep, long after Fosse had left for the navy. The woman told Mrs. Fosseabout the pregnancy, Grass recalled, “and Mrs. Fosse went to Mr. Weaver. She kept it quiet from the family and let Mr. Weaver handle it because he got him the job and Mr. Weaver, as the second father, should have told Fosse about the birds and the bees while he was on the road.” Weaver instructed Grass never to tell Fosse, as per his mother’s wishes, and Grass never did. “I want you to know,”Weaver assured him, “I took care of it. It’s over with.” And Grass maintained Fosse never knew. “Mrs. Fosse,” he said, “was protecting her son.”
     
    Fosse toured
Tough Situation
for three months, appearing almost a hundred times on the troop’s long way across the Pacific. The air transportation was nauseating, the weather was scorching, and the show was inane, but despite all that, and despite Fosse’s gloomy, lovesick heart, he rehearsed his numbers before every show and, when he wasn’t satisfied—which was always—after. Others in his company told him to take it easy. They said the soldiers, many of whom had been stationed out there for years, wouldn’t know the difference. They were too shell-shocked and show-starved to discern, let alone care, whether “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” was perfect or merely good enough. But Fosse cared; more than that—he feared. To the unyielding critic in his ear, the beaches were Broadway floorboards. Guam
was
the Palace, and
Tough Situation
was a rehearsal for auditions for more shows, which were auditions for more auditions. He couldn’t rest after the nineteenth run-through to treat his sunburn or sigh in relief because somebody somewhere would still be going, doing it again for the twentieth time. If he stopped now, if he allowed himself a breath, there’d be no one else to blame for failure.
    Dancing alone in the forest,he’d look up into the trees. He saw Japanese eyes watching him.
    By the time
Tough Situation
touched down in Tokyo at the Ernie Pyle Theater, renamed after the Americans took Japan, Fosse had become the company star. He had even managed to squeeze a few of his own solos onto the bill and convince Papp to end
Tough Situation
with a version of his Andrews Sisters drag routine, a flash finish that would have made Mr. Weaver proud. They sold out the Pyle for five nights. The venue, at two thousand seats, was by far the biggest he’d ever played, and the Andrews Sisters bit went over beautifully. It was a delicious success, much of it Fosse’s, and for those five nights, he crowed. Then there were the days. America had won, but the destruction of Tokyo and the way his buddies treated Japanese civilians—the women in particular—horrified Fosse. He said, “That was the first timeI was really ashamed to be an American.”

Forty-One Years
    L IKE VAUDEVILLE, NEW YORK CITY had something for everyone. Discharged from service in August 1946,Fosse ran toward it. He sat front row at the Lower East Side’s scrappy circus of Jewish, Italian, and Russian routines; uptown, he passed the pinball machines and two-cent scams of Forty-Second Street; he swallowed up Third Avenue lying in the shadows of the El, waiting on the edge of town like a bum looking for a fight. They were all waiting for a fight. The Germans of Yorkville hated the Irish of Yorkville, and the Irish hated the Poles. They all hated the blacks. You’d hear stories about guys getting on the 2 train instead of the 1 train and ending up in Harlem with no taxi to get them back. Things were safer below