Authors: Robbins Harold
She wrote to her mother that she lived in the waitresses' dormitory
and that she ate kosher. She wrote that they did not perform on the
Shabbat. What she did not write was that she no longer covered her
head whenever she went outside. She did not write that she had given
herself to one of the comedians. She did not write that once again
she had misunderstood the quality and nature of a man's attentions
and had annoyed him by falling in love.
When she returned to New York she was pregnant.
Resourceful Ernie Levin moved her into a flat with another client of
his and arranged for her to have an abortion. It was not done by a
back-alley abortionist but by a White Plains gynecologist. The doctor
was a woman, and she was competent and sympathetic. Even so, the
operation was painful, and it left Golda feeling she had committed an
unpardonable sin.
"You have two choices, my child," Ernie
had told her. "You can go home to your family, since after all
you must have a home and support for you and your child; or you can
abort the pregnancy. I have work for you. I can book you into clubs.
God forbid, I should ever
urge
a young woman to have an
abortion, but I want you to know what your options are."
"I have no options," Golda had said tearfully.
"I have a word of advice," said Ernie. "Do not be so
ready to give your person to a young man. You are naive. You must be
less trusting."
The doctor who performed the abortion gave her more specific
counseling about birth control.
Ernie took her to a tiny comedy club in Lower
Manhattan, where she auditioned for the owner — who had been
told she was twenty-one. He wanted a different act. She could dance a
little, okay, and she could sing a little, okay; but he wanted more
jokes. It was, after all, a
comedy
club. And the songs —
He wanted bawdy songs. And no bra under the leotard, okay? If she
bounced around a little, the audience would love it.
In his office Ernie rehearsed her with a string of jokes. He bought
some, stole others. Some were coarse, some weren't.
Golda used them all, and the audience liked them. Ernie got her
permissions to use several songs from what were called party records.
She got wild applause when she danced and sang, "Bounce your
boobies."
It was a tough grind. The club didn't open until nine o'clock, and it
closed at three in the morning, by which time she had done four
shows. But the owner renewed her contract three times, and she
performed there for a month.
Her last night someone yelled from the audience, "Hey, Golda!
Where'll you be next?"
"Yellow Calf," she said. Ernie had already arranged her
next booking.
"See ya there!" yelled the man in the audience.
Clubs announced new shows by running little block ads in the tabloid
papers, and before the winter was over those little ads were
promising a performance by the hilarious dancing comedienne Golda
Graustein.
She polished her act. Comedy-club audiences were far tougher than the
audiences in Catskill hotels. They were unforgiving. They didn't see
her as a kid trying to please them but as part of a show they'd paid
good money to see. They demanded earthy humor, filled with sexual
innuendo. Sometimes insinuation wasn't enough for them; they wanted
their comedy literally raunchy. Golda had to be taught, and Ernie
Levin was her teacher. He began to buy jokes for her. A young writer
fed her lines for ten dollars apiece. One night she got a huge laugh
from a parody on the song "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles,"
including the line "I suck like an Electrolux," and later
she blushed when she found out what it meant.
What she was doing was not what she had meant to do and be when she
was first inspired to dance and sing. But she had to make a living.
Eighteen years old, Golda had to make a living. She was allowed to
visit her family home in Queens, but never to eat a meal there, never
to stay overnight. Her father absented himself from the house if he
knew she was coming. He declared she degraded the family name and
left word that he would appreciate it if she would call herself
something else.
Ernie Levin said she would probably do better if she did change her
name. So ... Glenda Grayson.
"ERNIE ... OH, ERNIE, ERNIE!"
Glenda wept over the pallid figure lying in the wooden coffin. Ernie
Levin. At Forty-eighth and Broadway he had toppled off the curb and
fallen on his face on the rainy street. His signature pork-pie rain
hat had rolled out into the street and was run over by a cab. He'd
been hustling a deal, always hustling. His heart quit. Just quit. He
was fifty-five years old.
"What'm I ever gonna do without him?" Glenda asked quietly,
of no one in particular.
Gib Dugan put his arm gently around her waist. "The Irish do
these things better," he said.
"Meaning ... ?"
"A wake," he said. "We could all be drunk."
"I'd like to be drunk," she said, "but I have to work
tonight. And so do you."
In two years, thanks to Ernie, she had moved uptown in more ways than
one. She was working in a club called Dingo's in the Bronx, where she
was part of a fully produced show with live music, a chorus line of
six dancers, a comedian, and Glenda Grayson. She was the headliner.
Her name was outside.
Her act had matured. She danced. She perched on a piano, crossed her
handsome legs, and sang. Her comedy was no longer just one-liners but
a monologue that included touching lines about the way her family
scorned her.
"Hey, you remember Jack Benny's great line?
His father had wanted him to be a rabbi, not a comedian. But he said
to him, 'Anyway, whatever you do, don't change your name, Benjamin.'
What'd my father the rabbi say to me? 'Golda, as a favor to your
family ...
change your name! Please!
' "
Gib Dugan was one of the three male dancers in the chorus line, which
meant he was not good enough to dance on Broadway. He was a big
muscular good-looking guy, though; and, in Glenda's term, "hung
like a horse." He satisfied her. She told herself she had
learned enough to allow a guy to get in her pants but not to allow
any guy, especially a goyish guy, to get into her head. Still, she
had to admit she would be sorry if she lost this one.
"One or two won't hurt anything," he said. "C'mon.
Ernie was a great guy, but — "
"No buts, Gib. We have to work." She glanced a final time
at the corpse of her mentor. "Ernie ... How'm I gonna get jobs
without him?"
They worked two shows, and when they went home to her flat in
Brooklyn, she was again tearful. Performing exhausted her, and while
she was in the shower, Gib poured her a heavy Scotch over ice and
handed it past the curtain. She drank while the water was still
pouring over her and managed to relax.
She sat then in her living room, naked except for the towel that soon
fell down, with the Scotch almost exhausted. He put in two more ice
cubes and poured her some more.
"Ernie," she whispered tearfully.
"There was a limit to Ernie, Glenda," Gib said. "There
was a limit to his vision. You can do better than anything he could
ever get you."
"C'mon. Meaning what?"
"You gotta get out of New York, baby. You've done all you can do
here. Look at it. Things are changing. The hotels have quiet lounges.
They want a gal who can play the piano and sing — but not so
loud it interferes with the business talk over the tables. Clubs.
There are fewer and fewer every year. The ones that survive have gone
over to strippers. You wanta work with stripteasers? You wanta take
off your clothes on stage?"
"So what the shit am I supposed to do?"
"Gotta get out of town," said Gib. "The Poconos. Miami
Beach. Texas. L.A."
Glenda tossed back her Scotch. "Yeah, sure. I got an offer to
make some party records."
"No," he said firmly.
"What do you mean, no?"
"That won't do your reputation any good. You got a name as a
club act. You — "
She put her hand on his crotch. "Don't gimme advice," she
said. "Gimme what you got better of."
"Sure. In a minute. But be serious, Glenda.
You gotta get a new agent. Hey. Let
me
make a couple of calls.
I know some people. Maybe I can get you something out of town."
"Maybe it was G-d's will," said her mother.
"God? The man was
my friend
."
"You thought so. And what about this
shegetz
you are seeing now? Is
he
your friend? The
Katholischer
?"
"He is my friend."
They sat together in her family's living room on a
Thursday afternoon. Rabbi Mordecai Graustein was, as always when his
daughter visited, absent. Glenda stared at the crocheted
antimacassars on the chairs, which had seemed so natural, inevitable
in fact, when she was a girl and looked so antiquated now. She had
come to the house in a cab, her head uncovered — without in
fact bringing anything
to
cover it. That year shorter skirts
were in fashion — it was women's patriotic duty to save fabric
— and hers crept back above her knees when she sat. She was out
of place in her own home.
"It is not too late for you, Golda," her mother said. "It
is never too late for hope, always too early for despair."
"Which means what, Mother?"
"You did not marry Nathan. You should have married Nathan. He is
a fine educated young rabbi, with a reputation that will one day
rival your father's. And he married a girl who knew how to respect
him. But there is another. This young man came late to his studies,
but he is devout in them. He is rich! His father died and left him
more than two hundred thousand dollars, which is what allows him to
leave business and take up his studies. He wants only a devoted wife.
Your father is sure you could win him."
"I have no interest in winning him," said Glenda.
Her mother lowered her chin to her chest. "We try to save you,
Golda. Even your father, who will not see you, prays constantly for
you."
"For me to become what?" Glenda asked coldly.
"Do something then for your mother. Answer me this question —
Are you happy?"
Glenda drew a deep breath. "I cannot say I am happy. I am not
unhappy, but — "
"Then. If you will not try to earn the respect of this fine
young man, then do something else for me. You remember Mrs. Gruenwald
— the Gruenwald family? They had the delicatessen on — "
"I remember them, Mother."
"Mrs. Gruenwald's son, Saul, is a doctor. He helps people who
are unhappy. Go see him, Golda. He is what they call a psychiatrist."
"It was done to you before you could prevent
it," Glenda said to Dr. Saul Grünwald. (He used the form
Grünwald, rather than Gruenwald.) She held his limp penis in her
hand. "I prefer the ones that
aren't
cut, though. Gib's
isn't."
"What's better about it?" the psychiatrist asked, unable to
conceal a touch of indignation.
"Why tell you, since there's nothing you can do about it?"
Glenda asked with a grin. "You can't have it put back. If you'd
had a choice, though, I'd suggest you should have said no."
"Are you in love with the
shegetz
?"
"I'll tell you this. I will never fall in
love with anyone who uses the word
shegetz
. Or nigger. Or
kike."
Dr. Saul Grünwald was thirty-five years old and almost wholly
bald. His brown eyes were beady. His solemnity had not forsaken him
even when he was astride her. "Forgive," he said. "Old
habits die hard."
"No, they don't," she said disdainfully.
Dr. Grünwald, who had been putting his clothes back on during
this dialogue, frowned and glanced around the room. "The
question we are addressing," he said, "is whether or not
you are happy."
"I am for the moment," she said. "Since you just
screwed me good. How will I feel at midnight tonight?"
"You must not depend on that."
"Only for occasional therapy? For which I pay?"
"Golda, you are a prisoner of your resentments. Beginning with
resentment of your father — "
"Have I no right to resent? I think I do."
"If I were you, I would put aside the goy and try to make peace
with my father."
"Who speaks through you?" she asked. "Freud or Moses?
Is it also your advice that I marry a rabbinical student and settle
down to a quiet life of housekeeping and childbearing?"
"You would not have come to me," he said, "if you were
happy. If you were satisfied with yourself and with your life, you
would not have sought out a psychiatrist. I know, your mother sent
you to me. But you would not have come if you hadn't felt you needed
help."
"Make peace with my father ... It could only be on his terms."
"What do you want, Golda? What do you want more than anything
else?"
"I want a contract to do five weeks in a first-class out-of-town
club."
In December 1942, when Glenda was just twenty years old, she worked
in a strip club for the first time, in Miami. Gib Dugan, in spite of
his having spoken scornfully about working with strippers, had made
the deal for her and talked her into taking it. The contract was for
two weeks at five hundred dollars a week, far more than she had ever
made before.
Gib had promoted her to Mel Schmidt, the club owner, by promising him
her borscht-belt humor would delight the Jews who still came to Miami
in December in spite of the difficulties of wartime travel. It would
delight GIs on leave, too, he had promised.
The owner bought Gib's idea, but he was adamant that she must appear
in a costume appropriate to the club — meaning very little
costume at all. She had signed a contract that specifically said she
would work in "abbreviated costume, such as is worn by other
performers at Casa Pantera." Gib had argued to Schmidt and to
Glenda that a borscht-belt singer-dancer-comedienne working in
strip-club deshabille would be a "dynamite attraction."
Schmidt was so much convinced that he was advertising Glenda Grayson
in the newspapers.