Early Havoc

June Havoc

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789124910
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

She could dance on her toes when she was eighteen months old (and by heaven she had to!).June Havoc is the famous younger sister of Gypsy Rose Lee, and the daughter of Mrs. Rose Hovick, whose life story was fancifully portrayed by Ethel Merman in the 1959 smash-hit Broadway musical Gypsy.In Early Havoc, June tells quite another story, the inside story of a ruthless, conscienceless, ambition-driven woman who stripped her own daughters of their childhood. Early Havoc is a book that gets beneath the glitter of "show biz,", and reveals the savage reality, as only the real autobiography of a trouper can."A remarkable show-business document that might be titled 'How to Make Good in Spite of Mother, Men and Marathons!'—TIME"Tensely dramatic…these are the years in which a child and a girl were beaten, pounded and shaped into womanhood."—New York Herald Tribune

1

I WATCHED the hot dog being built. First the bun was taken out of a large tin pot, mustard was splashed across it from stem to stern, then came the frankfurter itself, shining from the hot, greasy water. The man must have asbestos fingers, I thought, watching as he dipped his bare hands into the steaming sauerkraut.

“Let it drain a little, please,” I directed and tried not to look at the dirty fingernails.

He shook the sauerkraut before laying it lovingly over the shiny tube of meat. “Onions?”

“The works,” I replied. I gave him my nickel and wandered up the street slowly. I like to relax as I eat breakfast. Besides, it was hot—sluggish hot. Underfoot the macadam had already softened even though the sun had only begun to go to work.

I licked my fingers and wiped away the sauerkraut juice that had run up my arm. I was thirsty. Breakfast just wasn’t breakfast without root beer to wash down my hot dog. However, finances were exactly what came after nothing, and yearning only brought the stinging pavement into sharper focus. I stayed close to the buildings: it was cooler. There was a great deal of walking connected with job searching, but I really didn’t mind. I wasn’t panicky or even worried. I just felt impatient, itchy. I was puzzled but determined. If I could only find out how to be who I’d like to be, I just knew I’d get to be, somehow.

Less than a year before I had run away from “Dainty June and Company.” My complete billing also subtitled: “The Darling of Vaudeville. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” Being Dainty June had been my livelihood from the age of two, but since 1928 Vaudeville had become the lost world on the map of show business. The depression had all but stamped it out of existence. I munched my hot dog slowly. My hunger was only partly physical. It was a hunger that didn’t go only from the inside out or the outside in; it went as far as my eyes could see or my ears could hear. I was starving for a place to belong. My sensitivities were stretched in all directions prayerfully—longing for a substitute. Show business as I knew it had simply dwindled and vanished before my eyes. The happy island of vaudeville which had been my kindergarten, elementary and junior high school had sunk into the sea and left me treading water. I was an animation of the ancient quote: “You can take the girl out of vaudeville but you can’t take the vaudeville out of the girl.” I was a displaced person. I didn’t understand it; I only felt it. But I didn’t know enough about life as yet to give anything I felt a name. I’d only been around for fourteen years and I wasn’t placing bets on anything or anybody. I was just looking.

But there was one thing I was dead certain of: I had to create someone to be, other than Dainty Baby June. The big hitch was how to go about it. I’d been trying to find a solution ever since I had run away from the act—Mother, my sister and my childhood—months ago in the middle of the night.

I stood on the corner of Fifth and Hope streets in downtown Los Angeles. I felt the soft oiliness of the tar under my feet; the air was heavy with the sticky fumes of the traffic. The soles of my shoes were so thin I could make wrinkles in the tar by wiggling my toes. I was on my way to make the rounds of what was left of the booking offices. I crossed my fingers and entered a dingy office building. It was dark after the glare of the street; the marble floor felt cool through my soles. I peered around in the smoky gloom. It was early, so there were only a few knots of people in the lobby.

“You seen Henny Zellman?” I asked Buddy Black and Company as they stood in the entrance.

“Not yet,” Buddy answered. He wore a neat dark suit; “And Company” was dolled to the brim. She wasn’t small, but she thought she was. She wore bows everywhere and beading on her eyelashes. “But we played the Hippodrome Saturday.” Buddy smiled. “So bring your bowl up to our place tonight, huh?” And Company giggled as they moved out into the sun.

I lived at the Hope Arms just under the rehearsal hall next to the room where they kept the cleaning equipment. It was only temporary, I told myself; besides, I was in it only to sleep. The elevator door slid open, revealing a gangly young man in a faded uniform from which a few buttons were missing. “Have you seen Henny Zellman?” I inquired as the buzzer sounded and a red light blinked on the elevator’s operating panel.

“Lessee now—Henny. Oh yeath—he moved. Said to tell his clients he moved to the lobby of the Acme Building across the street.” The young man’s breath was strong with stale coffee. I started to say thank you, but the elevator door clanged shut and he was gone.

The lobby of the Acme Building was a step down the social ladder. Poor Henny. Just a few seasons ago when I was “Dainty June” he had a whole floor of offices and four secretaries. He was a big, important agent. Poor Henny, I thought, now he carries his office in his pocket. “It’s temporary,” he always told us. “Just till vaudeville gets back.” I was struck with a sudden thought. When things are going great nobody says, “It’s temporary.” Right then I made a deal with myself: remember that everything is temporary and beware the smugness of security. It’s a good way to wind up with the shavings.

I found Henny holding forth in the corridor of the Acme Building lobby. The droop of his cigar stub was as eloquent as his words “I’ve got nothin’ to offer you, Baby. With things so bad I oughta just go away and quietly kill myself, only I couldn’t do a thing like that, not even if my life depended on it.” His chuckle was silent, but I laughed up the joke.

“You book the Hippodrome, Henny. Buddy Black says he played it for you.”

Henny began a close examination of some soiled notes he found unexpectedly in his pocket.

“Honey—” he looked up from his papers and his face softened—“last week was the good old days again. Now I ain’t got the Hippodrome because it’s this week.”

I said, “Oh.” We stood together for a moment, mourning at the open grave of the Hippodrome.

“I got some dates I wouldn’t send you on.” He didn’t look at me. “And then I got a date I shouldn’t send you on, but—”

“Why not, Henny? Why not? I can do a whole spot all by myself.” I knew I was being overeager.

He looked at me sadly. “You gotta remember all this crap is temporary. It’s like Will Rogers said—” he cleared his throat—“he said...ah...uh...just keep working, don’t stop working, then you don’t never have to start being ashamed.” He raised his eyebrows at me expectantly.

“That’s good,” I offered, “and true, too. But where’s the work, Henny? Give me a spot to play.”

There was another silence while my agent investigated his trouser pockets and finally untombed a worn pink envelope. “O. K., honey, come into my office.” He moved toward an uncongested corner of the lobby. “Now this date ain’t the Palace, you understand that, huh?”

I nodded. The hot-dog breakfast was already a distant pleasure. I was visualizing a real honest-to-people meal—a hamburger, maybe two, and root beer, of course.

Henny was copying something from the pink envelope. “You go on between what this guy calls rest periods—to keep the crowd from leaving. It’s a dance marathon, see?” I had heard of the craze—people danced until they dropped. “Pay is five bucks,” Henny continued, “and get the hell out as soon as your act is over.”

I looked at the slip of paper he gave me. “But this is ten miles out of town. What kind of show business is that?” I asked.

“Show business, schmo business—play the date, get the money and forget you ever was there. Just try to stay alive, honey.” His eyes didn’t match his next words: “It’s only temporary.”

I put the pink envelope into my pocket. Ace in the hole for today, I thought. There were many lobbies and corridors to cover before I settled for this.

I had all day to unearth a more savory engagement, and I didn’t stop looking, not until the day was over. Then I remembered Buddy Black’s invitation, “Bring your bowl up to our place.” That meant actor’s stew, for sure. Buddy and Company had played the Hippodrome, so the stew would be special—a real bone instead of scraps, maybe lots of potatoes. I turned toward the Hope Arms. At least I was sure of a good dinner before I thumbed those ten miles to the marathon.

It was polite to hold open house for your friends after you’d hit the jackpot with a genuine paying date. The usual dish was simply the biggest bone you could get for your money, stewed with as many vegetables as you could steal. Sometimes, if you played it right, the basic ingredient was lots of small bones. “Do you have any scraps or leftover bones for our little dog?” Of course you couldn’t ask for scraps in a restaurant unless you had at least bought a hamburger first, so buying a bone was economically sounder. The big bone boiled while you just kept adding whatever happened to be lying around loose. Sometimes it lasted for days.

I paused in front of the corner grocery store. Onions would be a nice contribution, but the carrots also looked good. I was too long in making my choice; the storekeeper came out to help me. Bad timing, I thought....

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER