I had no place to stay. Sure, I could move in again with Richie. After all, Sheila would be going back to her cluck of a husband and Richie’s bed and board would be available. I had a delicious thought—to call Marty Sawyer and tell him about his beautiful wife and Richie Pickering—but you know what? I couldn’t do it. Some kind of tradition, don’t ask me what. I could kill Sheila; I could pour acid up her cunt and sell the sound effects to a horror show, but I could not tell her husband that she’d been sleeping around. It was the one taboo, the one action I was not allowed to take. It was stupid, like applying Marquis of Queensbury rules to a gang bang, but that was the unwritten law and woe be unto the gypsy dancer who broke it.
I asked Barry if I could stay at his office as he had a room in the back, with a cot, where he often took naps. I told him it would only be for as long as it took me to find myself a new apartment. He said it would be okay and, at six thirty, he went home, saying good night and departing in little pirouettes, like a Jewish Jimmy Durante.
And so there I was, my first night back in New York, and I was as alone as I’d been the night of the big fire in my pretty little Greenwich Village apartment. Immediately I thought of Roland Jessup and called him. Some very genteel faggot answered the phone and said that Roland was out of town, Xanadu or something. I thought about who else I might call, as it was getting dark and Barry was two hours gone and I didn’t really want to be alone with the telephone for the remainder of the night.
Who else could I call? Florrie? She was on her honeymoon—the Virgin Islands, yet. I had already tried Roland. Don Cook was somewhere in Los Angeles. Alan Braden? He was probably still in knots from his one night fling with Ginnie the Jerker. Girlfriends? I had none. It was a sorry mess.
How about Ben Webber? He used to be a nice guy. Maybe he’d like to hear from me. Trembling, I dialed the number. It rang twice and then he answered. And I hung up immediately, terrified. I had heard his voice. It was like listening to God. I still loved him. It was a curse. I hated myself for having called him but I liked the fact that, anytime I wanted to, I could dial his number and hear his voice. That was neat. That would always keep him near to me, the sonofabitch. When would I stop behaving like that? When would I be mature enough to accept the fact that I had loved and lost, and been used, and cast aside, and traded in for something of greater value?
I heard a hand on the outer door, turning the knob. Stupid, I had forgotten to lock it. I stood there as the man came in and I could see the next day’s headlines—“Dumb dancer found mutilated and tortured to death in agent’s office. Police suspect foul play.”
It was Richie and he smiled at me, stickily paternal. “Barry told me you’d be here.”
“I was, but I left.”
“He says you’re unhappy with me.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“I have your money. I’m surprised Barry didn’t tell you.”
“Explain that, please.”
“The money deducted for your room. Plus the money to bring your pay up to Sheila’s. Here. Comes to over three hundred dollars. Ginnie, I had to do it this way, Sheila insisted.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s a bitch. She didn’t like you. Actually had to see all the contracts, exactly the way she wanted them, or she’d have walked out on us as soon as we hit St. Louis. Without her we’d have had no act.”
“She moved in with you, right off.”
“That was her idea, too.”
“You asked me to join the both of you on that rainy Sunday.”
“Also her idea. Among other things, she’s a voyeur. Thought it would be cute to watch us at play.”
“And now that she’s back with her husband you want me to take over.”
“Not exactly. I want you to have a place to stay. If you don’t want to get in bed with me, that’s okay. I just can’t see you sleeping in this crummy office.”
“And when we go on the road again? What happens then? Does she move back and I move out?”
“She’s out. Out of the act.”
“Why?”
“Because her husband found out and kicked the shit out of her. Her face is a mess. No makeup will cover it. And she’s got a couple busted ribs. Called me less than an hour ago, so much gauze in her mouth I could barely understand her.”
“Who told Marty?”
“You kidding? I thought you did.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Listen, Ginnie, think anything you want about me, I’m a realist. I can replace Sheila but not you. We’ve got almost a month to find somebody. Noah Sobel wants us for two more shows this fall, and Barry’s got us into the Riviera for three weeks, on the same bill with Howard and Birch. I took Sheila with all her nuttiness because she was the only girl we saw who didn’t have two left feet, and you know it. Now, when we audition, we not only look for a good dancer but for one who doesn’t have scrambled eggs in her head.”
“I don’t want to move back in with you, Richie. You have answers for everything. You make me unhappy.”
“Okay. I understand. But staying here is stupid. Stay with me until you find another place, okay? I’ll continue with my ‘handsoff’ policy. Okay? Now, come on.”
He picked up my bag and I followed him into the elevator, where he stayed pressed against the far wall, smiling, as if to say, “See how far away I can stay from you?”
In the cab he sat practically on the running board, which the cab didn’t have. And he carried my bag up to his apartment as if that’s what he did for a living. But once inside he tried to make love to me but I wouldn’t have it. He was annoyed but then shrugged it off, figuring he’d get me when I was hotter. But he was wrong. I never made love to him again. Never. Ever.
I always watched the newspapers, looking for word on Ben’s plays. One of them was on—“The Magic Horn.” It was kind of marvelous. A Jazz Fable. Sal Mineo played a deaf and dumb kid who was left this magic trumpet that would only play if he believed it would play. Ralph Meeker was his older buddy, a piano player. And all the other parts were played by jazz musicians like Vic Dickenson, Milt Hinton, Ernie Caceres, Pee Wee Russell; and Jimmy McPartland, the great cornetist, as the heavy. It was beautiful, really touching. The reviews were generally good but only Bob Salmaggi, the music critic of the New York World Telegram and Sun, really understood it, saying that music played the lead and that the humans were only secondary. I called Ben’s apartment, heard his voice—and hung up. I was having the crazies again and had to know he was nearby.
We found another girl, Dolores Murphy. She was perfect. Pale skin, black hair, blue eyes—Irish and basic. And she had the flaming personality of a grape. But when she danced, she was quite something else. She had incredible legs, a body made of rubber, and a stage presence that, if you’re not born with, takes ten years to develop.
Dolores was quick to fit in. Our only problem was that Noah Sobel was concerned that the TV audience would see that one of the girls had been changed since the Pickering Trio last did The Joey Magnuson Show. So, no sooner was Florrie back from her honeymoon than she was asked to come in so that the makeup men could try to make Dolores look like her.
We had to develop new numbers, of course. But we’d have to have done them anyway because, by then, all the improvisation had gone out of our old numbers and I just wasn’t a good enough actress to come on stage and make like I had never danced them before. Also, for the Riviera, for Howard and Birch, we had to look bright and fresh and new. As a matter of fact, Richie was so leery about opening there with numbers we would have first done on television that we worked out additional numbers just for the Riviera.
We did the first of our Joey Magnuson Shows. Two numbers, as before. It went smoothly, the newness of the material making it easier for me to come on and do my bit. The first number was straight, of course, but the second number relied on my ability to break up the act. And I did. Even the orchestra broke up and the director had the good sense to throw a camera on Joey and Mara-Ja
yne, who were collapsing in the wings. Anyone watching on television would just have to know that the whole thing was spontaneous, unrehearsed, and hysterical.
Ben’s next play went on, only three weeks after “The Magic Horn.” He was getting to be a celebrity and there was a lot of stuff in the papers about his show even before it aired. It was called “The Fair-Haired Boy,” and it had Jackie Cooper playing Ben in a kind of behind-the-scenes drama of a movie company’s advertising setup. The reviews were all respectful if not out-and-out raves. And all the critics agreed that Ben was a writer to watch. One man, though, had to be pretty ticked off about that show and that was Sam Gaynor, whom Ben had redubbed Ron Garner and presented as the villain of the piece.
I called Ben again, of course, after the show and hung up as soon as he answered. And then I cried and felt better, and felt worse, and wished I was dead, but knew enough to go on. One day, I thought, and soon, I’d have to answer when he said hello. One day. Very soon. Maybe after his next play. Maybe not, but maybe so.
We began rehearsing our Riviera numbers and were very busy because we still had another Joey Magnuson Show, to do in another few weeks. Work, work, work.
The way it worked out, as soon as we’d done our last Joey Magnuson Show, we went right over to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where the Riviera was, and began rehearsing there on their very large stage. Noah Sobel wanted to sign us for another show, maybe two, but Richie was playing it cool, taking it slow, giving it thought.
Let me tell you, Normie Birch was a crazy nut. A comic, he threw plates around the stage and danced on the outsides of his ankles and made faces and could make a condemned man laugh. Gary Howard, the other half of the act, was basically a romantic singer but had a streak of pure insanity running through him. Rehearsals were a ball because nobody seemed to take anything seriously except Richie, and after a while even he got into the swing of it.
Ben’s third play of the season went on and it clobbered me. It was a love story—“The Lonely Look”—and it was clearly about Ben and me, with Jack Lord playing Ben and Janice Rule playing me. The only thing was, it had a happy ending, with the playwright marrying the dancer and the whole world wrapped up in roses.
Before I called him after that show, I had determined to tell him who I was, sticking two Scotches in me to help me do the deed. But the operator came on and told me that they no longer had a listing for Benjamin Webber at that address. Nor did they have a listing for Benjamin Webber at all except Benjamin J. Webber, in the Bronx, a plumber, and Ben T. Webber, a shoemaker in Queens.
So my little attempt at reunion had gone awry. Too little, too late. Ben had changed his phone number and had possibly even moved. That fun apartment, that love place—he might no longer be in it. If so, then I had to view it as no longer being there. It would be less painful. All my bridges back to Ben were being burned, and I hadn’t even struck a match. Spontaneous combustion, or time and tide not waiting—whichever it was, the past was fading and my idiot heart was breaking. Oh, where was the little girl who rode ponies on Sundays and sat on her daddy’s knee?
The reviews on “The Lonely Look” were sensational, and Ben was heralded as a writer who could do it all—comedy, drama, love stories, fables, fantasies—the whole bag. And two of the critics wondered just when television would lose him to Hollywood. Soon, they suspected.
We opened at the Riviera and—ho-hum—we were a smash. And I mean really. It started out okay. After the Don Arden dancers opened the show, we came on. We did our first number straight, were applauded, and got off. And then came back. That is, Richie and Dolores came back. I was still offstage, waiting to go on with my improvisation. But, before I could, crazy Normie Birch came out in a tutu, tentatively watching Richie and Dolores (like I was supposed to be doing) and then joining in, grabbing Richie and dancing off with him, spinning him off the stage and out between the tables in the audience. Richie knew enough to go with it, to follow Normie’s lead, because what else could he do? But Dolores, left alone onstage, dissolved into hiccoughing hysterics, practically wetting the floor as she sank to her knees, trying to keep her legs pressed together.
Me? I’m standing in the wings like a lox because what do they need me for? Only out comes Gary Howard, dressed up as either a Hawaiian warlord or a large chicken. He grabs me by my arm and pulls me onstage and tries to lift me only he can’t. By now Dolores is lying on the stage in a fetal position, laughing her way through very heavy labor. Richie and Normie are waltzing all over the Riviera, and the orchestra, quick to pick up on the nonsense, goes into a Strauss waltz.
Gary next pulls me over to the stage mike where he starts throwing one-liners at me and I try desperately to respond. I guess I was good because Gary was breaking up. At first I thought my costume had split (shades of Guys and Dolls), but no, it was just me, standing up there with Gary, trading ad libs with him. And it was all working, everything of-a-piece. Finally, when it looked like we were hung up for an ending, I tap-danced on point, watching out of the corner of my eye as Dolores, completely bonkers, rolled off the stage, landing on one of the ringside tables and lying spread-eagled on the tablecloth, where those Philadelphia Mummers might eat her (one of them actually trying—with a spoon).
There came upon us the loudest burst of applause I’d ever heard, and all of us took bow after bow. And when the curtain finally closed on us, we lay on the floor in hysterics while out front the orchestra played “Onward Christian Soldiers.” We managed to crawl offstage though we couldn’t stand up straight for a half hour.
When I was sprawled out in my dressing room, a waiter brought me a blotty note that had been hastily inked on a paper cocktail napkin. It read: “You were great.” It wasn’t signed so Dolores insisted that it was from Sol Hurok and that we were stars. Gary and Normie came in to see if we were alright. They apologized for destroying our act and then asked if we couldn’t do it as a regular thing throughout the run. Richie thought it was a great idea if we could at least do our opening number straight. After that anything that happened was fine with him.
The toughest assignment was mine. I had no idea what Gary would be talking about because neither would he; it would all be ad lib. The upshot of it was that the dopey girl dancer I had played until then emerged as a dopey foil for Gary Howard. And I wasn’t bad. I was more verbal than I thought I’d be, quick on the uptake and brightly inventive (I’m told). Also, Gary was easy to work off, and, whenever I got stuck, I just tap-danced until Gary stopped me.
Amazingly enough, even though we did it every show, Dolores got sincerely hysterical every time. Richie and Normie became very adroit at dancing all over the Riviera, one night even coming out of the ladies’ room on roller skates, flinging toilet paper as the orchestra played “Rule Brittania.”
The whole gig got to be the talk of the town. Life magazine did a spread on us—“The Riviera Rowdies”—in which they said that Richie and I were an “item” and would be married in the spring. It didn’t bother me because it was too funny and Richie laughed, too.
I even appeared on The Stan Arlen Show, playing off him as I had played off Gary, being the dumb blonde who somehow wasn’t all that dumb. And after our run had concluded at the Riviera, Stan Arlen asked if I’d consider becoming a regular on his late-night TV show. I said I might, providing it didn’t interfere with the regular bookings of the Pickering Trio, and we left it at that.
Richie wasn’t happy and he took me aside and told me so, pointing out that we were a dance act and that I owed him some loyalty and that, though it was all right in a club, working off Howard and Birch, I’d be getting in well over my head if I began seeing myself as a standup comic. I assured him that I had no such view of myself, letting him know in the process that I was a free woman and could damn well do what I pleased.
I didn’t intend for it to end in a fight but that’s what it did, with Richie calling me cunty names and me asserting my god-given right of free choice. And so there I was again, in Barry Nadler’s office, facin
g another night alone on the cot.
Barry, thinking that Richie and I were lovers, was reluctant to take sides, saying only that he hoped we could work it out. He left at about six P.M., giving me permission to sleep on that lousy cot of his. He’d have invited me to sleep at his place, but his brother and his wife were in from Albany and there wasn’t any room. I told him not to worry, that I’d be perfectly comfortable and that I preferred to be alone.
I sat at Barry’s desk, wondering if Ben had seen me on TV or had come across the spread in Life. The usual phone calls came, about a half dozen from various clients in distress. I told them all that Barry would be in in the morning and that they should call then.
One of the calls, however, was from Sheila Sawyer. I identified myself and she was very pleasant, glad to be speaking to me and to have read how smashingly the act was going and all that. She seemed very sincere and not at all consistent with the image I had of her, so I probed.
“Sheila? You all right now?”
“Sure. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Well—the bruises and the ribs?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know.”
“Look, Ginnie, I called Barry to get some information for my taxes. I need some W-2 forms or 1040’s. I don’t know what the fuck I need.”
“Marty didn’t beat you up?”
“What? Why should Marty beat me up?”
“Richie told me that Marty beat you up.”
“Yeah? Well, if you want to believe that sonofabitch. He told me a few things about you, too.”
“Like what?”
“Like you were dykey and wanted to do a scene with me and him. I didn’t believe him but that’s what he told me.”
“Weren’t you sleeping with him?”
“You kidding? I’m a married lady. I slept on the fucking sofa. He said if I wanted my own room I’d have to pay for it, and listen, kid, I needed the money and still do. Marty hasn’t worked in six months. I know it didn’t look good—and Richie sure tried—but you go sleeping with your boss, baby, and that can only lead to bad news.”
There Should Have Been Castles Page 41