Chapter 1
Making a living
Being a show girl meant that you had to linger backstage the entire night, chatting with the assitants and prop men, change your clothes at least three times, do your make-up in ten minutes, and always squeeze a moment in to chew something, your so called "dinner on the road" -if there was any. Sometimes for lack of time, or lack of money we had to skip that commodity and just go to bed like that.
Being a show girl meant that you often had to spend the night in a train, sleeping on a seat, after having been dancing the entire day (rehearsal in the morning, show in the evening) and had packed your things at lightening speed only to stumble out the door, and fly to the train station to make it (skipping dinner one more time), only to wake up at sunrise the next morning, to carry your heavy suitcase all around, full of ridiculous stage costumes and very few personal things that were perfectly useles, and worthless, but you couldn't live without them. Letter from home, pictures of your loved ones, souvenirs and stuff to remind you what you left behind.
But Lilly Haley, that's me, always travelled light. I had no tiny nonsense to drag along. My bagage was strictly essential and icnluded only objects that might be useful in the future since my past was something I didn't even want to remember or be aware of.
For Lilly Haley being a show girl only meant a lot of sleepless nights, eatless afternoons, dateless weekends and loveless holidays. Not to mention a freedom-less schedule, and a penny-less life! However I wouldn't trade this for the world. It had the advantage that if you screw up your life at a point you just had to jump in the train and run off and arrive to a new place where nobody knew you and you could start all over. And, yeah, this was my life: a constant running away. Ever since my family moved from chilly London to sunny Miamy to try fortune in vaudeville, Lilly Haley was to be on the road. Partly because I had nowhere to go and partly becuase I knew the path to success is full of rocks and it's those adversities that filter who will make it and who will fail. I figured if I stayed long enough and took all those hard times my patience would pay off one day. And since I needed to run away I picked the perfect profesion.
I had been a show girl for almost a year now, under contract with the same company and by then I had sort of befriended a couple of girls in the troupe. Lisette and Alicia had that little thing in common with me: they both wanted to get to the top, no matter how much crap they'd have to take on the way to fame. With the big difference that they weren't outcasts like me: both kept in touch with their families and friends, both carried that heavy suitcase full of nonsense.
But as much as I detested vaudeville it was still nice to be onstage. If we struggled to write a song, no matter how bad it was, we got a bonus pay. We would get a bigger one for a play, but that went far beyond our limits. The most I could do for that part was to improvise a few comic bits here and there during our dance and sing routines.
The overall number seemed to please the audience, at least they applauded and never threw things at us.
At the end of the first contract, that had taken us to London for a few weeks, we were back in America and ready to start a tour, across the country, going West. It was 1913 and the very mention of the word "West" made you think of the savage wild extension of unpopulated land inhabited by a few Indians here and there and wandered by settlers with pistols, so the girls and I were rather worried about heading into this uncivilised territory. Anyway, all that mattered for me was that I was away -away from everyone and everything, from my family, from my past, from the memory of a heel named Bobby, that still haunted me. Wretched love. It's so fast and easy to fall and so hard and long to forget. I felt free and powerful without him, I felt brave and strong for having had the guts to end something that had hurt me so much; but still it was difficult to end a relationship that had meant so much to me, and every once in a while I had flashbacks of the good times we spent together, of the brief happiness we shared and the few times he was charming... it hurt to think of him, even if I was determined to go on with my life and never turn back to him again. I convinced myself that I didn't love him anymore and I didn't need him like before, but I did miss him. Wretched weak heart!
My friends kept trying to cheer me up, but I'm the kind that locks up in her blues and stays there, at the bottom of the depression pit for days or weeks -or months- until I find a reason to be happy. And right then I had little reason. Besides I felt worse every time I remembered they all had lovers and I was, as usual, the lonely one. As I had to witness Lisette with her new boyfriend (she got a new one in every city we visited) and hearing Ali recite the love letters she got from her fiance almost every week, I began to sulk more and more. Eventually I progressed from slightly apathetic to downright grumpy -so bad that even on stage I seemed bitter- which, paradoxically, instead of taking away from our act, rather seemed to add more comedy to it (hey, what's so funny ībout my pout??)
Since our means were rather limited and we wanted to save as much as possible we rented a room for the three of us in each city we visited. Should I even tell you how it is to share a place with Lisett? Well, let me say it: it required a great deal of patience! It so got on my nerves to be quietly reading a book at nights when we were not working, enjoying the very few quiet evenings we had away from the theatre... and watch her walk in so calmly with a bloke at the other end of her hand: "oh, look, Flavour of the Week is here". I began to spend all the evenings at the theatre only to avoid meeting her new conquests.
I stayed to see the whole show with all their acts and went back to bed quite late, often after midnight, hoping they'd be sleeping by then. I detested to be around while they were awake and "busy". Allow me to note: Lisett was not a quiet lover: you could hear her from every corner of the house -I think even our neighbours knew when she had visits.
Going to the theatre in such mood was not the best thing to do, since, grumpy as I was, I seldom bothered to hide my contempt, which made me sharp to the other people if anyone addressed me and mean to the show if I didn't like it. I even started throwing orange peels on stage one time, which was far too inelegant for my usual behaviour.
And so it happened that one night a comedian was on stage -a fat ugly guy with a hideous southern accent- trying his best to amuse the audience, but pretty unsuccessfully, indeed. It was a pathetic fellow with no charm and no talent whatsoever, and in more than half an hour the most he could achieve was a few grins from some of the spectators -not even an audible laugh.
It was the first day we spent in that city and I was very moody and temperamental after jumping out of the train so I had very little patience with his vulgar humour and lack of grace. I kept whispering and elbowing Alicia, who had accompanied me to the show, also to escape Lisettīs passionate concert that evening.
Ali and I began to joke about this wanna-be clown, insulting his act with the most refined irony. Since he was so boring, we had to have fun on our own badmouthing him. As the number got worse by the minute, our mocking began to be more enthusiastic and our whispered jokes became somewhat louder eventually.
At a certain point the people around me started to giggle. Ali elbowed me and made a sign that we should hush, noticing the others had heard us. But as the show carried on I despised the "comic" onstage more and more and began to mock him again. Once more, those sitting next to me giggled and the others began to look my way trying to hear what we were saying. I paid no attention and kept kidding with Ali until suddenly I realised everyone around our seats was listening to our chat and enjoying it.
The guy on the stage had no idea he was losing the public's interest until I dropped a joke really loud and the entire audience cracked up. This time he heard me too. And he got real mad! Without the slightest twinge of shyness or discretion he delivered his complaint against my ruining his number, peppered with hot insults about my spontaneous self. My answer to him was more spiced and spontaneous, bringing new fits of laughter from the crowd. And a duel began.
He, from the stage, attacking me with stern irritation; me, from my seat, attacking him with a witty sarcasm that was punctuated with a laugh from the audience every time I spoke. When he finally lost his temper and threatened to jump off the stage to hit me, a long thin cane appeared from behind the curtain and pulled him away, causing the audience to laugh more than ever and the "act" finished with a warm applause, even if nobody was sure whom it was for.
Although I had been grumpy for many days, and now I was still annoyed for the rudeness of this fellow (I'm just too delicate to quote the names the dude had called me), I kept grinning at myself after the show. Even if it wasn't very nice of me to ruin his number, I was well amused at the final result of the incident. So amused in fact that I repeated it. And again. And soon, if I chanced to be at the theatre and the comedy was dull or the act was piteous, I began to tease the star, discretely at first, but then with animation, as the giggles around me grew. The farce always had the same end: the more the public liked it, the more annoyed the actors became and I had to run off quick after the show to avoid getting in trouble.
Are bad habits addictive! Before I knew it I was going to the theatre every night with the specific purpose of picking on every single artist on the stage (only when it wasn't good, of course, but very few were). And we came to the point where, even during our show I would use my "spontaneous witty little tongue" and tease somebody backstage. The public usually recognised me, since I spent all the time at the theatres, either working with the girls, or among the audience displaying my evil humour against the other artists. It was dreadful for them: a shameless mean critic, sitting in the public, ready to outstage them and destroy their performance. Worse yet, some of the troupes that worked at the theatres had the same schedule we had and stopped at the same cities we visited in the tour, so, many times, even after travelling to a different part of the country, it happened that I went to the theatre to find a familiar face -and a familiar poor act, that I picked on at once.
They began to hate me, gossip me, plot against me (but they couldn't actually do anything, since the entire audience was on my side), they even called me "The Blue Terror" as I always always wore dark blue. As much as the artists hated me, the directors of the theatre were pleased enough: I drew spectators to the shows, so who cared if they came in to watch the actors or hear my nonsense: they paid a ticket anyway.
I found a new hobby: oh, what an evil girl I was! Shame on me, indeed! But, it did me good: upsetting everyone in such a funny way somewhat distracted me from my own upsetting situation.
On advise from the girls I had to stop, however, before I made a real enemy. So I had to trade the theatre for a movie show -where I could ridicule the picture, without the star yelling at me. Movies were still something relatively new and I wasn't a big fan of pale, mute, flickering images in a dark room; I could hardly understand what the actors were trying to do. But loneliness and boredom forced me to give it a try and so I became a regular customer of the cinema.
Inevitably movies seemed to me perfectly ridiculous: that was not acting! So I only attended comedies, since the pantomime on screen was too ridiculous to seem dramatic I always thought dramatic movies looked stupid. But, since the movement of the film was already comic in itself, if the story and scenes were intended to be comic too, it seemed to suit.
However I couldn't invest too much of my time in those new diversions: we were still busy with our growing career and the theatre work absorbed us. Everyday was a lot of rehearsing, performing and writing new songs for our number, trying new dance routines and inventing new things to keep the interest of our audience. It was a very busy life we led now, heading West into the wild territory (which turned out to be civilised enough however, but still very primitive)... but it was exactly what I needed: I was busy, away from everything and only looking ahead at the future.
What would the future bring to us in a land like this?... we had that single thought in our head each time we stepped into a new train and headed for our next stop.
