“Grab the jib,” she yelled at me when we hit the next big one.
“I’d do it if I knew what in the hell a jib was!” When the biggest swell hit us, the box with the wine was heading overboard.
“Save the wine, save the wine,” she shouted. What about saving the passengers?
She told me about the time she took Sammy Davis Jr. out on the boat. He had the opposite problem. Things were too still. No wind. The boat had no engine, so they were just stuck there in the middle of the ocean. Sammy was nervous about sailing to begin with, so he had a couple of Bloody Marys. He went belowdeck and wouldn’t come up. They didn’t make it back to the theater in time for his concert, not a laughing matter for any performer.
My son Joe was with me and was invited out to sail with the other Kennedy kids, which he loved. Then Teddy called and wanted us to come out on his boat. By this time, my black and blue marks from the first excursion were beginning to heal. I also felt reassured that Teddy had a bigger boat. Ethel had told me, “Before you get on his boat, you should be warned that he doesn’t want a mess of any kind. He’s very serious about his boat. So just be careful and you’ll be okay.”
The day arrived, and Kayla and Ira were also coming along. Teddy asked me to sit up next to him at the helm. Regrettably, the waves were rough again. I glanced over at Ira and Kayla. They had already turned pale shades of green. I looked at Teddy and then started to pray that no one was going to barf and create a mess.
“I think everybody needs some wine and clam chowder,” Ethel suddenly suggested. She shook the thermos containing the soup, but evidently someone had accidentally forgotten to tighten the cap. The clam chowder went splashing all over the deck. Misfortune had a silver lining. As delicious as the soup probably was, it took on the exact appearance as if somebody had just thrown up. I started laughing, and Teddy wanted to know what I thought was so funny.
“Because Ethel said that you love a clean boat. Look at this mess.” It was harder to explain to him that the real joke was looking at the ever so slightly relieved expressions on Ira’s and Kayla’s green faces. At least they knew they had one less thing to worry about: If they were going to throw up, they were at least off the hook with Teddy.
Some of the places I got to go might have been beneficial for understanding the ways of the world but given a choice in retrospect I would have done without. Take for example my visit to the Mustang Ranch in Nevada, the famous “legal” brothel. The owner, Joe Comforte, came to my show when I was playing Harrah’s in Reno. It was hard not to notice him with the entourage of beautiful young girls, one of whom I was told was the daughter of a high-ranking General Motors executive. Kayla and the boys in the act were curious and wanted to go see the place. The maître d’ arranged an invitation for us to visit after our second show.
“It’s depressing. I don’t want to go,” I told the others.
“Oh, c’mon.”
So I went along. We stood behind a translucent curtain and could see the scene of a row of girls sitting. An old drunken cowboy came in, and the girls all stood up and made various gestures to say “pick me.” We took a tour and saw their rooms that consisted of little more than a bed with a sink. Some of them had stuffed animals. Yikes. It was so sad to me.
Perhaps the worst journey to American society’s underbelly happened some time in the late 1980s. I was appearing at a nightclub in Nevada, a jewel of a place where a lot of top acts played. It was a small venue but very tasteful. We arrived in Las Vegas, the closest airport, and a huge white limo came to pick us up. After our arrival at the venue, the owner of the club invited us to dinner. Hollywood could not have done a better job casting someone who looked like a gangster, right down to the rings that adorned each one of his fingers. “I’d like to pay you cash,” he said to me that evening at the dinner table.
“Oh, no, you’ll have to write a check to my corporation,” I told him. Big mistake!
My conductor received a call one afternoon a couple of days later.
“We’re going to close the place tonight,” said the FBI agent on the line. “There’s going to be a raid, so we want to give you the opportunity to come and get your music. We’re telling you this because we love Ms. Henderson. We watched her performing while we were undercover.”
No one had understood where this man got the money to build this place out in the middle of nowhere. He was no doubt dealing drugs and laundering money. The FBI arrested him that night. Some of the cash was hidden in the walls. When I told my longtime business manager what happened, he made sure I didn’t miss the lesson.
“If somebody offers you cash, take the money!” Of course, I never got paid for those performances, but I did pay my musicians. Given the situation, maybe that was all for the best. Oh, and gone too was that big white limo to take us back to the Las Vegas airport.
What continued to drive me through this era was my love of the business and for the opportunity to be there, to listen, to learn, and to contribute. After the kind of fame and success I had with The Brady Bunch, some performers find it hard to get back
