Torchy's Big Lead

A babel of bewildered newcomers, clutching phrase-books like talismans, are told that salvation stalks the streets on the silver tip of a malacca stick banded with scarlet. One accidental swap in a clamorous café and the totem leaps from palm to palm, magnetizing every hopeful exile into a pied-piper procession behind the unwitting Torchy. Cane becomes baton, Torchy becomes reluctant maestro, conducting a symphony of miscomprehension through trolley bells, traffic cops, and the secret service’s shadowy overture. Espionage flits beneath the slapstick: contraband aigrettes—those delicate plumes once ripped from snowy herons—nest in the lining of a coat that may or may not be worn by one of the immigrants. Torchy, ever the improvisational puppeteer, off-loads the bamboo baton onto a flat-footed patrolman, then reclaims it only to jam it into the manicured grip of his romantic adversary. In the final pas de trois of coincidence, the rival is clapped in bureaucratic irons while Torchy pockets both the girl and the last laugh, leaving the audience to wonder whether the real immigrant is the American dream itself, perpetually lost in translation.