I Blame Dennis Hopper (7 page)

My entrance into show business could not have been further from the magic of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical
Camelot
except that it was brief, it lasted for a moment, and it was called Camelot.

I got my start at the Camelot Dinner Theatre, in Connecticut.

Don't remember it, you say? That would be accurate. It lasted about six months. The Camelot was the kind of joint you performed in on your last stop
out
of show business on the way to the graveyard. Donald O'Connor was there for a week—died a week later. Richard Kiley toured in the musical
Man of La Mancha
for fifty years—he played the Camelot and never did the show again. The Camelot spared no one. One night a man actually died
in
the audience. In the middle of
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown,
we heard a crash, followed by a scream of “My husband, my husband!” Snoopy and the chorus slowly stopped singing “Happiness,” the lights came up, and I saw a man literally killed by show business–his head facedown in mashed potatoes and prime rib. His wife cried while the firemen slowly shook their heads and wheeled him away in a stretcher. They say the show must go on, but it's kind of hard to get the audience back after a thing like that. The highlight of the Camelot for me was meeting Rudy Vallée, and learning the value of a good tape recorder, but I will get to that. The Camelot became the first sign of many that I was being singled out for larger life lessons, that maybe my life was destined to be a really, really good movie with twists and turns that made you wonder if the heroine would ever really make it. And if she did, would there be music playing in the background?

One day, I was riding my ten-speed home from high school when I saw a sign:
COMING SOON. THE CAMELOT DINNER THEATRE.
I nearly skidded off the road.

My grandfather got his break in the late '20s when he auditioned for theater god David Belasco. He headed to Broadway at the Belasco Theatre. I was stuck in the boondocks without a theater or impresario in sight to give me a chance. The Camelot Dinner Theatre would be my entrée onto the boards!

The next day, dolled up to an inch of my life and carrying a homemade head shot of myself, complete with hat, pretending to be a successful actress who had somehow managed to end up in the sticks, I met with a guy named Phil who seemed to be in charge. He sat me down for an interview, and I immediately started trying to charm him. Mildly flirting with a man twice one's age to get a job was not yet considered politically incorrect. It worked, and he genuinely seemed to take an interest in me. Clearly he had picked up on my earnestness about a career in show business. He was my David Belasco.

This is what I would later learn about Phil: Phil had no theatre background. Phil was a manager of sorts, looking to try something new. Phil, I would learn, was a pimp. Being a pimp meant that Phil's occupation left him with a lot of spare cash. Dirty money needs to be run through a legitimate business. So Phil's idea was simple: Why not open a dinner theater? Cleanse your money and put on a pretty good show while you're at it!

Phil, as I later learned, ran “by the hour” motels out on the Berlin Turnpike. This was code for
brothels
. That's how prostitution worked in Connecticut. You drove out to the Berlin Turnpike and got a room or you had sex in the middle of the woods with deer watching you. It's true. The first time I made out with a boy was in the middle of a forest. Ever since, the scent of pine needles has turned me on. Bring in a raccoon to watch me, and we could make serious dough.

Phil had a partner at the Camelot, and they had worked together before. Her name was Rosie (not her real name—her real name was probably inmate #6660027, but let's stick with Rosie).

Phil's partner Rosie was—again, as the gossip went—a former prostitute and Phil's number-one girl. She was a hooker with a heart of gold who apparently loved the smell of greasepaint. It turns out that Rosie's dream, much like Rose's dream from
Gypsy
and much like my dream, too, was to be in show business! Now, my dream had not included working for a pimp and an ex-hooker who wanted to be out of “the business” and into “show business,” but beggars can't be choosers.

Phil was your classic movie villain, with slicked-back hair and a thin mustache. Beady brown eyes. Reeking of Brut cologne. He usually wore some sort of horrible brown polyester suit, his gut bulging through a pistachio shirt with a tie that was much too short. Phil was hard to look at, and he was a little scary, but for some reason he took to me. Maybe it's because I didn't flinch the first time he showed me his gun. “This is a dangerous business,” he said one night. Then he opened his jacket revealing a pistol in a shoulder holster. It was only a dinner theater, but I didn't argue. I just nodded.

“You ever see a gun before, kid?” he said, patting his piece.

“Sure,” I said. “Like on
Burke's Law
.”

Phil cracked up. “You're too much, kid.”

I hadn't meant to be funny.
Burke's Law
was a television show from the '60s (and revived in the '90s) about a millionaire chief of police who rode around in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce catching bad guys. Phil thought this dated reference was meant to be “ironic.” Most of my TV viewing took place during extended stays with my Italian grandparents in Queens, watching the shows that they liked. I thought that
was
TV. Twenty-year-old reruns of
The Jack Benny Program
,
You Bet Your Life
,
The Phil Silvers Show
,
The Untouchables.
But my favorite was
Burke's Law,
with its gangsters and dames and all the men who wore guns under their jackets.

“You're a good kid,” Phil said, putting away his gun.

I told Phil at that first interview that I wanted to audition for the upcoming musical, but he explained that all the shows were being cast out of New York. I was crestfallen. Phil said that I might be able to be in the chorus, but anyone who was in the chorus would not be paid: “That was a freebie.” I would be paid only if I worked as a waitress, a busboy, or a cocktail hostess. I could be in the chorus “after I paid my dues.” Seemed pretty harsh, but this was show business, so I went along. Out of all the options, cocktail waitress seemed the most glamorous. And I had certainly seen my parents make drinks often enough. Luckily for me, Phil gave it away when he said, “But you have to be eighteen to carry booze. How old are you?”

“I'm eighteen, Phil,” I said with a straight face.

Phil laughed. “Sure, kid.” Then he paused. “You're sixteen, right?”

I got the feeling that Phil said “You're sixteen, right?” a lot in his line of work.

“Yeah, Phil. I'm sixteen.”

He stared at my homemade head shot. It was a very vampy pose. Backlit as if I were a film siren. Phil looked me up and down again and made his decision.

“Good,” he said. “We'll tell everyone you're eighteen. I need someone with good boobs to carry booze. Let's go meet Rosie. She runs the day-to-day.” Then he winked at me—a wink that promised, “Someday, if you're lucky, I will take you out back and grope you while you pretend you want me to stop.”

I found out two very important things that day. One, I had good boobs. No one had ever said that to me, although I thought I did. And two, keep your mouth shut during an interview. I was only fourteen and should have in no way been hired to carry booze.

Phil brought me back to meet Rosie. She was tall and thin and closely resembled the actress Susan Hayward. Her face looked like a gun moll out of film noir. One side of her face drooped slightly, and I later found out this malady was called Bell's palsy. It marred her once-beautiful features. She was smoking a cigarette and stood up briefly to take a look at me. “OK, Phil” is all she said. Phil seemed to think that I had made a good impression. He walked me out the door and said, “You start on Thursday.” I waited until he got inside to get on my bike, knowing that leaving on my ten-speed Peugeot might betray my age.

All week I rode past as the kingdom of Camelot seemed to come together. Outside a sign went up that said “Opening Night.
Godspell.
”

I told my mother that I had got a job at the newly opened Camelot Dinner Theatre. This former abandoned building was in a sketchy area on the outskirts of town near an old Greyhound bus terminal. It had last been a biker bar, closed by the police after too many fights. Angry, drunk bikers still showed up to do wheelies in the parking lot. At first she was concerned, but once I said, “Mom, they're giving me free food, and I will no longer need to be here for dinner,” she softened and gave me her blessing.

Part of my job meant I got a free meal, but only if I got there at five o'clock, an hour before I began my shift as a cocktail waitress. My first night, I sat at the bar with some of the staff and ate chicken cordon bleu, corn, green beans, and a roll while the orchestra was tuning up and the actors were getting ready for the show. I was in heaven. Until I actually had to go to work, and then it turned into a bit of a nightmare. Opening nights are never easy.

Godspell
was going on. The singers sang, “Pre-pare ye, the way of the Lord!” I started to take drink orders. That's when everyone learned I had no skills as a cocktail waitress. Someone asked for a VO and Seven and I actually brought them a V8 and Seven. By week's end I was no better, although I had finally learned what went into a rusty nail. Man, that was a popular drink. Glenlivet and Drambuie and a twist of lemon. I was so awful that every night I told people it was my first night working. That excuse combined with my low-cut blouse actually got me great tips—and I was learning all the songs to
Godspell
. And waiting for my big break: to be in the chorus. In a week,
Godspell
was over and now I had to learn all the songs to
No, No, Nanette.
Even though I was a horrible cocktail waitress, I loved my job, because I could interact with the audience—I could brag, “You think this is good? You should have seen
Godspell
!” And then proceed to sing every song I had learned to the helpless customers who just wanted a rusty nail.

Two weeks in, Rosie called me to the back. At the Camelot, you saw Rosie for two reasons. You got your paycheck, or you were fired for stealing. I thought I was getting my first paycheck, so I bounced back there full of excitement and to ask Phil about auditioning for
Damn Yankees,
which was coming in week three. He avoided eye contact as Rosie informed me that I was being switched from “cocktail hostess” to simply “hostess.”

“You'll just walk people to their tables,” she said in such a way as to emphasize my stupidity. Then she handed me a diagram that she had drawn with round tables on it numbered from one to twenty. “Can you handle it?”

I took the paper and nodded. Phil still wouldn't look at me and fiddled absentmindedly with the gun under his jacket.

“Good,” Rosie said. “Memorize it.”

I tried to explain that I was not really a cocktail waitress. I was an actress.

Rosie lit a cigarette and said, “Yeah. That's what they all say.”

“She's a good kid, Rosie,” Phil said. “She keeps her mouth shut.”

That was true. I never once told Phil my real age nor repeated the torrid and now recurring gossip that he and Rosie were common criminals laundering money through the kingdom of Camelot. Phil as a creepy King Arthur and Rosie as a bitter, past-her-prime Guinevere. Phil confided in me because I guess he assumed I understood things like this. He said that Rosie had been his number-one girl. “She could have been a madam if she'd wanted to, but she wanted to go legit.” He said it with pride. As if they were just a normal couple now running a theater. Like the Lunts, not a couple of crooks. “That's showbiz,” Phil said when he saw me hostessing the next night.

Sometimes I'd be hanging around and I'd hear Rosie and Phil fighting just like other couples about how to run the business. By week four, bills started to pile up. No one was getting paid. Phil had been happier back at his motels on the Berlin Turnpike, and he stopped coming to work. Rosie rarely left the office. I'm not sure that she ever saw a show. It was a shame because
Damn Yankees
was probably the biggest triumph. No one died. Although someone did fall off the stage during “Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo” while backing up and singing, “Look out, Look out, Look out, Look out.” Yup—right off the stage.

“Food costs,” I heard Phil scream one day. Phil now thought that we on the staff should have to pay for our meals or have the price taken out of our salary. At this point no one was really getting a salary, so free food was an incentive for workers to show up. The Camelot started to go downhill.

Not for me. I never stopped believing in Camelot even when I was demoted to hostess. Every night the audience filed in, and as I led them to their seats and said “Thank you for coming to the Camelot and please enjoy the show!” I could feel their excitement. Not so much after the show, but I was usually backstage by the time they filed out complaining about the food, or their seats, or whatever calamity had occurred that night.

My hostess duties took half an hour. I led folks to their seats and was then free to go backstage and watch the show. This turned out to be great because now I had more free time to spend with the actors. Most of them lived in an apartment above the Greyhound terminal next to the theater. From them I learned that the Camelot Dinner Theatre was not where you wanted to be. One dancer told me, “You want to be booked in a show in Vegas—preferably wearing feathers and dancing behind Liza Minnelli.” All the chorus boys felt that way. They would gossip and fuss with me, teaching me how to put on makeup and false eyelashes. As gay men they all had one story in common, and that story always seemed to involve the actor Paul Lynde. He was gay? I couldn't believe it! There was one actor I met who was very serious. He was studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. He told me, “If you want to be a serious actor, you go to New York and study with Lee at the Studio.” Then he offered to give me a massage. What did having a massage have to do with being an actor? I thought. When I declined, he told me, “If you want to be an actress you shouldn't be so uptight.” Hmmm. Maybe that's why I never liked The Method.