Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [18]
However, that realization didn’t stop me from worrying about my own lack of dance ability. It was only years later that George Schlatter, who managed the club and later went on to produce Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (and married Jolene along the way), cracked that I must have been nuts to worry about my footwork at the audition or while performing in the show. “We hired you because we knew the customers would never look at your feet, darling, but much further up,” he said.
I was young and naive and just didn’t fully understand the real reason male customers flocked to Ciro’s in droves. But at least I wasn’t lying about my age, like some of the other girls. A number of them, I later discovered, were much too young to be working there.
To my everlasting surprise, after the second audition I got the job, and what I look back on as my month in purgatory began. During my first few days at Ciro’s, we rehearsed every afternoon, and I spent most of the time stumbling around, losing my shoes, treading on the other girls’ feet, and, as soon as a break was called, bolting into the ladies’ room, where I sobbed my heart out.
Then at four I’d rush over to the bank and start working there. After the bank closed, I’d speed back to Ciro’s again, just in time for the ten o’clock show, where, to my horror, I was put in the front row of the chorus, presumably because I was so much shorter than all the other girls.
After a week, it was obvious to me that working at Ciro’s and at the bank just didn’t mix. Since I was making so much more money at Ciro’s, I quit the bank and concentrated on my job in the chorus at Ciro’s instead.
Fortunately, a dance team called the White Sisters took pity on me and spent some time teaching me the dance routines. I followed their instructions as best I could, but although I ended up not being such a klutz anymore, I still didn’t feel comfortable working at the club. From my perspective, dancing at Ciro’s felt like being on another planet. To top it all off, most of the girls mixed with the customers between shows—it wasn’t mandatory, and I did not, but it happened a great deal.
Then George discovered that I could sing, so I was given the additional job of singing with Bobby Ramos and his band in between shows. The first show started at ten, the second at midnight, and each of them lasted an hour.
A short time later, I was given a number of my very own to perform in the show: Miss Adelaide’s song “Take Back Your Mink,” from Guys and Dolls.
Suddenly the other girls were at my throat like a herd of long-legged hyenas scenting fresh blood. Before, my failure to mingle with the male customers between shows had passed without comment. Now the girls—most of whom had the longest legs not in captivity and the sharpest nails in existence—turned on me with a vengeance, sniggering, “Here comes the Little Virgin.”
They probably didn’t like me any better after one of the girls was asked by Sammy Davis Jr. to give me a message. A big scowl disfigured her pretty face as she whispered to me, “Sammy would like to take you out.” He was at the height of his career then, a big star (though his Rat Pack days were yet ahead of him), but I still wasn’t about to go out with one of the customers.
Besides, I’d heard all about Sammy’s wild parties, which he threw at his house high in the Hollywood Hills. George later confided to me that as soon as Sammy first saw the house (which once belonged to Judy Garland, and which had just been put on the market by the new owners) he fell in love with it and wanted to buy it then and there. But he was realistic enough to know that the current owner would never sell to someone of the Negro race (as African Americans were then called). So George stepped in and bought the house for Sammy, then transferred ownership over to him.
Anyway, I’d heard all about the girls who went to those parties, and sometimes ended up staying there. So I politely refused Sammy’s invitation,