Long Legs and Tall Tales: A Showgirl's Wacky, Sexy Journey to the Playboy Mansion and the Radio City Rockettes (2 page)

I fully recognize that I couldn’t have accomplished my dreams without the help of many people. First of all, thanks to all the audience members who spent their hard-earned cash (or trust funds or stolen credit cards) on theatre tickets. Without an audience, performing a show just isn’t the same. Entertaining you has been my pleasure. Thanks for applauding and cheering and laughing (mostly at the appropriate times).

Thanks to all the producers, directors, choreographers, agents, and casting people (many of whom are named in this book) for creating spectacular productions, for recognizing the value of theatre and the arts, and for taking a chance by hiring me.

Thanks to A.G.V.A., S.A.G., A.F.T.R.A., and A.E.A. for helping to keep this profession professional.

Thanks to Morningside Writers Group in Port St. Lucie, Florida for critiquing my work and being the first people who weren’t friends or relatives or even my demographic to tell me my story was worth telling. (Except for that one old grumpy guy who stared at me like I was from outer space. But secretly, I think we liked each other.)

Thanks to all my dance teachers, especially my childhood dance teachers, for fostering my talent and my love of sequins.

Thanks to the visionary Russell Markert, founder of the Rockettes, for appreciating long legs and tall ladies; the fantastic Radio City Rockettes; and Radio City Music Hall for giving me a dance experience beyond my wildest dreams.

Thanks to all my fellow cast and crew members who lived the dream with me on stage and off. You’ve been like family.

Thanks to my gracious peer review team—Dr. Marybeth Lima, Jenny Dewar, Karen Kasteel, Steven Goodwillie, Genia A. Sherwood, Jennifer Dowdle, Cami Elen, Laura Teusink, and Phil Randall—for being my guinea pigs and muddling through the rough version of the book. Your feedback, encouragement, and emotional hand-holding were invaluable.

Thanks to the mega-talented, three-time Emmy Award-winning costume designer, Pete Menefee, for allowing his spectacular sketch to grace the cover of this book (and for creating costumes so luscious and lovely they made me swoon).

Thanks to my mentor and official editor, Ken Wachsberger, for believing in this project and for suffering through more stories about G-strings than an editor ever should.

Thanks to Kendra Englund for being my lovely and loyal best friend since high school and for sharing this love of theatre.

Thanks to my Grandma Elsie for suggesting to me back in the early 1990s, “You should keep a journal in case you want to write a book someday.” I did it, Grandma! (I’m sure she’s smiling up in heaven.) Thanks also to my writing role model, Grandma Merle, who loved to take pen to paper and continued documenting her own memoirs (15 volumes in all and she never left her small farm town in southwest Iowa) until she died a few days short of her 99th birthday.

Thanks to my wonderful parents who paid for a million dance classes, drove me to those classes day after day and year after year, sat through seemingly endless hours of dance recitals and amateur performances, babysat my kids, and traveled all over the country to see me perform professionally. You deserve a huge round of applause.

Thanks to my sister Cindy, the professional screenwriter, for her wise advice and wacky sense of humor, and sister Jen for being a smart, strong, and inspiring woman.

Thanks to my incredible children, Kieran and Kara, whom I love more than feathers and fishnets, and that says a lot.

And, finally, thanks to Dave Boutette for being The World’s Best Husband and my cheerleader throughout this crazy process.

Mmmwaaaaah! I love you all.

To everyone with a dream, may you have the courage to pursue it.

"If I ever got a chance to get a group of American girls who would be taller and have longer legs and could do really complicated tap routines and eye-high kicks...they'd knock your socks off!"

- Russell Markert, Founder of the Rockettes (Originally the Missouri Rockets, 1925)

Like many Americans and international connoisseurs of culture, I have been knocked sockless by the Radio City Rockettes. But if perchance you’ve spent most of your life hiding under a rock on a deserted island, and upon hearing the term “Rockette” (thinking your ears need a good cleaning) you clarify, “Did you say Rock-head?” I’d animatedly articulate, “The Rockettes are the world’s most famous precision dance troupe—a bevy of tall, leggy beauties acclaimed for their intricate, unison tap dancing, eye-high kickline, and gorgeous gams. They are the synchronized chorus line supreme, and their theatrical home is none other than the renowned Radio City Music Hall in New York City, where they’ve been amazing and amusing audiences since the 1930s.” And if that weren’t enough to sock it to you, I’d rave, “The Rockettes are referenced in movies, TV sitcoms, best-selling books, magazine articles, cartoons, and even the board game
Trivial Pursuit
. They are a household name and as integral a part of Americana as baseball, hotdogs, and apple pie.” So enthusiastic am I about these luscious ladies that I’d continue to rhapsodize until you implored me to “Put a sock in it!”

As a devoted fan growing up in the suburbs near Detroit, I watched the Rockettes perform on national television for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade every year without fail. At the end of the sparkling, spectacular performance, the camera panned across their fair faces one by one, each woman brightly beaming for her personal close-up. My sister and I delighted in discussing which dancers were the darlingest. A Thanksgiving without the Rockettes was like a Thanksgiving without turkey. In the last seven years, however, I had come to know more about the Rockettes than the average American. Let it be said with certitude that I knew the Rockettes intimately. Like you-know-the-holes-in-your-underwear intimately. For I was a Rockette.

This was a big deal to me, as becoming a Rockette was my fantasy world come true. As a kid, I used to go gaga over those old Hollywood movie dance extravaganzas (à la Busby Berkeley and the Ziegfeld Follies, circa early-ish 1900s) in which a million stunning showgirls in lavish costumes formed intricate kaleidoscopic, geometric patterns and were escorted around sensational stage sets and staircases by debonair men in tuxedos and top hats. It was a world of razzle dazzle and romance, and I loved it. Appearing as a Rockette was about the closest I could get to living my life in a magnificent musical. It meant I had made it as a dancer. The Rockettes were the cream of the crop, the top of the skyscraper, the peak of perfection. In short, they were the Big Time.

But life goes by fast, and soon, instead of getting a kick out of life, you’re getting kicked out of life. Before you know it you’re a ninety-nine-year-old rickety rocker in a rocking chair, about to kick the bedazzled bucket and bemoaning, “It’s over already? But, but, but I feel like I just got here! Why it seems like just a blink of an eye from birth to grave, from opening night to closing night, from overture to finale. I want an encore!” In this insidious way, the end of my career snuck up, caught me by surprise, and bit me in my aging buttocks. (I was only thirty-six, but for a dancer that age meant the end of life.)

Of course, I knew subconsciously that the final curtain was about to fall, but the reality of the situation didn’t hit me until I returned to perusing the audition notices after taking a year off for maternity leave. A year spent singing and dancing in my Florida home to a literally captive audience of two small children under the age of four was all well and good, but I was ready and anxious to get back to a real stage and an audience that could wipe their own bottoms.

Like a virgin, reliving the excitement and anticipation of the very first time I touched a
Backstage
newspaper in search of performance opportunities, I eagerly turned the pages only to be rudely awakened to the discovery that everyone wanted eighteen to thirty-five-year-olds. “But I was thirty-five just last year before I had the baby! What happened?” I blurted aloud, my tykes wide eyed over their ranting mommy. Time had flown by faster than I could count “a five, six, seven, eight.” That’s what happened. Somehow I had forgotten or failed to realize that, like a carton of milk or a can of tuna, a dancer came with an expiration date, and I was already spoiled goods. Thirty-five seemed like such an arbitrary number, but you turn thirty-five and all of a sudden you need mammograms, prenatal testing, and are no longer desirable as a dancer. The consolation prize is that you are now of age to run for president of the United States, but it’s not a likely transition. (Although Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, and Arnold Schwarzenegger made the dubious leap from acting to politics.)

One moment I was reaching my peak and the next I was over the hill. “At least I still have the Rockettes,” I reminded myself, temporarily relieved. “But I want to leave looking good and at the top of my game. I don’t want to be one of those decrepit diehards the younger girls make fun of. Don’t want people begging me, the crinkly old lady, to get the heck off the stage.” While proud to be performing at my age, particularly post pregnancy, I preferred not to pathetically persevere past my time. I robotically retrieved my youngsters’ runaway Cheerios from the floor as I continued my internal debate.

Many of my fellow thirty-something Rockettes were also getting married, buying homes, and birthing babies. We were all hanging onto our jobs by a thread trying to keep the dream (and the health insurance) alive for as long as we practically could. But our priorities were changing and so were our bodies. Dancing professionally and child rearing were like oil and water (for me, anyway). They just didn’t mix. Having taken maternity leave last year when my daughter was born, this year I was required to either plop out another papoose, take a leave of absence, or actually do the show if I wanted to keep my job. As an almost thirty-seven-year-old mother of two, who was apparently too old to audition for other dance gigs (news to me), I now knew that once my Rockette contract ended, my dance career was completely kaput.

This perturbing possibility was smacking me right in the face, because the Rockettes were currently fighting to protect our positions and maintain our cushy contract with Radio City. All spring and summer long, my phone had been ringing off the hook with gossip from the Rockette cross country hotline. Being the lone Rockette outpost in the swamplands of Florida, my calls were coming in third party from New York through Vegas. My computer was bombarded with conflicting e-mails from multiple sources. My mailbox was loaded with persuasive letters from Radio City and Cablevision (who had bought out Madison Square Garden, owner of Radio City) and opposing rhetoric from A.G.V.A. (American Guild of Variety Artists), the union representing the Rockettes, and retaliation from enraged Rockettes. Our boisterous battle made the morning television news shows and CNN. Matters were coming to a head and the tension was thick. There was even talk of a strike.

One of the main issues up for discussion was Radio City’s demand to dissolve the notorious “Roster.” Many Rockettes had to re-audition every year to maintain their status, but, for umpteen years, there had also been a Roster of forty-one women who were considered permanent employees of Radio City. That is, they could remain Rockettes forever and ever amen, barring they didn’t blow up like a balloon (in other words, as long as they met their weight requirement) or become incapable of kicking to their bifocals. So there would be “girls” pushing forty or even fifty years old, which is ancient in the dance world, still pumping out those Christmas shows and cashing in.

These rostered Rockettes had first right of refusal for any and all job offers. As such, the Roster was a cash cow and possibly one of the best gigs in New York, because you were virtually guaranteed work for approximately three months leading up to and during the Christmas season
every year
. These privileged gals could do a gazillion shows a day and get double or triple overtime. They’d make so much money they could kick back and eat bon-bons the rest of the year and then simply crash diet before the first weigh-in come fall. (That’s an extreme scenario, but technically it could be done.) As you might guess, these were most coveted positions. And I had one of them.

Understandably, Radio City disapproved of having to cater to the Roster. In fact, they assured us that the very future of the Rockettes rested upon its elimination in favor of yearly, open auditions so that the creative team could choose the most capable individuals for each production. I could see their point. If I were in charge, I’d certainly want to hire the best. But the message some of us heard was, “There are younger, better models out there, and if we have to use old has-beens in the lineup, our show will suffer to such an extent that the Rockettes will decay into nothing more than a historical relic, like pet rocks.” Ouch. I felt like the devoted wife of many years being traded in by my wealthy husband for a newer, hipper, prettier woman. It was an emotional issue; it hurt to be one of the few to have earned a spot on the prestigious Roster only to be told that the Roster would be the downfall of the troupe. It also hurt to have our job security threatened and our status and privileges revoked. But times they were a-changing. As compensation, Radio City was offering us each a buyout package commensurate with our respective years of service. And we still had the option of auditioning to be rehired; Radio City guaranteed that many of us would indeed be given our jobs back.

Let’s be clear that I’m not here to call Radio City and Cablevision the bad guys; perhaps their actions
would
ensure a higher quality product that would keep the Rockette franchise afloat. They’ve employed oodles of excellent entertainers for years on end, and I’m eternally grateful and proud to have been one of them. I’m telling you what went down, because it demonstrates just how fiercely competitive and uncertain showbiz can be and how it favors the youngsters. (Thank goodness I wasn’t a gymnast. My career would have been over before I got my first period.) Frankly, I’m also telling you, because this sensitive situation gives me a dramatic beginning (and ending) for this book.

So, in the name of preserving the legacy of the Rockettes, Radio City was determined to disband our cherished Roster and all its power and privilege therein. We knew that Big Daddy Cablevision and their lawyers would be a tough contender against our union that represented the pool of “variety artists.” Our fight felt like a ninety-five pound weakling trying to kick sand in the face of a three-hundred-pound muscle man. I generally rooted for the underdog, but this time I wasn’t placing any bets. A.G.V.A. had taken good care of us for years and was making valiant efforts on our behalf, but I sensed it was only a matter of time before my time was up.

And so it was under such suspenseful circumstances that I received a crucial call from Rockette Headquarters at Radio City. “Kristi, you’re next on the list to teach the Rockette Experience. Can you be in New York in two weeks?” The “Rockette Experience” was an afternoon-long workshop open to aspiring dancers in which they would learn fragments of real Rockette repertoire from a real Rockette in the real Rockette rehearsal rooms in the real Radio City Music Hall. The participants would then proceed through a mock audition followed by a question-and-answer session with the real Rockette. I had put my name on a waiting list to lead this event, and the opportunity had arisen just in the nick of time.

This bit of business wasn’t necessarily reason enough for me to be Manhattan bound. But this was a much more personal, vitally important mission, because, here’s the kicker: this would actually be my first, and probably last, appearance as a Rockette in New York City at Radio City Music Hall. “What’s the big deal?” you ask. The big deal is that you don’t feel like a real, bona fide Rockette unless you’ve been on the Great Stage at Radio City Music Hall. Standing on this sacred spot is a Rockette’s pilgrimage to Mecca. Even though I had logged in approximately 1,200 shows and 240,000 kicks as a Rockette, I still needed to perform at the Music Hall to feel my experience was complete.

Of course, as a rostered Rockette I had been offered opportunities to dance at the Music Hall but had turned them down, for what I thought were good reasons at the time, to perform elsewhere. In the back of my mind, I always thought I’d get around to it someday. With the contract deadline looming overhead, however, my instincts told me that someday better be
now
or it may well be
never
. When presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it’s best to stand at attention, salute your good fortune, and shout, “Yes, Sir!” Nothing was going to keep me from this final hurrah, this grand, spankin’ finale, this apropos ending to my fairy-tale adventure. And, to be honest, as a mostly-stay-at-home mom, going to the grocery store alone was a thrill these days, so a solo visit to New York City seemed practically orgasmic. How could I pass it up?

Heeding the call from H.Q., I mustered the troops and briefed them on my upcoming deployment. “Kids, Mommy is being sent on special assignment and has to go bye-bye for a little bit.” In response to this entertainment emergency, I left my precious progeny in the hands of my husband and boarded a flight to JFK International Airport in NYC to do the divine deed, most likely my final duty as a World Famous Radio City Rockette. I settled into my seat, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to relax for the ride.
You’ve come a long way, baby
, I realized, reflecting back to my humble beginnings in the world of show business.