Sometimes I wonder how I ever escaped the stage as a profession and then, when I get to recalling my early dramatic experiences, I realize that things have turned out the best for all concerned. As a child my thespian efforts were many and varied; as a young grown-up I did a few turns in opera -- why, then, did these talents lead straight to the cookstove and vacuum cleaner and from there nowhere?
My first appearance on any stage occurred on the evening of my brother's
debut in theatrical circles. His part was the opening salutation in the
school Christmas program and he practiced it so long at home that even I, a
three-year old, had learned it perfectly. Ben delivered his speech with
his characteristic aplomb; the audience was quiet and must have heard and
remembered every word. The rest of the performance proceeded without
serious mishap through titters, blushes and forgotten lines to the very
end. With audible sighs of relief and tremulous smiles, the teachers
converged on the platform to herald the conclusion of the program. Just
then a voice, showing the same iron determination that was later to shake
teachers of sterner mettle, announced, "You've forgotten my piece. I wanna
say mine, now." Whereupon the Lindquist's only daughter slipped away from
her parents, trotted to the platform and delivered, word for word, gesture
for gesture, nuance for nuance her brother's address of welcome:
"Greetings, friends, and Merry Christmas,
Welcome to our merry show;
Stay with us for just one hour.
You'll be entertained, I know."
During grade school I took part in every theatrical production that came along. This showed more wisdom than recognition of talent on the part of my teachers, since it was safer to have me on the stage, where my loyalty and consideration could be counted on, than down in the audience as a penetrating but unpredictable critic.
Gym classes, at about this period, afflicted long suffering parents with "demonstrations" that required all to learn dances or gymnastic feats and present them for the edification of all. The girls in our grade did a Grecian dance, a gymnopedie, no less. The uniformity, grace and fluidity of line was apparently jeopardized by my considerably greater height than the remaining girls. Of course, I couldn't be left out of the program entirely so my mother was instructed to construct an ankle length costume for me rather than thigh length for the dancers, and I was to hold a Grecian vase aloft on a low wall in the background, an obviously safer place for me in projects of this sort. On the evening of the Demonstration, in the tension of anxiety one fifth grader became sick to her stomach and proceeded to lose her dinner, almost to the cancellation of the entire troupe due to sympathetic imitation. Of course during gym class everyone had been actively participating in the practice of the dance, so I was recalled from my statuesque role at the back of the stage to join the chorus line. I deposited my vase on the wall and joined the line as ninth and final dancer. With the opening measure nine fifth graders advanced with small quick running steps onto the stage. Then, after a pause, each raised her right knee and extended her toe. That is, all the others did. My knee came up until my drapery caught on the calf of my leg and sent my sole back down to the floor with a resounding slap. I managed the several short steps that followed, beautifully, but the next step, a leap with one leg thrown out behind required far more circumference than the tube of bed sheet which my mother had deemed ample for a statue at the rear of the stage. I landed in a flurry of drapery among the scurrying Grecian maidens. In no way dismayed, I stood up, ascertained at what point my fellows were in the dance and resumed my place. It would have been a good time for me to have retired to my wall and let those who could be nimble. Instead, I twisted and turned, posed and languished and tried that high step once more. This time my toe caught in the hem of my hastily sewn gown and I catapulted into the footlights. Everyone laughed: in the second row my father roared and slapped his thigh, mother put out a restraining hand, and I burst into tears.
The voraciousness of my reading is a subject for another assay into belles lettres, but when we were going to do a marvelous pageant for book week, I was chosen to be Robinson Crusoe, the only person to have his work done by Friday. I went home with big plans for my wonderful costume. Above all, I wanted a fur hat. My incredible mother was finally driven to sacrificing her fairly old but still being worn winter coat to this project. The tan material was shaped into trousers that had long varying length strips hanging from my knees to my ankles, the jacket also fringed and frayed, but above them both, the fur collar became a wondrous fur hat. This was a work of days. The pageant was held in the afternoon, during our regular auditorium class. Only our mothers were invited to attend. Everyone assembled backstage in the order that we were to come out on stage. There was Mother Goose, Old King Cole with a paper crown, Alice carrying a stuffed white rabbit, Jack, carrying a bowl from which he lifted handfuls of dried beans, Hiawatha with a feather in his hair, Robin Hood with a green paper cap and something that looked like a bow and arrow, Johnny Appleseed with several apples and apple cores, John Greenleaf Whittier's Barefoot Boy with Cheek of Tan, in a torn straw hat, and in every case, these children had assembled their own costumes, as directed by our teacher, from paper and items readily at hand. With the exception of Meggie Lindquist, resplendent as Robinson Crusoe, in her mother's everyday winter coat. Remember, we're talking of the winter of 1931.
Something always seemed to go wrong when I went on stage. In one
production I had a minor role as blind Bess, the old family retainer. The
part required me to come into the presence of the master of the plantation
as he sat with his head in his hands, harassed by thoughts of the impending
loss of his land, goods and chattels. As blind old Bess I had an idea that
might help him. I was to come in and say, "It is I, Master John." (Surely
no old slave ever said, "It is I.") He was to mutter, "Find a chair, Bess,
find a chair." At every rehearsal I counted the steps it took to get to
the proper position, so on opening night, in the interests of realism, I
kept my eyes closed, the better to simulate blindness. I walked,
hesitantly, yet purposefully, the required eleven steps.
"It is I, Master John."
"Find a chair, Bess, find a chair."
I reached back, tentatively, with my left hand, for the arm of the chair. The chair wasn't there. I realized, for the first time, that eleven sightless steps can carry an earnest thespian in almost any direction. I moved my hand behind me like a sheep's tail and finally had to turn around and open my eyes to look for the chair. I was a good three feet away from it! So I walked over and sat down, matter-of-factly, to a burst of flattering applause -- doubtless for my wholly miraculous recovery from total blindness.
One of my earliest efforts was to be manager of a marionette show at a time when all grades in the school were concerned with a unit on Communication and Transportation. As writer as well as manager for the production, I wanted a mammoth pageant that would depict the steady and inexorable march of man from prehistoric times to the twentieth century. Cave men were to do a dance, replete with guttural snorts, in a scene littered with stone axes and carts with huge stone wheels. The carts fitted in with the communication and transportation motif all right and I told everyone that the stone axes did too: if properly used they communicated definite messages to one's enemies and transported their souls to the happy hunting grounds. This scene was to be followed by others that would depict the use of sails on boats, the invention of the printing press, the stage coach, the telephone and finally the airplane.
Even though we had only eight marionettes I envisioned the production, somehow, in the style of Cecil B. De Mille. Since all eight were to be used in each tableau, I could see that we had to have plenty of costumes and that they would have to be changed speedily. I brought in mother's scrap bag and sewing basket and put my cohorts to work. It soon became evident that changing costumes on the marionettes was going to be difficult, so, like Alexander of old, I severed THAT knot by cutting off the strings wherever they interfered.
About a week before the gala performance something prompted our auditorium teacher to check on the activity in the workroom, rather than just checking with me on our progress. I guess it was a good thing, because I had just finished cutting off the large lead feet on the marionettes when I found that it was impossible to pull on the knee breeches over those large appendages that we were using in the stagecoach scene. Of course, we weren't going to operate the puppets -- that was up to another group which had been practicing faithfully with a set of weighted figures. The teacher made me pack up the puppets and she had them sent to the Board of Education repair shops.
Time was now pretty short and we hadn't yet made the scenery. I'm sure that was why it occurred to me to make it a shadow play so that we could just cut out cardboard forms and hold them near a large sheet of translucent paper mounted on a frame. Two of the remaining puppets were soldier figures with tin hats and gradually the production came to be a play about World War I. I don't know what happened to the original communication and transportation theme.
We made a fine cannon and when it was shot we would snap a forefinger against the bottom of a can of talcum powder. When viewed from the audience side of the screen, this device made a realistic puff of smoke so we used it early and often throughout the entire play; we were very proud of our smoke effect. I felt some of the action was wooden and lacked warmth, so with an author's privilege I interpolated a bar scene to show the strain of war. The scene was tremendously popular with the cast: the boys drank copious quantities of champagne from cut out ladies slippers and staggered towards and away from the translucent screen with raucous abandon. I learned later that this sequence disturbed some of the parents who protested to the P.T.A. and that it brought down the wrath of the principal on the auditorium teacher for not having edited the production. The principal pointed out further, and with some heat, that the project had no relation, direct or indirect, to communication or transportation. I guess he had us there.
As far as I can remember, every class got into dramatics in some way, especially music class. We did cantatas and operettas probably every year. They always had a theme that tied in with whatever we were doing in geography, history, literature, gym and everything else. In about the seventh grade we presented an operetta with a Chinese flavor, in which, in view of past performances, I had been relegated to the minor role of one of a chorus of maidens. Our teacher sent home the pattern for our costumes; mother made mine in the recommended colors but added some gilt ribbon, left over from Christmas, to brighten the general effect. When I discovered that I looked different, even if better, than the others, my feeling of being an outcast was intensified and letting me stand behind the others only helped slightly. Remember, I was three inches taller than any of the others and my red and black pajamas were decked with glittering gold ribbon! I had no trouble seeing over their heads, and they did need my loud voice and good memory in the songs. On the night of the first performance the teacher directed that I take a position at the end of the line near the footlights where my height would be more in balance (I think I was supposed to balance a pagoda on the other side of the stage) and where I could glitter more effectively. While the principals sang their solos I began to wonder where mother and father were sitting so I looked out into the audience. The footlights made vision difficult so I stepped nearer and leaned out over them. In spite of the laughter, which I never for a moment connected with my actions, I endeavored to locate my family. Then I felt someone pull on my sleeve. Jerked back to the make-believe world I assumed I had been called on for the next number, "Whistle for the Wind" and burst a cappella into song. We moved away from the neighborhood shortly afterward and that's probably just as well.
An incredible shyness descended upon me when I transferred to the new school and I never participated in theatrical activities until I was engaged, early in World War II. Bill was in the navy, stationed in Detroit, in the medical corps. Among other sailors, he was recruited as a "super" by a touring opera company which was playing Detroit that week. The director, a voluble little Austrian, needed men badly, but not girls. Nevertheless, he accepted me, with misgivings, since Bill said we were a package deal. Just before the performance of "Carmen" he briefed us in the wings, and it was a good thing he did. "In opera, efery time you do anysing wrong you valk on ze grave of ze poet," he cautioned us. Just then he caught sight of my wrist watch and blew his top.
As one of the factory girls in "Carmen" I smoked a cigarette while walking around on the stage, and learned, at the same time, quite a lot about the mechanics of an operatic performance. "Supers" are obviously there to give the effect of a crowd on stage even though the singing chorus itself is quite small. One would think that absolute quiet would be required, but it isn't. At least in our company the chorus talked to each other and hissed at the supers to stay at the back of the stage, and the director practically shouted his instructions from the wings, even during the arias. It was an interesting experience but I was constantly being pushed back by the chorus because I kept wandering downstage to see the principals.
Bill created something of a diversion, too. He was a soldier in the last act and to create the illusion of crowds entering the bull ring had to carry a pike over his shoulder and after passing through the gate ran behind the scenery to again come on stage and enter once again into the bull ring. They gave him black sandals that were too short for his feet, and with his heels and toes hanging over the ends of the sandals, he suffered acutely while walking. By the time he had marched across the stage five times and then ran behind the scenery to enter the bull ring for the sixth time he had blisters on his feet and was using the pike as a cane. The "supers" applauded his sixth entrance, exasperating the last wisp of the director's waning patience.
The following evening we appeared in "Faust" and we discovered that once again my height made a quirk in fate. When I climbed into one of the dresses designated for the village folk, about six inches of leg was evident below the skirt hem. Bill and I came upstairs together, face to face with the director. "Himmel" he cried. "you two again!" Then he scratched his head, closed his eyes, prayed for strength and came up with the suggestion that I walk like a demimonde around the village scene to be in keeping with the fit and length of my costume.
During the performance, as I mingled with the villagers, Bill started leering at me as I sidled around with as sensuous grace as I could muster. Then the other men among the supers got into the game, left the ladies they had been walking with and followed me about. That was bad enough but the payoff came when one stopped and offered me a cigarette. I had smoked cigarettes on stage in "Carmen" -- why not in "Faust"? At this point the director came right out on stage -- in modern dress and all -- and led me off, shaking his head and muttering, "On ze grave of ze poet!"
They told me afterward that Detroit laughed uproariously at the antics of the supers and hadn't bothered to listen to the score at all. Later, backstage, Bill said, with a wicked leer, "Well, my good girl, you surely trod on the bard that time."
Supers are paid with two free tickets for each performance in which they appear. These can be used for operas in which they are not needed. Bill and I were paid off that night and assured that our services would not be needed for the remainder of the run. The eight tickets we received enabled us to make up an impressive "Night At The Opera" party among our friends.
Just the same, though, I'd like to act again. Do you know of a good part?