Hello Darlin' (8 page)

I headed north, where Sinjin had me work in his productions in Lambertville, New Jersey.
It was “the original musical circus in the round,” where he had started out. By now
I’d won my spurs and he made me the assistant stage manager, a position whose salary
was regulated by the Actors’ Equity Association. I don’t remember the amount, but
it was a helluva lot more than $28 a week. Best of all, it allowed me to get my Equity
card, a big step for me in those days.

I was also playing very slightly bigger parts and feeling more confident about myself
onstage when Mom called to ask me about an actor named Wilbur Evans. She was about
to reprise her starring role in
South Pacific,
and Wilbur was set to be her leading man. I’d worked
with him in Florida. She said she was concerned that he wasn’t as tall as Ezio Pinza,
her costar on Broadway. I assured her that he was a fine actor who would do well in
the part. But it turned out she actually had something else on her mind. My mother
could be crafty like that. She said there was a small speaking part open in
South Pacific
and I could also be in the chorus if I was interested.

I didn’t have to think about it. I jumped at the offer.

The hard part was telling Sinjin, but he magnanimously let me go, saying mine would
be hard shoes to fill. Indeed, he was going to have to pay at least three additional
people to do the work I did. But knowing Sinjin, I felt confident he’d find another
sucker.

M
other, Richard, Heller, and I sailed to Southampton from New York on the
Media,
a small passenger liner belonging to the White Star Lines. During the voyage, I met
an air force Catholic chaplain, Captain O’Rourke, who was on his way to his post at
the U.S. base at Bushy Park, England. We drank and joked all the way across the ocean
and that connection would prove to be a great help to me a short time later.

The sailing was not as smooth during the brief family vacation we took before starting
rehearsals. At one point we were at Castle Combe, a fine countryside hotel, and once
again Richard was on my case. He saw me vault onto a horse in the stable area and
ride bareback. This sort of riding was apparently too wild for the proper form around
the stable and caused quite a stir. At dinner, Richard informed my mother that I’d
been misbehaving as usual, and it became an issue between us.

“The woman at the stables says you are harming the horses,” he said.

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I learned to do that back in Vermont and I’ve seen
it in every Western movie ever made.”

“I don’t care how many Western movies you’ve seen. You’re here now and there are very
different customs.”

Things got very heated and I went to my room. It must’ve been embarrassing to them
in front of the other diners, but I was beyond caring. About three o’clock in the
morning, I started down the back stairs, trying to sneak out quietly, except I kept
knocking the walls with my heavy leather suitcase. I was like a bull in a china shop.
Mother was waiting for me when I got to the bottom and asked what I was doing. I told
her that I was getting away from
him.

Mother convinced me to stay. She wouldn’t admit Richard was a son of a bitch to me,
but she emphasized that having me in the play was very important to her. Though she
didn’t say it outright, it was a way for us to have a relationship. I know she wanted
me to see her in London, the scene of many triumphs, and I have to admit it felt like
a homecoming when we checked into the Savoy Hotel a few days later.

Once rehearsals began, Mother was quickly drawn into her own world. She was so focused,
so consumed with breaking in a completely new cast, doing interviews, and she was
just plain remarkable when it came to handling the pressure of getting things together
in less than a month. It was the first time I’d ever watched her this closely and
I saw how much she loved it.

Richard was also busy, planning her schedule, dealing with the producer and the press,
and generally getting on everybody’s nerves.

For some reason, he brought up the Castle Combe horse-vaulting episode again and this
time I couldn’t take it and left. I was on the street again, looking for a place to
stay, when I got an offer from Archie Savage, the show’s lead dancer. He was the only
other American in the company besides Mother, Wilbur, and me. Archie had a great place
on Belgrave Square and said I could stay there. I knew Archie from New York, where
I’d once rented his Third Avenue apartment. He was a gay black man with impeccable
taste. I remember him saying that he’d been turned away by several hotels in London,
so he’d found a beautiful twenty-room mansion to rent, and he
opened it up to an array of guys, some of whom were in the show, others who he met
in town.

The night I arrived Archie called everyone together for a meeting. He introduced me
to the group. They were a colorful crowd to say the least.

“Here’s the deal,” Archie said. “Larry has this room up there on the second floor
and if anyone touches him, or even tries, I will beat the shit out of him.”

“It’s nice to meet all of you,” I added.

And it was. They were great. That mansion was hopping twenty-four hours a day. I was
there for two weeks, then hooked up with Ted Flicker, my friend from college. He had
a nice little flat in Saint John’s Wood and was looking for someone to share the expenses.
It was the perfect arrangement. He went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art during
the day, and I was in
South Pacific
at night. We seldom got in each other’s way.

*   *   *

Director Josh Logan, the original director on Broadway, came in for the last week
of rehearsals and gave the show its finishing touches. I had a nice little part. In
a scene when the captain talked to his aide-de-camp, I was to come in through the
door and tell the captain that Ensign Nellie Forbush—Mom—was there to see him. I handled
that with ease—until opening night.

Everything was wonderful. Mother stood behind me in the middle of the stage, concealed
behind the cabin that was the captain’s office. She was bursting with pride as I waited
to go on. I was so goddamn excited. The audience was filled with royalty, famous actors,
and important British dignitaries. I was riding the rush of such a thrilling evening.
Then I heard my cue, opened the door, and walked in front of the audience, and behind
me, at the moment I started to speak, I heard Mother whispering, “No, not yet.”

She was right. Overanxious, I had once again jumped my cue. The
actor playing the captain stared at me like I had lost my mind. He ad-libbed. “Tell
her to wait.” I did an about-face and walked off chagrined. Mother didn’t say anything.
Her laugh was sufficient. A moment later, I opened the door
again
and introduced her at the proper time.

Afterward, the audience applauded thunderously. There were at least two dozen curtain
calls. It was tremendous. They also threw coins onto the stage as was the custom at
Drury Lane and showered Mother with loving shouts of “Mary! Mary!” It was exhilarating
to stand out there.

Then all of us went to the Savoy for the party, where I had one of the thrills of
my life. As Laurence Olivier led Mother across the dance floor, I danced with Vivien
Leigh. My God, talk about a beautiful woman. I was so enamored of her I worried my
knees might give out. Even though I had grown up around celebrities, I was starstruck,
and Mother chuckled about it later.

“How was it, Larry?” she asked.

“Oh my God, Mom, I was dancing with Scarlett O’Hara.”

*   *   *

After each night’s performance, I got on my bicycle and rode ten minutes to the Irving
Theatre, off Leicester Square, a late-night theater where I earned an extra three
pounds a week by singing and dancing in a musical revue. Around 1
A.M.,
the tube closed, so I caught a cab back to my flat, using up the money I’d earned
that night. I was always tired and broke. But happy.

“This beats the hell out of getting your ass shot in Korea,” I said to Ted.

Oh my God, was it ever. The Korean War was going full tilt. I’d registered for the
draft in Texas and constantly thought about my chances of being called up for service.
They were higher than I wanted to know. From what I’d heard, the military liked the
boys from Texas. They had a reputation for being good soldiers. While that
was a reason to be proud, there was also a downside to being a great soldier. Occasionally
you got killed. I wasn’t interested in either fighting hard or getting killed. But
when the letter arrived calling me into service, I couldn’t disregard it.

I went to a U.S. military base in Germany for a physical. The doctor asked about
South Pacific
while reading through my papers.

“So you’re in the theater?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you homosexual?”

“No, I am not,” I replied.

“Why don’t you say you are?” he asked. “Then I can get you out.”

Okay, I admit it, the idea sounded good for about a quarter of a second. But back
then people had different attitudes about gays, especially in the military. As bad
as it is today, it was worse then. I worried that if I answered yes, it would be on
my record forever. So I exclaimed, with the proper sense of outrage, “I cant do that!”

“Aw, come on,” the doc said. “Who’s going to know?”

I came up with another idea.

“I’m nearsighted,” I said. “Without my glasses, I can’t see a damn thing.”

“Okay, I’ll give you an eye test tomorrow.”

That night I stayed in the barracks. Almost a year had gone by since the opening night
of
South Pacific,
and as I lay on my cot I marveled at how quickly time had gone by. One night I was
in the Savoy, dancing with Vivien Leigh, and now I was going to sleep in a nearly
empty Luftwaffe military barrack in Germany. Only one other guy was bunking in the
barrack that night, and the next morning we hit the shower at the same time.

“You got any soap?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said and tossed a bar his way.

Then I heard it drop. I saw him glance around for it.

“Hey, listen, can you find my glasses?” he asked. “They’re on the shelf over there.”

I handed him his specs. I noticed the lenses were thick as Coke bottle bottoms. I
thought, My eyes are perfect compared to his.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I’m in the army. A machine gunner’s assistant.”

“But you can’t see.”

“That don’t mean nothing,” he replied. “I carry the ammo and feed the belt in the
machine gun. You don’t have to see real good to do that.”

There goes my chance of getting out of the service.

“What are you in?” he asked.

I thought about it for a moment and said, “I’m in deep shit.”

W
hen I got back to London I looked up Captain O’Rourke, who was stationed at Bushy
Park, and asked if he knew of anyway that I could get based in London. He did. Bribery.

“If you can get tickets to
South Pacific
for all the brass—the generals and the colonels—you’ll probably be able to get any
posting you want,” he said. “Knowing who your mother is, I suspect those tickets ought
to be relatively easy.”

“I’ll do my humble best, sir,” I said.

Since Bushy Park was the enlistment center for the U.K., Captain O’Rourke walked me
through the whole procedure like the good drinking buddy he was. While I was in basic
training in Wales, he spoke to the general, and eight weeks later I was back in London,
posted to the Third Air Force Headquarters, in South Ruislip, Middlesex, a convenient
forty-five-minute subway ride from the apartment I shared with Ted Flicker. Then Ted
was drafted and had to go back to the States for his basic training in the army. Before
he left, Teddy found me a new roommate, his friend Henri Kleiman, a young, smart,
stylish Englishman who wore pinstriped suits and a bowler hat. We became lifelong
friends.

I belonged to the Remington Raiders, named such after the typewriters we used in the
office. I was assigned to Special Services. Nowadays, that means a crack commando
unit. In those days, it was different. I was in the entertainment division. I reported
to a civilian who ran a ticket bureau for the military. If a VIP came to London and
wanted tickets to a show, they called her and she tried to take care of them. But
on my first day, I realized she couldn’t get anything done when she turned to me in
a panic.

“I got a general and his wife who are huge Mary Martin fans,” she says. “Do you have
anyway of getting tickets to
South Pacific?”

Obviously the scuttlebutt hadn’t reached her. She had no idea of my relationship to
the show or its star. That’s how out of the loop she was.

“It’s a popular show,” I said.

“The hottest ticket in town.”

“I’m not promising anything, but I’ll do my damnedest.”

I understood how crucial it was to make myself vital to the war effort right from
the start.

She looked relieved when I said, “Why don’t you let me deal with the general directly
on this one?”

I met the general, who told me that he wanted six tickets. I informed him that the
show was sold out every night, which he already knew, but I said I’d do my best to
get him seats. A few days later, I delivered the prized tickets. Needless to say,
that put me in very good standing with the general of the Third Air Force.

Soon I took over the ticket business. My boss was upset, but she was a civilian and
didn’t have to worry about the gunfire and mortar shells on the thirty-eighth parallel,
so I didn’t really care if her nose was out of joint. I just wanted to do a good job
getting tickets for VIPs and keep my own ass from getting shot off.

By the end of the year I was put in charge of all the entertainment in the United
Kingdom, which involved providing entertainment for sixty thousand men and their dependents.
I produced
Stairway to the
Stars,
a talent contest that drew from aspiring entertainers in the army and the air force.
Dozens of acts were brought to Bushy Park, including comics, jugglers, barbershop
quartets, tap dancers, magicians, jazz combos, and vaudeville routines. I put the
winners of each category from
Stairway to the Stars
in another show, called
The Spotlight Review,
and toured it successfully across the twenty-seven U.S. air force bases in the U.K.