Robert Armstrong — He'll Be A Big Star in a Year (1929) 🇺🇸

Well, you see, it's this-a-way Whenever I hear of, see, speak to or write about this guy Armstrong. I just can't help but remember the dumb pug in Jimmy Gleason's stage show. And the name of the play was, and is, "Is Zat So?" Remember it? Wasn't it a darb? I saw it so often I knew the first act by heart.

Is zat so? Yeah, za — ah g'wan.

But seriously, dear listeners-in of radio land, this mug Armstrong isn't half the palooka he made out to be in the show. As a matter of fact, he may be rated, without fear of successful contradiction, as a real Bright Bozo. Bright enough to get a fat film contract. Bright enough to make a bit in pictures. Bright enough to marry a charming wife. Bright enough to be well along the road to stardom after a single year in what used to be called the deaf-and-dumb racket before they made yellies to cure the deaf part.

Bob used to be a stage actor. His peerless press-agent tells me that he "remembers vividly when he played in theatrical stock at Des Moines." Naturally he would. The whole troupe lived on the vegetables the Death Moans audiences showered upon them six nights a week. Wednesday and Saturday were feast days. Matinees, you know.

Side-Stepping the Sheepskin

Before that he was respectable. The old folks sent him to Washington University, in Seattle. Bob studied law. And all the neighbors back in Saginaw, Michigan, where Bob was christened Robert, were feeling awful sorry for Clarence Darrow when Bob started in to be a legal light. For Bob was the prize baby of Maple Street, and all the folks kind of took an interest in him.

But there's many a slip between the varsity and the bar. Any bar. And this Armstrong lad took it on the scram three months before he would have received the old sheepskin. And instead went aseeking of the Golden Fleece of fame in the realm of Booth, Barrett, Boucicault and Barrymore. Such a trial to the family!

Arid my, oh my, how collegiate the boy was in those days. Husky wow-wow, rah rah, 'n' everything! He and a couple of more accessories before the fact whom he had led astray from the legal road to learning, made up an act called "A Campus Romance." And, believe it or not, the durned fools got weeks' and weeks' and weeks' time from a vaudeville circuit and finally made the grade right into the Main Stem, Wiseacre Square. Broadway, itself, very much in the flesh and not a moom pitcher.

Now, of course, Robert Armstrong might just as well have held out for "A Campus Romance" bookings that would have taken him to Flagstaff, Arizona, or to Falstaff, Florida. But Robert, whatever else you girls may say about him, Robert is no umpchay. After Des Moines, he knew his vegetables. Broadway has its little ways, its innocent attractions, after all. Besides, one of the Three Wise Men of Gotham was Paul Armstrong. Paul was an ace playwright and producer, and Bob's uncle. And this was before the celebrated bowl episode. You know what I mean. "Three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl."

Trouper and Trooper

So Bob stepped right up to Paul and said "Uncle." And Paul heaved a sigh and wondered why he hadn't been born an only child, free from nephews. Then he gave Bob a job managing road shows of "Alias Jimmy Valentine," and the like of that. Bob doubled on the stage, too. Even if he had to fire an actor to get a part. The boy was a trouper at heart. He is still. If he isn't working at his racket, he isn't fit to live with. Ask Mrs. Armstrong. She that used to be Ethel Jones, of New York.

Well, a Serb bumped off an Austrian. And it was before the bootleg business gave the dailies a choice of murders for the front page, and they played this shooting up in banner lines and big type. Show-folk like parades. So when the big parade came off, Bob Armstrong marched right along to the music of the bands and the politicians' chins. After a lot of millions were killed, everyone decided to call it a day.

So after Bob got de-loused and everything, he went touring the tanks.

Six and seven, seven and six: the total is always thirteen, and hard luck. That's playing in stock. But when the picture is at its worst the title writer always slips in a "Came the Dawn" caption. This time the title was written in the shape of Jimmy Gleason.

Zat Was So

Now Jimmy doesn't look noticeably like a dawn, either coming or going. The best he rates in appearance is an evening star from behind, and something less'n half of that before, to paraphrase Kipling. But he was the beginning of a perfect day to Bob. For Jimmy, clever son of old New York, trouper par excellence, had a play of his own, which he knew like a man knows his wife, and for similar reasons. And which he knew to be above suspicion. It was a wow. Perhaps the big boys in the producing world wouldn't think so. But Jimmy knew that even they, the supercilious nabobs of the stage, are not infallible.

So under the title of "Thursday Night," or "Saturday Night," or some common-place night of the commonplace week these two put on their show. Bob was a bone-headed battler who kissed the canvas at the wrong time, and Gleason was his manager, not too far ahead in grey matter.

Well, miracles happened. The thing opened at the Davidson theater in Milwaukee. One of Jake-an'-Lee's scouts saw it. The Shuberts put it on right. And the play is running yet. And will for years. Of course, the troupe Bob and Jimmy led only played for three or four years. But for a couple of young fellers, that isn't so bad.

Eventually "Is Zat So?", for so the foxy Shuberts re-christened the show, reached Los Angeles. The great De Mille had a fight picture on at his studio, "The Main Event," and quick as you can say "contract," Armstrong was signed to one. That's how it happened. Since then, the boy friend, Jimmy Gleason, has come out, too. And now — well, ain't we got fun?

Bob's Love-Life

I have always felt that my literary life was being starved, that it would never be quite complete, perfectly rounded, until I, too, could contribute a story about the Love Life of a Star. Envy has consumed me in perusing the Love Life of Clara Bow, of Alice White, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford. In my naive way I approached Bull Montana for a tale regarding his romantic moments. But, unfortunately, it was just after The Bool had stopped a fast one from the little woman with his chin. And something told me that the moment was inauspicious.

But God is good, perseverance has its reward, and if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And by dint of dauntless delving, I've dug up the sweetest little romance ever lived by a screen star. Here it is. Presented to you for the first, last and only time, and against the combined wills of both hero and heroine. It's the Love Life of Bob Armstrong.

Is zat so?

Yeah, zat's so!

Bob was busy hanging out the S.R.O. sign at the theater where the customers were blocking Broadway to see his characterization of the un-Tunney-like leather-pusher in Jimmy Gleason's show. On a certain matinee day, a few blocks nearer Albany, a dear little girl had those all-alone blues. All against her wishes, the girl friend rushed her down to the theater, for a good shot of cheer-up as dispensed by old doctor Armstrong. Before the final curtain, loathed melancholy was definitely in the discard. And youthful femininity was exuberantly planning deviltry.

Now neither girl had ever written a mash note. In fact, persons who did that sort of thing were rather beyond the pale. Probably in all the wide circle of their friends, there wasn't one who had ever spent a stamp to send scented sentiments to a matinee idol. But wouldn't it be fun, they argued, to have a bit of a game with this Armstrong lad? Judging by the role he played, he was probably a nifty dresser on and off. And that would include two-tone shows — both tones yellow — whoopee shirts, tight jackets and perhaps even pearl buttons or a brown derby. Wouldn't it be a scream, my dear, to meet him!

Ethel and Bob

So Miss Jones, Miss Ethel Jones, more daring than her pal, wrote Mr. Armstrong telling him what his performance had meant in their lives. And in a sudden breath-taking inspiration penned a postscript saying that both girls went swimming real frequently, and that if Mr. Armstrong cared to come one day he might do so.

The letter mailed, it was promptly relegated to forgetfulness. But odd things do happen in life just as they do in the movies. And sure enough Ethel's maid interrupted dinner an evening not long afterward to say that Mr. Armstrong was on the 'phone. Well, my dear, you could have knocked her over with a feather! And before she said good-bye, she and the girl friend had an engagement to go swimming with Bob.

Of course, he was rather a disappointment at first. His garb was more that of stocks and bonds than songs, dances and witty sayings. And he didn't talk a bit like the palooka in the play, or any other palooka, for that matter. In fact, he said so little that the girls, thoroughly intrigued with that je ne sais quoi so apparent in Bob's pictures, figured that so far as he was concerned they hadn't made such a hit. However, when the whirring motor had whirled them from the shore, and the hour for adieux arrived. Bob said he'd had a corking day, and mightn't he come again?

He did. Again and again. And again. Other masculine interests eliminated the girl-friend. Miss Jones and Mr. Armstrong became sufficient unto themselves. Hut now they were Ethel and Bob. And as the happy summer faded into the sad haze of Autumn, Bob gathered courage to say: "I love you."

And when Ethel answered: "I love you, too, Bob."

It was just force of habit and astonishment that made him mumble.

"Is zat so?"

Then there was the business of the diamond solitaire. And plans for a wedding. But show business takes no count of Cupid. And Bob was sent to London with the show. But not even the Shuberts can outwit Cupid. So sure enough, Ethel followed on. The "I do" was said in sound of Bow Bells. And they lived happily ever afterwards. In all of Hollywood there isn't a more beloved couple, beloved by one another, beloved by the world. So there you have it, the sweetest story ever told — about the Love Life of a Movie Star.

The first stage success of Robert Armstrong in New York made a name for himself — and a change in the name of the girl who used to be Ethel Jones.

Photo by: Lansing Brown (1900–1962)

Collection: Motion Picture Classic Magazine, January 1929