The stage-door johnnies started calling my name louder as we walked out the theater doors to set off for our evening’s adventures, and I reveled in it.
“Olive, Olive,” they’d say. “Miss Shine, Miss Olive Shine… let me take you out, let me take you dancing. Olive Shine, let me show you what a gentleman I am.” Of course they were calling for the other girls, too, but all I could hear was my name.
There was usually a group of us heading out for a night on the town—Gladys, Lara, Ruthie, Pauline, Lillian and me—sometimes more, sometimes fewer, depending on who had a date that night. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love every minute of it, the attention, the desperation in those boys’ voices, the applause as we walked out into the New York City night. If I didn’t have a date already, I might look around the crowd of gents and survey my options, then pick the handsomest fella of the group.
“Come on then,” I’d say, pointing to one of them. “But if you want to show me a good time, you’ve got to show us all a good time.” And all of us girls would link arms, with the one lucky fella in the middle, and we’d walk down the street that way, or walk to his car, and sometimes I thought I noticed a look on his face that I’d just made his week.
Now that I was in theFrolic,the gifts and bouquets of flowersthat showed up in the dressing room doubled, tripled, quadrupled. At times it was absurd how many vases of roses stood on my dressing table. They’d always be accompanied by a note and an invitation to dinner; sometimes they came with a bracelet or earrings. I usually took these fellas up on their offers for dinner or dancing—not all of them, there weren’t enough days in the week, but I’d pick one and send a note back to him in the audience telling him I’d be bringing a friend and that he should, too.
There were more formal introductions, too. One evening Ziegfeld introduced me to politician Fiorello La Guardia; he was shorter than me by a good three or four inches, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He invited me and Lara and Evelyn to sit at his table at theFrolicwith a few of his friends once our show was over. They were big shots, no doubt about it; Fiorello had been elected to Congress and one gent was the mayor of Boston. But after a while I excused myself and told them I was needed backstage. Another time, while out at a club all the way up in Harlem, our group of five or six girls were approached on the dance floor and invited upstairs to a private room of what Ruthie told me were mobsters. I’ve never seen so much fur and so many diamonds in my life, on both the men and women.
While we certainly got to meet a lot of gents this way, and we did plenty of flirting and a little smooching here and there, I was never really, truly drawn to any of them. Some started to bore me once the initial fun of meeting them wore off. They’d start telling me about what they did for work, where they were from, and every time we got to that point I’d start thinking about what the rest of the girls were doing, how I’d rather be out with them, listening to a live jazz band and dancing and laughing with my girls. But more often, afterthe formalities wore off and we’d had a few drinks, they’d start to get that look in their eye, or they’d put their hand where it wasn’t wanted, and I’d be up and out of there and on my way home. I don’t know if it was that awful, regretful night in Los Angeles that made me feel this way, so prickly and prude-like all of a sudden, when I was as provocative as could be onstage and when most of the girls were living up their freedoms any way they chose to, but I never went home with any of them.
With our new earnings, Ruthie and I made our move to Fifth Avenue. We got the apartment of our dreams, with a window in every room. That, to me, felt like success—to pay my own way, not needing anyone to take care of me. We had our own apartment and we made our own rules and we liked to remind ourselves of that at all hours.
“No one can tell us now that we haven’t made it in New York,” I’d proclaim while brushing my teeth, parading around the living room in nothing but my undergarments while Ruthie wrapped her red hair in a silk scarf and put on her pajamas.
“That’s right, honey!” she’d say.
And I’d kick off my shoes and climb into bed and feel so content that it was just me, no one grabbing or pawing or sweet-talking. I’d lay my head on the pillow, often still swirling from the dancing or the hooch, and many nights, in those few private moments after I closed my eyes, my mind would drift back to the baby. I’d feel the weight of her in my arms, her sweet little face, her cheeks, her eyes looking up at me. And I’d picture those dewy eyelids getting heavy, then closing as she drifted off to sleep—peaceful and trusting. She trusted me to hold her and keep her safe. And then I’d lie there, staring at the ceiling, aching.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ruthie had started spending time with a theater director named Lawrence, who was also a patent attorney. I didn’t find him to be an attractive man—he had a big forehead, with hair that swept over his crown from one ear to the other—but he was fun and Ruthie seemed to like him. She kept on pushing me to join him and one of his colleagues for a night out and promised we’d have a grand time, but I wasn’t so keen on getting set up. I knew I’d be stuck with his friend the whole night, since I was too much of a softy to hurt someone’s feelings if he didn’t rev my engine, and I’d end up dancing with the poor fellow all night anyway, talking his ear off so he wouldn’t have a chance to swoop in for a kiss—it would be too exhausting for words.
“We’re going to a new spot Thursday after the show,” Ruthie said. “Come along with us, we’ll have the lobster.”
“We’ve had lobster a thousand times,” I said. “I’m sick of lobster.”
“Come on, Olive, his friend is dying to meet you. What does he have to do? Beg?”
“Why don’t you have Lawrence take you to the Village?” I kept hearing about the downtown bohemians—a quirky mix of musicians and writers and sculptors and revolutionaries—and I was intrigued to see the scene for myself.
Ruthie scrunched up her face. “I don’t know, Olive. They know us up here, we walk right in anywhere we go, the martinis are the real thing. We don’t want to drink some bathtub gin.”
“I think too much of the same thing can make a girl dreary,” I said. “We are in New York City, we should explore every dark and dirty corner.” I grinned. “If Lawrence wants to do his friend a favor so bad, tell them we want a night out in the Village, that’s the only way you’re going to get me to take pity on this poor fella.”
On Thursday night after the show, I walked out front with Ruthie and found not just one gentleman but two, waiting by the car.
“Olive, this is Ernest Patterson,” Ruthie said, smiling excessively as if to make up for his slight frame, thick glasses and sweating palms as he nervously took my hand.
“The pleasure is all mine,” he said.
“He works with Lawrence at the law office.”
“Hi there, Ernest,” I said, trying to put him at ease.
“You were a knockout in the show tonight, both of you,” he said. “The real McCoy.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said. As we drove down Broadway, I looked out the window and didn’t feel like making small talk. Maybe she was right, maybe we should have just stayed uptown.
“So what was your favorite part?” I said finally, filling in the awkward silence.
“Pretty much any part you were in, really,” he said. “The pony—where you rode the horse on the stage singing that funny song, oh, that was a hoot, a real hoot.”
“That’s one of my favorite parts, too,” I said, warming up to him a little. “I used to worry that horse was going to bolt when the applause came, and the heat from those lights gets pretty uncomfortable, but he’s such a good boy. I think they might give him a powder or two. I’ve never seen such a calm pony in all my life.”
On MacDougal Street, Monte’s felt more like someone’s living quarters than a restaurant. My stomach growled—I hadn’t eaten since lunch and I’d performed theFolliesand my act in theFrolic.
