Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [88]
Gloria and I go glam—wind machine and all.
We sat across from the agent at his desk. He beamed appreciatively at us.
“Boy,” he said, “I don’t know which one of you I’d like to fuck first.”
Boy, did he pick the wrong two women to say that to. I don’t think we heard anything else he said that day. The meeting—and the idea—came to an immediate end. But Gloria and I were at the beginning of a long and deep friendship.
SOON AFTER, Gloria called me and asked if I would pitch in for her at a welfare mothers event in New Hampshire.
“Welfare mothers? Are you crazy? They’ll hate me,” I said. “I’m a kid from Beverly Hills and I don’t have any children. What will I talk to them about?”
“Trust me,” Gloria said. “They’ll love you—and you’ll love them. You’re all women.”
I was terrified. But I wanted to rise to the occasion, and I think I was curious to see if these women and I would be able to connect. So I started by talking about family.
I told them about my grandmothers, and made them laugh with stories of Grandma the drummer, and how independent and eccentric she was. I told them about the time my mother had received a beautiful silver picture frame, and how she’d asked Grandma for a photograph of her to put in it. I knew what my mother wanted. She wanted a mother-like portrait of Grandma in a lovely dress and a string of pearls, her hair in a neat bun. But what Grandma sent was a picture of herself dressed as a fortune-teller—with wild scarves, gypsy earrings, a crystal ball and a mischievous grin.
Marching for the ERA in Chicago, with Bella Abzug (IN HAT, SECOND FROM THE LEFT), Phil, Betty Friedan (FAR RIGHT) and thousands of women warriors.
“This is the show woman who is your mother,” Grandma was saying. “Frame that!”
And my mother did. She put it right on the piano in our living room. When my little friends came to our house and asked me who the lady in the picture was, I didn’t even hesitate.
“That’s my mother’s fortune-teller,” I’d say.
I also talked to the welfare mothers about the other women in my family. About my mom giving up the work she loved to be with my dad. About my aunts and their marriages, and how they had been dismissed because they were women. By the end of the night, we were laughing and crying, and Gloria had opened my eyes and my heart to the connections that we women have with each other.
AND THEN I met Bella.
Bella Abzug was a big, strong, brilliant woman. She was a lawyer and a fearless congresswoman from New York who fought for women’s rights and all the causes she believed in with a fierce sense of justice and outrage. For those of us who worked alongside her, she was both an inspiration and a mentor. Some people would describe Bella as “the one with the big hat.” They didn’t know Bella. She wore dozens of hats, and shielded all of us with her broad brim.
She also had a great sense of humor that she often used to make a political point. It was in the midst of the heated fight for the Equal Rights Amendment that she made that memorable quip: “True equality will come not when a female Einstein is recognized as quickly as a male Einstein, but when a female schlemiel is promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.”
At a backyard fund-raiser with “Tanta Bella” and Carol Burnett.
I called her “Tanta Bella.” She was the loving, demanding aunt, always advising Gloria and me about everything, including marriage. She was happily married to Martin Abzug, the most supportive man in the world, and they had two great daughters. She saw no reason why Gloria and I couldn’t do the same.
She was crazy about Phil, and taunted me about marrying him. “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “You think you’re going to do better than this?” Bella was something else.
Shortly after I was married, I was on a flight to Chicago. I’d just been seated, when Bella bounded onto a plane (everything she did was big),