I wrote a series of shows with Mark Brown and David Holdgrive, including Jenifer Lewis in the Cosmos, which was a celebration and a send-up of my spiritual search. We three also wrote Jenifer Lewis Broke and Freaking Out, which is self-explanatory. Unlike my earlier solo endeavors, these shows had a through line, and thanks to Mark, a lot of commentary about current events and politics. I also unveiled characters such as Little Jenny Lewis and a Baptist pastor. The shows at Don’t Tell Mama were mostly sold out Tuesday through Saturday nights. The eight o’clock show usually was full of tourists. The eleven o’clock show would be filled with savvy New Yorkers and Broadway gypsies who’d just come off stage at whatever show they were performing. The Dreamgirls gypsies came damn near every night.
Occasionally I’d get out-of-town bookings at places such as the Tralfamadore in Buffalo, New York, and the Pilgrim House in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I did private parties in the Poconos and even went back to Kinloch for a “home girl makes good” concert. I was asked to do a benefit performance for an AIDS Charity at Studio 54. The legendary disco was just a block from where I lived, but it was my first time there, and it would be my last. I was there to work. I didn’t go to clubs to socialize, not disco clubs anyway. I wore a silver lamé jumpsuit designed by Don Klein and a big, fabulous vampiress mask. The famous husband-and-wife comedy duo Stiller and Meara introduced me on stage to perform “Blackuella.” It went a little something like this:
My name is Black-uella
And you are my prey.
Don’t tell me you gave at the office
Cuz I don’t drink during the day.
I hope you’re without a date tonight.
You want me to tell you why?
Cuz I’m gonna pick you up and dust you off
Then drain you ’til you’re dry.
Why? I’m a vampiress.
Jon Voight, who had won the Best Actor Oscar a few years earlier, was in the audience that night, and I could see him eyeing me. Later, he asked me to dance, and we did, scandalously, to Annie Lennox’s “Sweet Dreams.”
At the end of the night, Jon and I walked to Central Park and took a romantic carriage ride. We admired the moon and the reflection of the illuminated skyline off the lake. We talked about being from families of hard workers. We stared into each other’s eyes and kissed. We went to his room on the thirty-fifth floor of the Essex House. I was spellbound by his sensitivity and kindness. He ordered cognac and caviar. Let’s just say he was a real Midnight Cowboy. He walked me the six blocks to my apartment the next morning. I wanted so badly for one of the gypsies to see me with Jon Voight, but gypsies don’t get up that early.
I began to develop a more mature, professional performance. I had learned so much from Bette, like the technique of getting the audience laughing hard and then changing the mood on a dime and dropping some knowledge.
And I found myself comfortable enough to improvise based on what was going on with the audience. I’d give latecomers sass from the stage: “What time does your ticket say? You missed my first three numbers—which I did naked!” If you have ever seen one of my stage shows, you know I love to fuck with errrrrybody!
JENIFER
[To audience member returning to her seat from the ladies’ room]
You there in the red dress. Everything taken care of?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
[Completely baffled and embarrassed]
Huh?
JENIFER
Could you still hear me in the ladies’ room? You know they’ve got a speaker in there.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
[Now playing along]
No, I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you.
JENIFER
Well, we heard you!
But don’t get it wrong, I am no Don Rickles. For the most part, I am the butt of my own jokes.
It was nothing for me to walk the halls of my apartment building looking to bum a cigarette. With my head wrapped and wearing a fuzzy robe, I’d knock on a neighbor’s door, regardless of whether I knew them. One time when I knocked on a strange door, it was opened by the Hollywood musical star Jane Powell. I immediately recognized her and after chatting a bit, I invited myself into her penthouse. She was gracious and lovely and told me I was a “sweet girl.” Thank goodness she didn’t live next door to my loud ass!
One day I knocked on 4D. A cute guy answered the door and soon produced a cigarette. “You got a light?” I asked, and he presented a lighter. Then I said, “I’m Jenifer Lewis. I’m a diva. We’ll have to meet again when it’s not so morning and not so ugly.”
A couple of weeks later, the guy and I were riding in the same elevator. This time, I was in full beat and dressed to kill. When he made eye contact with me, I said, “See?”
That was how I met Lee Summers, a wonderful friend, actor, and singer. He was in the original cast of Dreamgirls. One of our favorite things to do together was people watching. Like the time we were sitting at an outdoor café and saw a man running away from a taxi driver he’d stiffed for a fare. Poor bastard slipped and fell on his face, and in unison we sang, “Karma, Karma Jackson, that bitch’ll get you every time.”
Then we fell out with laughter.
It didn’t take long for me to know that I loved Lee and his singing voice. When the opportunity arose to headline for a week at a swank club in Monte Carlo, Monaco, I wasted no time asking him to join me singing backup with my friend Todd Hunter, an amazing dancer.
Monaco was memorable for a number of reasons. I even met Grace Kelly’s son, Prince Albert, who currently is the small country’s reigning monarch. But Monaco will always stand out for me because I was there when the AIDS crisis really broke open in the US media. One day I decided to go ahead and sleep with the club’s gorgeous maître d’ after that night’s show. Then someone phoned and told me that Luther Vandross had AIDS. He had lost a lot of weight, and as a result, this rumor was born. During this period people were paranoid. Anyone who had lost weight or suddenly fell ill was rumored to have the virus. Nonetheless, when I heard that, oh, did I put the brakes on the maître d’! I had heard someone on the news say something to the effect of “Whomever you’ve slept with, you have essentially slept with everyone they have slept with for the last seven years.” I said to a friend, “Honey, I want you to book me a flight around the world. Put it on the credit card because I’m a dead bitch.”
Of course, I had been aware of HIV/AIDS for some time. The plague hit the entertainment community, especially the world of gay black gypsies, like a freight train. In these years, you knew what was coming when yet another call began with “Sit down Jenifer, I have some bad news.” It started slowly at first. Curtis Worthy Jr., a cast mate from Mahalia passed away. A couple months later, Jerry Grimes, a dancer I knew through Shirley Black-Brown, died. Then we bore helpless witness as our friends started to die, two or three in one week. For God’s sake, they dropped like flies! Another dancer, another hairstylist, another costume designer. By now I understood that the rare form of pneumonia that killed Will B. Able was no longer rare and that he was among the nation’s earliest victims of AIDS.
By the time I returned from doing my shows in Monaco the entire United States was in an uproar. President Reagan had finally mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time, but those SOBs in the government did almost nothing to address or remedy the situation, probably because it was mostly gay men, drug users, and poor people who were dying. But then, Americans began to freak out when it became clear that heterosexuals, women, and children were also at risk.
I recall watching Ted Koppel’s Town Hall on the AIDS crisis. We were glued to the television. Come on, you SOBs, do something. It was a horrible time. The following month the legendary creator of Dreamgirls, Michael Bennett, died. The Broadway community was devastated, and groups like Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Cares were organized to raise money and to push the government to do more for AIDS research and treatment.
To try to alleviate our feelings of helplessness, my frien
ds and I came up with an idea called “Divas for Dollars.” For several Saturday nights, when the gay spots were jumping, a few of us gypsies, including Sharon McKnight, Karen Mason, Lena Katrakas, Nancy LaMott, and Amy Rider, popped in to perform a couple of songs before we passed the hat for AIDS relief and research. It wasn’t much, but I like to think that we made a difference.
I cursed at God as the AIDS toll mounted. And not just in New York City. During Black History Month, when I toured the college circuit with From Billie to Lena with Jenifer, I was often asked back by the same schools year after year. Usually, when I’d arrive in a small town to perform at the local campus, I’d immediately go to the black hair salon, hoping to find a gay man who would appreciate my diva-ness and get my hair teased and snatched for the show. But far too often, I’d return to a salon I’d used the previous year only to learn their sole gay male stylist had passed away. The plague had reached small-town America. It was relentless and horrible.
The reality of just how many friends and colleagues of mine were very sick or had passed away was overwhelming. The relentless epidemic claimed nearly two hundred of my friends and coworkers in the span of about eleven years: Roderick Sibert and Breelum Daniels from the Eubie! tour; Tony Franklin and Larry Stewart from the Dreamgirls original cast; Philp Gilmore, from the Dreamgirls Broadway revival; Jerry Blatt and Ed Love from DeTour ’83; Carl Weaver, from Rock ’N Roll! The First 5,000 Years; three of my favorite hairstylists: Stanley Crowe, Jerry Terrell, and Michael Robinson; Sharon Redd, who had been a Harlette in the ’70s; Robert Melvin; Stanley Ingram; Chris Vaughn; Keith McDaniel; Mart McChesney; Craig Frawley. There are just too many to name. The trauma of their suffering, and their untimely and unnecessary deaths, haunts me to this day.
In late January, Quitman gave me terrible news: he was leaving New York City for San Francisco. I went all the way off! A screaming, crying, snot-filled breakdown. He said he was going out west to find someone to produce the musical he’d been working on for years. I cussed him out for losing hope and leaving. I did not know what I would do without him nearby.
Quitman was always in my heart and on my mind. Had I paid more attention a few weeks earlier when Quitman told me the doctor had found nodules on his neck, I would have understood the real reason he felt he needed to be in San Francisco, which had become a mecca for HIV research and treatment. Throughout the next few years, he was in and out of the hospital, very ill, and he was deeply depressed. I remember calling him to tell him how well things were going with a series I was working on, Crosstown, but he was not in the mood. He didn’t want to hear about how I was doing all the things he had dreamed of doing, which now, we both knew, he would never do. I tried to raise Quitman’s mood. Changing subjects, I began to regale him with stories of all the guys I’d been dating in Hollywood. He cut me off: “Stop it, Jenifer. I don’t want to hear about all the sex you’re having.” I was so sad for him and for myself. I didn’t know what to say.
I was working hard and looked forward to the still-almost-daily “silent” phone call from Quitman. God, how I loved him. We laughed and cried together as always. Around Christmastime, I remember discussing the death of Sylvester, the gay disco music icon, at only age forty-one. A couple of days later, we repeated the call, but this time it was Max Robinson, the first African American anchor of a national news program, cut down at age forty-nine.
One morning in early January, the bedside phone jarred me awake at 3 a.m. Quitman spoke slowly, the fear in his voice nearly palpable. “I’m in the hospital, Jen. I’m sick. This time I thing I’m real sick.”
My friend Beverly Heath drove most of the nearly eight hours it took to reach the hospital in Oakland. The nurse told me not to touch or hug Quitman; confusion still remained about how the HIV virus was spread. I entered the dimly lit room where Quitman lay still in the bed. This Adonis, this god, whose body could leap as high as Mount Everest, lay there, covered in purple lesions.
I stepped forward and touched Quitman’s face and took his hand. He whispered, “Oh, Jen, you’re the first person to touch me without wearing gloves in two years.” I held myself together long enough to laugh and joke with Quitman a little.
The nurses would not allow me to stay in the room for more than a few minutes. By the time I got to the parking lot, I was falling apart. I saw red. Then I saw black, because all I could see was death. In the car, I screamed, clutching my chest and banging the dashboard. I asked Beverly to drive to a liquor store, where I walked around like I was shopping for shoes. My eyes fell on a bottle of Wild Turkey, which I had never heard of but bought anyway. Back in the car, I turned the bottle up and chugged the burning liquid, needing to erase the image of my friend rotting to death.
As we drove to the home of Beverly’s friends, where we would spend the night, Beverly said, “You’re grieving, Jenifer, and I understand, baby, but there’s something more. Something’s wrong.”
I was too distraught to make much conversation with the lovely couple who were opening their home to us. As Beverly stirred the gumbo dinner, I dialed the kitchen wall phone to call Mark and Bobby to tell them about Quitman. But before I could even say a word, Mark blurted, “Jenny, I’m glad it’s you. Clyde Vinson died.” Clyde had been my acting coach a few years earlier in New York.
It was all too much. I collapsed to the floor and crawled under the kitchen table, holding myself in a ball and sobbing into my knees. Beverly calmly looked down at me as she continued to stir with the long wooden spoon.
BEVERLY
[gently]
What are you doing under the table, Jenny?
ME
[looking up and screaming]
I don’t know! Don’t leave me! Just don’t leave me!
BEVERLY
[a bit less gently]
Jenny, get your ass up off this floor!
ME
I can’t! I can’t move, Beverly!
BEVERLY
Jenny, you’ve got to listen to me baby. Something is going on with you. Really, this is more than sadness about Quitman. You need to get professional help with this. You need to talk to somebody.
ME
[starting to gain composure]
Really? You think it will help me?
BEVERLY
I know it will. There’s no greater journey than the journey within.
Quitman’s illness, and the near-constant news of another friend stricken by AIDS, caused me to channel my grief into many AIDS causes. Over the years, I launched at least a dozen AIDS Walks and performed at numerous fundraisers. No doubt there has been progress on the AIDS front, but it saddens me that many people, gay and straight, continue to get the disease. The struggle isn’t over.
EIGHT
HOLLYWOOD NOT SWINGING
My friend Louis St. Louis, who has been truly important to my career, came through for me in a big way. Louis was well-connected in showbiz circles and invited agents from William Morris to Don’t Tell Mama to see my one-woman show, How I Spent My Summer Vacation. And, yes! The biggest talent agency in the business signed me immediately! Finally! My big break!
In short order, William Morris arranged auditions for a Broadway show, a couple of movies, and a screen test for Bonnie Timmermann, who at the time was the casting director for Universal. But I didn’t get cast in anything. After I auditioned for Grind, a Broadway-bound musical starring Ben Vereen, the director, Hal Prince, commented I was “too powerful to be real.” (This feedback actually made me smile.)
My early days with William Morris underscored my persistent dilemma of not fitting into a marketable box. I was too unconventional, not “commercial” enough. One of my William Morris agents, Greg Mullins, told me I needed to be “more glamorous.” What the fuck did he mean by that?
The agency sent me on several auditions for roles that I knew could take my career to the next level. I auditioned for the role of Shug in the movie The Color Purple. I was hugely disappointed that Reuben Cannon, the casting director, felt I was too
young. It was sort of nice to hear that because in show business having large breasts usually means they cast you as characters that are ten years older than your age.
Then came the audition for Saturday Night Live. In its ten seasons on the air, SNL had featured only one African American woman, an actress named Yvonne Hudson. Excitement does not describe how I felt. This could be it: an opportunity to show my versatility, vocal ability, comedic timing, and charisma. Nora Dunn was auditioning that same day. I must have done well, because a day or so later, I got a call back and met the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels. Then a few days later, my agent Lucy Aceto called to tell me, with great compassion, that I had not gotten SNL.
If one real test of a person’s mental health is their ability to experience rejection and great disappointment, then, not surprisingly, I failed the test. I fell apart. I staggered to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. As soon as I got there, I dropped to my knees, sobbing, and fell face-first into the grass. Damn, that hurt. I lost control of my body, shaking, writhing, and crying out. I lay there and cried until nightfall.
By morning, my sorrow had turned to rage. I stormed the few blocks to the William Morris building on 55th Street, blew past the secretary, and burst into Lucy’s office. Pounding on her desk, screaming and shouting blindly, I blamed the agency for misguiding me. I know I scared the shit out of everyone in the nearby offices. I was lucky William Morris didn’t drop me on the spot.
The SNL role went to Danitra Vance, a talented actress who lasted through only one season. Frustrated by the stereotypical parts given her on the show, Danitra left SNL in 1986.
Although auditioning was getting me nowhere, my cabaret shows were still in great demand and provided me with a creative outlet that kept me from completely losing my mind. In the audience one July evening at Don’t Tell Mama was Bob Wachs, the founder of the Comic Strip in New York City. Wachs (pronounced “Wax”) had discovered Eddie Murphy, and Bob’s other clients—Arsenio Hall and Chris Rock—were bursting onto the entertainment scene. Bob loved my show, believed in my talent, and felt that as my manager, he could take my career to new heights. Finally, my knight in shining armor had arrived!
The Mother of Black Hollywood Page 11
