by Grace Jones
I got called to Mr. Katz’s office. We should have called him Alley Katz. He liked the way I looked, had heard about my skill with a whip, and he explained that the Playboy Club wasn’t open yet, but that he could use me while he got the office ready. He asked me if I would be his girl Friday, basically his assistant. The way he framed it, my job was to look pretty, act polite, answer the phones, make coffee, and be of general use.
I said, “I don’t know how to make coffee.”
He said, “Forget the coffee. Answer the phone, greet people. Can you do that?” I reckoned I could.
Later, I would start going to social things with him. He liked having someone decorative on his arm. It was really strange—they were like dates but not dates. We would go places together and my job was to look pretty. I did that for quite a while. I went to see Dionne Warwick with him once. It was all strictly business. I knew his family, his wife and kids. He never tried anything on me. I have no real idea what it was about. I think he simply liked me and wanted to hang out with me. We were just . . . friends. He’d take me home, all very proper, weirdly professional. I’d spend time with him and his family. He kept struggling to open the Playboy Club, struggling with the government, and in the end it never opened. I guess he was in his thirties, a lot older than me, very tall, and I figured he liked having me on his arm because I made him look good. Years later I would walk up red carpets into elite social occasions on the arm of Armani or Versace, and it all started with Harry.
He carried on operating around Philly for years, always on the make, looking for opportunities, opening clubs, trying to make money, meeting celebrities, having his picture taken with Sylvester Stallone, Bette Midler, Tom Selleck. I would run into him over the years, at the Grammys, at parties in New York. A newspaper piece reporting on his antics in the ’90s was headlined “The Last Playboy.” In 1995, he gained a little notoriety when a woman, a former teacher, Valerie Sheridan, was found dead in his hot tub after a long night of partying—he was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the rumors continued. Then, oddly, it was his son, David Bar Katz, a playwright, who found Philip Seymour Hoffman dead in Hoffman’s New York City apartment.
* * *
I had another encounter with Philly legends while I lived in the city, an early episode in the complicated relationship I have with my own voice. I didn’t think I had a voice at all at that time. I never believed in it as a voice. It was very deep and manly—it sounded like it was coming from another person.
I did an audition for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in Philadelphia during the period of going back and forth between Philly and New York on go-sees. I had no idea who they were until much later. They were about to become the monsters of the Philly sound with the Philadelphia International label, their version of Tamla Motown. I just thought it was an audition in front of some local musicians.
It taught me a lesson: to do my homework whenever these chances came up in the future. I walked into it without any idea how important this audition was, that they’d worked with Aretha Franklin and were making an album with Dusty Springfield. They hadn’t had their big hits yet, hadn’t been anointed the creators of the sound of Philadelphia, but I didn’t pay enough attention to what a great opportunity this was. I think it also had something to do with me not thinking of myself as a singer, since what I really wanted to do was act in the theater. Singing seemed like a distraction, and I treated it as such.
Their productions of the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, featuring rich, jazz-tinged strings, prominent hi-hat, and snappier bass lines, pushing the macho rock guitars a little behind the scenes, paved the way for disco. Ironically, the producer of my first album a few years later, Tom Moulton, used some of the session musicians who were part of that pool with the name MFSB (Mother, Father, Sister, Brother) that Gamble and Huff used at the Sigma Sound in Philadelphia. I would eventually return there.
Tom Figenshu took me to the audition. He knew them somehow, or managed to hustle his way in, and he wanted me to record the song I sang in his play, “Rooms with No Sun.” It was a lovely song. I would like to sing it now, if I could remember it.
At the audition, I had no confidence at all. It was like someone threw me into deep water and I couldn’t swim. Tom believed in me, but it was like I could do it only for Tom. At home, or in front of him, when I sang, I did it without any inhibition. As soon as I got up in front of other people I couldn’t do it. I immediately had nerves: What are they going to think? I’m not really a singer!
The backing singers, the Sweeties, were hanging around—smoking, laughing, drinking, and looking very casual, like they weren’t paying attention. And then as soon as they opened their mouths, these powerful soul voices would effortlessly pour out. I was shaking with nerves, and had to fight to get in character, though I still didn’t really know what my character was. The enormous effort I had to put into singing was silly, but there was so much fear I had to conquer. In front of new people I felt vulnerable and useless.
I totally blew the audition. Tom wasn’t there in the room with me. It was me and Gamble and Huff and their musicians. If I had known who they were, I would have freaked out even more. I was like this without even knowing how successful they were. The pianist started to play, and I couldn’t sing the song. There was this uncontrollable quivering of my voice. A hoarse rasp squirted out and then pretty much nothing. Maybe I should have taken a pill. Maybe a quaalude would have relaxed me. But it was extremely painful and embarrassing.
I wasted their time, and those guys were used to voices, serious voices, singers who shot shivers down the spine. I fell apart. That was the end of that. There was no Okay, not bad, go away, have some lessons, and come back in a year. It was like, no eye contact, There’s the door. Bye-bye. Forgotten as soon as I was out the door. Brutal. That side of the business always was and always will be.
They probably thought I had something on Tom Figenshu. A year or two later they had a huge hit with Billy Paul called “Me and Mrs. Jones”—no relation to me, or to my failed audition. In the meantime, one of my very first commercial jobs as a model was appearing on the cover of Billy Paul’s Ebony Woman album, Afro still intact, staring straight at the camera, looking like the kind of woman who would never let nerves get the better of her. I don’t remember if I did the audition before or after that sleeve, but there is no way Gamble and Huff would have thought that unflappable woman on the cover of one of their label’s albums was the flustered, hopeless singer Figenshu had sent along.
Tom realized I had panicked. The Gamble and Huff audition was like a test—and I hate tests. I always did well at school until it came to the tests, and then I would panic, freeze up at the word begin. I would have A’s during the year in most of my subjects and then fall apart during the end of year exams. Some people are very good at taking tests. I am the worst.
The next time I felt anything like that was when I performed with Luciano Pavarotti decades later—except that time I really prepared for three months, getting ready like it was the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. I concentrated on nothing else. I didn’t smoke, and no one could smoke around me. I stopped drinking. I became transcendentally pure. For me it was the equivalent of climbing Everest. I thought about nothing else. But by then I was a seasoned performer and I knew what it took to make my voice work, and how to make it work under the most intense pressure. I had learned from experiences like that abortive one with Gamble and Huff. I had found my character.
* * *
Even when I was with Sam, I still spent time with Tom Figenshu and looked up to him. There were always boyfriends and lovers, and then at the same time, mentors, collaborators, very close friends helping me who were not lovers. This pattern started with Tom. Certainly I was clinging to the hope that Tom would help me with the ambition I now had to break into theater.
I remember saying to Tom that I wanted to leave Philly. I was running out of patience with the city, bruised by the awful audition, and not makin
g it as a Playboy Bunny. I didn’t want to go back home—I couldn’t bear the thought of having to go back to my parents, having failed in what I set out to do. I asked him what he thought I should do. I needed to work. My options were: work, in whatever way necessary; continue living with Sam and let him support me; or go back home. The last was not an option. And I was on the verge of leaving Sam, even if he did let me work semi-naked in go-go clubs and took care of me. I wanted to make it on my own and do everything for myself. I didn’t want to rely on anyone. I never wanted a guy to take care of me. Help me, yes, but never, ever pay for me.
Tom said, “Well, I am going to New York to look for work; maybe you should move there permanently. Focus on modeling to make some money—you have high cheekbones, a strong look.” But he made it clear he did not want to babysit me. Tom knew I was crazy about him. That’s when he had to tell me he was gay. I never saw him in a gay relationship, never saw him with a guy, but he made it very clear he was gay.
But he continued to steer me, even if from a distance. I wanted to do theater. I auditioned for a production of Hair and was called back many times. They liked my look, but I didn’t have confidence in my voice. I opened my mouth, and you could hear the sound of self-doubt. The Gamble and Huff incident had really not helped.
I loved what Tom was doing; he seemed very ahead of his time. He was very inspiring for me, and helped set me in a new direction. He knew his stuff, but when characters like him go from the smaller town to the big city they have trouble. A big fish in Syracuse, making things happen, drowned in New York City. He couldn’t make it there. I’d followed him there, but it didn’t take long before he wanted to cut me loose. He didn’t want me hanging around his neck, and I suppose the Gamble and Huff incident made him lose patience. Maybe he found someone else, a lover, or another pupil to nurture, or both.
One day he was found dead in the street on his own, still relatively young. I have no idea how it happened. It was in the newspaper, very shocking and sudden, no definitive explanation. He seemed to walk off into the distance into a crowd until he was swallowed up and he was no more.
* * *
Once I made up my mind—I am choosing this life, the life of an artist—I set about figuring out what I needed to do to get to a new place. I always say to my son that to live the life of an artist you must always be traveling to new places and moving around. You need to see for yourself what is out there and make your own versions of what you see. I don’t think people see things the same way, so it is important to see the world, and show it through your eyes. And I’d decided it was important to see the world through my eyes, not my mother’s eyes or my father’s eyes.
I wanted to bust things open and see how they worked. The world became my candy store. I decided I would travel everywhere. I was strong, but I never wanted to feel vulnerable—the link with Tom was what I needed. I don’t need the whole church; just one person can make the difference. I needed to be single-minded and on my own, but I also needed know that if I got in trouble, there was one person I could call. Wherever I went, on my own terms, there would always be a sense that there was one person I could rely on if things got out of hand. I was independent, but connected to some form of lifeline.
I moved to New York, after all this driving back and forth from Philly on the bike. I always felt if it wasn’t moving, it wasn’t happening. If it’s not flowing, try something else, find somewhere else, move on. There is no point in banging your head against a brick wall. Sam felt he was losing me. He didn’t want me to leave Philly. I think he thought that once I got to New York, I would want something else that would involve someone else. He was very helpful with all the commutes, but there was a moment when he put the reins on me. For me that is always a signal.
The relationship had been going on for so long, in one way the next step would have been marriage and children, but I wasn’t ready for that. It was too early for that to happen. It was a tough breakup. We had been through a lot together, and we were good together. It was not the right time. I was not my mother, getting married at sixteen. My family all loved Sam. They thought he was kind and caring, and he was. I needed more than that, though.
He was very hurt when I left him. I didn’t know how to handle that then. Sam was always afraid to lose me, but in a way that then made me want to move on. I felt held back, so that the relationship could not be sustained. There was a certain point where he didn’t want to go forward, and I didn’t want to go backward. I think I learned from that. We could have stayed friends, but he became very bitter, and then it was very hard to stay in touch. I guess he stayed in Philly and did his thing. I had places to go, people to see, discoveries to make.
Even though we loved each other, we started fighting all the time, and then we’d take drugs to deal with the tension. I remember we had some friends in the East Village, and we even tried to live there, but it was Alphabet City, out of the way, almost falling off the edge of Manhattan, and there was a lot of heroin about.
You start to do a little smack on the weekends, you try it out, you hang out with old friends who are taking it, but you don’t want it to take over your life. I tried it, but it made me vomit. It wasn’t for me, luckily. It wasn’t the Rolls-Royce through heaven some people talk about for me; it was annoying numbness. I tried, because I wanted to try everything. Well, I thought, maybe one day I will play the role of a heroin addict. Maybe I should try it. I was living the method acting technique before I even had a role where I would need to know what it was like to take heroin. Try everything once and see what it’s like, just in case.
I was thinking very much about stage acting, more than about film. I got called up for a lot of films, but my accent was too Jamaican. I could not get rid of my accent enough for me to be what they wanted. I had the Afro, but I didn’t have that American black accent. It wasn’t enough to only have the look. I just didn’t sound hip and Harlem enough when I opened my mouth.
My girlfriend Marcia McBroom got every single role I was convinced I could have had if I hadn’t had this mixed-up accent. She appeared as the Carrie Nation soul sister drummer Petronella “Pet” Danforth frolicking in a haystack in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in 1970, and I didn’t. The director Russ Meyer would always tease her that she had the smallest boobs of anyone he had ever worked with. Helmut Newton would have the same complaint about me. (One of my early nicknames was Olive Oyl, and I was also known as “Nothing in the Middle.”) Marcia was in Jesus Christ Superstar, one of the people screaming, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” at the end of the show, and I wasn’t. Her sister cowrote “Pull Up to the Bumper” with me. Her mother still comes to my concerts and pretends to be by mother. She worked at the United Nations and was a good friend of Malcolm X. Crazy family.
With the theater, I was almost accepted for roles a lot of the time. It was always almost. Almost, almost, almost. I was close, but it wasn’t happening. I was doing an awful lot of go-sees for an awful lot of productions needing flower children and offbeat black hippie chicks, but I never ended up getting a role. I kept trying, though. I was unstoppable.
I spent about a year in New York, did the modeling, carried on auditioning. I was with an agency called Black Beauty. They were the first agency I tried, and Richard Roundtree was with them. I stayed with them about a month. They did commercials and catalog work, and I was seen as being too exotic for that kind of work. They said, Your face doesn’t fit. You are really black and your lips are big but your nose is too thin and your eyes are too slanty. You won’t get the catalog work that brings in the big bucks. Even then catalog modeling paid sixty dollars an hour, enough to keep you for a week.
Catalog modeling is awful photography artistically, using the same light for everybody, whatever their complexion. You would be like part of a herd—Next cow, next cow, next cow. It paid well, though, but I didn’t get any jobs, which was very frustrating. I had found an apartment and needed to pay the rent. I wanted to do my thing and pay my way and not feel that I
was being preached at by my family. My mom kept saying I should marry a nice preacher, be the first lady of the church, like her. That was so far from where I wanted to be.
I left Black Beauty, and I went to an exotic agency called Wilhelmina Models, opened in 1967 by the former Dutch-born model Wilhelmina Cooper, and her husband, Bruce, who had been an executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She had been with the Ford agency and had modeled for ten years, which was a lot back then, appearing on twenty-seven Vogue covers. She was one of the last stars of the couture era, but modern enough to compete with the new British breed represented by Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. Faye Dunaway played her in the film Gia, about a lesbian model, Gia Marie Carangi, discovered by Wilhelmina, played by Angelina Jolie. Gia was put on the cover of Cosmopolitan by notorious, powerful fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo, who would help invent this unspontaneous but positive, desirable Cosmo look that seemed triumphant but hid harsher truths. It was all about coldly manipulating vulnerability and neediness to create an illusion of perfection. It was where phoniness was ingeniously glossed over to create slick commercial fantasy. Gia had a wholesome, serene look but a torrid private life, and was one of the first recorded people to die from AIDS due to her addiction to heroin; the shots of her with haunted hollow eyes and a body on the edge of emaciation were an early warning of what became known as “heroin chic.”