My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir (7 page)

Julius’s other cardinal rule was that we could not play to each other. We must never exclude the audience. It came to me that this was why, when sitting out front, I felt flattered by the performers. Because of the eye contact, people often greeted us on the street like old friends. Carol Channing waved to me in a restaurant, “Hi, Mary Louise, it’s Carol.” As if I didn’t recognize the large blonde head, fake eyelashes, and big red mouth!

The first night I went on, I looked down at the front table and Noël Coward was smiling up at me. Famous faces dotted the audience every night: Tennessee Williams, Esther Williams, William Carlos Williams, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, David Frost, Robert Frost, Montgomery Clift, Arthur Miller, Ann Miller, Roger Miller, Ginger Rogers, Richard Rodgers. Once we spotted a pair of elegant mummies sitting in a corner banquette: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. All the theater people, producers, casting agents, as well as actors were there.

Even couched in this fabulous situation I found myself casting longing glances at another newer show in town called
The Second City
. While our every word and gesture was choreographed, these great young players, among them Alan Arkin, Bob Dishy, Robert Klein, and Barbara Harris, apparently made their lines up as they went along. It was unheard of, a kind of controlled chaos, very funny and it looked like heaven to me. Actors are never satisfied: When they’re acting in a tragedy they’re longing to be in a comedy. If they’re on the stage they want to be on TV, if they’re on TV they want to be in film, if they’re in film they want to be on stage

I did three seasons of these shows, two shows nightly, seven days a week, from September through May. Three years. The pay was minimal but we had our summers free, and we could collect unemployment and go to the beach knowing we had a job in the fall in the hottest show in town. Most of the waiters in the club were actors, and after the last show at night we went out drinking together. One of them—tall, blue-eyed Bob Downey Sr.—was my boyfriend for a while. Bob was gorgeous. He was the original hippie. His bible was
Catch-22
. He called me “Bitch”—riding past me on his bike he would yell, “Hey, Bitch!” Bob had maybe the first underground newspaper, mimeographed, in which he made outrageous claims: the powerful columnist Dorothy Kilgallen had a mustache; the Pope was gay. He made a movie starring himself as a Yankee soldier who wakes up in the present in Central Park. In one scene, he walked onto the field at Yankee Stadium in his uniform in the middle of a game and got arrested.

I marveled that I could stay out until five in the morning and show up to perform that night fresh as a baby. Of course, I
was
a baby. Julius was our daddy. The cast was my family; its members changed slightly from show to show, but a basic core remained. We even spent our days off together, as there was precious little free time for outside friends or lovers. At one point, and briefly, two of us went so far as to become lovers.

I
WAS A MISERABLE FRESHMAN STANDING ALONE SMOKING A CIGARETTE
in Northwestern’s Theta house during sorority rush week when a tall, hefty girl leaned her friendly face into mine and said, “You’re majoring in theater! So am I!” I was so unnerved by this unexpected attention I spit a piece of tobacco and to my horror it landed on her cheek. She didn’t flinch. She went right on talking, making me feel less lonely. Her name was Lovelady Powell. In the big college musical, the WAA-MU Show, she did a wonderful imitation of Carol Channing singing “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” She graduated a year before me. Soon after I arrived in New York, I was taken to a nightclub called the Purple Onion on Sixth Avenue and 53rd St., the future site of the Time-Life building. There was a hot new chanteuse singing there. She slithered into the spotlight, a sinuous, glamorous wraith all in black with an Audrey Hepburn boycut, clown-white face, kohl-rimmed eyes. Her mouth a red gash. She crooned her songs in a kind of anguished method-acting style, occasionally wrapping her limbs around a pole. I was transfixed. Suddenly in the middle of a song she looked right at me and waved. At me? I looked behind me. Yes, she was looking and waving at me. She was Lovelady Powell. I was flabbergasted. She had transformed herself into this slinky songstress. Lovey was getting noticed, she had a good thing going when her arranger and accompanist was suddenly drafted. The Korean War was on. Apparently her arrangements were all in her accompanist’s head. Nothing written down. So that was that. I recall she had a short period of making do. She lived for a while in the same cheap tenement George Furth, Ruth Buzzi, and I were in. She went down to Chinatown and bought a huge bag of rice to live on. Lovey never did anything in a small way. She had great style, tremendous energy and everything she did was big and beautiful. She wasn’t broke for long. She was in Julius Monk’s shows, she played the female foil to Danny Kaye on his television show. She raised wire-haired terriers, gave lavish cocktail parties, served caviar in vats the size of bathtubs. She changed apartments like hats, beautifully decorating them. Once she saw Bergdorf Goodman’s windows full of palely colored old shutters, the kind once used for hiding construction sites, and she bought them all. I can’t recall where she put them, maybe along the walls of her newest living space, a floor in an old warehouse on Coentes Slip before human habitation down there was even dreamed of. I think this was when she bought a motor scooter. We were both working at the Upstairs. After the show I hitched a ride downtown. It was heaven gliding down an empty Avenue at two a.m. in the balmy September dark, waving to Con Edison men as we passed.

J
UST WHEN
I
WAS THINKING HOW FABULOUS, HOW CUSHY IT WAS
to lie around in
dishabille
all day and then rise to perform at night in the most glamorous venue in town, along came television commercials. Ad agencies were switching from using models to what they called “flawed faces,” meaning us, the Cute and the Funny, in their commercials. It annoyed the pants off me that here I was, in the sweetest gig in town, and now all of a sudden I had to troop up to Madison Avenue to audition for these things. It seemed like every job was looked on as merely a springboard to the next one. It was considered
de rigueur
for actors starring on Broadway to go downtown after their shows to perform their club acts. This kind of thing exhausted me just hearing about it.

I reacted particularly badly to being routed at 9
A.M
. with a phone call, “Can you be uptown in half an hour looking pretty?” I felt unfairly harassed. But the night Lovelady swept into the club with an artichoke haircut and a long pink feather boa because she had become the Listerine Lady, I put my pants back on and started showing up.

I
N
1962, J
ULIUS MOVED HIS REVUES FROM THE CLUB ON
W
EST
56
TH
Street to the former Rendezvous Room at the Plaza Hotel, and everything got the lavish treatment. The room was gutted, painted red, and renamed the Plaza 9 Room. We women were in evening dresses and the men wore tuxedos, the pianists sat at baby grands on either side of the stage, and like so many good things when they hit the big time, the show lost its edge. Our loyal fans who followed us from the Upstairs at the Downstairs were being served much bigger drinks on the two-drink menu, and coming backstage unintentionally plastered.

Still, I was excited by the glamour of it all, wearing designer gowns, being photographed for
Vogue
magazine, rehearsing in the hotel’s white Moire Room with its white baby grand. Every afternoon the management would roll in a tea trolley loaded with crustless sandwiches, petit fours, tea, and champagne. But the sketches weren’t as witty. We sang a chivvying anthem to the Plaza, to its chandeliers and candelabras, as if it were the Cradle of Civilization.

I was getting a lot of attention. What was expected of me? Being considered for television shows like
Laugh-In
and
The Garry Moore Show
scared the hell out of me. In one Julius Monk revue I had this ditty called “Names,” with lyrics that went something like this:

and so on, verse after verse, each with slight grammatical variations. These names, so dead now, were of course well-known back then.

I was doing fine with the song, then one night we heard Garry Moore was out front. The Garry Moore television show featured a young comedian, Carol Burnett, who was leaving to do her own show, and it was rumored that Mr. Moore was shopping for a replacement. I came out and started to sing “If Conway Twitty would marry Kitty Carlisle, then Kitty Carlisle would now be Kitty Twitty—” and stopped cold. There was nothing in my head. The twin pianos behind me clattered to a stop, I looked at the audience and said, “I can’t remember.” The audience let out a unanimous
“Awwwwww,”
and someone yelled, “Start again!” I knew it was no good, the words had left the building. They were down the street. Out of town. Then a voice, Garry Moore’s, called out, “Just sing, Mary Louise.” So I started again and stopped again. I mumbled an apology and barged offstage. I was mortified. I stifled the thought that I had screwed up on purpose.

On opening night of the Plaza 9 show, Rowan and Martin, creators of the television show
Laugh-In,
came backstage during intermission and asked to meet me. I was terrified. I hid in the dressing room. Ruth Buzzi, who lived below George and me in the West 4th Street building, was now a regular on their show, and she scolded me for turning down this chance. I didn’t understand why she was so mad. I knew it was a big deal, but the performers on
Laugh-In
all seemed to have their “bits,” their little characters. I couldn’t just “be funny,” I needed a script. No script would be like having no net. At least Buzzi had her hairnet. So I argued to myself, but I felt guilty. I should want to be chosen.

Meanwhile, world events were getting too ugly for polite satire. I had a Scottish Highland number about “Bonnie Patrice Lamumba comin’ lightly o’er the Lea” that had to be pulled because in Africa Patrice Lamumba was having his speeches stuffed in his mouth and set on fire. And backstage, my lover had left me for a new cast member and I was in agony watching them necking in the wings every night. When I got a part in a Broadway show, I was more than ready to leave.

T
HE PART WAS
J
UDY
H
OLLIDAY
’
S BEST FRIEND IN
H
OT
S
POT
. J
UDY
Holliday was a fabulous comedienne, and a huge star on Broadway and in film.

I saw myself as being on my way. At some point I would arrive. I didn’t know what would happen then. I assumed I would be some place great and I would stay there. My success so far had seemed effortless. Without doing much of anything, people found me funny. I was afraid to mess with that. Besides, I didn’t know what else to do. I saw it all as happening to me.

I signed with an agent, Richard Astor. I knew I wanted to sign with him when I saw on his wall a black and white photograph of Beatrice Lillie holding a calla lily to her ear and speaking into another calla lily. Richard was Lillie’s American agent. When he called to say I got the part, I galloped around the room singing, “They want me! They want me!” That was a mistake. I have since learned that it is seldom, if ever, “they” that want you. During the entire run of the show, Miss Holliday spoke to me exactly once: just before her entrance on opening night in New Haven, she looked at me and hissed, “Salts!” I misunderstood and whispered back, “You too!” Later I realized that she must have been feeling faint. Apparently she had wanted another actress for my part.

From the outset, the show was divided into enemy camps. On one side was the lyricist Marty Charnin, the composer Mary Rodgers, and the book writers, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert; on the other side was Miss Holliday and her friends. I knew which camp I was in. At the same time I felt bad for her. It was a lame excuse for a book. At the first rehearsal, Marty Charnin stood up and announced exultantly, “We have no second act!” and to my amazement everybody laughed and applauded. There never was a second act. The plot as such was about Peace Corps volunteers landing on a native island. By the end of this debacle, the chorus had come up with several brilliant second acts. The best one had the island natives making their living selling porn films. Originally the singers were the Peace Corps and the dancers were the island natives, but by the third week out of town and umpteen-billion rewrites, some dancers’ gorgeous limbs were shrouded in baggy khaki and knee socks while some singers waddled around in grass skirts, their tubby bodies smeared in Texas dirt makeup. There was a gigantic curtain made of rope. Every time it hit the floor, rope particles flew into everybody’s throats.

By coincidence, George Furth had also been cast in the show. At one point in all the script adjustments, for no discernible reason, they changed his character name, which sent him howling down the hotel hallway. There were so many script changes that the cast was making airplanes out of them and shooting them out of the hotel windows.

Hot Spot
had more directors than you could shake a script at. Judy kept firing them. The original director was Morton “Teke” DaCosta, an affable gentleman noted for his un-interfering direction of diva vehicles. He disappeared after the first preview. When I asked the British stage manager what happened, he said, “He was bleeding from the
ahhss,
darling.” And then began the parade, a veritable who’s who of theater directors who came to our try-outs in New Haven, D.C., and Philadelphia to try to fix us. A director would take the train from New York to see the show, come backstage and give the cast a pep talk, the cast would applaud, then he would meet with Judy and not be seen again. When Arthur Laurents came he told us, “Listen, I just came from skiing in the Alps. When you’re skiing you have to be careful or you can fall and break your ass. Well, we’re not going to do that with this show!” Big applause. The next morning the cast arrived to rehearse, and there was a note on the sign-in board: “He fell and broke his ass.—The Management.”