So finally, here’s what happened. The weather cleared up and just the day before The Red Mill opened we were able to get the set in place and practice the scene.
The sails on the mill had been built and were in place. The sails didn’t really turn. They had tried but having a motor on the back would have made noise, and Cranston thought it was distracting if they turned during the show before the escape scene.
“This is supposed to be a hotel. Kip and Con are working here because they didn’t have the money to pay their bill. So the sails can be silent. It will be more dramatic when the sails start to turn just as the boys help Gretchen escape.”
Cass Brewster had figured out a way to rig rope to the top of one of the sails so that the crew could pull down on it on one side and hoist Steve and I up on the other side.
Kitty had convinced Cranston Muller that the leading lady should emerge from a window at the top of the mill, and then the three of us could jump off the wall beside the mill onto a platform, behind the wall. She told Cranston, “You know, I left the original show because I was afraid of this scene. We never did the boys being pulled up on the windmill sail at all. At least let your leading lady come out of the window the way I did.”
Cranston agreed.
The rehearsal went pretty well. The crew had put handles on the bottom edge of the sail so we had something strong to hang onto. And when they pulled, the sail went up, high, high, high. Very high. The wall had been the wall of the Abbey and was at least twenty feet up. When you’re up more than three times your height it feels high! The crew had built a scaffold on the other side of the wall with mattresses on it. It was only the pull up on the windmill that was dangerous.
So we practiced. Steve and I crouched behind the hedge at the foot of the wall. As the sail passed, we grabbed the handles and went flying up. The sail had to stay there at the top of its movement. The crew could only pull it so far, and then it had to stop. It was just above the wall and we had to jump down to get to the wall. But it was possible.
When we did it we could hear the crew cheering and applauding down below. Leslie came running out from her window, and we took her hands and jumped off onto the mattresses on the scaffolding. It wasn’t that difficult. But this wasn’t going to be all there was to it. Of that I was sure.
Cranston was waiting when we came down the ladder from the scaffolding behind the wall. “It’s going to be great! The audience will love it. If there’s any chance for this old piece of crap to go to Broadway, this scene will do it.”
Leslie, who is quite an adult young lady, said to Steve and I as we left rehearsal, “I saw something very strange this afternoon. I came over to look at the steps in the tower earlier today. I wanted to go up and down a couple of times, and I wanted to bring my own flashlight, just in case the crew didn’t think of it.”
“Those stone steps don’t have any railing either,” Steve said. “Don’t ever run up them without plenty of light. Good girl.”
“It wasn’t that so much that bothered me. But I went up and down twice before I realized that there was someone else there. I shone the flashlight down, and it was Cass. You know, the head of the crew. And he said, ‘Thank you for shining the light down here. I was about to pee in this gentleman’s face.’ And he laughed and laughed. And I think the other man was Mr. Muller. Is that possible?”
“Welcome to theater, Leslie. Now you’re a real professional. You don’t even have to get an Equity card now,” I said. I looked at Steve.
He put his arm about Leslie and said, “You weren’t shocked, were you?”
“Only that they were down there doing whatever they were doing and they didn’t even stop,” she said.
“Those things can get pretty urgent,” Steve said. “Just forget about it. No, don’t forget about it. It’s all part of growing up. But if Cranston Muller is giving you a hard time, just remember him brushing off his knees as he came out of that old tower and laugh. The silly old sot.”
I had never heard Steve criticize anyone before. He seemed to really dislike Cranston. I wonder if Cranston had been pursuing him when I was out of eye and earshot.
We did a dress rehearsal that evening for an invited audience, and the show went well. I asked Kitty if she would be backstage during the scene just to make sure the rope pulling was done by enough people and if she thought anything could be done to improve it. She said she’d report after the show.
The little villagers from the student body thronged about very efficiently. Cranston was excellent in directing groups onstage. Leslie sang very well. Danny Fandom as the silly romantic male lead looked cute in his uniform. Steve and I got a lot of laughs as the silly Americans. And E. L. Losada stole the show with his big solo. He had the best voice in the show. Estelle was very amusing in her small role as the automobile-driving society lady. Every little word, every little movement got laughs.
After the show, we all went to the theater for notes from the director. He seemed very pleased with himself. He congratulated the students and told everyone to get a good night’s rest and not to go out and cavort about too much. And to remember that there would be another performance on Saturday night and a matinee on Sunday. How the matinee would go in broad daylight we weren’t sure, but there were no specific nighttime scenes, so it should go all right.
Nina, still in her Dutch peasant costume and protruding only slightly, asked Kitty Carlisle Hart and Estelle Anderson to come over for a drink and a snack. Cranston Muller didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t invited. He seemed to be very occupied with the crew and Cass Brewster. Toca Sacar didn’t need an invitation. He was already at the door to the house when we arrived there.
Kitty had a glass of wine and some cheese and crackers in front of her when I came to sit by her in the lavender room. She immediately said, “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. You’re doing it, but it’s chancy. That whole method they have of turning the sails of the mill is very thrown together. And when they pull you up, it requires a lot of precision. Which they’re doing. But who knows? One misstep and it could drop back down with you. It probably wouldn’t kill either of you, but you could be seriously hurt. The theater isn’t the circus. We’re not there to thrill the audience with the possibility of our death or destruction.
“You think something is going to happen, don’t you? Do you think E. L. Losada wants your part in Tea and Sympathy?” she said.
“Has that come into your mind?” I said.
“Well, obviously Cranston has taken a big fancy to you. And your role in this show isn’t big enough for you. Isn’t right for you at all, actually. Although you play comedy pretty well. Of course, someone could be trying to get you out of the way. It happens all the time. I talked to Estelle about it.” She beckoned to Estelle across the room.
Estelle came across the room to us. She was still wearing her weird French woman makeup but had changed into her own clothes. Black and beige. The ladies were chic around here. Cornichons was going to miss them once the season was over. Estelle said, “Are you talking about that sail-jumping stuff? I think it’s crazy.”
So I decided I had to tell them about Cass. “You may think poorly of me after you hear this,” I said. And I told them the story of Steve and I getting naked with Cass Brewster and taking pictures. I didn’t put in all the little details. When I finished, Estelle said, “Steve and you are sort of the Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton of Cornichons, aren’t you? Right there to the rescue.”
“We didn’t give our all, Estelle,” I said.
“I think the two of you are wonderful,” Kitty said. “So modern. Who would think of blackmailing a blackmailer?”
Estelle had the big idea. “Look, you have a feeling that something is going to go wrong up there with Cass Brewster at the other end of the rope. You’d be a fool not to. You have to send something else up there. Dummies. And if something goes wrong, you run out and finish the show. If nothing goes wrong, you still run out and finish the show.”
“Where am I going to get dummies?” I said.
Estelle said, “Who’s the dummy? You make them. Some of your clothes that look like your costumes. That’s no problem. They’re just ordinary clothes. Stuff them with pillows off your bed. Old newspapers. Whatever. Fasten them together with big safety pins.”
“Put some bricks and stones in,” Kitty said. “They have to be heavy.”
I said, “It’ll work because we jump out from behind the hedge to grab the sail when it goes by. We’ll hide the dummies there and just reach up and hook them on. But how?”
“You’re not going to have time to tie them on. Clothes hangers?” Estelle said.
“Too fragile. They’d break. I know exactly,” Kitty said. “You know those kind of three-pronged little garden things. What would you call them? Diggers? A little weeder? Wire the end of the jacket sleeves around them and they’d hook on those handles where you have to grab. I’m sure of it.”
We bid each other good night, and I rushed off into the dark to find Steve and start our plan.
In the morning we borrowed the Peugeot from Nina and Graham and went to Charlestour. The hardware store, the quincaillerie, had exactly the small weeders we wanted. The clerk obviously wanted to ask why we needed four but didn’t. And we didn’t offer to tell him. Too complicated.
We stole pillows from some of the unoccupied dormitory rooms at the Abbey. I borrowed some pliers from Graham, and we cut up coat hangers to fasten things together. The dummies had to be strong if we were going to load up the pants with old stones. I knew exactly the pile to get them from. Right by the tower. If there’s one thing old French buildings aren’t short of, it’s piles of stones.
The heads would be easy. We both wore hats in the show. Just stick a hat on some little sofa cushions. I bought two in Charlestour in the morning. But the hats? Where was I going to find those? In Nina’s front hall was a hat rack with a lot of old hats on it. Would she loan me a couple?
“Take whatever you want, darling,” she said. She knew we were up to something, but Nina’s no snoop. Or gossip. I guess she thought if she didn’t know what was going on she couldn’t possibly talk about it.
So we carried our dummies over to the hedge bit by bit, kneeling down behind the hedge to put them together. The edge of the sail was right there over our heads. The garden tool hooks worked perfectly. There was no one around. Everyone else was resting. We were probably going to give terrible performances that night, having worked our butts off all day. Well, I thought, I’d rather be tired than dead.
We briefed our leading lady, Leslie, a little bit in the dressing room.
“Do not, repeat, not, come out on the wall until you see us out there. And we might be running up the stairs. As a matter of fact, we are definitely going to come up the stairs behind you and lead you out to jump onto the scaffolding behind the wall. So stay tight in the mill,” I said.
Leslie looked apprehensive.
“You’re going to go out there a little Dutch girl, and you’re going to come back a star,” Steve said. He was getting to be funnier all the time.
And of course, it went exactly as we thought it would. The first act wandered by. The audience applauded dutifully. Charming as we all were, they weren’t cheering.
But in the second act, when the mill began to creak, Steve and I, hiding down behind the hedge, hooked our dummies on the sail above our heads. The audience gasped when they went up and screamed when the sail came crashing right back down again, the dummy bodies right under it.
Steve and I had gotten well out of the way at either end of the hedge and dashed out, up those stairs and out on the wall. I had time to pinch Steve’s butt as we ran up the stairs. It was dark in there, but Leslie shone her flashlight down the staircase so we could see a little bit. We did it, we did it, we did it! Out onto the wall and jumped down onto the mattresses on the scaffolding, laughing our heads off.
The audience leaped up and screamed and applauded and hooted and wouldn’t settle down. They thought it was all part of the show. It had scared the bejesus out of them, and, of course, they loved it.
As we climbed down the ladder from the scaffolding, Cranston Muller was there. He had rushed up from the audience.
“Are you all right? I don’t know what could have gone wrong! Where did those dummies come from? I’m so sorry. You guys were great! We’re going to keep this in the show. It’s fantastic. We can go to Broadway with this in the show. Can you go on to finish the show?” Which we, of course, did.
The whole audience came surging up around us as soon as the show was over. E. L. Losada didn’t get much attention, even though he sang very well. The escape scene was the knockout moment in the show. “How did you do that?” “It was brilliant!” “I was never so excited in the theater in my life!” Yes, they liked it a lot, but we weren’t ever going to do it again.
Backstage, nobody had any idea how it happened. The crew said they had been pulling on the rope, pulling it around an old pillar that was near the base of the mill to keep it steady. And suddenly it just went pop!
“Where’s Cass?” I asked. Nobody knew. “He was with us when we were pulling,” somebody said.
Henrietta appeared with a hatchet in her hand. “Did you do it, Henrietta?” I said.
She gave me a scornful look and said, “I found this in the bushes.”
One of the boys said, “Yeah, Cass had that in his belt earlier today. I remember seeing him and thinking he looked like an Indian.”
“Where is Cass?” I asked again.
And we didn’t find out. Cass had left town.
We left it at that. The rope had broken. We had not been injured. We did two more shows that weekend, with Steve and I just running up the tower steps. Three more the following weekend, and that was it.
During the week that followed I had Henrietta in one of my classes.
“That was a very lucky thing that you found that hatchet, Henrietta,” I said.
“I put it there,” she said. “Cass dropped it when he ran away.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” I asked.
“I did,” she said. “Mr. Muller. I told him I saw Cass Brewster give the rope a whack with a hatchet and it broke and he ran away.”
“What did he say?” I said.
“He said, ‘So what?’ And I said, ‘So I want billing over the title of Ten Little Indians as the star. I also saw you doing something to him in the tower. When he was going to pee in your face. If I tell people, they will think you got him to cut the rope.’ “I’m not so dumb.” She was right.
And it all happened that way. “Henrietta Rothschild in the Ten Little Indians.” That’s what it said on the posters and playbills.
As we parted that day I said, “Oh, what’s ever going to happen to a little girl like you, Henrietta?”
She said, “When I get tits I’m going to Hollywood.”