I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [75]
Eventually, Michael and Stanley would show up, probably coming in from an earlier production meeting, so we usually started rehearsing around ten o’clock. At eleven o’clock, you’d hear, “Coffee break!” and everyone would stop for more coffee and doughnuts. Some half hour later, we would be back rehearsing. Between eleven thirty and one, work would get done, till “Break for lunch. Back at two.” After lunch, we rarely started on time, usually a half hour to forty-five minutes late. Exact time became elastic, but we always broke at five.
I resisted for a while, doing another ballet class during lunch so that at two o’clock I’d be ready to go again. Finally, I caved in and joined the culture, wolfing down the coffee and doughnuts, beginning to salivate just before lunch, and dashing to the commissary to gobble. I gained twenty pounds before the film was done. After lunch, cross-country running through the sets with Russ Tamblyn, and, often, playing handball with Tommy Rall against the sides of the sound studios, until the movie machine got moving again.
Russ taught me how to jump from an eighteen-foot height, and, on hitting the ground, take up the force with a body roll. “It’s how they train parachutists to land,” he confided. He was a tumbler who had studied dance and used both skills to great effect. He was a superb actor, insightful, thoughtful, and the scenes he did during the shoot always seemed the truest.
The female star of the movie, playing the role of Milly, was Jane Powell—lovely, petite, and vivacious. I immediately developed a crush on her, but I was shy. Years later, I heard that Jane told an audience, “Oh, Jacques d’Amboise? He was one of the brothers, but he never said much. I thought it was because he was French and didn’t speak English.”
On the romantic scene, Morgan tried to set me up with a girl. One weekend, with dreams of seduction, I cooked her a dinner, but after ten minutes or so of necking (pathetic on my part), she got up and left. After the first few kisses, she realized the teenager on the other end of her lips was a neophyte. Although I had just turned nineteen, emotionally I was eleven. I cleaned the dishes, relieved.
I had no car, but it didn’t matter; I couldn’t drive. To get to Culver City and the MGM studios, I’d leave Morgan’s house and walk down from upper Laurel Canyon Road to the taxi stand on Franklin Avenue and Hollywood, about two miles. When film shooting started, the call would be, “Brothers in makeup at six a.m.!” which meant I had to be on my way by four. A rare car would pass me on Laurel Canyon Road, and I’d thrust out my thumb, but never had any luck. Until one morning.
A black sedan barreling down Laurel Canyon Road stopped. “Hi! Gee, thanks. Wow. I never thought anybody would be out this early,” I jabbered, clambering into the elegant car’s passenger seat. The profile of a stunning, strong-featured man greeted my gaze. He didn’t say a word; his hands clutched the steering wheel. In an attempt to fill the palpable void emanating from my mysterious driver, I never stopped talking. “I’m just going down as far as you can take me. I gotta get to Culver City.” Big silence. “Usually, I catch a cab at Franklin and Hollywood. You see, I’m shooting a movie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers …” Babble, babble, babble. We stopped at Franklin and Hollywood, and he leaned across my body and pushed open the passenger door at my side. “Gee, thanks, thanks a lot. That was a big help, getting me down here. Well, so long, now!” I closed the door, and the car zoomed off.
Every morning, around four fifteen a.m., Monday through Friday, the sedan would drive down, my thumb would go out, and he’d pick me up. Over the next three weeks, I blurted out my life story—yammering about New York, the ballet, my family, adventures on the Seven Brides set, and gossip about the cast. This taciturn man, I suspected, was agonizingly shy. He exuded masculinity, and had gorgeous skin, with a healthy blush of red stroked across his cheek. I never remember seeing the left side