Stage Door Canteen (13 page)

Dina closed her eyes. She was glad she had only married sisters and no brothers to go off to serve. When they were growing up together her cousins were little tow-headed boys who played stickball on the sidewalk outside her aunt’s apartment house and meanly defended their territory from any little girls who wanted to hang around. The Casabonos were from the north of Italy. All their offspring were very blonde until, in their teens, their hair turned dark brown. Like real wops, Dina’s Irish father, who was not popular with the Italian side of the family, said. Brown eyes, olive skin—they only have that blonde hair when they’re little.

Angie looked at Dina and held her rosary up to her lips. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.

Father Paul Victor called for a moment of silent prayer. Dina shook her head.

Every Monday night all the wives and mothers and aunts and grandmothers sent their prayers up to heaven to the Blessed Virgin to intervene with God to save the boys who had gone away to fight. That meant all the parish boys Dina and Angie had grown up with. All those faces in the rows of photographs of young men in the U.S. armed forces displayed on the bulletin board in the church vestibule. Fifty four in all.

I pray you, Blessed Mother, to preserve and keep from harm our beloved children. There were sighs all over the church.

Dina had realized years ago that there were things that an ordinary person like herself would never understand. One was that the boys from the Blessed Incarnation were going to get killed no matter how hard they all prayed. What had happened to Mrs. Livoti’s son proved that. But one had to keep praying because Father Paul Victor said the one you prayed to, Jesus’ own mother, was after all, the Lady of Perpetual Help. Everybody knew the war was to stop the Nazis and now the Japs from taking over America and the world. It had to be done, and the boys from the parish had to go to war whether they wanted to or not.

She suddenly wished she hadn’t come to the novena. It was simple enough to think about the war when it didn’t seem very real outside of Brooklyn. Which was the way it was most of the time. Father Paul Victor had preached soon after Pearl Harbor that God didn’t start wars, wars were the work of the devil and the forces of evil. Now the duty has been thrust upon America to make great sacrifices—perhaps even die—to defeat what the Devil has set loose upon the earth.

Adolf Hitler was in league with the Devil and so were the Japs, that was easy enough to understand. Things got confused, though, in the canteen dancing with the GIs and sailors and marines. Who were warm and solid and real when they put their arms around you and wanted to dance cheek-to-cheek. They hardly ever said anything about fighting Hitler and the Japs and the forces of evil. They said things like “I hope we never have another damned war like this again, I hope this ends it.”

Dina looked down at her rosary, pink crystal beads and gold, given to her by her mother on her confirmation. Everything was more dangerous these days. The Mother of Christ really had to save Vincent and Billy, and all the boys of the parish, and all the war’s soldiers and sailors. It couldn’t be that her Aunt Marie was right, that the war reached out to you even if you were not a part of it except that it was going on around you, and tried to kill you. Although she could see why her aunt could believe that.

She closed her eyes. Her poor Aunt Marie was driving herself into a nervous breakdown over Vincent and Billy, that was all. Her aunt should probably see a doctor. A lot of people cracked up in wartime because terrible things were happening. It wasn’t their fault, they really couldn’t help it.

Dina squeezed her rosary tightly between her fingers. Oh Blessed Virgin, she prayed fervently, intercede with your Holy Son Jesus, fruit of your womb, and His Father, Almighty God, to save us and protect us and my cousins Vincent Alfred and William Angelo diMeo, and all the boys in Blessed Incarnation church. She suddenly felt her prayers were choking her, right in the muscles in her throat, as though she was speaking aloud. And all the GIs and sailors and marines who come into the Stage Door Canteen—and other canteens everywhere, and fighting men all over the world. Blessed Mother Mary, intercede for them with Almighty God the Father, and his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to stop the war. With victory, she added hastily to her prayer. Bring an end to the war with victory over the Forces of Evil.

Angie prodded her. Dina jumped, startled. Then she held her hand with the rosary to cover her mouth and whispered, “What?”

Her cousin was staring. “What are you thinking about? Are you all right?”

She couldn’t tell her cousin Angie that she had been praying to the Blessed Virgin to stop the war because she, Dina, was scared. Instead she said, “I’m all right. Why?”

The congregation was saying the last Hail Mary. The novena was almost over. “Are you still seeing him?” Angie whispered. “Is that what you were thinking about? Is he still coming to the canteen?”

It was her turn to stare. “Seeing who?”

“The one you liked. You know, the Air Force guy you danced with.”

“Oh, him.” She really didn’t want to talk about Sgt. Gene Struhbeck. “He—he—keeps wanting to date me.”

They pulled up from their knees and slid back in their seats. Father Paul Victor’s assistant, Brother Anselm, read the church announcements. Confessions would he heard on Thursday nights from seven to nine p.m., a new day and time in addition to Saturday morning, to accommodate those working in war industries. Parishoners were also urged to make note of the date of the next blood donation session by the Red Cross in the church hall.

“I like his friend the navigator better,” Dina told her cousin. She tried to smile. “Tom Weathersley. I even gave him my telephone number.”

EIGHT

Richard Rodgers came into the theater after lunch. He sat midway in the rows of seats to watch Jenny, Marty Levin and Lee Dixon, the dancer who was playing the cowboy Will Parker, run through their lines.

The cast of Away We Go had grown accustomed to Rodgers’ presence in the theater. He looked, in his homburg and fur-collared Chesterfield, more like a high-powered business tycoon than the composer of some of Broadway’s most romantically beautiful music. He usually took a seat several rows behind the director, Reuben Mamoulian. Occasionally he was joined by Oscar Hammerstein. The two men they sat and whispered to each other, and the cast knew they were making changes in the show. They seemed to be getting along well together, in spite of rumors. Both had worked for years with other partners, Richard Rodgers with lyricist Teddy Hart, Oscar Hammerstein for almost as long with Jerome Kern and others. Although Ockie, as nearly everybody called him, hadn’t had a Broadway hit in ten years.

During rehearsals new material was added to the show, but some dialogue and even music was also eliminated. The cuts were particularly painful. An actor or actress could find his or her part suddenly pared down if Rodgers, particularly, decided it wasn’t working. Over the weeks the two men had developed a way of handling crises. Dick Rodgers was the self-appointed hatchet man, big, easygoing Ockie Hammerstein was the sympathetic partner. Rodgers wielded the ax, Hammerstein dispensed comfort to the wounded.

Marty Levin looked up past the footlights in time to see Rodgers take a seat in the middle rows. He said under his breath to Jenny, “Hah, I wonder who called Dick Rodgers in this time. What’s up?”

At that moment Lee Dixon came up bringing cups of coffee from the electric percolator the stagehands kept in the wings. “Three guesses, Marty. I heard all the screaming this morning when I came in. Agony Agnes shot past me like a cannonball with a bunch of her dancers, still yelling, and bolted down the stairs. I missed it, thank God, but I gather all hell had broken loose.”

They sipped the hot coffee, waiting for Reuben Mamoulian, who had been called away on an errand. The stage was warmed somewhat by a pair of electric heaters, but the empty theater radiated impenetrable cold. They were rehearsing in hats, gloves and their overcoats.

“Yesterday she had a nosebleed,” Marty Levin observed. “The screaming brings it on. Then her face breaks out in splotches. It’s very impressive.”

Jenny said, “Oh Marty, don’t make fun of her, Agnes feels she has to fight for her dances. Who can blame her after that damned Winchell broadcast? What a cheap shot, just to be funny!”

“Darling Jenny, you are such a noble soul. And God forbid I should make fun of Agnes. However, you should know right now this show is a duck in a shooting gallery, everybody is taking shots at it. After all, who wants to see chorus girls in long skirts?”

“Is that what they’re saying?” She was making notes with a pencil on the margin of her script. The director, Reuben Mamoulian, wanted a piece of business when Will grabbed her to demonstrate his cowboy version of an “Oklahoma Hello.” They still hadn’t come up with anything satisfactory.

“It’s so bad comedians are featuring this show in their acts,” Marty was saying. “Winchell’s ‘cowboys in toe shoes’ is almost a rave review. Louis Sobol had in his column this morning that Billy Rose came to a rehearsal, saw what was going on, then predicted, ‘No showgirls, no jokes—no way!’”

Lee Dixon laughed. But Jenny was horrified. “How can he say that? Billy Rose hasn’t even been to a rehearsal, has he?”

He shrugged. “Does it make any difference? It’s a good line. People will laugh. Look, Jenny dear, I love Agnes de Mille, she’s a very talented lady, but nobody is going to say that temperamentally she’s the sweet little Tooth Fairy.”

“Marty, good God, who is? This is the theater, my God, any Broadway show is full of prima donnas.”

“You are not, my darling. A prima donna, that is.” He added with a roll of his eyes, “But sweet Jenny, that may be your greatest fault. You’re too nice.”

“I missed out on what this was all about,” Lee Dixon put in. “What happened, anyway?”

Jenny said, “Reuben got Terry Helburn and Larry Langner to back him against Agnes. It was really quite awful. Agnes is banned from using the stage to rehearse her ballet. She has to take her dancers downstairs to the men’s and women’s lounges to practice. Or go up to a storeroom on the third floor.”

He stared at her. Then pursed his mouth in a silent whistle. “You’re not kidding me.”

“No, Lee, I swear I’m not kidding.” Jenny pulled up a folding chair and sat down under the work light. They had been reading new lines in the “Persian goodbye” scene since eleven, and she was tired. Ado Annie was supposed to be more attractive than in Lyn Rigg’s original play. Instructions were to play her as a somewhat gawky, homespun farm girl, but sexy. The new material was supposed to bring that out. Homespun but sexy.

“You mean Mamoulian banned Agnes from using the stage, so the dancers have to practice downstairs in the restrooms?” He still looked disbelieving. “Christ, no wonder she was running around screaming.”

Marty said, “Reuben got tired of her tantrums. Frankly, I think I can say we all are getting tired of her tantrums.”

“Marty, he goads her,” Jenny said quickly, “he really does. Reuben monopolized the stage to start with, then he keeps taking her dancers out of her rehearsals while he stages the songs, but he doesn’t use them. He keeps them standing around for hours. That’s not fair.”

Every Broadway show had its temperamental, even violent outbursts, it was considered part of the world of the theater. Away We Go had its share. The week before, Mamoulian had fallen into a rage when he discovered Rodgers and Hammerstein had been shown the costume and set designs when they should have been shown first to him, as the director. To add to the strain, also, the world outside never let them forget their problems. Every critic in New York had an opinion about whether Hammerstein and Rodgers could work together, and the wisdom of their deciding to convert Lynn Riggs’ unsuccessful 1931 play to a musical featuring ballets. Plus Helburn and Langner’s Theater Guild was rumored to be on the brink of bankruptcy and, probably because of this, the show had failed so far to attract much-needed financial backers. There seemed no end to their problems. Or the publicity about it.

To Jenny, the amazing thing was that the cast still managed to be loyal, aware that Dick Rodgers and Ockie Hammerstein were experimenting with something new and exciting. The show’s dialogue was written to lead into the songs, and the songs into the dances, forming a dramatic and musical whole. If it worked, it was revolutionary. But the excitement and strain affected everyone. There were quarrels between de Mille and Mamoulian. Even quarrels between de Mille and the stage hands. Whom she equated with some past bad experience, as vandals and saboteurs.

All three—Richard Rodgers, Mamoulian, and Agnes were strong individuals used to having their way. The morning’s screaming match had been typical, although this particular bone of contention, over Agnes de Mille’s dancers, had been there from the first day of rehearsal.

Mamoulian had hit the ceiling when he first saw Agnes choice of ballerinas, mostly recruited from her school, that she brought in. They could dance wonderfully, she’d seen to that, but they were no musical comedy chorus girls. Mamoulian screamed that Agnes’ dancers were hideous, in particular one principle dancer, Bambi Linn, whom he described “with the body of a twelve year old and enormous thighs,” that he, Mamoulian, absolutely would not work with.

Ironically, the same sort of criticism had been leveled at Agnes herself many years ago. In spite of being a lead dancer with several dance troupes, including her own, critics carped that she did not have a good dancer’s body, being shortlegged, with a big bust, and an ample rear end. But when she danced, it was grudgingly conceded that she managed to make an audience forget her physical shortcomings with her fanatical drive, her passion and total immersion in her character. To some dance theater critics Agnes’ triumph over her less-than-ideal body was nothing short of magical.