Vaudeville philosophers: "The Killers." - short story by Ernest Hemingway

Twentieth Century Literature, Spring, 1999 by Ron Berman

When Max and Al walk into Henry's lunchroom they are in a confined, lighted, and stagy space with doors for exits and entrances. A running gag begins about not knowing what they want - the gag is at this point merely absurd. Max and Al keep asking each other questions as they go through the formalities of what vaudeville historians call "The Two-man Act." This "was usually the comedy standout of the bill" because "talking routines" had taken precedence over song, dance, acrobatics, and other forms of insurance for comedians. Hemingway follows one specific vaude tradition: "usually it was a straight man with a Hebrew comic" (Laurie 81). Max is gentile; Al, who could only have come from a kosher convent, is not. The key, however, is that they really are what they are.

Two-man acts were relentlessly ethnic, and aggressive beyond anything dreamed today. Olsen and Johnson or Smith and Dale or Weber and Fields did "The Sport and the Jew" or "Irish by Name but Coons by Birth." The scripts that remain indicate that no punch was pulled, no insult spared. As vaudeville developed, insult gave way to wit. Slapstick was dropped: beginning with belly-laughs, the two-man act after the turn of century utilized "more rational stuff." The costume and demeanor of modern comics indicated a new sophistication, hence the displacement of red noses, checkered coats, and circus shoes by good suits, ties, and stock collars. The two-man act often wore (Hemingway noticed this) city-slicker gray derbies (Laurie 82). The act developed "routines" that were highly verbal, demanding interpretation.

The straight man had the most status - he was sane in a world of eccentrics - and he had some pretensions to ideas, education, and even style. Both Max and Al like to play the straight man, and they alternate in the role. When they first enter, the dialogue is unfocused because they are free-wheeling, ad-libbing on the clock and menu. But they are strangely aggressive and bring into the story attitudes that the story itself does not account for. Some of these attitudes are (so to speak) professional, but others have to do with the genre. All straight men know that the world is composed largely of fools who must be suffered.

Here are two parallel scripts for an opening gag. The first is from Hemingway:

"This is a hot town," said the other. "What do they call it?"

"Summit."

"Ever hear of it?" Al asked his friend.

"No," said the friend.

"What do you do here nights?" Al asked.

"They eat the dinner," his friend said. "They all come here and eat the big dinner." (280)

The second passage suggests that Hemingway borrowed liberally from vaudeville lore. Scripts that were older than he was provided him with one of his central themes: urban sophistication poised against rural idiocy. A "well-dressed" man (he is in fact an actor) from the big city meets one of the local rubes:

"What's the name of this town?"

"Centertown."

"Where is the theatre?"

"I don't know," says the native.

Then the actor looks at him as though he were an idiot. (Musson 45)