American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (26 page)

Bookings were difficult at first. In El Paso, Texas, they served as
the Tuesday-night entertainment for the local newspaper’s fourteenth annual Cooking and Better Homes Exposition. No admission charge and no payday, but Rose worked the press as only she could, promising “
a kaleidoscopic pageant, differing in its whimsical phases, specialties and climaxing in a beautiful finale.” On to Tucson, where the Dancing Daughters were billed under the new Conrad Nagel talkie
Let’s Make Whoopee
. Just to shake things up a bit, Rose gave herself a number in the act, singing “
Mother Machree”:

For this performance, out of both habit and heartache, Rose submitted to the newspapers an old photograph of June.

Three months now, and not a word from the Baby.

Rose had no idea her daughter was living, as June herself put it, “
in the shadow of the real world” on the dance marathon circuit, swaying on her feet for weeks at a time with only ten-minute intervals for rest, growing calluses on top of calluses, watching her fellow “horses” go squirrely from lack of sleep. The assistant surgeon general issued a graphic warning about the fad: “
It’s the same as putting a five-ton load
on a one-ton truck. Something must give. No nervous system, no matter how strong, can stand seventy hours of dancing without ill effects. It may result in overstrained heart, rupture the muscles, or cause serious injury to the nerves of the body. The dancers may not notice it for months but the strain they put on their bodies is certain to tell.”

One teenage girl had
visions of Jesus. Another disrobed in the middle of the dance floor and went through the motions of taking a shower. A young man
gnawed off the tops of potted palms, believing they were fried eggs. Some
talked to imaginary friends or snatched nonexistent objects from the air. A twenty-seven-year-old dancer named Homer Morehouse
dropped dead of heart failure as he left the floor.

But June, used to working herself past exhaustion, knew she could survive—and that this job was temporary. Every hour with Bobby on the dance floor was spent plotting her return back to both the stage and to Mother, this time following her own schedule, writing her own script.

W
ith Gordon’s negotiating skills in mind, Louise devised a plan: if they offered one free night, the managers might be persuaded to book them for a week or two. It worked. The Lyric Theatre in Yuma, Arizona, professed to host a “
complete Orpheum Circuit,” but its advertisements blared pure burlesque:

The Dancing Daughters were actually headlining this time, their name strung up in blinking lights—so what if the orchestra was inadequate, with the town butcher moonlighting as the violinist and the manager’s teenage nephew working part-time as the drummer? If only a stagehand hadn’t nailed their scenery to the back wall, thereby making it impossible to enter and exit fluidly, a misstep that sent every girl but Louise into nervous hysterics. One of them refused to do her number with Porky, the baby pig Rose picked up at a roadside farm along the way. The contortionist’s shoulder strap broke as her dusty, stockinged feet brushed against her forehead, dropping her leotard and exposing her breasts. She quickly righted herself and fled the stage in tears. During the new military number, the backs of the uniforms were supposed to spell out
DANCING DAUGHTERS
in radium, a radioactive chemical (and, as it turned out, carcinogenic besides) used in luminous paints. Some of the girls were out of order, some sobbed in the wings, and the rest were too paralyzed to turn around. The audience tittered and offered a timid patter of applause.

After the show Louise found Rose in their hotel room, consoling the girls. She could either join them and wait for her mother’s moods to turn, from sympathy to despair to outrage and back again, or she could step in and direct the action, sure as a conductor waving his wand.

“
Look at us, Mother,” Louise said. “You’re pretending we’re little girls and that’s what’s wrong. We aren’t little girls anymore. We’re almost grown up. Then why not make us look really grown up? Have us wear make-up and high heels—”

Rose stood. “Stop that yelling and shouting,” she said. “You’ll wake up everybody in the hotel. High heels? Have you lost your mind? High heels, on these
children?
”

“That’s just it!” Louise stepped closer to her mother. “We’re not children anymore. We’re not anything. We have to make ourselves into something. Just think how much better we’d look if we were blondes!”

Rose’s eyebrows leapt, and she clamped a hand over her mouth. After a moment her expression relaxed. “The girls might be very pretty as blondes,” she conceded. “Yes, I’m sure they would. And we could change the name of the act to “Madam Rose’s Baby Blondes.”

“No, Mother,” Louise said. “I have a better idea. We’ll change the
name to Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes, and I’ll be the only brunette.”

Rose relented. She watched as Louise poured peroxide over every head but her own, and agreed that the change called for new press photos. Arranged in ascending order of height, the girls flashed full-tooth grins for the camera, peering over pale, bare shoulders—all but Louise, who dipped her head coyly away from the others and allowed the corners of her lips only the slightest upturn. For the first time her face found a mask that fit: sultry, sly, and suggestive, with no trace of Plug, Hard-boiled Rose, or even Louise.

R
ose did her part updating the publicity materials, calling the Blondes “
Seven Sunkist Sirens of Song & Dance” who were “
really and truly from Hollywood” and scheduled to appear in “
a number of the larger cities.” Despite their newly saucy appearance and the more suggestive phrasing of their ads, the act remained the same: the dancing cow, the mechanical dolls, the skit with Porky the Pig, the perennial “Hard-boiled Rose.” She secured them bookings at knock-off Orpheum Theaters in places like Marion, Illinois—theaters that weren’t on Martin Beck’s once-prestigious circuit but clung to the vestiges of his glory. The Orpheum Circuit didn’t even exist anymore, technically,
having merged with the equally formidable B. F. Keith–Albee Vaudeville Exchange. Edward F. Albee, who once boasted “
I am vaudeville,” was also ruined; his most trusted associate betrayed him by selling all of his Keith-Albee-Orpheum stock to one
Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president.

Kennedy announced that the longtime vaudeville producer was “
washed up,” dropped Albee’s name, and combined the company with RCA and the Film Booking Offices of America to create Radio-Keith-Orpheum. RKO quickly came to dominate the market, producing radio programming and movies in a theater chain that reached every corner of the country. By the time Louise christened her Hollywood Blondes,
only five straight vaudeville theaters remained nationwide. Getting booked was now more a game of musical chairs than a matter
of talent or reputation. Acts trouped the same sad string of cities again and again, hoping to be in the right place when the melody stopped.

Which was why Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes once again found themselves in El Paso, this time for a gig at the Colón Theatre, situated in a neighborhood populated by Mexican immigrants who’d fled during Pancho Villa’s reign. An alley along the back of the theater served as a roving red carpet for prostitutes, pimps, and johns. The Colón’s manager placed Spanish-language ads in the
El Paso Times
, promising that Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes would deliver “
deliciosos” and “sugestivos” numbers “in the style of New York, Paris, London, or Mexico City.” Mildew coated the walls and the air reeked of sweat, but the shows were fantastic, unlike any Louise had ever seen: a strange, frenetic mosaic of sequins and spangles and feathers and heels with dangerous spikes. Bare torsos swelled and rolled like sleek olive waves. One comic bit a leading lady’s behind, another peered down his pants as if stunned and delighted by what he found there. Every word was in Spanish; even the audience’s laughter sounded foreign and surreal, a Dalí painting in audio.

“
They’d never get our comedy lines,” Rose whispered to Louise. She did not approve of the biting and leering, but the Colón had booked them for a full week at $35 per day. “We’d have to learn the act in Spanish.”

“The whole act?” Louise asked.

“Of course not. Just the key words.”

Rose found a stagehand who spoke passable English to translate a few of their numbers, “I Have a Cow,” “Vamp a Little Lady,” and “I’m a Hard-boiled Rose.” The last song proved particularly difficult, however, and when Louise launched into her refrain, talk-singing “
Yo soy una gancha,
” the audience roared. Only later did she realize what she actually said: “
I am a hooker.”

It was their most successful performance to date.

E
ven on the road, a dull, muted sameness pervaded their days. The girls ate the same meals when they ate at all: sardines on graham crackers,
gingersnaps, candy bars, and, during truly desperate times, dog food. They piled into the Studebaker in the same cramped order, sleeping upright on the night trips, animals tucked between limbs. They removed their makeup with the same cheap tub of Crisco, which Rose insisted was “purer” than cold cream. They listened to her daily complaints about money and why the grouch bag was skimpy. “
A dime here, a quarter there,” she always said. “It all adds up, you know. Next time your parents send you spending money you must keep notes on how much you spend.” They abided her obsession with
daily expenses: a quarter for a hat, $10 for a week’s rent, shoes for $3.60, a dollar for “eats.” They humored her insistence that vaudeville would survive, that “
nothing will ever take the place of flesh.” They felt the same flutter of panic after each performance, knowing it might be the last time they were standing behind the curtain when it fell.

They made it to Kansas City, Missouri, where they hoped to get work at some theater, any theater, even though the town hadn’t put on vaudeville in months. While Louise and the Blondes struck poses, Rose regaled a local agent, Sam Middleton, with stories about their successful (and wholly fictitious) show in Mexico City, making up the details as she went along. Gorgeous theaters, she exclaimed, with revolving stages and orchestra pits that rode up and down on elevators. The Mexicans couldn’t stop gaping at all that blond hair. Anyone who thought vaudeville was dead should take its temperature south of the border. “
If it weren’t for that terrible revolution,” Rose added, “we’d be there right now.” She took no notice of the
Variety
on the agent’s desk, nor of what would become its most famous headline:
WALL ST. LAYS AN EGG
. The agent shook Rose’s hand, told her he’d be in touch if anything came up.