THE STORYTELLER

Harry had a professor in film school who first put the idea in his head. “When you start a script,” the man said, softly but with steely authority, “it should be about a meeting.” That night it came to him: Peanuts Hucko meeting Peanuts Holland. He didn’t know if it had ever really happened. Hucko was with Goodman and Condon, Teagarden and Powell. Howell was with Sears and Trent, Bryant and Lunceford. Harry read and read in search of an overlap. Finally he found it: the Armstrongs. Holland had played with Lil Armstrong in the mid-thirties, and Hucko with Louis Armstrong in the forties and fifties. The Armstrongs were done as a couple even by the time Howell joined up with Lil. Holland heard Lil bang on Louis constantly. She hadn’t been impressed with him at first. In fact, he had disgusted her, his country hair, his rumpled clothes. But he had grown on her, a younger man in need of guidance, a genius to boot. Bangs were cut. Suits were bought. Vows were exchanged. Things were good while good. But then he had catted around with Alpha Smith and begged Lil to keep the marriage on the books so he wouldn’t be sued by ardent Alpha, now discarded. Lil banged on Louis to Holland, but he could hear the affection in her voice. The union was finally dissolved in 1938. The two remained on terms, and when Hucko had worked with Louis, Lil was very much a part of the Armstrong orbit. Holland could have dropped by to say hello, seen Hucko on the stage. Yes! Light blazed in Harry’s head! He called his old professor, who seemed nonplussed. “Are you sure the Armstrongs aren’t the story?” he said. Harry laughed. The man was joking. He had to be. It was Holland and Hucko, no more, no less. For more than a year he worked on a script, certain that he had isolated the crux of it, and he was still certain when an elevator he was in fell fourteen floors and made the whole thing moot.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas