Stage Door Canteen (14 page)

Reuben Mamoulian wanted to throw de Mille’s ballet girls out of the show and get some attractive Broadway chorines. Richard Rodgers, who knew what Agnes was trying to do, took the choreographer’s side. Her dancers stayed. So did the bad blood between director and de Mille.

That morning, as the cast assembled for rehearsals, Agnes brought up yet another complain, that director Mamoulian was stealing her ideas. That Mamoulian had his actors move, walk or even crawl in choreographed steps during a song, instead of just posing them in the usual static attitudes of Broadway musicals. She considered this strictly a de Mille innovation. Agnes claimed Rueben Mamoulian had pirated it.

In addition, there was Mamoulian’s insistence on taking Agnes’ dancers out of rehearsals, having them stand around while he staged a scene, then sending them back to her drooping and tired. It was no small matter, so highhanded it was bound to make any choreographer rage. And Agnes did.

Things had reached a head a few weeks earlier, when Agnes’ agent, Richard Mohr, tried to negotiate a settlement between the two. While the cast stood around trying not to listen to the shouting, Agnes grudgingly agreed to stop tilting at windmills. Mamoulian was, at last, persuaded to be less autocratic and more considerate to a fellow artist. A few minutes later though, the director hadn’t been able to resist saying, “So you see, all this time you have been mistaken, I am not a very difficult man. You must admit, dear Miss de Mille, what other director do you know who can stage crowd scenes the way I do?”

Whereupon Agnes shot back, “My uncle!”

Unfortunately, bringing up Agnes’ relative, the great Hollywood director C.B. de Mille, was not the way to win Reuben Mamoulian’s cooperation. An hour later he peevishly interrupted the ballet rehearsal and carried away three of the girls to work on staging the Many A New Day song. The war continued.

That is, until that morning, when Agnes had been informed the Theater Guild directors, Helburn and Langner, threw their weight behind Mamoulian. Her tantrums. he’d complained to them, were too much to take. He quoted people who’d worked with her and confirmed that she was spoiled, insecure, a maddening, time-wasting perfectionist. Mamoulian had had enough. Hellman and Langer agreed. Agnes and her dancers were permanently banished to the men’s and women’s lounges in the Guild theater building. Or the splintery storeroom upstairs.

Lee Dixon said, “I knew something was wrong. Agnes can’t work that way, can she? Doesn’t anybody give a damn about her rehearsal space? Look, I guess I shouldn’t say this, but in my opinion if anything is going to carry this show, it’s the ballets. Have you seen them? I mean, really watched what Agnes is doing, especially with Laurey’s dream ballet? It’s sensational!”

“Hah,” Marty grunted, “take my advice, kid, and don’t let this fighting get to you. For my money Agnes de Mille is tough, she can work in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Give her the chance, I tell you she can direct a pas de deux in hell while at the same time having a screaming fight with the Devil.”

Jenny tried to reassure him. “Marty’s right. It’s wrong to treat Agnes that way, but I think Agnes could rehearse dancers anywhere. She’s that determined.”

She knew why Lee was edgy. He’d just gotten the break of a dancer’s lifetime and he was worried about it. During rehearsals of the number, Everything’s Up To Date In Kansas City in which his character, Will Parker, describes his trip to the big city, Lee was given the center of the stage to sing about the modern attractions he encountered there: telephones, automobiles, a burlesque house, and a brand new dance, the Two Step. Which, in the show, Will proceeds to demonstrate for Aunt Eller’s and a group of his friends’ benefit.

Following this, Will grabs Aunt Eller and, caught up in Rodgers’ lively ragtime tune, they do the new Kansas City Two Step together. Lee and veteran actress Betty Garde had worked out such a wild, engagingly funny routine that Agnes de Mille had a brainstorm. The piece was so good she wanted more. She ordered a stop in the rehearsal, making the cast wait while she worked out something new.

At the end of the Two-Step, Aunt Eller is forced to quit dancing because she’s “all tuckered out,” and falls into a chair. It seemed to Agnes was too abrupt, and she tinkered with the idea of Lee Dixon improvising a solo, accompanied by four of the other male dancers. His best dancing. Anything he chose to do.

“Here’s your chance for a virtuoso turn, Lee,” she’d told him. “Do your stuff.”

Do his stuff? Lee, who was somewhat overwhelmed, jumped at the idea. A solo in the show was his big break. Taking his cue from Dick Rodger’s rollicking ragtime music, he threw himself into a dance that had elements of ballet in the dazzling leaps and jumps, but was basically tap dancing that sizzled with youthful exuberance. Yet still managed to say cowboy loud and clear.

Agnes de Mille was ecstatic. The solo was sophisticated enough for Broadway but had American folk dance roots, her favorite mix. She was so inspired she could hardly write Lee’s improvisation down fast enough in her choreographer’s notes.

Now Lee said, “Jeez, I guess I have to rehearse in the men’s room, too. That’s a hell of a note.”

“Wait, see how it works out,” Jenny soothed him. “It might be all right for rehearsals. Besides, it’s all you can do.”

She’d finished making notes on the script about the “Oklahoma goodbye” bit between Will and Ado Annie, and put the pencil back in her purse. She knew Richard Rodgers had been watching them in the dark beyond the footlights. She wondered if he had overheard anything. If so, it didn’t matter, but the composer still had a way of making her uneasy.

Reuben Mamoulian came back, wanting to know if they’d run through the “Oklahoma Hello” stage business.

“I’m still practicing the ‘Persian goodbye,’ Reuben,” Marty told him. “It takes time, believe me, all this kissing is not easy.”

Mamoulian wasn’t in the mood for Marty’s humor. “Kiss—kiss? Is that what it will take, this scene? Hah! It will take a lot of something!” He crossed center stage and started down the stairs. “Hammerstein and I were discussing it yesterday. Right now, funny it is not.”

The Yiddish theater actor came down to the footlights. “Reuben, just how funny do you want us to make it?”

“First make it funny, Moishe,” the director’s voice came out of the darkened expanse of the theater. “Then I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Marty moved back to the work light. They exchanged glances. “Let’s start,” he told Jenny, “where Ali Hakim says he is leaving forever. Page one hundred twenty seven. I am calling myself a poor wandering gypsy, and I am saying goodbye reluctantly to Ado Annie. But the reluctance is a fake since the girl is not putting out anyway, and I am glad to get away from her shotgun-carrying father.”

Jenny had memorized the new dialogue; she didn’t have to look at the script. Lee Dixon thumbed rapidly through the pages.

“I tell you, darling Jenny,” Marty rumbled, “that I like Will Parker because he will make my Ado Annie happy, so go with him and have a good life. And then I tell you I will show you how we say goodbye in Persia.”

He began singing his Persian love song.

“This is my entrance,” Lee said, “I’m standing here looking stunned.” He paused as Marty swooped Jenny into his arms and slammed his mouth down on hers. “My God, I am stunned,” he said after a moment. “Marty, what the hell are you doing?”

The burly actor held Jenny tilted backward so that she was more or less immobile in his arms, her weight resting on one foot, the other extended fairly gracefully. She managed to gasp, “Yes, Marty, good grief, what are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Marty recited his next line, that he was glad that Jenny, as Ado Annie, was going to marry such a wonderful man as Will Parker. That she deserved a fine man, and she’d got one.

Jenny pretended to see Lee Dixon, playing her intended groom, Will, for the first time. She blurted out to Will the explanation for the kiss, that the amorous peddler Ali Hakin was just saying “goodbye” in his own way.

Marty said to her under his breath, “Jenny. the kid’s half in love with you, haven’t you got eyes?”

She could only stare as he delivered his next line. Which was, that he wanted to say goodbye to Will, the cowboy, too. Lee, reading from the script, told him, “No you don’t. I just saw the last confounded ‘goodbye.’”

It was the cue for Marty to pat Will on the cheek, then pull the cowboy to his left side, Ado Annie to the other, so that he could put his arms around them and hold them. It took some juggling of scripts and coffee cups but finally Marty boomed, “I want you to promise to be good to her.” And to Ado, “And you be good to Will, my darling.”

His character craftily added that he was a friend of the family, now, wasn’t he? And he was entitled to wish Ado Annie another “Persian goodbye.” Jenny, fighting an attack of giggles, braced herself for the onslaught. Lee frowned at her.

Marty’s lines were “Here’s my ‘Persian goodbye,’ you lucky fellow. I wish she was marrying me instead of you.”

Will was supposed to watch Ali Hakim kiss Ado Annie with a mixture of confusion and suspicion. His line was a surly, “Don’t seem to make no difference.” But as Marty Levin swept Jenny into his arms for a second steamy kiss Lee whispered, “Hey, hold it down you two, willya?”

The embrace finally came to an end. Marty straightened up and let go of Jenny, who staggered slightly. His lines were: Back to the open road, still the lonely gypsy. He made his exit singing a snatch of the “Persian goodbye” song.

Lee, tightlipped, demanded of Jenny, “You ain’t going to think of that peddler anymore, are you?”

She was still choking back the urge to laugh. Lee didn’t have a crush on her, she was sure. Although he seemed put out with Marty’s attempt at stepping up the sex in the “Goodbye” scene.

“Of course not,” Ado Annie told Will, “I’d never think of no one less’n he’s with me!”

Lee was still in character. “Well then dadgummit, I’m never going to leave your side!”

Jenny half-turned, looking at him over her shoulder. Her next lines were that even if he never went away on a trip or anything, could he please, now and then, give her one of the ‘Persian goodbyes’?

They were at the close of the scene in the middle of Act Two. Ado Annie and her cowboy lover wind up their love story with a comedy blackout. Will regains his composure and confidence and bellows, “Persian goodbye? It ain’t nothin’ compared to a ‘Oklahoma hello’!

Jenny gasped as Lee pounced on her. God knows what had got into him, she thought dimly, but whatever it was, Marty had started it. The young dancer bent her so far over backwards that her hat fell off and her hair tumbled down, touching the floor. He flung one leg over her legs and bent over her. The next moment his mouth took hers, trembling a little. She felt his tongue caressing hers. A real kiss. She was too startled to struggle.

In the theater, one did not struggle at anything unexpected if one could help it. Still, it was hard not to react to Lee’s burning ardor. Perhaps, Jenny thought, Marty Levin was right.

When he pulled back, Lee’s blue eyes were right in hers, waiting for her final line.

ADO ANNIE

“Hello, Will!”

BLACKOUT

He pulled Jenny back up. When she was on her feet he bent over and retrieved her black velour pillbox. Jenny brushed off the crown of the hat and straightened out the nose veil, but did not put the hat back on.

“All right,” Reuben Mamoulian’s voice came to them from the outer darkness, “that was better, Jenny and Lee, I like some parts of it. Jenny darling, try not to look as though you’re being raped, will you? Where’s Marty? Lee is right on the mark, can Ali Hakim and Ado Annie be brought up to that level?”

“Marty Levin’s gone to the men’s lounge,” someone said from the wings.

There was a silence. Jenny looked a little apprehensively at Lee, who was biting his lip. The silence was deepest out in the darkened theater where the director and Dick Rodgers sat.

“To pee,” the same voice said with deliberate innocence. “Not to rehearse, Mr. Mamoulian. Marty’s gone to the men’s lounge to pee.”

At four o’clock rehearsals ended. Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts, the play’s Curley and Laurey, had taken up most of the afternoon working with Reuben Mamoulian staging their song People Will Say We’re In Love. Marty Levin, not sure that Mamoulian wouldn’t call them back for more work on the “Oklahoma Hello” scene, sat on the stairs to the dressing rooms reading War And Peace in the original Russian. Lee Dixon joined the cast’s marathon poker game at a card table in the wings with Howard da Silva, who was playing villain Judd Fry, and Ralph Biggs, who played Ado Annie’s father, and another actor, Owen Martin.

After the cast had been dismissed, the poker players, along with Marty Levin, left the Guild Theater building with Jenny. They tried to persuade her to go over to Toot’s Shor’s Restaurant for drinks but she begged off, as it was one of her nights at the Canteen.

She left the actors on Fifty Second Street and decided to walk down Broadway to west Forty Fourth. It was a good night for walking. The balmy weather was more like the Indian summer of September than the second week in November. Without the theater district’s electric lights, the early twilight was a purple-gray haze, smelling of streetside roasted chestnut stands and diesel exhaust. Broadway was full of people hurrying for the subways. The sidewalks were packed with servicemen and the occasional woman in uniform. In front of a hotel at Fiftieth Street the pavement was jammed with young navy officers, pilots from their gold winged insignia, unloading from taxicabs that were double parked in the rush hour traffic. Piles of luggage covered the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Several young officers turned to stare appreciatively as Jenny made her way through them. On the corner of 44th and Broadway, Jake’s newsstand was busy. She couldn’t see him as he was hidden behind a crowd of customers, but newspaper headlines trumpeted the landing of U.S. troops in North Africa, where Jake had feared for weeks that his son, Anthony, was headed. As Jenny turned into Forty Fourth Street it was apparent there was no line waiting in front of the canteen.