BRING BACK BIRDIE (my last Broadway show), THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC (my first job out of show business), and my close connection with the rebuilding of
the famous Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
Joe Layton was having chorus auditions for Bring Back Birdie, the sequel to Bye Bye Birdie, the huge Broadway hit. Chita Rivera was recreating Rose, her original role, and Donald O’Connor was replacing Dick Van Dyke as Albert. Joe hadn’t liked me when I worked for him in Once Upon a Mattress in 1959 and he gave me the cold shoulder, the last time I saw him, when I showed up in 1966 at his audition in Hollywood for the film, Thoroughly Modern Millie. Even so, I decided to swallow my pride and attend the audition.
While the huge group of guys was learning the first combination, I noticed Joe staring at me. He leaned over and said something I couldn’t hear to Wakefield Poole, his assistant. Wakefield responded, but, again, I couldn’t hear what he said. Then Joe, in a loud voice, said incredulously, "That’s Howard Parker?" I thought, I’m out a’ here! But after we had danced in smaller groups, and the first elimination occurred, I wasn’t dismissed. The second elimination puzzled me even more because I was, again, asked to remain. At the third elimination Joe started moving people into a front line and my name was the first one he called. What’s going on? I wondered.
When it was time to sing, my name was called first again. After a couple of bars of "Anything Goes," Joe stopped me. I thought, Here it comes, Joe just kept me around to prolong the agony and embarrass me. Instead, he said, "Howard, that key’s too low for you," and told the pianist to take it up a notch. After I finished singing the song in the higher key Joe said, "That was much better. You should always sing in that key."
Some of the guys were then asked to read the role of Albert. After my first reading Joe said, "Read it again, Howard, and have more fun with it. Read it like you were one of the kids." Okay, I thought, I can do that, and I put a completely different spin on the lines using a lot of energy and jumping around like a teenager.
Joe said, "That was terrific!" which absolutely floored me.
After a long and grueling audition, when the final ensemble was chosen, I couldn’t believe Joe had actually hired me. I was further amazed when Joe said he wanted me to understudy Donald O’Connor. Donald was primarily a tap dancer and Joe hadn’t even asked us to tap at the audition. Of all the dance styles I did well, I was weakest at tap and I really had my doubts that I could understudy Donald. Joe must have seen the look on my face and said "Howard, you can tap, can’t you?" I didn’t want to mislead him so I answered, "Well, I tap okay but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a ‘tap dancer.’" Joe said, "I’m sure you can learn it." I thought, I hope you’re right.
After all those years I was curious to know why Joe had done such an about face but I never had nerve enough to ask him what had changed his mind about me. If he had seen me in Ballroom, he would obviously have recognized me when he first saw me at the audition. Therefore, I could only surmise he either read my glowing review in The New York Times or Wakefield, or someone else, had told him I was good in the show.
Joe had choreographed some very complicated shows like Barnum, which I had seen when Jim Dale, who played the title role, was out one day and my friend Harvey Evans, his understudy, played the part. Even though I had never thought much of Joe’s work, I thought he did a terrific job with that show.
One day Joe was working with Donald on one of his dance numbers. They were both standing in front of the mirror improvising some tap steps and I was watching. Joe said, "Hey Donald, that was great, do that step again." Donald laughed and said, "What do you mean, do it again? I don’t know what I did. I just make up this stuff up as I go along." That’s when we found out Donald, one of the most famous dance stars in films, never had any formal dance training. He told us he started working in vaudeville when he was a kid and quite simply picked it up by watching other dancers.
I said, "Joe, I think this is what Donald did," and I showed him the step.
"Yeah, that was it," Joe said, "and you said you weren’t a tap dancer!" Once again, my ability to look at a step and analyze it quickly served me well.
When I found out that the show was going to open cold at the Martin Beck Theater in New York after a couple of weeks of previews without having out-of-town tryouts, I was shocked.
The concept for the scenery was very complicated. David Mitchell, the set designer, used television sets for some of the action that was filmed off-stage. And instead of furniture, he used boxes in various shapes and sizes that had pictures of furniture on the front of them, similar to the signs one sees at a bus stop. A desk, for instance, was a big rectangular box, the front of which was covered with a photograph of a desk that was lit from inside the box. The boxes moved on and off the stage via tracks in the floor which also proved to be dangerous. I was in the opening scene and during the first preview, when I made my entrance, all the "furniture" was still moving on stage. I had to keep dodging it so I wouldn’t get hurt. The audience roared!
The first night Chita performed one of her big production numbers, one that I had been taken out of, thank God, the number ended without one person in the audience applauding. Not one single clap was heard in the entire theater. Nobody put their two hands together because they didn’t know the ridiculous number had ended. Chita was left standing center stage with egg on her face waiting for applause that never came while the curtain slowly closed. After the number, when I passed her on the stairs in the basement, she was fit to be tied and I couldn’t blame her.
The next day at rehearsal I watched Joe change the end of the number. I thought, Nope, that’s not going to work either. And it didn’t. That night, the same thing happened again! Not one clap! As the curtain closed, Chita’s face was frozen in a grimace. When I passed her on the stairs that night she was literally screaming undecipherable words and phrases. She was mortified.
The next day Joe changed the number a third time and this time it worked. That night Chita got the ovation she expected. And I might add, the ovation she deserved because Chita is – and always will be – one of the most sensational performers any audience, from Borneo to Timbuktu, will ever see!
In Donna McKechnie’s book Time Steps she writes the following about an experience she had choreographing Chita: "Though I was a bit intimidated by Chita at first (after all, she was one of my idols), she was a joy to work with. I thought she might tell me what she was going to do with the number, but like many dancers, she wanted to be told exactly what to do."
It reminded me of one day in rehearsals when Chita didn’t like something Joe had choreographed for her. She was standing backstage with some of us bitching about it and I said, "Why don’t you go tell Joe you don’t like it?" I could tell by her reaction that she would never even consider doing such a thing. She’s been a Broadway star for decades but it seems she still has a chorus dancer’s mentality.
Bring Back Birdie officially opened on Broadway March 5, 1981. It was astounding to me that the original creators, all of whom did such a great job with Bye Bye Birdie – Michael Stewart (book), Charles Strouse (music), and Lee Adams (lyrics) – could have made such a mess of the sequel. I advised my friends to stay away and most of them did. After hearing me talk about the show for weeks, my partner Curt, of course, wanted to see the show. When we met after the performance, he just rolled his eyes and said, "I thought you were exaggerating. You weren’t! It was God-awful!" When the reviews came out at the opening night party, we saw one of the producers actually sobbing.
Frank Rich, the critic for The New York Times wrote: "By the end, the show has run off in so many cryptic directions that you may think each member of the cast has been handed a different lousy script;" "The score that interrupts this book has a death wish;" "Even David Mitchell, the inspired designer of ‘Annie’ and ‘Barnum,’ has gone haywire here. His scenery is built around a multitude of television sets - a mild satirical notion that’s so overdone the show looks like a discount appliance outlet;" and even mentions "Fred Voelpel’s cheesy costumes."
And of Joe’s direction and choreography, Mr. Rich wrote, "On those rare occasions when he (Joe) has an idea for a dance routine – a roller-skating number, for instance – he loses interest before he gets around to executing it. The solo turns he’s given his stars are so flavorlessly repetitive that they blur into one continuous banality." Gower Champion, who’s work on the original production was so terrific, must have been turning over in his grave.
My track record on Broadway was dismal: Juno lasted 2 weeks; I left Once Upon a Mattress three months after it opened because I had nothing significant to do in the show; Happy Town died after 4 performances; Ballroom only ran three months. Now I could add Bring Back Birdie, another 4 performance flop, to my resume.
At my age, Broadway shows weren’t easy to come by and even if they were, the instability of taking another chance on a Broadway show held little appeal for me. Even though I didn’t know what else I wanted to do, or could do, I was quite sure of what I didn’t want to do, and wouldn’t do. I had no intention of pounding the pavement looking for work. When I moved to New York the last time, I had decided to take my life from the top and I wasn’t going to do that again. At least not in show business. I didn’t want to have to peruse the weekly trade papers desperately looking for something I might be right for. Or go on countless interviews for TV commercials hoping I might be lucky enough to land one. Or have to look for an agent and have him tell me he hates the pictures I just had made, which all agents inevitably seem to do. Or maybe have to take a job in stock and go on the road, which I hated. I had done all that. I tried directing and I didn’t like it. And I didn’t want the stress of choreographing anymore.
After giving it a great deal of thought, I decided to hang up my dancing shoes and stop while I was ahead. I had had a glorious career and I decided I could be content resting on my laurels. Just look what that 17-year-old kid, who worked as an assistant window trimmer at Sears after he graduated from high school, had accomplished: dancing with most of the legends of the silver screen; working for some of the greatest choreographers who ever lived; two invitational visits to The White House; having the entire dining room erupt with applause when I walked into Sardi’s after the opening night performance of Ballroom, and the piece de resistance: a rave review in The New York Times!
I had always liked change and, once again, I was ready for the next chapter in my life, whatever that might be. And if perchance I ever happened upon an empty stage somewhere, if nobody was looking, or even if someone was, I knew I would get on it.
I was one of those people who equated my self-worth with working. If Monday came and I didn’t have a job to go to I felt worthless. If worse came to worse, I could always temp. I had done that before and liked it. But I wanted to find something more permanent. I devoured the want ads in the Sunday paper for a couple of weeks but nothing caught my eye.
I got a call from my friend Bill Witty, who worked for the New York Philharmonic in the Lincoln Center complex. We occasionally met for lunch and although I never saw his office, he seemed to like working there. After we caught up with each other’s personal lives, I told him that I was interested in finding a job outside of show business and asked if there were any job openings at the Philharmonic.
"You mean, you’d consider working here in the Philharmonic, in some kind of office job," he asked.
"Sure, why not?" I replied. "I’m a great typist. Didn’t I ever tell you about breaking a 12-year typing record in high school by typing eighty words a minute for five minutes with no mistakes? They even awarded me a fucking typing letter? Don’t ask! Besides that, I’m an organizational freak."
"You’d hate working here. They don’t pay shit."
"Look Bill, just let me know if something comes up. I’m dead serious and I would really appreciate it. I’ve had a great career in show business but I want to do something new.
A few weeks later, Bill called to say that a position had opened up in a department with only one salaried employee, who worked with thirty wealthy women volunteers. They produced a Radiothon every year which was one of the Philharmonic’s largest annual fund-raising events. I screamed in the phone, "That sounds perfect! I would love that!"
"I don’t know exactly what it pays but I know it’s not much."
"Bill, I don’t really care. I honestly don’t. It sounds like the perfect job for me. I’ve always enjoyed working with women and I promise not told hold the fact that they’re wealthy, against them."
Bill called me back later in the day and told me that he had arranged an appointment for me. A guy named Francis, who happened to be gay, would interview me. While I knew a ton about auditions, I knew nothing about the interviewing process in "the real world," as we performers always called it, so I was a bit nervous about it. If Francis liked me, I would then meet with Jean Sloan, the present volunteer chairwoman of the event.
Two days later I was sitting in Francis’ office in a suit and tie. Bill was right about the salary. I had been making $1,000.00 a week at Radio City and this position paid $15,000 a year. Even so, I didn’t care. With my impressive background, which I even watered down, Francis said he was sure I wouldn’t last long. But, he said that the job was mine if Jean okayed me. Jean and I clicked immediately and that afternoon I walked home happy that I was beginning the next chapter of my life.
One by one I met all of the women and all of them welcomed me with open arms. A woman had previously held my position and they made it obvious that they were thrilled to be working with a gay male. It was a match made in heaven.
The office was fairly well organized but I organized it within an inch of its life. Almost immediately, I heard some of the women complain about the storage cabinets, which held all the premiums, or gift items, to be sold during the Radiothon. I inspected the cabinets and found that they had been poorly designed with a lot of wasted space. The cabinets themselves were much too deep and the unmovable shelves were too far apart. I measured the closets, drew them to scale on graph paper, and along with my typewritten report, I presented my suggestions. Jean and the other volunteers were so thrilled and so appreciative, it was as if I had given them all gift certificates to Tiffany’s.
The ladies, as I came to call them, had many problems, most of which seemed insurmountable but in reality were easily solved. Every time I solved a problem I received another star and I got more than my share of stars every day. I found I enjoyed dressing up in a shirt and tie every day and they enjoyed the attention a gay man gave them. They liked to be noticed when they wore something pretty or had a new hairdo and compliments like that come naturally to most gay men.
When the new storage cabinets were completed, even people from other departments raved about them. The next thing on the agenda was the design of the catalogue. The premiums, with the New York Philharmonic logo on them had already been designed and ordered by the time I was hired. All the services had to be volunteered and the photographer who worked with them the previous year had suddenly become unavailable. Jean had no back up and was in a quandary about what to do. I said, "You know, Jean, I have a good camera and I’m a decent photographer, maybe I can take the pictures. I could at least try it and if it doesn’t work out, we can look for somebody else." You’d have thought I handed her the Hope diamond. I told her the only thing I’d like was a by-line if it turned out that my pictures were used and she readily agreed to that.
The next day I brought in my camera and Jean and I spent the entire day together arranging the premiums for the photo shoot and had a wonderful time. Jean rubbed some of the other women the wrong way because she never hedged words. People always knew where they stood with Jean because she said what she thought in no uncertain terms.
She was a true diamond in the rough. She was originally from Ames, Iowa and some of her pronunciations were a bit odd. For instance, when she said Howard, it came out like Hard. She was also terribly funny because she often mispronounced words she was unfamiliar with. One day when we were shopping for something and couldn’t find it, she said, "Let’s just forget about it, we’ve spent enough time shlubbing around the city looking for it." The word she was looking for, of course, was schlep. Another time she said, "Well, if we don’t do it the whole thing’s gonna go caploote," instead of caput. She was a riot and the longer we worked together the more we liked each other.
Jean was married to Don Sloan, who, at the time, was second in command of a large accounting firm, and they lived at 860 Park Avenue in a 17-room apartment they owned. It was the kind of apartment I had only seen in films, where the elevator actually opens into the foyer of the apartment because the apartment takes up the entire floor. The foyer alone was bigger than our bedroom. It was incredible! Don, however, wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he had worked himself up to that lofty position the hard way and he and Jean never forgot their meager beginnings. Jean, in particular, was as down to earth as one can be. Prior to their moving to New York, they had lived in Kansas City, next door to Don Hall, the owner of Hallmark Cards.
Real estate prices in Manhattan were rising dramatically and Curt and I knew if we couldn’t find something affordable to buy soon, we would be priced out of the market. Even though my job at the Philharmonic wasn’t paying me much, we had a joint account with a decent balance, and I had somehow managed to save some of the money from the sale of my Berry Drive house, so a down payment wasn’t a problem.
We methodically scoured the ads in the newspapers every Sunday morning and looked at condos and co-ops for months. Almost at the point of giving up, we finally found an "L’ shaped, 1,100 square foot loft in Chelsea that we loved. The building, on 17th Street between 7th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas, had originally been a printing factory and had four units – all with 11-foot high ceilings – on each of its seven floors. Like most buildings, the price of the units increased the higher the floor. Unit #4-D was on the front of the building and if you stood at either of the four windows, you could actually see a small piece of sky. At $103,500, it was the most we could afford and we bought it!
Aside from one nicely finished bathroom, a water hookup for the kitchen sink, and a separate room at the bottom of the "L," the loft was open space. One of the things we liked most about that particular unit was the separate room because it would make a terrific music room for Curt. As a design team, Curt and I found we were a great fit because I could visualize the finished product and draw the architectural design to scale on paper and Curt excelled at dealing with the contractor and supervising the actual construction, which I wasn’t good at and hated doing.
On one side of the wide entrance hall, I designed a niche to hold Curt’s four white Steelcase five-drawer filing cabinets. On the other side of the hall was our bedroom, which was only large enough for a small night stand on either side of our king-size bed. Although the room was small, is wasn’t claustrophobic because the entrance had double pocket doors, which we rarely closed, and mirrored closet doors on either side of the bed, with storage space above.
We furnished the large square living room sparsely, with two identical sectional sofas, covered in slate gray fabric and 2 large glass and chrome coffee tables, one of each in opposite corners of the room. The mirror-image effect was quite dramatic.
Curt, of course, was most interested in the music room and I was most interested in making the music room soundproof so I wouldn’t have to continue listening to his practicing, which, after six years of living together, would be a luxury for me. The common wall between the music room and the rest of the apartment grew to be twelve inches thick and had two doors, one facing the living area and the other facing the music room itself, which created a one-foot vacuum between the two doors. Aside from Curt’s two grand pianos, a Grotrian and a Yamaha, the only other furniture in the room was a Victorian armchair, covered in cranberry velvet, which sat beside a small antique side table. The wall opposite the windows, became a floor to ceiling bookcase to accommodate Curt’s music, record, and book collections. Because the bookcase was 11-feet tall, we installed a portable rolling library ladder, which could be used to reach the cabinets over the mirrored doors in the bedroom, as well as the cabinets in the front hall over the washer/dryer. The music room was so soundproof, guests, who were sitting in the living room and unfamiliar with our apartment, were often quite startled when Curt walked out of the room because they couldn’t hear him practicing and they had assumed the door led to a closet.
I did most of the cooking and designed the kitchen so that it was open to the living areas when the lights were turned on but almost disappeared completely when the lights were turned off. And because we wanted to make the most out of the space, we decided to splurge by outfitting the kitchen with custom Poggenpohl cabinets.
Our unit turned out so beautifully, the sponsor of the building asked if he could use our apartment as a model and show it to perspective buyers and we agreed. Three buyers, including Bobbi Van (not the performer) and Stephen Greenberg, liked our unit so much, they even hired us to design and supervise the construction of their lofts. Bobbi and Stephen, in fact, ended up becoming lifelong friends.
Shortly after the New York Philharmonic Radiothon presentation, Jean got an offer from the actor Sam Wanamaker. For some years, Sam had been on a crusade to rebuild Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in England on its original site. He was anxious to begin fund-raising efforts in the U.S. and he asked Jean to head the fund-raising events in New York, as well as California, on a volunteer basis. Sam had already secured a donation of a small office on East 44th Street, and told Jean the budget allowed for one full-time office position.
After being the Chairman of the Radiothon, Jean didn’t want to stay on and work on another similar event at the Philharmonic in a lesser capacity so she was quite excited at the prospect of working on the Globe project. Over lunch, Jean told me all about the offer and asked me if I would consider leaving the Philharmonic to accept that position. With my show business background I felt I was a natural for the job. Jean said that she had already told Sam about me and that I would have to meet with Sam to negotiate salary.
I found Sam to be charming and my meeting with him went very well. He offered me a starting salary of $500 weekly with a raise to $600 after 6 months, which would be more than double what I was making at the Philharmonic. Not too shabby for someone who had only recently made his first foray into the real world that exists outside of show business. I accepted the offer and gave my two weeks notice to the Philharmonic the next day. Jean and I were delighted that we would continue working together.
The tiny office wasn’t going to require much furniture so the following weekend Jean and I made the rounds of used furniture places. We found a couple of desks, two file cabinets, and one office chair, all quite acceptable looking and reasonably priced. Jean couldn’t find a chair that she liked and decided she would buy a new office chair and pay for it herself.
It became evident quite quickly that Jean and Sam did not see eye-to-eye on a great many things. Jean had a very impressive fund-raising background and she had her own unique way of doing things. She felt, and I had to agree with her, that Sam found fault with a lot of her suggestions, gave her too much direction, and treated her more like an employee rather than a volunteer. A few weeks after we began, Jean resigned. If she had had her druthers, I think she would have liked me to walk away with her, but she understood that wasn’t an option for me because I needed the job.
Finding a replacement for Jean proved to be an impossible task for Sam so he and I ended up running the office for the first several months. The longer I worked with Sam, the more I liked him and I came to have great respect for him.
Many people thought Sam was born in England but he was actually born in Chicago on June 14, 1919 and went to London for the first time in 1949. He looked for the site of the original Globe Theater and was disappointed not to find a more lasting memorial to one of the greatest playwrights in the world. He made his stage debut there in 1952, was appointed director of the New Shakespeare Theater in Liverpool in 1957, and joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theater company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959. In 1970 he founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust, dedicated to the experience and international understanding of Shakespeare in performance.
He honored his commitment to the project with great determination and drive. Having doors continually slammed in one’s face could have deterred a weaker man from his goal but not Sam. He was never discouraged and his dedication to the project never wavered.
Sam and his wife lived in London but his long time love affair with Jan Sterling, the film actress, was fairly well known in Hollywood. I became a fan of Jan’s when I saw her in The High and the Mighty, which won her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress in 1954. Even though Jan and I never met, we spoke so often on the phone we developed a warm friendship.
Sam commuted back and fourth to England on a regular basis which left me, all alone, in charge of the office. When Sam was away, he sent me endless tapes with lists of instructions: people to call; business, luncheon and dinner appointments to make for him when he returned; and, of course, letters to write. Sam dictated many of the tapes on planes. They usually began quite coherently but more often than not, they ended up fuzzy and slurred as he enjoyed his in-flight cocktails. The tapes went on and on and on, with Sam repeating himself ad nauseam. Occasionally I would hear him snoring, having fallen asleep while talking. I spent hours transcribing the tapes trying to make his letters readable. Fortunately, Sam came to trust my grammar and editing skills, although they were far from perfect.
The first event Sam and I worked on was a benefit in Los Angeles hosted by Prince Phillip. Sam, of course, communicated with all the celebrities personally to extend the original invitations. In most cases, however, it was more a job of talking them into appearing at these benefits, rather than having them volunteer. It was my job to make all of the follow up calls to their representatives to confirm their appearances and fill them in with all the details of where and when the events would be held, and what would be expected of them, which in most cases was only their presence.
Before the event itself, Sam held a meeting with many of the luminaries, the only ones of whom I remember are Cary Grant, Richard Burton and Michael York. I was so excited to be in the same room with Cary Grant, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. I had actually seen him once before years earlier when I was working on the film Anything Goes with Mitzi Gaynor. He walked into the rehearsal room one day and Mitzi suddenly got tongue-tied, which didn’t often happen to Mitzi. I might add that the dancers – both male and female – were also speechless to be in his magnetic presence.
At one point during the meeting Mr. Grant got up from his place at the table, walked toward me, and smiled as he said, "Could you point me in the direction of the men’s room?" I directed him although what I really wanted to do was accompany him. Oh, well.
After the meeting, we moved to a ballroom where Prince Phillip addressed the crowd. I was awe struck when I found myself standing next to Elizabeth Taylor. Although she was rather chubby and dressed in a rather shapeless sky-blue silk dress, she was still gorgeous.
The event came off without a hitch and Sam was very generous in his praise of my participation. At the time, I had only been working with him for four months. My salary raise wasn’t due to start for another two months but on the flight back to New York he told me he was so impressed with my performance he was going to raise my salary to $600.00 immediately.
Without skipping a beat, we began working on the next event, to be hosted by Her Serene Highness, as she was always addressed, Princess Grace of Monaco, and held in New York at the Helmsley Palace Hotel. During the planning of the event I was in constant communication with Monaco, because Princess Grace, or someone who spoke in her stead, had to approve of all the press releases, programs, schedules of events, etc.
In the midst of all this, I got a call from my friend Kiki. A friend of his, who worked for the soap, Ryan’s Hope, called him and said they were doing a scene with Helen Gallagher that took place in a ballroom and they needed some dancers. It would only be two or three days work and he asked me if I wanted to do it. I called Sam in England and he agreed to let me take a couple of days off.
On September 15, 1982, our first day of rehearsal, we heard the tragic news that Princess Grace had been in an automobile accident the day before and had died. I called Sam immediately. He was devastated and said he had already made a reservation to fly back to New York.
Sam still hadn’t been able to find a volunteer replacement for Jean and he felt that the job had become more than one person could handle, which it had. He began looking for someone to hire who had prior professional fund-raising experience, someone who had worked for other nonprofit organizations, and consequently had social connections. Sam interviewed several applicants, one of whom was an English woman named Edmee Slocum. We were losing the gift of our office space and one of the primary reasons Sam selected Edmee for the job was because she promised him she could solve our problem, which she did. One of her connections offered us a much larger space in a brownstone on the upper east side and we moved there immediately.
Up to this point I had been working solely for and with Sam. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy working for someone else but I felt I could adjust to my new role fairly easily. After all, I had no problem switching from choreographer back to chorus dancer, which I had done repeatedly. In time, however, I grew to resent Edmee. True, she did have some connections but that was about all she had. I felt I was smarter than she was, wrote better letters, and had much more common sense than she did. One of the things that bothered me the most about Edmee was that she never wrote anything down and she had a memory like a sieve. When I make a phone call I take copious notes writing down the time and date of the call, the name of the person I speak to, and everything of importance that is said during the conversation.
Edmee would say things like, "When did I call Mr. Smith? Was it Monday or Tuesday?" and "What is the name of Mr. Jones’ secretary?" She really tried my patience. Additionally, she constantly called people the wrong names. "Call Sally for me," she’d toss at me without ever adding please. "Sally who?" I would reply. "You know, the woman who’s doing the flowers for the luncheon," she’d answer. "You mean, Shirley?" I would ask. "Yes, Shirley, call Shirley for me." I resented her telling me what to do and I knew it showed.
One morning I arrived at the office early when the phone rang. After I said, "Hello," I heard a gruff, sour woman’s voice say, "Is Emee Slocum there?"
I replied, "You mean Edmee?" emphasizing the "d."
The voice said, "Same thing."
I said, "I’m sorry, Ms. Slocum isn’t in yet this morning. May I take a message?"
The voice said, "This is Leona Helmsley." My body stiffened at the thought of actually speaking to the "Queen of Mean." Edmee had contacted Mrs. Helmsley in an effort to secure rooms gratis for many of the celebrities who were coming into town for the event, which was now going to be hosted by Princess Caroline and Prince Albert. Ms. Helmsley continued, "You tell Emee that I don’t give free rooms to anybody. Not Charlton Heston. Not Michael York. Not anybody. If Emee wants those people to stay in my hotel, somebody’s got to pay for the rooms."
"I’ll give her the message as soon as she arrives Mrs. Helmsley," I responded and followed it with, "After seeing your photo in so many magazine advertisements, Mrs. Helmsley, I must say it’s a pleasure to actually speak with you personally."
After a long pause I heard, in a light, lilting, mellifluous voice, "To whom am I speaking?"
"Howard Parker," I answered.
Then I heard this sweet-as-maple-sugar voice say, "How’s the weather there?" I thought, Could this actually be happening?
"It’s freezing here. It snowed last night and the streets are all slushy and nasty. Obviously you are not in New York."
Sugar mouth answered, "I’m in Palm Beach and I just came in from my morning swim. It’s a lovely day here."
"You’re so lucky. I wish I were there."
She continued, honey dripping from her lips, "Now, I know you had nothing to do with Emee’s request for free rooms, Mr. Parker, but please tell her when she comes in that Leona Helmsley doesn’t give anyone free rooms. If she’d like to speak with me further about this, ask her to call me."
"I’ll be happy to do that, Mrs. Helmsley. It’s been wonderful speaking with you."
"Stay warm," she cooed just before I heard the phone click.
I started jumping up and down in the room all by myself. I couldn’t believe that I had actually sweet-talked Leona Helmsly. I didn’t know who to call first.
When Edmee arrived, I told her what had happened and her only reaction was one of annoyance because Mrs. Helmsley wouldn’t give her the free rooms that she had asked for.
The night of the event, dressed in a tuxedo, I had just set my fluted glass of champagne, which was about half full, on a table when I saw Mrs. Helmsley standing two or three feet away from me. She looked so scary I didn’t have the nerve to go over and introduce myself. I reached for the glass and hit the rim of it with my pinkie finger and it started to tip over. At that moment, my life went into complete slow motion. I was so frightened that Mrs. Helmsley would embarrass me for breaking one of her glasses, I somehow reached under the falling glass and caught it, without spilling a drop.
Ultimately, it became impossible for me to hide my antagonism toward Edmee and the office situation became extremely uncomfortable. By that time Edmee had brought in a part-time woman with whom she had previously worked. When Sam called and asked me to have a drink with him after work one afternoon, I figured he was going to fire me and I was right. He was very apologetic, said he had no other choice, and I told him I understood his position completely. Sam offered me two weeks severance pay but told me I could leave the next day if I wanted to, which I did.
I got to the office early the next morning, packed up my personal things, lugged Jean’s office chair downstairs, and hailed a taxi. 25 years later I am sitting in that same chair, after recovering it few times, as I write this.
Happily, I never saw Edmee again but I did see Sam a few years later. In 1988, on my way to India, I stopped in London for a few days and went to the building site. I asked someone if Sam was there and I was delighted to find that he was. When he saw me, he welcomed me with a big smile and a hug and took me on a tour. He was peacock proud and I was just as proud for him, because I knew he, and he alone, was responsible for the rebuilding of the theater. Regrettably, Sam died on December 18th, 1993, shortly after construction of the actual theater began, and never saw the completion of his dream.
I was thrilled to see the following article in the Los Angeles Times November 29, 2012:
"STAGE NAMED FOR SAM WANAMAKER
Shakespeare’s Glove – the famous outdoor theater venue in London – will honor it’s late founder, the once blacklisted American actor-director Sam Wanamaker, by naming a new indoor stage after him.
The indoor venue, which will enable the company to produce year-round, will be called the Sam wanamaker Theatre. Wanamaker worked for many years to create the Glove but died in 1993 before he could see the finished project, which debuted in 1997.
The outdoor theater is expected to debut in early 2014."
