Little Me Page 21

  But it was in the second act when Magdalena Montezuma showed her murderous and totally unprofessional qualities. During my big vocal number with “Peeping Tom,” I was conscious at first of a certain uneasy inattention on the part of the audience, then of an uncomfortable wave of heat on the stage. I heard Mr. Lamont gasp and, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the long, tulle wimple attached to my unbecoming steeple headdress was on fire! Standing in the wings I saw Magdalena Montezuma with a Zippo lighter! At that moment a bucket of water was unceremoniously poured over my head by an assistant stage manager. Mine had been a show-stopping number in the truest sense of the word. The curtain was rung down, the fire department summoned and the theatre emptied. When I returned to my dressing room, my hair singed, soaked to the skin, Murray Casebeer handed me my notice and stated that my part would be written out of the show.

  IT WAS WITH HEAVY HEART that I returned to the Taft Hotel and, by some caprice of instinct, drifted into the bar. At the table adjoining mine were three extremely personable young Yale men of the sort I could immediately “peg”:

  boys of the better class of American family. (I can always “spot” a gentleman.) They were discussing the disastrous opening of Goodie Godiva and I was somewhat cheered to hear one of them say: “The only decent thing in it was when that blonde caught fire.” Feeling that these fine, clean-cut youngsters would be thrilled to meet a real star, I introduced myself. They seemed embarrassed at first, but I quickly put them at their ease. As I had a stylish suite upstairs, stocked with cases of those clever and economical Connecticut half-gallon bottles, I suggested that we repair to my rooms. The boys seemed more than willing.

  So “starved” had I been for the company of “my sort” of men—my “Yalies,” Bruce, “Larry” and “Jack”—that the time simply flew. Before anyone even bothered to glance at the clock, it was after ten the following morning and New Haven was in the grip of a furious snow storm! However, with three handsome chevaliers to do my bidding, we turned the whole thing into a “romp” and the boys were ever so sweet about “phoning” room service for “snacks” and ice. As I had engaged the suite for a week and because it was snowing, anyhow, I saw no reason to return, defeated, to Gotham where naught awaited me but the heartless “condolences” of theatre “friends” and dunning letters from my creditors. (Rather than being grateful that a star of my stature was adding lustre to a hotel whose days were numbered, the management

  of the Ritz-Carlton in New York was becoming increasingly “stuffy” about my mounting bill, which was really too trifling to bother paying, and I had already had a great deal of difficulty in removing certain valuable bits of wearing apparel from the premises.) So, by my innate courage, “guts” and good spirits, I was able to turn a defeat into a triumph. Yale men are noted for their chivalrous hospitality to “damsels in distress,” and that certainly described little me during the bitter winter of 1946.

  And—I may as well confess it—I had developed rather a tendresse for Bruce, one of my “Yalies.” I quite “fell” for Bruce and vice versa. He came from a splendid old Boston family (the typical “rebel” who chooses Yale over Harvard), long established in a “gilt-edged” State Street banking firm, where Bruce, himself, was “slated” to step into a vice-presidency once he had graduated. The difference in our ages was too trivial to mention (he was very nearly at the quarter-century mark). After all, I had worked for so many years, did I not deserve a respite as a Beacon Hill bride?

  While “Jack” and “Larry” returned to their classes, Bruce lingered on in my suite. I urged him not to “court” pneumonia by braving the elements of the Connecticut winter. After some slight indecision, he agreed. But at the end of the week when my bill was delivered, along with a Jeroboam of champagne, on a silver salver, I was amazed at its size. “Laying my cards on the table” with Bruce, I explained to him my embarrassment and I was distressed to learn that he was kept on a very close allowance.

  I made several expensive and fruitless telephone calls to New York and to the “Coast.” Helen Highwater was, unfortunately, in a rest home again. I tried several times to reach Dudley du Pont at his chic new decorating establishment on Rodéo Drive, but Felice, his assistant, said that Dudley was away on a “job” in Palm Springs and could not be reached by telephone. There was no one to turn to but my own daughter, Baby-dear. I placed a call to North Hall at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and—after an interminable period of waiting—Baby-dear was summoned from the chemistry laboratory. I must say that she did not seem especially pleased to hear from a mother whose entire life had been spent in sacrifices for the sake of a beloved daughter, but only children (with the exception of “yours truly”) are notoriously spoiled. This is undoubtedly my fault for being too doting a parent, and I accept the blame, my only excuse being that I loved my daughter perhaps “not wisely but too well.”

  Baby-dear appeared the following morning looking, I felt, quite “seedy” in a Peck & Peck suit, glasses and snow boots. I took her to task—which I felt was a mother’s duty—for her somewhat “matronly” appearance, handed her our accrued hotel bill and borrowed just enough money to go out and have my hair and nails properly done. (They had, after all, been neglected for more than a week.) Upon my return I was stunned to find awaiting me in my suite only the receipted hotel bill, a return ticket to New York and a note saying that my own daughter had eloped with Bruce! In the words of Walter Hampden, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” (More of my daughter’s ill-starred mésalliance later.) The treasure to whom I had given my life, my love, my all had simply run off with a total stranger—attractive, I grant—whom she had known for an hour, without even consulting her own mother!

  Heartsick and depressed, I returned to New York, checked my luggage in the station, and bravely faced the sneers of the Communist-dominated staff of the Ritz. Feeling, perhaps, that my future lay in musical comedy, despite the unkind blow dealt to me by Dame Chance in New Haven, I tried to interest a number of promising newcomers, such as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Nancy Walker, Carol Channing and Judy Holliday, in “testing their wings” as supporting players in a new operetta in whose starring rôle I would appear. You may not believe this, but none of them was even vaguely interested in playing “second fiddle” to an established star, and one of them was even quite rude and terminated our telephonic “get-together” with a burst of the most unprintable profanity! I sensed then that the spirit of “trouping,” or “all for one and one for all” and of “starting from the bottom,” was gone in the theatre. I bade adieu to the musical stage.

  “Saint Joan”

  “Private Lives”

  “Romeo and Juliet”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AT A LOW EBB

  1947–1950

  Marching with the times • My thirteen weeks on television • Despondency • Seeking comfort in drink

  The lower depths • I take to the “road” • “Trouping” in the “sticks” • Despair

  HAVING SPENT MANY IDLE MONTHS in bustling Manhattan, trying vainly to secure a starring rôle suited to my special talents, I was desperate to do anything!

  Sensing that the temper of the times was not one to approve of a star lolling in lassitude, bowed to and waited upon by liveried “flunkies,” I had long absented my suite in the Ritz-Carlton in favor of a more modest apartment at the Hotel St. Vitus, much more conveniently located in West Forty-sixth Street. How right I was! Soon the dear old Ritz was to be no longer. It, and a more leisurely way of life, were to be “mowed” down by the advancing times. The world was changing and I would have to change with it.

  Owing to many moments whiled away in a nearby radio-and-television repair shop, going to and fro interviews with theatrical managers, I became interested in the “magic box” that was television, “telly” or “T.V.” Although such gifted comedians as Milton (“Uncle Miltie” or “Mr. T.V.”) Berle had pioneered in this compelling new medium, I noticed
that very few of the fair sex had been willing to lend their talents to the “picture tube.” I have always had a throbbing interest in the new frontier, the exciting, the different. “Why not,” I asked myself, “try to improve the level of television by volunteering to appear on a program of my own?” It was a challenge and, as I have said before, with me, the answer to the challenge is always “Yes!” I would call this stimulating hour Belle Poitrine Thinks and I would serve as “M.C.”

  I had envisaged my program as a sixty-minute show during which I would expound my views on fashion, politics, the arts and vital issues of the day. I would interview other celebrities and endeavor, in my own small way, to keep “Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Citizen” au courant with the exciting haut monde in which I was a focal figure. I thought of it as not only a stimulating and profitable way of life for me—breaking ground in a new art form—but as a public service. Jotting down some notes on the sort of observations I intended to make, I immediately set up appointments with the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company. Alas, I was to realize, to my sorrowful surprise, that these two great “Temples of Mammon” were neither willing nor able to cope with any idea as radical as Belle Poitrine Thinks. Instead of being welcomed by the important executives of these networks, who should have humbled themselves with gratitude for the gamble a performer of my stature was willing to make in an untried medium, I was relegated to underlings who were little more than “office boys.” After countless cancelled appointments, after hundreds of costly telephone calls—each unceremoniously terminated because of faulty switchboard “service”—after having been given the “run-around” from office to office, studio to studio (where it often turned out that the “executive” I was to see was employed in the shipping room), C.B.S. and N.B.C. each said “Nay.” It remained for me to discover a vital, young station visionary enough to “take a chance” on such an unusual new program.

  Opportunity finally knocked in the form of WOE-TV, a small, experimental station located in Levittown, Long Island. Although no “time slot” was available when I first offered my services, the young man who was “chief cook and bottle-washer” (as he picturesquely described himself) took a definite “fancy” to little me and we spent many mutually advantageous evenings together discussing the future of “T.V.” (the “idiot box” as he wittily referred to it). But there was little time left for “small talk.” My finances were in shocking order. Everything I had once owned in the way of bijoux was pawned. When I tried to reach her for a bit of monetary assistance, Momma seemed to have been removed from the face of the earth and, as I had never learned Bruce’s last name, it was impossible for me to locate my precious child, Baby-dear. The years of 1946 and 1947 had all but slipped by, without my having secured gainful employment.

  But Opportunity appeared disguised as a disaster. During the great December

  blizzard of 1947, I received an unexpected telephone call in my bleak little room at the St. Vitus. It was WOE-TV. Would, they asked, I be able to rush right over to the Chinese Thrush Restaurant and “fill in” for their nightly television program? Their regular program, it developed, was a cage filled with extremely talented canaries that warbled to an electric organ accompaniment. These feathered songsters had been all but “mowed down” by the blizzard and the management of the restaurant had been unable to replace them. Would I ? In less time than it takes to tell about, I had jumped into ski pants, stadium boots, a décolleté sequin blouse and a flattering “picture” hat and was fighting my way through the snowdrifts to the deserted restaurant.

  Thus I began 1948 as a television star! The arrangement made between WOE-TV and Mr. Agropolis, restaurateur and genial “boniface” of the Chinese Thrush, was that I was to be “on trial” for thirteen weeks, appearing each night from ten until ten-fifteen in exchange for all the vegetarian chow mein I could eat. After this “tryout,” my contract would be adjusted. My job was to lure interesting celebrities to this smart little bistro and, by holding casual and intimate conversations with them in front of the camera, make New Yorkers conscious of the existence of the Chinese Thrush and its exotic Oriental cuisine. Here was a challenge!

  I began by subscribing to the Celebrity Service and inviting all of the interesting and distinguished guests I could think of. The results were rather disappointing. I had hoped for a “top-flight” gathering, “spangled” with names like Albert Schweitzer, Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Anthony Eden and Hamilton Fish Armstrong as well as the “Sardi’s crowd.” I am sorry to say that many of my old “pals” let me down badly. Nor were as many vivid theatrical personalities as I had hoped interested in appearing with me. (These, mind you, among actors who had once fought to be in my films when I was the “reigning queen” of mighty Metronome!) Another “wrench” was that the Chinese Thrush was located directly opposite the old Heartburn Theatre (recently renamed the Magdalena Montezuma!) where Goodie Godiva, the show in which I should have starred, was entering its second sell-out year. Darling old Sir Walter Mohair, who was still “packing them in” as Godiva’s husband, assured me that he would have been happy to appear with me at the Chinese Thrush except that my program coincided exactly with his long soliloquy, “When My Lady Once Undresses, Save But for Her Raven Tresses.” Of course I understood. As a consolation, “Wally” sent his understudy, who said many interesting things.

  My loyal old school “chum,” Princess “Winnie” Pizzicato, also volunteered to be interviewed while en route (she thought) to her palazzo in Sicily. Our little “chat” was going along ever so nicely when it was interrupted by two gentlemen from the F.B.I. who had long wanted to question “Winnie” about some of Prince “Al’s” unlisted holdings. My deal old friend never forgave me, but the whole unfortunate incident was powerful proof of the deep penetration of “T.V.” as a means of communication.

  Dudley du Pont came onto my show one night while in New York and spoke stimulatingly about décor. It was a most controversial program and brought in a great deal of “fan” mail from viewers who wrote to say that they thought Bert Savoy was dead. It did, however, “hypo” Mr. Agropolis’ business, for the very next evening the bar at the Chinese Thrush was thronged with young men. I was as “proud as Punch” and even spoke tentatively to Mr. Agropolis concerning the amount of my weekly salary after my “trial period” had been completed. I felt that, for all I had done for the restaurant, chow mein was an inadequate reward. Mr. Agropolis had to agree, for at the end of

  My old boarding school ”roomie,” the former D. Winifred (“Winnie”) Erskine, now Principessa Pizzicato of Beverly hills, Acapulco and Palermo, Sicily

  the week the Chinese Thrush was raided, many of its bright new clientele booked on charges of loitering. Before my contract was half fulfilled both the program and the restaurant were finished. Like Adrienne Ames, Constance Bennett, Wendy Barrie, Arlene Frances and so many other gifted actresses who squandered their talents as commentators before the unappreciative audiences of the “idiot box,” I retired from the air waves. Clearly, television was not ready for little me. The Chinese Thrush was replaced by a pizza “joint” and Belle Poitrine Thinks by wrestling.

  So depressed was I by my recent failures, by the absence of my loved ones, by the seeming cruelty and indifference of my fellow men that—yes, I confess it—I began to seek solace in the bottle. At first my drinking was purely “social”—a convivial glass shared with a gay acquaintance from the

  Drinking more than is good for me!

  past in some fashionable gathering place such as El Morocco, the Stork Club or Twenty-one. But when, owing to pressing commitments in other places, these old “pals” began to absent themselves, I discovered the quiet little bar of my hotel, the St. Vitus. Here a very palatable blended whiskey could be purchased for as little as twenty-five cents a “shot” and the bartender, “Jimmy,” and I soon became fast friends.

  Before I quite realized it, I was habitually “tipsy” hours before the “sun was over the yardarm” e
ach day. I drank, I suppose, to forget the many hurts and slights I did not wish to remember. There were times when I resolutely vowed not to have a drink before noon, but “Jimmy,” a most friendly and generous soul, often stopped in my room before opening the bar and he rarely arrived empty-handed.

  “I’ve got to get hold of myself,” I kept telling my reflection in the stained and cracked old mirror above my chiffonier. “Drinking this way is doing nothing for my face, my figure, my morale or my career.” There had also been more than a few embarrassing “incidents” as a result of imbibing too heavily. On one occasion I sustained a severe fall on the stairs at Sardi’s; late one afternoon I found myself without the “wherewithal” to pay for the twelve double martinis I had consumed at Tony’s Trouville; and—horror or horrors—I was once asked to leave Schrafft’s!

  “If only I could find work,” I confided to “Jimmy” one morning in my room. “I would be able to ‘straighten out and fly right’ in no time at all.”

  “Don’t worry about it, baby,” he said affectionately, filling my tooth mug to the brim with Imperial. It was easy to forget with an understanding companion like “Jimmy,” but I knew that it was wrong and that this excessive drinking would get me nowhere.

  Then, one afternoon, the chance to find redemption through good, hard work came my way. Resolutely quitting after my third drink, I had dressed carefully and was waiting for an interview at the newly formed producing “team” of Feuer & Martin. Earlier in the season I had lost the rôle of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire to Jessica Tandy, Medea to Judith Anderson and Catherine in The Heiress to Wendy Hiller simply because I had been unable to “pull myself together” and appear at the offices of various producers. Recently I had taken to arriving no later than five o’clock nearly every afternoon, ready to “read” for any part. Seated next to me was an attractive, sensitive-looking young man whom I felt sure I had seen before. We fell into conversation and he recalled to my memory that we had been seated together in the offices of Rodgers & Hammerstein, John C. Wilson, Jed Harris, Leland Hayward, the Theatre Guild and many other top-ranking impresarios. Told that dear “Cy” Feuer could see no more people that day, my young neighbor and I departed and strolled to the nearby Raleigh Room where he offered me a cocktail.