Opening night was magical, but it was not without its blunders. In the second act, Marylin rode an ostrich with a rhinestone collar across the stage. In every rehearsal it had gone off without a hitch, but on that night the roar of applause that filled the theater must have spooked the poor thing. It looked around frantically, then fixed its eyes and aimed straight for me. I leapt out of the way, breaking formation from the other girls, but it seemed determined and raced toward me. In hindsight it was likely the ostrich feathers I had strapped to my arms, which I’d been pulsating like some kind of mating dance, that sent the bird into a whirl of confusion. Once I stopped moving and stood still for a few moments, it turned and ran in the opposite direction, and then into the wings, looking for its trainer, or an exit, sending Marylin to the floor in its frenzy. She handled it like a champ, of course—stood up, brushed herself off and took an exaggerated bow as if it were all part of the act, and then she went on with her next number. But offstage she was livid and said she refused to share the stage with that animal again.
We all planned to meet at Casa Blanca after the show to celebrate a successful opening night, despite the ostrich incident. Ruthie, who’d been in the Follies for a few years already, had been showing me the ropes. She had shocking red hair, huge blue eyes and a face that was more interesting than traditionally beautiful.
“Now when the two of us walk out the back of the theater, there’ll be a big crowd waiting—men and women, but mostly stage-door johnnies.”
“Stage-door johnnies?”
“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “We just smile, thank them and walk on. You ready, Olive?”
“You bet I’m ready,” I said.
We pushed open the back door and there they were, just as she’d promised.
“Miss, miss, you were stunning tonight, can I take you out to celebrate?” one called.
“I heard you’re new in town,” another said. “My friend told me to look you up, show you around.”
“Ignore them,” Ruthie warned. “They say that to everyone.”
Some johnnies were looking for specific girls, bouquets in one hand, jewelry boxes in another, while other gents were there to take out whoever would say yes. But it didn’t matter, it was all such fun.
“Let me treat you, miss … miss…”
“Hey, Miss Spicy,” said one johnny as he pushed through the others toward Ruthie and me. “Come on,” he said, leaning right into me, smooth as pomade. “Let me take you away from all these boys.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a slim navy box and gave me just a peek. I couldn’t help staring at the string of pearls inside.
“Stick with me, doll,” Ruthie said as she took my arm in hers. “We won’t have any shortage of champagne and lobster once we get there, and there’ll be plenty of fellas showing you lots of ice as the days go by, just wait. Why don’t you take it all in before you say yes, see how it all works?”
The guy wasn’t my type anyway, not that I really knew what my type would be. I hadn’t had an appetite for romance in the last year, but he was a sharp dresser, and my, those pearls, were they for me or anyone who’d take him up on his offer? I wondered. I glanced back at him and smiled. “We’re going to Casa Blanca on Fifty-sixth Street,” I said excitedly. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a drink.”
“Oh, boy,” Ruthie said, tugging me along to Broadway. “You have a lot to learn. Come on, or we’ll never get out of here.”
Just five months earlier when I first set foot in New York City, I’d looked up at the bright lights on Broadway with the celebrated names of headliners and the towering billboards advertising all the things they assumed I needed to be prettier, thinner, more elegant, more capable. But now, walking up Broadway, made up like a doll, with a buzzing high from the first performance, I felt as though the lights were just for me, that the man smoking his cigarette above the Great White Way was tipping his hat in my direction. Well done, Olive, he was saying, you do know how to shine.
I felt like skipping. I didn’t even feel the blisters on my toes or the tightness in my neck from the twenty-pound, foot-and-a-half-high headdress I’d worn along with the rest of the girls in the last act. All I could feel was the giddy sensation rising up in me, a mix of pride and excitement at what would come next.
When we arrived at the club, there was a line out the door, but Ruthie walked us right up to the front, introduced me to the doorman and led us through the revolving door into a grand and ornate gilt lobby.
Ruthie pointed across the expanse to a commanding staircase. “Loraine, Marylin and the other principals will wait until we’ve all arrived before they make their grand entrance down those stairs,” she said. “But don’t worry, we’ll have our chance one day.”
The dining room must have seated at least five hundred, and the walls were covered in green velvet with gold trim everywhere. Trumpets and saxophones and the roar of chatter and laughter filled my head. I couldn’t hear a thing Ruthie was saying, but she was already laughing, as if some laughing gas were filling the atmosphere and we were all drinking it in. The dance floor up front was small in comparison with the room and crowded to no end, but the people—they were the most beautiful people I’d ever seen, all under one roof. And everyone had a drink in hand, clearly not giving two hoots for the Volstead Act. It was festive and gay and here I was, right in the middle of it.
Ruthie caught sight of some girls from the show and waved them over. They swarmed toward us, enveloping me into their circle. Someone grabbed my hand, another put her arm around my waist. Ruthie handed me a glass of champagne out of nowhere, and I felt that I was being carried en masse by these beautiful girls. We approached the teeming dance floor and it welcomed us into its heaving, spirited arms, opening up for us, then closing in around us. I had arrived exactly where I wanted to be.
I was one of the Ziegfeld girls.
CHAPTER SIX
Edward, the Prince of Wales, had been to see our show on opening night. The stage manager came to the dressing room right before the curtain went up and told us of Prince Charming’s attendance. It sent some of the girls to pieces, but it didn’t rattle me. In the paper the next day he said he’d never laughed harder in all his life than when he heard Eddie Cantor, with all of his peculiar inflections and slurs, sing “The Star’s Double,” about an actor who called for his double when he was about to be slugged by an irate husband who’d caught him with his wife. A handful of girls were in a huff that the prince hadn’t mentioned their performance. Rumor had it that one of the principals, Irene, had allowed him to take her to dinner, but she wouldn’t admit or deny it, which led me to believe it was all horsefeathers.
The Prince of Wales could sit in the box and watch me perform any day of the week, and it would just make me sing sweeter and dance lighter on my toes, but it was my father’s attendance a few nights after opening that had me sweating in the dressing room ten minutes to call time.
Though they didn’t say it outright, my parents had been mildly impressed that I’d been cast in a Ziegfeld show, or it could have just been relief that it was more reputable than the show at Olympia Theatre. My mother had insisted that they come and see it right away, I think as a way to assuage my father’s concerns, but it didn’t help; in fact, it made everything worse.
The performance opened with “The Follies Salad,” a number featuring several girls from the chorus and me dressed as ingredients for the dish, while Eddie played chef and sang about his culinary creation. We all knew, of course, that it was a metaphor for the show: Eddie was Ziegfeld, the creator, and we chorus girls were the essential ingredients for the revue. At first I’d been over the moon when I was cast as “Spicy” while some of the others got stuck with “Chicken” or “Lettuce,” but then, when I knew my father was in the audience, the thought of walking onstage in a skimpy red lace costume while Eddie sang that the spice adds “just a little tingle” and that it’s “not too naughty,” well, it had me biting my nails off with worry. It
was obvious that I had seduction written all over me. I cursed myself in the minutes before the music started. Why couldn’t I have been cast as “Oil” for the orchestra with a melody that makes the show run smoothly, or “Salt” for the proper seasoning, or “Paprika” to add a dash of “class and smartness.” Hell, I’d even be “Chicken”—“young and tender,” he sang—anything was better than “Spicy” with my father sitting up front.
Up until that evening, the audience had just been a mass of people that formed one body; I didn’t think of them as individuals. They applauded, they stood, they applauded some more. I’d never caught the eye of any one person, and I told myself this had to be the same as any other night. But as soon as I set foot on that stage, I saw the sheen of my father’s parted hair. Lower right, orchestra. The grey plaid suit and burgundy tie he’d worn to work that day. Arms crossed tightly across his chest. My mother to his left, my brothers to his right. I repeatedly looked away, out to the blur of the audience, but my eyes kept going back to him, that shine of his hair transfixing me. It made me nervous as hell.
As the number was coming to an end and all of us girls, the ingredients, sashayed across the stage and gathered around Eddie, some drunken fool in the audience began calling out obscenities and was quickly escorted out of the theater to the street. We did exactly as we’d been told to do in rehearsals in a situation like this: we carried on with grace. But I could feel the weight of disapproval from my father’s seat and it stirred in me a heavy mix of emotions. Worried that he’d think the whole thing was too provocative, I felt my stomach twist at the thought of how he’d react. But I clung to a faith that he’d see this performance was more than that, hopeful he’d see that most people in the audience were wealthy, respectable gentlemen taking their wives out for an elegant show of beauty and charm. In the next instant, I felt angry, knowing all too well that it was too much to ask of my father to think that way, my defenses up already at the thought of his bristly response at the end of the night.
Later, as part of the chorus, I sang “Shaking the Blues Away,” in front of a beautifully designed backdrop of a cotton field and a white wooden house with real Spanish moss hanging from a cut drop, and I had a short solo in the sweet “Maybe It’s You” number wearing a rose-trimmed hoop skirt and a floppy hat. I thought I’d given the previous night’s performance my very best, but this night I sang with everything I had. When I walked slowly down the enormous staircase in a gorgeous full-length gown with fifty other women while Franklyn Bauer sang “The Rainbow of Girls,” I walked with all the grace and elegance I could muster; I was going to impress my father if my life depended on it. But despite all of that, I knew that damned salad number was the act he would latch on to.
After the show, I took off as much of my stage makeup as I could and met my parents and brothers in the front of the theater—I didn’t want them to see the shenanigans going on at the stage door with the johnnies begging for our company.
My mother hugged me. “Darling, you were wonderful, just wonderful,” she said more enthusiastically than I would have expected from her. “You were a star, I’m so proud of you,” she whispered into my ear. She had forgiven me for all that had happened, I thought with relief. My time in Rockville with Aunt May was all in the past now. Maybe we could move beyond it after all.
I glanced at my father standing with his arms crossed, staring straight to the street, his lips pursed tightly into a downward frown. I walked over to him slowly.
“Olive, you were the best!” my brother Junior said, jumping in, hugging me. “The berries, I’m telling you, blew the rest of those girls right out of the water.” He was always my biggest fan.
“Aw, thanks, JJ, you’re sweet to say so,” I said, kissing his cheek. “I messed up a few steps in the final act, coming down that staircase.”
“I didn’t notice. Really,” he said.
“Wow, what a show, though,” George said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” I knew he’d be asking me about the ladies later.
“What did you think, Pa? I know it’s not exactly your cup of tea, but did you find something you liked in the acts?” I stepped in front of his gaze, trying to get his attention. “How about the pet act, Pa? We always laugh backstage when the dog asks his owner for a whiskey.”
He stood firm. “That’s enough now, Olive,” he said, straightening up even more. “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
“But Ted, we’re going to dinner, remember?” my mother said, putting her arm through his.
“Not tonight, Doris, I said we’ll talk when we get home. Now all of you get in the car.” He walked to the car waiting at the sidewalk, got in the front seat and slammed the door shut.
I looked pleadingly at my mother, but she was defeated. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe he’ll come around at home. Come on, Junior.” She put her hand on my little brother’s back and ushered him into the waiting car. “I’ve got some bread and cheese, I’ll make us some sandwiches.”
When we got out of the car in Flatbush and closed the door behind us, my brothers made themselves scarce. My father took a beer from the icebox and my mother fixed herself a gin rickey and began assembling sandwiches at the kitchen counter.
“I don’t want you in that show, Olive,” he said, finally looking me in the eye.
“But, Pa—”
“No, Olive. You looked like a chippie up there, and no daughter of mine is going to parade herself around the stage like that for every man in Manhattan to drool at.”
“You’re talking about that one act, the stupid salad, but what about the others? They’re just good old fun, nothing harmful there.”
“I said I don’t want you in that show.” He grabbed the kitchen chair he was leaning on, lifted it a few inches, then slammed it down again. I stepped back. I hated it when he got like this, all blustery. I knew that any small thing now could push him over the edge and I didn’t want that.
“Teddy, relax, will you?” my mother said quietly. “Let me pour you a whiskey.”
“I don’t want a goddamn whiskey, I want my daughter to wipe that makeup, and that smug look, off her face and give me her word that she won’t set foot on that stage again.”
I rubbed the back of my hand across my lips. “I did wipe it off.…”
“Don’t you talk back to me,” he snapped, leaning into me, and I flinched just a little and wished I hadn’t. It showed weakness, it showed fear. “You heard that blotto in the audience calling out to you.”
“It wasn’t to me, he was just some drunkard, he was out on the roof, so far gone.”
“Oh, he was calling out to you all right, dressed up like a good-for-nothin’ harlot.”
“Teddy!” my mother said.
“Shut it, Doris.” He took a deep breath, and I could see he was trying real hard to keep a lid on it. He took another swig of his beer and shoved his hands down into his pockets as if to will them to stay there.
I was boiling mad. I was working so damned hard. When I was on that stage, I was bursting with life. How could a father not want that for his own daughter? Sure, Ziegfeld was glorifying us, he was dressing us up in the most elaborate and expensive costumes that had ever seen the lights of Broadway, and he made us feel like the most beautiful women in all of America, but he wasn’t exploiting us. I knew the difference. I didn’t care if a guy in the audience had the hots for me or not. I didn’t care if I was dancing for Prince Charming, someone’s grandmother or someone’s daughter. It was still the performing that made me soar. How could he not see that, how could he not be happy for me? I’d paid a price for being too naïve, too gullible, and I thought about that fact all the time, but that was my business. Now I’d earned some recognition, some appreciation, because of hard work. I hated that I couldn’t tell him this.
“Pa, I’m a trained singer and a dancer too now. You know this is what I’ve always wanted to do. Mr. Ziegfeld even said he was considering giving me a comedy song—he thinks I’m funny.”
“He thinks you’re funny?” he scoffed. “Well, I’m not laughing.”
I was keeping my voice down, I was choosing my words carefully, I was really trying not to send his hands flying, but inside I was reeling.
“You let Erwin follow his dreams,” I said quietly. My parents certainly hadn’t been happy when Erwin joined the navy, getting shipped off to Illinois just days after enlisting, but within weeks the talk in our house went from concern and disapproval to tremendous pride, and now that he’d been one of a few selected to transfer to a brand-new training facility in San Pedro, California, he was the one in the family who could do no wrong.
“Your brother is serving our country. Are you really comparing your song and dance to his patriotic duty?”
“No, just noting your response to it. But I’m making pretty good money, Pa, I’m contributing to the house, seventy-five dollars a week.” I tried to appeal to his financial mind. He knew there were very few places where I could work and bring in that kind of money, but he didn’t think it was right for a woman to work anyway. He thought a woman’s job was at home, making some man happy. He already had my life planned out for me, indentured to a man none of us had even met yet. But what about me? What about my happiness?
“Olive,” he said more quietly now, giving me hope that my reasoning had reassured him, “if you quit that show first thing tomorrow morning, then I will pay you one thousand dollars.”
My mother gasped, but my father kept his eyes fixed on me, wanting an immediate response.
“Papa,” I said, almost in a whisper—this was pointless, he wasn’t listening to a word I said.
“Hell, I’ll give you two thousand. Three thousand.”
“Pa, stop this,” I said, hot and angry now. How could he think this was about the money? This was about life, this was about living. “I’m not going to quit the show.”
The intensity in his eyes turned to fury, and his lips pinched into a snarl. “Then you’d better damn well start packing your bags and looking for a place to live, because as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, prancing around like a good-for-nothing quiff, you will not live under my roof.”
The Show Girl Page 5