Marty Rubin

Marty Rubin is May Wynn’s agent and coach, a steady presence in her working life and, by her own account, her best friend. He helps launch her engagement at the Club Tahiti, supports her through an uncertain relationship with Willie Keith, and later leads Willie to the hotel where May is performing. His role is both practical and personal: he arranges opportunities and watches over May, while his conduct repeatedly challenges Willie’s tendency to judge him by his civilian appearance and social type.

Identity and Work

Rubin enters the story as the person May names when Mr. Dennis asks who represents her. The question leads directly to an offer: Dennis asks whether she can start the following Monday. Rubin is thus connected to the beginning of her Club Tahiti job, where her Mozart novelty act is well received. The engagement lasts three weeks, and May’s performance improves over the run, becoming simpler and more lucid, with fewer gestures.

Rubin is not a distant agent who merely arranges a booking. He comes to watch May several times each week and, after her performance, spends an hour or more talking with her, either at a table or in her dressing room. The narrative describes him as short and stout, with a moon-shaped face, pale hair, and very thick rimless glasses; his suits have conspicuously broad shoulders and full trousers, though their colors are restrained browns and grays. The details first mark him as someone Willie reads through appearance, but his repeated presence establishes a more consequential identity: he is a working companion and adviser who gives May sustained attention beyond the stage.

May’s Friend and Advocate

During May’s Club Tahiti engagement, Rubin’s visits occupy only part of her time between shows; Willie usually monopolizes the rest. The contrast helps define the different kinds of attention the two men offer. Willie positions himself as an educated authority, while May is half respectful and half satirical about the role he assumes. Rubin, by contrast, is shown through his regular attendance and long conversations with her, rather than through any claim to instruct or impress her.

Willie’s assumptions about Rubin are shaped by class prejudice. Although Willie is sure Rubin is Jewish, he says he thinks no less of him and considers Jews warm, humorous, and alert; the narrative also notes the exclusion of Jews from the real-estate development where Willie’s family home is located. These attitudes coexist uneasily with Willie’s immediate social discomfort around Rubin. At the Stork Club, Willie arrives in his midshipman’s uniform to find Rubin seated with May. He compares Rubin’s loose-fitting civilian suit with the standards of Manhasset and Princeton, and greets him coolly. Rubin, meanwhile, congratulates Willie on becoming a midshipman and says he envies the uniform.

Rubin’s response to the evening is generous and tactful. When Willie invites him to stay for dinner, Rubin recognizes that he is no longer needed, pays for the meal, and makes sure the headwaiter knows not to charge May or the sailor. Willie calls the favor vulgar and objects to having it pressed on him. May rebukes him: Rubin is her best friend, she says, and she values him as a decent man who does not regard women as objects to be pawed or pursued. The disagreement exposes the distance between Willie’s suspicion of Rubin’s gesture and May’s trust in the man who has consistently treated her with respect.

Counsel About Willie

Rubin’s friendship with May includes frank advice about her relationship with Willie. In a later conversation, May tells Willie that she had asked Rubin what she should do about him. Willie assumes Rubin advised her to throw him out, but May corrects him: Rubin believes that Willie really loves her. The distinction matters. Rubin does not simply confirm Willie’s fears or encourage May to dismiss him; he gives her an assessment that leaves room for Willie’s feelings, even when the relationship has become difficult.

Rubin’s counsel does not make him a neutral observer detached from the couple’s tensions. He is May’s friend, and Willie’s conduct has affected her; nevertheless, the advice May reports is not a blanket rejection of Willie. Rubin’s place between them is therefore defined by both loyalty and judgment: he is close enough to May to be asked for guidance, and candid enough to offer an opinion that Willie has misunderstood.

Finding May Again

Years later, after returning from wartime service, Willie calls Rubin’s office to ask where May is. Rubin has been waiting for him to appear for a couple of months. Their reunion begins not with an immediate explanation about May, but with Rubin picking up a loud plaid overcoat and leading Willie out of his office. The office is a desk in a cluttered room shared with four other agents, a markedly different setting from the polished world Willie associates with his own upbringing.

As they walk along Forty-seventh Street and turn up Seventh Avenue, Rubin eagerly asks Willie about kamikazes and minesweeping. Willie interrupts to press for news of May. Rubin then takes him through a revolving door into the crowded lobby of a popular hotel, where a large sign announces May’s nightly appearance in the Aztec Lounge. A photograph shows her with a saxophonist at a microphone. The sign gives Willie the immediate answer to where she is; Rubin supplies the explanation behind the change he sees. May has changed her stage name because she felt the former one brought her bad luck, and she has been involved with Walter Feather since about two weeks after Willie left.

Rubin describes Feather as a twice-divorced man whose latest divorce may not yet be final, and says that he has been trying to oppose the relationship. His efforts have strained his friendship with May: she becomes angry when he criticizes Walter. Rubin also tells Willie that Feather advised May to stop paying him his ten-percent commission, but she continues to pay it even though there is no written contract and Rubin has never demanded the money. This financial detail underscores that their bond is not presented as a simple exchange of services. May continues to honor an informal arrangement while Rubin continues to advise and worry about her, despite their arguments.

Rubin admits that he and May have fought over Willie’s letter. During that conflict, Rubin called Feather a draft dodger, and May would not accept criticism of Walter at that point. After revealing the situation, Rubin agrees to see whether May and Feather are rehearsing. He has brought Willie to her, but the reunion now carries complications that his earlier help cannot erase: May has a life with another performer, and Rubin’s loyalty to her has sometimes placed him on the opposite side of her choices.

Narrative Role

Rubin is a recurring point of connection between May’s professional life and her relationship with Willie. He helps secure her work, observes her performances, and remains present through her changing circumstances; later, he becomes the person Willie must approach to find her. These actions give him a practical influence on the plot without making him its romantic center. He neither controls May’s decisions nor resolves the consequences of Willie’s absence.

His scenes also sharpen the contrast between appearance and conduct. Willie initially sees a civilian agent whose clothes seem out of place beside a midshipman’s uniform, and he interprets Rubin’s payment for dinner as an unwanted favor. Yet Rubin’s repeated actions—watching May work, defending her interests, offering an honest view of Willie, and eventually taking Willie to her—make his decency legible through behavior. The man Willie underestimates is among the people most consistently concerned with May’s welfare, even when she resists his advice.