My Trip Down the Pink Carpet (3 page)

I thought,
I’m not sure I can pull
that
off.
I started to turn down the audition but my agent told me the director had specifically asked for me.

Yep, the same director was at the helm. There was much hemming and hawing in my mind. Did I want to go through another butch-Leslie-up session?

When I got to the audition, the director told the people in the room, “This is one of the funniest men you will ever meet.” God bless him. I almost started crying.

Needless to say, I did not get the part.

M
Y MOTHER
was a bashful champagne blonde who always smelled of White Shoulders perfume. On special occasions she would dab on a little Shalimar. She always conducted herself with a great amount of class. She was never one to succumb to fads, and she wore her hair in a modified bouffant. It was very glamorous—Jackie Kennedy with just a little touch of the Supremes—and it had an amazing flip to the side that she sprayed with a cloud of Aqua Net.

I was so proud that she was my mom. Her name was Peggy Ann and to me she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I thought she was a fairy princess. When the other mothers showed up for the Parent Teacher Association meetings in frumpy housedresses, my mother was always perfectly turned out. Until I was almost out of grammar school, she wore white gloves when she left the house. She looked like a fashion model from the pages of a magazine.

I also adored my mother’s mother. Her name was Mary Lucille Griffin. My mother was the baby of eight children, and I suppose that’s why she was so spoiled. When she was growing up, what she couldn’t get from her mother and father, she got from her brothers and sisters. Mary Lucille had raised all of her children on a plumber’s salary and was known for feeding the neighborhood kids as well. She was the best cook in all of Hamilton County. It was more than just a rumor that Grandmother Griffin’s red velvet cake could make a Baptist get up and dance.

When poor Mary Lucille was practically on her deathbed, my mother decided that it would be a shame for all those wonderful recipes to go with her. My grandmother, like most Southern cooks of her era, cooked without any written recipes. It was a pinch of this and a little of that. I know, because out of all the grandkids I was the only one who took a real interest in the way she cooked. I would follow beside her in the kitchen as she whirled about in her flour-covered apron, making her delicious tea cakes.

My mother decided that it was up to us to get all those recipes on paper. So off we went to Grandmother’s house with my Big Chief tablet in hand. Mary Lucille was trying to nap, but my mother was not to be deterred. She gently poked her and whispered, “Mama? About your biscuits?”

“What?” Mary Lucille asked, without opening her eyes.

“Leslie Allen and I are going to write down the recipe for your biscuits.”

“Oh Lord, Peggy Ann, do we have to do it now? I wanted to rest a little before my stories come on.”

Mary Lucille’s “stories” were her beloved soap operas. She watched them every afternoon without fail. One time we went to her house and the television was off. She was in bed during her stories and got us all worried. Granddaddy Griffin explained that Lynette had been framed and was in jail. She’d just found out she was pregnant with Hawk’s baby. Poor Lynette was going to have the baby behind bars. It had upset my grandmother so much she had to take to the bed. We thought he was talking about some of our trashy relatives, but it turned out Lynette was the heroine of Mary Lucille’s soap opera.

My mother persisted. “It’s now or never. How much flour, Mama?”

Mary Lucille thought for a while, then opened her eyes. “Well, let me see. Enough to make a nest.”

“Make a nest? That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know what she means,” I piped in. “You pour enough flour in the bowl to pat it out and then it looks like a nest.”

“Well, all right. Write that down. How much shortening, Mama?”

As I scribbled in my Big Chief tablet, Mary Lucille held up two shaky fingers, then promptly rolled over and went right back to sleep.

My mother sat there looking befuddled.

“I know what she means,” I said again. “She means you take your two fingers and scrape them into the Crisco. And that’s how much shortening you plop in the bowl.”

“Well, Lord help us all, we can’t write that down.”

So our little project came to a disappointing end.

I get most of my sense of humor from my Granddaddy Griffin. Homer Howard Griffin was a stitch until the day they put him in his grave. Even in his nineties he had the nurses at the hospital eating out of his hand because of his amazing sense of humor. He liked to talk a little dirty, much to the delight of us grandkids. And Lord knows, with eight children there were a lot of grandkids.

One time, he was cutting up at the dinner table, and my favorite aunt Dot said, “Daddy, when you talk like that in front of the children it makes my skin crawl.”

Granddaddy Griffin cocked his head inquisitively and said, “Well, Dot, what does your
heinie
smell like when it crawls past your
face
?”

All of us kids just hollered.

When Grandaddy died, I was performing with a melodrama troupe in Bakersfield, California. It was my first acting job after college and I was in heaven. I was making $165 a week! My mother called and tearfully told me, “Your biggest fan passed on this morning.”

And he was. He really was my biggest fan. Even toward the end, when he was crazy as a bedbug and did not recognize anyone else, I would walk in the room and he’d say, “Leslie Allen, can you help spring me out of here?”

I had other fans from the beginning. When I was little, I think both Peggy Ann and Mary Lucille took one look at me and thought,
He’s going to need some help!

They circled the wagons, as only true Southern women can do, and created a secret garden where it was okay for little boys to play with dolls. How sweet is that? It was also okay for little boys to read about Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew instead of those rambunctious Hardy Boys. And it was okay for little boys to make potholders and sew doll clothes. I was “artistic,” and they encouraged me in that arena. But somehow, even at a young age, I knew it was best to not let Daddy into our little secret garden. So even though I was allowed to do what I wanted, I knew it was somehow shameful.

My daddy, Allen Bernard Jordan, was a man’s man. He was as handsome as a movie star. Even though he stood a little less than five feet five, he was in possession of an easy kind of masculinity that both awes and terrifies me—and that I am extremely attracted to. I’ve been in therapy about
that
for years.

My daddy used to call me “son” as if he was in deep pain. He’d say, “Oh, son,” and it would sound like “sohhhn.”

One of my early ambitions was to be a go-go dancer. I used to sit and watch the dancers on a TV show called
Hullabaloo,
which was the MTV of my generation. I was transfixed as the dancers wildly cavorted on white platforms. I knew it took a lot of practice to achieve that level of expertise, so I pushed all the furniture in the living room out of the way and commandeered the coffee table. Once I had mastered “the Jerk,” I moved on to the next level, which included “the Swim” and “the Hitchhiker.” After several weeks of intense practice, I also had “the Batman” and “Mashed Potato” under my belt. By the time my repertoire included “the Dirty Dog,” which involved a whole lot of hunching and some really intricate facial expressions, I was on my way.

My poor daddy would come home and his firstborn son would be feverishly go-go dancing on the coffee table to “Wipeout” by the Safaris.

“Daddy, watch me do the Pony!” I’d squeal as I hopped from foot to foot, jerking my head back and forth.

“Oh,
son,
” he’d sigh.

My career hopes were dashed when I noticed that one of the boy dancers on
Hullabaloo
had bleached bangs. This was before even the Beach Boys had bleached bangs, and I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I talked my friend Charlie into helping me achieve my new look. We took hydrogen peroxide and combed it through my bangs, which promptly turned bright orange. When confronted by my daddy at the dinner table, I swore right over my Chef Boyardee ravioli that I didn’t know what had happened. I just woke up that morning and there it was. Orange bangs. Can you believe it?

He did not believe it.

I got a good whipping for that. Not because I bleached my hair but because I lied. The whipping apparently did not do a lick of good, since when I was growing up I could lie with the greatest of ease. I have been in therapy about this, too.

Anyway, it was so disheartening. If I couldn’t even get away with bleached bangs, how on earth was I ever,
ever
going to get away with high-heeled, pointy-toed Italian boots and skintight, striped pencil pants?

So I gave up my dream of becoming a go-go dancer and replaced it with dreams of becoming a majorette. My mother had been a majorette in high school (aren’t they all in Tennessee?). I pulled out her baton one sweltering summer afternoon and begged her to show me a routine. I had always been fascinated with batons. My daddy had once taken me to a football game and tried patiently to explain all the ins and outs of football.

“Now, son, that is the offense and that is the defense.”

I tugged on his sleeve and asked impatiently, “Daddy, when do the majorettes come out?”

“Oh,
son
…”

On that summer afternoon, Mother showed me a few of her best moves and that was all it took. I began to practice with a vengeance. I was in the front yard going to town with my baton when my daddy pulled up with his army buddies in tow.

“Daddy! Daddy! Watch me twirl!” I yelled in my high, squeaky voice.

“Oh, son,” he lamented, pulling me aside, away from the pitying eyes of his buddies. “Why don’t you twirl that little baton in the house?”

“Mama’s afraid I’ll break something!” I threw the baton over my head, did a big final twirl, and caught it in a pose. I wanted to show those big, butch army boys a thing or two.

“Son, I’ll pay for whatever you break! Just please twirl in the house.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. My daddy was a good man. I adored my daddy. Everyone did. My daddy was a churchgoing man who lived his faith. He was a man with a code and he lived by that code. He was a deacon, a Sunday school teacher, and a pillar of the community. It was said that he “never met a stranger.” My daddy was the kind of man who talked to people in the grocery store checkout lane. When all the car windows were rolled down in the summertime, he’d strike up conversations with other drivers at stoplights. My sisters and I would get down on the floorboard of the car because we were so embarrassed.

My daddy could walk into a room and light it up. And he was doing the best he could with “the light he had to see with,” as my spiritual advisor once told me. It was the 1950s, and what was the greatest fear a man could have? That his son would turn out queer.

My daddy was killed in a plane crash when I was eleven years old. That is a terrible time for any boy to lose his daddy. He was so loved in the community that all the schools closed for his funeral and the church was packed to capacity with mourners.

But when my daddy died, I just knew to the very core of my being that he went to his grave a little ashamed to have a son like me. And at that age I didn’t even know what “like me” meant. I just knew I was different.

I sometimes feel like I was born ashamed.

T
HE AWFUL
part about Hollywood is how people in the industry try to pigeonhole you into a “type.” I was once described as a Danny DeVito type. What? We’re both short and we each have a penis. But that’s about all I have in common with Danny DeVito.

I think one of the secrets to the little bit of success I have had in Hollywood is that I refused to change anything about myself. Not that I could if I tried. A long time ago, I decided that I would never be like Robert De Niro or Meryl Streep. I would never be the kind of actor who could disappear into the roles he or she played. And quite frankly, I have never been asked to play a character I felt was more interesting than me in real life.

So I just do the best Leslie Jordan I can. And I’ve done pretty well.

When I first arrived in Tinseltown, I met a casting director named Pamela Sparks. She was a really fun gal from Texas. Pam sat me down and gave me some advice.

“Honey,” she said, “you are already so limited in what you can do because you have such a character look, with that elfin face, short stature, and those big ears. I think you really need to concentrate on losing your accent, especially in commercials. It regionalizes the product and advertising people don’t want that.”

The hilarious thing was that back then I thought I had actually
lost
my accent. My goodness gracious, I had a degree in theatre from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga! I had taken all kinds of classes in speech and elocution.

But I went to work to rid myself of my Tennessee accent. I tried everything. I walked around with a pencil between my teeth. I bought a bunch of boring tapes from the Samuel French Bookstore. I decided the only way to truly get rid of my accent was to drop it entirely from my daily life—but I just wasn’t willing to do that. I felt like such a fake. I am Southern to the bone. It’s what I am. I felt like it was what set me apart from all the hundreds of other character actors that were getting off the bus daily.

So I set sail, accent and all.

Years later, Pam Sparks was casting a situation comedy starring Isabel Sanford, after her long run on
The Jeffersons.
It was called
Isabel’s Honeymoon Hotel,
and one of the main characters was a security guard who kept shooting himself in the foot. They were looking for a Don Knotts type. I auditioned for everyone under the sun. Finally, I was standing outside Fred Silverman’s office. (He was a TV god in those days.) Pam Sparks had her hand on the doorknob. I could tell by the way she was sweating that a lot was at stake with this audition.

“Now, listen, sweetie,” she said. “Don’t change a thing. Just do the same brilliant audition you’ve been doing.”

Out of spite I said, “Well, Pam, you gave me some advice once that I’ve decided to take. So I’ve been working real hard and I’ve decided to do the audition without my Tennessee accent.”

She turned pale and looked like she was going to faint. “Don’t you fucking do this to me, Leslie.”

“I was kidding! Honey, I was just kidding!”

She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “Well, standing outside Fred Silverman’s office with our asses on the line is no time to kid. I have really talked you up. Now cut the shit, get in there, and be brilliant!”

The year I stepped off the bus in Hollywood—1982—was the year a wonderful character actor named Clara Peller hollered “Where’s the beef?” and ushered in a whole new era in commercials. Character actors became the rage.

I worked up a storm. I was the Del Taco guy and the PIP Printing guy. I was the elevator operator to Hamburger Hell (where people go who do not eat tacos) for Taco Bell. I was lost at sea dreaming about pancakes for Aunt Jemina Lite syrup. I was a hapless Christmas tree salesman, a busboy, a window washer, a dumb army private. But, alas, I was never the “hero” of the commercial. I was always the guy who mowed his lawn with the lawn mower that blew smoke, or drove his car with gas that “causes knocks.” The hapless wonder! The clown! The loser! This did not do wonders for my self-esteem.

One of my first commercial agents was an old, cigar-chomping guy. My phone rang one day and he said, “Hey, kid, listen, I got a little something for you. They’re looking for a spokesperson for the Selective Service.”

I was a little taken aback. “Do you mean the organization that gets boys to join the army?”

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”

I was hesitant. The spokesperson for the Selective Service? A little queer like me trying to convince young boys to join the army? Who was he kidding? But at that point in my career I was game for anything.

The Selective Service had decided to do a public service announcement putting the word out that all males were required to register at the post office within thirty days of their eighteenth birthday. In this particular television spot, a young man was seen lying in bed asleep on his eighteenth birthday. All of a sudden, his guardian angel pops up on the headboard and reminds him that today might be a good day to register with the Selective Service.

I was auditioning for the part of the guardian angel. When I got to the audition, I was handed a copy of the script. Actors at commercial auditions are usually not given much time to look over the words before the audition, so I quickly read through the script and almost fell over. It was filled with words that contained the dreaded sibilant
s
—which I was convinced would be a dead giveaway that I was queer.

It was terrifying.

“Hey, Ralph! Guesss what today isss? The SSSelective SSServissse ssspecifically ssstatesss you mussst regissster at the possst offissse within thirty daysss of your eighteenth birthday. Why not do it today, Ralph?”

When I finished my audition all I got was a very terse thank you. I left the audition feeling very depressed, and very
gay.
But when I got home, the phone rang. It was my commercial agent.

I got the job!

I began to panic. I spent the next week holed up in my little Hollywood apartment practicing in front of a mirror. I knew it was imperative that I not come off as too gay. I tried lowering my voice. I tried sitting with my legs spread far apart, as if I was airing out my big gonads. I tried keeping my hands from fluttering in the air too much.

On the day we were to shoot the commercial, I walked on the set and everywhere I looked I saw enormous, masculine men in army suits. The troops had arrived! It was as if my daddy and all his buddies were there. It was like an acid flashback. The director called action and I jumped into my new “butch” mode and really tried to sell it.

“Cut!” The director walked over and gave me a puzzled look. “What happened to the flighty little angel that I hired? Did John Wayne eat him?”

Huge laughter.

I was so embarrassed. The director then asked me to please just do the part the way I did it in the audition. We did it over and over until he got what he wanted. That damn commercial ran for ten years. It haunted me. It was so hard for me to watch. Even though all my friends would compliment me on my performance, and tell me I was adorable, funny, and lovable, all I saw was a big sissy.

Another time, I was hired to do a series of Foster’s beer commercials. The star of the commercial was Paul Hogan, before he became famous as “Crocodile” Dundee. I was supposed to sit at the bar drinking beer with Mr. Hogan as he waxed poetic about “shark wrestling” from Down Under. Hogan barely spoke to me, and when he did, I could not understand a word he said. On camera, he enunciated his words, but off camera, he didn’t seem to be speaking English. He made me nervous. I thought any minute he might challenge me to a pissing contest or make me box a kangaroo.

I was sure he knew I was a queer and that’s why he wasn’t being very nice to me. Of course, back then I thought anyone who wasn’t being nice to me knew I was a queer. (Now, I know Hogan could not
really
have been homophobic, as he eventually married Linda Kozlowski, his lovely costar in
“Crocodile” Dundee
. I knew Linda before that picture spiraled her to stardom, and she had many gay friends and a huge entourage of gay men who followed her around everywhere.)

There was something else that made me nervous. A good friend of mine from Australia told me that the rumor floating around Sydney was that Mr. Hogan had a twelve-inch penis. That is impossible! I went home and pulled out my ruler from elementary school. That’s
huge
!

I remember years ago, sitting in a dirty-movie theatre watching the porn star John Holmes, who was supposed to have an enormous penis. His big thing was always flaccid. It was never fully erect. It just sort of hung off his skinny torso and flopped all over the place like a grotesque sausage. I was not impressed at all. He was just going through the motions. He would grunt and stuff his penis into whatever it had to be stuffed into and that was it. There was no passion, no fake groans, nothing. Then the bad 1970s porno music would start and there it was! Just a big slab of meat stuck in some cavernous, hairy, hippie vagina. What was the audience supposed to do then? Clap?

When I was sitting on the bar stool with Mr. Hogan, I couldn’t get those nasty movies with John Holmes out of my head. I kept hearing that bad porno music. Every time I looked at Hogan I saw naughty pictures, which preyed upon my mind. I envisioned him trying to stuff something into something. It made me terribly tense and out of sorts.

And it did not help matters that the director kept fussing at me. He wanted a two-shot of us, but Hogan kept hogging the shot. I could have sworn he was elbowing me out of the way. I was certain at the time it was because I was a homo.

Finally, in desperation, the director took me aside and asked me what the problem was. I told him that Mr. Hogan was hogging the shot. He looked like he didn’t believe me, so I told him to watch closely on the next take. Afterwards he came over and apologized, and said that a two-shot was imperative and I would just have to push my way into the picture. The cameras rolled again, and Hogan mumbled something about shark wrestling. I sat there in character and hung on his every word.

“Shark wrestling?”
I asked, wide-eyed. This was my only line.

Then it was time for the two-shot. I was supposed to laugh uproariously and lean in to Mr. Hogan as if we were now best friends. Here goes! I threw back my head, laughing like a hyena, and then shoved my way right into the shot. I felt an elbow but that did not stop me. I was a man on a mission. I don’t think Hogan was too happy with my brazen attempts to get into the picture, but such is life!

Years later, when Hogan became famous, I thought I had the inside track. I knew what made “Crocodile” Dundee so “cocky.”

I was once hired to play a Ferengi on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Ferengi are extraterrestrial creatures with huge ears (where, supposedly, their erogenous zones are located). I was hired mainly because of my height. The job involved forty separate prosthetic pieces that were glued to my face, as well as fake teeth, contact lenses, and a very uncomfortable costume. I also had to be burned at the stake. I agreed to take the job because I needed the money.

I hold the distinction of working for the longest time in full prosthetics of any actor who has ever appeared in a
Star Trek
movie or television series. During the shoot, I was called into the makeup trailer at three o’clock in the morning and was not released until the following morning at two. Forget about overtime, I went into golden time. I was making a full day’s salary every hour! At one point I was so tired I fell asleep, had a nightmare that I was drowning, and was woken up by a screaming makeup person—I had been clawing at my face, trying to pull off the rubber pieces.

But I soldiered on. The director called “Action!” and I paraded onto the spaceship and heroically delivered my first line.

“Cut!” yelled the director.

Huge laughter.

“This isn’t Deep
South
Nine!” the director cackled. “Can you please bring that Ferengi a little north of the Mason–Dixon Line?”

It must have been hilarious to see this creature from outer space yelling with a thick Tennessee accent. It was like
Star Trek
meets
Hee Haw.

The director was relentless. “Hey, Ferengi, the word ‘feather’ does not have four syllables, even in outer space. Lose the accent!”

The whole shoot was just torture. When I tried to lose my Tennessee accent, I would, for some unknown reason, lapse into a terrible Cockney impression.

“Hey, Ferengi! Now you sound like Eliza Doolittle on crack.”

At one point, I locked myself in the bathroom and had a good cry. Thank God there weren’t any of those people who gather at
Star Trek
conventions lurking about. Seeing a Ferengi boo-hooing on the toilet would be a Trekkie’s dream come true.

I muddled through and they must have been pleased with the results because a week later, my agent called. “They want to bring your character back. And guess what? All your scenes will be with Whoopi Goldberg.”

“I don’t care if my scenes are with Jesus Christ,” I said. “I don’t want to be a Ferengi ever again. Do you hear me? I don’t want to be on
Star Trek.
”