I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [74]
HOLLYWOOD
From Trieste, I took the Rapido to Milan, and boarded a red-eye flight to Hollywood. No jets in those days, so propeller planes required several stops for refueling and changing crews. The trip lasted two days. Despite exhaustion, descending into Hollywood was magical: the city lights glowed reddish orange, a million campfires burning through smog. Jack Donaldson met me at the airport. A caricature of a struggling Hollywood agent, all bluster and hyperbole. Jack was a ballet groupie, young looking for his late forties, though he already showed a hint of double chin. He had latched on to me, but his biggest love was the movie business—the wheeling and dealing, the gossip, and the stars. “Do you realize what an opportunity this is?” he harped. “Jack Cummings is one of the great producers at MGM, and Stanley Donen’s a legend! Have you ever heard of On the Town or Singin’ in the Rain? You can’t get any better. Gene Kelly is getting older, and the silver screen will be looking for a new, athletic, male dancing star! You could be it!” Dear Jack tried his best. He had ambitions for me; I had none. Doing a film was exciting, but as a career move? No. For me, it was just a game to play for a while, another challenge, a new cast.
Another of Jack’s clients, Morgan Jones, owned a small house on upper Laurel Canyon Road, and he rented me a room. Morgan, an actor in his mid-twenties, had a solid, muscular body, blue eyes, and the freckles of a redhead. Charming and matter-of-fact, he offered a litany of rooming-together details. “There’s the door. The key’s in the flowerpot. This is my shelf in the fridge. If you’re up early, tiptoe.” Then he revealed his great secret. “It’ll make me millions!” he boasted. “Except for my house, everybody in LA has a swimming pool, and those pools need to be kept clean. Mostly leaves and smog dust. It’s hard to reach the stuff in the middle. But …” He held up a small bottle of clear liquid. “With these mystery drops, cleaning’s a piece of cake! Here, I’ll show you.” Morgan filled his biggest kitchen pot with water, scattered crumpled leaves and broken matchsticks over the surface, and, with a tiny eyedropper and a dramatic wave of his hand, hocus-pocused a single drop into the center of the pot. Immediately, the floating debris moved outward, in concentric circles, to the sides of the pot. “ ‘Morgan’s Magic Drops,’ ” he exclaimed. “Now, all that debris is easy to scoop up from the sides!” “Wow! How did you do that?” I asked. He nodded with self-satisfaction. “It’s a secret.” Was he nuts, or was he on to something big? “But Morgan,” I persisted, “swimming pools are big. How are you going to get those drops into the center of the pool?” Preening, he whispered, “Squirt gun.”
Jack Donaldson laughed. “He’s pulling your leg. It’s nothing but household detergent [a new product in the early 1950s]. It has that effect on water.”
I discovered the difference between Hollywood and NYCB within the first few days. Michael Kidd would say, “Call for the brothers—tomorrow nine o’clock.” I would get there at eight a.m., don my tights and ballet shoes, do a barre, and by nine be warmed up, dripping with sweat, and ready to dance. That’s how it was at the ballet. Not so on the movie set. At nine, a couple of the crew, the assistant director, and a few of the brothers would wander in with cups of coffee and doughnuts, schmoozing or reading a newspaper, and would make themselves comfortable. “What’s happening?” I’d pipe up. “Is rehearsal canceled?” “Nah, we don’t start on time.” I don’t know if that’s true today with the big salaries and budgets, but in those days,