There Should Have Been Castles

by Herman Raucher

  NBC, via Brokaw and Kaplan, had begun to make noises about a long-term contract, to which Barry was very receptive but on which no one had as yet asked for my signature. Another agent was seen hanging around. He was from William Morris—tall, bluesuited, grey at the temples, and very presidential. The few times we chatted he told me not to sign with anyone too hastily. His name was Vernon Stacey and he impressed me. Though I suspected that he was soliciting me, he was so low-key that I often was unaware that he’d been around until I saw him leave.

  I watched the Pickering Trio on television. They were good enough in their first number but were fantastic in their second. The tall blonde in particular, naively sexy, was in such control of what she was all about that even Joey Magnuson and Mara-Jayne came close to dissolving in laughter. It was Ginnie, I could tell by the ponytail; but the old TV had seen better days, and its seven-inch screen was greying around the edges and the whole thing was coldly two-dimensional, whereas the girl I knew had been most decidedly three. When the show concluded, I suspected that I didn’t know her anymore. And when I turned the set off, I had to wonder if I’d ever known her at all.

  “The Fair-Haired Boy” went on, directed deftly by David Greene, a Canadian. Jackie Cooper played me, and the nearest actor we could get who was large enough to play Sam Gaynor was a half-ape, half-Viking named Ulf Redmond. If Sam Gaynor had been an indifferent adversary before that play, he had to be a blood enemy after. Yet all I had done was to put him up there in all his boring splendor, designing his three longest monologues so that they were interrupted by commercials—and were still going on after the commercials had concluded. The effect was astounding, making the character look as though he never stopped talking, which was the essence of Sam Gaynor and was why I doubted if he’d heard the show, let alone seen it.

  When I got back to the apartment that night after having chatted briefly with Vernon Stacey (who was about to make his move), I received another of those prank phone calls. It was unsettling because I knew who I wanted it to be. Anyway, on the following day I arranged to get an unlisted number. So ended an era, finally, and by my own hand.

  The reviews were fine and Brokaw and Kaplan and two NBC vice-presidents came at me with visions of glory and offers of the moon. But Stacey had advised me not to commit, and, as nicely as I could, I didn’t.

  The Pickering Trio did another Joey Magnuson Show and were once again funnily great. But someone in the control booth had chosen to train the camera almost exclusively on the blonde ponytail, superimposing her face over a full shot of all three of the dancers. It was a brilliant move, for the ponytail’s face was a perfect mirror of the trio’s dancing, reflecting innocence, then interest, then confidence, then bliss. And even when the whole number came apart at the seams, the ponytail never knew that it was she who had caused it. The camera work gave the choreography elements of Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Pearl White. And damned if that leggy blonde wasn’t Lombard incarnate.

  My third and final play of my NBC contract was “The Lonely Look,” directed by Harvey “Slidey” Epstein. It could not have gone better. Though Janice Rule did not much look like Ginnie, she did have that dancer’s grace and a spooky kind of repose that made her wonderful in the role. As for Jack Lord’s playing me, that was a stretch. He was better-looking, more intelligent and less obtrusive. But, because he was also a helluvan actor, I could not object to his being cast as the writer. He gave the part a sympatico that even I hadn’t realized was a prerequisite to the play’s working. And I was pleased to see what a nice guy I actually was underneath all that sturm and drang. I had taken liberties in the scripting. It wasn’t exactly Ginnie and me. And it had a happy ending because, in the fifties, that was more often than not required. But in its own way it worked better than had any of my preceding plays.

  We had our meeting in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel, Vernon Stacey and me. It was the first time we had really talked. All the other times we had merely touched elbows and grazed conversations. That night he was not one for beating around the bush. Even before our first drinks had arrived, Vernon Stacey had already come to grips with the reason for our being together.

  “Barry Nadler is a nice man,” he said. “And NBC is a nice network. And Kemper is a nice aluminum company—but you’ve already outgrown all of them. And to saddle yourself with any of them would be to stunt your career before it had a chance to get properly started.”

  “Barry’s been good to me.”

  “Really? Did he waive his commission?”

  “No.”

  “Then he wasn’t being all that good.”

  “Will the Morris office waive their commission?”

  “No. Not because we’re not nice but because it will be too large a figure. If you were starting out, and we believed in you, and our commission was fifty dollars, we’d waive it if you asked us to. But you’re not starting out, you’re cresting. And you’re worth a lot more than NBC is offering.”

  “Do you know what they’re offering?”

  “I don’t have to. No matter what they’re offering, it would be wrong for you to accept. It’ll tie you up, keep you in the corral when you should be allowed to roam. I can get you more for one movie assignment than they can pay you for all five of those plays.”

  “How do you know it’s five?”

  “I guessed. Ben, NBC is hung with a weekly budget. If you want to limit yourself to television, stay with Barry Nadler and with Brokaw and be happy. But a film studio has a different budget for every film, and it’s big. And screenwriters get a big hunk of it. Warner Brothers has already called Barry Nadler. Twice. He’s turned them down.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  “Why would Barry turn them down?”

  “Because he knows that once you leave New York you leave him. He can’t possibly handle your career from here. It’ll be but a matter of time before some big talent agency convinces you to join them. The Morris office thinks the time is now. We want you, Ben. We think we can help your career and make big money for ourselves in the process.”

  “Does Helen McIninny still work for you?”

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s very good. Would you like her to be assigned to you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m no Henry Denker.”

  “You lost me.”

  “No. I would not like Helen McIninny to be assigned to me.”

  “Barry Nadler handles comics, acrobats, jugglers, and dance teams. He’s strictly Borscht Belt. How he talked you into signing with him—Are you signed?”

  “No. It’s verbal.”

  “And you feel you have to honor it.”

  “To some degree, yes.”

  “I’ll take a guess right now that it will cost you fifty thousand dollars this year to have Barry Nadler represent you instead of us. Ten percent of fifty thousand dollars is five thousand dollars. Give him the five thousand dollars and call it quits.”

  “Where do I get the five thousand dollars?”

  “From your first movie assignment.”

  “I don’t have it yet.”

  “You have it the minute you sign with us. Do we have a deal, Ben?”

  “Can I take a couple of days to think about it?”

  “Take all the time you want. Just don’t sign anything without letting me know what you’re signing. Even if you don’t sign with us, I’ll help you in your deal with them.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “To impress you. So that next time we come back at you to sign, you’ll think of us kindly and remember what a schmuck you once were—and you’ll sign.”

  “I’d like to think about it.”

  I thought about it. And while I was thinking about it I received a long distance call from Don. Said he was coming east and was there room in the old pad—for two more. I said yes but that he’d better hurry as I might be going west. He said he’d hurry.

  Jerry Ka
plan was being very solicitous of me. He asked if I’d like to join him and his wife for the opening of the new show at Bill Miller’s Riviera. He said I could bring a date but I simply couldn’t think of anyone so we went as a threesome. Karen Kaplan was a smashing-looking girl who just couldn’t bring herself to fawn over me as her husband was doing, and I liked her for it. Our table was not the best, about midway. But it was the center table of a dozen that sat on a one-foot-high raised landing, thus affording us an excellent if somewhat distant view of the stage.

  The dinner was passable. The Don Arden Girls did a nice opening number, strutting about in floral array to a “Lady In The Dark” medley. Then—a big surprise to me because I hadn’t even looked to see who was on the bill—out came the Pickering Trio and it took me a few moments to accept that it all was happening. They did their first number straight, with Florrie’s replacement doing just fine. But it was the blonde ponytail who caught my eye, as she always had and always would.

  They danced in meticulous synchronization, sort of a modern version of “In A Country Garden.” It was precise, stylish and clever and the audience ate it up. Their second number never got started, at least not the way I thought they must have intended it. Because out came Normie Birch, on point (on ankles would have been more correct), in some frilly ballet get-up—and it was mayhem. Everyone knew that it was ad lib because it was a show-wise audience and they knew what could happen on opening night with Howard and Birch. But I don’t think they knew how funny it was going to be until that leggy blonde stood up there with Gary Howard, feeding him straight-lines and often topping him. By the time it was over, some guy was pulling the other dancer off a ringside table where a drunk had already begun to dig his way into her with a spoon. The rest of it segued into a kind of pandemonium that hadn’t been since Olsen and Johnson’s last production of “Hellzapoppin’.”

  I looked over at the Kaplans and they were as out-of-their-minds hysterical as everyone else. I scrawled a hurried note on a cocktail napkin, and gave a waiter five bucks for making sure that the blonde dancer got it. Unfortunately, I gave him that fiver before I’d signed my name, and the oaf took off with both, practically tearing the napkin out from under my autographing fingers.

  The Kaplans dropped me off at my building. I thanked them and then proceeded to fake the next few days, avoiding everyone and gathering my courage so that I could tell NBC and Barry that I’d be going with the Morris office. Barry took it very well. He also took the five thousand dollars I offered him to break my nonexistent contract. Jerry Kaplan sighed and said he hoped I was ready.

  Don called again. He and his girl were flying in the next day. There was a cover story in Life magazine entitled “The Riviera Rowdies.” The photo on the cover was of Gary Howard, Normie Birch and the Pickering Trio. And inside there was one of Ginnie alone that looked so good that I almost ate the page. In the text was a passing reference to the fact that “Miss Maitland and Mr. Pickering, long an item, are to be married in the spring.”

  I called Pat Jarvas but she was no longer at that number. I called a spade a spade, consumed half a fifth of Scotch and fell asleep on Ginnie’s bed. I didn’t dream. I didn’t dare.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ginnie

  1952

  Again, I bought enough clothes to get by on, to go alongside the only garment I had left beyond the stuff on my back—the Gypsy Robe. Still, I just couldn’t get comfortable living with Don and Candy. They were wonderful, truly, but there were so many memories of Ben ghosting about the apartment that, even when I was alone, I wasn’t alone. Then there was Maggie in the closet. Often I thought of slashing that portrait of her, or burning it, and, in so doing, ridding myself of the Curse of the Maitlands. But I never had the courage to do it, fearing that it would be interpreted as an act of matricide and that the heavens would open and the hand of God would reach down and flick me off the earth.

  Don had no information for me as to how Ben felt about our breaking up. Evidently Ben had simply told him that it hadn’t worked out and that it was better left undiscussed. Needless to say, I didn’t care to have them think I was carrying any kind of torch for Ben, so we all forgot about it like the third chorus of “Just One of Those Things.” I was being very adult about it, which was fine with Don as he didn’t care to take sides. But Candy, being a girl—and a sensitive one—knew there was more to it. But I never let her in and, finally, she stopped trying.

  Candy had been a model in Los Angeles but without much success. About thirty, she had those great facial bones, and her body was as angular as a maze. But it just hadn’t been enough and she never got to be top-flight. Also—oddly—she was quite Catholic and couldn’t get herself to do the things that many girls had to do to become successful in sunny California. How she could live with Don in an unmarried state and still toot to church on Sunday was, of course, none of my business. But I think it was all made easier for her because she and Don were planning on getting married as soon as things properly broke open for him. In the meantime, they had no choice but to stretch the scriptures a little.

  Don had returned to New York in hopes of breaking into TV as a bona fide director of dramas. New York was where television was, and, though Don knew it all had to move west eventually, he also knew that the best way for him to make it in the West was to make it in the East first.

  Ben had lived with Don and Candy for only a brief period before he himself went west. That way they all got a chance to get to know each other—again for Ben and Don. Barry Nadler became Don’s agent. Some guy, that Barry. If you were breathing he’d sign you. I, of course, never mentioned his involvement in the breaking up of me and Ben. I simply figured it was habitual and that he couldn’t help it. Still, I’d keep an eye on him in case he tried to pull something on Don. Somehow I felt he wouldn’t.

  Meantime Candy was able to pick up some jobs modeling lingerie because none of the really successful models would be caught dead in a girdle or bra ad. Stewardesses and such dropped in on us but none of them were old-timers, just a whole new generation of kids whom Don and Candy felt obliged to put up whenever they stumbled in.

  Barry handled my deal with The Stan Arlen Show. It was a fair deal. Barry was negotiating from strength because Stan Arlen really wanted me.

  The Pickering Trio immediately fell on hard times. Richie tried to replace me and, according to Barry, actually found a girl. But the whole routine was wearing thin and playing out. And with the original kooky blonde now a regular on The Stan Arlen Show, Richie never had a chance of climbing out of the pit. I think, too, that dance acts had just about had it. Just like the nightclub business, they had slowly gotten pummeled into oblivion by TV.

  I felt sorry for Richie, I really did. As angry as I had a right to be with him for deliberately keeping Ben and me apart, I understood him all the same. He was just another shipwreck victim trying to hang on, just another gypsy playing his tambourine, hoping that someone might see him and give him a dollar for his dancing. Eventually he just kind of faded from the scene, choreographing a few flop shows, directing a couple industrial shows, and generally falling off the world.

  So there I was, on network television. And a helluva show it was. I would have to vote for Stan Arlen as the quickest mind on earth. He was so fast that sometimes I couldn’t believe he was unrehearsed. The retorts and rejoinders came out of him with such velocity that you had to wonder if the man was human. He never paused to think. He never reached for words or asked to have something repeated so that he’d have time to frame his ad libs. He just fired them off almost before whoever was talking had finished, and the results were nearly always staggering.

  What I did was sit in the audience every night, and Stan would see me and recognize me and say hello to me (my name was Ginger) and invite me to come up and sit next to him and chat. I’d be wearing something very slinky but not too revealing—none of that low-cut Faye Emerson stuff—and when I got up on stage I’d do a little timestep before sitting down n
ext to Stan. (I always did my timestep before sitting down. It was my trademark and was hokey-cute and everybody loved it.) Then we’d chat, neither Stan nor me knowing in advance just what we’d be talking about—and that was the fun of it. He’d open with whatever line came into his head and I’d try to hang in there with him. It didn’t always work and, whenever I got stuck, rather than sit there with egg on my face, I’d stand up and go into my timestep. After a while it got to catching on all over. Comics on other shows, whenever they’d bomb, they’d go into my timestep. It was becoming a showbiz tradition.

  It all made me pretty well known. I couldn’t walk down a street without someone saying, “Hiya, Ginger.” They knew me in stores and restaurants and I received mail from all over. Much of it wasn’t anything you’d want to write home about, though, a lot of it just filth and propositions, and a photo or two. And always a handful of viewers wanted to know whether I was Ginger Rogers and what was my beauty secret that I could stay looking so young while Fred Astaire was getting older and older.

  I still lived with Don and Candy because the pair of them kept me sane. They also kept me company because I just couldn’t apply myself to serious dating. Besides, my hours were so crazy that I seemed to attract only crazy men. So, when I did go out, we went as a threesome, to some dinner spot, with me happily picking up the check because Don’s money was running out and because I loved them both. Actually, it was good for all of us, our names getting into the columns without our even trying—such as:

  Ginnie Maitland, Stan Arlen’s “Ginger,” sampled the steak last night at Manny Wolfe’s Chop House. With her, as usual, were TV director Don Cook and fashion model Candy Carson. A most beautiful ménage à trois, eh, Lucky Don?

  Happily, all that publicity helped get Candy’s New York career off the ground. One of the larger modeling agencies, Plaza Five, called her and signed her and pegged her price at seventy-five dollars an hour.