Not a Celebrity Story, a Love Story from my Hollywood Memoir


As the title states, this is not a celebrity story from my Hollywood Memoir, Three Stages but a

love story

and a network TV interview (not aired yet so I can’t say where). I tell the story of my meeting Elizabeth – then known as Betsy – and falling in love with her. I think I told the story better in the book.

Here’s part of the written version, an excerpt from Chapter 9 “Betsy”:

Sitting in the front row was a lovely young woman with a Shetland Sheep Dog at her feet. I didn’t know who she was but it was as though there was a pin spotlight on her and all the others in the room faded from view. Her presence hit me like a velvet sledge hammer. It was confusing.

The rehearsal split into the chorus, who stayed in the theatre, and principals who moved to the Inn to work on our individual numbers. The piano was in the dining room and as we waited our turns we sat on the porch. I learned that the mesmerizing lady’s name was Betsy Hepburn and that she was playing “Carrie”, the comedienne, who marries “Mr. Snow”. I was thrilled with her voice and the comic personality with which she sang. She was really good and that was a relief. Joy Franz, who played “Julie”, my leading lady, went next and I was delighted with her performances as well. I then joined her and the musical director to work on our duet, “If I Loved You”. Joy was a joy.

When we finished, Joy returned to the porch and we worked on my big number, “Soliloquy”. This is a seven minute tour-de-force and I’d sung it many times but knowing that Betsy was ten feet away hearing everything, I sang it better than ever before and socked the high b-flat on the end with all I was worth. …

I asked Betsy if I could take her to lunch. With some reluctance she accepted and we went to the snack bar across from the Inn. As we were eating our sandwiches I told her that I felt like I knew her. She replied that she knew we’d never met. I agreed that that we’d not met before, that wasn’t what I meant. I just had the feeling that I knew her. This was the absolute truth. (It was several years later that I learned the concept of reincarnation.)

Rehearsals proceeded and over the next two or three nights I asked her to dinner but she always had a reason to decline. (She must have had the cleanest hair since Nellie Forbush.) One night I hit the jackpot! I was going to drive into Lebanon to wash my clothes and asked if she’d like to join me. So our first “date” was in the glamorous fluorescent lighting of the nearest laundromat.

The show, the reason we were there in the first place, was very good. Once I walked onto that stage I was in love with Joy/Julie and our singing together was thrilling for me. (I don’t know how she felt.) Off stage Joy and I had no relationship whatsoever. We weren’t hostile we were just neutral. I was so entranced by Betsy there was simply no room for or even consciousness of other women.

Joy Franz with the author

Joy and me as Julie and Billy

Betsy was brilliant. The combination of her beauty, singing voice and comic skills made her Carrie a highlight of the show. Dennis Britain, who played her husband, “Enoch Snow”, had a lovely tenor voice and was appropriately prissy.

EH & Dennis

Dennis and Betsy as Enoch and Carrie

My pursuit of Betsy continued with a gradual bit of success but it was an uphill struggle. I think it was at least two weeks after we met that I was allowed my first kiss.

In an attempt to get some marketing for my books, I signed up for this list called HARO (Help A Reporter Out). Every day I get three emails from them listing all sorts of stories – for newspapers, magazines, blogs, TV shows etc. – asking for an amazing variety of input on every subject you can imagine (and quite a few that are so bizarre as to be unimaginable). So far I’ve been interviewed for The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan and the aforementioned unnamed major cable TV network. None have allowed me to talk about the books but sooner or later I will hit that home run meanwhile I am getting up to bat from time to time.

That interview is the source of the story that inspired this blog piece. The very nice young man who produced it sent me the unedited footage and from that I was able to extract this 2:09 video from that, as yet unaired, piece.

Click here to get Three Stages

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