In February I celebrate my eighty-sixth birthday, and at eighty-six we celebrate every one of them as though it could be the last one. Shirley, “the Boss,” and I will be going through the Panama Canal from San Diego to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We did the trip from East to West several years ago.
Although the Boss and I have traveled extensively once the kids were on their own, we were confined mainly to the U. S. and Canada prior to that. I have visited 49 of the 50 states, some during my bachelor and Army days, while Shirley is just a few short of that number. We have been to at least 16 European countries, all of North America, most of Central America (we are not sure about El Salvador), and three nations in South America, as well as Israel, the Palestinian Territory, Turkey, and Morocco. Not as much travel as some, to be sure, but more than many others. All our trips were, in various degrees, exciting, adventurous, educational, and, most important, enjoyable.
One trip that I was fortunate enough to be part of occurred way back in my bachelor days, a few years before the Boss and I even met. In terms of personal growth and expanded learning in my chosen field, as the old saying goes, “It was a TRIP!”
I had taught drama, speech, and English for two years in high school in Southern California when, in 1959, I decided the time was ripe for me to become rich and famous as an actor. After teaching two years, I moved to a residential section of Hollywood and started making the rounds of agents, producers, and auditions. Although I had some success, I saw quite early on that I did not want to continue the lifestyle that I was then living. I also missed the classroom and interaction with students. I, therefore, enrolled in the graduate school of theater at UCLA in late 1960, and began classes toward my master’s degree in January of 1961.
Although I felt the program was a bit too regimented for my taste, the classes were excellent. I was cast, however, in the musical “Finian’s Rainbow” based on my reading four lines from the ancient Greek play “Antigone” by Sophocles, a casting I did not then and do not now understand. My sheer dumb luck, however, came through with flying colors. A student had to be in residence in the Winter Semester to be eligible to audition that Spring for a show sponsored jointly by the University, the U. S. O., and the Department of Defense. The show was scheduled to tour a variety of service bases in Asia, and, indeed, we did exactly that.
As a student, I had been strictly a commuter, living with my parents and later in my own tiny apartment. For the four to six weeks of rehearsals and early performances I rented a room in a fraternity house, learning to live with the odor of perspiration and beer constantly in the air. Our company fortunately received permission to perform George M. Cohan’s “Forty-five Minutes from Broadway,” using the script written for a performance honoring Cohan’s 100th birthday and shown on the great television show “Omnibus.” Some of us who became cast members also performed songs about U.S. cities and states between scenes and to open and close the show. I became the villain in the play, spoke directly to the audience at the beginning as MC, and then ended the show singing and scatting “Route Sixty-six,” with the entire cast joining in the finale.
During the rehearsal period an undergraduate student at UCLA who was of Japanese descent taught us a few expressions in that language including “Where is the bathroom?” “Please,” “Thank you,” “Where is a restaurant?” and “Can you tell me where I can find a teaspoonful of toilet paper for my horse?” (I never got to use the latter one, but the others helped.) Incidentally, the undergraduate student’s name was George Takai, better known today as Mr. Sulu of the original “Star Trek.”
The director, the cast of twelve (including the director’s wife), and the pianist were allotted a total of ten steamer trunks in which to pack our sets, costumes, and lights plus one suitcase each for personal belongings. It was tight. We had rented our costumes from Western Costume in Hollywood, and I wore a suit worn by a minor star in a long forgotten movie. That was as close as I came to becoming “rich and famous.”
After a few trial performances at UCLA, we played a few more at service bases around Southern California, then boarded a gigantic, slow, propeller cargo plane for the interminable trip across the Pacific Ocean. In the next six weeks we traveled some 45,000 miles, did 46 shows, and visited Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Guam, Wake Island, and Hawaii, performing in the hot, humid summer both indoors and outdoors.
Every place we played had different sized stages. We did one show on a stage no more than fifteen feet wide with yet another on the stage of the Toshi Center Hotel in Tokyo, which at that time was considered the most modern theater in the world, with a stage some 50-60 feet across. The dancers, of course, had to practice on every stage because some stages demanded giant steps and movement while others required little baby steps.
On a personal note, even the act of eating a meal meant new horizons for me. Although my father was the better cook, my mother did most of the cooking, as did most women in those days when Dad worked from early morning to mid-evening. My tastes remained stagnant with my mother’s style of cooking: vegetables boiled until they were almost a paste; meat well done until it bordered on leather. (All right, so I exaggerate a little bit.) Knowing that I would not be returning soon to this part of the world, I asked the waiters to bring me something good, but not to tell me what the ingredients were until after I ate. It worked; I tricked myself and expanded my culinary horizons greatly. At the service bases where we often ate, indigenous laborers served the food in cafeteria lines. I quickly learned to ask for rice, not potatoes, because the natives then included me as one of their own, and gave me extra portions of meat also.
Our audience sizes varied greatly from about twenty to a few thousand. The base which had the fewest audience members was located 100 yards from the Communist lines near the 38th parallel. The men were not permitted to discuss what kind of electronic work they did, but any serviceman, regardless of how long or short his time there had been, could simply say he needed to transfer and it would be arranged immediately. Anyone who ever served in the military knows how unusual that is. The men there also served our troupe a delicious chicken dinner with all the trimmings. The following day, when we were at our next venue, we were informed that those men had gone without dinner so they could feed us.
Our show was a completely clean, wholesome performance, which was not always the case with USO shows. Some had young, and not so young, women in skimpy costumes showing a lot of skin and telling off-color jokes with strong sexual content. We were amazed and delighted at the number of servicemen who thanked us, saying that our clean show was the way they preferred to remember their wives, mothers, girl friends, and sisters.
Occasionally though, we did have problems. In one scene the male lead danced around each of the four chorus girls and kissed each one on the cheek. On Okinawa we were informed that there had been race riots between black and white service men. Because one of our chorus girls was black, we were obliged to cut the kiss in that particular scene. The racial tensions prompted the Army to station men with clubs backstage to protect us. Once, just before I went on stage to speak to the audience as MC, our “protector” said to me, “If there is trouble, you can have my club, because I’m getting my butt out of here.” Not too heartwarming when one is just getting ready to go out to face an unknown audience. Thankfully, we never experienced any of those problems.
Although we had racial problems on Okinawa, we had two incidents that qualified as unusual and frightening theatrical situations. One of our chorus girls, Jan, sang “The Boston Beguine” between two of the scenes. The comic song basically deals with a man and a woman who do not know what to do with their new found love because all of the books they should have read were banned in Boston. The song, written in 1952, ends, “Land of the free, home of the Braves, home of the Red Sox, and home of the Boston Beguine.” The Boston Braves baseball team had moved to Milwaukee, and John Kennedy was President, so Jan changed the ending to “Land of the free, ex-home of the Braves, home of the Red Sox, home of Jack Kennedy, and home of the Boston Beguine.”
The baseball references usually received a chuckle and the Kennedy reference mild applause. One night in August, however, “Home of Jack Kennedy,” got all the servicemen and women on their feet, booing, and shaking their fists. Jan, naturally was shocked and shaken. Between performing, traveling, and sightseeing none of us followed world news, and on that fateful day, the Russians raised the Berlin Wall and President Kennedy had extended duty for all service personnel an extra six months. Needless to say, Jan cut out the Kennedy reference for the remainder of the tour.
Because of an administrative foul up (Yes, those things happen in the service), a large group of servicemen were told we would perform at noon, but we were not scheduled until two o’clock. The men, all of whom had records as petty criminals, fighting and minor thefts, had been sitting in the hot, humid tropical sun for two hours when yours truly came on stage alone to start the festivities. I learned a great deal in a great hurry about handling a hostile audience, but I survived and the men enjoyed the show once we started.
After several shows in Okinawa, we flew to both Guam and tiny Wake Island, the scene of intense fighting during World War II. Our efforts on those outposts drew enthusiastic applause and appreciation from those stationed there. Then it was back to the “good ole’ US of A.”
Although we had the chance to relax a bit in Hawaii, we also did three shows there before returning to the reality of our normal lives. (“Reality?” “Normal? Los Angeles? A contradictions of terms.) Exhausted and worn out from our travels and constant performing, we returned to our separate lives with new insights about theater and performing; new understandings and appreciation for other cultures; and, at least in my personal case but I suspect for all of us; expanded horizons as performers and, more important, as ourselves.
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