The Legs Are the Last to Go (7 page)

The audition was nerve-racking, as freckle-faced Elissa banged her heart out on a grand piano on an overlit stage. I forgot about the serious-looking people scrutinizing us, plunged into my song, “Tenderly,” and gave it all I had. Afterward, we waited in the lobby for a verdict. A producer came out to tell us the singer was wanted, but not the pianist.

I told Elissa that I didn't want to do it without her. She told me I had to.

I won first prize on the television show, and went in to see Mr. Godfrey to discuss appearing on his daily radio show. This time, it was with my mother. She was looking unusually beautiful that day, in a formfitting suit and high heels that made her voluptuous body all the more seductive, and Mr. Godfrey, a man fully in touch with his power over us, flirted with her right under my eyes. Then he told us a racist joke about a slave who fell off a wagon or some silly thing. And Mom laughed. What was going on here? I felt my palms go sweaty with discomfort. How dare this man insult my mother? How dare he insult me like that? It was very confusing to see this woman, my mother, who had such a keenly developed sense of propriety, allow herself to be so complicit with such vulgarity. The sense of correctness (ingrained in me since I was a toddler) went into high alert, and suddenly the power this bullying celebrity had to change my life didn't mean anything to me. I told him, “I don't think my mother appreciates
jokes like that.” He fell silent and got a look of consternation on his otherwise pleasant bland face that I'll never forget. And my mother? She looked absolutely shocked at my response. All her life, both she and my father, dignified and upright as they were, had had to stoop and bow their heads when faced with racism. They didn't want to make any waves. They wanted to move up in the world, and getting upset about how hateful racism could be was never their approach. After a moment, Mr. Godfrey leaned in to his buzzer and told his secretary, “Miss Smarty Pants here is going to be on our radio show next week.” By holding my own, I had prevailed. I wish I could have impressed that point on my mother. But when it came time to appear on my first radio broadcast, he continued flirting with her and she allowed it, even as she became more and more embarrassed. Her discomfort could not stop Arthur Godfrey, a driven entertainer. And you know what? It didn't stop me, either. I returned to the show to sing for the next three weeks, an unqualified success.

Of course my mother found this as exciting as I did. I was, after all, her child, and it was terribly validating for her to see me prevail at such an early age. She'd get up at the crack of dawn with me, dress herself carefully, weigh in on my outfit, then drive me to the studio, where I had to put on my own makeup to perform in front of a live radio audience. It was so exciting to be waiting in the dressing room with well-known singers, such as the McGuire Sisters. And the acclaim we'd get all week from neighbors who heard me on the radio pleased her, of course, but it was the backstage glamour, the entry into an exclusive world my mother had never imagined within her
reach, that made her happiest. And she developed a taste for it right away; this intoxicating inside world of show business got into her blood early on. Well, why not? She lacked what it took to crack the code of black society in our community. But suddenly she was on the inside of an even more impressive world. Those early days of accompanying me were our happiest times, as triumphant as they were nerve-racking, really. I was still so young that I needed her to be there with me, and we both knew it. My father did, too. Yes, there was a toddler in the house, but my mother always made sure someone else could look after her.

Sometimes she'd see a handsome man on our rounds. Proper as she could appear to be, she wasn't afraid to let me know when a man had sex appeal.

“Well…” She'd sigh. “He could certainly put his shoes under
my
bed.”

Sometimes I'd argue with her, and sometimes I'd agree. “Yes, Mother, he's very attractive and he can certainly put his shoes under my bed, too,” I'd say. It was a funny little female-bonding thing, that's all, and we'd laugh at each other in delight.

I still remember how excited she was to help me get ready for a singing contest I had entered in Philadelphia as a teenager. “What are you going to wear? Should we have a new dress made or should we go shopping?” It was never so much about what I was going to sing as what I was going to wear. She loved how pretty I could look, and I loved making her happy. She'd drive me to all kinds of contests. We were as excited as kids.

When I graduated the High School of Music and Art, I
told my parents I could not uphold their lifelong dream of attending Howard University. It was too far away, and it would keep me from my lucrative modeling work with Johnson Publications. My career as a student of psychology at NYU didn't last long, either. I'd show up in class carrying my leather hatbox so I could run off to a photo shoot, and my professors saw this preoccupation reflected in my grades. In my freshman year, I entered a television contest called
Chance of a Lifetime,
and was called in. I sang “The Man I Love” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and won for three weeks in a row. My prize? A staggering three thousand dollars and a week's booking at the famous nightclub and society venue the Latin Quarter.

A seventeen-year-old girl singing in a nightclub is not exactly a parental dream scenario. The Latin Quarter served liquor. The Latin Quarter had showgirls in scanty costumes. It was no place for a performer to bring her mother. And besides, there was no room for her in such a hectic backstage, with performers changing costumes night by night. I learned by watching, as I did at modeling jobs, the strong-willed women around me. The showgirls at the Latin Quarter, for instance, might have dressed like loose women, but they were very focused and meticulous backstage as they prepared themselves for each costume change, and I heard them discussing diet and exercise with the knowledge of true professionals. It was from them that I learned how important it was to take care of my skin, hair, teeth, and physique, along with my voice. And it was from the transsexual Christine Jorgensen, also performing at the club, that I learned to bow. She was a lovely person. I took it all in, just as I had taken in my mother's lessons in childhood.

And frightened as I was, my mother's training served me well as I took to the stage in my grand gown of tulle and my tiara, and told myself, “Here you go, Diahann Carroll,” and stepped out, scared but not paralyzed, to sing my heart out into the darkness.

Around that time, my parents got a call from the Lou Walters office. Lou Walters (Barbara Walters's father) owned the Latin Quarter. He also owned a personal management company and he wanted to sign me. He believed I had a big future in the business. So at the same time as I was leaving NYU, a new education began for me. A young manager from the Walters office named Chuck Wood took me under his wing. He quickly became a mentor, taskmaster, and second family to me.

Although the Walters Office made its bread and butter booking singers into nightclubs and Catskills hotels, Chuck loved the theater. He thought I belonged on Broadway and he was relentless in getting me to sing each song perfectly. “You're stiff,” he'd say. “Relax! You're not letting us hear the lyrics! Do it again!” He'd cook dinner for me in his apartment in Greenwich Village, and introduced me to new foods as we continued lessons by his fireplace. He told me to read the work of the playwrights Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. He told me to always remember I had an innate ladylike quality and that I was all about style and class. He didn't want me in tight gowns, and wanted me to retain my soft vulnerability rather than pursue the more obvious raw emotions and sexuality of other singers. He'd advise me to cross my legs more quickly when sitting down and suggest I rid myself of the rhinestones and sequins my mother preferred.

“Remember, you're a lady!” he'd say. “If it ain't real, don't wear it,” he chuckled.

My vocal coach, Margo Rebeil, was equally intent and giving. After our lessons, she'd teach me about serving tea. She'd take me for drives in her Packard convertible, and at a cocktail party, she decided it was time for me to try my first glass of champagne.

“You look so pretty tonight,” she told me.

If only she knew how much she and Chuck Wood both sounded like my mother. There were times when I ached for Mabel Johnson to be a part of this new life with me. After all, we were buddies, so in love with each other in my childhood that every once in a while, and despite her insistence on discipline, she'd let me stay home from school. “It's raining, and you're getting a cold and shouldn't go out today,” she might say.

Hard as he tried, Chuck couldn't get me any roles on Broadway. So he started booking me into nightclubs. My earliest memories of the road were harsh ones. There was only enough money for me to travel alone. I'd stay in squalid, tiny rooms, and sing to half-filled little clubs and at bars where people talked over me. I learned how to deal with every kind of audience in places like that. If there were hecklers objecting to me because I was black, I'd simply move to the other side of the stage and finish my set, as required. What mattered to me was that I was learning to be a professional, and that I was earning a living. Soon enough, Chuck was getting me bookings at Catskills hotels. This was in their heyday, when middle-class Jewish families from the city and suburbs would come up to the mountains to relax. That meant golfing, tennis, sitting by a pool, and
then dressing to the nines for dinner and a show. Who do you think was my date?

Mother loved every minute of it. We'd drive up on a warm summer Friday afternoon, car full of luggage and the all-important hatbox, of course, and we'd be welcomed by the hotel staff and taken to our room, which was always spacious and comfortable, and we'd unpack our clothes and become two girls in a dorm room. We'd have such a good time. We could order room service or eat with the other artists. Sometimes we were encouraged to eat with the guests. There was never a sense of being “less than” just because I was a performer, and my mother loved seeing that. She also had a habit of stealing ashtrays. “Do you think they'll miss it?” she asked. “Yes, Mother, I do, but take it anyway.” When it was time to prepare for the show, I'd go off to my dressing room and she'd be escorted downstairs. Even as I was taking these jobs very seriously (rehearsing for as long as the musicians could stand it before turning to worrying about everything from my outfit to my microphone and lighting) I was glad to show Mom such a good time after everything she had put into me during my childhood.

On our Sundays in the tranquil Catskills, with my show behind me, we'd have breakfast. We were always dressed nicely. But perhaps not quite as nicely as all the church ladies my father would be discreetly flirting with in Harlem in our absence. Well, he was admired and he wanted to return all the compliments. I was glad to have my mother along with me on those Catskills weekends. But by then, I was already a big girl, and it occurred to me that this was more about fun for her than anything else.

This was the start of my mother following me around for her own pleasure, and enjoying it a little too much. And it was the kind of bad judgment on her part, putting show business ahead of home life, that I repeated in my own marriage and motherhood.

In time, I began getting more work in Manhattan. When I started performing at Café Society Downtown in Greenwich Village, I replaced my tulle and my tiara for more formfitting, seductive dresses. I could hardly fill them out and they needed padding, but when I zipped them up, voilà, I was no longer the skinny innocent ingenue Chuck thought I should be. Inside, even then, however, I was still a child. I was still living at home with my parents in Yonkers, after all. And while I was gaining more confidence and an understanding of how a singer works with musicians, I still had little flair for giving off a more casual air onstage.

“Why don't you consider having a glass of wine to relax you a little,” my mother coached me as she drove me to work one night. “You're a little stiff onstage.”

“Because, Mother,” I said, “I don't do that.”

To her great credit, she'd drive me downtown to work, park the car in front of the entrance, and sit there, waiting. She didn't want to go inside. In her complicated mind, this woman whom I'd seen have a cocktail or two at home, deemed nightclubs absolutely improper and no place for a lady. So although she was locked outside, I could feel her watching me as I tried to promote a more sensual self onstage to a room full of people enjoying their drinks and wanting more than anything for me to seduce them.

Years later, I realize just how central her presence was for
me in my earliest years. She made it so much easier for me to feel secure in front of so many strangers.

Meanwhile, Chuck Wood's hard work as my personal manager was paying off. One day I found myself summoned to audition for my first Broadway show. It was for none other than Harold Arlen and Truman Capote. The man who wrote “Over the Rainbow” was collaborating with the man who wrote
Breakfast at Tiffany's
on a show set in the West Indies called
House of Flowers
. Chuck thought I'd be perfect for the ingenue's role and had set up an audition, even as the Walters Office was talking to Hollywood about having me try out for a role in an all-black-cast film version of
Carmen
called
Carmen Jones
. But Broadway, to Chuck, was the be-all and end-all. So one day I walked onto the stage of the Alvin Theater and performed to a row of faces in the shadows. One of them was Peter Brook, the English director, who ordered me around in a crisp accent. The other was Capote himself, whose high-pitched Southern drawl was unmistakable. Then there was the gentle voice of Mr. Arlen, a hero of mine, as he was and still is to so many serious singers. I gave it my all for them, and must have done something right because I was called back. But this time, at the callback, a shy casting director in the audience named Monte Kay seemed sure I wouldn't be right for the ingenue role.