Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (5 page)

I intended to commute from San Marino to Hollywood each day, imagining that the journey would be quick and uncomplicated. By rights it should have been, but after I had my first experience with the LA transit system, a seemingly interminable journey on a hot, crowded bus, I quickly concluded that unlike San Francisco, Los Angeles County just wasn’t a bus-friendly place.

However, things began to look up considerably when through a mutual friend I managed to wangle an introduction to Solly Biano, head talent scout at the Warner Brothers studio.

I was highly excited and intensely aware that this could prove to be my big break, so on the morning of my interview with Solly I painstakingly ironed my best plaid skirt and my nicest beige blouse, polished my best patent leather shoes until they shone brilliantly, and, last of all, donned my whitest of white gloves.

Uncle Grandville drove me to Burbank, and though I was probably more nervous than I’d ever been in my life, I took comfort in the fact that he decided not to leave me at the studio but would wait outside in his car while I had my interview.

So when I walked through the gigantic iron gates at Warner Brothers and the security guard gave me a pass, then directed me to Solly Biano’s office, I didn’t completely feel as if I were Little Red Riding Hood about to place herself at the mercy of the big bad wolf.

I relaxed further after the casting director’s affable assistant showed me into the office and introduced me to Solly, a handsome blond, blue-eyed man with a mustache. He was courteous and started by asking me about my drama training, my home, and my family.

Then, all of a sudden and to my everlasting shock, he pulled out a picture of his daughter, Lonnie, and said, “See, honey, that’s what you need. Big tits!”

Tits! He said tits to me!

I must have turned as white as my gloves, but he wasn’t finished with me yet. “You’re a pretty girl from a nice home,” he said, “and you come from a good family. Problem is, you’re too nice.” I brightened a trifle, but then he went on. “But you’re not pretty enough, and you’re not tough enough, either. Go back to San Francisco and marry the boy next door as fast as you can.”

Now, as young and naive as I was, I had already made it a firm rule not to cry in front of anyone, and I wasn’t about to break my rule, not then, not ever. But by the time I got back to the car and told Uncle Grandville what had happened, I found it difficult to hold back the tears.

My uncle, in contrast, wanted to go up to Solly Biano’s office and give him what for. I spent the next ten minutes convincing him not to, by which time my tears had stopped and I had composed myself sufficiently for the drive home.

But once I got upstairs to the privacy of my room, I let go completely and sobbed till I felt like my head was about to explode.

Fifteen minutes later, I finally calmed down, and gave myself a stern talking-to. Barbara Huffman, just you remember that Hollywood isn’t only about mammary glands. You can act, so become a character actress.

Then I dried my tears and promised myself I’d do just that. I also made up my mind to part ways with the Los Angeles County bus system as well.

Always cautious with money, I’d managed to save an impressive thousand dollars from all my band appearances and Hoffman and Huffman shows, so I bought a beat-up old Buick. My boyfriend, trumpeter Al Sunseri (who had worked with me in San Francisco bands), reupholstered and cleaned it until it shone like a newly faceted high-quality stone, and drove it down to LA for me.

My next step—and I suppose you could call it a leap, not a step—was to move out of my aunt and uncle’s home and into the fabled Hollywood Studio Club, dubbed by cynics the “Hollywood Nunnery.”

A little background here: Formed in 1916 by a group of aspiring actresses so they could read plays together, the Hollywood Studio Club first met in the Hollywood Public Library. However, in 1925, with the backing of Mary Pickford and Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille, as well as donations from Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd, and Howard Hughes (you’ll hear more about him later), the Studio Club later moved into a three-story Spanish-style steel-and-concrete building on Lodi Place, not far from Sunset and Vine, that was filled to the brim with antiques and overstuffed furniture.

From then on, the Studio Club, which was run by the YWCA, became sought after as a home for young Hollywood women who were involved in all aspects of show business. Provided that they could supply bona fide references, actresses, script girls, makeup artists, casting directors, secretaries, and anyone else in the business could live in the Studio Club, where they were easily able to pool information about auditions, rehearse, study, and in general network in order to further their burgeoning careers.

On my first day at the Studio Club, as fate would have it, I encountered one of the most famous Studio Club residents of all: Kim Novak, who’d lived there for the past five years but was moving out that very day. A silvery blond vision clad from head to foot in lilac, Kim had a handsome man trailing in her wake. I thought then that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.

And there I was, grubby, sweat-stained, and worn out from moving box after box containing most of my worldly possessions—plaid dresses, patent leather shoes, white gloves, my best blue leather jewelry box (which would have pride of place in my room, although I didn’t have anything in it except my tiny Miss San Francisco diamond ring), plus literally scores of books—into the Studio Club.

The dramatic contrast between Kim and me didn’t make my first day at the Studio Club any easier. Quite the reverse. And by the time I had moved everything into my room, I couldn’t have felt more lost and lonely. A few weeks later I gained a roommate, a beautiful brunette actress named Barbara Wilson, who was a lot of fun.

My only pleasure came at the very end of the night when I called my aunt Margie and my uncle Grandville because I missed them so much. That call became a daily ritual because I couldn’t afford to call my parents long-distance in San Francisco.

Years later, at the height of I Dream of Jeannie’s success, Aunt Margie let slip that she hadn’t ever approved of my going into acting, because she didn’t think the business would be good for me. I guess that my many evening calls from the Studio Club, in which I must have sounded extremely depressed, only served to reinforce her feelings. Nonetheless, she was encouraging and supportive, and stayed that way until she died in her nineties. I still miss her today.

Residence at the Studio Club included the use of the library, the laundry room, the sewing room, and the sundeck. In the midst of everything was the crucial notice board, where agents, producers, and directors posted news of upcoming auditions, and aspiring actors and actresses advertised for girls to read with them at auditions.

In my day, over a hundred girls lived at the Studio Club. Each of us paid fourteen dollars a week for a room, a telephone answering service, a cleaner twice a week, and two meals a day (generally breakfast and dinner, because no one had time for lunch), at which we all ate home-style food served on a buffet in a large dining room where we could all meet and gossip.

The only memorable thing about the Studio Club mealtimes is that one day when I was eating dinner in the dining room, all of a sudden—and I never discovered why he was there—John Wayne swaggered across the room, larger than life.

The only other celebrity I remember seeing at the Studio Club, apart from John Wayne and Kim Novak, was Mary Pickford, her hair arranged in big blond ringlets, rather like the style she wore in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, even though she was now well into her sixties.

Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead, was one of the Studio Club’s earliest residents. Like many of us, she was so poor that she couldn’t afford to pay her rent, so a charitable benefactor donated fifty dollars. But instead of using the donation to pay her rent, Ayn promptly went out and splurged on a set of black lingerie.

Marilyn Monroe was another Studio Club resident who had trouble coming up with the rent. She finally raised it by posing for that notorious nude calendar, in which she reclined on red velvet. It caused a scandal, but made her an overnight star.

Marilyn was probably the biggest star ever to launch her career while living at the Studio Club, but other names aren’t chopped liver, either: Dorothy Malone, who won an Oscar for Written on the Wind and who, during her time at the Studio Club, dated Mel Tormé; Diana Dill, who met and married Kirk Douglas while she was still living at the Studio Club; Donna Reed; Evelyn Keyes; Rita Moreno, of West Side Story fame; Sally Struthers; and tragic Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Manson family.

Long before any of us had made it in the business, we knew that we had to abide by the club’s stringent rules. For example, if we wanted to have a guest at the club for dinner, we were obliged to alert the staff a few days in advance, and get permission. Men of any age, of course, were not allowed to set foot in any of our rooms, which we had to keep spotlessly clean and tidy at all times.

The Studio Club was arranged around a courtyard, and the center of operations was the reception desk, right by the entrance, where Florence Williams, an attractive and imposing dark-haired woman, managed the club and ran a tight ship. She answered all our calls, took messages, and made sure to lock the Studio Club’s doors at midnight sharp. We all knew that we had to be in at midnight without fail, or we would be locked out, no matter what. However, permission would be granted if we did request a pass to go away from the Studio Club for the night or the weekend, although we had to leave Florence a number and an address where, if necessary, we could be contacted.

The Studio Club’s strict rules didn’t trouble me much, as I wasn’t planning to invite men into my room or be out late at night. In fact, because I wanted to be free to audition during the day but needed a salary in order to survive, I got a job in a local bank, which began at four and went on into the evening.

Otherwise, whenever I came back home to the Studio Club, I spent most of my time hanging around the notice board, answering as many of the advertisements as possible and auditioning for every single job around.

I was determined to make it in Hollywood, and I knew that auditioning for everything going—amateur as well as professional—was the only way in which I could become a successful actress, or at least survive financially.

At least that’s what I believed. However, after about a month at the club, I was to discover that there might be an alternative route to survival in Tinseltown, one of which my aunt Margie definitely would have disapproved. And, to tell the truth, so did I.

IT WAS ONE of those smoggy Los Angeles mornings. I’d just come back from an audition for a car commercial that I knew I wouldn’t get, and I was feeling rather despondent. As I trudged up the sweeping Studio Club staircase, Jolene Brand, a statuesque brunette actress who I knew was moonlighting as a showgirl at Ciro’s nightclub on Sunset Boulevard, was coming down the stairs toward me.

She stopped and asked me to have coffee with her. I was due at the bank in two hours’ time but was free until then, so I said yes.

Still a bit downhearted at not getting the commercial, I sat back and let Jolene do the talking. And, boy, did she talk! What was I doing at the Studio Club? What was my acting experience? And why was I working in a bank?

Ten minutes later, she got to the point. Why didn’t I audition for the dance line at Ciro’s, where she worked and which her boyfriend, George, managed?

“Because I’m afraid I can’t dance,” I explained patiently.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jolene declared. “Neither can I. Just come and audition, and I promise you, they’ll love you.”

“But I’m not like you, Jolene,” I said.

“You don’t have to be, Barbara. You’re you, and that’s quite enough,” she said.

“But Jolene, you’re tall! You’ve got very long legs. I’m not and I don’t,” I said, as if I were spelling out the facts of life to an Eskimo who couldn’t speak a word of English.

“Just wear high heels and shorts, so your legs will look long and lean, and you’ll be fine,” Jolene said.

I was running out of excuses. And after all, I had done some tap and a little modern dance at Miss Holloway’s. Besides, Jolene said that the club paid really well, and I was no stranger to nightclubs, having practically been raised at the Bal Tabarin. Little did I know that Ciro’s was quite another ball game: the biggest, glitziest, most decadent nightclub in the whole country.

In those long-ago days of cafe society, customers dressed to the hilt before a night on the town, champagne and caviar flowed nonstop, and Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Kirk Douglas routinely patronized Ciro’s, bringing with them glamorous starlets galore, all willing and eager to cater to their every whim.

At that time, Ciro’s was still at the height of its glory days: Peggy Lee, Sophie Tucker, Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis all performed at Ciro’s, and Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe were romanced there by glamorous men set on sweeping them off their feet. It was dinner at eight, a ten o’clock show, and afterward a night of unbridled passion. All in all, Ciro’s vibrated with glamour and mystique, laced with an aura of sin and sensuality.

Ciro’s catered to male customers unashamedly, and in the most artful ways. As I learned years later, no tall maitre d’ was ever hired at Ciro’s because the powers behind the club firmly believed that any short male guest would loathe following a tall maitre d’ to his table.

Nor did Ciro’s hang any mirrors in the main room, a strategy to prevent revelers from catching a glimpse of how extremely debauched they looked as the evening wore on. Light fixtures were set on special dimmers all over the club, so that as the hours went by, the light faded slowly until the club closed at two in the morning.

I was unaware of that Ciro’s lore then. All I cared about was that I had to learn four numbers for the audition and that hell would probably freeze over before I was transformed into the showgirl type. I was scared half to death.