By Myself and Then Some (6 page)

I walked through the curtains. Mr Crystal asked me to turn – I did, without falling down or getting dizzy – he examined the fit of the dress carefully, said, ‘Okay, you can change into your own clothes now and come talk to me.’ I did as I was told. Mr Crystal said, ‘We can use you starting in a week – the salary is thirty dollars. Bring your Social Security number with you and leave other information with Miss …’ whatever her name was – Jones?

Only after it was over did I realize how terrified I had been. But I had a
job!
And thirty dollars a week – a fortune – Mother and Grandma would be thrilled! It was my lucky day – I must remember the day, it was a Wednesday. (All good things and bad, all
big
things in my life would happen on a Tuesday or a Wednesday from then on.) I rushed home feeling as though I had accomplished some great feat. Thirty dollars – no more allowance, asking my mother for money – at last I would be able to give some to her, help her, and possibly save a bit each week. It was the beginning of financial independence for me. A big step.

I spent the next week going through my scant wardrobe to make certain I had enough to wear to work. Then a trip to Loehmann’s in Brooklyn. Loehmann’s was a large store that stocked clothes from all the Seventh Avenue houses – lower-priced clothes of unknown designers as well as the most expensive from Traina-Norell to Hattie Carnegie. Mother had been shopping there for years and had been taking me from the age of fourteen. There were no dressing rooms in the store. Women learned when new dresses would be coming in – Thursday nights were always good, I remember. Women ran around in their slips, girdles, and bras – all shapes and sizes – grabbing things from saleswomen as they brought them down. A madhouse. Downstairs were the least expensive items, upstairs the better things – and a small room in the rear reserved for special designer clothes. Everything on racks in the open. On the landing between the two floors any poor husband who had been bulldozed into accompanying his wife was made to wait. It was insanity, but it was bargain heaven!

I started my professional modeling career on Seventh Avenue in May of 1941. I was still sixteen years old and very immature. But I was full of bravado, and although I really had nothing in common with the other models, I liked them and I made them laugh. I soon learned the routine. On arrival at Crystal’s you undressed and either sat in a slip or put on a cotton smock. There was a long make-up table with a chair for each of us. The two girls I remember were a luscious blonde named Cynthia and the beautiful, tall brunette named Audrey whom I had seen on my first interview. I watched them as they applied their makeup – a base, then full eye make-up. It didn’t look heavy, but it was there. I did the best I could do with the face confronting me in the mirror. I used no base – only a little mascara, eyebrow pencil, and lipstick. I had never felt that make-up enhanced my looks very much. Not that there was no room for enhancing – there was plenty – but make-up made me look unreal to myself.

That summer moved along fairly pleasantly. I got along fine with the girls. I was the baby of the group, looking up to the older girls who knew all about life – perhaps I would garner some knowledge from them. Each model was assigned the ten or twelve outfits made on her, and they made a few outfits on me, but not many – I was too thin, too underdeveloped. When I showed a dress and a buyer would ask to see it close to, I’d be motioned forward. The buyer, male or female, would
then feel the fabric, discuss it – I’d stand there until I was dismissed. An occasional male buyer would feel the goods a bit more than was necessary and I never knew what to do. I was petrified, though no one ever was really fresh, just suggestive – just enough to make me aware that I’d better keep on my toes, protect myself. I suppose my experience in the garment center helped me to build a small wall around myself, taught me to take care of myself, defend myself. It also started me on the road to saying something funny, acting funny, to promote a laugh instead of a feel. It was all I could think of to do – I wasn’t sophisticated enough to sluff things off or make some telling remark. I felt safer with the distraction of laughter. Their reaction, I hoped, would be ‘funny kid’ as opposed to ‘possible bed material.’

The summer was suffocating – in the garment center you’re always modeling heavy winter clothes in 100-degree heat and flimsy summer wear in the dead of winter. At the end of the summer Audrey took her two-week holiday – she went to California, which seemed as far away to me as Outer Mongolia. She returned singing its praises, looking great – told of sleeping well, awakening to a large glass of
fresh
orange juice every morning, swimming, sunshine, and meeting Errol Flynn! I hung on her every word. Flynn had a reputation as a great ladies’ man and he was beautiful. I never imagined that California life for me – it all sounded a fairyland, which I guess it was in 1941. I still identified only with Broadway – New York. I used to meet Betty Kalb for lunch when I had a full hour to eat. We’d go to Walgreen’s Drug Store at 44th Street and Broadway, a well-known hangout for out-of-work actors, and although we didn’t know anyone there, the atmosphere was so pungent it carried me through those hours just seven blocks south that seemed to be lived in another country. Enemy territory, for it took me away from the theatre; anything that took me away from the theatre was against me. So I stumbled through those months enjoying my paycheck and little else. Soon it was time to prepare for cruise wear – the designs had been made, the clothes were to be ready for showing in October. They started to make a couple of things on me, but there was something in the air.

As I felt the firm beginning to lose interest in fitting me for cruise wear, the ax was indeed about to fall. Shortly before its descent came the day we all were casually talking about our lives. The other girls seemed fairly uncomplicated to me – they would keep on modeling
until Mr Right came along and then they’d get married and be all set. No dreams of names in lights to get in their way. Audrey and I ended up in the ladies’ room talking about our families – she talked more than I did, and that’s when she said from her stall to me in mine, ‘What are you?’ That’s when – not knowing she meant ancestry, not religion – I said, ‘I’m Jewish.’ And that’s when she said, ‘Oh – but you don’t look it at all.’ I’d like to meet the man who decided that people do or don’t
look
Jewish. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it the American penchant for pinning things down, categorizing, for pigeonholing people? Whatever it is, it’s wrong. Audrey’s idea, I suppose, was that I didn’t have a large nose and I wasn’t ugly, the standard Gentile concept of Jewish looks at the time. She wasn’t nasty, unpleasant, or even bigoted – just very surprised.

We returned to our dressing room and the conversation went on, bringing in one of the other girls. ‘Can you believe Betty is Jewish?’ ‘My God, you sure don’t look it.’ I didn’t know what to say. I resented the discussion – and I resented being Jewish, being singled out because I was, and being some sort of freak because I didn’t look it. Who cares? What is the difference between Jewish and Christian? But the difference is there – I’ve never really understood it and I spent the first half of my life worrying about it. More.

A few days later Phil Crystal called me into his office and said something like, ‘Betty, you’re a good model and I hate to have to do this, but we won’t be needing you anymore. It was only a trial, you’re a bit too thin for our clothes’ – underdeveloped, you mean – flat-chested ‘– we’ve enjoyed having you with us and wish you luck.’ Oh God, I thought, let me not cry now. Of course I knew modeling wasn’t my life’s work and I’d never felt really comfortable there – but being fired is
not
pleasant. And it did not feed my frail ego. I was very stiff-upper-lip – went back to the dressing room, didn’t talk much, went to the girls’ room, cried it out in the loo, then back to the dressing room. The girls must have known it was coming. I braved it through, making jokes about how now the theatre could have me full time, how had it managed this long without me? … I finished out my week at David Crystal and took my leave, praying I wouldn’t trip as I exited the room for the last time. I didn’t.

I had heard models were needed at a place called Sam Friedlander at 495 Seventh. Friedlander made evening gowns. I went to see him
and, miracle of miracles, was hired. He was a friendly, nice man who enjoyed my dreams of becoming an actress. Of course I thought he was nice – he liked me.

I was much happier at Friedlander’s than at Crystal’s. He laughed at all my little jokes, the other models were good girls (there were only two of them), the feeling was much cozier. I still spent most of my lunch hours rushing to Walgreen’s to grab
Actor’s Cue
and look for a job in the theatre.
Actor’s Cue
was published by a man called Leo Shull. It consisted of about four pages of listings of producers’ offices, plays being cast, road tours, everything pertaining to the theatre. Leo had a table in the basement of Walgreen’s where copies of
Actor’s Cue
were piled up and sold for ten cents apiece. I prevailed on him to let me sell some. He finally said okay – to get me off his back, I think. I took them half a block away to Sardi’s Restaurant and there I’d stand outside, stopping all and sundry to buy my product. I kept my eyes peeled for sight of a recognizable producer, actor, anyone who might help me get a job. I really was crazy, now that I think of it, and rather fresh, flip, nervy. But it was fun to do – it was heady, being in the vicinity of theatre life, so much so that I threw caution to the winds and blatantly charged up to Max Gordon, one of the most successful and respected producers on Broadway, asking him to please buy an
Actor’s Cue
and also when was he casting his next production. I guess he thought I was funny, for he chatted with me whenever I saw him on that lucky street. He was a kind man, forever generous to struggling actors, always approachable. My face also became familiar to John Golden, Brock Pemberton, and other important producers, which all helped, since when I went to their offices when plays were being cast, they at least recognized me when they said no.

In the summer of 1941 there was casting for
Best Foot Forward, a
musical to be directed by George Abbott. I had worked on my singing and had rehearsed a number called ‘Take and Take and Take’ from an old Rodgers-and-Hart show. I had rehearsed gestures and naturally thought I’d be a wow at the audition. There was an open call, which meant
everyone
was there. I wore a turquoise-blue sharkskin playsuit – my only and my best – and low-heeled shoes. We were to come prepared to demonstrate dance steps at the snap of Mr Abbott’s fingers. I arrived fully equipped and found myself in the midst of beautiful, mature girls wearing high-heeled shoes, bathing suits,
leotards –
experienced
, grown-up, and stacked. I knew right away I was all wrong – I looked twelve and just would not do. We were lined up on the stage – four or five rows, eight across – told to walk downstage in rotation, told to do the time step. I felt good doing that since I wasn’t out there alone. Finally we were called one by one – Mr Abbott was in the darkened orchestra with some other people – a piano was wheeled downstage left and the auditions began in earnest. One terrible light was focused on the stage. It made my hands and feet feel twice as large as they were. I felt completely naked. Awful! Finally my turn came. I gave my name – no experience except American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I gave my sheet music to the accompanist, a faceless young man – I was so terrified I didn’t see a thing. Mr Abbott called to me to move out to center stage. First he asked me to do the time step again – which I could do, God knows, but my knees were shaking so badly I even had trouble with that. Then the dreaded song. I wanted to hang on to the piano, but that was out. I sang it, or talked and sang it, or did something with it. I got through it terribly without confidence or voice – at the end I was told to leave my name with the stage manager, thanked for my trouble, and the next name was called. I knew I’d never hear from them. What an experience! It was like going to the chair. Auditions are hell. I honestly don’t know how anyone ever gets a job based on them – they show an actor at his worst, in the glare of a naked spotlight, surrounded by strangers, laying his life on the line. My audition was no good – I’d done it all wrong. But at least I’d done it, and I never forgot what it was like. But I never did it again – not for a musical.

A
fter six months of modeling
all day and pounding pavements at lunchtime (and not eating of course) I became fairly rundown, although I survived the winter of ’41 still modeling for Friedlander. Mother was due for her yearly two-week holiday and she was tired too. So my loving grandma, who had a very small insurance policy, decided to cash it in and give it to Mother and me to go to Florida, where we could rest in the warmth of the sunshine and be rejuvenated by the soothing, healing powers of the sea. It came to something like $1,500, which was a fortune to us. It was a gift of love. I left Sam Friedlander, as it seemed foolish for me to stay – I wasn’t getting any closer to the
stage in the garment district and knew I’d have to find something else, something that would bring me within smelling distance of a theatre.

Mother and I went to Florida by train. She had made a reservation in what turned out to be a good hotel on the sea, but expensive for us. We looked for rooms in a smaller establishment and found a charming old house with a sign outside advertising rooms to let. Mother told me to go in to inquire, which I did, whereupon the manager asked, ‘Religion?’ ‘Jewish,’ was my response. ‘Sorry, no rooms,’ was his. Mother was furious, and I was too – but we had each other, so the hell with it. We stayed where we were – it cost too much, but at least no apologies had to be made for being what we were.

I had never been in a tropical climate before and I loved it. The balmy air, palm trees, beach beautiful and white, a blue warm sea. We met a couple of people at the hotel – I even met a fairly attractive young man who played in the hotel orchestra and actually went out with him one night, walking romantically, always romantically, on the beach, trying to talk myself into another fantasy at least for the time I was there. It was all harmless and pleasant, and the warm climate did what it was supposed to for Mother and me. We returned to New York ready to face whatever the future would bring – and it brought a lot, including of course, America’s presence in the War after Pearl Harbor.