Four Long Months...

Nowdays the time between September and December just seems to fly by. Perhaps it's because I hate the approach of winter and well, that's sort of what those months mean to me now. But they didn't always.

In September '73, I went back to school. I'd moved away from home for the first time in my life, into an apartment near campus with my friends Debbie and Jean and it was an empowering experience! But not empowering enough to make me want to regularly attend class. I remember sleeping in on so many mornings, feeling that little tinge of guilt, but really wanting to do nothing more than wait for the afternoon mail. Those were the days of postcards from Doug, before he began writing those tomes of letters. (But I still always loved those post cards!)

Our apartment overlooked the pool. I actually don't remember ever swimming in it, or even laying by it, but it felt awesome just having it there and knowing this was our own place. I felt pretty darn grown up!

And not to infer that I NEVER attended classes or anything, I just don't REMEMBER attending. But I have a boat load of written test essays saved from that time, and they were honestly written more thoughtfully and intelligently than I could have probably written now, so obviously I wasn't slacking off THAT much. I think at the time, I was just doing what I felt I had to do, but honestly didn't care. I was on some other sort of mission.

During this time I DID land a role in the main stage production of "Cabaret". And you have to understand that "Cabaret" was a pretty big thing for me. I'd seen the movie like at least a dozen times! I was a huge fan of Liza's and enamoured with the style of Fosse, though I'm not sure if I was really even quite sure of his style at the time, I just knew I loved it. But it didn't matter, because the styling of our show was more along the lines of Mariam Tate.. who pretty much had the idea that everyone should just choreograph themselves... which wasn't a bad thing entirely. But definitely not Fosse.

I'd give anything to see video. But unfortunately this was back in the day...

How's that for subtle?...

Remember this from the movie? There's a dance number between the Emcee and a gorilla. He's obviously completely smitten with her, much to the shock of the audience. The song? "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes." The punchline? "She wouldn't look Jewish at all!"

So much wisdom there when you think about it...

Anyway. I had to walk down a huge "busby berkely type" staircase wearing this outfit!

The play wasn't exactly like the movie though as I would come to find out. For example, the song "Money, Money" was replaced by "Sitting Pretty." I played the American Buck...

How many different variations of "Cabaret" could there be? I'd end up doing two other completely different versions in my lifetime eventually...

Making Plans

It must have been around November sometime that my best friend LeeAnn and I decided we'd take Doug up on his offer. He'd promised that me and any other fun-seekers from California were more than welcome to "flop" in his apartment at any time. So we figured we'd leave in January and start there...

I'm not sure who decided it was a good idea to move to New York in January. Perhaps only "fun-seekers" from California. But anyway...

Now I had to somehow make enough money, to not only buy a plane ticket but to be able to survive there long enough to experience it. (I think I honestly thought it would all just work out somehow.)

So I got a job at Polly's Pie Palace in Tustin, I think, which served the best pies (not to mention hamburgers) in the world. And it was there on my very first night that I recieved my first tip (very cool) and my very first compliment as a waitress. "You're the best waitress we've ever had!" a woman and her daughter said. I'm still scratching my head over that one. But I'll never forget driving that 40 minutes or so to work a couple times a week with songs like "Dust in the Wind" and "Time In A Bottle" as my soundtrack.

Disneyland also came through for me once again, but this time with a leading role in the Christmas Parade!

Clarabelle Cow...

I was so ready to be gone already that I hardly remember it, except for sitting endlessly in the staging area, smelling all the "Ho Down" smells. (Even though I sometimes wish I could go back there and do it again, if only for a day.) Because in the scheme of things it went really, really quickly even though as I remember, that December seemed to last forever.

And boy did my calves hurt!

But by the middle of January I had a plane ticket in hand, my suitcases were already packed, and I'd saved up nearly $300!...

Gentle (but rude) awakening ahead...

The Happiest Place On Earth...

I grew up only about a half hour away from that Happy Place. Lucky me! But we'd only go about once or twice a year, because it was SO expensive! Something like $5 a person just to get in the gate and receive a little coupon booklet which included a series of tickets ranging from A to E. The A ticket was always just a throw away... You could use it to ride the Main Street trolley if you wanted to, but that was about it. I don't think we ever used those A tickets though because who'd want to ever miss the experience of actually "strolling" up and down Main Street?

The E tickets were of course "golden!"

I was lucky enough to snag a job there in the Christmas Parade of 1972, as a Snow Woman. A fun little experience, but certainly nothing to write home about...

Then in the spring of '73 I landed a summer job in the Main Street Electrical Parade as a Cinderella Dancer. I had no idea what would lie ahead that summer or how it would eventually alter my course. All I knew was that I'd be making money for a whole summer doing something I absolutely loved doing. Dancing.

But the summer turned out to be much more about dancing OR making money. In retrospect, I would have done it for free. It was one of the absolute best summers of my life.

What's funny though, is that I swear I'd been put in charge of caring for my little neice Chelsea during the days all that summer, but my journal clearly has me staying out until 2 or 3 every morning. So I guess that just goes to show you that the energy of youth is truly wasted on the young.

Anyway to start... Doug.

He was my dance partner. Well he and JoAnn... We were quite the awesome threesome!

The OTHER threesome was me, Doug and Linda (though we didn't spend much time together...) Linda was a butterfly from the Alice unit... who spent the whole summer fluttering her wings against my guy. haha Though in actuality he wasn't really my guy at the time, I had no doubts that he eventually WOULD be... This was of course back in the day when we had no real understanding of homosexuality, and every woman in the world was still totally convinced that if she fell in love with someone like that she could just somehow *snap* and change him. But to be fair, this was still mostly confusing territory, even to those who thought they might actually BE gay. I'm almost embarrassed writing that right now, but it's the truth. These were definitely the years of major discovery for many of us!

At any rate...

There was nothing like having the complete run of the Disney backlot staging area though we didn't spend a ton of time back there but it was nice to be able to just flash your badge and pass through the employees only gate leading back to the employee cafeteria, the Inn Between (where the food was really cheap) and the DRC (Disney Rest Center?). Mostly we spent our parade in between time either Ho-Downing in Bear Country or Swinging to the big bands at Carnation Plaza or New Orleans Square, or we were more than able to just enjoy the park and the rides. And sometimes I just spent those few hours pining away in the parade forming area during the times that "my boyfriend" was somewhere out in the park with Linda... *sigh*

Can you even imagine now being able to get two guests into the park any night of the week... FOR FREE EVEN (except on a holiday)! So I did that alot too, and in the meantime found out I had a lot more friends than I thought I had.

In the meantime, I just loved these boys!

Here's a funny story... I had this friend David, (who I talked about in my last blog and who was friends with Paul, who is the guy in the middle in that last picture up there). So anyway, sometime during the summer he ran into Paul and Doug on the beach together and the conversation started. "Hey! So what have you been doing? blah blah blah..." And Paul said that he was currently working in Disneyland's Electrical Parade. So David said "Wow! Do you know my friend Jannet? I hear she is completely in love with her dance partner, but she's pretty sure that he's in love with Prince Charming.." At which point Paul replied, "Um, I'm Prince Charming." Ugh.

Anyway...

And there were parties galore!

At The Disneyland Hotel for one...

It cost us a whole $37 just for one night!!!

Michael...

Me and Paul...

Most of the group... (that's Linda on the left.)

Our parties were WAY after hours... including the one at our house that mom never knew about... (this one wasn't THAT one.)

Doug and I head over heels!...

But back to the parade and the job at hand...

What a magical summer it was!

Just LOOK at him in those cute pink knickers!

I swear I will miss these people for as long as I shall live!

Tent City...

It doesn't exist anymore. There is now this huge parking structure standing in the place where it use to stand.

Here's a pic of the cast that was taking one evening late in the summer on that very spot. I'm pretty much front and center sitting on Paul's lap. Michael, Garry and Joann are one row up and a little bit to the right. Linda is two rows straight up from me. It was Doug's night off...

Taken from my journal... "Tommorrow is our last parade and I'm going to have to say goodbye to a wonderful summer and to some of the best friends I've ever know. I remember at the beginning of the parade saying "It's going to be a really long summer!" Well that's not true. It's been the fastest summer I've ever known... Doug is moving to New York in two days to join Gus Solomon's dance company... and I'm going to cry in about 5 minutes."

*sigh*

But funny how things turn out, because one of the very last things he said to me on that very last, very sad (for me) night of our summer was this... "I'm really going to miss you. Come to New York?"

And so well, Gee. I wonder how all THAT turned out...

Theatre 101.. or How Best To Procrastinate The Inevitable...

I'm not sorry that I went to college. I'm not even that sorry that I failed to complete my degree back in the day. Because it was a time of growing up, a time of preparing for what would lie ahead. Even though I don't think I actually grew up at all much during those years. I was still writing in my diary on a daily basis (which has ended up being useful over the years for getting all the times and dates straight)... but I was still addressing my entries to "Barbra" for pete's sake... Anyway, I think I felt a lot more grown up and sophisticated at the time than I think I probably was (which I discovered after spending a few hours reading those old journals today.)

And to be honest, even though I sometimes wish I had just moved to New York fresh out of High School (and sometimes I even tell people I did) at the time I was no where NEAR ready to move to New York! As you will see, it would take me several years to be able to do that with any real committed purpose in mind, and then, only after a few false starts. But anyway, I DID have a wonderful time in college and with everything that would go along with my staying home in LA for another few years... but I seriously don't remember a single thing about my first day of College, except for feeling very lost.

My first memory, seriously, was sitting in French class. Which is kind of funny, because when I went back to college for real 28 years later my first memory was sitting in French class...

But other than that, here's my first memory of the Cal State Fullerton Theatre Department.

I read an announcement on the Theatre Bulletin Board that there would be auditions held for the One-Act Play of "The Birdbath" an Arena Theatre student direction production. And since I had just recently seen that TV movie staring my most ex-favorite person Patty Duke... I got a little excited, to say the least! It was this play about a waitress and a bartender who end up all alone in a restaurant one night while closing up after hours. Velma Sparrow is a rather psychotic sort of girl and Frankie Basta has more than a few problems of his own. And the plot thickens! Anyway, I was told by several people (my BFF Lorna included) not to get my hopes up too high because underclassmen rarely get cast in productions. But I went to the audition anyway. And in fact, to 3 callbacks.

I SO wish I could do that play again. I think I would be SO much better at portraying the psychotic part now!

Here's a really blurry picture of Steve Patterson and me backstage.

btw... Steve was a Senior.

During this time, Lorna and I were still hanging out quite a bit. Ok, inseperably. With weekly weekend jaunts into Hollywood, Century City and Westwood, and the traditional stops at 301 Carolwood Drive... During this time I also joined a sorority. Alpha Delta Pi. I still have no idea why I did that but it was an interesting experience.

And then the annual Disneyland Christmas Parade auditions came up and I couldn't resist trying once again. I'd been passed over the year before but was much more confident in my abilities now (even though I hadn't really danced too much in years!) So there I was amoung 500 - 600 young dancers, on this very slippery floor in a recreation hall of a park in Anaheim California just trying to do my best. And I was cast as a SnowWoman! I left that audition with beautiful visions of sugarplums and grand jete-ing balletic snowflakes dancing in my head!

This is a photo of me taken a few weeks later..

Humility Rocks!

Coincidentally though at the very same time, I landed a dancing chorus role in the MainStage production of "Die Fledermaus" though I really don't remember the show too much because I would only arrive halfway through the performance each night after dangerously racing my way the 10 miles from Disneyland.

I was told it was good though. And even multiple times that I was the best dancer in the ensemble. (It's the little things that make life great.)

Upstage West was an improvisation group organized by the director of the Cal High theatre department than Lorna was still attending. And I joined. It was the scariest thing ever! We'd go in and sit on these old sofas in the back area of some community center and just IMPROVISE for hours. If you've never done that, be glad. It was terrifying and I was not very good. But then, they put on a production of "Tom Jones," which is now where I think it's probably time to mention my lifelong crush on George Thatcher... who played Tom. He was the "catch" of the Whittier drama scene in those days and no girl was left unscathed by his charms.

Anyway... here's another somewhat blurry photo of me as Lady Belaston in that production.

And George and Lorna as Tom Jones and Lady Waters..(in the famous "Eating Scene.")

Even so, I was victorious in my pursuit. Even if our little "affair" only lasted a few days. I remember how Lorna was SO upset with me about that! She probably wouldn't be as upset now to know that he became my kind of go-to boyfriend for the next several years. I know that he toured with Harry James for a while and he even wrote me a couple of times years later when he was playing trombone in South Africa with the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra asking me to come visit, but I was dating Brad by then so I didn't go. I still often wonder what he's doing now. There are too many George Thatchers on Facebook.

David Dotson was my first introduction to gay. I'll never forget sitting in his dorm room when he told me and then he just kept sitting there waiting for my reaction to his big reveal and I was like... "Ok..." Then I went home and wrote in my journal to Barbra and said "Wow, I'm probably going to be questioning everyone now! But David says you love fags." Yes, I really wrote that.

The year ended with several other arena productions, "The Crucible", "Thurber Carnival" and lots of other acting class scene work. It was like I was totally into this whole acting/performing thing, ya know? Getting my craft together and not letting anything stop me!

But then I auditioned for the Main Street Electrical Parade...