Saturday, January 31, 2015

Waiting for The Dough...

So anyway, there I was all alone again, depressed and not to mention broke!..

Except that I forgot to tell you about the part where me and Melanie had landed hostessing jobs at the newly reopened Tavern On The Green during that very long month of waiting. Unfortunately (or I guess rather fortunately for her) she didn't have the chance to work there for very long...

From 1000 Things New York
Originally built in 1870 to house the sheep that grazed in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, Tavern on the Green has served New Yorkers, tourists, presidents, royalty, artists and actors since 1934. Having gone through several additions and renovations, it became a New York place to be seen when Warner LeRoy acquired the lease in the 1970s. He poured $10 million into the Tavern, adding the legendary Crystal Room (seen in Ghostbusters and Arthur), stained glass, etched mirrors, 45 chandeliers along with 400,000 outdoor lights in the trees so that the Tavern always looked like it was Christmas in the Park.

LeRoy reopened the doors in 1976, and the new Tavern immediately became the most popular dining and banquet spot in the city. Flamboyantly lavish, the Tavern was a place for visitors and celebs who came to be dazzled by the glitter and extravaganza of LeRoy’s new Tavern on the Green. The waiters dressed in powder blue, the captains in tuxedos, you could dance the night away on the patio and you could arrive or depart in a horse drawn carriage at the entrance.

What a very funny job that was! And to this day it's rather hard for me to believe that I actually managed to hang onto it for a couple of months without completely losing it (literally and figuratively)! Because every single person in that entire city wanted to experience that place. And they ALL wanted to be seated in the Crystal Room!... and ALL at the very same time!

*Journal Entry from September 5th... I almost quit my job 10,000 times today! The whole afternoon was the picture of mass hysteria. Everyone yelling at me, telling me what a f*cked up place this is and I couldn't agree with them more! I'm so tired of getting it from both ends. I'm mobbed by the customer's questions and then when I try to be polite to them David tells me not to chat with the customers. What in the hell am I there for? So then I stand at the desk to seat people and he tells me I need to cue people at the door, so when I do that he yells "Jannet, I need someone here at all times to seat the guests!" I can't win! Guess I gotta stop taking it all so personally and just do it. There wasn't even a 5 minute lull today and I thought I'd absolutely die. I hate every minute of this!

But there were also couple of little perks that came along with it as well, like all those free lunches. And I got to go upstairs to the back office for a few minutes every day to copy the reservations list and sit down for a bit (and smoke!) And there were also times in between the lunch and dinner rushes where I could sometimes go out and sit on the patio and just breath in all that garden air along the beautiful Central Park vistas. And once Ted Hook invited me and a guest for a free lunch at Backstage in appreciation of my getting his group a table.

But I think one of the best memories that came out of that job (and one that I still have evidence of to this day) was the time that this gentleman came up to the hostess desk after his group was finished with lunch and asked me for my address so he could send me something. (Of course this was back in the day before you didn't share private things like that, but still...) About a week later I received this in the mail.


A leatherbound copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" with this very sweet insert.

Sometimes it's the little things... even though I'm sure that man will never know how much that little expression of kindness meant to me, but over the years, that little book has become not only one of the very few possessions I still have from that time but also one of my all time favorite novels.

And then there were those embarrassing moments as well, like the time when I had to seat Donald Sadler, the director of "Hellzappopin."

But as happens with most good things...

First, they let a bunch of people go and my hours tripled... and then my hours suddenly got cut way back. And THEN a couple of days later I went into work to find I didn't even have a job at all! I'm still not quite sure what happened there, but I suspect it had something to do with them wanting their hosts in tuxedos...

At least the Industrial Show hadn't fallen through as they'd called to let me know we should be signing our contracts sometime within the next few days... (again). And now I also had a little more time to be able to sit on my rooftop and gaze at the skyline, still not quite believing that I was living right here in the center of the center of the world!

And then... just when I thought my self-esteem couldn't take much more of a beating, they announced another set of auditions for "Hellzappopin." The pessimist side of my said "If they didn't want me the last time why would they want me now?" While the optimist side thought "Well, they wouldn't have called me back the first time if they hadn't seen something they liked!"

Also, replacement auditions for both "Pippin" and "Chicago" were announced for that very same week! Oh My Gosh, Please!!!

Fast foward to later that week...

Axed! And I couldn't believe it! I mean, all my life I'm told that ALL I need is to audition for Bob Fosse! And then he cuts me the very first time he sees me!

I fared a little better with "Hellzappopin" or at least I stuck around to the end again where they said they'd call us... But when Mel went to talk to the producer's office on my behalf, their advice for her (for me) was to go ahead and sign the "other" contract because they still didn't know who they were going to cast and were still planning on holding (yet) another audition the following week.

So later that very same day, I trekked all the way up to 74th Street to sign my very first Actors Equity Contract. And then I bawled like a baby all the way home.

This was on October 7th 1976, the week before my 22nd birthday.

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