Life Is Not a Stage (11 page)

It was great fun, and I continued doing these industrial shows for several more years when the schedule permitted. I also started doing Oldsmobile television commercials. They probably look silly today, dancing and serenading a car, but they were sophisticated production numbers with precise choreography. If it were broadcast on live television, the timing had to be perfect, and it was quite satisfying to nail the two minutes perfectly. Others were put on film, showing me gloating over fins and mufflers while running my finger along a car’s top or against its sleek door panels. There were no cue cards or teleprompters either, so everything had to be memorized. Print ads also appeared in magazines: “Broadway star meets road star! That’s Florence Henderson admiring the new Olds Starfire.”

Returning to New York one night on the GM private plane after a show in Michigan, I looked out the window at the big full moon. I told Frank and Jane of a memory of such a moon when we had a party on the beach when I graduated from high school. My brother Joe had given me the present of a ticket on the Greyhound bus to come visit him in Florida. He knew that I was soon going to New York, and how ill-prepared I was emotionally. I think he saw the situation Babby and I had been in, and in this gesture stepped forward as a surrogate father. He wanted the time for some long talks to make sure I was a little more savvy in the ways of the world before landing in the big city.

That night, as he always did, Joe made me sing. As we looked out at the water and the reflection of the moonbeam on its surface, I sang “Ave Maria” at the top of my lungs. I told Frank and Jane how the light beam on the lake appeared like a magical stairway we could take to walk up to the moon.

When I got home late that night to the apartment on 55th Street, I knelt down to say my prayers at around 2 a.m. I asked for the usual things about taking care of my child and husband, and the rest of the family, including my sisters and brothers. My husband told me just before bed that Joe had called. He worked for the telephone company, and there had been a hurricane in Florida. He had probably been working around the clock and would be exhausted, so I thought it best not to call him back in the middle of the night.

While I was saying my prayers, the phone rang. It was my other brother, Tom. He told me that Joe had died. He had fallen asleep smoking. There were no windows open, so the smoke inhalation from the burning mattress killed him. Ironically, his wisdom from our talk just weeks before about death seemed prophetic when a fireman later told me how smoke inhalation is a very peaceful death. Joe was only thirty-seven years old. I often felt that if I had called him, maybe I would have awakened him and prevented his death. My mother, too, who lived with him at the time, was away and felt horrible knowing that if she had been there it probably would not have happened. It was May 10, 1958. I still think about him every day.

Joe’s death brought my situation to a dramatic and unmistakable point of no return. The drive, energy, and inertia that I could always count on now had to take a backseat to something else. Religion and faith, where did you go? It was akin to standing naked and unprotected. With this spiritual crisis along with the physical and emotional factors, my eternal optimism was nowhere to be found. Added to this mix of confronting Joe’s passing was that I had never really allowed myself to grieve my father’s and my other brother’s deaths. I tried to get answers to what all of this meant. I researched and read to find positive explanations but came up empty. Dr. Weinstein advised me to immerse myself in a topic that I had no real interest in to force myself to take my mind away from things. How about reading up on the Civil War? he suggested. I am glad there wasn’t a quiz afterwards, because I did not retain much. But it helped a little bit.

It would be a full two years before this pervasive cloud of gloom finally lifted and I would start to feel like myself once again.

CHAPTER 9

The
Today Show
Girl

A
s I was coming out of my postpartum funk and getting active again, the medium of television stepped up to become an increasingly important part of my life. Some actors are terrified about being on live television, helpless and at the mercy of Murphy’s law. More than a few did not thrive on the spontaneity of being unscripted. After my baptism of fire nearly fainting on
The Ed Sullivan Show
during my appearance at the time of
Fanny
, I quickly grew to love it. It was fast and it was live. You had to memorize and be prepared for anything. Here again, my childhood experience proved to be a valuable asset. After all, I had already stared down hell. What’s the worst that could happen to me? So when that little red light on top of the TV camera went on, I was fearless. But even if I had been afraid, my psyche would thrust me forward, forcing me to confront whatever it was head-on. Swinging high up on a circus trapeze hanging by the bar? No problem. Just go ahead, dare me! (And it happened.)

For better or for worse, television exposes people, and if you’re on long enough and often enough, they are going to learn who you are and what you’re like. But the more I developed, the more comfortable I felt. If you’re a phony or think you are funny when you really are not, there is no place to hide. It is all going to come out. Thankfully, I was privileged to constantly be around a multitude of very funny and talented people, and I was always trying to learn from them.

Jack Paar and his
Tonight Show
were right up there at the top alongside
Ed Sullivan
in terms of must-see television. Intelligent, witty, emotional, spontaneous, and highly unpredictable, Paar fascinated the public and media alike, and all tuned in with as equal passion to see him as to see his guests. I told my agent that I wanted to do the show. “I don’t think you’re right for it,” he said. Undeterred, I got on through another contact. Bill Hayes (my costar in the industrial shows) and I went on the show and sang a song on January 13, 1960.

The recurrent theme in my life, “turning misfortune into opportunity,” struck again, in the same way that ill-fitting bathing suit helped get me my first stage role. It happened when I went to sit on the hot seat to chat with Jack Paar for a few minutes after doing the number. Don’t ask me how, but I managed to spill a glass of water all over his desk. Instinctively, I got up and started to wipe up the puddles with his handkerchief. Jack said something like, “I’ve always wanted a maid like this,” and got a huge laugh. And as a consequence of that simple, nonsensical act, our friendship was cemented. I got invited back and soon became a “regular.”

I understood that Paar loved good stories, so I made sure to have one or two in hand ready to go each time I went on. Of course, the show could suddenly veer off in another direction. You had to roll with the punches, like the time Paar asked me to sing the same song over again three times. Johnny Carson, who succeeded him, could also throw out whatever was on his card from the pre-interview and talk about something completely off the wall. To hang with them both was a challenge, but always an enjoyable one. These were big personalities, and I had to match them. And because I was fairly successful in holding my own, my reputation grew, and I was in demand a lot on the talk show circuit.

To come up with content to talk about, I would think about things from my life that I considered funny. All of it was based on truth, which is where I believe the greatest comedy comes from. Case in point, Paar loved a story I told one night on the show about Barbara. I related how I would take my little daughter with me to St. Malachy’s Church, the actors’ chapel, which is on 49th Street between Broadway and Eighth in the heart of the theater district. Purposely, I would take her down front so she would not distract the other parishioners. After a few minutes sitting there, I noticed how her attention was drawn upwards. She was looking up at the crucifix high above the altar and recognized how it was similar to the one we had at home.

“Jesus on the cross,” she called out upon making this discovery.

“Yes, that’s Jesus on the cross, but don’t talk because people are trying to pray,” I told her, adding that it was okay for her to quietly whisper if she needed to say something.

“Oh, Jesus on the cross,” she repeated a few decibels louder.

“Shhh!”

She paused for a moment and looked thoughtfully up again at the crucifix. “Come here, Jesus, come here.”

“Jesus can’t come down,” I tried to explain to her. “That’s there just to remind us of Jesus and that he suffered for us.”

She looked up at the cross once again, and I could see the little wheels turning. A couple of seconds later, her little voice seemed to fill the church: “Jump, Jesus!”

I loved television so much that when an audition came up for the job as “the
Today
Show
girl,” I jumped at the chance. They were testing different people on air for the part. I went on as a “guest host,” and they liked what they saw. Conventional wisdom may have questioned why I would want to go in that direction when I was considered a member of that rarefied diva club, a Broadway lead. But from as early as my teenage years, I had a steadfast goal, and within it this move made perfect sense. My plan was to be active as an entertainer at a top level at least until age ninety-five (if God granted me the chance to live that long). I knew that I would need to diversify in order to do that. I thought this challenge would be fun and an opportunity to grow.

Such a challenge came fairly early on. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I have no idea whether what happened to me in one of my first big interviews was deliberate or accidental—a form of hazing, a lighthearted practical joke gone awry, a malicious prank, or just an innocent and unintended comedy of errors.

My interview subject was a Japanese woman who had written a beautiful book on ikebana, the art of floral arrangement. She was married to an American pilot, and she was wearing a beautiful kimono. We didn’t have time to chat before the seven-minute segment was to begin. The segment producer assured me that she did, in fact, speak English.

We went live seated tatami-style on the floor of an area appropriately decorated with a Japanese flourish. We exchanged bows, and I began my questions.

“So, tell me, how did it come about that you got into designing these beautiful floral arrangements?”

“Aaaaaahh aahhaaarrruuuu.” (I think she was saying, “Yes, yes, yes.”)

Maybe the question was a little too complicated, so I thought I’d go to something a little more basic.

“I understand that your husband is American, and that’s how you learned English.”

“Aaauuuhhh aahhaaaarruuu.”

After two more attempts and the same unintelligible syllabic answers, I realized that I was in quite a fix. The floor manager held up four fingers, meaning four minutes remained to be filled. Funny how time can suddenly stall to a near crawl in these moments. Beads of perspiration were beginning to form. I was desperate. She wouldn’t speak. Think fast, Florence!

I held up her book and opened it up to a random page in view of the camera. “Oh, why don’t you tell me about this wonderful book with all these incredible pictures? Would you describe this picture for me?” Of course, there was no response.

“Well, let me describe this picture for you.” I quickly looked at the caption to the photo. “Oh, here are some daffodils and unhusked
pussy
willows.”

The sound of that sexual double entendre unleashed a torrent of laughter on the set. I seized my opportunity for escape. “And now, Dave, over to you!”

Fifty years later, who would have known that it would be commonplace to see commercials for erectile dysfunction on television? Back then, the slightest innuendo that had anything to do with sex or any manner of bodily function related to it were harshly off-limits. On television and in films, there were all sorts of rules about such things as how long a kiss could last. If you happened to be embracing on a bed, better be fully dressed and have one shoe firmly planted on the floor. There was a long list of words, many of which are very tame by today’s standards, that could get you into big trouble if you uttered one on air.

On a practical level with a new family, the
Today Show
job was a perfect situation. It was in New York, and for the only time during this show’s long history, it was pretaped in the afternoon for airing the next morning. The viewers at home had no idea. The news readers, either Frank Blair or Jack Lescoulie, were the only ones live arriving at the crack of dawn, to give inserts with the latest news and weather.

The accommodation of doing the show the afternoon before was designed for the program’s first host and originator, Dave Garroway. Like everyone who has sat in his chair since, nobody enjoys waking up that early every day year in and year out. Dave was a powerful but lovable figure but one with a very big and obvious drug problem. He had this little black leather case where he kept his stash of blue and red pills. “These pep me up, and these calm me down, and I take them together,” he told me. He would wash them down with a liquid he called “The Doctor” from a flask he carried in his pocket. When I asked one of the staffers on the show what “The Doctor” was, I was told it was liquid Dexedrine, a powerful amphetamine. That world was all new to me. I had no idea what he was talking about.

The habit was a good reason why his behavior could be quirky at times. One day he came in and all the skin was off his thumb. “Dave, that looks terrible!” I said.

“I was working on my car and got glass fibers in there, so I’ve been pulling them out,” he explained.

“Dave, I don’t think those are glass fibers. Why don’t you go see the nurse?” There was nothing subtle about it. He had been pulling out the skin fibers.

Dave was the first person I had encountered in the business who was on “prescription” drugs. I knew musicians did it, but it wasn’t such an obvious thing to me working in the theater. For most of the actors I knew, alcohol was the poison of preference. For example, if the understudy for Walter Slezak in
Fanny
had to suddenly answer the bell, he would get blasted to self-medicate his anxiety. The other actors would routinely have to turn their backs to the audience to feed him his lines.

Dave would come in sometimes and tell me that he had been up for three days straight, one of the side effects of his habit.

“I really admire you,” he said to me one morning. “You have children and you work. My wife…” He was kind of upset and complained that she was not active enough or productive, in his opinion.

“You shouldn’t say that,” I countered. “Your wife is lovely. She’s raising your son.” We had developed a nice friendship grounded in mutual admiration. But the pressure of all those years clearly wore on him. He was a very bright and sensitive guy under it all, a very complex man.

As an on-air personality, Dave had a penchant for doing some fairly wacky things, not the least of which concerned his fascination with monkeys. J. Fred Muggs was one of the memorable simian regulars on the show, but one that I would choose to forget. One day, the chimp gently and tenderly put his hairy little hand out toward me and grabbed hold of my cheek like he was ready to rip it from the bone. Guess he didn’t know his own strength. That was the beginning and end of our friendship.

But it didn’t stop there. “More fun than a barrel of monkeys” was a very common expression of the time, and Dave decided to put it to the test on the program. So he arranged for an actual barrel stuffed with live monkeys to be on the show. When he took the lid off, all hell broke loose. “More
pandemonium
than a barrelful of monkeys” would be more apt. We quickly had a full-scale disaster on our hands. The chimps went completely berserk. In seconds, the set became one big monkey toilet, littered in crap. I quickly leaped up on the desk, adrenaline-boosted gymnastics given the dress I was wearing. Some holdouts were still up in the rafters when I left. Sadly, I was told later that they had to shoot them to get them down. I hoped that wasn’t true.

Being the “fart in the whirlwind,” as my mother had once called me, life circumstances put me in the center of one particular censorship issue. Not long after the ink dried on the
Today Show
contract, I got pregnant. And yes, the word “pregnant” was on the no-no list. They did everything possible to hide my bulge as it became more visible. A strategically placed potted palm plant worked quite well when I was singing. I never really got that big, but my dresses went up a few sizes as I progressively got larger. Some lady wrote in and referred to me as “sitting up there in my hatching jacket.” Now you can almost deliver your child on television!

Don’t ask me why my biology always seemed to pick inopportune times in conflict with major career moments. So much for the rhythm method (or “calendar-based contraception”), the only family planning option morally acceptable for strict Catholics! I love my children, but I found out the hard way that there is a good reason why it is called Vatican roulette. Like most forms of gambling, the house almost always finds a way to win in the end.