Viewing page 12 of 51

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

– were girls on their own could live inexpensively. I didn't even know about YWCAs. So, after four days at the Woodstock, I answered a newspaper advertisement: "Apt – Will share…"

I told my prospective landlady a great big lie. I told her I was an actress – and she let me move in. It was a one-room and kitchenette apartment, with an alcove large enough to hold a cot, a chest of drawers, and my small trunk. The lady slept on a pull-out sofa bed in the living-room part. She was pretty, though terribly old, probably all of 30 or 35. Her hair was bobbed, curly, and bright red. Her clothes weren't anything special, but she had beautiful filmy nightgowns and beautiful négligées trimmed with marabou, and beautiful underthings – black lace ones, even. Occasionally she packed a bag and went away for a night or two. She was amiable enough, but somehow we could never seem to get really well acquainted.

After having invented for myself an impressive background as to my theatre experience, I started looking for work. The classified phone directory made it easy to find addresses of producers and agents, and every day I made the rounds. The outer offices were crowded with actors and actresses of every shape and size. They waited and smiled and chatted together exchanging gossip – who was casting what play – and waited and smiled some more. How I long for the day when I might join in.

Then, one afternoon two men came through the inner door of an agent's office and scanned the hopeful group. One pointed in my direction and said, "You." I looked around to see who he meant.

"You," he said, "the blond one." He consulted the other man. "She's the type all right." And there I was, after only two weeks in New York, engaged to play the ingénue in a dramatic act for vaudeville. The sketch had three characters. The other two would be played by the men. I learned that they were a juggling and dance team who, having gotten tired of opening the show, had decided to move into a higher echelon with a 20-minute drama which they themselves had written. I thought it superb; though it has since occurred to me that their juggling and dancing may have been better.

I wired Dad the glorious news. I was an actress and my salary was 35 dollars a week, or anyway it would be as soon as the act started playing. The man didn't know exactly when that would be, but, taking no chances, I bought my costume right away, a dress I had admired in a window on my evening walk down Broadway. It was white lace, with a red velvet ribbon around the waist and a big pink rose, and it cost 25 dollars. As things turned out, there was no great hurry after all because we rehearsed intermittently for nine weeks. During that time I didn't have much block getting acquainted with the man either, but I was an eager rehearser and nine weeks didn't seem a bit too long.

This was a new world, a stimulating anything-can-happen sort of place, entirely unrelated to any world I had known before. It made Dickinson, North Dakota, seems so remote that at times it hardly existed. I was beginning to learn the technique of shutting out the things it was better not to remember. It worked quite well except for those moments that caught me unguarded, like seeing something in a shop and thinking, "That would look lovely on Mother." But now it was nearly Christmas and the technique didn't work so well. Holiday sights and sounds were everywhere, dazzling displays and windows, Salvation Army Santas on corners, familiar hymns and carols accompanied by wheezy organs, and being wakened in the morning by a German band on the street below thumping out "Tannenbaum" or "Stille Nacht." I tried to close my eyes and ears, but Christmas had begun to creep in around the edges.

Then – the act was booked for a tryout, the last half of a split week at the Myrtle Avenue Theatre in Brooklyn. Four performances a day, and the dates would be December 23, 24, and 25. Four lovely performances a day and the long subway ride to Brooklyn and back. I could slip through Christmas and come out on the other side as if it hadn't happened.

I packed the white lace dress and the new makeup in its new metal makeup box, boarded the subway and arrived at the Myrtle Avenue station two hours before the front of the house opened. At the end of the dirty alley was a door marked "Stage

[[end page]]
[[start page]]

[[advertisement]]
LE PUNCH*
[[image – color photograph: a clear glass punch bowl full of orange liquid, has a large chunk of ice and decorative orange slices (each with five cranberries secured with whole cloves into them) floating in it next to a glass punch ladle; on the table in front, is a bottle of Cointreau liqueur, which has "Cointreau" molded into the bottle above the label and on the visible left-side. The label says:
IMPORTED
3/4 QUART
86 PROOF
COINTREAU
LIQUEUR
SPÉCIALITÉ
PRODUCT OF FRANCE]]

*OR HOW THE FRENCH GET INTO THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT.
This year America can begin enjoying the punch that's already a favorite in France. Le Punch. a delicious new party idea that begins with the world's best-selling liqueur, Cointreau. Cointreau's subtle hint of orange blends its own unique taste with every ingredient in Le Punch until what you and your guests, taste is no longer merely a punch but rather [[underlined]]the[[/underlined]] punch. Le Punch. A punch with a flavor as different and exciting as the country that first discovered it.

Le Punch Recipe: Place a clear block of ice in a large rounded punch bowl. Top with 1 bottle (3/4 quart) Cointreau, 1 bottle (fifth) vodka, and 1 can each (6 oz.) orange juice concentrate and pineapple juice concentrate. Stir to blend, add 3 quartz club soda, and garnish with orange slices decorated with cranberries and studded with cloves. Makes about 5 quarts or 40 punch cup drinks.

COINTREAU
MORE THAN AN AFTER DINNER DRINK
(Pronounced "Kwan-tro."