This Time Together Read online

  POPS: Hey, Eddie, this kid here wants to see ya!

  Omigod, here he comes …

  EDDIE: Yeah, kid, whaddya want?

  ME: (all in one breath) Well-Mr.-Foy-a-friend-of-mine-from-California-where-I-just-came-from-worked-with-you-in-a-movie-he-had-a-bit-part-as-an-Irish-cop-remember? Anyhow-he-said-you-were-a-real-swell-guy-and-that-maybe-when-I-get-to-NewYork-I-should-ask-you-for-your-advice-on-how-to-get-into-show-business! I-can’t-get-a-job-’cause-I-don’t-have-an-agent-and-I-can’t-get-an-agent-unless-they-see-me-in-something!

  I stopped to take a breath.

  There was a pause. Please, God, don’t let him look at my galoshes!

  EDDIE: You sing?

  ME: Kind of … I’m pretty loud.

  EDDIE: Dance?

  ME: I can jitterbug.

  EDDIE: Well, maybe I could get you an audition here for a chorus replacement.

  ME: But I don’t read music, and I really can’t dance.

  EDDIE: (eyeing his dressing room, wiping his neck with the towel) Okay, you can’t read music and you can’t dance. Then … what?

  ME: Well, I’m not good enough for the chorus, so I guess I’ll have to have a featured role.

  There was a long pause before he gave me the phone number of his agent, wished me luck, and made a beeline for his dressing room. The fact that he didn’t laugh me right out of the theater proves the point that Eddie Foy was, indeed, a helluva swell guy.

  The Rehearsal Club Revue

  I called Eddie’s agent the next day, and lo and behold I got an appointment! I’d never been able to get past an agency’s sourpuss receptionist before.

  Armed with my red imitation-leather scrapbook containing my UCLA reviews, I was ushered into the agent’s office. He quickly flipped through the scrapbook and then said, “So, what are you in and where can I see you perform?”

  Oh Lord, here we go again …

  “Well, you see, I can’t get IN anything unless I have an agent, and I can’t get an agent unless I’m IN something!”

  He looked at me and said, “Then I suggest you put on your own show.”

  After dinner at the Rehearsal Club that night, I gathered the girls in the parlor for a meeting. “Gang, I actually got beyond a receptionist and into a real agent’s office today!”

  Somebody said, “Wow.”

  I continued, “And you know what he said? ‘Go put on your own show.’”

  Several of the girls got up to leave, but I persisted. “Why not? We can do it. We’ll call it The Rehearsal Club Revue! And we’ll invite all those agents and producers who say ‘Let me know when you’re IN something’ to come and see us, because now we ARE in something!”

  So several of us pooled our money for a rehearsal space, wrote our own script, picked out the songs we wanted to sing (one of the girls could play a mean piano), and had a first and second act in no time. I asked Don, my college sweetheart, to direct the show. Now we just needed the money to rent a hall to perform in. Miraculously, the rich ladies who contributed to the club came up with the $200 we needed for two nights at the Carl Fischer concert hall on West Fifty-seventh Street. We sent penny postcards to every producer and agent in town inviting them to our show, the postcard being their ticket.

  They came.

  After our two evenings, three of us got agents. It was right out of a Mickey and Judy scene in Babes in Arms, and I thanked my lucky stars that I had seen all those joyous movies growing up, telling me no pipe dream was impossible.

  That was March 1955. Don and I got married in December that year and moved into a one-room apartment over an Italian restaurant. We got a reputation for being the best Italian cooks among our group of friends. Our secret? All we did was throw some spaghetti and sauce on the stove and open our windows. The aroma from the restaurant below did the rest!

  John Foster Dulles and the Blue Angel Nightclub

  After the revue at the club I got a summer stock job at Green Mansions, in the Adirondacks. During the audition I met a fantastic special material writer, coach, and pianist, Ken Welch. After my stint in summer stock ($500 for all ten weeks) I returned to the city and called Ken about getting together to write some sort of act I could use for audition pieces. I was back at Susan Palmer’s as a hatcheck girl, so I paid Ken $10 a session in quarters and dimes. Don was driving a cab to make ends meet.

  That call to Ken Welch was one of the best phone calls I ever made. He and his talented wife, Mitzie, became two of my closest friends, and have continued to write brilliant musical special material for more than fifty years. They’ve won a number of well-deserved Emmys, several of them for the musical specials they created for me.

  In 1957 Ken and I auditioned our musical-comedic material at the Blue Angel nightclub, which was the “in” cabaret, over on the East Side of Manhattan. I was hired! The club featured four different acts a night, each about twenty minutes, and I was one of them. I worked there for several weeks, and the owner said he’d like to keep me on, but we would need some new material. Then Ken came up with a very funny idea for a number. It was during the height of the Elvis craze, and the song he wrote was about a young girl going ape—not over a rock star, but over our then secretary of state, John Foster Dulles.

  As far as his public image was concerned, Mr. Dulles was aptly named. He wore glasses, a fedora, and a heavy coat, and he never smiled. In fact, he sported a very dour expression most of the time. Uptight and ultra-conservative—that was our secretary of state. Some people in the media went so far as to call him a “pickle puss.”

  He was the least likely candidate for anyone to swoon over, which was what made the number so funny. We decided to open our new act with it. I sang the first line, “I made a fool of myself over John Foster Dulles,” and the audience started laughing right off the bat. It was an instant hit.

  Television came knocking on the door. Jack Paar booked me on his show twice that next week, and I performed the song again on The Ed Sullivan Show the following Sunday. Three times in one week! By the time Monday rolled around, the song and I were the talk of the town. Newspapers, front-page stuff. NBC had received hundreds of calls, some protesting that the number was in poor taste and others saying it was a riot. Reviewers raved, and there was even a tongue-in-cheek editorial in the New York Times by James Reston: was the song pro-Republican or anti-Republican?

  A week later, Mr. Dulles happened to go on Meet the Press. The hour was almost over, but there was one final question: “Mr. Secretary, what’s going on between you and the young lady who sings that love song about you?” I was glued to the set. He kind of smiled … an actual smile—I swear I could see a twinkle in his eye. He said, “I make it a policy never to discuss matters of the heart in public.” After that, nobody could tell me he didn’t have a sense of humor.

  All of a sudden I was famous: the flavor of the month. People were lined up around the block to get a booth at the Angel, even on a usually slow Monday night, to see me. I was lapping it up. My contract had been extended, and I was walking on air. While I was getting ready in my dressing room (“Let’s see, should I wear the black or the red tonight?”), I heard the audience filling up the room downstairs. I realized my usual nervousness had disappeared—no butterflies in my stomach anymore before going onstage—and it felt great. Hallelujah! Cool as a cucumber, I finished blotting my lipstick, and then I actually winked at myself in the mirror.

  I was introduced and sauntered onstage in my red outfit. The audience greeted me with the huge round of applause I had come to expect. Oozing confidence, I signaled the piano player, and began to sing.

  I made a fool of myself over John Foster Dulles.

  I made an ass of myself over John Foster Dulles.

  Something wasn’t right. They weren’t laughing. I pushed on.

  The first time I saw him ’twas at the UN.

  I never had been one to swoon over men,

  But I swooned and the drums started pounding and then …

  I MADE A FOOL OF MYSEL
F OVER JOHHHNNN FOSTER DULLES….

  Nothing. Nada. They were just sitting there, staring at me. It wasn’t that they were unruly or not interested. It would’ve been better if they had been, but no, they were paying attention, they just weren’t laughing. I felt like I was performing in front of an oil painting. And this was only the opening number. I had twenty minutes to go. My body was heavy with dread.

  I decided to push harder to get just a chuckle or two. Not a titter. Then I began racing through the rest of the act, praying that no one I knew was in the audience, praying to die (a wasted prayer, because I already had), and praying my armpits would dry up. The flop sweat was trickling down my back, making my dress stick to my skin. Finally, blessedly, the show was over. I made a hasty exit with barely enough applause to get me off the tiny stage and over to the back stairway. No encores tonight, kiddo. I had bombed. Big-time.

  In my gut, I knew why. I had been too cocky, too sure of myself. I’d been way too pushy, and it had affected my whole attitude. I simply hadn’t been funny.

  I headed for my small dressing room at the end of the narrow hallway, where a customer was weaving toward me on his way to the men’s room. Drunk. No way to avoid him. We had to pass each other. I knew he had just seen my act. I looked down at the floor and tried to inch past him. Damn narrow hallway—oughta be a fire law or something. I hoped he was too loaded to recognize me. I was thoroughly humiliated, and the specter of the upcoming midnight show was already starting to haunt me. I started crying like crazy, and the tears were spotting my red satin dress. (Why hadn’t I worn the black?)

  He noticed me. “Hey there,” he slurred. “Hey, aren’t you—”

  Oh God. I wiped my eyes with my fingers and looked up at him. He had kind eyes—bleary, but kind.

  “Hey there, little lady.” He smiled at me nicely. His voice matched his kind eyes.

  “Yes, sir?” Please, God, don’t let me blubber.

  “Well, my goodness.” He reeled back, bumping up against the wall, and then pulled himself forward again. “Aren’t you the little lady I just saw this very minute? Downstairs—just now, on the stage?” He had a sweet smile. I was starting to feel a little bit better.

  I smiled back. “Yes, sir, I am.”

  There was a pause. “Boy, you stink.”

  And with that he disappeared into the men’s room.

  The midnight show went better. The butterflies came back and I wasn’t the least bit cocky—not that night, and not ever again.

  Once upon a Mattress and George Abbott

  After the excitement over the John Foster Dulles number died down, I went back to doing some occasional television and continued to audition for Broadway musicals. Not much was happening for me. Ken and I continued to work on audition material. Mama had died, and raising a soon-to-be teenager was too much for Nanny, so I had brought my kid sister, Chris, back to New York to live with Don and me.

  Early in 1959, Richard Rodgers was overseeing a revival of the stage musical Babes in Arms, which Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had written years before and which had been made into a movie with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. I was a kid when I fell in love with Judy and Mickey and the movie, which was about young talents putting on their own show. That film, with a nudge from Eddie Foy Jr.’s agent, inspired the Rehearsal Club Revue.

  The producers of Babes in Arms were going to open the show in Florida for the tryout period, with the intention of bringing it to Broadway, and I got a call to audition for them! There was a wonderful part in it for a girl who could belt out a song. The character would have two terrific Rodgers and Hart songs to sing, “Way Out West” and “Johnny One-Note.” I desperately wanted to win the role.

  Princess Winnifred the Woebegone, 1959.

  COURTESY OF CAROL BURNETT

  The day of my audition came, and Ken and I went to the theater together. I walked onstage and stood next to the single stage light, peering out into the darkened theater. Ken sat at the piano in the orchestra pit. I knew Mr. Rodgers was out there somewhere, but I couldn’t see him, which was all to the good, because I was pretty nervous. Ken played the intro, and I belted out “Everybody Loves to Take a Bow” from the musical Hazel Flagg. When I finished, Mr. Rodgers came down the aisle to tell me that he liked what I’d done. I was on cloud nine!

  The director, Stanley Prager, called me the next day and said he would like to give me the part, but I had to come back for another audition. I did, and everybody was smiling. I thought I had it.

  The next day I got a call from Stanley, who said he was awfully sorry, but the producers had decided they wanted a “name” for that role, and mine wasn’t big enough. I hung up the phone and began to cry.

  My sister, Chris, comforted me as best she could. “Remember, Sissy, we’ve always said, ‘One door closes and another one opens.’” Bless her thirteen-year-old heart. I swear, she had barely finished the sentence when the phone rang again. The producers of an off-Broadway musical were calling to ask if I could audition for them that afternoon at the downtown Phoenix Theater, for a little show called Once upon a Mattress, a kind of fractured fairy tale based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.” The composer was Richard Rodgers’s talented young daughter, Mary Rodgers. It was scheduled to run for six weeks starting in May, and, oh yes, the director was going to be George Abbott!

  My lifelong dream of having my first show directed by Mr. Abbott came true. I was cast as the lead, Princess Winnifred the Woebegone. Mr. Abbott was wonderful to work with, and so was the cast, a group of enthusiastic young unknowns.

  The show was a hit, and it ran for a year. Then, over the next several years after that, I performed in it on television in three different productions.

  I paid the $1,000 back to my benefactor five years to the day I got the loan, by certified mail.

  Babes in Arms closed in Florida. They never brought it to Broadway.

  One door closes …

  Another door closed at around this time as well. After four years of marriage, Don and I parted and he returned to California. No arguments—we were simply leading parallel lives, so we agreed to separate. Not long after that we divorced amicably.

  Rumplemayer’s and the Mean Hostess

  During the summer of 1959 Once upon a Mattress was enjoying a healthy run, and a few of us in the cast decided to splurge one Saturday night after the show and treat ourselves to a sundae at the most expensive ice cream parlor in New York City: Rumplemayer’s, in the St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South. Even though Mattress had been running for a few months and I had done some television, I was far from being recognizable in public. Nonetheless, I was flush with the excitement of being in a hit stage show and raking in $80 a week to boot. I could afford a Rumplemayer’s treat.

  Rumplemayer’s was a pretty posh ice cream parlor. You could spot familiar faces there anytime after the bows had been taken and the lights had dimmed on Broadway for the night. Some folks went to nightclubs or bars, but those who had a sweet tooth and who also wanted to be seen went to Rumplemayer’s. I remember having peeked in a few months earlier and spotting Marlene Dietrich in a gorgeous gray pantsuit at the counter, elegantly digging a long-handled spoon into a whipped cream goodie.

  On this night four of us pushed our way through the revolving door and stood casing the scene as we waited for the hostess. It was crowded, but there were a couple of empty tables in the back. The hostess, in a blue dress with a white collar and cuffs and sporting a very tight bun in her hair, approached us with menus. She took a closer look, and smoke began to come out of her ears.

  “EXCUSE ME! But just what do you think you’re doing?” She was looking straight at me.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I SAID, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Before I could speak, she went off on a major tear. “Young woman, don’t you realize that we don’t allow ladies in RUMPLEMAYER’S wearing SLACKS? SL-ACKS”—she made it two syllables and pronounced them like a dirty word�
�“are FOR-BID-DEN!”

  She was actually screaming at me. Her pipes could’ve given Ethel Merman a run for her money. I wondered if maybe her bun was too tight. Suddenly I noticed that the place had become strangely quiet: fewer clinking spoons, less slurping through straws. More than a few customers were watching us, evidently waiting to see if the hostess was going to shoot me. I was feeling like an axe murderer and at the same time awfully humiliated. I was dressed in a nice pair of black slacks, not jeans, but apparently that was still enough of a social gaffe for her to send me up the river and put me in solitary.

  My friends and I were frozen in place, but this lady wouldn’t quit. I looked for the swastika on her sleeve as she continued her harangue.

  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? FOR-BID-DEN!”

  I was about to slink out backward when the image of Marlene Dietrich came to me out of nowhere. She had been in SL-ACKS and nobody had yelled at her. And all this hostess needed to do with us was to nicely explain the rules. It could have gone thusly:

  HOSTESS: (quietly) I’m awfully sorry, miss, but Rumplemayer’s has a dress code, and ladies are not seated if they’re wearing slacks. I do hope you and your friends will come back and see us soon. Here’s a mint.

  ME: (quietly) Oh, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t know. We’ll definitely come back another time, and thank you so much for the mint. (We exit with dignity.)

  End of Scene.

  Simple. No problem. But noooo.

  Astonishingly, she was still at it, not only for our benefit now, but clearly for that of the entire restaurant: “I DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU KIDS GET OFF THINKING YOU CAN BREAK THE RULES WHENEVER YOU WANT!”

  You could’ve heard a pin drop. At this point, the image of Dietrich in pants was looming full screen in my mind’s eye. I opened my mouth to speak.