June Havoc

Michael Kantor: Tell me about when you were a young girl, your first memory of what, hearing the word Broadway, what did it mean to you then?

June Havoc: When I was a young girl, well, that’s so long ago, let’s see. Broadway was a destination. I think it still is. Broadway was the best. Broadway was where every vaudevillian wanted to go. Every clown, every comic. Well, that was the zenith. That was as far as you could get. And I think still is, even with people who are very successful in other fields. You’ll notice how they keep sort of coming to Broadway, even if they haven’t been there before, because it’s such a lure.

Michael Kantor: Perfect. Great. When you think about Broadway now, is it still a little work for you?

June Havoc: The only thing I find unromantic in… Unpleasing, unwelcome, is the corporate influence. But it’s in all the arts now. It’s corporation owned and I did Annie, you know, I did Mrs. What’s Her Name. And the little kids came into my dressing room once and they had little, you those little signs they put in windows, advertising signs. They said, oh, isn’t this wonderful? We have these and they only cost, the management only charged us $7 each. I said, the management charged you kids? For those little pieces of paper, but that’s corporate. And that’s the way they think. And there’s.

Michael Kantor: I got the bell on that.

June Havoc: The Broadway musical, American Wallet, isn’t anymore. It was. We had grabs on all of it for a long time there, but the Brits have certainly caught up, and the French have always had a musical, but it’s always been a little faster, a little more daring, and more cabaret-like, but they’ve always had the music. Look at the, my dogs, look at the music that came out of France. In the early part of this century. Wow, wonderful. And that’s musical comedy type of music. No Cole Porter’s, but music.

Michael Kantor: What kind of adjectives, when you think back to that glorious American period, what are the kind of adjectives you use to describe the Broadway musical?

June Havoc: Of course with me, the Broadway musical would be terribly personal because most of show business to me is what home is to other people because that’s all I’ve ever known ever since I was two, that’s it. So the Broadway Musical was the Acme, the end of the yellow brick road and to be able to be on those boards when you’ve been on so many other boards. And I’ve been on an awful lot. It was sheer heaven. It was like being transported somewhere. And if you could stand center stage, as I’ve been privileged to do a few times, and stop the show. Cold. Of course, you’re not allowed to stop the show anymore. They know better now. They go right. It’s all segue. And if there’s a really powerful sound coming from that audience, there are ways of clipping it off. But in the old days, old days 20 years ago even, you could hear that sound from an audience. It was drunk making, nobody needed booze.

Michael Kantor: Tell me more about that. What happens when you, when you finish a song or when you do a routine and then what would happen?

June Havoc: Well, for instance, in Mexican Hayride, which was Cole Porter, it was really quite a madhouse. Mike Todd produced that. And he had gone and collected a lot of people from different areas, nightclubs and things that he was sure were going to be wow, you know. And when opening night came in Boston, they weren’t. It just is a different milieu. It was a whole different thing. So Bobby Clark. Was given lots of extra things to do, and so was I, overnight. Overnight things. And I was given a song, and I had to learn it overnight, and I did, and went out and did it. And Bobby was supposed to come on the stage with a lot of tourists after it. He came on the state afterwards, and they didn’t stop applauding. Well, I was busy making a quick change. I had stripped it in my dressing room offstage. My dog came back and said, get out there. Can’t you hear that? Well, I put some part of the costume on and I came out. I was so thrilled. But to have that happen, that I couldn’t remember a lyric. Everything went blank. So I said, I’m awfully sorry, ladies and gentlemen. Cole Porter didn’t think this number would mean anything in this show. And he didn’t write me an encore. Variety, but it worked because I stopped the show again. They kept applauding, and it was very thrilling. So I leaned over the trough as I had seen Bobby Clark do, and I double-talked the song, and I worked. I did my little funny exits. And Bobby said, that’s what we need more of. We chaired dressing rooms at the Schubert in Boston. He had three enormous trunks. One was in his room, one was in the bathroom that was between us, and one was my room from those trunks. He took all of those miraculous things that he made. He made the papoose on his back who smoked a cigar. He made this great big thing on his chest, and it looked like fur, but it looked like some kind of wild animal fur. He made, he even fixed my atomizer. He was just a genius, and we loved being together. I asked him about the trunks, I said, gee, we can hardly move in this place. He said, Junie, he said, we’re going to need every single trick that’s in those trunks for this show. You wait and see. And he was right.

Michael Kantor: Great, great story, thank you. What would you say is the myth of Broadway?

June Havoc: Myth? What do you mean myth?

Michael Kantor: When people think of Broadway, what are they dreaming of?

June Havoc: I don’t think they’re dreaming of Broadway today. I think they are dreaming of the history of Broadway, which is unparalleled, which is so romantic, it’s so American. Broadway represents all the states in the Union, all the people who strum guitars or who dance or who used to wear blackface because it was funny then, or who did Yiddish comedy, Dutch comedy, German comedy. Italian comedy, even when I was a little kid in Vaudeville, those were very popular things. They were ethnic jokes, and everybody thought it was funny. I’m confused about it today because they were so embraced by the audiences, who were everybody. You talk about mixed audiences, those vaudeville audiences, you get 3,200 people in one house. And the comic out there doing a. There was something loose about it and very American, something that I think we’ve lost.

Michael Kantor: It represents all these different kinds of people and seen by so many people. What do you think the musicals that we’ve loved over the years say about us as a people? What does it represent? If it’s an American form, it means we’re what? That we love this stuff.

June Havoc: Well, it doesn’t always mean the same thing, does it? American or not, some of our American things are sensational in Japan and Africa because the message is so clear. Whatever message there may be, there’s no message at all in something like guys and dolls in Chicago, which are huge hits all over the world and will be for generations to come. My, uh, precedence, my Not my generation, but the people who were a couple of generations older than we were when I was a kid, used to say over and over again, you missed it. You missed a good part. Too bad you’re coming in on the last eight bars. Well, I came in on last eight bar of vaudeville. I came on the eight bars of films as they were when they were studio. Everybody was under. Protection and almost guaranteed, if you were good, of success and of guidance, which is, there’s so little guidance. I had no guidance. I begged and longed for guidance, but I think I was too sassy. If you’re too sussy, nobody guides you. Well, I’ve read book upon book upon books and all of them say, way back to the church. When actors just wandered and were allowed to appear on the street corners or were allowed, they weren’t allowed anywhere else, they were absolutely, you know, no-show people. They were freaks as far as the public was concerned. They didn’t want them in their homes or anywhere. But that’s the beginning. I have some marvelous books on this subject. They’re fascinating because you see the actor and the creator, the people who wrote the, strum made. And did creative, unwanted, unencouraged, and yet they never ceased and they’re still there. All over the world the creative people just, it’s just too bad that we don’t have better choosers. We don’t the producers, the kind of people with the imagination to create the kind of explosive, true art, that those people apparently are Shakespeare. You know, name a dozen of them, but they subsisted on nothing. They weren’t even encouraged.

Michael Kantor: Great, let’s talk about vaudeville, or as you pronounce it much better than I. For those who have no idea, what was it?

June Havoc: It was a world. Vaudeville was an entire world. It had everything. I was first in Vaudevill when I was about three. And I didn’t earn a penny until I was two years old. But by the time I was three, I was in Vauteville. I was surrounded all the rest of my childhood with the most extraordinary people. These people had been in the business, the business. For many years, their acts were so unique that they handed them down as an inheritance to their children. And their children were backstage usually. And that was the only childhood companionship that I had with those kids. And all of them were intent on either wire walking, juggling, singing, dancing, or doing what the kids did to imitate their parents and finally become their parents. And that was a whole world that went on for a long, long time. There were 3,500 weeks of vaudeville. Every city, town, even small places had the vaudevill theater. And it was family entertainment. And there were signs backstage that said no hells, no dams. And if you got a stoop to dirt to get that laugh, you’re in the wrong theater. And it very strict. And they were very strict, they went to whatever. A synagogue or whatever was possible in the towns near enough. Everybody lived closely together. I remember going out, being taken out rather, after the show around midnight eating at a Chinese restaurant with a whole bunch of acts on the bill. And there was nothing unusual about it. And I slept till noon. And I never went to school, of course. But that’s another story. The story that you want to hear is. The life of the vaudevillian, right? Well, they made coffee in their dressing rooms. The place always smelled. I never can smell coffee being brewed, but I don’t think of the acrobats who would sit there sewing on their sequins and fixing, fixing, always improving the act. The act was what home is to everybody. Now, I wasn’t in a real home until I was over 10, 12 years old. I never saw the inside of one. And it fascinated me. I thought they were so strange.

Michael Kantor: Different kinds of acts the zaniacs and who were the personalities? Oh?

June Havoc: Well, there were wonderful acts like, there were a lot of foreign acts at the time who did dexterous things like you see in Cirque du Soleil, saying that’s vaudeville, that’s the cream of vaudeville right now. There were animal acts, oh, I never left the wings. There were people who did tight wire, who did risley acts, and who did all these things, but there also were the piano acts, like Blossom Sealy, who sang. And who was absolutely majestic out there with a feathered fan. Oh, I loved them. I stood the wings adoring. And there was O’Diva and her seals. That was the most magical of all. A voice said, ladies and gentlemen, O’Diiva and her seals, and the two seals would come out and dive into this translucent tank on stage lit from all sides. It was beautiful. And then the voice would say, O’diiva. And she would appear all in black silk with long dark hair, dive into the pool with the seals, and they’d all go swimming around. And then it was miraculous when they went in a circle. She would hold onto somebody’s fin and they hold onto her foot and they go around. And then the voice would say, ladies and gentlemen, the maiden’s prayer. And she will be centered like this with a seal over there and a seal over there, and they will put their flippers together. Wow, well, that was magic time. That was vaudeville. And there was always something like that. And I just believed in all the magic I still do.

Michael Kantor: Look at those people, what were their special attributes?

June Havoc: Oh, well, it was, I think it’s kind of an almost lost art. Audience communication. The moment a vaudevillian confronts an audience, there’s a connection. And I don’t think you can manufacture that. It’s magical. But you see it today. Judy Garland had that. She was a vaudvillain. Mickey Rooney had. He’s a vaudo-villan. But vaudevilleans had that, And I remember Bill Robinson. Just tearing up the house, couldn’t get off the stage. He was so connected to that audience. And the same thing with Fanny Brice, who just could do anything. I never left the wings, never, when they were on the bill. Sophie Tucker was on the, she wasn’t very friendly to me. And she had me placed all over the bill, but I kept, it was too good. I was lucky when I was a kid, things went awfully well. Finally, me and my autograph book, oh dear, I went to her dressing room and I knocked and I said, Miss Tucker, could I please have your autograph? And she looked at me a long time. I know she’d, now I know that she had tried to get me removed from the bill entirely. She said, come on in. I went in and she said, sit down. I sat down and she says, well, I’m not gonna give you an autograph and I’ll give you a picture too. Darn fools, they should never put two blondes on the same bill, that’s all. But she was tough, but she was wonderful.

Michael Kantor: Great, thank you. What about the cow song? What were you billed as? What did you do?

June Havoc: Well, there were nine numbers in the act, and I was in seven of them. I was a quick change artist. I sang, I danced, I did a very dramatic recitative. I did an adagio with a boy in the Act. I did comedy, mostly. I think I prefer the comedy, always. I love to hear the laughter, and I love the response it always got. I still do. Also, comedy is more difficult than anything. You see a lot of comics who make marvelous impressions when they do dramatic things, like Burt Lahr. And, but you rarely see the opposite, the dramatic actor being successful in comedic roles. And that goes all the way back to everything.

Michael Kantor: What about your billing? What were you called?

June Havoc: It was, first it was Baby June, the Hollywood baby, because I had been in pictures. And then, when I was in Vaudeville, it was baby June until I hit the big time. And then it was dainty June and her newsboy songsters. And there were little boys in the act. And we had a lot of production. We, you know, we showed the act, so called, in Chicago at the Majestic and had a three-year blanket contract headlining on the Keith Orpheum circuit at $1,500 a week, which in those days was a very vast sum. And I remember those. Years so lovingly, because it was just before the Depression really wiped out so much of everything that I’d ever known as home. The next few years after it was gone were so grim and dismal, but because I was 13, what, 14, 15, I was among the generation who said, Just get through this right now. Because up there, it’ll be wonderful again. I lived with that, and I think it’s what saved me, because it was wonderful again. All I had to do was get through that bad time.

Michael Kantor: Tell me about that depression era time on the stage and what people were looking for from stage shows at that point, not from movies, but what was happening, what did the depression do to Vaudeville and where did the Vaudevillians go?

June Havoc: That’s just it. Many of the vaudevillians are running little hotels, restaurants, resorts. They found, many of them found a way to live. Wasn’t what they wanted, but it was a way to live, they were party souls. You couldn’t scrunch them out that easy. They didn’t go out and kill themselves or become drugs or addicts. They made another world for themselves, most of them. I did. I went to answer. A call. I had my little ratty costume over my arm and it was a dance marathon. And there was nothing and I was alone and I was 13 and the man, the promoter said, gee, he said, you’d be great out there in that floor. You look like you’re going to drop dead any minute. And the audience would love that. I took that a huge compliment and entered the next marathon where I ate. 12 times every 24 hours. I gained 10 pounds in the first 1,500 hours. To me, it was treading water. It was just getting through the right now. And a lot of people were there. Red Skelton, Frankie Lane, an awful lot of young, very young people who had big hopes. And they were just trying to stay alive. And that was all the marathon was really about. It was about survival. And I was just lucky I could do it.

Michael Kantor: I just want to go back on something you mentioned earlier, which was that Broadway is the zenith, the dream. You said, you know, in this time period, and in Broadville, that everyone had big hopes. What was the big hope for?

June Havoc: Well, I think, you know, one tidbit would be that three-year blanket contract on the Keith Orpheum circuit to play the big time, the big houses. I think there were thousands, literally, of vaudevillians, so-called, and musical artists, who were quite happy because they were working, and there was a lot of work. You could go over to England. You could any English-speaking country and play weeks and weeks and week. There was a whole world without the big time, but it was the big time and the biggest time of all of course was a Broadway show

Michael Kantor: What about, do you recall, what was the cow song? How did that go? What were the, give us a sample of some Oh, that’s easy. Of some of the songs.

June Havoc: Oh, I can remember that one.

Michael Kantor: And set it up for us, you see, when I used to do…

June Havoc: Well, the cow number, which of course, a lot of people have seen a misrepresentation of that number. It wasn’t like that really, it was very, very funny and I have pictures of it. The cow was a two-man cow and there were two men in it and the head did a lot things and the tongue went like that and the eyes rolled and it danced, really danced. But I would come out first. As a little, really burlesque of a country girl with the pigtails and the little hat with the feather and, you know, and that little starch skirt. And I would sing, I got a cow and her name is Sue and she’ll do most anything I ask her to. If there’s something I’d like to know, then to Suzie I just go. And I wanted to get some pictures for the county fair. And anyway, so I sing in the chorus, Oh. We’re going to have our tin-types took and took and we’re going have our tint-type took, da-di-da. And the cow came on, and the cow danced. We danced together, and cow did kicks and things. And then we were going to go to the county fair, you see, because there was a prize. And at the very end of it, we’d turn around, and I jumped on the cow’s back, and there was, I had the prize, and it was first prize. And I held the prize while we danced off, and I sang. Oh gee, oh gosh, we took the first prize, but nobody saw it. It was wonderful entertainment for the time. The times were simple.

Michael Kantor: Working together, but how did that work?

June Havoc: Well, it worked very well for the times, because the times were very… They were difficult for the minority people. If an act came over from Tokyo, let’s say, where they had wonderful acts that did all sorts of fights with great huge swords and scabbards and scary things, or there was a blackface act and the people were black under the blackface, and there were lots of them, or even there were all sorts acts as long as they were They could stay at the same hotels and eat in the same restaurants, but if they were yellow or if they were black, we never saw them. And at the time, of course I was so doggone little I don’t know what I thought, but I know that there was a lot of unhappiness about it backstage. People who didn’t feel that they should be at the end of the trolley line to get a room or restaurant. I’m so glad to see that things are wonderfully improved. If the minority peoples, I’m in my 86th year, so I can speak with authority about that time of the world. But if the younger black people and yellow people and the people who suffered so much then realized what hope there is today, because you see all sorts of people everywhere now. I just hope that we keep. On learning, growing.

Michael Kantor: Great, I’m with you on that. Let’s talk about pal Joey. What if that moved for you?

June Havoc: Oh boy, Pal Joey, was the end of the rainbow for me. It was, oh, I had been with a gang of kids and we had been in the Borsch circuit. And we’d been doing something every night, every something, even doing comedy dives into the pool and then everything. And when the season closed and there was no place for us to go, the two young men who had created the material that we were doing said. Let’s rent a theater dark and fight all the producers. That’ll be great. Well, everybody thought it was a great idea, except that we rented the theater with one bulb on stage, the work light, and nobody came. Stenographers or secretaries or less than that really, the boys in the office. We killed ourselves. We did everything we knew, relying on a damp, moist heap at the end of it, and a tall man came over to me and he said, come with me, can you bring the accompanist and come with me? Well, everybody was a little suspicious about that, but he said I’m only taking you to the Barrymore Theater, I want somebody to see you. So he took me sweaty, dirty, filthy, tired out. And I went on in this lots of light, elegant, you know, not one bulb, lots of lights. And they asked me to do this. I did everything I could think of. Then finally one voice said, can you sing any ordinary regular song like T for two or something? And I said, I don’t know if I know the lyrics. He said, well, I’ll throw them to you. Come on. T for two, and I sang along with Richard Rodgers. I didn’t know who it was. I didn’t know it was George Abbott. It was Richard Rodger’s Larry Hart. I didn’t even know who they were at that time. And I got the job. Miracle of miracles. When we were in rehearsal, I wasn’t even supposed to come on until the middle of the second act. And I would wait in the wings, because after the rehearsal, Dick Rogers, Larry Hart, they would come down, John O’Hara, the aisle and say, well now let’s play a new song or number to go into the show where they felt something was needed. And I’d be curled up in the traveler. I would go to the stage manager and say please, give me a copy of that. And I learned it overnight. And I’d come back and audition with the strangers. And I got them all. I got all those numbers. So John O’Hara had to write parts to get me on stage for them. And I wound up with a. It was the beginning of my real life. But it was because, and I don’t know if you can do that today. Maybe you can, but that’s what I mean by sassy. You just have to try anything. And you have to have the courage to push yourself if no one else is pushing you. And there are a lot of us who don’t have pushers. We just are on our own. So it takes self-discipline, self-courage, and self-pushing to realize anything.

Michael Kantor: As of some of the different numbers that you covered, some of Larry Hart’s wonderful lyrics.

June Havoc: Well, the character really was nobody at first, as I told you. And then as I got the numbers, the first one was because somebody had to make a quick change. Maybe Vivian Siegel or Gene Kelly or somebody. And so I was thrust forward and I got to sing and dance. You can’t kick it around. If my heart gets in your hair, you mustn’t kick it around, and then the next one was. Terrific rainbow, where I had this long sequined dress cut down to there, and a wheel on stage and it’s hanging. I’m a red-hot mama, but I’m blue for you. And the lights changed, as I said blue and green. And I get purple with envy, and there was a purple. It was wonderful fun. And the next one was the flower garden of my heart, where I had a large gown all with flowers, and all of the chorus were behind me with flower cantons and little, and Bob Walton did wonderful choreography, and I sang in my high voice. Because that got brought into the theater by Dick Rogers, and he said, now tomorrow send out the call for some rotten sopranos, some people with terrible voices, and this will be good. I came in, learned it overnight, and I sang in the flower garden of my heart. So that worked. I got that. And the other numbers were do it the hard way, And it’s easy sailing with Jack Durant. And the other one plant you now, dig you later. Oh boy, those were wonderful songs. And it was a wonderful score.

Michael Kantor: About Larry Hart.

June Havoc: Poor little man. He was pathetic that little man, so talented, so un-in-love with his image. He didn’t know himself to be so wonderful. He didn’t know that he was a doggone genius and nothing could convince him. And he was in love with Vivian Siegel. And I don’t think, you know, I don’t think he was successful with any love.

Michael Kantor: Let’s talk a little bit more about Larry Hart and this show. Richard Rogers says that Hart liked and understood disreputable characters. Tell us about, tell us about your sense of Larry Hart and his connection with the sort of seedy scene that just passed.

June Havoc: He wasn’t the only one, you know. He, John O’Hara was immersed in the CD. They were fascinated by, well, there was a very colorful time. There was Lindy’s restaurant on Broadway. There was Damon Runyon. There were people like that. And O’hara was like Damon Runyan in as much as their language, the language they assumed, I mean, you their way of talking. Was filled with little gangsterisms and that shady sort of talk which was fascinating to everyone guys and dolls. That’s what they used and it was fascinating, still is, I guess it always will be. Larry, I think, was mostly interested in all of that because he never knew where he fit. He was, he couldn’t place himself. And it wasn’t only because he was a tiny man and a rather strange looking tiny man at that. It was something else. He was displeased with Larry Hart.

Michael Kantor: Ultimately, I understand he what led to his I mean, could you tell he was self-destructing while you were doing the show?

June Havoc: Oh, yes, but John O’Hara was self-destructing, too. He used to be so intoxicated that they would bring him in and put him down in the aisle while he recovered so he could be communicated with, so he’d write something. But a lot of people who are brilliantly talented, self- destruct. I’ve never understood that. When you reach what you’ve aimed for And you’re right up there. Why not just envelop yourself with it and enjoy it? It’s so rare. I hated all of that sad part.

Michael Kantor: You were telling me, what happened to Larry Hart? What was the ultimate cause?

June Havoc: He died. I think he was, he had destroyed his physique. I think he drank and weakened everything. And his little physical body couldn’t. He was vulnerable.

Michael Kantor: You said also during this time there were farewell parties to people, what were those?

June Havoc: Those were goodbye, GI, the draft, and some of the men in the company, the dancers, didn’t want to wait for the draft. They wanted to enlist. They wanted… It was a fight. That fight was a fighting of honor. That fight we really believed in. And at the time, I think there was a sense of country. We’re slipping, we’re losing an awful lot of it. God, I wish we wouldn’t. It was vibrant. I spent almost every night at the stage door canteen along with everybody else on Broadway. We took turns. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve. My sister was very pregnant at the time. I shouldn’t tell you this. I made her get out of bed and put on a shroud and come over and let the boy talk to her. It was, it was a powerful time. Of the world, for all of us. You’d go out and do a camp show for 60,000 men who were leaving the next day. Very emotional stuff. You’d do things on a ship just before it departed. You would have to go in with a car that was blindfolded so you wouldn’t know the name of the ship or anything. You couldn’t tell about it, not that you would, but A lot of people couldn’t do it because… Well, frankly, it was very emotional, and very difficult to do, but I figured all through that time, I must have done a thousand or two or three shows, that I wasn’t a man, and I couldn’t go and fight. But the one thing I could do was to make somebody smile or laugh.

Michael Kantor: Describe Vivian Siegel. What was she like? Pause just one second. What did she bring to that room? What was her background?

June Havoc: Vivin Siegel had been an operetta, ingenue. So she had great stature and pride and dignity and sex appeal. And she brought elegance to the part. She was no little lascivious middle-aged lady at all. She was a 38-year-old aristocrat who happened to see. And that, I think, was greatly a part of the charm of the play.

Michael Kantor: Who was Joey?

June Havoc: Gene Kelly was Joey. And he’d only done one smashing thing before. And this, of course, took him to Hollywood and no one ever saw him again on Broadway. He just went out there and moved in and took over.

Michael Kantor: Who is George Abbott?

June Havoc: George Abbott was royalty. He’d started out as an actor. I have special ties with George Abbott. He discovered me, gave me my first anything. He discovered a lot of us. He followed through. He would, oh, he was such a gentleman. One New Year’s Eve, he said, would you like to come to the Lotus Club, but Richard Rodgers will have his wife and Larry Hart has someone, and it was everybody. It was royalty table. It was a big round table. I remember, I can’t ballroom dance. Hardly any people who really dance can. He started with this lady and when he seated her, he said, you have wonderful rhythm. I dread the fact that he’d come over eventually and want to dance with me. Then he’d seat another one and say, oh, light is a feather. Finally, it was my turn and I shook and it was a waltz, thank heavens. So George Abbott came over to me, Mr. A, and said, this is our dance, it’s a walth, aren’t you glad, June? I said, oh, yes. We got up and we waltzed around and when he seated me he said, June, you have a very strong back. That was it. I never lived that down. It always seemed to me to be, he thought it was a compliment, I think. He was wonderful. He would anticipate things on stage during rehearsal and he was very acrobatic. I worked with Tony Guthrie later in Dinner Date and he did the same thing. They would leap over the orchestra pit, leap into the stage to show you something. He was a genius.

Michael Kantor: What about, describe the time that you auditioned for a little man named George M. Cohan.

June Havoc: Well, that was right after the marathons. And this bedraggled agent said that he was going to take me to see someone who wanted to see me. And it probably, uh, nothing would happen, but, and he took me to this strange apartment house, I think it was the San Remo, that big, strange oriental type building, and there were oriental everything, it was all very Asiatic. I waited, and then somebody said, you can come in now, and here was this little old man sitting in a chair with a shawl around him. And in front of him was a tray with hot cocoa, one cup, and some pastries. And I sidled in, and it was George M. Cohen, which of course I didn’t know from Adam. And he said, now tell me about your background. And I’d been warned not to mention that I was a vaudevillian. Because nobody liked that. But something about him prompted me to say. I’ve always been a vaudevillian. And he said, no, really? Oh, that’s great. He said, I was in vaudeville my whole life. Well, it was love at first sight. And we wound it up. A shottish together. He got up and he did that and then he said, your shoes, he said give me your shoes and I was so ashamed to give him my shoes. I had paper in them, you know, because of the holes. And I finally, I took one off and I said, well you see, I put, he says don’t tell me about it. You just got the paper in wrong. That paper’s in there wrong. I’ll show you how to really put paper in your shoes and he didn’t. And then I drank all the chocolate and ate all the pastry. I never saw him again, but I’ll never forget a moment of that meeting.

Michael Kantor: What does it mean to a performer that the show must go on?

June Havoc: What I think it means is that if you can walk, if you can talk at all, be heard, you get out there. You don’t not. You know, today young actors, I don’t think that means anything to an awful lot of young actors because today in their contracts, there are clauses saying that you get holiday times. And they look forward to holiday times, which of course in my time would have been sacrilegious to let anybody go on unless you couldn’t walk or talk. Then of course an understudy would go on and you would agonize until you got back on there because it was a dishonorable thing. To miss a performance, and that was the Bible to all of us.

Michael Kantor: So we’re talking about the show must go on and I’m curious, I recall reading somewhere, what would you do if your feet as a dancer got hurt?

June Havoc: We couldn’t walk. Then you just couldn’t. I broke my leg on dress rehearsal in this last play that I did. And I was out for three weeks, and they held a play for me. But it was horrible. The doctor said eight weeks, and all of us said eight for weeks. We don’t do that. I was back in three. But in Mexican hayride. Which I loved because of Cole Porter. And it was sumptuous for its time. Really, it was one of those overdone musicals with everything. And I love Bobby Clark with all my heart and soul. And the first time you hear the score in a musical is a magical time. It’s unbelievable what happens to the whole company. All of the chorus were sitting on the stage. I was in… The wings holding on looking catty-corner because the violins that Cole Porter insisted on, they petered out in the pit and there was no more room. They went into the boxes and the cellos were in the boxes, in the box that I was looking across the stage at. And when they started to do the I Love You, which is such a beautiful song, I love you, Hums the April breeze. I noticed that the celloist in the box just sort of slid over slowly and fell. I don’t think anyone else noticed, but my instinct was to run over quickly. I went into the box and the little man, he was… Foreign little man because he had laced up shoes and a hard collar. He was really dressed unlike the other people. Mike Todd saw me run over there, so he ran over too, and when he got to me, I was just pulling the little man’s shirt open, and he died in my arms while that beautiful song was being played. And Mike said, let’s just close the curtains, because he’s a musician, and that’s the way he’d want to go. But I never hear that song that I don’t think of that man. I hope he died happy.

Michael Kantor: I have another question about a sign going up that says, show girls wanted, big new show, 41st and Bowie. It is the midst of the depression. Describe the dreams, set the scene for me, and describe the dreams of all the girls.

June Havoc: Oh, boy, well, you said in the middle of the depression. Many of us, I was modeling in the garment center, which was a dreadful job for anybody, but I was lucky to get it. And many of us weren’t doing a doggone thing because it was starvation time. And what happened was the daily news or the mirror or one of those current sheets had decided that it would be a wonderful thing to get everybody up on the fire escapes that are on the back of the New Amsterdam Theater, they’re in tears. And so the fire escapes were crowded with all of us. They took their picture and everybody went home. It wasn’t a legitimate call. It was just to see how many starving girls would follow that ad and go up there. I was one of them. I stood there when nobody said anything and there was no camera down there anymore. You know, they took their pictures and left. There was a terribly empty feeling and I felt so sorry for the other girls because at least I was getting $25 a week modeling in the government center. Oh boy. Oh boy!

Michael Kantor: What’s the dream that everyone had, all those girls on the fire escape?

June Havoc: I’m sure it was the same as mine, to be on stage, to be part of the magic. Mine might have been a little more powerful because I had had the magic in my childhood and I will never forget the magic and it has kept me, it has keep me going all my whole entire life. But a lot of those people were just people from out of town who wanted, like in Hollywood. Oh, some of the casting calls in Hollywood are really, and we have, we have those mob calls for equity, you know, people are allowed to come even though they don’t even belong to equity yet, hopeful. There’s so much hope. And some of them very beautiful people, but something that I don’t think anybody is ever going to learn. Is that beauty isn’t the answer. You can be the most beautiful chick in town. It’s something else, something mysterious.

Michael Kantor: Describe Cole Porter when you worked with him after the accident. What was he like physically?

June Havoc: Oh, he was on two crutches and his poor legs wouldn’t work and people were always attending him and he was very crippled and in pain, in horrible pain nearly all the time. And yet he did, you know, because it was Hayride and once again numbers kept coming that I hadn’t signed up for really, but they kept coming and I was so, glad for all of them and so I did them all and I remember he sent me an orchid tree and I have the card in my scrapbook. He was a very generous. Amusing, intelligent, intellectual, charming man.

Michael Kantor: Describe his apartment and what it was like to work there.

June Havoc: Oh boy, well it was elegant, totally elegant and he would sit at the piano and I sat next to him, I guess everybody else did, and he’d play your numbers and sort of nuances and things that you might not have thought of. I was so grateful and it was thrilling. He had little collections, little collections of cigarette boxes and things. Now I have so many collections, of course, that I can’t keep up with them all, but collections at that time of my life were rare to see.

Michael Kantor: He was famous, I mentioned this before, he was famous for his list songs. What was one of the list songs you got to do?

June Havoc: Well, I guess there’s a boy cat, for every girl cat. There’s a boi bat, for ever girl rat. Bad cat. There’s boy rat, for evry girl rat, so there must be someone for me. And down and down and with all those little couplets to learn, you know. Bobby was very funny. In Boston, Cole Porter wrote a number called Count Your Blessings. And we had to learn it overnight. And it was full of couplets. And Bobby said, oh boy, so he wrote them on his cuff and on his palm and I wrote them on my glove. And we got out there, center stage, and the spotlight was so strong that he couldn’t read it. He said, excuse me, folks. And he turned around and read it twice. But the audiences were so close to him that he could do anything on stage.

Michael Kantor: Why do you think Cole Porter, obviously he left Hollywood, but what did he find in Broadway? What was his attraction?

June Havoc: The ultimate. You know, if you’re a real honest-to-peat theater person, it’s awfully hard to settle for films or television. Now, of course, everyone does all of them. One has to, because you can’t make a living in just theater anymore. You have to diversify. But at that time, he had a choice, and his life at the Waldorf, with his beautiful life, he a lovely, beautiful life. And it was… What he really wanted, the skirmishing that goes on in California is very difficult for such a fastidious mind as his.

Michael Kantor: How would you say he was different from Richard Rogers?

June Havoc: Oh Oh, entirely. They have nothing in common except their art. They were both just superlative. But Richard Rogers was a family man. And he was very bread and butter and down to earth. And Cole was a feat. Lived the elegant life. He was very special in that way. They were different kinds of men.

Michael Kantor: The stars, we don’t know anything about that now. Paint the scene for me. When a Broadway show opened in the 30s or 40s, tell me that.

June Havoc: Oh boy, well, I remember Pal Joy, which was my first anything. And I was up in my dressing room, and Van Johnson, who was in the cast, he was in chorus dancing, and Stanley, Donan, and Amarillo, the only people who were around my age were the people in the chorus. So we were all very close, all buddies, real close buddies. And on opening night in Philadelphia, I guess I was leaning on my experiences. I had- You know, a vaudevillian doesn’t really think of an opening night. You do three a day.

Michael Kantor: What do you think, and you’ve said this much in your book…

June Havoc: Which books?

Michael Kantor: More havoc. What does a performer need to feel right before they go on stage? What did you say to yourself?

June Havoc: Well, I used to stand on a wing so terrified that I think the whole place shook. And I was confronted once with a very old actor whose name I forget. And he said, you’re scared, aren’t you? I said, oh, no, no. And he says, now listen, I’ve got the key to that. You stand right there. The audience is right over there. You stand there, and just before you go on, you say to them, you. You lucky so-and-so’s, you’re gonna get to see me, and get out there fast! I tried that for years and it worked pretty well. I tell young actors about that. I tell them to use that. And, you know, in some way it reverses the situation. Actually, if you think about it, it does. He was right.