A Truly Bizarre Showbiz Story


Here’s a

showbiz story

excerpted from the Las Vegas chapter of my Hollywood Memoir, Three Stages.

Thunderbird Hotel in 1963

Thunderbird Hotel in 1963

“By the end of February [’63] we had done about a hundred sixty or seventy performances [of South Pacific] and the show had become something of a dull routine. However one evening that changed dramatically.

“In the middle of the song There is Nothing Like a Dame the nurses jog through and Nellie has a brief scene with Billis. The dialog in the scene is essential to the plot. It was late in February or early March when one night in the first performance, Nellie (Joan O’Brien) wasn’t there. The nurses kept on jogging right off stage and the orchestra kept vamping and Benny Baker (Billis) stood there like a character in a tableau vivant as did most of the other guys. Always ‘quick on my feet’, a survival technique for those like me who are in the habit of forgetting words on stage, I ambled over to Billis and said what was necessary to the plot in a more or less natural way and included the cue for the song to resume. The conductor picked up on it, hit the appropriate chord and we all began to sing. I was thinking I’d be the hero who saved the show but little did I know what was to come.

“A few minutes later … came the I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair scene. In case you’re one of the six people who have never seen the show, there’s a ‘SeaBee shower’ on stage operated by the ‘Billis Bath Boys’, in this case, me and another guy. After a chorus of the song Nellie gets into the shower and washes her hair. When that time came instead of going into the shower Joan walked off stage. (Note: Joan’s understudy was home sick.) One of the nurses, Gay Edmund, who had never played the role or even rehearsed it was standing next to me. She said, ‘What should I do?’ I asked if she knew the role and she said she did and I said, ‘Get in the fucking shower!’

“She did, I pulled the handle and she washed her hair. While Nellie is in the shower De Beque, the man she’s ostensibly washing out of her hair, enters, the nurses all giggle and run off. Nellie comes out of the shower with a towel over her head, sees his feet and stops. De Beque slowly lifts the towel. When Bill Miegs [the actor playing De Beque] saw Gay’s face he nearly shit a brick. He didn’t know Joan had walked off. The man was a stone pro! After a brief pause he composed himself and went on with the scene.

“During the scene break the stage manager went on the P.A. system and announced that Miss O’Brien had become indisposed and her understudy, Gay Edmund, had stepped in. With ‘a little help from her friends’ Gay finished the show brilliantly and, during the curtain call Benny Baker stepped forward and raised his hands. The audience grew silent. I don’t recall his exact words but he told them the truth, including the fact that Gay was NOT the understudy, and they rose to their feet and gave Gay an ovation. …

“I have told this story innumerable times to colleagues in show business and as yet no one has topped it.”

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