Excerpts from
SWING GIRL
© 2003,
Denise Garon Miller
FROM THE
EARLY CHAPTERS – First Arrival
in
Union
Pacific coach, March, 1948…
I
was on a high-wire, alone with no net. “Clickity clack, don’t look back,”
whispered the metal wheels for six dismal hours. I stared out blankly over
miles of nothing until darkness came and it got worse. The darkness made the
window a mirror, and I got to watch myself weep silently all over my blouse.
Like a tiny beacon of hope a red light
suddenly flashed in the distance. “That’s the Flamingo Hotel,” someone said.
That one little light in the middle of NOTHIING? And then it took another
interminable fifteen minutes for the engine to drag us through the darkness
into the station. Lights at last! An
unimpressive two stories tall, downtown did have a lot of lights.
I gathered my gear, lurched toward the
vestibule, and stood on the cool and windy open platform. By a pretty stucco
depot at the end of Fremont Street I jumped off the train and hailed one of the
waiting taxis. The driver claimed and stowed my bags, little knowing that
getting to the Flamingo Hotel was going to take the last of my money leaving a
very small tip for him. By dint of
thrift and self denial (two qualities with which I was becoming familiar) 1
hoped to run up a modest grub stake … to save enough to survive a successful
job hunt. Meanwhile, I would need a
salary advance to buy dinner.
Moving away from the casinos of Fremont
Street, we passed the black store fronts and vacant lots of Main Street. Just
outside of town we came to a brightly lit sprawling hotel: El Rancho Vegas.
Across the road was a tiny building: Bingo Club. Another mile of desert and we
passed the Last Frontier Hotel. This hotel looked even more like a motel, with
a swimming pool built right up against the gravel shoulders of the two lane
blacktop highway. After Maggie’s Pantry Restaurant, the Red Rooster, (a big red
barn), and a few small motels, we pulled up to the glass doors of the long,
modern Flamingo Hotel. At nine o’clock the tiny parking lot in front was full.
I followed the cab driver through the glass
doors, and gave him the last of my money. In carpet up to my ankles, I looked
around at big glass chandeliers, and red modern furniture. The lights seemed
too bright; glass, leather, metal sparkled. The music seemed too loud. Like a child, helpless in an adult world, I
clung to my smallest suitcase, and the brief future I had been offered. In my flat shoes, long coat, and head scarf,
I felt like Little Orphan Annie, but without her composure.
I stepped up to the front desk, and told
the clerk that I had come to join the new chorus line from Chicago. He said
that my group hadn’t arrived yet, but he could give me a room in the barracks
where the dancers lived. The Bell Captain picked up my bags and led the way. As
we walked around the lighted pool he pointed out Bugsy Siegel’s “penthouse” A
penthouse on top of a two story building? How quaint! But, if the penthouse
wasn’t much of a penthouse, the barracks were, every inch, barracks. A gray
wood frame building had been divided into tiny bedrooms and one big bathroom.
Bell Captain, Pete, explained that no men
were allowed in this building, but he could enter with me now because the
dancers were all on stage. He dropped my bags inside one of the rooms, and I
stared at classic dismal: one window with a dirty shade, two beds without
spreads, a dresser, a clothes rack, and everything lit by a dim bulb hanging
from the ceiling. When he said I could get a free meal in the Help’s Hall, I
followed him back to the kitchen in the main building.
The Help’s Hall waiter, Alan LeWinter,
brought me a plate of chop suey and a pot of tea. Then, seeing my obvious
loneliness, he said that if I heard girls moving around in the barracks after
dinner I should knock on the door. They were good kids, he said. I was usually
shy, but they were, after all, dancers.
So when I had finished my free dinner and
got back to the barracks, I timidly knocked on the door where I could hear
movement. The girl who answered was wearing bikini underpants, fishnet
stockings, and make-up. I had found my people. Barbara was young with a warm,
friendly smile. She said I should stay with her until she had to leave for the
second show, and while she packed her wardrobe trunk we talked about our
previous jobs. Then Barbara explained to me that mixing here was different from
back East. It seemed, according to Barbara, I had landed in Paradise. Here men
gave you chips to stand and gamble beside them, and since they were busy
gambling themselves, they never knew how many chips you slipped into your
pocket. How, urn, opportune! Now too depressed even to be curious about the
show room or seeing Barbara’s show, I returned to my cell when she left. I
looked at the bare wells, turned out the bare bulb, and crawled into bed. God,
I prayed, where have you led me? Is this some kind of test? I cried
myself to sleep.
In the middle of the night my door flew
open and a young voice cried out, “Here she is!” “Hi,” she said, “I’m Sandy, and
now you don’t have to be lonesome any more.” My Line had arrived.
The Line had rehearsed in Chicago with the
swing girl, Julie, doing my part, and now we had one day for her to teach me
the routines. We worked all day and night Monday on the elevated stage while
the room was “dark” that is, not open for business…no show. We did pretty
simple tap and character numbers, but six inch heels made them look more
impressive. After rehearsal I had to fit and mend my well-worn costumes.
Wardrobe ladies were not in the budget for most night clubs. Dancing teachers
had never mentioned that dancers might often be required to sew, and it was
just luck that I had taken a course in high school. And bend, stretch, kick;
and stitch, cut ... shave your legs.. .my
God! It’s opening night!
In an agony of jitters I felt my hair come
out of the pin curls still damp. My eyebrow pencil broke. I did the routines
over in my head until, suddenly, my mind went blank. When someone whistled in
the dressing room, she was thrust into the hall to turn around three times,
spit, and swear to remove the curse. Everything was right on course. The
opening blast of music made my breathing deep and slow, and my muscles tense. Five, six, seven, eight … I stepped into
that warm bath of colored lights and smiled. I was doing what I felt born to
do. I was dancing, and I couldn’t
remember why I had ever stopped.
On our fourth night I was having a coke at
the bar in the casino lounge when a man walked up and said, “How old are you?”
“What business is that of yours?” I
answered in typical Chicago tough fashion.
“It’s my business because I’m the bar
manager” said Jack Brannon, “and you don’t look twenty-one to me.” Oops. As it
turned out, Miss Marlowe had not known that you had to be twenty-one years old
to be allowed in a bar or casino in Nevada, not eighteen like in Chicago. Five
of our eight girl troupe were under the legal age, and could not sit down or
stop near the bar, or casino games. No mixing! Miss Lewis, the Flamingo
producer, said that we must dress up between shows anyway, and walk around and
“be seen.” And so, like pantomime ballyhoo we walked around, and around, and
around.
Compelled to be high-heeled atmosphere by
night, we were tennis shoed explorers of a rural town by day, living in jeans
and western shirts. Right after opening, the whole Line left the dreary
barracks, and chose roommates in a kitchenette motel. (Toast and coffee,
however, seemed to be the total of our combined cooking skills.) Local
residents called out to us like old friends as we shopped. Mr. Hecht, a dress
shop owner on Fremont Street, would cut his prices almost in half for
performers. Visiting actors easily made up or joined a swimming or riding
party. I awoke one morning staring into the face of a horse. Hugh O’Brien,
looking for someone, had ridden his polo pony right into our room.
On the back of a motorcycle I learned to
love the desert. We took scenic tours with a group of young local bikers whose
names I never learned. This noisy bunch would arrive revving their engines, and
we dancers would run out tying on scarves. We roared all over the valley, and I
have never since then experienced such an exhilarating combination of speed,
wind, color, and subtle floral scent. We didn’t have to fear hitching a ride;
bike or car, you could safely accept a ride since there was almost no crime. People
locked their doors only if they were going out of town. This was almost a
typical small town. Except, I was told, the hotel owners were better than most
police forces at crime prevention.
Research tells me that all of Clark County
had about 42,000 people. It seems as though way fewer than that lived here
then. For one thing, it seemed like everybody knew your name. Enchanted by this
little community that lazed in an ocean of sand, with mountain shadows changing
colors, and a canopy of stars close enough to touch, I thought I had found
Paradise. I didn’t save money for my return to L.A., or give it much thought at
all, busy as I was exploring and all.
A week after opening I made a date with the
Bell Captain, Pete, but when I went to the Bell Desk after work, he was not
around. The Bell MAN (as I had been told to say) said that it was Pete’s night
off “We have a date,” I said, “would you call the men’s barracks, please?”
“I’ll call if you want,” he said, “but I
don’t think Pete’s there. He’s got a fiancé in the Frontier Line, and she gets
Monday nights off, too. Will I do for a substitute?” Again I had been set up.
In a split second cosmic dice rolled, and I won “The Rest of Your Life in Las
Vegas.”
- - - -
FROM MIDDLE OF BOOK: The Atom Bomb Tests
There was no surprise: Tests were announced
well in advance, even advertised like an “attraction”. We waited just before
dawn with front and back doors open so the concussion would not break our
windows. Each test felt the same: The suspense was palpable. Pretending to be
brave, we didn’t talk. Well, I was pretending. Time seemed to stop. Were all the calculations correct? What if some little thing went wrong?
First the light would come, blue-white,
blinding, apocalyptic, brighter than any daylight. We held our breath. When the shock wave came
it was with a rumbling roar, and it shook us like chuck-a-luck dice.
In a little while, in silence, a great
white cloud would rise.
In our little cottage just south of Ground
Zero we prayed.
Oh, surely our government
knew what they were doing!
- - - -
FROM NEAR THE END OF BOOK: The Young Choreographer
A new kind of dance, modem jazz, had crept
into our ranks with the various new girls. The rounded arms and pointed toes of
ballet that were natural to me, were being replaced by what I thought of as
“gymnastics.” I had barely mastered the strange head movements of Jack Cole,
when Gail hired a young choreographer to teach us a new dance, and I snapped.
With no training in the new movements, some of us old timers were hurting.
Well, some muscle on a dancer hurts all the time anyway, you get used to that…
but these new movements were a whole new type of pain.
I might have made it if this kid
choreographer hadn’t wanted us to turn to the left! Our stock in trade as a
team was the ability to spin like tops.... but to the LEFT?? And I still
might have made it if, when I asked for a cigarette break, Gail hadn’t refused
because this choreographer, Bob Fosse, was costing the producer a lot of money.
How…how…materialistic! I handed in my
notice the next night. Call me undedicated, call me old… Call
me a taxi.
. . .
MY DAUG1iTER THE DANCER
Spring,
1976 --.. By her senior year at school my daughter, Carolyn, had had
nine years of ballet training with ex-Duffy, Christina, and now took modem jazz
classes at the dance studio where professionals worked out. The work being done
on stage now was much more difficult than anything I had ever had to do. In
fact, I, personally, had never had to work as hard as girls dancing in other places.
I got by, for instance, with a fore-shortened thigh muscle that precluded doing
‘splits,’ or ‘leg mounts.’ The 25-cent classes I had taken had never included
lessons in many basic tap steps that I should have been required to do. It was
my extreme good fortune to work with groups with standards such that they never
became necessary.
Carolyn was by now fully trained, and an
inch over the five foot nine minimum dancer’s height requirement for the new
production shows. I was delighted when her teacher said that Carolyn had what
it took to dance professionally, and then took her to an audition at the MGM
Grand Hotel. I had seen her dance and been impressed. I told Carolyn that the
assistant producer at the MGM had danced with me at the Thunderbird, and she
should say hello for me. I was sure Carolyn would be hired, but she came back
to me in tears. My old pal had not even been gentle turning her down. She had
simply said, “Go get more training, you’re not good enough.”
I told Carolyn to try another hotel, but
she said it was obvious that they hired only experienced dancers. Two weeks
later at another audition, she was offered a job with a Minsky show dancing
topless in an eight girl Line for eight weeks in Boston. She came to me asking
my advice, or maybe just asking for approval. “CAN you do it?” I asked her.
“Can you dance topless in front of a lot of people?”
“As long as they’re all strangers, I can,”
she said. “1 couldn’t do it in this town around people I know.” I thought back
to the way my parents had been embarrassed to mention my career to their
families. Even with the extreme modesty of our costumes, just being on the
stage had been suspect. And yet, neither of my parents had ever tried to hold
me back. (Dad, remember, had only insisted I learn secretarial skills “in
case.”)
And now my girl was thinking of lowering
her modesty standards. I pondered: In my
days on the stage, Cynthia had threatened to quit our Line because the costume
exposed her navel. That had been the way it was. That had been a different
time, a different day, somebody else’s daughter. These were the seventies; the
bikini had been invented. We had “go-go” dancers on the bar in neighborhood
taverns, and topless showgirls in million dollar productions. When the pink
light went out and your make-up was scrubbed off…the real “you” would live as
wild or as conservative as your beliefs dictated. Your job didn’t make choices:
you did. And my daughter loved to dance. “Go do it!” I said. “When you come
back as an experienced dancer, you can work any hotel in town.”
The dancers had to lay around the
producer’s secluded pool nude every day for an hour after rehearsal to erase
bathing suit tan lines. By the middle of the second week, they were rehearsed,
tanned, and on the way. Carolyn’s letters described all the historic sites the
group was touring by day, but there were some bonus chuckles. The Minsky show
was, of course, burlesque, and Carolyn had been selected to be talking woman
for the comics. She was doing scenes I had done twenty years earlier! And also,
in Boston the chorus were not allowed to work topless. All that concern had
been for nothing!
Now when Carolyn returned as an experienced
performer, and auditioned at the Stardust for a (covered) dancer’s position in
Lido de Paris, she got the job. On opening night she came down the staircase
backstage fully bedecked for the opening number, and said hello to her dad who
was preparing to open the curtain. Ever the charmer, he grunted and turned
away. “Daddy, don’t you know me?” she asked. The regulation three pairs of
really large false eyelashes were a virtual disguise. Siegfried and Roy were
the stars of Lido de Paris, and after they had a party at their home for the
cast members, Carolyn came to tell me about the beautiful home. She said the
tiger cages were all around the pool, and she had petted a tiger until he took
her hand in his mouth. “My God!” I gasped, “What did you do?”
“I know that cats like to chase anything
that moves, so I just let my hand lay there until he got bored and spit it
out,” she said. I wondered if she were drinking too much.