The Riddle of Gender - Deborah Rudacille [59]
Yes, Finocchio’s was definitely a training ground. But as good as Finocchio’s was for me, it was merely a stepping-stone. My life actually began in 1962, with surgery. It was a rebirth, truly. Everything prior to that was in preparation for a better life. I didn’t know what that better life was going to be, or how I was going to get there, but I was very aware of not being comfortable in the life I was living. This was not me. I had that brief time span onstage at Finocchio’s, when people applauded and said, “Ooh” and “Aah,” but that was as close as I had ever gotten to what I wanted. But that was only on the stage, not off.
But going into television on The Red Skelton Show—that was really show business. I had worked prior to the show and had done a movie called The Love God {’with Don Knotts. I got an agent, took acting lessons, then did a thing called The Female Bunch, with Russ Tamblyn, which is today a cult classic, but is so tacky, so terrible. I think I tell the story in the book, that because we didn’t want to sleep with the grips, my girlfriend and I passed ourselves off as lesbians, and because of that… the dialogue was pretty much being invented as we went along, and the dialogue did take on a very lesbian overtone. [Laughs] And it was one of the first. Then I went to work at the Ambassador Hotel, and that led to the Skelton show. Usually you reverse that order, you do stage and then television and film, but I did film first and then television.
Then things really started to flower, with The Red Skelton Show. I started getting quite a bit of work. I did a lot of early television … in fact, recently I was auditioning and a young director looked at my resume and said, “My god, you were there at the very beginning of television!” You start feeling hair sprout from your ears and a cane. [Laughs] But I was there doing all that variety show stuff. I did The Andy Williams show, and Leslie Uggams and Dean Martin. The Partridge Family. A skunk had gotten on the bus, and so Danny goes around to get costumes for the family with a cigarette girl or something in Vegas, and he’s trying to get me out of my costume.
I also did Night Gallery. When Rod Serling interviewed me he said, “If I wanted a showgirl, I’d hire Kim Novak. If you pull any of that showgirl shit on me, I’m going to have you right out of there.”
Q: So you had a reputation as a showgirl?”
I did have that reputation … well, I didn’t dare try anything else! So I was walking around on stilts and in miniskirts and very breathy. Smiling a lot. Not just in film, but in real life also.
Q: You were selling sexiness as a commodity?’
I don’t even know that it was sexy. It was a particular look. Do you remember Little Annie Fannie, the cartoon? Big eyes and the lips and the little perky nose and the long legs. That was the image. It was just another version of drag. The ultimate drag queen was Mario Thomas. With the lashes and the hair. That whole image back then. I was very familiar with that. Once, when I was working at Finocchio’s, I was going to work, and I saw Ann-Margret, standing on the corner in all of her glory. And it was the same act.
Q: Did you have the political consciousness to make the connection back then?
No, but I was shocked to discover that some of the people I considered to be the most beautiful women in the world were going through the same traumas that I was. We had the same goals; we were going about it the same way; we were going to private clubs in Beverly Hills, trying to be noticed, trying to be discovered, trying to find a sugar daddy. It was the same damn thing.
Q: The life of a starlet?”
Exactly. And the “will somebody really love me for who I am?” This was not transsexual, it was being a woman.
Q: Did you enjoy your life as a starlet?”
I loved everything that went with it. The restaurants, the parties. People treat you with great—they might be snickering behind their hands, but I don’t think they were at that time. I don