by Goldie Hawn
Without speaking, he grabs his duffel bag from the back and dumps it on the ground next to him. He pulls on his green beret and smooths down his uniform. I open the driver’s door and step out and walk round to where he is standing. Reaching up, stretching on tiptoes, I adjust his beret so that it comes down at a slight angle over his right eye.
“Good-bye, Goldie Hawn,” Stu says with a smile, leaning down and kissing me tenderly on the lips.
“Good-bye, Stu,” I reply, kissing him back. His lips are soft and taste of vanilla. “And good luck.”
Stepping back, he brings his right hand up to his head in a crisp salute before turning sharply on his heel and walking away.
I climb wearily back into my car with Lambchop for the final leg of my long journey. Starting the engine, I pull slowly away from the side of the road as if floating in a dream.
In my rearview mirror I watch for as long as I can until Stu melts into the darkness and disappears from sight. When he is gone, I realize with a heaving sob that wells up from somewhere deep inside me that I will probably never know the fate of my “unknown” soldier.
War. When will we learn?
choices
Doors slide open and shut along life’s path. Roads diverge right and left. The only way to discover where they lead is to choose which one to take.
“Come on, Lambchop,” I whisper, opening the door to my apartment so he can follow at my heels. “Let’s get out of this place!”
It is dawn, and I am fleeing Las Vegas like a thief, slamming the door on the five shows a night, the vampire hours and the drooling perverts.
The wheels of my car spin dust as I head for the Mojave Desert highway that brought me here three months ago. Three whole months of sleeping when I can during the day, tinfoil taped to my window to block the light. Three months of never venturing out in the daylight because of the ferocious heat. Three months of having to dance in half-empty bars. I’ve had enough.
Goldie, I can hear my dad’s words of advice ringing in my ears. Go back to L.A. and see if you can get some work at one of the television studios. Give yourself a set time period, and, if it doesn’t work out, then come on home.
Nine months, I tell myself. I’m giving myself nine months. If I haven’t got a dancing job by then, I’m going to go back to Maryland, and I’m going to open that dance school.
Escaping now in the middle of the night, Lambchop at my side, I retrace my journey across the desert toward L.A. The top down, the wind in my hair, I drive up through the mountains and down the other side. My road to hell has become my road to freedom. Passing through Good Springs, I wonder about my unknown soldier and what kind of hell he is in.
Back in the city, pounding the pavement with a portfolio that is bigger than I am, I try to get work at a studio or in commercials. Time and again, I am turned down. Time and again, I put myself in a place of rejection.
“Oh, thank you, Miss Hawn. That was lovely…Next!”
“You’re too unusual-looking…You can’t be pigeonholed…We don’t know what to do with you.” One agent even tells me, “We don’t really know where to place you. Go get a job and then come back and we’ll see what we can do.”
I go through all the usual agonies of wondering what it is about me that the producers and directors don’t like. Is it my face? My body? How I look? How I read the line? The scrutiny is intense and only brings more self-scrutiny, feeding on my insecurities.
“I am not going to be one of those sad L.A. girls who grow old here waiting to be discovered,” I tell my new roommate, Shawn Randall. She’s a dancer too, and we share an apartment in the heart of Hollywood.
Looking up a list of talent agencies, I find one in downtown L.A., on Fourth Street. I take the freeway, the top down, but the smog is so bad that it burns my eyes. Pulling my car over, I wipe the smudged makeup from my eyes in the rearview mirror and carefully reapply it. I try to put my top up, but it won’t go. My car, like my life, is falling apart.
Eventually finding the agency, I push open the door and scale a mountain of wooden stairs with paint-chipped walls on either side. I reach the top and a door with a rickety knob. I turn it tentatively and step inside. A big guy sitting behind a desk smiles at me. “Come on in,” he says with a wave.
He has a broad smile and a colorful shirt. His name is George, and I like him. The wall behind his desk is plastered with photographs of his clients.
“So, what can you do?” he asks as he pores over my portfolio of publicity shots.
“I’m a dancer.”
“Great. How about commercials? Do you have any experience?”
“Well, yes, I did one for a hair product in Vegas. But I had to wear a big red wig and I looked awful.”
“I don’t know why they didn’t let you show your pretty hair.”
“George,” I ask, looking up at his wall of fame, “tell me, do you represent any white clients?”
George laughs, a big open laugh that reveals a mouth full of teeth. “Well, no, girl,” he replies with a chuckle. “You’d be my first. Don’t you worry, Goldie, I don’t care what color your skin is. I can help you…I can definitely help you.”
So now I have an agent, only he never asks me to sign anything, and he never seems to call. I continue to spend my life traipsing from one audition to the next, my dance bag slung over my shoulder, sometimes with Shawn, sometimes without, always hungry for work.
One day, we spot an advertisement in the show business rags for The Andy Griffith Special.
“Yes!” I cry, excitedly. “This is exactly what Daddy said I should go for.”
We drive to the CBS studios in Shawn’s Oldsmobile, which looks and sounds like a Sherman tank. Laughing, chatting away, we are as free as birds and looking forward to our audition. Finding the rehearsal hall, we see some familiar faces from other auditions, girls like us who are doing the rounds. Most of them are older, and have been dancing in L.A. for years. They form tight cliques, and know their presence here is perfunctory; they will almost certainly be selected.
“Okay, five, six, seven, eight…” the choreographer, Nick Castle, puts us through our paces. We begin in groups of ten, and then he mixes the combinations, watches some of us perform solo, hears a few of us sing, and finally whittles us down to twenty girls.
“All right, now,” he says, clapping his hands together and lining us all up in front of him. “You, you and you, thanks so much, but not this time. You and you, you’re in.” He was pointing at Shawn and me.
“Really?” I cry, looking excitedly at Shawn. “We’re in?”
“The pay is four hundred and fifty bucks for the week,” Mr. Castle’s assistant tells us. “There’ll be four days of rehearsals and three days’ shooting. You’ll be doing some singing as well as dancing.”
“Four hundred and fifty dollars?” I reply, my eyes wide. “God! I was only making one-eighty in Vegas!” I am so excited, I can’t wait to call Mom and Dad.
“I’m going to be dancing on an Andy Griffith special for Nick Castle, Mom,” I tell her later that night from somewhere above cloud nine. “Nick’s a god to the dancers in Hollywood. If he likes me, then I’m made.”
“Oh, Andy Griffith is my favorite, doll,” she says, in her gruff voice. “Goldie, this is going to be so much fun. Rut! Rut! Come and speak to Goldie. She has some good news.”
“Way to go, Kink!” Dad says. “We’ll be watching. Wear something red so we can see you among the spear throwers.” It gives me a thrill to imagine him watching me with his TV tray and his socks half off.
I arrive on set the first day, and Tennessee Ernie Ford, the statuesque country-and-western singer who shares the show with Andy Griffith, stares down at my old dancing shoes, which have holes in them. My eyes follow his.
“So, what’s with the shoes?” he asks. “You going for extra ventilation?”
“These are my lucky shoes.” I giggle.
“Hmm.” He smiles and walks away.
Later that day, he sto
ps the rehearsal in front of the whole cast to make an announcement. “Everyone chipped in,” he tells me with a grin, presenting me with a brand-new pair of shoes.
I am so overwhelmed I almost cry. Happily, I pull them on, and they feel great as we do some new routines. A short while later, Nick Castle pulls me to one side. “You’ve got it, Goldie girl!” he tells me. “From now on, you’re going to be in all of my shows.” As he walks away, I stare down at my new shoes. Wait a minute, I think. Maybe these are my lucky shoes!
That night, I glue glitter on them so that it spells out THANK on one shoe and YOU on the other.
It is the first day of shooting, and now I know why I’m being paid so much. Nick is a wonderful choreographer, but we sweat and pant our way through the grueling routines we have to learn in just a few days. The constant repetition to get the shot just right is exhausting.
Twelve of the older girls are up front, singing and doing their thing, and Shawn and I are in the background, high-kicking and trying to synchronize our movements and singing all at once. It isn’t easy.
“Okay, everyone,” Nick yells, clapping his hands together, “take a break, and then we’ll go again. Five minutes, everyone.”
Leaning up against the back wall, swigging thirstily from a bottle of water, I spot a handsome young man walking straight toward me with a big smile on his face. “Uh-huh,” I say to Shawn, with a nudge, “here we go.”
“Let’s hear his line, at least,” she says.
“Excuse me,” he begins, extending a hand, “my name is Art Simon. I work for the William Morris Agency, and I’m servicing the show.”
I look at him like he has six heads. William Morris? I don’t think so.
“Tell me, are you represented?”
“Not really,” I say, thinking guiltily of dear George, who hasn’t called me in weeks.
“Well, can you come to my office next Wednesday so we can talk?” he asks, handing me his card. “Say, at eleven o’clock?”
“Uh-huh,” I reply, coolly.
“Okay, everyone! Places!”
I can hardly believe my five-minute break is over. I take the man’s card and stuff it down the front of my leotard without another thought.
The following Wednesday morning, the telephone rings in my apartment just as I am halfway through a piece of Sara Lee vanilla cake, the kind my dad loves.
“Miss Hawn? This is Art Simon’s secretary at the William Morris Agency. We got your number from CBS. Mr. Simon’s waiting for you here, and we just wondered if you were coming for your eleven o’clock appointment?”
“Oh my God!” I cry, spitting crumbs from my mouth. “He really is an agent for William Morris? Okay, I’ll be right there.”
Scampering around the apartment in a blind panic, I grab an orange jersey dress with a bold psychedelic design, tousle my hair and smear some lipstick across my lips. Slipping on some sandals, I rush out the door and jump into my trusty Chevy, which is now really falling apart on me. The passenger’s-side door won’t latch, and each time I make a right-hand turn it flies open and exposes me and any passenger to the street. Driving with one hand, I have to lean across the front seat and pull it closed. Left-hand turns are no problem—but, then, they never have been.
Looking like something out of The Beverly Hillbillies, I find the agency on El Camino Drive, in a smart area I don’t usually frequent. Parking my car illegally, I run into the building and ask a receptionist where to go. Rushing upstairs, I say to anyone I see, “Art Simon? Where’s Art Simon’s office?” Several people point or give me directions, and I barrel through his door.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” I say, breathlessly.
Art is sitting behind a long desk, flanked by six other men, all dressed in identical suits and ties. They all stare back at me.
“Hello, Goldie,” Art says. “Good of you to join us.”
“Hi,” I say, catching my breath and sitting down. “I really didn’t think you were serious.”
“It’s okay,” Art interrupts. “You’re here now. Well, guys?”
I sit on my hands, fidgeting as seven pairs of eyes give me the once-over.
One of the agents looks down at his notes and speaks to Art as if I am not even in the room. “Well, what can she do?”
“She can sing.”
“Actually, I’m really a dancer,” I chip in, but no one looks my way.
“She can dance.”
“Anything else?”
“She has something about her, don’t you think?”
They all look up at me with blank faces.
I stare back at them. Gee, what should I do? Maybe I should break into a soft-shoe shuffle.
A man on the left asks Art, “What were you thinking of sending her up for?”
“Good Morning World. That new CBS comedy sitcom by Persky and Danoff.”
“But she’s too young for that character.”
“I know, but I thought Persky and Danoff should meet her.”
Good Morning World? Persky and Danoff? What in the world are they talking about? I wish someone would cue me in.
“Okay,” one of the men says, standing up. The others follow him toward the door. “Do what you want. Go ahead. Sign her.” They leave the room without as much as a good-bye.
Art looks across at me and gives me a conspiratorial wink.
I read the few pages of the script Art gave me and then go to my meeting with Bill Persky and Sam Danoff, who, it turns out, are the biggest TV producers in town. The story revolves around two radio disc jockeys who are friends and neighbors, one married and one single. I’m supposed to play the wife. I arrive lugging a huge shopping bag that clanks as I heave it into the room.
“Come on in, Miss Hawn,” one of them says. “Well, now, what have you got in there?”
“Props,” I say, putting down the bag and pulling out a Corning Ware teapot, cup, saucer and plate, as well as spoons, knives, forks and napkins. “The script says I have to make some tea.”
They start to laugh.
“Did I do something wrong?” I giggle.
“No, it’s just that we’re not used to actresses bringing in their own props.”
“Oh, really?” What an ass, I think to myself. Could I be any dumber?
“Anyway, dear, that’s very clever of you to think of it, so why don’t you go ahead and get it all out and then you can read your lines?”
I am so nervous that when I open my mouth to speak, I am shocked by my own voice. What comes out is eight octaves higher than my own. I can’t wait to finish. I know I’m completely wrong for this part.
“Thank you so much, Goldie,” they tell me when I’m done, nodding and smiling.
“No thank you, guys,” I say, embarrassed. “This was really a lot of fun.” They watch me as I repack my bag of tricks, excuse myself with a bow and run down the stairs. Boy, well, I really screwed that up, I think to myself.
Back in my apartment, I call Art Simon immediately.
“Hi, Art, it’s Goldie.”
“Hi, Goldie. Listen, you didn’t get the part…”
“Oh, I know, and I really thank you so much for believing in me, Art. But, you know what? If you don’t want to represent me anymore, that’s fine too, because I sort of have an agent downtown, and I think that maybe I should really go back with him.”
“No, Goldie, you don’t understand,” Art replies. “You didn’t get that part.”
“What do you mean?”
“They wrote in a new part for you.”
“Wait a minute, you mean I didn’t get that part, but they wrote another part for me with that character?”
“No. They liked you so much they created a whole new character just for you.”
“They did?” I slump back into a chair, all the wind knocked out of me.
“Goldie? Did you hear what I said? You’ve got the job. You’re going to be an actress on television. This is just the beginning.”
Art Simon believed in me. He discovere
d me in a chorus line and had the fearlessness to stand up and put his instincts on the line. He became my trusted agent, and then manager, for many years to come. If I hadn’t chosen this show to do, I would never have met him, and who knows what my life would look like today. I still question that thing called destiny. The choices we make in life and the roads we choose to travel take us to places we may only dream about.
The choices we make can change the course of our lives. It is not the course of our lives that changes us. The road doesn’t come to you; you go to the road. I chose to leave Vegas and try for a career in television. I chose to go to that audition, and I chose to follow the path that Art Simon set for me. The choices I made set in motion a series of events that were now completely out of my control.
Sometimes the choices we make are good, and sometimes they are bad. Sometimes the fear of making a bad choice prevents us from making any choice at all. It is a question of doors opening and shutting in front of us along the way. Should we go through this door, or that one? Should we wait? Or move forward to the next door? Luck certainly plays a part in fate, but what gets us to that lucky place in the first place is a direct consequence of our own decisions.
In my case, I met someone pivotal in my life—Art Simon—who was to become my manager, confidant, laughing partner and guru. He helped me make the right choices along the way. He believed in me and guided me with dignity. He protected me as one would protect a precious jewel. That is rare in Hollywood. I cherish him to this day.
Sometimes we make choices that turn out to be bad, but, if we do, we shouldn’t dwell on it. Instead, we should really stop and think about what happened. Only then can we uncover the hidden lesson, the golden nugget of truth that previously we may not have seen. Mistakes are good, because in illuminating the wrong path they remind us not to go that way again.
Change is the key. Whatever our choices, good or bad, we must learn from them, we must change, and we must move on.