Harry Belafonte had advised me to always make the best financial deal I possibly could, because no career is guaranteed, especially for an African-American woman in showbiz. He also explained early on in my career that touring, regardless of how inconvenient it was, could be very lucrative. That’s why when Richard Rodgers’s No Strings was ready for its national tour, I decided to go with it.
I remember the day I had a horrifically unsettling experience in a department store. It was in the early 1980s, and I had driven my Rolls to Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. I did not give much thought to the fact that it needed some work. Usually I’m persnickety, but around this time, I’d been neglectful. So the Rolls wasn’t looking its best that day. Anyway, I had bought some bathing suits and cover-ups for a trip, and while I was in the dressing room, a young salesclerk came in to see me.
“Miss Carroll,” she said. “Your credit card didn’t go through.”
I stood there, confused. I had never heard those words before, ever. It was so mortifying I hardly knew what to say. Then, as I stepped out of the dressing room, there were some women who wanted my autograph. Can you imagine? I signed for them and spoke in a way that was more animated than usual. Then I called over to the clerk, “I’ll be back to take care of this tomorrow!” I wanted to make it clear to everyone in that swimsuit department at Saks that I did not have a financial problem. And I actually didn’t. It was more that I was starting to feel a kind of slipping from the top of the food chain at the time. Certainly, I could pay my bills. But I probably couldn’t continue to travel the way I traveled, extravagantly, with twenty pieces of luggage and an entourage. In my midforties, I was beginning to make contact with the feeling that my life had changed, and that I might not be able to maintain the level of success that had come so easily in the past. Should I really be driving a Rolls, particularly one in need of a few repairs? My outspoken agent, Roy Gerber, didn’t think so. He told me that someone had cringed seeing me pull up to the Beverly Wilshire for lunch.
“My friend saw you get out of your car and he called me immediately,” Roy told me. “He said you should stop driving it because it’s a perfect example of someone having financial problems.” I finally got it repaired, and I kept trading up for new ones, just as my father had done with his Chryslers all my childhood. And now, fifteen years later, here I was after a disastrous audition, standing in a theater parking lot about to get into my Rolls, and worrying about how to pay for my life. I didn’t just want to play Norma Desmond in the national production of Sunset Boulevard in Toronto. I had to.
I unlocked the door to the car and got in.
“I just can’t believe this is really your car,” the pianist said. “Well, I promised myself years ago that I would drive a Rolls all my life,” I told him. “It’s very important to me that I only have the best for myself and my child.”
He nodded respectfully, and then shook his head.
“Well, I wish those people inside that theater could see you now, because quite clearly you are Norma Desmond,” he said. “You have the perfect voice, looks, and car.”
I thanked him and drove away, angry that the revered creator of the show could feel it was his right to tease me and try to provoke me into singing saloon songs. And I was upset that I was not the kind of person who could joke around with him and go with the flow. My whole life I’ve been careful and formal. The only time I wasn’t was when I ran in for my second audition for House of Flowers with a crazy, chopped-off hairstyle, so exhausted that without even thinking, I sat down on the edge of the stage, kicked off my shoes, and sang to Harold Arlen, Truman Capote, and all the producers in the dark. But I was a girl then, barely twenty years old. Now I was very much an adult.
“Well, that’s that,” I said as I drove home. So much for Sunset Boulevard.
Not long after that, my agent got another call, and I was sent some music to prepare and asked to fly to Toronto. After another audition, without Sir Andrew around, I was granted my proper time with a rehearsal pianist and sang well. The producer, Garth Drabinksy, told me he had wanted me all along. No, Sir Andrew was not totally happy about the choice. I don’t think he wanted me at all, and claimed that I couldn’t sing in the key in which the songs were written. But the final decision about me was the producer’s, not the creator’s. And I was offered the job that very day, and like any woman in her sixties, I was terribly delighted to be wanted again.
But it didn’t take long to realize that I was back in the theater, and that meant I would be locked away day in and day out in my own little gilded cage. I always took my work so seriously, too seriously. For an entire year, I would be committed to eight shows a week, worrying about my throat, with humidifiers all around me. But I desperately needed to prove I could play the role. I was the oldest woman to play Norma Desmond, and certainly the darkest. My leading man, Rex Smith, was very charming and extremely talented. And there was something so rewarding about not having to worry for two years about what kind of jobs I might be offered.
The revolving set for the show was incredibly ornate and so were the costumes. Sweeping around in capes as heavy as velvet drapes and walking up and down three hundred steps eight performances weekly in heels and a leopard-skin gown that weighed sixty pounds almost killed me. One night I tripped and injured my ankle badly. I iced it in between scenes so the show could go on. That’s the reality of live theater. It can be painful and it isn’t always pretty. Yet it can be so rewarding.
The reviews and audiences were wonderful. Toronto’s a beautiful city and its theatergoers are as sophisticated as any in the world. And if the American press didn’t pay much attention to the production, I was just becoming seasoned enough to understand that less than perfect can be good enough. You learn that as you age, I think—to appreciate fully what you’re given. It’s a kind of acceptance that can bring peace, even to an overly ambitious perfectionist like me.
The one thing that I could not accept from my experience as the lead in Toronto’s Sunset Boulevard was the night Sir Andrew came from England to see our performance. The company was thrilled that we would be able to meet the great creator of so many shows and songs we knew so well. The plan was that we’d have some time with him after the show. So after the curtain fell, we were all racing around in our dressing rooms, pulling ourselves together for our moment. But then his voice came over our PA system, sounding brittle and rushed.
“Thank you all so very much for a lovely performance. I enjoyed it very much. My pilot has just informed me that the skies are clouding over and that I must leave immediately, but again, thank you for a fine show.” There was dead silence everywhere.
We had all worked so hard on this show and we were really disappointed. The cast so wanted to meet him, be around him for a half hour. That’s how actors are. We try our best to interpret the work of important artists every single night, and it would have just been so wonderful to be able to greet him. I was also looking forward to burying any ill will between us. But he was gone, just gone. I was demolished and demoralized. You do feel responsible for the company when you’re the star of the show. And I just couldn’t believe he would do that.
On the other hand, I’d been the leading lady in a similar situation years ago with the great Richard Rodgers. Actually, it was worse.
It happened in Detroit. I was working extremely hard in 1962 for the out-of-town opening of the Broadway-bound No Strings. And the night before we opened, Mr. Rodgers came to see me in my dressing room. In a voice that was something between avuncular and condescending, he told me he had something he needed to discuss with me: the hostess of our opening-night party did not want me in her home. She felt that it would confuse her children to see a black woman who was sophisticated and elegant because they didn’t exist. She told Rodgers she was certain he’d hired tutors to teach me diction and manners, and that I was a fabricated black character who was designed to startle white audiences. Did Rodgers, who wrote “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” about
prejudice for South Pacific, argue with this racist hostess or give her a dressing-down? Did he tell her to cancel her party? No, he did neither. Well, I’d seen him be cruel in the past. Once in his office, he referred to Larry Hart, one of his former collaborators, as a fag. Another time, I ran into him in front of our hotel, again while we were trying out No Strings in Detroit. It was a rainy day, and when he asked how I was doing, I told him I was having a terrible time getting a cab. He said, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and then went and left in his limo without offering me a ride to the theater. It amazes me when people who have the ability to create such beautiful music can behave so rudely.
At any rate, when he told me that I would not be invited to the cast party, I wasn’t really surprised. After all, when you live a life in which racial prejudice is a daily experience, you carry with you a mental first-aid kit to fix any situation to avoid further infection of your soul. So I had my assistant call a favorite restaurant across the street from our theater, and reserved it for our private party. Everyone in the cast and crew was invited. We had a ball. We ate and drank, hugging one another and praising one another and giving one another the kind of support we needed after so many weeks of difficult rehearsals. And I never chose to speak of the incident again with Mr. Rodgers. I have never understood the point of dwelling on things that are so blatantly obvious. And besides, I could not withdraw from the theater opportunity of a lifetime.
Mr. Rodgers had called me on the telephone to introduce the idea of No Strings in 1961. He had loved my work in Capote and Arlen’s House of Flowers, and a few years later, in 1957, had tried to make me up to look Asian for Flower Drum Song, a look that didn’t work. I knew he had wanted to work with me for years, and I was excited. The morning he called was after one of my appearances on The Tonight Show with Jack Paar, where I was becoming a regular—a great boon to my public profile. For my meeting with Mr. Rodgers, I went in a pale pink Givenchy suit and pillbox hat. It was a perfect choice. “You look marvelous,” he said. “That’s exactly how I want you to look onstage in my show.” And so I did. In No Strings, I played an American model in Paris who falls in love with an American writer played by Richard Kiley. We have a glorious, glamorous fling (that only ends when he has to go back to the States) in a bonbon of a beautifully designed show. It meant the world to be able to depict a black woman with some sophistication, and it was especially gratifying to know I was part of the first integrated love affair on Broadway. This was Rodgers’s first project without a lyricist, it was a solid hit, and I won a Tony Award. My competitors for the prize in 1962 were Anna Marie Alberghetti, Molly Picon, and Elaine Stritch.
And No Strings was an almost perfect experience. I say almost perfect because show business is never without its regrettable moments. The cast party in Detroit was one. The other came in the days after I received my Tony Award, and I opened the papers to find out that Nancy Kwan, an Asian-American actress, had been cast to play my role in the Warner Brothers film version of the show. Yes, Audrey Hepburn had replaced Julie Andrews for the film version of My Fair Lady, just as Andrews would replace Mary Martin for the film version of The Sound of Music. But this was different. I wasn’t too old for the part in the movie, just too black. Around that time, I had testified for Adam Clayton Powell Jr. about limited opportunities for black performers. In the wake of the news about No Strings, the NAACP sent a petition to Warner Bros., demanding to know how many black people it employed. Several groups threatened to boycott the film. The studio eventually decided to shelve the project.
It was devastating to be unwelcome at a cast party and the movie version of a show that had been written for me. But by then, I already knew how cruel show business could be. The great Pearl Bailey was the one who taught me my very first lesson about these immense cruelties in show business. In House of Flowers, she played a madam in a West Indian bordello who helps raise Ottilie, the young ingenue I was playing. Despite all odds (and sense, when I look back on it now), Ottilie remains lovely, innocent, and pure.
I was nineteen at the time, and looked rather innocent myself. I suppose that’s why Pearl became so maternal. I don’t think she knew that I didn’t really need any mothering, given that I had such an attentive and loving mother. But Pearl was very sweet to me. Then, suddenly she wasn’t. We were still in rehearsals on the road. And on the show’s opening night in Philadelphia, I decided to apply a little eyeliner on my eyelids so the audience would notice my eyes, a standard routine for any theater actress. But before the curtain went up, and in the kind of loud, dramatic voice I had worked to eliminate from my own persona, I heard her on the other side of the theater. The whole cast and crew heard her, too. “That girl is covered in makeup,” she was yelling. “This show will not go on until she removes every last bit of it, do you hear me?” To be honest, I didn’t even know whom she was talking about. So I couldn’t believe it when the stage manager walked over to me, and with a sheepish voice said I’d have to wash my face. It was mortifying. But I didn’t argue. I knew what was going on. She was threatened by my youth, and wanted to keep me as barefoot and dowdy as possible.
“So that’s what it means to be the star,” I told myself as I washed my face.
Then it got worse. I had a beautiful song in the show called “Don’t Like Goodbyes.” It was Harold Arlen at his finest, and the audience was wild for the song. After a performance in our out-of-town rehearsals, there was a knock on my door. The producer, Saint-Suber, and Mr. Arlen were standing there. He was a terribly dapper-looking man, but he was also nurturing, and spoke to performers with respect and kindness. This was, in fact, a man whose personality was equal to the loving and idealistic songs he wrote.
“This is going to sound awful, and it isn’t very pleasant, so get ready,” he said. “And I have to apologize because we never should have allowed this to happen.”
My heart skipped several beats. What could this be? I knew I wasn’t being fired.
Then the producer quietly said, “We’re going to have to take the song ‘Don’t Like Goodbyes’ away from you. Pearl wants to sing it.”
I didn’t say what I wanted to say, which was, “Are you all crazy?”
I might have suggested that the song would make no sense if her character sang it. But I knew the rules well by then—don’t argue with the star. So I didn’t cry or carry on at all. I simply told myself that there was nothing to be done about this situation. If there’s something that you can do, then you have to fight for it. Or maybe you get the people you are paying to do the fighting for you. But this? Nothing to be done about it. She wanted my song.
So it was decided that to help the song make sense, I would remain onstage as Miss Bailey sang it to me. The director put me at her feet. I was looking out to the audience, wistfully, as she sang:
Don’t like goodbyes,
Tears or sighs…
She was playing the loving woman who had adopted me, and I was this girl whom she had raised to become a lady. It was decided that I would rest my face on her lap and she would tenderly rub my cheeks and forehead as I looked outward and she sang the song that was one of the most beautiful I’d ever heard, a song that gave me chills when I sang it. But the first night she sang my song, she took my head into both her hands, and slowly but forcefully turned my face completely upstage, away from the audience, and then she buried my face in her ample lap.
I’m not too good at leavin’ time…
I got no taste for grievin’ time
While breathing into the fabric of her dress, I waited for her to lift my face back up so I could continue breathing freely and looking out at the audience. But it soon became clear that she was going to keep my head placed right there where she decided it should be. I wanted to bite her, but I told myself, “You can’t change this, leave it alone.” And when the song ended, and she had let me go, I heard the audience applaud her instead of me. Everyone tried to convince her it made no sense for her character to sing that song.
“No, it’s fine
,” she said. “We’ll leave it just like it is.”
So, as I say, show business can be cruel. Sunset Boulevard epitomizes that, and Norma Desmond is an example of what it’s like to fight with the fact that you are getting older. Well, we do have a terrible problem with age in this country. But you know what? I think it’s ridiculous for older women to allow themselves to be so demoralized. Say what you want about Norma, at least she had the wherewithal to try to get someone to write a script for her so she could have a role to play. She did what she could, and only when she realizes that she is no longer wanted, not by Hollywood and not by her young man, does she have her famous “ready for my close-up” meltdown scene. I’m glad that I’ve figured out at this tender age that public recognition is not the most important thing in life. I’m glad I have friends around to laugh with me and discuss the pros and cons of liposuction and other pertinent issues of the day. It’s a lot more fun. On the other hand, imagine how gratifying it was for me, at the end of that show in that theater in Toronto, to stand at the top of a staircase and go stark raving mad? That scene is the perfect fulfillment for any actress who has spent her life in the industry.
Well, in a way, I really was going mad at the time. Things with Vic Damone, my fourth husband, were falling apart. In my Sunset Boulevard interviews at the time, I’d joke about how wonderful it was to play Norma Desmond.
The Legs Are the Last to Go Page 3