Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [21]
“He’ll ask you to come straight over to Republic Pictures to meet him, but don’t be worried. He’s really on the up-and-up. He’s just an eccentric. Midnight is when he always interviews actresses. Those are his legitimate office hours and you’ll have no problems with him,” he said.
I wasn’t reassured and made a deal with my roommate, Barbara Wilson, that if Howard Hughes called, she’d chaperone me at the midnight meeting.
Fortunately, Howard Hughes never did call me, but I still can’t help wondering what was going on in Wilt’s mind when he suggested that I go over to Howard Hughes’s place at midnight. I’d like to think that he was just looking out for me professionally. And I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but perhaps I was—and still am—more than a little naive.
After all, Wilt was a top Hollywood agent and, unlike me, had no illusions about the town or the industry. In fact, how he got me my first job is just one example of the way in which the business worked back then, and the way in which the men who ran it viewed women—and probably still do.
“They want a sexy blonde over at CBS. So wear the gingham dress,” Wilt instructed me.
The gingham dress? It was March and unseasonably cold, but I wasn’t about to argue with Wilt. I threw on the dress, flung a woolly white coat over it, and drove right over to CBS.
The lobby was colder than a Sub-Zero refrigerator. In a moment of rebellion, I went up to the interview but didn’t take my coat off.
The next morning Wilt called, irate. “Barbara, you didn’t get it. Tell me you wore the dress. Tell me you wore it!”
Well, I could never bring myself to lie to Wilt.
“I wore the dress, Wilt, but I didn’t take the coat off,” I said.
To do him justice, he didn’t give me a hard time.
Instead, he got me a second interview for the same job, but he didn’t mince his words when he prepared me for it, either.
“For God’s sake, Barbara, wear that tight gingham dress, and this time take that goddamn coat off!” he said.
Grateful to get another chance at the job, I wore the dress, and even before I arrived at the building I took my coat off. At the same time, I consoled myself that at least that way, I knew that I wouldn’t have to peel off my coat at the audition like some kind of a stripper.
The director was urbane, kind, and polite. He asked me where I’d studied, then after a minute or two thanked me and I was dismissed. Gingham dress or not, I hadn’t gotten the job.
But just as I was walking down the hall, a man lolling by the watercooler chatting with a group of other men detached himself, came over to me, and asked what I was doing in the building.
I explained I was there for an interview but that I clearly hadn’t gotten the job. The man seemed sympathetic and asked me who my agent was, and that, I thought, was that.
When I got back to the Studio Club, there was a message to call Wilt.
“Bar, you got it!” he said, jubiliant.
Mr. Watercooler, it turned out, was Nat Perrin, the producer of the show for which I’d just auditioned.
My very first job. Twelve spots on twelve live shows as a dumb blonde who sang off-key and appeared in skits with the star of the show, a new performer named Johnny Carson.
Later, I found out that the reason why the director hadn’t immediately cast me in the show was because, as he later explained to me, apologetically, “When I found out where you had studied and for how long, I assumed that an intelligent girl like you could never pass for a brassy blonde who sings off-key. I’m afraid I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”
Nat Perrin had set him straight, so now I had my first job, on The Johnny Carson Show, a live summer replacement for Red Skelton’s show that was projected to run over the summer of 1955. Johnny was only twenty-nine at the time, married to his first wife, Jody, but restless, insecure, and, I discovered afterward, drinking too much, perhaps to assuage his nerves at getting his big break at last.
Those nerves were never on display during the show, though. Johnny was brilliant at what he did, and really clever,