Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  The French rehearsal took most of the day, and by the time we got use of the stage, the stage union had quit again. This time Halston literally put his foot down—he stamped it hard on the floor and threatened to walk out. His little temper tantrum worked; mysteriously, they were back on the job. But the lighting assistants were not helping, and we had the biggest star in the world—Liza Minnelli, who had just come off a Best Actress Oscar win for Cabaret—opening the show. We were forced to rehearse with a simple spotlight, and that was when the eureka moment came: no sets, just spotlights! Genius. Necessity is the mother of invention.

  Joe Eula helped each designer with his lighting—lots of pale blue, rose, and magenta—and since the music was already in order on the cassettes, all we had to do was be in our place on time. Each of the designers directed his own section in rehearsal: Bill Blass went first for seven minutes, followed by Stephen, then Anne Klein, then Halston, then Oscar. Somehow we just pulled together as a team. We finished rehearsals at around half past nine, and there was a party to attend at Maxim’s, given in Liza’s honor. Finally, a fun night out in Paris. I table-hopped all night long, hobnobbing with the likes of the Duchess of Windsor and Andy Warhol, and once again got to sleep in the early-morning hours.

  The sight of Le Château de Versailles as we approached on the bus the evening of the show was one of the most magical scenes I have ever witnessed: It felt like being inside a snow globe as snowflakes drifted down on the lit-up palace. We entered through the front gates, and everything seemed golden and full of life.

  None of us could see any of the French portion of the show beyond what went on backstage, though I did hear that Princess Grace of Monaco was in the audience. A giant pumpkin, like a Cinderella coach, was rolled onto the stage, and we were told that a ballerina would bounce out of it during the Dior show and dance to the music of Prokofiev. We couldn’t hear the music from where we were standing. It seemed so silent, it was hard to believe a show was going on out there.

  I knew that Josephine Baker was the finale of the French portion of the show, and missing that one killed me. I would have given anything to sit out front and watch her. But as one of the girls in our gang said, too bad, too sad. We realized the first half of the show was over only when someone came backstage and said there would be a champagne interval, the way there is at the theater. Well, why not? I thought. This is theater.

  Then it was showtime. The backup dancers took their place onstage, with the heavy curtains still closed. We could hear the audience milling around, getting back to seats. We lined up like racehorses behind Liza. My place was in the second row after the lead dancers; I kept a good eye on a dancer in front of me so I wouldn’t miss a step.

  “Bonjour, Paris!” Liza shouted as the curtain rose. Then she began to sing: “I want to step out on the Champs-Élysées . . .” and I could feel goose bumps all over my body as those of us onstage started to step in sync to the music. We were moving as fast as our feet could go; the energy level was sky-high. It seemed like only an instant before the opening number was over and the audience was applauding wildly. I quickly shuffled offstage to change into my first outfit for Anne Klein. Everything was going fast-fast-fast. The next thing I knew, I was running to change into Stephen’s finale dress—a hot pastel multicolored creation with a dragon-tail train—and the trumpets and funky R&B guitar of Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” enveloped the whole theater. The lyrics were all about loving, and I thought, That’s what we’re here to do—to spread the love and happiness.

  The show was moving like a locomotive, and my heart was beating to match. I moved to center stage, where I would come into the spotlight to walk the stage alone. But Bethann was to walk out first, and she got an unexpected case of stage fright. She turned to me and said, “I can’t go out there.” I decided to make a joke of it: “If you don’t go out there, I will kick you out. Just do it!” I gave her a reassuring look, and she seemed to take a gulp of air as she strode out like a warrior, feather and bone in her hair and a defiant look on her face. By now the crowd was really warmed up; they’d seen all these beautiful black girls onstage, and Bethann was the crowning glory. Then it was my turn. The drums beat out Love and happiness / Love is . . . In order to keep the beat, I had to hold my long train in my hand. As I walked, I picked up speed, waving the train about as though it weighed nothing, until I got to the front of the stage. And then—bam!—I dropped it hard with attitude and made a sharp turn. I could feel the weight of the train dragging behind me almost the length of the entire stage. As swiftly as I could, I returned to the top of the stage to meet the other girls, and when I turned again, the funky drumbeat picked up. This was the kind of runway move—more like a dance—that I had become known for and loved through and through. (Years later, Vogue would describe my style as “Broadway meets flamenco,” and I think that gets it about right.) I was the point of the arrow for the girls to follow in a V formation behind me, spreading out downstage in the blue light as Stephen had told us, an arrow shot from Cupid’s bow straight into our audience’s heart. With Al Green’s voice lifting us up, we could do no wrong. The audience simply had to fall in love with us.

  Posing there at the front of the stage in our V, we looked out into the audience. This was the true origin of voguing, where it really began, with us walking girls. We were just happy moving with the rhythm of the music, like waves to the shore, coming at the audience, who went crazy wild, standing up, cheering, almost dancing along with us. Talk about the power of love. They felt it, all right.

  Stephen’s presentation stole the show, and I was over the moon for him. But there was no time to bask in the applause; I had another solo number for Halston. I rushed to change into his evening dress, constructed of layers of beige chiffon. The music from Visconti’s The Damned, with its classical guitar, played as we Halston girls—Elsa Peretti, Marisa Berenson, China Machado, and a few others who usually did H’s shows—posed in sharp beams of pin lighting. The choreography was by Martha Graham, with whom Halston and Joe Eula had consulted when Kay Thompson quit so abruptly.

  Onstage, Elsa carried a silver compact that she’d designed, China fluttered a black raven-feathered fan with a silver handle over her bare breasts, and Marisa wore transparent sequins. Then it was my turn in the spotlight.

  Alone onstage, in complete silence, I could see nothing. Everything was blacked out except one dramatic beam of light that waited for me. I started spinning into it in my mind even before I left backstage, and within seconds the spotlight was following me. All I could hear was Halston’s voice in my head shouting, Spin, spin! And I did. All I could feel were the layers and layers of chiffon, a vortex all around me in which I was spinning. I was on the very edge of the stage until I was virtually in the audience; such was my momentum. But somehow I managed to grip the soles of my high-heeled sandals with the balls of my feet and prayed that I would stop before I tumbled into the crowd. My prayers were answered: I made a dead stop, and then the vortex of chiffon reversed itself and I started to twirl and spin at high velocity in the other direction. What had come over me? I’m not sure, but something held me in balance. I heard the roar of applause and whistles, and my heart felt as though it would pop from joy.

  The rest of the show was a blur. I joined the other girls in Oscar’s number as Billie’s genie hypnotized us to the swirling violins of Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra. I didn’t take part in Bill Blass’s section of the show, which was Gatsbyesque, with music by Cole Porter, because I had no time to change.

  Then the curtain dropped and all the models were back onstage, dressed in black and seated at tables for a restaurant scene. Liza came out to center stage and threw us all a big kiss. The curtain rose, the spotlight was aimed, and Liza stepped into it, surrounded by rainbows. In her appearance and her movements, she looked so much like her mother, Judy Garland, that if you’d squinted, you would have sworn it was Judy herself up there.

  As Liza sang and danced like the world-class en
tertainer she was, everyone in that palace—onstage, backstage, in the wings, and in the audience (where people were throwing their programs in the air like confetti)—knew without a doubt that American royalty was in residence at Versailles.

  chapter 40

  COME SAIL AWAY

  Mombasa, Kenya, 1973.

  Courtesy of Barry McKinley.

  I looked up from my game of shuffleboard and took in the craggy face of one of the world’s natural wonders: the Rock of Gibraltar. A shiver ran down my spine. This, I thought, is the reason I became a model and not a designer—to see sights like this instead of being stuck in an office.

  I was aboard the S.S. Michelangelo, and we were maneuvering through the Strait of Gibraltar en route to Genoa, Italy, the ship’s home port. The photographer Barry McKinley had chosen me to be part of a big fashion feature for GQ magazine that we’d been shooting as we sailed across the Atlantic on this magnificent ocean liner. I was the only woman; the other three models in our group—Peter Keating, Tony Spinelli, and Ted Dawson—were male (and totally gorgeous). After Genoa, we were going to Capri, and from there, Barry, Peter, and I would take another boat to Mombasa, Kenya, and then fly from there to the interior for another photo shoot for Harpers & Queen.

  I’d been warned that Barry, a red-haired, somewhat quirky Australian, was a “perfectionist” (which, in my experience, is code for “difficult,” which is code for “jerk”), but he and I had been getting along just fine. The theme of the GQ story was “elegance,” Barry explained, and the aesthetic that he was going for was Duchess of Windsor chic. The clothes I wore were varied and exquisite, and I examined them from top to bottom. I had become more interested than ever in the finer points of clothing design when, a few weeks earlier, Antonio had taken me to the Chelsea Hotel in New York to meet one of his heroes, the eccentric and utterly brilliant couturier Charles James, who lived in a single room at the Chelsea amid his draping mannequins and cutting tables. Charles, who’d been Halston’s teacher and Marlene Dietrich’s favorite designer, had awed me with his knowledge and impeccable design instincts. He was the first designer to cut fabric on the bias and thereby introduce one-seam construction, and he showed me how the lines of a well-made dress echo the wishbone shape of a woman’s body. As a former seamstress (emphasis on “former;” I was not sorry that I had dumped my sewing machine once and for all), I had always paid attention to the way clothes were sewn, but Charles made me more attuned to the way they were made. This trip with Barry, whose own fashion sense was peerless, advanced my design education by leaps and bounds.

  Our little gang aroused a lot of curiosity from the other passengers on the ship: the three handsome male models and me, all dressed up in designer duds; the tall redheaded guy with the camera; and the crazy stylist/hairdresser/makeup artist Richard Adams, who’d drape me in pearls to wear with a swimsuit. “Very Duchess of Windsor,” he’d always say. He and Barry both had a thing for the Duchess of Windsor, who was widely considered the best-dressed woman in the world at the time.

  We’d work hard during the day, grinding out the looks that sold the dream of elegance. And at night we’d party hard. We ate dinner with the ship’s captain, but not before testing out every cocktail lounge on every level of the ship. We’d drink and drink and get so wasted that we could barely walk up and down the stairs. We’d just fall down and laugh at how hilarious it all was. It sounds kind of ghastly when I describe it now, but I was having a ball. During the day when we weren’t working, I’d lounge by the pool and have lunch on the deck. If this is what’s called a working vacation, I’ll take it.

  When we reached Genoa, we immediately caught a boat to Naples and from there we marched along with our Vuitton trunks to catch the hydrofoil to Capri, where we continued our shooting. I wore sun hats and holiday clothes and posed with the boys, who at this point had become like my brothers. Just before our final photo, we went to lunch and downed such large quantities of white wine—a fixture at Capri lunch tables—that we could barely keep it together for the photo. I had to stand by myself at the top of a tall rock—Ted Dawson sat at my feet on the side of the rock—and it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t fall down and crack my skull. But as usual, Barry pulled a rabbit out of the hat and got a great shot. No one looking at that beautifully composed photograph would ever guess our state of inebriation.

  Capri was the end of the road for Ted, Tony, and Richard; Barry, Peter, and I headed on to Africa, the land of my mother’s ancestors, or at least some of them. And that was where Barry’s notorious “difficult” side surfaced, perhaps because we were no longer enjoying all the perks and first-class accommodations that the developed world had to offer. He and Peter, who were romantically involved, started fighting constantly, and a day rarely passed that Barry didn’t throw a temper tantrum—or two.

  The small plane that picked us up in Mombasa to take us into the interior was almost too tiny for the enormous amount of luggage we were towing. As we flew to Lake Nakuru National Park, the herds of water buffalo, giraffes, and zebras on the ground all merged, looking from the air like one long undulating body snaking across the brown earth. Our little plane dived down to let us get a closer look; the sheer abundance of animal life was breathtaking.

  Barry and Peter got into a huge row as soon as we got off the plane, and in the middle of it, Barry said he was calling off the shoot. I wasn’t about to let that happen. “You do not come all the way to Africa to not take the photos,” I told him. “You are going to take them. And you’re going to stop fighting.”

  We spent the day crossing an arid plain to a Maasai village. Once the sun set, the sky was almost pure black. For dinner we ate snake cooked over an open fire, along with a drink made of cow’s milk and cow’s blood, just as the Maasai do. On the way back to our huts with our guide (he was a Kenyan-born Brit who led safaris), we had to walk along a river. Suddenly, our guide told us to stay very still. There was a black leopard in a tree eating the carcass of an antelope. We could hear but not see him feasting; only his huge greenish-yellow eyes glinted through the darkness. I was petrified. What if that leopard preferred American fast food—like me? (Our guide told me later that the villagers put sheep carcasses in the branches of the surrounding trees at night to keep the leopards satisfied so they wouldn’t go after the people.)

  That night I lay in my hut alone, trying to get to sleep on my little straw mat, but I was upset because Peter and Barry were quarreling in the hut they were sharing and scared because of all the hungry animals nearby. The fruit I’d been given on arrival had been half-eaten by monkeys that got into my hut when I wasn’t there, and at that very moment I could feel an elephant eating off the top of the hut. He snorted and brushed up against it, which terrified me. Our guide was in the next hut, and I told myself that he’d protect me if the elephant decided to stampede. With that in mind, I finally dropped off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.

  I woke up earlier than the boys and decided to go relax by the river with a book and a banana. Sitting on the sand cross-legged, I closed my eyes to meditate, and when I opened them, I was completely encircled by large hungry-looking yellow monkeys with long teeth. I remained silent; my first thought was that they wanted my banana. Then a gunshot rang out, the monkeys scattered, and I felt myself being pulled roughly across the sand by my shirt collar. It was the guide, and he was furious with me. He said I was in grave danger and that I should never, ever go off by myself like that again. These animals were dangerous and could eat me alive. I realized that I’d been very lucky that morning.

  We were going to shoot some photos during the day that involved taking a Jeep out over the plains. Peter and Barry were still mad when we set off. I was trying to apply eyeliner and a bit of rouge and eye shadow as the Jeep bounced along over the bumpiest, dustiest roads I’d ever been on in my life (the Jeep had no roof). Our ride soon turned into an impromptu safari, as we were treated to the sight of giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and even lions grazing right out in the open
. I was marveling at these majestic beasts, so close we could almost touch them, when Barry announced that he had to relieve himself. The driver stopped the Jeep, and Barry jumped out and ducked behind a bush.

  As it turns out, a lion’s mane is indistinguishable from a dry beige bush. All of a sudden, Barry was running like a bullet for the Jeep, shouting “Lion!” Our driver started up the motor and started to pull out. Barry yelled at him to stop, but the driver just kept going. When Peter told the driver, “Keep driving!” I couldn’t believe my ears! Was Peter really so angry at Barry that he’d leave him here to be killed by the lion?

  “Are you insane?” I screamed, grabbing Peter’s shoulders and shaking him as hard as I could. “Stop this car!” I was shouting at the top of my lungs. Barry, his face redder than his hair, was running alongside the Jeep, which had slowed but was still moving. I reached out and pulled him, hard, into the back of the Jeep, where we both tumbled onto the floor. These people are out of their minds, I thought as we sped away, leaving a spray of rocks behind us.

  That night, as usual, I could hear Barry and Peter arguing, but I couldn’t make out the words. If I had to guess, I’d say Barry was bawling out Peter for nearly leaving him there to die with the lion. Those two weren’t exactly ambassadors for coupledom; witnessing the viciousness with which they went at each other, I began to wonder if the whole concept of a romantic partnership was inherently flawed and doomed to failure. Maybe we should all forget about finding Mr. or Ms. Right and resign ourselves to being alone. That was how I felt in the tent that night—a million miles from everything that was safe and familiar and more lonely than I can ever remember being. But I also remember thinking that loneliness had to be better than fighting nonstop with a so-called lover who’s so furious he’s willing to let you get torn apart by a lion on the side of a road in Kenya.