The summer after my first year in high school, my father, an engineer, had a contract to build an airport, roads, and housing in the jungles of Colombia as part of the war effort. What a marvelous opportunity to experience an exciting new world, right? Wrong. Fifteen-year-olds are not looking for adventure. I wanted to be with my peers. In Colombia, I feared my only social life would be with howler monkeys.
In most of the world today, you can just walk up to someone and start a conversation. But in Colombia in 1945, you had to be introduced. Lacking the proper introductions, young men began following me around as an American novelty. The most ingenious and attractive was Fernando Quintana, age nineteen at the time. He and his mother just “happened” to be in the hotel elevator at the same time as my parents and me.
“Señor,” his mother said to my father, “my son was so determined to meet your daughter that I agreed to accompany him in the hope of seeing you. I want to invite you to our home for dinner.” My parents were enchanted by this elegant lady and her wonderful invitation. Through Fernando’s family we met the most important people and saw a Bogotá that few Americans ever see. For me, interacting with influential foreigners on their own territory would become essential in my future. Another tool in the box.
There was a problem, however. Fernando did not know that I was only fifteen…
Oops! Time to go to the jungle!
By then my father had already left, and Mother and I missed the plane that was to take us inland to the jungle. To meet him, we had to ride a paddle-wheel boat pushing a barge up the Magdalena River. The cabins were not air-conditioned. The cow on the barge disappeared, and that night we had steak. My new puppy enjoyed what I could not swallow. This was another world.
The jungle was different from anything I’d known before. My parents spent every night at parties with an international group of engineers, scientists, doctors, and military people in our luxurious camp. For them this really was an adventure, but all I had was a wild horse and scorpions the size of lobsters.
Never one to suffer silently, I launched my campaign to go home. I wept. I wailed. “I am not going to spend the best years of my life in this jungle!” I protested. It had been all of three months so far. “No! No! No! I want to go home and now!”
“Where do you want to go? Hockaday?” asked my bewildered parents.
“Heavens no, I’m not that dumb!” An all-girl school was not what I had in mind.
Before making this announcement, I had reviewed all my relatives and where they lived. Bryan, Texas, had Allen Military Academy, Texas A&M University, and, of course, the high school, which meant there would be lots of men there. Cool!
“I want to go to Bryan and live with Great-Aunt Hettie,” I told my parents, never giving a thought to what Great-Aunt Hettie might think. The whole family almost fainted. “Oh, no, you’re not taking on Joanne,” they told Hettie. “You’re too old and she’s a handful. She’ll kill you.”
Despite the protests, Aunt Hettie agreed to take me in. Southern families are like that.
My great-uncle Charles Gainer, Hettie’s husband, was a former state senator and speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. He and Hettie were wonderful examples of the gracious society in which Texas was rooted. So I snagged one of my scorpion/lobster friends, put him in a jar of alcohol, and transported my jungle trophy to Texas.
Before I moved to Bryan, parties, clothes, and boys were all I thought about. Because of my dyslexia, I thought I wasn’t smart. I thought attractiveness was all that mattered because that was all I had. But Bryan High School changed my life. There, kids were not interested in society as I knew it. They took education and being part of a church seriously. After arriving, I realized that my values and priorities had to change.
One of the students who epitomized Bryan High School values was Bill Powers. He was student body president and the football team captain. He became a naval fighter pilot, one of the men who inspired the Tom Cruise character in the movie Top Gun. (He even looked like Tom Cruise.) Bill was always very kind and complimentary. He once told my son Beau, “The day Joanne walked in, I was smitten. She won contests, the leads in plays, and the offices of many clubs. She really didn’t seem to care about grades.”
But Bill, I did care about grades. Every kid wants to do well. I just didn’t make them. Although I knew that Bryan students were serious about their studies, I aimed my own efforts toward excellence at activities I was comfortable with, such as plays, operettas, and contests. I never thought I could do better than Bs and Cs—until the day the principal called me into her office. “Joanne,” she said, opening a file in front of her, “I’ve been looking over your grades.”
My heart plummeted and my smile faltered. I sat frozen, unsure of what to say.
She glanced up and gave me an appraising look. Then she said something that caused this mediocre student’s heart to leap: “You can do better. In fact,” she added in a voice filled with conviction, “you can make the National Honor Society. All you have to do is try.”
No one had ever said I could make good grades. The only praise I’d ever had was for extracurricular activities. But Miss Weddington saw beyond my facade to what was locked inside. If I hadn’t had the extracurricular activities to build on I could never have been able to believe what Miss Weddington said. After that, my grades improved dramatically. Her belief in me made the difference. I learned then that how people perceive you and how you perceive yourself can be very different. Often what we need is encouragement and success at something whether it be knitting or calf roping, just something.
From the dyslexia I developed a retentive memory. In the beginning I learned to memorize what the teacher said.
Johnie McAdams, my speech instructor, also saw something in me that might never have surfaced without her guidance. In fact, she made my eventual television career possible. “Joanne was a piece of work,” Ms. McAdams later told a friend of mine. “She could memorize a script in one night. I hate to tell you this, but I saved the best parts for her.
“Joanne did one thing none of us will ever forget. There was a thin, frail child named Emma Jane who came from a poor family. She was the subject of painful adolescent laughter when she was noticed at all. People thought she was ‘slow.’ Joanne began speaking to her,” Ms. McAdams recalled. “She hung her head and did not answer, but Joanne kept talking to her every day and walking her to the door and down the hall. Slowly Emma Jane began to change. She sat up straight in class. She no longer crept down the halls. She began to hold up her head. Then she started talking. Her grades improved and she began to behave like the other students.” Mrs. McAdams said that people can make a big difference in others’ lives when they try.
I remember that shy girl very well. All it took for her to gain confidence was for someone to pay attention to her. I had been there. I understood how she felt. I paid attention.
As I gained confidence, I started debating, and to my surprise I won most of the debates. This became an important tool for my television show.
When I made the National Honor Society, my mother cried. Success is a gift from God. If God had not given me successes to build my confidence, I could never have faced the failures life was to bring me, not to mention rebounding from those every-ten-year downfalls.
In my last year of high school, my mother returned from South America. She wanted to make my senior year memorable. For my high school graduation tea, the dining room glistened with family silver brought from Houston. Breathtaking flowers added color and aroma, and a grand table groaned with food displayed on an embroidered linen tablecloth.
Girls from the city’s finest families arrived. And there, to their surprise, standing in the receiving line with them, was Emma Jane, wearing a beautiful organza dress. Her presence added the perfect closing to my high school days. I never returned to Bryan, though I loved every minute I was there and owed everyone so much. But a page had turned. I was ready to take on the world—or at least Texas.
What Southern Girls Do: We Get Married
When I left for the University of Texas at Austin, in 1947, my grandfather said, “Don’t worry about grades; just get to know people.” Translated, that meant land a rich, socially prominent husband. Girls were discouraged from even considering medicine or law or any remunerative position.
My family did not care what I studied since my having a career never entered their minds. But it entered mine. Since I had played the leads in high school plays, I studied music and drama to prepare myself to sing in musical comedies on Broadway. Most hopefuls who failed to make the big time ended up teaching in a second-rate school. That was probably my destination until God took a hand.
Scarlett O’Hara always asked men for advice. So naturally I did too. One senior economics major suggested I take a class in his field. I signed up but I didn’t like it, so he gallantly agreed to attend the class and even to take the exam for me. I’m ashamed to say I accepted his offer. There were one hundred students in the class, so he thought he could get away with it. To our horror, he discovered that my final exam coincided with his most important test. Disaster! I had been to only two classes all semester!
Furious, scared, and guilt ridden, I asked, “What am I going to do?”
My friend replied, “I will not be able to graduate if I miss my exam. But I know how your professor thinks. I’ll coach you. You should at least pass.” To overcome dyslexia, I had developed an excellent memory, another tool. I used it now.
I walked into the exam room, took out my pencil, and wrote. Instead of answering the questions, I had written twenty-seven pages on his theory of economics. I made an A and got an accolade from my professor. He asked the class to vote for me for the University of Texas “Sweetheart” title. From that experience I learned to focus on the big picture and learned not to cheat.
My family suggested that I get a summer job. They thought it was important that I “learn to earn” so that I could appreciate the efforts made to support us “helpless women.” This was the beginning of my full-time focus on my dream career, singing in a Broadway show, dating, and marriage. I never returned to the University of Texas because of some totally unexpected opportunities.
Around this time, Bill Roberts, a popular Houston journalist, asked to photograph me for his column. This was the first and only time I was photographed in a bathing suit. (My family gasped and asked, “How crass can you be!”) In the article, Roberts mentioned my contest titles. Word got out and a modeling agency called. Modeling was not the summer job my mother had in mind. It wasn’t what I had in mind either. I wanted to sing in a Broadway musical. But photographs are seen and forgotten.
At about the same time, Houston’s top law firm, Baker Botts, called. They always hired a receptionist from a good family. All the girl did was sit at the front desk and smile. It was a good display case. She quickly got an appropriate husband and quit, because, of course, married women typically did not work. Thus, the job was regularly open and much sought after. I was offered this coveted position and I accepted because my mom told me to.
Meanwhile, my father’s brother heard that the Summertime Opera Company was seeking a girl to sing the second lead in the next local production. This was a fabulous opportunity for me and my theater aspirations. The leads were always imported accomplished professionals. To snare a second lead would give me the opportunity to pursue my dream of singing in a Broadway musical. I auditioned and got the role. I felt like seventy-six trombones had just led the big parade down my street.
“You cannot sing at night and work in the daytime,” said my mother. Thus, I bid adieu to the receptionist job at Baker Botts.
I remember the newspaper review of the show well: “Joanne Johnson can neither sing, dance, or act, but no one since Hedy Lamarr or Liz Taylor has needed to less.”
The left-handed complimentary review bothered me, but my family was delighted. Bye-bye, Broadway. They never intended to let me go to New York. They played along because they thought I would never get the chance. They were right. I didn’t. I just wasn’t good enough! And, frankly, I wasn’t willing to put in the time and practice required to develop what talent I did have. I just wanted to open my mouth and sing! That’s what they do today, but back then you had to be Julie Andrews. My unwillingness to practice warred with my desire to be a singing star. I wasn’t listening to God or anybody else. I was listening to my own rather unrealistic dreams about a singing career.
Without my knowledge, the modeling agency had sent my photograph to MGM Studios. MGM was having a talent/beauty contest to find a new star. The prize was a role opposite Clark Gable. An MGM representative came to Houston to interview me.
“I have years of acting experience in school plays,” I gushed.
He rolled his eyes and said, “Honey, you have a terrible southern accent, but we are only interested in how you look. You would play an Indian and all you would have to say is ‘Ugh!’ ” The role was that of Kamiah, a Blackfoot princess and the wife of Clark Gable’s character, Flint Mitchell, in the movie Across the Wide Missouri.
I sat there wondering what to do and how to act, intimidated by this important man. But my mother was very much on her high horse. She looked down her nose at this common theatrical person who did not even speak English correctly. Her disapproving demeanor amused this tough character immensely. He must have thought, “That dumb woman has no reason to act so lofty. There are a million like her snotty little daughter who would sell their souls for this chance.” I really expected him to get up and simply walk away. He did not walk away—but he was not very encouraging either. He simply said, “We will see.”
I did not long mourn my dream of a career on Broadway. I turned my attentions to something really important: the debutante season was in full swing. I was a year younger than the big-time glamour girls who were the queens of the season, but I was also invited to debut parties around the state—Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio—and I basked in their glow. Amon G. Carter Jr., the biggest husband-catch in Fort Worth, invited me to a house party and skiing at an elegant resort in New Mexico. But my parents had financial limits: they had provided fabulous ball gowns, but ski clothes were definitely not in the budget.
Actually no one in the group, including Amon Jr., had any ski clothes—but he didn’t have a budget! It was not a problem for him or any of the rest of his crowd to spend thousands on ski outfits as it was for me.
Joan Farish, daughter of one of Houston’s most distinguished families, heard that I needed ski clothes. She hardly knew me but offered me all of her wonderfully appropriate clothes, which she’d worn at her school in Switzerland. In life, you always get paid back, one way or another. This time I was Emma Jane.
Girls usually did not “go steady” with just one guy in the 1940s and early 1950s. We dated a lot of people—so we had to learn to control racing hormones. When you control the situation, you win. If he can convince you to succumb, he wins. Even today I believe that. The world changes, but people don’t. Men in history and men today like a conquest but don’t value an easy one. I believe if a woman jumps in bed easily tonight, tomorrow the man will be bragging. If today she makes him wait, tomorrow he will be begging. Making men wait only whets their appetite.
In the end, sex is not what keeps men hanging around anyway; it’s the intrigue, the interest, and the intellect. That’s why it’s important for women to develop their minds and obtain knowledge.
My virtue intact, I spent a glorious year meeting the right people and lining up suitors for parental approval. This was objective number one to a family intent on protecting their daughter from the evils of show business and the infamous studio couch. Why risk it when everything that careers could buy was available in Texas on the magic carpet of marriage?
In the forties and fifties, I really did not know what love was. I just did what I was told. Dating whomever I pleased was just not possible. I dated only those considered appropriate by my parents.
Charles Henry “Pete” Coffield was one of the richest boys in Texas. His father was wealthy and powerful, both in Texas and nationally, and Mr. Coffield had big plans for his only son—which did not include me. He wanted a merger, not a marriage. I had nothing to merge. His son, however, for perhaps the first time in his life, stood up to his father and said, “I am going to marry Joanne. She comes from a good family and has everything except money. Why do we need money? I love her.”
His papa called on me and said I was “beautiful and good with people.” He then said, “Pete is determined to marry you, so I won’t stand in the way.”
Stand in the way? I was aghast. No one had ever even implied that I was inappropriate as a suitable marriage choice. Even Pete’s mother had been calling me her daughter-in-law proudly ever since I met the family. I had had many suitors, and their families had all approved. I did not like Mr. Coffield’s comments one bit.
Enter Bob King. Bob was twenty-seven, older than my group. He had served in World War II, was out of college, and already had a successful business. His rich, innovative father, C.E. King, cleverly taught his two sons, Bob and Buck, how to become millionaires themselves. They did so almost overnight due to the elder King’s progressive thinking. He bought three hundred acres of land, put in streets, water, electricity, and lights; hired an experienced foreman; and told the boys to build and sell houses to returning servicemen on the GI Bill.
Subdivisions like this sprang up all over the country and not only provided low-cost housing, but created thousands of jobs for carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, and so on. Bob and Buck built ten subdivisions all over Houston. This was hard work. They had to know subcontracting, banking, design, salesmanship, and, most importantly, how to choose land in the path of development.
Diplomacy and Diamonds Page 3