Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  I was really nervous walking into that grand Manhattan hotel, especially since I knew Mick was somewhere in the tower, hiding under the fake name. I’d written it down in case I forgot it, because the people staffing the front desk would show me the door if I asked for Mick Jagger. “Mr. Lawrence” was the password I must whisper to the gatekeepers of this hidden treasure.

  When I got to the suite, the door was ajar, so in I walked. Voices were coming from down the hall, and I followed them until I saw Mick standing there talking to the rest of the Rolling Stones: Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood. They were all sitting on the sofa, smoking. On a low coffee table by their feet sat a pizza box, overflowing ashtrays, beer cans, and empty champagne bottles. Keith Richards saw me and pointed. Mick turned around. “Hi! You made it. I’m Mr. Lawrence. No, I’m Mick.”

  “No, you’re not Mick.” Keith laughed, plucking on his guitar in slow motion.

  Mick and I shook hands, but then Ronnie shouted, “Kiss her!” so Mick kissed me on the cheek. “There, satisfied?” he said to his bandmates. “I’m going out. You’d better be ready to work when I get back.” He turned to me and said, “These guys are so lazy . . .”

  There was an awkward pause while Mick hatched a plan. “I have a car downstairs. You hungry?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Mick and I got in the elevator. When the doorman opened the front door, Mick poked his head out and said, “Got to see if the coast is clear.” We ran for the car and dove into the backseat.

  “Where to, sir?” said the driver.

  “To that little Italian place on Eighth Avenue.”

  “The same one as last night?”

  “Yeah,” said Mick. “I go there after the studio,” he explained to me. “It’s not too far.”

  Gosh, this is a real date, I thought.

  “I can only go out late at night,” he said. “Fewer people around, more space just to be.”

  I recognized the restaurant as a place Ara liked. We sat down at a table in the back and ate American-style spaghetti and meatballs and drank red wine. When we got back to the hotel, we went straight to his suite, which was fancy and candlelit, and he set the scene by throwing rose petals over a fur throw. I thought this was romantic and stylish, and soon we were making love.

  Afterward we lay in bed next to each other and talked and talked about our shared love of music, art, and fashion. I knew he was the biggest rock-and-roll star on the planet, but to me he came across as a vulnerable boy, especially when he mentioned his earliest years in England during World War II. At one point, Mick jumped up, put on his Chinese silk robe, and did the strangest thing. He just stood there at the foot of the bed looking at me, as though taking a picture with his eyes. And then the moment passed and we fooled around some more, like two kittens.

  I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was morning and time to go to my booking. That evening Mick called and we met again for dinner. He took me home in his limo—I was living at the Upper East Side townhouse of my beloved agent, Zoli Rendessy (with whom I signed after Wilhelmina accused me of “tarnishing” her agency’s reputation by appearing in a spaghetti western, something I never did, by the way)—but instead of saying goodbye, Mick came in with me and sneaked up to the room where I was staying, which had a piano in it. We kissed a bit, and then he saw the piano. “Nice,” he said. “You play?”

  “Just for fun,” I said. I’d been practicing a little, because I had my heart set on launching a singing career at some point. The two of us sat down at the keyboard. He played a few chords pianissimo, and we rhymed words together, laughing so hard that the maid in the house knocked on the door and told us to pipe down. She padded away, never realizing she’d just shushed the front man of the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world.

  Mick and I tried to be as quiet as mice. We whispered the words, and he told me that the vowels are the most important part to sing, and that the higher I sang, the better. I was thrilled to get this advice (the vowels? who knew?), and I thanked him profusely as I walked him to the front door. With one last kiss, we said goodbye.

  “Tomorrow?” he said.

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  But Mick got caught up in his work, and I in mine, and it was nearly a week before I heard from him. He invited me over to his studio. He talked to the tech guys for a while, we grabbed dinner, and then he had to return to the studio to record. By then, it was two in the morning, and I had an early-morning booking, so I bade him good night. How could I have known it would be years before I’d see Mick again, and by that time he’d be with Jerry and I’d be cast in the role of her old pal from the Paris days?

  The other Portobello-related incident that stays with me was the handwritten note left there for me by another English rock star. I met Ringo Starr in 1972 because I’d heard through a hairdresser friend in London that the film studio of Apple Corps, the production company formed by the Beatles when they were still together, needed an actress for the opening scene of a film they were shooting. I wanted to break into acting almost as much as I wanted to be a singer (even at that relatively early stage in my career, I sensed that modeling wouldn’t be enough to satisfy my artistic yearnings), so the next morning my friend took me to the studio and said to the director, “This is the perfect girl.” I was sitting in a chair in the waiting room, not knowing whether I’d end up doing anything or not, when someone popped her head out and asked, “Are you ready?”

  I was incredibly nervous, but I jumped up and said, “Yes, yes, of course.”

  She said, “Did you bring anything to wear?”

  I said, “Yes, I have this.” I produced my Blue Angel dress and gold spray-painted Goody Two Shoes high heels, which I adored even though they pinched my toes something awful.

  “Well, put it on,” she said, and I retreated to the bathroom in the hallway to change. When I got onto the set, I realized how different shooting movies was from shooting still photos. The lighting was much more dependent on natural light, and best of all, I didn’t have to stand motionless and wait for the shot. I could move! There was a blower on the set that hit my dress just so; its pleats billowed up and flowed behind me, my hair blew back, and with my posture as erect as I’ve ever had it, I probably looked like the emblem on the front of a Rolls-Royce.

  When the director announced a break (I can’t recall the name of the film, and I’m not sure it was ever released), I walked out on the terrace and sat down on a bench to give my feet a rest. Someone said, “Hello there,” and I looked up and it was Ringo. The first things I noticed were his hands. On every finger, he wore a big chunky silver band—the accessory that had earned him his moniker—and he was dressed in a silk indigo-blue suit with a purple satin shirt. He asked, “What are you into?” and we chatted about colors. I told him that I saw colors every day, and he told me he did, too. “When I was in New York,” he said, “I saw everything yellow—yellow cabs, yellow traffic lights.” It was a playful conversation, and he ended it by asking me to join him and some friends for dinner that night.

  The dinner was in the private dining room of a private townhouse restaurant. There were three couples—Ringo was with Maureen, his first wife—and me, seated around a big round table. I sat next to Ringo, and at one point he asked me, “How do you like London?”

  “I love it,” I replied. “I can’t believe I’m here!”

  He smiled and said, “Well, luv, you got to believe in believing.” Believe in believing. It was a throwaway line, but I found it oddly profound, and it has stuck with me all these years. The next morning, the desk clerk at the Portobello handed me an envelope. Inside was a handwritten note on stationery, “Apple Corps Ltd.” embossed at the top along with the company logo, the image of a green apple. It read:

  Dear Pat,

  Thank you for being straight.

  Love, Ringo

  chapter 39

  OF THEE I SING, BABY

  On stage at the Versailles fashion show, 1973, for the curtai
n call just after the finale with Liza Minnelli (left). I’m at the far right.

  Afterward, a lot of people said, “It was just like the war. Versailles was crumbling. And who swooped in to put it back together? The big, brash Americans.”

  That’s a simplification, of course, and it’s not quite the way I remember the so-called Battle of Versailles, a now legendary fashion show at France’s Palace of Versailles in November 1973. The event, in which French designers competed against American ones, was a fund-raiser to repair the palace’s rapidly deteriorating roof. The American “victory” came against all odds; we were definitely the underdog. Still, I’ll admit that it felt great for this sometime expat to be on the American side that night, especially since we not only showed critics on both sides of the Atlantic that American fashion could hold its own against the very best in the world, but we also made history with the record number of black models who participated.

  Out of the thirty-six models used by the five American designers included in the show, ten of us were African-American: Billie Blair, Bethann Hardison, Amina Warsuma, Charlene Dash, Ramona Saunders, Norma Jean Darden, Barbara Jackson, Alva Chinn, Jennifer Brice, and me. En masse, the three dozen girls who walked the show ranged from the lightest-complected blondes and redheads to the darkest-skinned brunettes. We were the original United Colors of Benetton, a living, breathing emblem of America in all its glorious diversity. In 1973 that was a breakthrough of epic proportions (and a sweet vindication for me, since I’d had to move to Europe to find more acceptance), and like everything else that happened that night, it was proof positive that times were changing.

  The show, the brainchild of Eleanor Lambert, pitted five French couturiers who were considered the preeminent fashion virtuosos in the world—Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior—against five on-fire American designers: Anne Klein (who was accompanied by her pregnant number two, Donna Karan), Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Halston, and Stephen Burrows. It was very much Old World versus New.

  It was just after Thanksgiving, which I’d spent in New Jersey with my mom and stepfather, who’d bought a house there soon after I’d left for Europe. They seemed to be doing okay—moving out of the city had been good for them—but I still loathed Sonny and constantly had to hide my revulsion from Mom. Besides, extreme cold had already come to the New York area, so a free trip to France was just the thing to brighten my mood.

  On the flight over, the Versailles-bound crew felt like we were having a private party, with free-flowing champagne, singing, and dancing in the aisles. The clothes were all in the belly of the plane; as far as I and my fellow models were concerned, we had everything we needed to put on a terrific show. The pay was low (as in really, really low), but our pride was high because we knew we were the best walking girls in the business, and we were being asked to help rescue Versailles from ruin. Our attitude was like Mighty Mouse’s: “Here we come to save the day!”

  In Paris, a bus took us from Orly Airport to the Hotel Saint Jacques in the Latin Quarter. The digs were perfectly fine but hardly at the level of the Plaza Athénée, which was where Oscar de la Renta was staying. We girls bunked together, two or three to a room, and slept until another bus came at the crack of dawn to take us to the palace for rehearsal.

  At Versailles, the snowflakes fell like lace on the fragile rooftop, and the cobblestones in the courtyard glistened as everybody got off the bus. Like schoolgirls, we tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues; we didn’t mind the cold, because we figured we’d be warm inside. Wrong. The space was tiny, damp, and drafty. This was the first trip to Europe for some of the girls, and what a rude awakening it must have been: no central heating, no food, and worst of all, ancient toilets that lacked even the simplest amenities—like toilet paper! By the time the designers joined us, it was nearly dark, and we girls were like sheep huddling together just to keep warm. When they saw what was going on, Stephen Burrows and Anne Klein spoke up and managed to get us some cheese sandwiches.

  Meanwhile, out front, Halston, Bill Blass, and Oscar de la Renta were trying to get our segment of the show set up, but it was no-go because the stage crew union had called it quits for the day. Then Bill, Halston, and Oscar’s wife, Françoise (an editor at French Vogue), got into a tiff over the order in which the designers should go. Stephen was his easygoing self, and Oscar really didn’t care; he was busy rounding up his models to go back to his suite at the Plaza Athénée for a stealth rehearsal.

  For now, though, we were supposed to rehearse at Versailles, and everything seemed to be going wrong. Halston’s good friend Liza Minnelli was to open the American show, and in addition to being a model for the designers, I was one of Liza’s backup dancers. Kay Thompson, Liza’s godmother, was set to choreograph and direct. Kay was an idol of mine because she’d written one of my favorite children’s books, Eloise, and had coached Audrey Hepburn in one of my favorite movies, Funny Face. I was overjoyed just to meet her, let alone work with her.

  Kay was standing downstage with Halston when Liza’s backup dancers, including me, went onstage to rehearse the opening number. (Liza was arriving the next day.) From where I stood, Kay and Halston appeared to be quarreling. She was waving her long arms and making hand motions at the stage as Halston pointed here and there with his extended cigarette holder. His face was contorted in anger, and so was hers.

  Meanwhile, Joe Eula, the celebrated fashion illustrator who’d been recruited to design a stage set, looked traumatized, and the reason was evident. He had painted a very large Eiffel Tower on an even larger swath of seamless paper, but on that humongous stage, with its forty-five-foot-high ceiling, the painting looked like a hand towel flapping on a clothesline.

  There was no lighting, no stage assistants, no stage crew. It was midnight when we were told the obvious: The rehearsal would have to wait until morning. So it was back in the bus and off to Oscar’s semisecret rehearsal at the Athénée, where we ate caviar and drank champagne as Oscar directed our show number, featuring Billie Blair as a genie who charmed the rest of us into dancing in a circle around her and set to the music of Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra. By the time we got back to our hotel, it was nearly time to get up. Billie and I flopped down on our queen-size bed and slept in our clothes until the bus came at six-thirty to take us back to the palace.

  The first thing we learned was that Kay Thompson had walked off the job. She couldn’t handle the infighting among the designers, so she quit. At least the Opéra Royale stage was buzzing with activity—even if it was all for the French designers. There were three hundred people working up there, including the famous French hairdresser Alexandre de Paris. I couldn’t believe how much scenery was being moved on and off the stage. There were enough sets, by Jean-François Daigre, for five operettas and two orchestras. Meanwhile, the Americans had Joe Eula’s hand towel and a master cassette tape.

  Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, one of the show’s French organizers, was trying to assist us Americans, but she kept complaining to the French designers that we hadn’t spent enough money for props and that we had no orchestra. Finally, she just left, and we waited as the French conducted their leisurely rehearsal. They had corralled some big-name performers: Rudolf Nureyev, Zizi Jeanmaire, Capucine, the nude dancers from Paris’s Crazy Horse, and the legendary Josephine Baker (who, it’s worth pointing out, could as easily be claimed by the Americans, since she was born in Saint Louis—a city she left because my great-aunt Leanna had urged her to do so!).

  On my way to the bathroom, I sneaked out of our dressing space to watch the French rehearsals. I was running so fast in my high heels through the dark backstage area that I accidentally stepped on Nureyev’s toe as he prepared to leap onto the stage. He shot me an irritated look but didn’t miss a beat. I stood behind the curtain and watched him dance flawlessly to Swan Lake. When I rushed back to our dressing area to tell the others what was going on out front, Billie decided to c
ome with me to “use the loo.”

  This time a group of dancers was encircling a tall woman with a feathered headdress. In the middle stood Josephine Baker, decked out as a showgirl. This was a larger-than-life, near-mythic figure whom I’d been hearing about since childhood; she was an inextricable part of my personal folklore. I couldn’t just stand there and gape. “Come on, Billie,” I said. “Let’s say hello.”

  “No, no, I can’t,” Billie said, pushing me forward. “You go, Patty.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said, but I hooked my arm in hers and brought her along with me. We were both shaking in our high heels, and then I noticed Billie duck behind Josephine and begin to pluck feathers out of Josephine’s boas. I don’t think anyone noticed, but I looked so guilty as I was saying hello to Josephine that she must have thought I was strange. Sixty-seven at the time, Josephine was dressed in a nude catsuit, her long legs covered in fishnet stockings with pearls dripping off them. Her headdress of ostrich plumes was so enormous and high that I figured whatever balance she had came from having to hold up that thing. She had on eyelashes so heavy that all I could see of her eyes were two tiny twinkling slits. She gave me the briefest of smiles, like a silent film star, as I said hello. I would have loved to say, “My great-aunt Leanna—the music teacher who told you to get out of St. Louis—is the reason you’re here today,” but the guards caught Billie and me watching her from the wings and ordered us to return to our dressing area.

  Billie was so proud of her stolen plucked feathers that she handed me a piece of her plunder. “Here, Patty, these feathers will make us stars, too,” she said, hugging me. I still have that scraggly black feather—and I still think it’s magic. If nothing else, it reminds me that I managed to meet the great Josephine Baker before she died, which happened less than two years later.