Undertakers from London to Broadway

Undertaker Song by Damon Runyon

short story, published 1934

 

I encountered Damon Runyon’s stories when I was a teenager (the library again) and adored them, and read everything I could get my hands on – there was a huge omnibus called Runyon on Broadway, with his main collections in it. (Though yes of course I also read Runyon from First to Last, which was full of oddments and was my introduction to the idea ‘they will gather up any old stuff and put it together to make you buy it’)

But On Broadway – what a collection.

Most people may not even know the name, but they probably know the musical Guys and Dolls, which is based on two Runyon short stories. If you’ve seen Guys and Dolls (and if you haven’t, go and do so, or else find the film with Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando doing some of their best work. Luck be a Lady Tonight…) you’ll know the general vibe of the work, the tone and the distinctive voice. Runyon has featured on the blog before:

Guys and Dolls

The stories I loved (and this is probs 95% of them) were set in and around Manhattan, and particularly Times Square, Broadway and the theatres, restaurants, speakeasies and nightclubs around and about – with of course the occasional trip out to the racecourses, or to lie low after some criminal activity.

But there was one story that haunted me, with a very different setting: Undertaker Song. Much of this takes place at a Harvard/Yale football match, in Boston, and I first read it when I had not much idea what any of this was or meant. And it is equally not the natural home of the Runyon characters.

Our usual unnamed first-person narrator is hearing the story from a friend, Meyer, who is at the game and – always – talking in the present tense:

Just after the tally comes off, all of a sudden, from the Yales in the stand across the field from the Harvards, comes a long-drawn-out wail that sounds so mournful it makes me feel very sad, to be sure. It starts off something like Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, with all the Yales Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ing at once, and I ask a guy next to me what it is all about.

“Why,” the guys says, “it is the Yales’ ‘Undertaker Song.’ They will always sing it when they have the other guy licked. I am an old Yale myself, and I will now personally sing this song for you.”

And with this the guy throws back his head, and opens his mouth wide and lets out a yowl like a wolf calling to its mate.

Well, I stop the guy, and tell him it is a very lovely song, to be sure, and quite appropriate all the way around, and then I hasten away from the football game… 

For some reason this passage stuck in my mind forever, quite gives me the shivers, especially when we know what  has gone on in a seat nearby…

So in a recent post we looked at Margery Allingham’s More Work for the Undertaker. And at the beginning of the book there is an epigraph, lyrics from a music hall song of exactly that name. Idly looking into that, I found out to my great surprise that this is exactly the song from the Runyon short story: and yes it was a real thing. Yale has many Fight Songs for singing at games, and this one seems to be particularly for the game with Harvard, and when they are winning – though it seems it might be less of a thing nowadays.

So obv I had to go and read this story again.

The narrator with his friend Meyer Marmalade (they tend to have names or nicknames like that) are in Boston for a different sports contest, and in the lobby of their hotel this happens:

All of a sudden, a very, very beautiful young doll who is about forty per cent in and sixty per cent out of an evening gown walks right up to us sitting there, and holds out her hand to me, and speaks as follows:

“Do you remember me?”

This is Doria, and she tells the men she is in trouble about something in her past: She is now about to make a very advantageous and respectable  marriage, but when she was 16….

She is in the chorus of Earl Carroll’s Vanities, and I remember well what a standout she is for looks, to be sure.

Naturally, at sixteen, Doria is quite a chump doll, and does not know which way is south, or what time it is, which is the way all dolls at sixteen are bound to be, and she has no idea what a wrong gee Joey Perhaps is, as he is good-looking, and young, and seems very romantic, and is always speaking of love and one thing and another.

Well, the upshot of it all is the upshot of thousands of other cases since chump dolls commence coming to Broadway, and the first thing she knows, Doria Logan finds herself mixed up with a very bad character, and does not know what to do about it.

 

This Joey Perhaps is now trying to blackmail her.

And in a neat fashion, Meyer takes over the narration (though honestly it is the same voice…) and gets things sorted at the football match.

I don’t really think it is a ruinous spoiler to say that someone is now seeming to be supporting Harvard, because he

has a big, broad crimson ribbon where he once wears his white silk muffler

The man knew how to tell a story: this is short and economical, quite violent, but with a sense of justice. And wholly memorable. That Yale wail will continue to haunt me.

You can find the story in its entirety here

Undertaker Song

Doria’s evening dress: now how respectable would she have been, given that she’s marrying up? A few other options, though I always had Jean Harlow, above, in mind.

The Earl Carroll Vanities was indeed a real thing: a revue featuring beautiful young women in the 1920s and 1930s. (And in the earlier Runyon post you can see a pic from the similar Ziegfeld Follies, along with a description of Georgie White's Scandals, with a girl wandering round the stage 'with only a few light bandages on')

The gorgeous top picture is from a 1934 film, Murder at the Vanities.

Murder At The Vanities - NYPL Digital Collections

The other, from the Library of Congress shows

Earl Carroll instructing girls in vanities, 1/26/25

You can pick for yourself which one you see as Doria the chump girl.

Jean Harlow - NYPL Digital Collections

Forward Pass During a Yale-Harvard Game - NYPL Digital Collections

"The game is over", Harvard - Yale, 1911