The rehearsal pianist sat ready to play the traditional "Bye Bye Blues" forty times. We would each step forward and give our name and our credits. We broke until two-fifteen-lunch if we wanted it. By one-thirty, we were down to forty girls and I was still there. Five or six from each group were sent to the dressing room to put on rehearsal clothes.
TRABAJOS DE BUSBOY EN NEW YORK FULL
We made a full turn in place as instructed, and then waited to be chosen. When my group lined up onstage, I was still blushing. When I happened to catch his eye, he grinned at me again. I felt the blush begin in the pit of my stomach. And he was my "busboy"-the one I had told that I was a very good dancer. The combination of sensitive Irish face and slim muscular body was spectacular enough, but he was also the only one at that table who looked at us as individuals. He seemed to be balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to spring like a cat. The stage manager introduced them: "the director, John Murray Anderson" (white-haired, tough, and sharp-looking) "our designer, Raoul Pene du Bois" (a tall, refined, and delicate man) "Billy Rose himself" (short, with slick black hair, his stubby body encased in a very expensive suit with matching silk polka-dot tie and pocket handkerchief-Rose radiated energy and power, which made him attractive) and then "Gene Kelly, our choreographer." He was wearing an open-necked white shirt, a dark long-sleeved sweater, dark trousers, and moccasins. There was a work light on the stage, an upright piano and a trestle table with five chairs, a thermos of coffee, pitchers of water, ashtrays, pads, and pencils. The stage manager and four assistants corralled us into groups of twenty. The scene the next day was entirely different.
"Very," I said, turned on my heel and left. "Thank you," I said, as if to an underling. Today's the ninth." He was still grinning. "Even so," he grinned at me, "it's tomorrow." He's fresh, I thought, as I fished in my pocketbook and took out the card. "Yes-but I think you'll find it's tomorrow." He seemed to be repositioning some of the tables and chairs. I took him for another bellboy or busboy. There was no one there except a young man. Tables for about four hundred people surrounded the runway. The inside of the horseshoe was lowered between shows to become the dance floor. At the far end was the proscenium stage, with a horseshoe-shaped runway coming out of it. Near the entrance across the whole width of the room was a Gay Nineties-type bar, brass railed and mirrored. Down the stairs I went into another world.
After all, I'd had a postcard addressed to me personally from Billy Rose himself, inviting me to this call for dancers. That day I felt completely sure of myself.
TRABAJOS DE BUSBOY EN NEW YORK MOVIE
Or would I be a movie star-Ginger Rogers, Margaret Sullavan, Greta Garbo? No, not Garbo-I was from New Jersey. Someday I would be a great actress, Eleanora Duse, Katherine Cornell, Helen Hayes. I had no strategy, no plan for my life beyond this audition and college in the fall. I was all dressed up in a lavender four-gore flared skirt made by my mother, a polka-dot blouse, a hand-me-down fingertip-length gray-squirrel coat, a pillbox hat with violets, and my one pair 4of high heels. I had been sixteen years old for three weeks.
A busboy showed me the staircase down to the nightclub. The lobby, with its coffee shop, newspaper kiosk, shoe shine stand, and a cashiers' cage, was a bit dingy. Ican't claim it was love at first sight-not even from my side.īilly Rose's nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe, was in the basement of the Edison Hotel in New York, on Forty-seventh Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.
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