Chapter Thirty Four
I packed everything I was going to keep in ten boxes a friend said he’d stash for a few months. I packed two duffel bags, a flight bag and a briefcase with the stuff I wanted to take with me and boarded a flight on my way to become a great and famous actor on the Great White Way.
I spent my first night in Manhattan at the YMCA across from Central Park. Riding up in the elevator I met a who man was good friends with one of the directors at Zach Scott: Mavourneen Dwyer, who had just directed me in Bedroom Farce by Allen Aykbourne. Small world, indeed.
The next day I moved into the Times Square Motor Hotel on 43rd street, half a block from Broadway and Times Square.
This hotel is where they found the severed head of a prostitute lying comfortably on a pillow in one of the rooms a few years prior to my residency.
It was also one of the repositories the state of New York used to house mental patients during an austerity program designed to reduce the cost to the state of taking care of them on a daily basis in hospitals and sanitariums.
Seems it was cheaper to medicate them and put them up in hotels.
Some were even forced into billeting at the Waldorf Astoria.
During the day the lobby of my hotel was cluttered with zombies radically drugged into submission and casually strolling about with vacant looks in their eyes. Some sat in groups and reminisced about whatever came to mind, not necessarily to anyone in particular.
At night some of them dressed up in fresh robes, pj’s and nightgowns and repeated their daytime recreation. There was a lot of checking in at various points of interest: the front desk, the newsstand, the elevators, the revolving doors, the window to the little grocery shop next door, and any vacant chair or bench space.
I’d moved into the Beverly Hills Sanitarium’s east coast branch!
The switchboard operator didn't speak much, if any, English which irked me no end.
Too many times when I’d touch base with potential clients I'd learn they'd called and been told I didn't live there; that there was no such room number as 1467.
I got into an heated argument with one and finally told her I was calling from that room. She didn't care. She just said "No EEnglishhh!" and hung up.
Lesson: Official people must have official rooms.
For a Southerner this was an entirely different land. It seemed on one level to be an incredibly hostile place.
I learned from casual conversation: “Always carry twenty dollars...mugging tax. Junkies'll kill or maim ya if you don't have enough for them to get a fix”.
A solid looking briefcase was an excellent deterrent.
Always look like you have a place to be and a place to go and you'll generally be left alone on the streets.
Check all elevators before you get on them for unsavory types.
This latter custom was demonstrated to me by an attractive woman on the 8th floor of a Madison Avenue Advertising Agency's building.
When the elevator door opened she leaned over from the middle of the lobby and looked into the car. Inside was what appeared to be a delivery person -the kind that rode those sturdy bicycles around town. He was seedier looking than her standard of seediness allowed, evidently, because she just stood her ground and let the car go on without her.
"It's that bad, is it?" I asked.
"You can get raped between floors in this town. I never get on with anyone I don't feel comfortable with. It's not worth it", she cautioned.
She'd seen me in the offices of her agency and obviously felt comfortable enough with me to share the next car.
All my life my height and size have played major roles in keeping me out of trouble.
Strangers have walked up to me on the street and told me they'd hate to get caught in a dark alley with me!
What motivates a person to walk up to a complete stranger and say something like that?
Hell, to me, most of them looked a little frightening in their own right, too.
I'd certainly not want to be in a dark alley with anyone who didn't want to be there with me. But why make a point of telling me about it?
Not long after the young woman had warned me about strange elevator companions I found myself on board one at my hotel with a young man in his twenties who began opening and closing a hunter's pocket knife with a blade a good four to five illegal inches long.
He'd mutter something and snap the blade open, mutter something again and snap it shut.
He kept doing this over and over as our snail driven hydraulic lift moped unsteadily upward.
Finally, I understood what he was muttering: "I'm gonna cut somebody!" Snap. "I'm gonna cut somebody!" Snap.
Fortunately, I was still a nobody, so I felt a bit safe; however I thought a little judicious friend-making might be in order.
"What happened? You get mugged?"I asked with genuine concern.
"Somebody ripped me off for eighteen hundred bucks, man; and if I catch who did it I'm gonna cut the son of a bitch!" he told me.
"Wow! $1,800. Man I don't think I've ever seen that much money at one time in my life”, said the idiot who’d once bought a Lincoln Continental for cash. “What happened?"
I was hoping he was getting off the elevator on a floor below mine, which happened to be the top one.
"Somebody broke into my room and took it, man. And if I find out who did it, I'm gonna cut him. I already cut myself I was so pissed off”, he said as he pulled his pant leg up to reveal a bright red slash mark running a good seven inches up his calf. It was healing...slowly.
And all by itself, too, without any meddling doctor having looked at it.
"Why'd you do that, man? Didn't it hurt?" I asked.
He shot me a look that almost froze the adrenaline coursing through my veins and said with a frown, "Hell, yes it hurt! It hurt like hell! But it didn't hurt half as much as that son of a bitch is gonna hurt if I catch whoever took my money. I'm gonna cut that son of a bitch!"
Mercifully he noticed where we were and got off at the next floor. The door opened and he shot me a friendly, "See ya 'round!" over his shoulder as he limped out, still snapping his knife blade.
He seemed friendly enough.
Lesson: The concept of friendly is different in New York.
Maybe they smile broadly as they disembowel you and wish you "have a nice day".
Maybe the "I (heart) New York" campaign is more graphic than it appears. Maybe it's the organ of choice amongst the city's mug-force.
The first week I was in town I took my voice demo tapes around to many of the ad agencies up and down fabled Madison Avenue. When I started running out of the batch I'd made up before leaving Austin I decided to leave some at recording studios and talking with the engineers there.
It’s not uncommon for a client to ask a trusted engineer to recommend a new voice to them. It was worth a shot.
I'd been in town eight days when I got a call from one of those studios.
The regular announcer for Two Guys Department Stores was on a train somewhere in Illinois and they needed to get some spots cut right away, would I be interested and was I available right away?
I lived only two blocks from the studio and hustled my hungry buns right over. I cut a couple of radio and a couple TV voiceovers for them.
I was in New York. I was working. I was earning money. And I'd started doing it in 8 days. Not bad. Not bad at all.
That night I had an audition for what was billed as a new musical melodrama. I was one happy camper at that point.
The audition was at a place called the Storefront Blitz, named after it's owner Rusty Blitz. Rusty's claim to fame was his portrayal of a gravedigger in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.
He was also in a print ad campaign for Benson & Hedges cigarettes. The campaign featured situations where the length of the cigarette just didn't, physically, fit in the activity at hand. His ad was a barber (Blitz) holding a hand mirror for the smoking customer to check the back of his new haircut and the cigarette was too long to fit between the customer's mouth and the mirror, bending the end of the cigarette upwards a bit.
In case anyone had missed seeing it when it ran, Rusty had about 20 copies of it plastered around the theatre.
A motley crew of auditioners was on hand in this tiny off-off Broadway showcase theatre with a total seating capacity of 30 maximum. We were paired and grouped and read from a photocopied Curse You, Jack Dalton! script. There weren't enough copies to go around for some scenes and people had to share the sides (scripts). It made for some interesting acting choices.
I felt confident I'd get something in this one since I'd had so much melodrama experience in Austin, and I was right. I was cast as the villain.
J David Moeller As Dexter Dernbad in "Egad! You Cad!" Off-Off Broadway
First rehearsal was the next afternoon and we all arrived about the same time.
The first thing Rusty did was ask if we'd all brought our scripts from yesterday. We glanced at each other bewilderedly.
No one had taken the sides home since no one knew they'd been cast.
Rusty suddenly noticed the sides lying where they were the day before and passed them out telling us we could begin working with these.
More puzzled looks shot back and forth: this was Curse You, Jack Dalton!, a published script...not a "new musical melodrama" as advertised.
We were confused, but Rusty wanted to hear us again; and, since this was all we had to work with at the moment, he explained, it would have to do.
For about an hour we "worked" the severely truncated two scenes that didn’t include all the characters on hand. He just had us all read from the parts that were available.
"That's enough rehearsal for now", Rusty told us. "Now don't forget to get your own scripts and to have them by rehearsal tomorrow."
I asked where we were going to get them, since this was a new musical. He told us we'd have to go to Samuel French and buy them, naturally.
"We have to buy the scripts? I thought it was new", I said.
"It will be, but we need to start work right away on it because we open two weeks!" Rusty blitzed us with.
"Two weeks?" we all chimed.
There was something weird going on here.
Rusty decided I would go to Samuel French (the play publishers) and buy as many copies as I could of the Jack Dalton script, an old melodrama that had dropped into the public domain –but this version was still under copyright to Samuel French.
That didn't seem to bother Rusty.
The next day at I could only buy two copies and was chewed out when I came in for not photocopying them for the rest of the cast. I told him I wasn't too sure where all this money I was spending was coming from and he promised to reimburse me.
It took a couple of weeks.
When we finally had our scripts Rusty sat us down and had us change the names of all the characters.
"Now, what are we going to call it?" he asked no one in particular. "I know", he answered himself, "Let's call it Egad! You Cad!”
What's that you say? Wasn't it supposed to be a musical, too? No problem at all: "Just keep rehearsing and it'll all become clear", we were told.
During one rehearsal, at a point in a scene between the hero and the heroine, Rusty jumped out of his chair like a rocket and stopped the action.
His directing style became a constant source of amusement: "Ok. Ok. Ok. Here. This is it. Now I’m going to give you the line. Ok. Get ready. Here it is. Jack! No! Sally! Yes, Sally! Sally, you say right here...are your ready? I'm giving you your line now. Here it is. Right here after you say whatever you just said, you say this. Ok. You say...'Oh! Jack! Isn't that a Charleston I hear?' That's it. Ok. Say it. Let's hear it. 'Oh! Jack! Isn't that a Charleston I hear?'", he blurted without stopping for air.
Our heroine was dumbstruck and said "Ohjackisn'tthatacharlestonihear?" and just looked at the rest of us.
We were in stitches. What was this man doing?
"Great! Can you remember that? Let's hear it again. Go ahead. Let's hear it", he prodded.
She said it with a little more feeling this time much to Rusty's glee. Then he got all excited again and went into his routine for Jack: "Ok! Ok! Ok! Jack! Now here's your line. Are you ready? When Sally says the Charleston line I just gave her I want you to say... Are you ready? Here's your line. Your line...you say it right now, right after Sally...your line is: 'I think it is, Sally. Do you want to dance?' Ok! That's the line. Do you have it. 'I think it is, Sally. Do you want to dance?' Got it? Let's take it from Sally's line and then you say your line Jack. Ok! And... Sally! Go!"
Like a trained seal Sally said her line and like a genius Jack responded. The fact that no one had any idea what was going on never entered ol' Rusty's mind.
So, I took up the challenge, "Uhh. What are we going to do for music?"
"Don't worry. We'll have music." Rusty assured us.
If the experience of getting the scripts was any indication of “getting the music” I knew we were in for a treat.
After giving the line, Rusty then went on to "choreograph" the dance.
"Ok. Ok. Now. I’m going to give you your choreography. Are you ready? Ok. Ok. Ok. Does anyone know how to Charleston?" he asked the group.
Between gasps for air during her laughter, one of the ladies answered she knew the basic step of kicking back and forth and one of the other men said he could do the hands-on-the-knees¬ crossover-thing.
"Ok. Ok. Great. Come up here and show them how to do it. Ok. Great. Great. Ok. Now, here’s your choreography. Are you ready. Go ahead. Show them", he said.
The stage at Storefront Blitz was, maybe, 10 feet across and about 7 feet deep. There was no curtain. When you were on stage you were in the front row’s laps. Now here are four people on the stage trying to learn/teach the basic DA-TA, DA-TA, DA DA DE DA DA TA step. It was certain neither Jack nor Sally were going to put any Broadway Gypsies out of work this season but they picked it up right away.
"Ok. Ok. Now we got the choreography done. That's Great. Ok. Ok." went a happy Rusty all full of himself.
If he'd been dead, yet, Bob Fosse would've been spinning in his grave.
The rest of us just rolled our hysterical eyes heavenward and hoped for the best.
But wait, there’s more!
Two days later Rusty asked if anyone had a recording of the Charleston music. A lot of head scratching finally revealed that a friend of one of the cast members had a pretty substantial collection of oldies and the Charleston might be among them. She was put in charge of getting a copy of the record.
Then he asked if anyone had a tape recorder!
The best we could do was an old portable cassette player about the size and shape of a shoebox. Absolutely no sound quality to speak of, but it worked.
"Ok! Ok! Great! Can we use it? Ok! Great. Can you bring it down so we can use it? Say! I've got an idea!" Rusty loved to speak with exclamation points popping out of his mouth.
"You'll like this. It's so easy. Ok! Why don't you two get together and record the Charleston music on the recorder? Can you do that? Ok! Ok! Do that tomorrow before you come in for rehearsal. Ok? Great!"
He was such an organized director.
The next day, at great hassle to those involved due to separate schedule conflicts and such, the music was added to the program and we were “a musical melodrama”, as advertised!
We rehearsed our parts and, somehow, were ready for opening night.
Flyers and mailers had been drawn up and distributed to try to get casting directors and agents in to see the show, not to mention a few paying customers. It was sanctioned by Actor’s Equity as an Off-Off Broadway Showcase Production. We were paid a buck fifty per show.
Lesson: Hitting the big time, sometimes isn’t.
I made a point of plastering a batch of my allotted flyers all up and down Broadway. At that point I figured it might be the only chance to have my name on the Great White Way.
Dalton was the second show on the bill at Storefront Blitz. The first was an original musical review troupe that had rented the theatre for their run. They played to packed houses every night.
Our curtain time was 10 pm. On opening night we were ready...but no one was really ready in the sense that we all wondered what the hell we were doing and why were we doing it. But this was New York and we were performing Off Off Broadway!
There's no back stage at the Blitz. Off stage was to the left of the aisle. The audience was to the right.
The cast made its entrances and exits down a couple of steps from the stage and we took our seats across from the audience, quietly.
Rusty situated himself behind some unsuspecting couple or group and whenever someone -anyone- made an exit he would stand and applaud and nudge the people in front of him with his elbow to join in the enthusiasm.
"Weren't they great? They're great!" he'd nudge while applauding loudly. Never mind we never had more than 15 people in the audience during the entire run and most of the time we played to about 8 or 10, meaning that when Rusty gave us a standing ovation it meant about 10 percent of the audience was on it's feet and it was him!
When we came to the scene we’d rehearsed and choreographed so well, Rusty would stand up, walk across the aisle to the dinky little tape recorder sitting on top of a piano at the front of the house, and, ceremoniously with one finger, thus pulling all focus from the stage to himself, push the play button.
Fortunately, more times than not the tape was cued to the right spot and the music would start and Sally would ask if Jack could hear it and he, in turn, would ask her to dance. She would accept and they would do a few kicks to the front, a few kicks to the rear, a few knee crossovers things, a few more kicks here and there and then Rusty would turn off the tape recorder with the same ceremony he had started it with and go sit down again behind a now highly schitzy couple wary of his every move.
Thus, we were a musical!
The play would continue to it's happy ending and we would proudly accept our thunderous reward from an audience we were sure were applauding more for the fact it was over and they would be escaping Rusty’s enthusiasm than for what they had just seen.
Lesson: Everyone needs a New York story.
They play three card monte on the streets of Manhattan.
There's usually a game going somewhere up and down 7th Avenue (Broadway), aka the Avenue of the Americas.
The only ones I saw were always run by young cleanly dressed black men. Their playing surface was an upturned wire trash receptacle topped off with the bottom of a cardboard box lined with newspaper.
The object is to "find the lady". The dealer has three cards which he manipulates with lightening speed throwing them in a criss-crossing pattern face down onto the playing surface. He throws them down and exposes the queen to show she's there. The other cards are numbers so as not to confuse. Then he does it again and the play begins.
The dealer will throw down and pick up the cards several times trying to get someone interested in betting that they can find the lady card, which he exposes liberally for all to see during his warm-up. If things are slow a confederate will make a small bet and win with ease. He might even win a second time. A mark (read that "sucker") might join in the fun and place a bet. He, too, might win the first time or two. Then he'll lose, and while the dealer's attention is focused elsewhere for a moment the confederate will let the mark see that he's identifying the queen by bending down the corner a little bit, so it shows. All the mark has to do now is bet big and they'll split the winnings.
The dealer refocuses his attention to the matters at hand and begins his routine.
A tidy sum is floating on the outcome. The mark's eyes never leave the bent card. The dealer’s hands flash back and forth, swooping and diving, showing the lady and dropping her on the surface. The money's down. The mark confidently makes his choice and turns over a number card with a bent corner!
Before you can say "Coney Island" the sucker either realizes he's been had and gets his butt on down the road or he actually thinks he can beat this guy at his own game and ups the ante.
He never wins again.
I used to try to watch these games being played but my size and height and look always got in the way.
I look like a cop.
It's cold in New York and I wore a pea coat almost everywhere I went. I'd hang back from the game so as not to get in anyone's way and just watch.
But, not only are there a dealer and a confederate, there are also watchers who roam the perimeter keeping a look-out for the cops. A big man with short hair and a handlebar mustache wearing a navy pea coat lurking against a building watching the action "looks" exactly like a cop.
A prearranged signal would bring the quickest reaction possible: the dealer would flip the bottom of the cardboard playing surface, kick the trashcan over and everybody'd walk off in different directions leaving the trash, three playing cards, and some bewildered faces in their wake.
Somehow the money never got tossed.
I lived on the fourteenth floor of my hotel. Sound carries in Manhattan and what might be blocks away sounds as if it's right in the room with you on a good night.
One night I was awakened from a sound sleep by the sound of running footsteps and a bloodcurdling scream followed by a couple of gunshots.
This was not the old Gangbusters! on the radio, it was New York at night: Live and up close! Too close.
I don't like listening to someone's life coming to an end.
My second week in town I got a call from National Studios -the same place they used in the movie Tootsie as the studio for her/his soap opera- to come in for a session with Kane Floorcoverings.
I narrated a sales video and some radio commercials for distribution around the country and made enough money to last me a couple more weeks.
But I didn't know what I was going to do after that was gone. In the end I had enough money for one more week's rent at the home of the Headless Hooker or a one way flight to Dallas.
I weighed my choices: stay in New York and not get any more work and be kicked out onto the streets, go back to Texas where I had friends and would at least be able to bum a meal and a place to flop.
Of course there was also the possibility that I could stay in New York, eat lots of greasy foods and rent myself out as a human popcorn butterer.
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