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car arrive for the matinee. She was then the “great and good friend” of a certain Waldo Niemier, a burly sub-contractor from Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, and after every performance Waldo’s driver would take Babe to Ruby Foo’s, or to Sardi’s, or the old Delmonico’s. On this particular afternoon, just as the car started up, Frankie stepped out of the shadows, opened the door, and jumped in, announcing to the startled passenger that he had a present for her; it was right there in his fist. So declaring, he flung himself back against the pearl-gray upholstery and exhibited for her delectation his rampant “pride and passion.”
    “Take a look, Babe,” he breathed hotly, “it’s all yours.” And it did live up to its rep; every raging inch. Then, while he rolled his eyes and snorted in imitation of a bull, Babe slipped out the stickpin from her hat and gave his throbbing pride and passion a healthy jab. They said you could hear the howl of pain clear over to Broadway. As the car ground to a screeching halt, with his wounded pride fast wilting in his hand, Frankie threw open the door and staggered onto the curb, blind with rage and agony. As it happened, in addition to curious passersby, a Times Square mounted policeman was also on hand to witness the spectacle, and when he questioned the occupant of the limousine as to what the trouble was, Babe replied:
    “He was tryin’ to stick me up, Officer. Take him away and book him.”
    A citation for disturbing the peace and impairing public morals was written, and Frankie spent the balance of the day in jail before he found a mouthpiece willing to bail him out.
    Furious, he plotted his revenge, and at the next Saturday matinee a phalanx of ferocious harpies was seen marching from Broadway toward the Eltinge Theatre, where they stormed the box office. Calling themselves “Mothers for a Moral America,” they carried signs reading “Babe Osterreich sinister influence on young America,” things like that, and ringed the lobby so no one could buy a ticket. There was also a gang of news photographers and reporters on hand, and as a fracas ensued between the irate “Mothers” and the would-be audience, mostly male, one of the photographers managed to sneak into Babe’s dressing room, where he snapped her in the embrace of a fifteen-year-old boy whose nether quarters beneath his shirttails appeared to be bare. The resultant picture is the comical one everybody knows today. “Broadway star in flagrante delicto with under-age son of boiler superintendent,” read the florid caption. Babe’s show never played that matinee, the Black Maria arrived, and she was hauled off to the pokey, to that identical jail where Frankie had been incarcerated earlier that same week.
    Lola Magee had been what might be called a so-so hit. After this, however, all was changed, and Babe was never the same again. The box office was mobbed, this time by sensation-seeking audiences, the play became famous, all New York was fighting for seats, and the theatre was sold out weeks in advance. Babe remained in her cell two nights instead of the single one that was required, and, knowing a bad thing when she smelled it, she later held a press conference outside the jail. The “Mothers for a Moral America” were exposed by a traitor in their midst, who declared that each of the bogus “Mothers” had been paid five bucks a head to storm the theatre, while the “under-age son of the boiler superintendent” was disclosed as being a forty-three-year-old dwarf from a Forty-second Street flea parlor. And the whole farrago was exposed as a hoax perpetrated by none other than Frankie Adano!
    Tit for tat. For years afterward, Frankie wore Babe’s pearl stickpin in his cravat and loved to tell the story to friends, though it never got into print. While nursing his injured “pride,” he also nursed a grudge against Babe, now his declared quarry. He went up and down Broadway betting that he would give her the