This only made him angry. He yanked down my pajamas. His legs forced mine apart, and he moved on top of me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. I cried out, but he covered my mouth. “Shush, babe, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to put it between your legs.”
“No, Dad, you can’t do this to me. It’s wrong!”
But he was doing it . . . He was having an orgasm, and it happened so fast—and then he lay still. He had not penetrated me, but it was sickening, and I died a thousand deaths.
“I hate you, I hate you!” I sobbed . . . and then I slapped him as hard as I could.
He looked at me, then slapped me back. The blow was quick and stinging. There was contempt in his voice when he said, “I haven’t hurt you, babe. It’s what you deserve, because you’re nothing but a dirty little Jew! Like your father!”
And with that, he got up and left.
For a moment, I lay there in the dark, stunned, not realizing what he meant, thinking he must be crazy. Afraid he might return and try again, I ran to the bathroom, washed myself, dressed, and packed my bag. I dashed out the door and took the first train back to Bryn Mawr, reaching Harcum just as the night watchmen were making their rounds. They let me in and I tiptoed up the stairs to my room and to bed, filled with shame and confusion.
Everything I “knew” about Jews was bad—that the Jews killed Jesus, that Jews were miserly, that Jews gypped and cheated everyone. Me, a Jew? I didn’t want to be like that. I felt dirty enough after he molested me, and when Dad called me a “dirty little Jew,” he took away what was left of my self-esteem. I hated myself . . . I wished I was anybody but me!
I never told Mom what Dad did to me that night, but when I went home for Christmas vacation I asked her, “Why did you marry my father? Why didn’t you tell me he was Jewish?”
“I loved him,” she answered, “and you must be as proud of his family as I am of the Ware family.”
My mother had met my tall, dark, and handsome father, Walter Lytton, when they were both in college, he at Cornell and she at Smith. His father, Henry Charles Lytton, had put himself through college before joining the Union Army. After the Civil War, he opened a dry goods store in Chicago. The business prospered and expanded, eventually becoming a department store called the Hub, later known as Lytton’s, which rivaled Marshall Field’s in prestige. It was there that my father created the “bargain basement” and the “working man’s suit.” That’s the suit with two pairs of pants, one to wear to your job, and one to go to church in. My grandfather was now well known in Chicago as the dean of State Street merchants. His wife, my grandmother, Rose Eva Lytton, was the daughter of the legendary Sailing Wolfe, the seventh generation of her family in America, and president of the Chicago chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Isobelle, her sister (my great aunt) was the mother of Bernard Baruch.
Dirty little Jew indeed. I decided that if Ware, Henry, and I were Jews, we’d be the best Jews in the world.
CHAPTER 2
NEW FACES
That winter, Ware attended Yale as a freshman, and Henry left for Chicago. Mother decided to move to New York, and took an apartment at 1111 Park Avenue for herself, Nancy, Bobby, the nurse, Dad, and me. I was sent to the French School for Girls on 86th Street, between Fifth and Madison.
It was there that I met Jane Swope, a beautiful girl full of fun, and we became best friends. Jane was the daughter of Herbert Bayard Swope, the executive editor of the New York World. Mrs. Swope, like her daughter, was a great beauty. They entertained lavishly, both at their Park Avenue apartment and at their summer home on Long Island, and, happily, they included me.
Practically every weekend during the summer, there would be fabulous parties at Lands End, the Swopes’ lovely home at Sands Point on the Long Island Sound. The Swopes were absolutely the most fabulous hosts, and their guests were as fabulous as they were—Irving Berlin, Oscar Levant, William S. Paley, the Marx Brothers, Clifton Webb, Heywood Broun, and Dorothy Parker and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table were regular visitors. All the great newspapermen and bigwigs from Washington were there, and they were mad to play croquet on the great lawns of the estate, which they did every afternoon.
It was a fascinating time to be alive. There were no Concordes, no freeways, no computers, no TVs, no cell phones, but people always seemed to have something to say. They dressed for dinner, gave huge parties, and were passionate about the theater, books, radio, opera, and the art of witty and intelligent conversation.
I went to see Anna Della at the Great Northern Hotel. I told her I had to get away from home because of my desire to get a job in the theater and sing. She advised me to write the Shuberts. At the time, Lee Shubert and his brother J. J. Shubert were the only producers putting up revues and light operas on Broadway. I wrote for an appointment, and was asked to come to Mr. J.J.’s office.
Although I was scared to death, I was determined to audition. The well-dressed J. J. Shubert sat behind a huge desk. “Sit down,” he said as he smiled and took off his horn-rimmed glasses.
“So, you want to become an actress, Teddy?” Shubert continued. I saw my letter in his hand. “And, you live in Belle Haven, Greenwich . . . Why, that’s very near my home in Mamaroneck. It’s beautiful out there in the country right now, isn’t it? But, tell me, why do you want to go on the stage?”
“Because I want to sing, and I thought that you might give me that opportunity,” I replied. “I can dance, too, and I’m sure I can read lines.” I stopped because Mr. Shubert was already ringing for his secretary.
“Is John still here?” he asked when the door opened and she came in.
“No, sir,” she replied. “He left at three.”
“Well, young lady, can you play?” he asked, turning to me. “I’d like to hear you sing. There’s a piano over there.” He pointed to a fine old baby grand in the corner.
“I can only play one song, sir, and not very well, but I’ll sing it for you if you wish . . . Or I can come back again another day.” I hoped he’d say “fine,” but he didn’t, so I bravely went to the piano, sat down, and sang.
After singing the entire chorus of “What Is This Thing Called Love?” Mr. Shubert gestured for me to stop. “Well done, Teddy,” he said. “I’m going to give you the opportunity you asked for. Come back in two weeks and sing for Eddy Mendelson, our director. If he likes you, I’ll put you in the revival of Arms and the Maid, a musical opening in October in Atlantic City.”
I was thrilled. “Oh, Mr. Shubert, thank you!” I exclaimed.
Two weeks later, I sang for Mendelson. Two months after that, I was singing my heart out in the revival of Arms and the Maid. And two weeks after that, Mother and Dad, thinking I was too young, showed up and took me back to Greenwich. Mr. Shubert was so kind when I had to leave. “Don’t be sad, my dear,” he said. “You did very well. Come back and see me after the holidays.”
My singing career really started in the summer of 1932, when Elsie Taylor (Mrs. W. R. K. Taylor Jr.) of New York had the brilliant idea of corralling a group of society girls from New York and Connecticut to appear nightly, singing with Jack Denny’s orchestra on the Roof Garden of the Waldorf Astoria hotel.
We were in the worst of the Depression; most hotels and restaurants were half empty. This had never been done before—no debutante had ever sung with a band. It was not only fun for the girls but good for the Waldorf. Elsie believed that because we were pretty and had talent, we would bring in the social register crowd. She thought they’d be anxious to see “their own” perform. It worked.
We were each paid $25 per week. Every evening we dressed in our most glamorous gowns. Lois Elliman, Timmy Dobbin, Gloria Braggiotti, and I arrived at nine, each with our escort, sat at the table next to the orchestra, had dinner on the house, and danced until our particular number was played. Then up we’d go to the bandstand and sing our song. Mine was “Lazy Days.” It was fun, and every college friend of my brother’s vied to be my partner for the e
vening. It cost them nothing but the price of gas to drive down from Yale, or up from Princeton, to wear a dinner jacket, have supper on the house, and dance till dawn.
Although no one knew it, I was the only girl living on that $25 a week. The others still lived with their families on Park Avenue or in River House. I was sharing an apartment with two sisters, Olive and Vida McClain, on the ground floor of a dingy, scary-looking brownstone walk-up at 36 West 75th Street, a half block from Central Park West. At the time, this was considered to be a dangerous area. When I came home late at night, I’d have to make a dash from the main entrance down a long, dark, paint-chipped hallway to our door. The man who lived in the first apartment off the corridor would sit on his bed in the dark, with the door half open. As I passed by, he’d reach out and try to grab me, but I was too fast for him.
Olive modeled at Saks Fifth Avenue, and Vida was a dancer at Radio City Music Hall. We each paid $5 a week for a living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen. I had the use of a dresser and chair, and slept in a single bed right under a huge window overlooking the back alley filled with trash. It was summer, and we had to leave the window open to catch whatever breeze might come our way, no matter how bad it smelled. The heat was unbearable. I remember lying naked on my bed in the dark, looking up into the night sky filled with stars, thwarted from sleep by the mating calls of a million cats. This didn’t seem to bother my roommates, who shared a double bed at the other end of the room.
I had never been on my own before, but I learned fast that first morning, when I walked into the kitchen and started to pour myself a cup of coffee. I was told I had to buy my own, that I was not to use their bread, butter, eggs, cereal, juice, or coffee! At first I was hurt, but then I realized times were tough. It was the Depression—jobs were scarce, salaries low, and no one could afford to share. Watching these two sisters manage on so little taught me a great lesson—how to survive on $25 a week.
When the Roof Garden closed after Labor Day, I had to look for work. Determined to get another singing job, I marched off to Broadway to the music publishing house of Feist.
Feist was at 49th and Broadway. I walked up a flight of stairs and into their huge, crowded reception office and asked the man at the desk for their latest songs. He looked at me as if I were from Mars. “Where are you singing, kid?”
“The Waldorf Roof,” I replied. Apparently this was the right answer.
“Mickey!” he yelled.
A little guy came out of a rehearsal room, walked up to me, and said, “Hiya, kid, what song do you want, and what key do you sing in?”
Not knowing, I smiled and said, “Any key you have . . . I just need songs.” So he grabbed a few sheets of music and I followed him into his room.
Within minutes, he discarded Feist’s latest numbers, saying, “These aren’t for you. Let’s hear you sing this.” He started to play “Something to Remember You By,” that lovely song made famous by Libby Holman. When I finished, he turned and said, “That was swell, Teddy. Will you come on my show tonight and sing this song?”
I didn’t know what show he was talking about, but I of course said yes. That’s how I started singing professionally, with Mickey Addy on his radio show at station WPCH. He kept me on for months, singing solos and duets with Phil Reagan, a handsome Irish New York City policeman with a gorgeous tenor voice.
In due course Anna Della introduced me to Leonard Sillman, who was about to put on a revue on Broadway called New Faces. Sillman had produced a show called Lo and Behold on the West Coast at the Pasadena Playhouse, featuring a cast of talented young unknowns (Eve Arden and Tyrone Power among them). Now he was intent on doing the same in New York. After I sang for him, he turned to Annie and said, “You’re right . . . she’s got the voice. Sexy, too . . . No experience . . . but I’ll use her!” He gave me a kiss and signed me to a contract.
It took Leonard a year and about 130 auditions for prospective backers to get New Faces to opening night in 1934. Even though it was the Depression and people were dying from cold and hunger, there was a serious theater shortage on Broadway—there were no theaters available to rehearse in, and no place where auditions could be held. Lee Shubert allowed Leonard to use his theaters in the morning—but not the stage. We would be called to audition for a potential backer at 10 A.M. in whatever theater was free, but instead of being onstage, we’d have to perform in the cold, ugly downstairs lobby, right in front of the men’s and ladies’ rooms. This went on for months, but all of us in the cast, which included Henry Fonda and Imogene Coca, were faithful to Leonard—bonded together by hope.
While waiting for New Faces, I still had to eat. In the winter of 1933, I got a job as a salesgirl at Atkins on 57th Street. I had to, because I was supporting myself and had to be ready to rehearse whenever Leonard called. I never took a penny from my mother from the day I left home and moved in with the McClain sisters.
By this time my brother Ware—newly graduated from Yale—and I had rented an apartment at 156 East 54th Street. It had one bedroom, a bath, a kitchen, and a living room with a dining alcove. It also had a doorman and an elevator man—that made me feel so elegant. I don’t recall where our furniture came from, but my guess is that it came from the house in Belle Haven. I slept in the bedroom and Ware slept on the sofa bed in the living room. Once a month, Lulu, Mom’s retired old housekeeper, would come in and clean. We loved Lulu and she loved us, and we three had fun working together.
The apartment cost $150 a month, which Ware and I split. By this time he was working for the Lennon and Mitchell advertising agency. I had finally gotten a job singing with an orchestra at the Merry Go Round, a nightclub not far from where we lived.
I STARTED EVERY evening at the Merry Go Round at 7:30, and never got home before two in the morning. Nick Bates, the owner, looked like Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and paid me $75 a week. The smoky club was jammed each night with people who drank too much. The bar was an actual carousel, and it moved very slowly, around and around. I sat on the bandstand with the orchestra. They played loud, and the dance floor was small and overcrowded. Sometimes men would hand me a bill as they danced by, saying, “Sing this song for me, baby.” I always gave the money to the orchestra leader, who only rarely divided it up with the other five in the band. He never offered any to me.
An angel finally appeared in the guise of Elsie Janis, the “sweetheart of the AEF” (the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I—the doughboys). Elsie, a dear friend of Leonard’s, listened to the show’s plight, asked the cast to audition, and was delighted. She called Charles Dillingham, one of the theater’s most accomplished producers, to come and see us. He, too, was enthusiastic, so enthusiastic that he came out of retirement and agreed with Elsie to produce us. At long last Leonard Sillman’s New Faces was finally in rehearsal!
We opened at the Fulton Theatre on March 15, 1934. As the curtain went up on the opening number, all of us were onstage with our backs to the audience. As we turned to show our “new faces,” the roar of applause greeting us was so loud that the conductor had to stop the orchestra until it died down, just so we could sing. And sing we did.
Looking up at us from the front row on that marvelous opening night were America’s Sweetheart Mary Pickford, Katharine Hepburn, author and conservationist Louis Bromfield, Libby Holman, and Tallulah Bankhead, smoking a very long cigarette. We later heard she never stopped smoking, but she did scream and laugh and loved the show, as did the others. When the curtain went down after the finale, the entire audience rose to its feet, whistling and applauding. New Faces was a hit—Leonard said later that there were twenty-nine curtain calls!
The revue played to full houses every night for six months. When President Roosevelt and the U.S. Fleet sailed into New York Harbor at the end of May, there we were, on a tugboat Leonard had chartered to greet him. With New Faces flags flying from every part of the tugboat, we caught our president’s attention. FDR waved to us from the deck of his flagship, the USS Indianapolis.
&n
bsp; Mother loved the show, too, and invited the entire cast out to Greenwich one Sunday for brunch. Hank Fonda, God love him, endeared himself forever to Nancy and Bobby by playing hide-and-seek with them out on the lawn, and hiding from them in the dog house. It was a great day.
As more parties were given for us, we became known as the “Kids from New Faces.” I got a job singing after the show each night at the Gotham Hotel’s supper club.
Later that same year, Leonard put on another revue called Fools Rush In. We opened on Christmas night, 1934. The show was great and the audience loved us, but by then our fate had been sealed. The critics had been invited to review the last rehearsal, and they crucified us. William Brady, our producer, put up the closing notice immediately. Instead of giving up, however, Leonard started hunting for backers.
Everyone in the cast did, too. I had become great friends with another member of the cast, Betzi Beaton. One night before the evening performance, realizing we only had one more week before closing, Betzi and I had dinner at an Italian restaurant two doors down from the Playhouse Theatre. Sitting up at the bar, having a bowl of soup and a sandwich while telling our sad story to the barman, I noticed that there were no other diners in the restaurant. Nevertheless, there were voices coming from behind a huge screen that ran across the back of the room.
Naturally inquisitive, I asked, “Who’s back there?”
“My boss,” the barman said, “and his buddies.”
At that I got down and walked over to the screen, jumped onto a chair, and peered over. Six men looked up from their spaghetti. “Hi,” one said, smiling.
Alone Together: My Life With J. Paul Getty Page 2
