Edward, the Prince of Wales, had been to see our show on opening night. The stage manager came to the dressing room right before the curtain went up and told us of Prince Charming’s attendance. It sent some of the girls to pieces, but it didn’t rattle me. In the paper the next day he said he’d never laughed harder in all his life than when he heard Eddie Cantor, with all of his peculiar inflections and slurs, sing “The Star’s Double,” about an actor who called for his double when he was about to be slugged by an irate husband who’d caught him with his wife. A handful of girls were in a huff that the prince hadn’t mentioned their performance. Rumor had it that one of the principals, Irene, had allowed him to take her to dinner, but she wouldn’t admit or deny it, which led me to believe it was all horsefeathers.
The Prince of Wales could sit in the box and watch me perform any day of the week, and it would just make me sing sweeter and dance lighter on my toes, but it was my father’s attendance a few nights after opening that had me sweating in the dressing room ten minutes to call time.
Though they didn’t say it outright, my parents had been mildly impressed that I’d been cast in a Ziegfeld show, or it could have just been relief that it was more reputable than the show at Olympia Theatre. My mother had insisted that they come and see it right away, I think as a way to assuage my father’s concerns, but it didn’t help; in fact, it made everything worse.
The performance opened with “The Follies Salad,” a number featuring several girls from the chorus and me dressed as ingredients for the dish, while Eddie played chef and sang about his culinary creation. We all knew, of course, that it was a metaphor for the show: Eddie was Ziegfeld, the creator, and we chorus girls were the essential ingredients for the revue. At first I’d been over the moon when I was cast as “Spicy” while some of the others got stuck with “Chicken” or “Lettuce,” but then, when I knew my father was in the audience, the thought of walking onstage in a skimpy red lace costume while Eddie sang that the spice adds “just a little tingle” and that it’s “not too naughty,” well, it had me biting my nails off with worry. It was obvious that I had seduction written all over me. I cursed myself in the minutes before the music started. Why couldn’t I have been cast as “Oil” for the orchestra with a melody that makes the show run smoothly, or “Salt” for the proper seasoning, or “Paprika” to add a dash of “class and smartness.” Hell, I’d even be “Chicken”—“young and tender,” he sang—anything was better than “Spicy” with my father sitting up front.
Up until that evening, the audience had just been a mass of people that formed one body; I didn’t think of them as individuals. They applauded, they stood, they applauded some more. I’d never caught the eye of any one person, and I told myself this had to be the same as any other night. But as soon as I set foot on that stage, I saw the sheen of my father’s parted hair. Lower right, orchestra. The grey plaid suit and burgundy tie he’d worn to work that day. Arms crossed tightly across his chest. My mother to his left, my brothers to his right. I repeatedly looked away, out to the blur of the audience, but my eyes kept going back to him, that shine of his hair transfixing me. It made me nervous as hell.
As the number was coming to an end and all of us girls, the ingredients, sashayed across the stage and gathered around Eddie, some drunken fool in the audience began calling out obscenities and was quickly escorted out of the theater to the street. We did exactly as we’d been told to do in rehearsals in a situation like this: we carried on with grace. But I could feel the weight of disapproval from my father’s seat and it stirred in me a heavy mix of emotions. Worried that he’d think the whole thing was too provocative, I felt my stomach twist at the thought of how he’d react. But I clung to a faith that he’d see this performance was more than that, hopeful he’d see that most people in the audience were wealthy, respectable gentlemen taking their wives out for an elegant show of beauty and charm. In the next instant, I felt angry, knowing all too well that it was too much to ask of my father to think that way, my defenses up already at the thought of his bristly response at the end of the night.
Later, as part of the chorus, I sang “Shaking the Blues Away,” in front of a beautifully designed backdrop of a cotton field and a white wooden house with real Spanish moss hanging from a cut drop, and I had a short solo in the sweet “Maybe It’s You” number wearing a rose-trimmed hoop skirt and a floppy hat. I thought I’d given the previous night’s performance my very best, but this night I sang with everything I had. When I walked slowly down the enormous staircase in a gorgeous full-length gown with fifty other women while Franklyn Bauer sang “The Rainbow of Girls,” I walked with all the grace and elegance I could muster; I was going to impress my father if my life depended on it. But despite all of that, I knew that damned salad number was the act he would latch on to.
After the show, I took off as much of my stage makeup as I could and met my parents and brothers in the front of the theater—I didn’t want them to see the shenanigans going on at the stage door with the johnnies begging for our company.
My mother hugged me. “Darling, you were wonderful, just wonderful,” she said more enthusiastically than I would have expected from her. “You were a star, I’m so proud of you,” she whispered into my ear. She had forgiven me for all that had happened, I thought with relief. My time in Rockville with Aunt May was all in the past now. Maybe we could move beyond it after all.
I glanced at my father standing with his arms crossed, staring straight to the street, his lips pursed tightly into a downward frown. I walked over to him slowly.
“Olive, you were the best!” my brother Junior said, jumping in, hugging me. “The berries, I’m telling you, blew the rest of those girls right out of the water.” He was always my biggest fan.
“Aw, thanks, JJ, you’re sweet to say so,” I said, kissing his cheek. “I messed up a few steps in the final act, coming down that staircase.”
“I didn’t notice. Really,” he said.
“Wow, what a show, though,” George said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” I knew he’d be asking me about the ladies later.
“What did you think, Pa? I know it’s not exactly your cup of tea, but did you find something you liked in the acts?” I stepped in front of his gaze, trying to get his attention. “How about the pet act, Pa? We always laugh backstage when the dog asks his owner for a whiskey.”
He stood firm. “That’s enough now, Olive,” he said, straightening up even more. “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”
“But Ted, we’re going to dinner, remember?” my mother said, putting her arm through his.
“Not tonight, Doris, I said we’ll talk when we get home. Now all of you get in the car.” He walked to the car waiting at the sidewalk, got in the front seat and slammed the door shut.
I looked pleadingly at my mother, but she was defeated. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe he’ll come around at home. Come on, Junior.” She put her hand on my little brother’s back and ushered him into the waiting car. “I’ve got some bread and cheese, I’ll make us some sandwiches.”
When we got out of the car in Flatbush and closed the door behind us, my brothers made themselves scarce. My father took a beer from the icebox and my mother fixed herself a gin rickey and began assembling sandwiches at the kitchen counter.
“I don’t want you in that show, Olive,” he said, finally looking me in the eye.
“But, Pa—”
“No, Olive. You looked like a chippie up there, and no daughter of mine is going to parade herself around the stage like that for every man in Manhattan to drool at.”
“You’re talking about that one act, the stupid salad, but what about the others? They’re just good old fun, nothing harmful there.”
“I said I don’t want you in that show.” He grabbed the kitchen chair he was leaning on, lifted it a few inches, then slammed it down again. I stepped back. I hated it when he got like this, all blustery. I knew that any small thing now could push him over the edge and I didn’t want that.
“Teddy, relax, will you?” my mother said quietly. “Let me pour you a whiskey.”
“I don’t want a goddamn whiskey, I want my daughter to wipe that makeup, and that smug look, off her face and give me her word that she won’t set foot on that stage again.”
I rubbed the back of my hand across my lips. “I did wipe it off.…”
“Don’t you talk back to me,” he snapped, leaning into me, and I flinched just a little and wished I hadn’t. It showed weakness, it showed fear. “You heard that blotto in the audience calling out to you.”
“It wasn’t to me, he was just some drunkard, he was out on the roof, so far gone.”
“Oh, he was calling out to you all right, dressed up like a good-for-nothin’ harlot.”
“Teddy!” my mother said.
“Shut it, Doris.” He took a deep breath, and I could see he was trying real hard to keep a lid on it. He took another swig of his beer and shoved his hands down into his pockets as if to will them to stay there.
I was boiling mad. I was working so damned hard. When I was on that stage, I was bursting with life. How could a father not want that for his own daughter? Sure, Ziegfeld was glorifying us, he was dressing us up in the most elaborate and expensive costumes that had ever seen the lights of Broadway, and he made us feel like the most beautiful women in all of America, but he wasn’t exploiting us. I knew the difference. I didn’t care if a guy in the audience had the hots for me or not. I didn’t care if I was dancing for Prince Charming, someone’s grandmother or someone’s daughter. It was still the performing that made me soar. How could he not see that, how could he not be happy for me? I’d paid a price for being too naïve, too gullible, and I thought about that fact all the time, but that was my business. Now I’d earned some recognition, some appreciation, because of hard work. I hated that I couldn’t tell him this.
“Pa, I’m a trained singer and a dancer too now. You know this is what I’ve always wanted to do. Mr. Ziegfeld even said he was considering giving me a comedy song—he thinks I’m funny.”
“He thinks you’re funny?” he scoffed. “Well, I’m not laughing.”
I was keeping my voice down, I was choosing my words carefully, I was really trying not to send his hands flying, but inside I was reeling.
“You let Erwin follow his dreams,” I said quietly. My parents certainly hadn’t been happy when Erwin joined the navy, getting shipped off to Illinois just days after enlisting, but within weeks the talk in our house went from concern and disapproval to tremendous pride, and now that he’d been one of a few selected to transfer to a brand-new training facility in San Pedro, California, he was the one in the family who could do no wrong.
“Your brother is serving our country. Are you really comparing your song and dance to his patriotic duty?”
“No, just noting your response to it. But I’m making pretty good money, Pa, I’m contributing to the house, seventy-five dollars a week.” I tried to appeal to his financial mind. He knew there were very few places where I could work and bring in that kind of money, but he didn’t think it was right for a woman to work anyway. He thought a woman’s job was at home, making some man happy. He already had my life planned out for me, indentured to a man none of us had even met yet. But what about me? What about my happiness?
“Olive,” he said more quietly now, giving me hope that my reasoning had reassured him, “if you quit that show first thing tomorrow morning, then I will pay you one thousand dollars.”
My mother gasped, but my father kept his eyes fixed on me, wanting an immediate response.
“Papa,” I said, almost in a whisper—this was pointless, he wasn’t listening to a word I said.
“Hell, I’ll give you two thousand. Three thousand.”
“Pa, stop this,” I said, hot and angry now. How could he think this was about the money? This was about life, this was about living. “I’m not going to quit the show.”
The intensity in his eyes turned to fury, and his lips pinched into a snarl. “Then you’d better damn well start packing your bags and looking for a place to live, because as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, prancing around like a good-for-nothing quiff, you will not live under my roof.”
“Teddy, don’t say that,” my mother cried out, but he had stormed out the kitchen to the backyard and let the door slam behind him.
That night I lay in bed staring at the darkness. We’d been leading up to this for some time now. My father had never liked me being on the stage. He hadn’t liked the way people looked at me; it made him angry. But what if he knew everything about me? What would he think of me then? It cut me deep inside, knowing that the possibilities for disappointment were endless. I knew he’d think I’d quit, that I’d be too scared to disappoint him. And he’d be right, I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn’t be his little girl anymore, that he’d never forgive me, that our relationship would be forever changed. But I also knew I didn’t want to be like them, married at seventeen, a kid at nineteen, a second at twenty-one, a third at twenty-three, a fourth at twenty-six. To me that sounded like living a prison sentence. I’d known since I was a little girl that this domesticated life didn’t appeal to me. Maybe one day I’d change, but not yet. I still had some living to do.
The next morning, I got up and went to early morning rehearsal as usual. We had a two-hour session on nothing but the walk. Mr. Ziegfeld had watched from his box the night prior and said that many of the new girls—me included—didn’t have it quite right. The walk was what most of us did ninety percent of the time we were onstage, either while another girl or guy was singing, to walk the staircase (often with a long line of other chorus girls following along behind), or simply to cross the stage. It was an essential part of the show and it had to be perfect. Arms elegantly outstretched to both sides with a slight dip of the elbow and a slow and steady saunter—no hip swaying—in heels and, more often than not, with a very heavy headpiece.
My arms felt as if they were going to drop off my body by the end of rehearsal, and my neck was as stiff as a board. I laid my head down on my dressing room table and closed my eyes.
“Hey there, Olive, what’s the matter with you?” It was Ruthie coming in from her voice lesson. She looked in my mirror and checked her rich red hair, giving herself the lips and turning her head from side to side, admiring her high cheekbones. “You have a rough one last night? I didn’t see you at the club.”
“I just need to soak in a bathtub for a few hours,” I said, thinking of the tub at home. “Say, do you know if there’s any space available at the rooming house where you and Lillian stay?”
“There’s a wait list, but after next week some space will open up. Lillian and I are getting our own apartment uptown. You should come with us. That rooming house is no place for us Ziegfeld girls. There’s going to be a third roommate—someone Lillian knows from the Scandals, but you could sleep in the living room, and then it would be a better price for all of us.”
“Really?”
“Sure, honey, it’d be swell, wouldn’t it? And you should see this place—it’s a stunner, views of the water, a straight line down to Times Square. You want in?”
“Sure, I want in, but I might need someplace to go this week. Do you think I could bunk with you at the boardinghouse for a few nights?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong, you too good for Flatbush all of a sudden?”
“My pop is all sore about the show, wants me to up and quit.”
“Oh, Olive. You shouldn’t have let him see it—what did you think he was going to say?”
“I don’t know, I guess I thought he’d be proud of me or something.”
“Honey, no one brings their fathers. They want to take care of us—all men, fathers, husbands, lovers—if they feel you slipping away, like they can’t take care of you no more, they act up. I’ve seen it here a thousand times. But you can’t quit, honey, you just got here.”
“Oh, I’m not quitting,” I said. “Not now, not ever.”
I crept around my parents’ house for the next few days, coming home when they were already in bed and trying to be up and out the door before they were awake in the morning. The first few days I left a note on the kitchen table for my mother, letting her know I had an early rehearsal and that I’d be back after the show—no need to wait up. It was exhausting and the girls often found me napping in the dressing room at the Amsterdam when they came in for morning rehearsals.
On Saturday, I tiptoed into the kitchen well past one A.M. and my mother was sitting at the table with a magazine in front of her. She closed it when I walked in.
“It’s late, Olive,” she said.
“I know, we had to stay after, to go over some steps…” I trailed off, then walked to the kitchen cabinet, took a glass down and poured myself some water. I’d had two glasses of champagne at the speak and I hoped she wouldn’t smell it on me.
“Why don’t you sit with me for a minute.”
“All right.” I stood at a distance and gulped down my water, then took the seat opposite her, my hands folded on the table between us. She reached out and took my hands in hers as if she’d been waiting all night to do this. We hadn’t spoken since the blowup with my father, and now there was a softness about her, a kindness.
“I think you’re wrong, Olive,” she said gently. “You’re wrong to be doing all this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Disobeying your father’s wishes. Singing, dancing, going out like this until”—she looked up at the clock on the wall—“all hours of the night.”
I shook my head. She’d been on my side, at least I thought she had been, and now she sounded just like him.
“You said you loved my performance, that you were proud of me,” I said. “You said that less than a week ago.” I’d been holding on to that one small moment from the night they had come to the show. You were a star, she’d said. I’d been keeping that in my mind.
“Well, I’ve come around to his way of thinking. Your father is right, Olive, you can’t be doing this, it’s disreputable for you and for your family. It casts a bad light on all of us. And I’m worried about what will become of you. Look what happened to you last time you were in a show—you got yourself into a disastrous situation,” she said in a low whisper. “What if that happens again? There’d be no fooling anyone a second time.”
I stared at her in shock. How could she not mention my pregnancy or the baby at all since I’d arrived in Brooklyn, not even to ask how I’d fared or if the baby was healthy, and yet choose to bring it up now, to shame me?
“That would never happen again, never, ever.”
“How can you say that? You did it once already. One night out on the town and you ended up getting yourself pregnant,” she said in an angry whisper.
“Mother! He took advantage of me, I didn’t know what was going on, he was older and he was pouring hooch into my drinks.”
“But you drank them down, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know that would happen, I was, he was…” What was the point? I could blame him all I wanted, but it wasn’t going to make a difference. “I would never get myself in that situation again. You have to believe me, Mother, it was awful. I could never go through that again.”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about that.
“Well, I’m sorry, Olive, but I have to agree with your father on this,” she said, her face cold. She’d made her mind up on this one.
“Why? You were the one who encouraged me when I was younger, all those singing lessons you took me to.”
“We wanted you to have a hobby. Something you could talk about at social engagements. We never imagined you’d do this with it.” She sighed, exasperated with me. “Don’t you think I’ve looked at my life before and thought, What the heck happened? Don’t you think I might’ve had days where I would have liked to run off with the circus instead of making dinner each night, making sure you kids are clean and fed and have shoes that fit? Making sure your father’s beer is cold for when he gets home from work? Life isn’t always one big party. Life comes with responsibilities, Olive, whether you want them or not.”
I was taken aback. I’d never considered for a moment that the life she had might not be the one she wanted for herself or that she fantasized about something more reckless and freeing.
“But you don’t have to agree with him all the time,” I said, more cautiously this time. “Why would you take his side when you know I have some talent and a chance at a different kind of life?”
She looked at me, miffed. “Because he is my husband. He’s my husband, and that’s what I’m supposed to do, that’s my role as his wife. Honestly,” she said, baffled that I couldn’t grasp this simple fact. “He provides for us, he is the head of this household and we are to respect him and his wishes. Just like you will when you get your head out of the clouds and find yourself a husband of your own.”
“So you’re kicking me out, too?”
“I’m not kicking you out. I’m asking you to stay. I’m asking you to give up the theater and do something more respectable. You’re my daughter, of course I want you to stay, I want what is best for you.”
I glared at her.
“But if you are going to disrespect your father and defy him, go against his will, then yes, I have to support him and stand by his decision.”
I stood up, shocked. Over the past few days, I’d thought somehow that she would help me fix this rift with my father. In the back of my mind I thought that it would blow over.
“I’ll be out by the morning, then,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not leaving. You’re being ridiculous. Where would you even go?”
“I’ll stay with a friend. What does it matter to you where I go?”
“Olive,” she said, grabbing my wrist. “Think clearly, for goodness’ sake, this is your future we’re talking of, your prospects.”
I pulled my arm away and ran upstairs, tears pushing at the backs of my eyes. I dragged out the old suitcase I had stored under my bed, laid it open on the floor and began stuffing the case with clothes.
It wasn’t that I desperately wanted to stay; in fact, the thought of getting an apartment with the girls sounded like a whole heck of a lot of fun and far less tiptoeing around. It was the fact that my parents hated the life that I’d created for myself, the life I’d worked so hard for, the life I loved. Not having their approval felt as though I didn’t have their love, and if I didn’t have their love, then who was I? What did it say about me if they couldn’t even love their own daughter? I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. I’d given a baby girl away to strangers. One day she’d grow up and learn this. She’d feel unloved, too. It felt awful, it would haunt me always. I suppose this was exactly what I deserved.
There was a knock on my door. I quickly wiped my face. Junior walked in and his eyes went straight to the half-packed case.
“Hey there, JJ.”
“Are you moving out?” he asked.
“It’s for the best,” I said. “You know Pops doesn’t like me performing and it’s not worth fighting about it anymore.”
I tried to sound light, breezy, as if this were no big deal, but inside I was seething, angry as hell at the two of them, my mother and my father. And my head was spinning from what my mother had just said. Was there a hint of envy at the life I was living now? A glimpse at a life she’d never had the chance to explore? But she knew what I’d just been through, she knew it was a miracle that I’d managed to get myself cast in the Ziegfeld Follies so soon after everything that happened in Rockville. It was sheer determination and sass that had gotten me that job, and yet here they were booing me from the sidelines. Well, to heck with them. I didn’t need them or their approval. I’d be just fine on my own.
“Where will you go?”
“I’ve got a place lined up with the girls from the show.”
He looked shocked. Where we came from, it was unheard of for a girl to move out of her parents’ house until she was well and truly married off.
“It’s okay, I promise you,” I said, walking over and putting my arm around him. “I know it’s not what we’re all used to, but it’s different here—actresses, singers, dancers, so many of the show girls—they all live together in apartments near the theater, it’s easier to get to and from rehearsals.”
“But Papa will be so angry,” he said, his forehead creasing with concern.
“He’s already angry,” I said. “At least I won’t be under his nose all the time, taunting him by going back and forth to the theater.” I said it as if it were my choice to leave, as if he hadn’t given me an ultimatum to quit or move out of his house.
“But if you go he’ll never forgive you.”
He was right, he probably wouldn’t, but what choice did I have? I wasn’t going to be ruled by him, stifled by his old-fashioned ideas.
“Of course he will, he just needs some time, that’s all. Come on, help me get these down, would you?” I pointed to three hatboxes I had all the way at the top of my closet. Junior may have been the baby of the family, but he was still taller than me by a long shot.
“You’ll come back, though, won’t you, Olive?”
“Of course I’ll come back, Junior. I’ll always be here for you.”
The apartment was at the far end of Manhattan on West 213th Street in an area called Inwood. And I didn’t know what Ruthie was thinking, because it was no stunner. One window in the living room and one in the kitchen—that was it. The carpet smelled damp and it was on the tenth floor, the elevator was broken, so not only was I sweating like a man by the time I climbed the stairs on those sticky summer days, the apartment heated up hotter than a two-dollar pistol. There were Jewish families living there mostly, and Irish immigrants, and when we walked to and from the train station before or after a show, we were often stared down with looks of disdain. Ruthie said they must’ve thought we were cheap flappers making some money on the side.
“We’re show girls, not prostitutes,” she called out one evening after a few too many drinks and with a face full of makeup, to a couple pushing a baby carriage who were glaring in our direction. “There’s a difference.”
Our building was surrounded by trees and open fields, and during the day there were always children running around the neighborhood, but inside, the apartment was dark and dingy, so I spent as much time at the theater as possible, and in the afternoons, rather than ride the hot, sticky train forty-five minutes from the theater district back up to Inwood, I’d practice my numbers at the rehearsal halls.
Luckily, we didn’t have to stay in Inwood too long. Within a few months Ruthie was given the extra responsibility of auditioning new dancers for the Follies, because, though he seemed to love every minute of it, Ziegfeld told her he didn’t have time to hand select the girls anymore. There was a constant flow of dancers and singers coming and going, getting married, getting lured to other shows, getting promoted to the chorus or taking the show on the road, so the company had to be replenished often, staying at around one hundred girls altogether, more than any other show on Broadway. Ruthie had her work cut out for her, but her paycheck doubled.
A month later, Ziegfeld called me into his office.
“Do you know why I started the Midnight Frolic, Olive?”
“Sure I do, Mr. Ziegfeld, you wanted to keep the party going.”
“That’s right, and quite a party it has been.”
When I first started he wasn’t shy in telling us that he created the Follies’ sister show, the Midnight Frolic, because he had always hated seeing his audience members walk out of the New Amsterdam Theatre at the end of a Follies show and go spend their money to eat, drink and dance at Rector’s or Delmonico’s, and more recently at the Backstage Club or Casa Blanca. So he built a 680-seat rooftop supper club, serving the highest-quality food you could find at any of the nightclubs in town, and he gave everyone a reason to stay. He built a revolving stage, tables surrounding the dance floor where guests could eat and drink, and a transparent glass walkway above the audience, with blowers and spotlights shining upwards, where some of the chorus girls gave patrons a new perspective. The performances were far more risqué than the original Follies shows that went on earlier in the evening, and for the extra skin and racy jokes, he charged a higher price for tickets and tables.
“Things are changing, Olive, and we need to change, too,” he said. “We need to give them a new reason to stick around after the show.”
“I’ve heard the food and the hooch you serve is pretty outstanding.”
“I still want to give my patrons a buzz. But that buzz doesn’t always have to be in liquid form—that reason to stay, that could be you.”
I felt a rush of excitement at being chosen for this special distinction. It was certainly more provocative than the Follies and my father would cringe at the thought of me now, but he’d already kicked me out of his house and accused me of being a harlot, so there was no sense in trying to please him anymore.
On my first night in the Frolic, after dancing all night in the Follies, I came out on the platform in a skin-colored, lace, barely there costume that looked more like an undergarment, covered in balloons. I sauntered down the wide glass stairs and paraded through the audience, encouraging the gentlemen to pop my balloons with their ten-cent cigars. From the stage, Will Rogers sang “Girls of My Dreams,” and as the balloons popped and popped and popped, I was left with nothing but my lacy negligee. Ziegfeld put small wooden mallets on the tables, and when the audience liked an act they didn’t just applaud and hoot and holler—they’d bang their mallets on the table, sending a vibration of approval through our bones.
I was in heaven on that stage. It was everything from the Follies, but more fun, more singing, more flirting, more dancing, and Ziegfeld paid me $75 a week in addition to my Follies pay. I was on top of the world.
The stage-door johnnies started calling my name louder as we walked out the theater doors to set off for our evening’s adventures, and I reveled in it.
“Olive, Olive,” they’d say. “Miss Shine, Miss Olive Shine … let me take you out, let me take you dancing. Olive Shine, let me show you what a gentleman I am.” Of course they were calling for the other girls, too, but all I could hear was my name.
There was usually a group of us heading out for a night on the town—Gladys, Lara, Ruthie, Pauline, Lillian and me—sometimes more, sometimes fewer, depending on who had a date that night. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love every minute of it, the attention, the desperation in those boys’ voices, the applause as we walked out into the New York City night. If I didn’t have a date already, I might look around the crowd of gents and survey my options, then pick the handsomest fella of the group.
“Come on then,” I’d say, pointing to one of them. “But if you want to show me a good time, you’ve got to show us all a good time.” And all of us girls would link arms, with the one lucky fella in the middle, and we’d walk down the street that way, or walk to his car, and sometimes I thought I noticed a look on his face that I’d just made his week.
Now that I was in the Frolic, the gifts and bouquets of flowers that showed up in the dressing room doubled, tripled, quadrupled. At times it was absurd how many vases of roses stood on my dressing table. They’d always be accompanied by a note and an invitation to dinner; sometimes they came with a bracelet or earrings. I usually took these fellas up on their offers for dinner or dancing—not all of them, there weren’t enough days in the week, but I’d pick one and send a note back to him in the audience telling him I’d be bringing a friend and that he should, too.
There were more formal introductions, too. One evening Ziegfeld introduced me to politician Fiorello La Guardia; he was shorter than me by a good three or four inches, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He invited me and Lara and Evelyn to sit at his table at the Frolic with a few of his friends once our show was over. They were big shots, no doubt about it; Fiorello had been elected to Congress and one gent was the mayor of Boston. But after a while I excused myself and told them I was needed backstage. Another time, while out at a club all the way up in Harlem, our group of five or six girls were approached on the dance floor and invited upstairs to a private room of what Ruthie told me were mobsters. I’ve never seen so much fur and so many diamonds in my life, on both the men and women.
While we certainly got to meet a lot of gents this way, and we did plenty of flirting and a little smooching here and there, I was never really, truly drawn to any of them. Some started to bore me once the initial fun of meeting them wore off. They’d start telling me about what they did for work, where they were from, and every time we got to that point I’d start thinking about what the rest of the girls were doing, how I’d rather be out with them, listening to a live jazz band and dancing and laughing with my girls. But more often, after the formalities wore off and we’d had a few drinks, they’d start to get that look in their eye, or they’d put their hand where it wasn’t wanted, and I’d be up and out of there and on my way home. I don’t know if it was that awful, regretful night in Los Angeles that made me feel this way, so prickly and prude-like all of a sudden, when I was as provocative as could be onstage and when most of the girls were living up their freedoms any way they chose to, but I never went home with any of them.
With our new earnings, Ruthie and I made our move to Fifth Avenue. We got the apartment of our dreams, with a window in every room. That, to me, felt like success—to pay my own way, not needing anyone to take care of me. We had our own apartment and we made our own rules and we liked to remind ourselves of that at all hours.
“No one can tell us now that we haven’t made it in New York,” I’d proclaim while brushing my teeth, parading around the living room in nothing but my undergarments while Ruthie wrapped her red hair in a silk scarf and put on her pajamas.
“That’s right, honey!” she’d say.
And I’d kick off my shoes and climb into bed and feel so content that it was just me, no one grabbing or pawing or sweet-talking. I’d lay my head on the pillow, often still swirling from the dancing or the hooch, and many nights, in those few private moments after I closed my eyes, my mind would drift back to the baby. I’d feel the weight of her in my arms, her sweet little face, her cheeks, her eyes looking up at me. And I’d picture those dewy eyelids getting heavy, then closing as she drifted off to sleep—peaceful and trusting. She trusted me to hold her and keep her safe. And then I’d lie there, staring at the ceiling, aching.