Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [17]
Ten minutes later, she got to the point. Why didn’t I audition for the dance line at Ciro’s, where she worked and which her boyfriend, George, managed?
“Because I’m afraid I can’t dance,” I explained patiently.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jolene declared. “Neither can I. Just come and audition, and I promise you, they’ll love you.”
“But I’m not like you, Jolene,” I said.
“You don’t have to be, Barbara. You’re you, and that’s quite enough,” she said.
“But Jolene, you’re tall! You’ve got very long legs. I’m not and I don’t,” I said, as if I were spelling out the facts of life to an Eskimo who couldn’t speak a word of English.
“Just wear high heels and shorts, so your legs will look long and lean, and you’ll be fine,” Jolene said.
I was running out of excuses. And after all, I had done some tap and a little modern dance at Miss Holloway’s. Besides, Jolene said that the club paid really well, and I was no stranger to nightclubs, having practically been raised at the Bal Tabarin. Little did I know that Ciro’s was quite another ball game: the biggest, glitziest, most decadent nightclub in the whole country.
In those long-ago days of cafe society, customers dressed to the hilt before a night on the town, champagne and caviar flowed nonstop, and Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, and Kirk Douglas routinely patronized Ciro’s, bringing with them glamorous starlets galore, all willing and eager to cater to their every whim.
At that time, Ciro’s was still at the height of its glory days: Peggy Lee, Sophie Tucker, Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis all performed at Ciro’s, and Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe were romanced there by glamorous men set on sweeping them off their feet. It was dinner at eight, a ten o’clock show, and afterward a night of unbridled passion. All in all, Ciro’s vibrated with glamour and mystique, laced with an aura of sin and sensuality.
Ciro’s catered to male customers unashamedly, and in the most artful ways. As I learned years later, no tall maitre d’ was ever hired at Ciro’s because the powers behind the club firmly believed that any short male guest would loathe following a tall maitre d’ to his table.
Nor did Ciro’s hang any mirrors in the main room, a strategy to prevent revelers from catching a glimpse of how extremely debauched they looked as the evening wore on. Light fixtures were set on special dimmers all over the club, so that as the hours went by, the light faded slowly until the club closed at two in the morning.
I was unaware of that Ciro’s lore then. All I cared about was that I had to learn four numbers for the audition and that hell would probably freeze over before I was transformed into the showgirl type. I was scared half to death.
But thanks to Miss Holloway’s advice, I was going to try. So off I went, my heart in my mouth, to Ciro’s on Sunset, where a Copa-style line of ten chorus girls danced fourteen ensemble numbers a night and, along the way, added to Ciro’s erotic allure.
At the audition, my worst fears that I’d be truly humiliated by my own shortcomings were immediately confirmed when the choreographer positioned a group of Ciro’s dancers in the front row and asked me to stand right next to them. The pianist thumped out a tune, I did a high kick, and my shoe flew right off my foot, up in the air, and down onto the stage again with a clunk.
I could have died, but the choreographer just motioned to me to pick it up and carry right on dancing, so I did. But as much as I struggled to follow the other girls’ footwork, I couldn’t keep up with the intricate dance steps and felt like a klutz of the first order. Then the music stopped, and the choreographer asked ten of us to come back to the club the following day. I nearly fainted when I found out I was one of them.
But I needed the job, so, like it or not, I went back to Ciro’s again. At the second audition I realized that I wasn’t the only klutz on the block. After watching many of us galumph around the stage like elephants, it began to dawn on me that