Hold the Roses (39 page)

I said, "Well, you're gonna watch our show."

He said, "I know you're doing great business, and that's all I care
about."

I said, "No, you're gonna watch our show," and he did... that night.
He loved it, but he didn't like the girl who played my daughter.

He said, "Get rid of her. Get somebody else."

I said, "Not me! You fire her, I won't," and by God he did. We had to
get another girl. But as I said before, Angela had called all of this.

One afternoon, Ethel Merman called me and said that she was going
to L.A., but she wanted to stop in Chicago to see my show, was that all
right?

I said, "Are you kidding? I'd love it."

She said she would be there the day after next. She had a friend pick
her up. She was going to stay at the Ritz and he would drive her to the
theater. As it was, I knew the guy who was bringing her. Let's just call him
Eddie. I told the cast she was coming and they were all excited. I got her
the best seats in the house and we did a helluva show that night. I kept
looking at her to see if she was laughing, and she was. Of course, I introduced her and she took a bow and came back to my dressing room after
the show.

She said she loved it; she thought it was funny and clean. She said, "I
went to see a play in Chicago and you know what some broad says right in
the beginning? She says, `I gotta pee!' Isn't that awful for a musical? Broadway is not Broadway anymore."

So I said, "I'll get dressed and we'll go downstairs and have a drink
and talk. The cast wants to meet you."

She said, "Fine."

So she and Eddie went to the lounge and our entire cast came down
to meet her. We all talked and told stories. She was just wonderful and the
cast loved her. She was something else. She left for L.A. the next day.

My birthday came in the middle of the run of the play. We did the
show that night and at the end of the curtain call, I did a little "after piece." I would talk about how we got the play going, thanks to Mr. DeSantis. I'd
tell some little jokes and talk to the audience. This night Bob came on
stage and said, "We have a surprise for you." He told the audience that it
was my birthday and that Ethel Merman was visiting me a few days before
and she had made me a tape! They played it. It was Merman who said,
"Happy Birthday dear Roe. The kids asked me to do a little birthday tape
for you. Have a happy, happy birthday. I send you all my love, Ethel." She
started to sing "Happy Birthday" and everyone joined in. Talk about a
thrill-it was wonderful. Carol told me they asked her to do this when she
came down to see the show and she said, "Of course." The cast threw a
party for me, and I got some beautiful gifts. One was a bracelet I truly
treasure; it has charms and each charm had the name of one of the actors.
It was a birthday to remember.

I went home, and in three weeks Tony DeSantis called and wanted
me to do Up a Tree in Chicago at the new theater and that he wanted me in
two weeks!

He said, "I have twelve people on stage and nine people in the audience!
I'll get you a big suite at the Ritz-Carlton. It's right next door to the theater."

I said, "You have to get the same cast."

He said, "I'll get them."

I said, "Okay, I'll see you in two weeks."

I called joy and said, "We're off again," and then I realized what Angela had said: "The show would go on and on." She was right again!

Joy and I arrived in Chicago and again Bob Nichols picked us up and
drove us to the Ritz. The suite was unbelievable. It had three bedrooms, a
kitchen, a dining room, and a living room. I think it took the entire floor.
It was fantastic. I arrived on Saturday night and told Bob to call the cast
together for Sunday in my suite. They arrived and we sat around and went
over the script. We all remembered the show and we breezed through it.
We opened the following Wednesday. It was a sellout for six weeks. Thanksgiving came while I was doing the show, and Tony DeSantis brought over
boxes of pots and pans, dishes, and silverware, because he knew that I
wanted to cook Thanksgiving dinner in the suite.

Angela came to Chicago to see the show and stayed with us in the
suite. She loved the show and said it should be a series. I said that was a
great idea and spoke to Bob Nichols about it. He wrote a presentation and
I called Bill Loeb to see what we could do. In the meantime, Bob wrote a
pilot and three story lines for future shows. It was great.

We came back to California and I know Bill was trying to sell the
show, but the studios said it was too political-they were afraid of it. So we
kind of gave up on it for a while.

I did the play again in San Antonio, at a theater that Earl Holliman
had bought. I tried to get as many of the original cast as I could. Carol
Saenz was signed, but Bob Nichols couldn't do it. We got a guy to replace
Bob, but it wasn't the same. It was all right. We got Otto to play the principal again, and instead of Dick Stadleman, we got a great guy named Don
Marston. It came off very well. I did a lot of publicity. I went to the Alamo
again and signed the guest book again. Carol and I stayed together at some
apartment, and I even brought my dog Scruffy along because there was no
one at the house. Noop had moved out into her own apartment. Carol and
I became good friends, and it was such fun to work with Carol. She was
great!

Vince decided to come to San Antonio and we had a ball while he
was there. The whole cast loved him. We'd go out every night after the
show and he'd spend money like it was going out of style. I think he enjoyed it too, because I think he had always wanted to be in show business.

When our show closed in San Antonio, I came home to California
for a few days and then went to do a TV movie called Bridge across Time
with David Hasselhoff in Arizona. David had played one of my sons in
Everybody's Girl, in Chicago. Robert Urich was another son. They were
doing all right, bless them. David kept calling me "Mom," which was kind
of cute. I had about two days on the film. In the middle of the second day,
Angela called me on the set and told me that Vince had died of throat
cancer and wanted to let me know before I heard it someplace else. He was
53 years old. He was one helluva guy. He was a dear and wonderful friend,
and I think about him very often even to this day.

4Gnes4

Bill Loeb called me one day and said, "How would you like to do your act
with Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting, and Barbara McNair?"

I said, "What are you talking about?"

He said he had an idea about putting the four of us together, each
doing our own act.

I said, "That's fine, but you have to have a finale-something to tie it
together."

He said, "We can come up with something."

I said, "When would we open?"

He said, "In about a month or so at the Wilshire Theater in Beverly
Hills."

I said, "Let me think about this, I'll call you later."

Six weeks before this happened, I was booked on a cruise to do my act.
I called Frankie Ortega to play for me. Our group was Frankie and his wife,
Maxine, Bill Loeb and his wife, Pinky, Joy and me. I was really breaking in
my new act. Frankie made the arrangements. I asked Anthony Newley if I
could do his song "Funny Man." He was so kind. He sent me a lead sheet
and lyrics and asked me if I needed anything else. What a dear man.

The cruise was wonderful. The show was a big hit and Frankie did a
concert of his own on another night. We had a great time and I felt a little
better about doing my act again. After doing all the TV and Australia, I
wasn't so sure about my act. The cruise convinced me again that it was a
good act. I had all new numbers and did quite a few bits with Frankie at
the piano. So I called Bill and told him I would do it. The money was all right, not great. We would each do about twenty-five minutes apiece. I
said, "And a finale. I want Frankie to do the show too. He can conduct for
all of us."

Bill said, "Fine."

I really wanted to make an impression because this was Hollywood
and my home. By this time, it seemed like everybody only knew me from
The Dick Van Dyke Show. It seemed no one knew I had an act, or that I had
worked in all the best clubs across the country for years. So I was out to
prove I was something before I did The Dick Van Dyke Show. I had two
gowns made by Michael Travis and I called Sammy Cahn to write a parody
of "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore." He said he'd love to do it. I could
use a clip from International House as my intro-nobody to introduce me,
just put the film on and play about one minute, have the band pick up the
music from the film and I would walk out, beaded dress and full-length
fur to match every gown. It was a helluva entrance.

I told Dodi, my secretary, that we needed a finale and she wrote parodies based on "Together," "Side by Side," "There is Nothing Like a Dame,"
and "There's No Business Like Show Business." She was a whiz at writing
parodies. We used her "Together" parody, and I walked into rehearsal with
the finale all written out and said, "This is the finale we're gonna do."

They said, "Fine."

I told Frankie and he wrote out some kind of music so we wouldn't
sound like amateur night. We all rehearsed our acts and then we rehearsed
the finale. It was good-not great, but good.

We opened and we were sensational. The reviews the next day were
unbelievable. On the entertainment page of the L.A. Times they had a
picture of us taken during our finale! We played the week and we were the
talk of the town. Bill Loeb was excited and thrilled and said we should go
on with this. He spoke to us about the Huntington Hartford Theater in
Hollywood. Barbara McNair didn't want to go on, so we had to think of
another girl. I suggested Kay Starr, but Frankie, who had worked with Kay
for years, said he didn't think she would do it. So we thought and thought,
and somebody, I don't remember who, said Helen O'Connell and we all
said, "Great!"

Bill wanted to "four wall" the Huntington Hartford Theater. For
those of you who don't know what "four wall" means, it means you pay for
everything, the musicians and the acts (us girls), and you pay a percentage
to the theater, like a rental.

I said, "We can't make any money."

Bill said, "Even if we fill half the house, we can come out with a little
something."

I said, "No, we won't, but I think we should play the date-right in
Hollywood. It would be good for all of us."

We got Helen. She was just right and God, she was beautifuldimples and all. She looked like she was thirty-and she was the oldest
of the group!

We decided to rotate each night. I would open, then Helen, then
Clooney, and then Margaret. The next night, Helen would open, then
Clooney, then Margaret, and then me. It all seemed to work okay, but it
still didn't feel right. We needed to really have a good finale. We took our
bows to "Together, Wherever We Go." Every night we would add little bits
and gags that just seemed to happen on stage. We'd come off stage saying
"Leave that in." It worked well for a while, but we really needed a song
written for us to make it a solid finale.

We got some great publicity and we opened. It was one of those starstudded openings. Everybody and his brother was there. Free, of course,
but it was a helluva opening and the reviews? Raves again!

Now we all started thinking about doing this on a tour. Bill would set
up the dates, we'd split the money four ways, and we'd each pay Frankie
one-fourth. In fact, we'd split everything four ways, including Bill Loeb's
commission. We started getting dates. The first one would be New Orleans about two weeks later at the Fairmont Hotel.

I was happy to have a little time to spend at home resting, relaxing,
and getting ready for our opening in New Orleans. Noop and I spent a lot
of time together during those two weeks. She had been going out with
Steve Rodrigues, a KNBC director, for about a year. Noop was producing
The Saturday Show on KNBC. She had quite a career as a producer. She
started on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder thanks to Rudy Tellez
and Joel Tator. She produced a game show called Are You or Aren't You?
She was currently doing The Saturday Show, producing a live remote every Saturday.