Then she changed him to a “funny man,” and I switched to happy laughter; then
sadness when the man fell down and hurt himself. The photographer took pictures
of all of this, and they show a surprising range of emotion. The caption under
them reads, “Alphonse wants to be an actor.” It might just as accurately have
read, “Alphonse wants to please.”
A couple of days later, everyone at the theater made a fuss over me and showed
me my picture in the paper. I watched my father as he proudly held up the
article and showed it around. I’d been told not to lie, yet we all knew I didn’t
smoke (I drank a little beer with the comics, but I didn’t smoke). Now here was
my father, proud of the gimmick he’d come up with. The picture of me holding the
pipe was a clever way to announce that the company had come to town. For him,
saying I smoked was no different from coming onstage in a sketch and saying,
“Well, here we are in sunny Spain.” He and the audience all knew they were
actually in Toronto. It was just a show, a way of capturing attention. And if
you could capture attention, that was an accomplishment. It was the
accomplishment.
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