The Doo Dah Gang

The private train was slowly chugging across Nevada one day last week on the final stretch of a six-hour trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The 150 passengers, guests of West Coast Mobster "Big Jim" Valenti, had lunched on a buffet of "selected Sicilian meat and cheese cuts," and they were looking forward to an evening at Valenti's hotel speakeasy, The Boiler Room. Big Jim, trigger-tempered head of the notorious "Doo Dah" gang, had arranged the party for the opening-night floor show starring his bride, a former Detroit showgirl named Boo Boo O'Hare. Boo Boo could warble like a thrush, it was said, and Valenti told one and all that she would be "the next Clara Bow."

Big Jim, resplendent in white linen suit, white shoes and lavender tie, had planned for everything, down to the brass band waiting to toot out a welcome at the Las Vegas station. Or had he? Passengers taking in the scenery suddenly noticed a 1923 Chrysler touring car and a 1925 brewery truck following the train on an adjacent road. Rival Hoodlum Barney Weiss apparently had dispatched his own welcoming party to greet Big Jim. From a machine gun mounted on the back of the truck, a Weiss torpedo named Charley Ice fired several bursts at the passing coaches. Two other goons opened up with shotguns. Valenti and his bodyguard, Tony Robozo, fired back at the attackers until they dropped their pursuit.

Strange Amusement. A Hollywood gangster shoot-'em-up in the making? Not on film, in any case. In fact, the whole thing is an elaborate fantasy produced and paid for by Multimillionaire Artist Bob Graham, who acts on the conviction that all the world's a stage. Big Jim, Boo Boo and the rest of the Doo Dah gang are actors getting paid $450 a week to portray gangland characters from the Roaring Twenties, primarily for the entertainment of Patron Graham--and anyone else who happens by. So far, this strange amusement has cost Graham some $600,000, with no end in sight.

The saga of the Doo Dahs is a succession of polyptychs that Graham somewhat grandly refers to as his "living canvases." "I call it Doo Dah art as a takeoff on Dada art," he says. "I didn't set out to create an art form, although I think it has become one." What he did set out to do was to "inject vitality and fun onto the national scene after the dark years of war and scandal."

Tastes Indulged. With a fortune inherited from his father, who invented a pressure valve for jet engines, the lanky young Graham had the means to indulge his tastes. After graduating from Oxford in 1963 with a degree in art, he opened a gallery in London. In 1968 he staged an exhibition of tableaux vivants called "The Americans." He imported an Alabama dirt farmer, a California fisherman, a stockbroker and an Oklahoma oil driller to stand around and represent themselves, but his piece de resistance was a New York cab driver complete with yellow cab and nonstop monologue for anyone who ventured to enter it. Says Graham: "It seemed an interesting thing to do."

These were only preliminary sketches, as it were. Last year Graham prowled Los Angeles in search of actors willing to help him recreate, more or less, the exploits of a gangster mob of the 1920s. Valenti is modeled on "Big Jim" Colosimo, who actually died in 1920 when he was shot in a Chicago cafe. After considerable research and meticulous preparation, Graham invited a few guests to his first caper: an attempted rub-out of Big Jim at the posh Beverly Wilshire Hotel. As police alerted by Graham controlled traffic, unwitting pedestrians and hotel employees cringed while Charley Ice blasted two of Big Jim's henchmen, who slumped to the sidewalk, oozing cosmetic blood. Graham has staged six other canvases since then in Los Angeles, including "Shootout at Century Plaza" and "Incident at the Brown Derby."

Graham's Los Angeles headquarters is the Doo Dah Planning Center, where a staff of ten carefully choreographs each incident. The actors use no scripts, however, improvising all dialogue as the incident develops. For their substantial salaries, plus expenses, Graham has extracted a promise from his actors to remain in character at all times. None will even reveal his real name. Such role playing has gone to some strange extremes. Earlier this year Graham invited his cast to move in with him at his newly purchased Benedict Canyon hideaway, and the actor playing Big Jim took such a liking to the digs that he told Graham to move out or he'd "break his kneecaps." Graham promptly rented an apartment; Big Jim christened his new pad "Valenti's Villa."

Paddy Wagons. The Las Vegas caper will cost Graham a lot more. He has leased the main showroom at the Flamingo Hilton for six months and paid to have it redone to match Colosimo's Chicago speakeasy. Flamingo executives, who get a share of the take from any audiences at Big Jim's floor show, had some doubts about Boo Boo's revue, and they expressed a desire for more bare skin on the chorus line. "Would you want your wife to sing on the stage with a bunch of naked bimbos?" yelled Valenti. When Hotel Manager Henry Lewin paid a courtesy call on Valenti in his suite, Big Jim plucked Lewin's cigar from his mouth and said, "How can you smoke such garbage?" At a meeting with the entire hotel staff, Valenti promised them a little extra something in their paychecks. Says Graham: "I guess I'm gonna have to make it good."

Boo Boo's debut last week was a smash. Popping out of an oyster shell, she crooned Have You Ever Been Alone with an Abalone? while guests sipped Prohibition booze from coffee cups. Big Jim contributed his rendition of Ja Da and a twinkletoes tap dance, but the Las Vegas "police" put a crimp on the evening with a raid. "I'll have your badge in the morning," Valenti yelled at one cop while being led away. Big Jim and his cronies were packed into a pair of vintage paddy wagons, then later released and returned to the hotel.

Big Jim and the Doo Dahs may tire of Vegas, says Graham, who hints that they may move on to St. Louis and New York before the year is out. He refuses to predict how far the canvas might stretch, saying only, "The story will run its course--in time." Then Graham will be off to bigger and better things. Already he's planning a re-enactment of Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic on the 50th anniversary of that feat in 1977. But that's a mere stunt compared to his ultimate fantasy. "I'd love to do Napoleon's retreat from Russia," he says. "Wouldn't that be a gas?"

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