To go back to the very beginning, I was born on August 10, 1942, in Wethersfield, Connecticut, a small suburb of Hartford. That date put both my sun and moon in the sign of Leo. Now, I don’t take astrology too seriously. I don’t make daily decisions based on charts or planets or any of that. But there’s no denying that from the time I was little, my Leo personality was in full bloom.
From what I’ve heard, the sun in Leo means you go out into the world and you shine. And that behavior was always instinctual to me. I was full of energy and enthusiasm and had my own special kind of appeal that wasn’t at all determined by my looks. I was never the kind of pretty that would make every head turn when I walked into a room. That’s for sure.
Instead, I relied on my bubbly, oddball personality to make my way in the world. I distinctly remember one instance of that from when I was a child. I was home after school. My sister and brother were at opposite ends of the living room, both studiously doing their homework. I walked into the room and out again and back again—the whole time walking on my hands, my feet in the air swaying as I tried to keep my balance. I kept this up for more than thirty minutes until my mother finally toppled me over and said, “Betsey Lee! Stop that!” I looked up at her from the floor confused and said, “I can’t. It’s not perfect yet.” That was my peculiar drive in a nutshell.
As bubbly as I may have been, I was also what my mother called a “worrywart,” which I thought sounded so ugly. But she was right: I would literally lie in bed at night and fret. It wasn’t just the typical monster-under-the-bed situation. I was just an insecure, scared little girl.
I remember I had this irrational fear of dying, which came seemingly from nowhere. My mother would ask me what I was so worried about, and I didn’t know how to answer. What made it all the worse was that I didn’t even know how to talk about it. The fear was very real to me. I couldn’t accept that I was actually going to die in the end—whatever and whenever the end might be. I used to tell my mom: I better not die before Christmas, which was my favorite time of year. My mother, in her own way trying to reassure me, would say, “We are all going to die . . . someday.” I didn’t feel any better. Her response just fueled my anxiety.
If I were to play armchair psychiatrist, I would have to say that World War II had something to do with my dread. The war was in full swing when I was born. I do remember hearing war reports on the radio as a child and seeing scary pictures in the newspaper that I didn’t quite understand.
The war didn’t directly threaten our safe little corner of Connecticut. But I guess the specter of some kind of Nazi bogeyman permeated the collective consciousness in a way that even little children couldn’t escape it. My father would tell us stories of his role during the conflict. He was what was known as a “blackout man,” responsible for going around the neighborhood and making sure everyone had their blackout shades down after sunset. I found it creepy that my dad—who was sweet, kind, and so full of life—had to make sure everyone in town was sealed into darkness every night.
I could also attribute my anxiety to the moon-in-Leo part of my nature. And by that I mean, when my Leo moon would kick in, oh crumb! It would come along with a pail of water to pour all over my sunny-side up. From very early on I understood that I had a choice: did I want to choose the light or the dark? I wanted the happiness and sunshine. I usually found it easy enough to shake off the dark and get back into the light.
Wethersfield was at that time a very small, tight-knit community—the type of place that had neighborhood vegetable gardens and where everyone knew everyone else. Women would get together once a week for sewing bees. My mother actually hated sewing but she joined in to be sociable . . . and to learn to sew clothes for her children. It was cheaper for her to make our clothes than to go out to a department store to buy them.
Every year she’d make matching back-to-school dresses for me and my sister. They were always plaid and had little puff sleeves and sashes and bows. She later also sewed all of my dancing costumes, and I started to help. I had no idea that this would become my life’s work. Back then it was just a means to an end. I don’t remember deriving any great pleasure from cutting and sewing other than the joy of spending time alone with my mom.
I don’t know whether my family would have been considered working class or lower middle class. Whatever we were, I just know we weren’t fancy. We lived in the classic little house with the white picket fence. Very quaint, very country. Looking back, I see my childhood as very comforting and traditional, a series of endless, sunny summers followed by winters that looked like Christmas cards or a Norman Rockwell painting. We were apple pie to the max.
My devilishly dashing daddy, Chick
My mom, Live Wire Lena
Me, Bobby, and Sally in our plaid den
I had the most wonderful, loving family you can imagine. There was Mom and Dad, and I’ve already mentioned my brother and sister. By way of a more formal introduction, they are Sally, who was the oldest of the kids, and Bobby, the youngest. Each of us two years apart. When I was really little, we had two kittens, which I named Pete and Re-Pete. In fact, we always had animals around. I remember there was a collie named Lassie (not the most original name), a horse named Scout, and later on another cat who would only eat Cheerios that she would take one at a time from a bowl with her paw.
Sally was the best sister I could ever wish for. She was just so perfect, always doing good things. She was the president of her class, she ran the local pool, she volunteered for the Red Cross. Everything she did I wanted to do, too. I guess you could say I idolized her.
Even while my true nature was already pointing me toward a different path, part of me wanted to follow in Sally’s footsteps. I sometimes felt that I couldn’t keep up with her, and there were definitely periods of animosity and competition. I’d sometimes get so upset with her, which was usually just my own frustration at not being as good as her. I fantasized about sneaking over to her bed while she was sleeping and biting her fingernails off. They were her pride and joy. My high energy level always had me feeling nervous or anxious, so I naturally bit my own nails down to nubs, which left me with aching fingers. I hid my hands a lot.
As for Bobby, he was the typical happy, sweet brother. He was the fastest guy on the basketball team. Basketball wasn’t the only sport he was good at. He also had a sharp eye when it came to darts. One time he landed one right into my leg all the way from across the room!
To say that we were an active bunch would be an understatement. Between Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, dance classes, and baseball practice, we kept Mom and Dad pretty busy carting us around. But they never begrudged us our after-school activities. Quite the opposite—they totally encouraged and supported them.
Mom’s name was Lena and Dad’s was John, but for some reason everyone called him Chick. They were an idyllic couple. I have never seen two people more in love. I never once remember them having a fight, or if they did, it was never in front of us kids. They had met and married when they were both very young. Mom was petite, wiry, and pretty in a very fifties way, especially when she was all dressed to go out. It didn’t happen very often, which made it all the more special to see her that way. Dad, who was a tall, blond, handsome devil, fell in love with her and her vivacious personality.
Dad had gone to Pratt Institute back when it was mostly a technical college. He was trained as an electrical engineer but ended up working at the Taylor & Fenn metal foundry. He made metal patterns for the decorative details you see on things like Winchester rifles and potbellied stoves.
Once when we kids were really young, as a special treat he took us to the factory to show us what he did all day. When I think back on that trip, I can still see those big metal pattern pieces hanging from the ceiling of his workshop, and they remind me of pattern pieces that have hung from the ceilings in my own workrooms over the years.
My mom’s job was running the household. And it was a full-time job. But in spite of that, she was also den mother for my brother’s Boy Scout troop and my sister’s and my Brownie units, and, just for good measure, head of the PTA. Mom was always on the go, just a bundle of nervous energy. I always pictured her as a human vacuum cleaner that was never unplugged. If I inherited one quality from each of my parents, it would have to be my father’s unflinching work ethic and my mother’s boundless energy.
When I was about six years old, Dad switched jobs and moved the family ten miles away to Windsor, which was another small Connecticut town. Windsor was less country than Wethersfield, and it was a bit more upscale. No victory gardens there. But we did have tobacco fields. There were no more sewing circles, either, which was just fine with Mom.
The house we moved into was more modern than our previous one—very 1950s. I can still vividly picture the kitchen wallpaper. It was salmon colored with a white lattice design and ivy running through it. And, of course, we had the plaid den complete with Ethan Allen furniture and a black-and-white TV set, which was a big deal. Not everyone had me.
It was very important to Mom and Dad that the whole family have breakfast together every morning, and at six each evening, come hell or high water, no matter how much stuff we kids had going on, we’d sit down to have dinner—that is, except Mom. She buzzed around serving the rest of us. It was light-years away from how things are nowadays.
When we kids were older and didn’t need her to watch over us when we got home from school anymore, Mom took a job as a guidance counselor at our school. Can you imagine? If you got into trouble you had to go see my mother. Of course, that was never an issue for me, Sally, and Bobby. For the most part we were good kids.
I can remember getting into trouble only a couple of times. Once, when I was about five or six years old, around the time I’d have been learning how to read, I was out in the backyard with my best friend, Vicky. She had perpetually skinned knees and came from a few blocks over where the picket fences weren’t quite as white as ours. She also had an older brother who you might say was a bad influence on her.
One day, Vicky dramatically wrote a word on a piece of paper. I couldn’t read it, so she told me to sound it out, like we did in school. I looked at the letters and read them aloud one by one. F-U-C-K. She said, “Now put them all together,” and I said “fuck.” She laughed, and I didn’t know why, so I said it again. I had never heard the word before and certainly didn’t know what it meant. The word felt so strange in my mouth when I repeated it. Pretty soon Vicky and I were skipping around the yard saying and singing the word over and over. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! We must have been quite a sight, two little girls in patent leather shoes, bobby socks, crinolines, and pigtails, cussing like a couple of sailors.
Unfortunately for me, my father had witnessed the whole scene from inside the house. He came running out, yelling for Vicky to go home. He dragged me inside and promptly washed my mouth out with soap. If you have never had your mouth washed out with soap, believe me, it is not pleasant. But I understood.
I never got an explanation from Dad as to what that word meant and why I should never say it. I was just told that it was bad. Which of course only made me want to say it all the more, but for the rest of my childhood I didn’t.
Another incident with Vicky happened about a year later. This time we were in Woolworth’s, and she dared me to steal something. It didn’t matter what it was, she told me. It was just about stealing or, more accurately, getting away with it. We walked around the store for a while trying to look inconspicuous. My heart was racing while I looked for something to swipe, eventually ending up in the candy section. I surveyed the huge selection of goodies—candy cigarettes, candy necklaces, bubble gum, Charleston Chews, and chocolate bars—before I finally decided on a pack of cherry-flavored Life Savers. I figured they were small and easy to hide, and besides, they were my favorites. I looked around one more time to check that no one was watching and when I was sure I was safe I slipped them quickly into the waistband of my skirt. We nervously made our way toward the front of the store and just as we were about to step outside, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard a gruff voice saying, “Come with me, miss.” I froze and my blood ran cold. My first thought was I am going to jail. My second was My parents are going to kill me for this.
They let Vicky go home because she hadn’t done anything wrong, even though I burst into tears and said that she had made me do it. They hauled me to an office upstairs, called my parents, and told them to come down to the store. The worst part of the whole incident was the shame I felt waiting for them in that scary locked office.
When my parents arrived, they told me that they were disappointed in me, which was more of a disgrace than having my mouth washed out with soap. Their approval meant everything to me.
As punishment, I had to work at the store after school for a week with no pay. Which is strange. It seems like a kid with sticky fingers would be the last person you would want working for you. But I’m sure they could tell I wasn’t exactly a budding career criminal.
As far as school went, I hated it. I didn’t have the temperament to sit through a boring math or science class. Truth is, I just wasn’t any good at it. I wasn’t book smart at all. That’s not to say I didn’t do well. My parents were very strict when it came to grades. We were absolutely not allowed to bring home anything less than B’s, which meant I had to work harder on some subjects than my classmates. My only real interests in school were all extracurricular: boys, dancing, and, by the time I got to high school, being a cheerleader.
Please note, I listed boys first. That’s because I and my girlfriends were absolutely stark raving boy crazy. Foul language and shoplifting aside, we were good girls, especially me. No tits, no ass, no makeup, no nuthin’! Like all girls our age we talked a lot about sex because it was an exciting but also taboo subject. It was a very scary thing to think about, because we knew so little.
That would change around the age of fourteen, thanks to my new best friend, Sandy Barker. She was the most gorgeous girl on our tiny planet, the real hot chick in town. Unlike the rest of us she had a body and was not afraid to show it. She was not a good girl. Also, unlike the rest of us she went out with the bad boys. Bad boys! I mean, how bad could they have been in a small rural town in Connecticut in the mid-1950s?
In spite of her fast reputation, Sandy hung out with us straight arrows, so of course we loved her for that. She’d tell us naughty things now and then, stuff she did with the boys. We believed everything that came out of her mouth, blushing the whole time, of course. We were so green that up till that point in our lives, we literally thought you could get pregnant by sitting on a toilet seat and get rid of a pregnancy by taking a pill—until Sandy set us straight.
Thank God for Sandy. Before I met her, everything I knew, or thought I knew about sex, had to be left to a fourteen-year-old girl’s imagination. I had to speculate about everything because this was an era when you simply couldn’t ask your parents. It just wasn’t done.
Yup, we were boy crazy all right, but boys—real flesh and blood boys—were a complete mystery to me. They were like fictional characters you would read about in books. There was never any mention of the “P” word or any anatomical talk. The only points of reference we had came from playing with our Ken dolls as kids. That’s not to say we didn’t chase after boys, we did. We just didn’t understand them.
When I did start dating, it was all very squeaky clean. I always went for the jocks, which made sense because by that time I was a cheerleader. They were part of my crowd. I remember spending an obscene amount of time preparing for dates. I would iron and starch my petticoats to within an inch of their lives to get them just perfect to wear under the latest ruffly dress Mom still occasionally made for me. When my date arrived, he would come into the house and always had to shake my father’s hand and tell him where we were going and what time he would bring me home. I never understood the need for all the questions. Dates were always the same. It was either a movie at the one theater in town or a soda at the one diner. It was all very innocent but it was also exciting to be sticking my big toe into this strange new world.
When I got a bit older, the boys would have cars, and we could get more adventurous. There were lots of little “parking” streets in our neighborhood, dead ends that didn’t get much traffic. My parents happened to be out driving one evening when they pulled down one of these streets to turn around and saw me and my on-and-off boyfriend in the front seat of his car making out. They didn’t stop, and I had no idea they had driven by, but when I got home, as soon as I came through the door, my mother smacked me and told me what she had seen. I was in shock.
She had never laid a hand on me before or after. Any sort of physical contact, good or bad, was so far out of character for my mother, and my father, for that matter, that it really had an impact on me. I realized just how much she cared about me to do something like that. A little slap on the face showed me that she really cared. She needn’t have worried. I had no interest in going any further than, what is it, first base? I mean, I never did anything more than make out with my boyfriends. That said, I secretly vowed to be more discreet in the future.
Enter Ann K. Pimm
While boys did occupy a lot of my time and headspace, the real driving force of my childhood was dance. Almost as soon as I could walk I danced. I danced everywhere: in my bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, in the street on my way to school, everywhere.
I even put on my own recitals in the backyard. My dad would lay down a couple of big sheets of plywood for me to use as my little stage and all of the kids from the neighborhood would come. Admission was a penny, which I collected in a paper bag at the backyard gate.
“A penny a kiss a penny a hug”—Ann Pimm dance recital
As I said earlier, I was an anxious kid, but dance changed that for me. When I danced I was free from worry. As long as I kept moving, nothing could touch me, which was a dizzying way to go through childhood. Turning reality into a blur! Truth be told, I still like to blur reality.
When I was just four years old, my mother signed me up for dance classes at the only place for them in town: the Ann K. Pimm School of Dance. It may have been a small-town dance school, but Ann was anything but small town. Before moving to Wethersfield she had been a professional dancer. She was the real deal and had appeared on Broadway in Pal Joey and One Touch of Venus.
Ann was beautiful, glamorous, and an amazing dancer. She had dark hair and dark eyes and couldn’t have been more than five foot two. A real little spitfire. To me she was like Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse, and Mitzi Gaynor all rolled into one, with maybe a little bit of Gina Lollobrigida thrown in. Even at such a young age I knew that she was different from all of the other women in Wethersfield, a pretty big fish in a tiny, tiny pond. I figured all the women in town must be jealous of Ann because all the men in town had to be in love with her. I fell totally under her spell.
Every day at school I couldn’t wait for that last bell to ring so I could hightail it to Ann’s class and start dancing and have all the day’s cares and worries just roll right off me as I spun around. Ann taught ballet, tap, and jazz and encouraged gymnastics. I was a natural acrobat and learned to do somersaults, back flips, and, yes . . . cartwheels. Dance class was held most afternoons at the Knights of Columbus hall in the center of Old Wethersfield. The main meeting hall was a huge space that you could really feel lost in. Each day before class all of us students would line up chairs along the walls so the mothers could sit and watch us as we practiced. When we had the place set up, Ann would make her entrance in the same uniform every single day: a black leotard with a white stiffly starched short, short skirt. I admired that skirt so much and wanted to wear one just like it, but all us girls only got to wear the leotard.
While Ann was a real inspiration as a dancer, she was also very creative when it came to the costumes for our recitals. She turned us into dancing strawberries, butterscotch candies, Neapolitan ice creams. That last costume was my favorite. It featured a brown tulle skirt, a leotard top, and a hat made from a square brown box painted pink, off white, and brown tied under the chin with a pink ribbon. I still have that costume to this day.
Ann’s inspiration wasn’t limited to the confines of the old Knights of Columbus hall. A couple of times a year she would take a few of her special students on field trips to places I had only heard about or dreamt of. I will always love Ann for showing me New York City for the first time. Even though we lived only two hours away, it might just as well have been a thousand miles. My parents never took us there. My father hated New York with a passion. I never knew why, but he never had one good thing to say about the city.
Our first trip was to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes’ Christmas spectacular. As I stood outside the theater my eyes just bulged out of my head. It was so big and so glamorous. I had never seen a building like it. All of the big buildings in Wethersfield were kind of scary looking. I especially loved that grand stairway in the lobby. Ann let us girls walk up and down and up and down those fairy-tale steps, and we felt just like movie stars. When it was time to get off the staircase and into the theater itself, my amazement kicked into high gear. The Art Deco–style stage shone just like a big, faceted gold Christmas ornament.
We found our seats just as the lights were going down, and a minute later the orchestra launched into an overture of a medley of my favorite Christmas songs. And then the Rockettes themselves came onstage dressed up like toy soldiers with rosy painted-on cheeks and high hats. But there was more. They then transformed into elves and by the end were all done up like reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh. When I saw them form their famous kick line from my seat, which was way off to the side of the stage, it looked as if their legs stretched for miles. I knew right then and there what I wanted to do with my life—get to New York City and become a Rockette.
I worked hard for that dream. I studied practically every day with Ann until I was fourteen years old. When my family and I moved to Windsor, about forty-five minutes away by car, I needed my mom to drive me to dance practice, which meant I couldn’t go as often.
So what was I going to do if I couldn’t dance with Ann five days a week? Crazy as it sounds, I started running my own dance school. An older girl from Ann’s class had opened a studio a few years earlier and then she got married and pregnant. She asked me if I wanted to take over the business. That’s how the Betsey Johnson School of Dance was born.
I had learned so much from Ann that I was more than up to the task of teaching solo. Considering all of the girls were quite young, it wasn’t very challenging work. I taught only on the weekends, which meant that between school and the studio, I was working seven days a week. The crazy schedule didn’t faze me in the least. I was doing what I loved to do, I was also making some money of my own and learning how to handle the financial matters of the school, which Dad helped me with.
High School
Dad moved us one final time to a tiny town called Terryville, about twenty miles west of Wethersfield. I didn’t miss a beat when starting at the new school because I was never an outsider. At my previous school I had joined the cheerleading squad, probably in another attempt to keep up with Sally, who had been a cheerleader, too. I had an automatic in with that crowd, joined up, and made friends easily.
Along with cheerleading my other main focus at school was art. From childhood on I could always draw well and loved to do it, but in high school my art rose to a new level. The reason for the boost was my art teacher. Just like Ann Pimm, Rita Card would be a major influence on the direction my life would take. Rita was very creative and recognized that trait in me right off the bat. She really encouraged me to push myself, and when I did, I saw my work gain more depth and get better and better.
Goody-goody girl. High school yearbook photo, 1959.
And, just like Ann, Rita was an original and stood out in our rural Connecticut town. She had long straight dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, and perfect pale skin. She could have been a model for a Modigliani painting; very exotic, almost Polynesian looking. Even though she stuck out, she didn’t care. She had her own style and owned it.
One of the chief things Rita taught me was how to look at an object and really see it. Sometimes it was an egg, sometimes a wooden box or a doll. Some days we would spend the entire class just looking at one of these objects, maybe changing the way the light hit it. A lot of the time we never even picked up a pencil. This may sound crazy, but it left its mark on me. It was Rita’s direction that got me to focus . . . which was no small feat.
From walk-overs onstage . . . to flip-flops on the field
Rita’s lessons weren’t confined to just the classroom. Again, like Ann Pimm, she would take a group of us students on sketching trips around town—much to the dismay of the principal. But Rita didn’t care. Being her student was like being in the movie The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She made us feel like the crème de la crème!
As my senior year in high school was winding down and prom time grew closer, I campaigned for and was named head of the prom committee. I suppose this was another example of my competing with Sally, as two years earlier she had been in charge of decorating her prom. Her theme was “Around the World in 80 Days.” Each table was decorated in the style of a different country. The Italian table had a red-and-white-checked tablecloth and Chianti bottles covered in melted wax. The French table had baskets of French bread and a papier-mâché Eiffel Tower. The Irish table was all green and covered in shamrocks cut out of construction paper . . . you get the idea. It was so creative and so well executed. I was in awe of what she had accomplished but never let on to Sally.
Now it was my turn to show what I could do. And what did I choose for my theme? “Flirtation Walk,” which is what we used to call a secluded area where your date would take you for a make-out session. It sounds very 1950s to me now—like something right out of the movie Grease. As a decorative concept it was vague and abstract to say the least.
The decor consisted mostly of sparkling lights draped around arches that my friends helped me make. I placed the arches all around the gym so all the prom couples could enter together through these magical—or at least twinkling—doorways. The rest of the decorations were balloons, streamers, and bunting all in shades of whites and soft pinks. I had started off wanting to create a fairyland, but it ended up a tacky mess.
On the upside, I was named prom queen. Back then it was less a popularity contest than about being rewarded for decorating the prom. Now homecoming queen, that was different. That went to the best-looking girl, and that definitely was not me. I’m not saying I wasn’t popular. I was very popular, but that was based on my personality, and looking back, I’m glad for that. Looks fade. Personality lasts a whole lot longer.
Back to prom night. I wore a dress that was heavy off-white satin with a floor-length dirndl skirt. The bodice went straight across, and the whole dress was sprinkled with rhinestones and little crystal droplets. Of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I added more rhinestones and more droplets. I wore my hair, which I had lightened from my natural dark brown to a bad shade of red, in an updo. And to add insult to injury, my entire face had broken out. I looked awful. Leo and I must have been going through a bad patch, because I don’t even remember the name of the boy I went with. All I know is I needed a date, and he asked me. I didn’t want to go with him. He had more pimples than I did.
I spent the entire evening checking on the decorations and making adjustments as balloons sagged and bunting dropped to the dance floor. This maintenance was no small feat while wearing that heavy dress, which must have been five feet wide, including petticoats (starched, of course). I couldn’t just sit back, relax, and enjoy what was supposed to be a special rite-of-passage night. I had to attack it like I would a job. I don’t remember how the night ended except that I made my pimply date stay after and help me put the gym back in order.
So compared to Sally’s prom success, mine was an artistic failure. But I didn’t beat myself up about it for long. I had already demonstrated my talent and knew what was next after graduation.
The year before, we students had been told that it was time to think about college. I never gave a thought to a school anywhere else but in New York City. And since Dad had gone to Pratt and since Pratt is in New York, it was a no-brainer. Rita Card helped me put together a portfolio of my illustrative artwork, and I applied to Pratt. I got in easily.
New York here I come!