I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [96]
So that’s how George got to the Philippines. He said they performed day and night, averaging twenty performances a week, sometimes at four o’clock in the morning, in a clearing in the jungle, under makeshift klieg lights, surrounded by exhausted troops. After a long stint, he went to Manila on an R & R break. The soldiers, excited about the whorehouses, chanted, “Let’s go, let’s go!” So George decided to try it.
“I took a shower, shaved, put on my best dress uniform, cut my fingernails, and perfumed and covered myself in talcum powder, because I wanted the experience to be perfect,” he told me.
He got out of the jeep with the other soldiers. Dozens and dozens of troops were around, most of them drunk, some coming out of the brothels holding naked women upside down with their legs spread, yelling, “This is what you’re going to get! This is what you’re going to get!”
“I was so traumatized,” George said, “but I was determined to do it.” Inside, there were cubbyholes with sheets dividing rows of mattresses lying on the floor. “I don’t doubt the Japanese had just left, because we could still hear shooting off in the jungle. I was not going to let this be a bad experience, so I stood at attention next to the poor girl in the bed, and sang Cole Porter.”
Night and day, you are the one.
Only you beneath the moon or under the sun …
What did the girl think? The Japanese were bad enough, and now the drunken Americans. Here was a singing madman, moaning at her. All George heard in reply to his serenade was, “Hurry up and pom pom.”
MILLY
Melissa Hayden was a perfect example of doing everything possible to be your best onstage. We would be on a concert tour. Milly would want to get up and go to the theater first thing in the morning and do barre. Or she’d get out of bed and do barre in her room. She even traveled with a full-length mirror. At breakfast, she would sit down, eat like a stevedore, then consume forty different colored vitamin pills—she’d lay them out on the table like a mosaic. She’d find a place to get a massage after class, check the floor of the theater, go out front and look at the stage to see the sight lines, take a nap after rehearsal. We’d come to the theater, always an hour earlier than everyone else, and she’d want to rehearse constantly, “Can we do it again?” She had a ritual in the dressing room, and carried a syringe to give herself vitamin B12 shots for extra energy, just before curtain. Everything was timed and worked out so that when the overture played she was ready to make her entrance onstage, she was at her peak.
If she didn’t feel at her peak, to get her adrenaline up, she’d pick a fight. Once, just before our entrance in Swan Lake, we could hear the music in a countdown, Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight … I was busy trying to get myself together, jumping and stretching, when I spotted that dissatisfied look on her face. “Milly, save it. Leave me alone.” Twenty-one … twenty … nineteen …
“Well, I don’t feel ready,” she complained. “I don’t have enough energy. I have to get my adrenaline going. Let me go pick a fight with a stagehand.”
As the countdown continued, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen …, she’d approach some unsuspecting member of the crew. “Hey! I have to make an entrance here. Move your ass. Move up to the front where you can see me better!” At that point, it’s like ten, nine, eight … and she’s arguing with this guy, who’s furious at her, and he’s opening his mouth to call out “BITCH!” … then three, two, one and she’s onstage, transforming that conflict into a performance of riveting drama.
At the end of the bows, when the curtain came down, she’d yell, “Where the hell is he? Where’s that wonderful man? I owe it all to him!” She would seek out that stagehand to hug him and kiss him, saying, “Thank you, thank you, I needed you! Wasn’t I great?!” Tremendous generosity of spirit, drive, and ego.
Milly depended more than anybody I know on the music. If the music didn’t give her joy, pleasure, and excitement, she would be angry. Partnering her onstage was exciting, but hair-raising.