positioned in key locations around the city and taxi cabs carried announcement banners on the back of their cars. Newspapers and motion picture magazines also carried interviews with Lancaster and mentioned his scheduled personal appearances and press conferences. In some magazines, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands was cross promoted with Rampart Productions' film You Gotta Stay Happy, doubling the star appeal for Fontaine. Lancaster also organized a twenty-minute vaudeville-style opening act to present at three theaters across the country. The act included Lancaster's old acrobatic act, Lang and Cravat, from his days performing in the Ringling Brothers Circus, accompanied by an orchestra, comics and signers. Joining Lancaster on stage was his old circus and vaudeville partner Nick Cravat, who was still living in New York City and had not worked with Lancaster since before World War II. Lancaster wired Cravat a telegram and initially offered his old friend and partner half of his salary, a reported $8,000-$10,000 a week, to perform with him on stage. Cravat was excited to work with Lancaster again and accepted to do the act for only a third of the original financial offer. Lancaster's troupe was booked by vaudeville agent Paul Small, who was benefiting from a vaudeville revival in the late 1940s, to play some of the biggest theaters in each city where, in most cases, they were not performing prior to a screening of Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, but rather before larger-budget pictures. Before taking his show on the road, Lancaster tried it out, unbilled and without publicity, for two days at Ken Murray's Blackouts variety show at the El Capitan Theatre on Vine Street in Hollywood. Starting at the Oriental Theater in Chicago on November 18, 1948, they performed for three weeks opening for When My Baby Smiles at Me, a Betty Grable film for Twentieth Century-Fox Films. The show opened with Lancaster performing a solo gangster act based on his tough guy characters seen in The Killers, Brute Force and I Walk Alone, all while adlibbing with bobbysoxer fans in the audience. Julie Wilson then joined him on stage to perform a parody of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene and sign a duet, "Pretty Baby". Wilson would then perform the solo song "A Little Bird Told Me". Lancaster returned on stage for another comedy routine with Charlene Harris, the later dressed as a moppet playing the prexy of