CABARET: JENIFER LEWIS
By John S. Wilson
New York Times, May 26, 1983
A MONTHLONG series of performances by Jenifer Lewis that had been scheduled at Don’t Tell Mama, the West 46th Street cabaret, was interrupted last week when Bette Midler asked Miss Lewis to become one of her Harlettes during a current tour. Miss Lewis immediately took off for the hinterlands but it is doubtful that she will be a Harlette for long.
She already has the aura and the confidence and the projection of a star. She is the very essence of show business—a singer with a dazzling voice, a high-kicking dancer, a lusty comedienne, a coiled spring of energy. And, after all her razzle-dazzle, she has the ability to sit down at the piano where, in tribute to Mahalia Jackson, she sings a gospel song in a big, imperious commanding tone that echoes Miss Jackson, building to a climax of explosive passion.
Miss Lewis in action is a fascinating study, not only for what she does but for the shadows of other performers that flicker through her personality—suggestions of Pearl Bailey’s monologue style, even the tone of Duke Ellington’s mock elegance. They are just passing accents and seem a completely natural part of Miss Lewis, but they indicate the range of show-business background that she has absorbed and reshaped.
There are moments when she is overcome by her own exuberance and enthusiasm, and the discipline of her performance is broken. But she is such a skillful craftsman that she will undoubtedly learn to control this or, more likely, to turn it to her own advantage by the time she returns to New York on her own—as she inevitably will.
The first time I met the Divine Miss M in person was at the S.I.R. Studios in Hollywood. It was supposed to be a rehearsal without Bette, just us three Harlettes. We were in the middle of singing “Pretty Legs and Great Big Knockers” when the music suddenly stopped. Bette entered the room. She was dressed casually, but every inch a star. All I could think at that moment was What presence. There to survey the new recruits, she chatted with us a bit in a fun and fabulous way, but also with an air that conveyed that she was all about business. Soon she was saying, “Come on, girls. Get in those mermaid fins and pull up a wheelchair. Let’s get this shit in tip-top shape.”
When I joined De Tour ’83, Bette was at the height of what continues to be an amazing career. By that time, she already had won two Grammy awards, two Golden Globes, and an Emmy, and had been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and awarded a special Tony Award. I studied her from the wings and talked to her every chance I got. Her vocal talent and comedic timing were peerless. She was funny, fun, artsy, and smart as hell. She always had a book in her hand.
Bette immediately clocked that I was plenty crazy, but she respected me and honored my talent. I wanted to be the best Harlette she ever had, and she knew that. She featured me, but in a mask. She wasn’t about to let my charisma and star quality upstage her. Yet she loved to have me entertain her during breaks or at parties. She’d often ask me to do a monologue or song from my show. Bonnie Bruckheimer, who went from Bette’s assistant to her producing partner, told me I was one of the few who could make Bette laugh out loud in those days.
Bette was sort of an introvert and could come across as removed—even shy. You knew when she did or did not want to engage; you didn’t have to guess her mood.
We’d all been drinking one night after the show and Bette said to me, “Jeni-Fah” (she still says my name like that!), “you don’t want this, Jeni-Fah. This is hard shit!” But my idol was wrong. I did want it. I wanted those ten thousand voices in the arena to be cheering for me.
De Tour ’83 was sort of a mixture of rock and roll meets Broadway. We did forty-six cities in about three months. It was incredibly fabulous, but exhausting, even for my twenty-six-year-old body. The show included several big high-camp numbers, including “Pink Cadillac.” We also performed one of Bette’s torch songs, “Here Comes the Flood,” as well as the anthem “We Are Family.” There were elaborate costumes and sets with ramps, levels, and one scene where we wore mermaid fins and rolled ourselves around in wheelchairs. I did my specialty (Hula-Hooping) and had to learn to play the accordion. We Harlettes rehearsed endlessly, mastering the tight vocal harmonies required to back up Bette.
I fought with the other Harlettes, Siobhan O’Carroll and Helena Springs. We three were replacing the Harlettes who had done the wintertime portion of De Tour. There was plenty of drama. Stupid shit. Once I threw my Hula-Hoop during rehearsal and had to apologize the next day.
In the limo—we usually shared a limo as we traveled from the airport to our hotel—I guess I was too loud or teased too much because eventually Bonnie and the rest requested my silence. On one occasion, I needled Helena to the brink, and she jumped out of the moving car (we were going very slowly and she wasn’t hurt).
JOURNAL ENTRY: I am a monster.
Frannie the dresser said to me, “You have to get over this shit because it will kill Bette.”
Fortunately, our make-up artist, Geneva Nash, had a loving but stern way of settling my ass down.
Bette was a class act, but this was a rock-and-roll tour, so there was plenty of sex and drugs. In general, we were a pretty wild bunch. Bette’s collaborator Jerry Blatt, whom I loved very much, had pink hair. I sported a crazy Mohawk. We had a rollicking time, but Bette never allowed our antics to compromise the show’s professionalism. Believe me, we snapped to attention when the Divine Miss M arrived!
The tour started out in Philly and East Coast locations. When we got to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, I had sex against a sugar maple tree with Ed Love, the choreographer. A few days later, he showed up backstage with another girl, so that was that—until we got to Montreal a couple of weeks later and I had a ménage à trois with Ed and Billy, with whom I’d toured in Eubie! I also had sex with one of the band members. But his enormous penis stayed soft. Too much cocaine.
The day we opened in Boston, I went ballistic because someone forgot to put VIP tickets aside for Temi, Billy, and their friend June. I pulled a full-out diva tantrum, banging on Bette’s trailer door, crying and whining. She barged out of the trailer half made up, hair flying, robe flapping, and shouted at the assistant: “Get her four fucking tickets in the front row! The last time she cried, she fell off the fucking ramp!” It’s true, I did have a few major gaffes on stage, like in Costa Mesa, where I fucked up the whole mermaids-in-wheelchairs routine.
If Bette got irritated with me, she rarely showed it. When the tour got to Newport, Rhode Island, and I asked Bette to sign my De Tour ’83 poster, she wrote: “To the greatest black entertainer who ever lived . . . I am the white one!”
Bette knew I was loyal and that I only wanted the best for the show. I think by this time she suspected I had deep emotional problems. But I also think she saw a bit of herself in me. I felt she kind of took care of me in her own way. I wish only that I had been able to pull my shit together this first time we worked together.
When all is said and done, Bette Midler probably had a greater impact on me than anyone else I have worked with. She polished my game and upped it several notches. She validated me and confirmed what I knew about my talent, especially the fact that JeniferMothaFuckinLewis does not belong in the chorus, be it as a Harlette, Ikette, or Ronette!! Honestly, though, the experience of observing Bette’s artistry and getting to know her as a loving friend made it all worth it.
Toward the end of the tour, Bette gave me a wonderful gift of original sheet music from an old Ethel Waters song. In turn, I gifted Bette a black Raggedy Ann doll. She named it “Killer.”
Prince came to see De Tour at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. During the after-party at Spago on Sunset, I found him in the back in the dark. I approached him. He extended his hand, which was swathed in a black lace glove. At first, I thought he expected me to kiss it. Instead I gripped his hand firmly, but got grossed out when I felt the sweaty moistness of his palm through the lace. Unfortunately, because I was so focused on my own glory, I did not take the
opportunity to engage with this master. Damn. Prince and I met again twenty-six years later, backstage at the (first) final Jay Leno Show in 2009. I said, “Hey, Prince, I’m Jenifer.” He smiled and said, “I know who you are.” Then he turned to his beautiful companion and said, “Yeah, she’s funny all the time.” I get tingles just thinking about it.
In September, we did our final show in Minneapolis. The entire company sprayed their hair pink for closing night. I fucked an Italian guy named Frank in my dressing room. The party was over.
Nearly fifteen years after we toured together, I was still foolishly competing with Bette. I flew to Las Vegas to see Bette in her show called Diva Las Vegas. I went to her dressing room after the show and started clowning, telling jokes and singing loudly. Bette asked me, “Jenifah, why are you performing?” I said, “Well, didn’t you just perform?” She said, “Yeah, but I got paid.” I shut the fuck up.
Touring as a Harlette with Bette had put me in greater demand. I was happy to finally start getting the attention for my work that I felt I deserved. I was asked to do one-woman shows at popular venues in New York City such as Sweetwater’s, Freddy’s, and the Red Parrot. I was everywhere.
The performance at Sweetwater’s earned one of the few bad reviews I’ve ever gotten. The writer for Variety said, among other things, that I used too many props to get my point across.
JOURNAL ENTRY: Kiss my black ass.
I found the review meaningful. I learned something about simplicity from the critic. Small things such as knowing when and how to use your body alone to convey a message makes the difference between an amateur and a professional.
I did a New Year’s Eve show at Don’t Tell Mama. I knew I had to be good that night. It cost $50 to get in, and that was a big deal.
I woke up on New Year’s Day 1984 with my head banging and my face feeling like it was made of cement. Peter, a bassist I’d been flirting with, called at 6 a.m. to wish me happy New Year! I went back to sleep till 2 p.m., when Tyrone came by. We watched the Orange Bowl, and let’s just say Tyrone made it to the end zone more than once. He was going down on me during halftime when Peter and Ken called. And yes, to answer your question, I picked up both times. I loved to push the limits—fucking one guy while talking with two others was a complete power trip for me. Thomas called twice and hung up before finally leaving a message. The neighbor next door banged on the wall and shouted for us to keep it down. Being in my twenties, how could I possibly keep it down?
June, a friend of my friend Temi in Boston, introduced me to an agent in Washington, DC named Jim Keppler, who owned a successful speakers’ bureau. Keppler encouraged me to develop a solo show that he could book at colleges during Black History Month. I started to work on an idea for a one-woman show I called From Billie to Lena with Jenifer that would pay tribute to great African American women singers whose lives and art had inspired me.
I spent weeks doing research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Every contemporary African American singer—Toni Braxton, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and, of course, my li’l Brandy—stands on the shoulders of genius women whose artistry and struggle, I feared, were becoming lost in the tide of history. I chose seven women: Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, and Lena Horne. God knows I wanted to include them all—Gladys, Nina, Patti, Natalie—but the show was only one hour long!
I listened to dozens of songs written or recorded by each singer, ultimately choosing not their most popular songs, but songs that seemed to offer special meaning for the singer or that gave insight into her character. For instance, rather than Tina’s “Proud Mary,” I sang “Show Some Respect,” and whereas Billie’s “Strange Fruit” had become iconic, instead I sang “T’Ain’t Nobody’s Business.” Mahalia laid the foundation for gospel music with “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” but I instead chose to sing “Trouble of the World.” (Years later, on the set of Touched by an Angel, Della Reese, who was close with Mahalia, told me that this was in fact the perfect song.)
It was not my goal to imitate the singing styles of my subjects in From Billie to Lena. Instead, I sang the songs my way while framing them with monologues that dramatized the women’s lives and struggles. The show was pretty serious, even somber, especially when I spoke of the hardships and racism the women had faced. But there were plenty of fun parts too, like during Dinah’s “Evil Gal Blues,” when I splayed myself onto the piano, threw one leg in the air, and sang, “I’m a evil gal, don’t you mess around with me; I’m gonna empty your pockets and fill you with misery!” Dinah had sewn mink coats and always carried a gun.
In February 1984, I took to the road with From Billie to Lena with Jenifer. My first booking was at North Greenville University, a small Christian university in North Carolina. It literally was the first time I had performed before an audience made up entirely of strangers. No gypsies. No relatives. No fans. Was I really as good as I thought? Who would start the applause? I hardly even knew Billy McDaniels, my genius pianist. It was quite possibly the first time I was actually nervous before going on stage!
The show was well received. Mark Brown cowrote the show’s monologues, and I am eternally grateful to him for creating a meaningful show that entertained and educated college audiences for a full decade of Black History Months. After every performance, I held a question-and-answer session with the students. This was my favorite part, because I got to relax and just be myself. There might be a question or two about the show, but mostly the students wanted to hear about how I had “made it.” I must have seemed like an exotic bird to these college kids, with my big ’80s hair teased to the ceiling, my sequined gold lamé Don Klein jumpsuit, caked blue eye shadow, and extreme liquid black eyeliner. Many of the students came from small, rural towns and had never visited New York or met a professional entertainer.
I enjoyed sharing with them what I had learned and seen of the world. I wanted them to know the importance of finding their passion, working hard to fulfill their dreams, being good citizens, and, above all, giving back to those less fortunate.
I crisscrossed the United States doing From Billie to Lena with Jenifer mostly at rural schools. Billy and I flew in raggedy propeller planes that served small cities. I always did my best to go through St. Louis to gorge on some of Mama’s fried jack salmon with spaghetti before I had to catch my flight on Allegheny or Ozark Air Lines.
Attending services at Unity and listening to Phil Valentine had expanded my thinking, and I began to explore spirituality on my own. I really wanted to be more connected and to understand life outside of show business. To that end, I experimented with everything that was a part of the New Age Movement. Being among artists meant that I was exposed to all sorts of new ideas. Artists are discontent by nature; we are thrill seekers who are hip and in the know and are often the first to open up to new ways of thinking.
Unity’s philosophy of “say yes,” which had resonated so deeply for me, evolved into a general appreciation for positive thinking after reading The Greatest Salesman by Og Mandino. The book moved me to think about the possibility that I, not an unseen force, was in control of my life. I began to practice the breath of fire technique in Kundalini yoga class and learned to sit still long enough to meditate (no easy task for me, I assure you).
Perhaps the most important book for me at the time was Out on a Limb by Shirley MacLaine, in which she chronicled her exploration of New Age spirituality. The book brought ridicule to MacLaine for her talk of aliens and trance channeling. In her speech after winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her role in Terms of Endearment, MacLaine said, “If you can dream it, you can make it happen.” I was hooked. Shirley was famous, and I wanted her recipe for success.
Fast forward to 2000. I walked onstage for one of my one-woman shows and immediately spotted a head full of red hair sitting sixth row center. It was Shirley MacLaine. Need I say, I performed my ass off that night. I wasted no time at the end of the sh
ow pointing out that she was indeed in the house and had been an influence on me and my spiritual journey.
When she came backstage after the show, she embraced me, pulled back, and held me by the shoulders. “That was the best show I’ve seen ever,” she said.
I wrinkled my face a little, thinking, “Sinatra? Sammy? Judy? Me?”
And then she repeated herself: “Ever.”
She said something else I’ll never forget: “Your landscapes are vast.”
Well, let’s just say that after that, I never gave a flying fuck what anybody had to say about anything. After Shirley’s amazing compliment, she invited me to walk with her on the beach early the next morning. Trust me, I wouldn’t get up that early for nobody but Shirley MacLaine and her dog. She said to me, “I have one question for you—why aren’t you the biggest star in the world?”
I looked at her and said, “I am the biggest star in the world.”
I knew she understood.
I was beyond excited to be cast as a featured performer in Harlem Story, which was conceived by Peter Herbolzheimer, a German arranger and conductor known for bringing American jazz artists to perform with his orchestra in Cologne. Harlem Story was a musical revue of works written or recorded by African American jazz and gospel artists. A producer friend assembled an impressive company of gypsies and Broadway actors, including Clare Bathé, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Connie Brazelton, Ty Stevens, Yolanda Graves, and Roxanne Reese. I soloed in a scene featuring songs made famous by Bessie Smith and a medley of songs by Eubie Blake.
It was wonderful to be away from New York City. I strolled along the Rhine River and visited the city’s gothic Cologne Cathedral. On the down side, I found the German food inedible and mostly ate McDonald’s.
I seriously thought about remaining in Europe to do the whole Josephine Baker thing. She was the first black person to become a world-famous entertainer and to star in a movie. In the 1920s, Baker fled American racism and became the toast of Paris. But never being good with languages, I took my ass back to New York.
The Mother of Black Hollywood Page 10