Then and Now (5 page)

It was at Tamiment that I met Jack Cassidy, my future costar in
She Loves Me
. I remember being distinctly awed when I was told that Jack had already been in something like twenty-one Broadway shows, because I, at that point, had exactly one nightclub engagement in Boston to my credit. Oh, what a character Jack was! The first thing you noticed about Jack was that he was beautiful. I don't mean handsome, but
beautiful
. Almost too pretty. He didn't look especially strong because of it and was told sometimes, “You're too pretty for the role.” He was also quite a dandy. He was so aware of his clothes and of everything related to his physical appearance: I recall that he used to put toilet paper under his shirt collar so that it would roll perfectly! That's the sort of thing he would do all the time. For the Tamiment season I was to be the ingénue and Jack my leading man, and we performed little scenes and songs that Jerry and Larry had written. All of the material was completely original, and it amazed me how quickly Jerry could write a song.

Tamiment is also where I first met Herbert Ross, who went on to such great acclaim for his work with Barbra Streisand on the film version of
Funny Girl
and as director of the films
The Turning Point
and
Steel Magnolias
. In a further stroke of good luck I also met Joe Stein, who went on to write the terrific book for
Fiddler.
What a dear, dear man. He was one of the creators of the first show I starred in
, Plain and Fancy
, and Tamiment was the start of a fifty-year friendship that continued until he died in 2014. He was a very
sweet man and oh so funny. One day while I was very pregnant with my son, Adam, I ran into Joe at Variety Arts Studios, where I was about to take an acting class with my then husband, David. Joe took one look at my belly and even before greeting me wisecracked: “If you're not pregnant, you're one very sick woman!”

I wanted to make the most of my chance in 1950, and that's what scared the hell out of me. I knew that performing at Tamiment wasn't just a good summer job—it was potentially a career-launching situation.
Your Show of Shows
with Sid Caesar was really born at Tamiment; all the writers who went on to create that landmark show had worked at Tamiment the summer immediately before mine; and my bunk mate—we always had bunk mates—was Lucille Kallen, the only woman in that group of writers for Sid Caesar. I have a memory of wandering by the lake one day and meeting a young writer named Neil Simon, as he sat with his soon-to-be wife, Joan. Neil was just a kid—absolutely no fame yet. It's astounding to realize how many successful writers and performers received their start at Tamiment.

Scared as I was about Tamiment, once I got there I didn't really have time to fret over my insecurities because we were too busy working; every week for the ten weeks of summer, the company, which included singers, comedians, and a chorus, would have to put on an entirely new variety show. We rehearsed all week and performed for the guests on Friday and Saturday nights. In addition, on Wednesdays there was an informal show where any of us could get up and do whatever we wanted. I loved it.

The atmosphere at Tamiment was inspiring, and the resort itself was a wonderful place. On Sundays, our one day off, we could take a boat on the lake or attempt to master archery. The countryside was beautiful and the food was tremendous—this Southern
gal quickly discovered the unending delights of brisket, stuffed derma, matzoh balls, gefilte fish, and schmaltz you could spread on bread like it was butter. Jewish soul food. Healthy, maybe not, but heavenly—yes! Room and board were part of the deal, and because virtually everything was taken care of (unless you wanted an extra meal), if you watched your pennies you could save five hundred dollars from a summer of work—a tremendous amount of money to me then, and more than enough to help me hang on to my half of my apartment back in New York. At the end of the 1951 theater season, I had the five hundred I had saved from my first Broadway show,
Flahooley,
plus
that five hundred from the Tamiment season. This meant that for the first time in my life I had a thousand bucks. Wow!

Needless to say, room and board were high on my list of priorities, but the most vital aspect of working at Tamiment was the confidence it gave me. I gradually got used to the idea that I
belonged
on the stage with people who had performed in Broadway musicals. That was a big deal for me, and while I still wasn't entirely at home onstage, working with all these people who had real careers—men and women who constantly encouraged me—gave me new confidence.

That summer at Tamiment led directly to my first New York nightclub engagement. Max Gordon, who owned the Blue Angel—a trendy supper club—with Herbert Jacoby, made a habit of coming up to Tamiment to check out the talent on our informal variety nights. When he saw me perform, he told me that I should come to the club and audition as soon as I got back to town. This was a real break, because the Blue Angel, just like Tamiment, held a special place as an important springboard for emerging talent. Thursdays were their audition days: you walked in, they listened to you. I hurried down
to the Blue Angel on the very first Thursday I was back in town and when I'd finished singing the owners hired me on the spot.

There was just one problem: the currently scheduled performer was not working out and as the last-minute replacement, I was to open in precisely four days. I was ecstatic but stunned, not to mention terrified. I didn't have an act and had only one weekend to put some songs together. I rushed home and got on the phone to a pianist I knew. Luckily he wasn't doing much that weekend and we went right to work, all the while bearing in mind the only piece of advice Max had given me: “Whatever you do, don't sing ‘The Boy Next Door.' I'm sick of it!”

We worked like hell through the weekend and put together about a half hour of material, which proved to be just enough; at the Blue Angel four acts would perform two short sets each night, so you weren't doing a whole solo evening. I was sharing the bill with comedian Wally Cox, a group called the 3 Mad-Moiselles, and the folk quartet the Weavers. A full concert it wasn't, but it was still thirty minutes onstage by myself, and I latched on to the opportunity with great determination. In the process, I also chose some material that now strikes me as downright bizarre—whatever possessed me to sing “It Ain't Necessarily So” from
Porgy and Bess
?

Fortunately I also made some more suitable choices, including Rodgers and Hart's “Little Girl Blue.”
Variety
took notice, referring to me as a “blonde cutie, in her early twenties, who evidences potential with a vocal style and a routine that still can't qualify as an ‘act' but will be heard from in time.” After having only four days of preparation I was very happy with that review, and when audiences proved to be enthusiastic, Max invited me to return for another engagement.

One night during that initial run, one of the Weavers asked me
to join him between shows for a meal just around the corner at Hamburger Heaven. The Weavers were a known commodity at the time, having scored some hit singles, including “Goodnight, Irene.” I was happy to go out for a hamburger, but before we went he cautioned me that I should really think twice about it because the FBI already suspected the Weavers of being Communists. It would be just a few years later that two of the Weavers were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. I was still quite naïve at the time, but I wasn't afraid of having a hamburger with this nice man.

When the Blue Angel engagement ended I found myself out of work and dangerously low on money. I toured briefly in a tab show that proved a real education because we opened this show in a tiny Kentucky club that was situated right near a gambling casino. It was really rough, with lots of Mafia people on the scene. It was actually more than rough—it was downright scary. Clearly, it was a long way from Broadway. Eventually the tour ended and once again I was without work, but it was then, just when my prospects looked particularly bleak, that my Tamiment friend Jack Cassidy came to the rescue.

Jack was in between shows at the time, and he had an uncle who was the postmaster in Flushing, Queens. The holidays were approaching, and they always hired extra help to deal with the influx of Christmas cards. Once again I found myself back in an office situation—fortunately for the very last time—where I did grunt work while Jack, as I recall, did a lot of swanning about while looking important and doing very little work. He was a thoroughly charming man, and incredibly funny and clever. He was, however, not the kind of guy who was going to settle down to hard work in a post office if he could help it.

I'm not sure how many of those Christmas cards were sorted properly, because as a post office employee I was a great singer. But, it was shortly thereafter that I auditioned for the show that became my first official Broadway credit, the wonderfully strange musical
Flahooley
. My agent Charlie Baker, a very elegant man who became head of William Morris's theatrical department and worked as my agent for over twenty years, sent me on the audition for
Flahooley
. The audition was held at the Martin Beck Theatre on Forty-fifth Street, and I, who feared and hated auditions, had one of the happiest auditions of my life, thanks to E. Y. (“Yip”) Harburg.

I knew Yip's work, of course, as the lyricist of
Finian's Rainbow
and
The Wizard of Oz
. I auditioned singing “My Funny Valentine,” a piece I often used for auditions. As soon as I was finished, a little man came roaring up onto the stage and threw his arms around me in obvious delight—it was like being given a bear hug by Santa Claus—and that is how I officially met Yip Harburg. He was an adorable-looking man with a great smile—a charming, charming man. A lot of people thought he was difficult to work with but I never found him remotely difficult. He held very strong opinions that were considered pretty radical for the times. He took on racism in
Finian's Rainbow
, and his work was almost always socially conscious. Working with the composer Jay Gorney, he wrote the song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” about down-and-out men in the Depression.

In an illustration of how you can't put people in boxes and always expect them to behave in a preordained fashion, Jay Gorney's wife, Edalaine, had left her husband and married Yipper in 1943. It proved to be a real scandal at the time, but Eddie, as Yip called her, was a very warm, sweet woman and they had a terrific
marriage. Yip was such a generous, warm man; that's why my audition for
Flahooley
was a dream. I had the show the very moment the audition concluded, although I didn't know it then. To this day it remains the only time an audition unfolded in such a magical fashion for me—and the ease of that experience nearly ruined me!

In truth, my involvement with
Flahooley
actually dated back a little earlier, although I didn't realize it at the time. I had taken to dropping in at a private midtown spot called the Gold Key Club, and Colin Romoff, who was the club's piano player, would call me whenever Judy Garland stopped by just to sing for friends and her own amusement. Judy was a very big influence on my singing—oh, how I wanted to sing like her, but it was impossible. My voice teacher said to me: “Forget it. You have a completely different voice. You're a soprano.” But listening to Judy taught me how a song must contain a beginning, a middle, and an end—that it should possess an unbroken line both musically and lyrically, while taking the listener on an emotional journey. To hear her sing “By Myself” in that intimate room was the thrill of a lifetime.

During her first storied run at the Palace in 1951–52, I went to see her repeatedly. My agent knew Judy and wanted to take me backstage to meet her but I just couldn't. I thought I would die if I met her—I was simply too much in awe of her. I did eventually meet her later in the run, and she was very cordial, but I remained in awe of her.

The one other major influence on my singing was Mabel Mercer, who didn't have much of a voice but used words better than any other singer I can think of. Mabel communicated the richness of good lyrics, the subtext lying beneath the surface. She did things other singers wouldn't—she would really lay into consonants instead of vowels. Mabel would sing the word “wonderful” and lay
into that “n” in the middle of the word, which gave it a completely different sound and meaning than a smoothly sung, skimming-the-surface “wonderful.” My own attention to consonants really comes from Mabel's influence—I always want to be understood and never want to overdo.

At some point I started singing for fun at the Gold Key Club, and one night the composer Sammy Fain stopped me after my performance and mentioned that he was working on a show that I'd be perfect for—
Flahooley
. It was well after this encounter at the Gold Key that I actually auditioned for
Flahooley
, and because the audition had gone so well, I was not completely surprised when Charlie Baker called and said, “Are you sitting down?
You got the show!
” I'd been in New York three years by now, and my dream of performing in a Broadway musical was going to come true.

I had no idea, however, of how painful I'd find the process of putting a new show together. When rehearsals began early in 1951 I was so awkward and green that I was embarrassed to even mime picking up a glass or opening a door. What saved me was that I could sing the hell out of that score—I knew just what I was doing with the singing. The acting was a completely different story.

As a result of my insecurities I started developing all sorts of nervous ailments when we took the show out of town. I decided that every other girl in the show was prettier than I was, that every other girl could act better than I could (which may have been true), and that every other girl could sing better than I could (which definitely was not the case). By the time we arrived in Philadelphia for the out-of-town tryout, I was positive they were going to fire me any day and move somebody from the chorus into my ingénue role. Net result? Physical ailments started springing up, and I developed a hypersensitivity on my hip and leg, to the point where I had to
sleep on top of the covers. This all became so emotionally painful that I remember coming back to my hotel one night in Philadelphia and saying to myself, “If this is what it means to do musical comedy, I don't want any part of it. I will never do this again.”