BEING A FRESHMAN Kate’s Journal

Episode 9

Torrance, 1940

Arthur Murray taught us dancing in a hurry when we sent for his printed paper diagrams and invited him into my bedroom to follow the colored footsteps. Not that the two-step benefited me in any since I wasn’t allowed to go to school dances yet anyway. Jitterbugging was learned by grasping a doorknob in one hand and shimmying forward a few times.

Arthur Murray

When we returned to California I was skipped ahead another half grade making me a year younger than my classmates. Being younger is a definite social disadvantage at the age of thirteen.

I fell in love with my Biology teacher Mr. Katz while dissecting a frog, but I don’t think it was reciprocated. For some reason I developed a strong desire to become a psychiatrist and asked him for books I could read. To give him credit, he honestly tried to discourage me, though I may have been a good one.

The sports teams were the Tartars, and I was unexpectedly elected Junior Tartar Queen. The acquisition of a crown gave me confidence to actually run for office. It was always clear to me that the reason no one voted for me was that I was wearing my grandmother’s light blue lace evening gown and a pair of her strappy dancing shoes.

While living in Connecticut I had for the first time had a room of my own except for the times I lived with Auntie. In this new home I again shared a room with my mother, but as Grandma obtained new roomers, this room kept changing. When leaving for school in the morning we might have one room, but upon coming home, I would find myself in another. One roomer who became a boarder, was a girl my own age who had recently lost her mother. Her name was Dorothy Graham, and much to my shame, I was not kind to her. Dorothy kept most of her possessions under the bed, including old comic books, candy bars and empty soda cans. She had a sullen personality and though my Grandmother nagged me to take her into my group of friends, I never did. Poor Dorothy did not live with us long. I understand now that she needed much more than I could have given her anyway, but I still feel the guilt.

Sometime during the Fall semester, I discovered boys. One of our football players, a senior boy called “Shifty Hips” Parton, lived across the street, so I was always ready to mow the lawn when he was home. I wore glasses, and one day he insulted me by saying I “looked intelligent”. From then on I tried never to wear my glasses.

I never knew what to say to boys. They were a whole different breed except for one boy who rode his bike down our alley on his way home from school. I was frequently up in the fig tree when he came along and we developed an easy comradeship. We would talk, he would scuff his toe in the dirt and I would occasionally give him a fig. It was not a hot romance. One day a boy actually came to the front door and my mother let him in. What do you do now, I thought. At my mother’s suggestion we made fudge and sat silently eating it in the living room while my three year old cousin kept turning summersaults on the living room floor.

Cousin Judy and Me at Redondo Beach

Somehow I developed a singing voice which caught the attention of my choral teacher and an acquaintance of my Grandmother who was the vocal teacher of Deanna Durbin, a young movie star. I have to attribute my singing voice to the outhouse in Connecticut. Singing allows you to breathe through your mouth. I had sung my way across country in the backseat of our car.

The family, convinced that i would one day make us all famous, pooled resources and gave me voice lessons. I loved singing so much that I searched all over for a church which would allow me to join their choir, since the Christian Science church where my female family member attended did not have one.

I spent Sundays going to most of the churches in town and finally found that the Episcopal church choir could use another voice. And thus began a secret life, ostensibly in the name of religion. Upon being issued a choir robe and marching out for my first practice, whom should I see but my Grandmother’s gentleman friend sitting in the bass section. I lived in fear that my family would learn I was not attending the Christian Science church, but the dear man never told them. On my mother’s death bed I asked her if she ever knew and she shook her head.

TO BE A STAR

In my grandmother’s eyes, I was destined to be a star. Fortunately no one else’s eyes were aimed in the same direction.

Hollywood, in the decade of the 1930’s during the height of the Great Depression, made cheerful, happy musicals; such as those featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, and most important to my grandmother—Shirley Temple. It seemed almost like there was a new Shirley Temple film a month, and we saw them all. If you lived within a radius of 50 miles near Hollywood, especially in the early days, you were aware of the movies wherever you looked. They were cheap, and every kid went to the Saturday matinee for a dime.

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When I unexpectantly won the Long Beach Baby Parade in my silver lame body suit and cleverly concocted wire top hat, the three women in my family; my mother, grandmother and aunt, decided that I had unforeseen talent. And so I went to dancing class along with all the other untalented five year olds, where we practiced our step, shuffle steps and our five year old struts in our shiny new black patent leather tap shoes, under the watchful eyes of devoted mothers and grandmothers.

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My father was a Navy man, and we lived with my grandmother when he was at sea. Occasionally when he came briefly into port in San Diego my mother joined him and I stayed behind. During those periods, I was sent to stay with my Grandmother’s sister Aunt Georgia.

Aunt Georgia was a serious no-nonsense Yankee, so when I took up residence, my Shirley Temple curls were cut in a Dutch Boy style, and the patent leather shoes were replaced with practical Buster Browns. But on Sunday afternoons we went to the movies to see Shirley Temple.

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I had a love and a mild talent for singing, and when I was thirteen Grandma again zeroed in on the idea of stardom. I had an audition with a voice coach in Hollywood who worked with Deanna Durbin, who was then making light-hearted films such as “Three Smart Girls” and “Every Sunday” with Judy Garland. She was a Canadian lyric soprano and though I was a mezzo soprano, her coach agreed to take me. There was one small drawback; his fee was out of our price range at that time, and so we opted for a local voice teacher.

I studied for five or six years until I got married when we all had to admit that I was not going to be a star.

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Many years later my husband and I attended a high school class reunion of mine and across the room I recognized my old singing teacher. Still tall and thin, but now wearing a tip-tilted toupee, with rouged cheeks and lips, he seemed strangely pathetic. Rushing over to him I introduced myself by my maiden name. He seemed not to recognize my name, though we had worked together for several years and he had given me choice roles in a couple of operettas. He peered at me a few minutes then said as he turned away “Your voice must not have impressed me very much.”

I was embarrassed, thinking back to the hardship it must have caused my family to raise the money to pay him for my lessons. I glared at him and though both my mother and grandmother had been gone for some time, I said “My mother is not going to want to hear that!” He countered with “Well, you’ve got a sense of humor.”

Sorry grandma—I never got to be a star.