Life Is Not a Stage

to say it’s my birthday. They’ll know we’re from the show. That way, we’ll get something extra to drink or a dessert on the house.” Per the plan, we sang “Happy Birthday” to him. And sure enough, we would get it. Once we did it at a very fancy and expensive place. Owen said after that meal, “All that service, white gloves, and eighteen-karat gold plates, and the food stunk!” Maybe that was payback for all the freebies, but we did have fun. A lot of laughs were also to be had hanging out with the male dancers, most of whom were homosexual. I was further educated in the diverse ways of the world. All of that proved to be a helpful diversion from my own little melodrama. I had a crush on my leading man, who was married. That, of course, was a nonstarter and the end of the story, but I sure loved kissing him onstage!

I trust that the statute of limitations has run out on this accidental crime I committed during the second season in Oklahoma! No fingers were pointed at the time, but here, for the first time, you have my confession. Barbara Cook (who played Ado Annie in the second year) and I had our dressing room together backstage in the theater in Pittsburgh. In those days, we had a very neat trick for thickening our eyelashes. We had these little containers of wax with a small candle underneath. We’d melt the wax and put it on our eyelashes. After we would finish at night, we’d cover the makeup on the table with a towel and leave. That’s what I did one Friday night. The next day, we came in to do the Saturday matinee and learned that there had been a fire in the theater backstage. My costume, which was a little white dress, was an absolute mess with black soot on it. Pittsburgh was known in those days for having a lot of soot from all the coal-burning steel mills, but this was ridiculous. I paid no attention to it. The show had to go on. When Barbara Cook came out onstage dressed as Ado Annie, she not only had soot on her dress but also on her face, on the rose on her head, and all over. A little more and she could have done the show in blackface. I took one look at her and became hysterical. So did she, and we fell into each other’s arms. The stage manager was yelling at us from the wings to get on with the show, but it took a while before we finally stopped laughing. It didn’t take an arson expert to notice that my makeup table was more severely burned than anything else around it. Hmm, someone must have forgotten to blow out that candle. It was pathetic, and I felt bad about it. But now I’ve finally gotten it off my chest.

All throughout this time, I kept up the friendship with Ira Bernstein from afar despite being out on tour. We exchanged letters, and he came out to see me a couple of times on the road. He said to me after he saw me for the first time, “You just make love to the audience.” Part of that probably was due to the fact that I am always very grateful to the audience, what Oscar Hammerstein called the Big Black Giant. When you come from that place of gratitude, I think it opens up the potential of what can happen, some of which can almost seem supernatural. When you listen to actors talk about their experiences on the stage, some remark about their ability to see all around them onstage as if they truly had eyes in the backs of their heads. For me, there were two sensations. First, I had the sensation that I could reach out and touch the person in the last row of the balcony. And second, I felt like I physically grew larger on the stage. To this day, people come backstage after a show and comment how they were certain I was a half a foot taller when performing than in reality.

Being on tour in a long run introduced me to another challenge—doing the same show over and over night after night and keeping it fresh every time. I learned very quickly to say to myself, “This is a new audience. They haven’t seen it. I want it to be as good for them as it was for the audience the night before.”

Sometimes, circumstances onstage intervened to break the routine in horrifying, hilarious, and unforgettable ways. For example, it does not matter how perfectly well you know all your lines. All it takes is a momentary lapse in concentration. You’re singing a song, everything is going fine, and all of a sudden the lyrics are gone! It is not the same as if you are just speaking lines and someone whispers to you the cue to get back on track after a few seconds of uncomfortable fumbling. No, the music doesn’t stop for you when your memory hits a glitch. Instead, the only thing you can do is vamp a little, make up some lyrics, and grab back your place a bar or so later or as quickly as you can. It is the strangest sensation, and it scared the heck out of me the first time it happened.

One little incident I found fascinating came as the result of meeting a blind woman and her guide dog on one of those train rides on the tour. I talked to her for a while and got to know the dog a little as well. As we were both getting off, I invited her to the show. There is a scene in Oklahoma! where Jud tries to grab Laurey and kiss her. She pushes him away and makes a strong speech to him. When I got to that part, struggling to push him away, the woman’s