Stage Door Canteen (41 page)

Boston brought a veritable landslide of bad luck. The cast got terribly sick. Miriam, who had followed Marty there, did her best to urge her husband to stay in bed, but he managed to drag himself over to the theater every night to do a truly marvelous job as Ali Hakim the peddler. Celeste Holm, too, was a smash in the part of Ado Annie; everyone had to agree she was the right choice, after all. But Theater Guild Producer Terry Helburn caught the ‘flu and was so sick she held press conferences while she sat in bed with ice packs on her head to lower her temperature. The wildest moment came when Agnes de Mille, incredibly enough, came down with German measles, which spread to her dancers. The ballet kids went on and danced while running fevers, greasepaint covering their measles spots. The nightmare didn’t end there. The singers in the chorus all had sore throats and laryngitis and could barely croak. Ockie’s wife, Dorothy, came down with some bizarre ailment “of undetermined origin,” according to the doctors, ran a raging fever, and spent several days in Brigham Young Hospital with a frantic Ockie running back and forth from the theater to her bedside.

In spite of the catastrophes, though, something clearly had happened in Boston. The reviews were generally good. Even better, the audiences were notably enthusiastic. Oscar and Dick Rodgers kept their calm optimism, as they had from the very first day of rehearsals. In Boston the composer and lyricist played a game when everyone else was downhearted, in which they matched hilarious reasons why the show was sure to be a terrible flop. As for instance, they chortled, the chorus girls didn’t appear until the curtain had been up for forty minutes. Also, the first act had no plot except there was a young girl (Laurey) who had to decide which man to go to the dance with. There were virtually no new numbers in the second act. Worse, someone gets killed. In addition, what the critics had said in one form or another since the beginning: that this was wartime, everything much more sophisticated, everybody living on the edge. That meant no one was interested in farms and cowboys. And on and on. Ockie and Dick thought their “act” was hysterically funny.

But much later, walking with Dorothy a few hours before the show was to open in New York, Ockie Hammerstein, who hadn’t had a hit on Broadway in ten years, had said to his wife, “I don’t know what to do if they don’t like this. I don’t know what to do because this is the only kind of show I can write.”

On the telephone Lee was saying, “—some things people don’t remember, because it’s such a crazy smash hit now. But did Marty tell you that on opening night the show wasn’t sold out, we had empty seats in the theater? Then the raves started the moment the curtain went down. Larry Hart was there. When the show was over he came up to Dick and threw his arms around his neck and said he loved it. Poor little Larry, he’d still be Dick’s partner if he could give up his drinking. They all went over to Sardi’s to wait for the morning paper and the reviews.”

Waiting for the reviews in the next day’s papers was a time-honored Broadway tradition. Vincent Sardi kept his restaurant open until someone brought in an armful of the New York dailies around one a.m., and everyone gathered around. The first review Theater Guild Producers Larry Langner and Terry Helburn, and Ockie and Dick Rodgers and their wives had seen was the one in the all-important New York Times. Lewis Nichols, substituting for drama critic Brooks Atkinson for the duration of the war, had written: “Wonderful is the nearest adjective, for this excursion combines a fresh and infectious gaiety, a charm of manner, beautiful acting, singing and dancing, and a score that does not do any harm, either, since it is one of Rodger’s best.”

When she was silent for a long moment, Lee said, “Oh shit, I see I have made you sad, Jenny darling, after all. I can’t get it through my head that you’re actually on the outside, now, of all the excitement.”

“It’s okay, Lee, I went out and got the reviews, too. It was four a.m. when they were delivered up here at Broadway and Ninety Sixth. I bought the New York Times, and the Herald Tribune and the Journal-American and carried them to the local all-night coffee shop and piled them on the table. Of course everyone in the coffee shop thought I was crazy because I kept screaming and crying while I was reading what the critics said, I was so happy for all of us. We all knew it would be a marvelous hit from the beginning, didn’t we?”

Marty had told her what happened when Ockie and Dick Rodgers had gone to the theater at noon the next day. The rave notices in the newspapers had sent crowds of people to the Oklahoma! box office to cue up early to buy tickets. By the time Dick and Ockie arrived, the pushing and shoving had become almost a riot. The theater management had sent for the police to keep things calm.

By then Oscar Hammerstein and Dick Rodgers were as excited by the show’s smash success as anyone else. They discussed whether they should go to lunch at some place quiet and enjoy their victory, or go to Sardi’s where all the theater crowd would be and, in Ockie’s words, “show-off.” They elected to go to Sardi’s and flaunt their triumph, especially in front of all those who during the long months had bet Oklahoma! would be a terrible flop.

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Lee was saying. “I haven’t talked to you since the New York opening, but I’ve been thinking about you, Jen, you know that. Are you still getting along all right? How’s your husband, Major Haller?”

She knew he needed to be reassured. “But I wanted you to call me, it was very sweet of you. Lee darling. You know I want to hear how things are going. When you work on a Broadway show you become a family, you know what I mean. I miss all of you. God, I even miss Dick Rodgers and Reuben Mamoulian and all the fights!”

They laughed. “And my husband is fine, as far as I know, thanks for asking. I’m beginning to get some mail from him now, and I didn’t for a long time. It appears my mail was going to London, and he was sent to North Africa. Even now his letters come in spurts.”

“Jen, you don’t worry about getting another job, do you? Hammerstein’s already talking about a new show—”

“Yes, I know about it,” she said quickly. “It’s Ockie’s pet project, Dorothy told me about. He wants to do an updated, all-Negro version of Carmen. You know, Bizet’s opera. He wants to call it Carmen Jones.” She added, wryly, “It’s a wonderful idea, I’m sure it’s going to be another hit show. But I have to agree with what my agent said to me when I had lunch with him. That he can’t see much of a part in Carmen Jones for me.”

He didn’t laugh. She knew Lee was genuinely concerned for her, but at the moment Jenny wasn’t particularly worried about another job. “My agent wants me to do a USO overseas tour, Harold thinks he can get me into a company going to North Africa, so perhaps I could see Brad somewhere. But I don’t know, I’ve been feeling lazy, sleeping a lot, puttering around the house—I’m actually painting the back bedroom.” When he made a sound of amusment she said. “Really, Lee, painting walls is fun, I didn’t know I was so accomplished. I’ve also been doing my usual sessions recording with Talking Books For The Blind, and the Stage Door Canteen. The Canteen is always frantically busy. They do the weekly Stage Door Canteen radio shows, they’ve got the Stage Door Canteen movie coming out, and they’re opening more Stage Door Canteens all around the country. Even overseas. To hear the board of directors talk, they’re not going to settle for anything less than a Stage Door Canteen global empire. That’s show business people for you, we always have to prove something to ourselves. This time, I guess. that we’re more patriotic than anybody.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got something to keep you busy, love. So you can’t brood about what happened. I know I don’t express it very well, but you’re one of the most beautiful, kind, talented people I’ve ever met. You know how I feel about you. Listen, the part just wasn’t right for you, that’s all.”

She watched the traffic crawl along Riverside Drive below in congested ribbons. The conversation made Jenny uneasy. She really didn’t know how Lee Dixon felt about her, and she didn’t want to find out. Was he in love with her, as Marty maintained? She didn’t want to think about it. Actually, it would be better if Lee and other friends from the cast stopped trying to comfort her. She frequently told herself that all the anger and disappointment had faded away. She’d been working on it. One of the first things she wanted to forget was the awful drunken episode that had landed her in bed with the sea captain. Might as well face up to it.

On the other hand, she told herself, the only way to cope with that self-inflicted disaster was to try to put the memory completely out of her mind. Hard to do, but she was working on it.

Now she was painting the back bedroom in a cheery shade of pale yellow. Since it was a rather dark room the warmer color was an improvement over the original off-white that Brad had put on the walls.

When Jenny hung up she was glad Lee had telephoned. He was right; she was out of the show, out of its action and excitement. Oklahoma! really no longer concerned her. Perhaps losing the part of Ado Annie was a stroke of luck after all; something better was undoubtedly on the horizon. One had to look at it that way.

By noon the rain had become a drizzle, and the air was colder. Jenny had a doctor’s appointment at one thirty. The worsening weather made her decide to take a cab, if she could find one, rather than the Broadway bus.

The doctor’s waiting room was crowded and overheated. Jenny waited for an hour before a nurse called her into an examining room. She took her clothes off and put on a white cloth wrapper, but it was three-quarters of an hour more before Dr. Chorba came in.

After the examination he said, “It’s only been six weeks since your last menstrual period, Miss Rose. That is, according to what you remember.” He sat behind his desk, busily writing. “You find your breasts more than usually tender, you say you’ve been sleeping more than usual. Upon examination I find your uterus a little enlarged, but that doesn’t mean much. In my experience, you could have all these symptoms and still begin your period tomorrow. If there’s anything certain about a woman’s menstrual cycle it’s that it’s very uncertain. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You’re in excellent health, you’re still under thirty—” He consulted the folder that held her records. “Well, right at thirty, not a bad time to start a baby. I’d recommend a rabbit test, but they can take several weeks, and the situation’s usually evident one way or another by the time the results come in.” He put the folder down and stood up. “Make an appointment with the nurse to see me in a few weeks, take good care of yourself, Miss Rose, exercise regularly and you might want to consider taking a daily vitamin regimen. Make it the end of February.”

Jenny left the doctor’s office, deciding to walk over to Broadway and 44th Street. She had a few errands to run, but she couldn’t seem to collect her thoughts. Her mind was in a muddle. Then, as she crossed Time Square, the undulating moan, loud and inescapable, of air raid warning sirens suddenly started up. The citywide air raid drill had been announced in the New York newspapers, but she had forgotten. Men in white-painted helmets and armbands marked with the red letters CD, for Civilian Defense, appeared, and directed people on the sidewalks into nearest bomb shelters in the lobbies of buildings or, in Times Square, down into the subway. Jenny dutifully went to stand inside the lobby of the Merchants Hanover Bank office building. Traffic in Times Square stopped. Drivers left their vehicles where they were and went into the nearest designated shelter marked with the Civil Defense symbol of a red triangle.

Abruptly, the hair-raising whoop of the sirens stopped. Those standing in the lobby of the bank with Jenny looked out on a Times Square suddenly abandoned and motionless, the streets clogged with empty vehicles, eerily empty of crowds. Even the Civil Defense wardens were out of sight.

After a few minutes someone said, “We haven’t had one of these in a long time.”

No one said anything. A man standing in front lit a cigarette.

Minutes passed. Then, just as suddenly, the air raid sirens on top of the buildings around Times Square began a solid, unwavering tone. The All Clear. The bank’s glass doors opened and the crowd left the building. It had begun to drizzle again. Jenny needed to go the canteen after all and pick up her umbrella. At 44th Street she started to buy a Variety at the newsstand, but instead stood somewhat distractedly, reading the headlines. General Rommel was holding the Allied armies at the Mareth line. Brad was there, she told herself, hopefully not up front, in combat. In the Pacific, after six months of deadly fighting on Guadalcanal, the Marines were driving out the fanatical Japanese forces. While on the other side of the world, General von Paulus had surrendered the decimated German armies at Stalingrad.

Jake hadn’t been behind his newsstand counter since early December. Ernie, who’d taken his place, didn’t know if Jake would come back. He’d heard that Jake’s oldest son had been killed somewhere in North Africa. There was a rumor that Jake and his family had decided to move to California, but no one knew if that was true. Ernie, the current newsie, didn’t know, either.

Jenny turned down 44th Street. It was early, there were no servicemen waiting in front of the canteen. The front door was locked. No one responded to her knock, so she went around to the alley entrance and rapped on the door to the kitchen. George Kanarakis let her in.

“I didn’t know you were going to come in today,” he said.

“I’m not. I left my umbrella and I need it. Ugh, it’s sleeting now.”

In the main room, volunteers from the cast of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee’s show, Star And Garter, were scrubbing tables under the glare of the unshaded house lights. No one was in the office. Ann Bennett was in Chicago to open a new Stage Door Canteen, and no one had replaced her as yet. In fact, Jenny was reminded, many familiar faces were missing. Madame X, the famed star of stage and screen. no longer came in to clean the canteen garbage cans while wearing her diamond rings. Her Wonder Child’s bomber had been shot down over France and he survived as a prisoner of war in a camp somewhere in Germany. It had been in all the newspapers. After the Christmas holidays most of the debutantes had gone on to do other volunteer war work, leaving only a faithful few society girls like Annemarie and Jane. Jenny located her umbrella in Charlie Hanrahan’s Lost and Found box, and left, turning out the hall lights.