Life Is Not a Stage by Florence Henderson (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

person she was just as beautiful but very sweet. She was easy to talk to, and I found her to be not all that different from myself. We had a lovely visit. Another knock on the door I will never forget was what I had thought was my costar Bill Tabbert playing a trick. Knock, knock. Who’s there? “Cary Grant.” I wasn’t biting on that. Another knock. “It’s Cary Grant.” When I opened the door, there he was. He apparently loved the show so much that he came back to see it several times. He was a gorgeous man. He would always joke about coming to see me backstage: “I wanted to ask you to marry me, but I didn’t think I had a chance.” Had he asked, I might have given it some serious thought!

The stage door to the Majestic was right next to the same for the Royale Theater, where Julie Andrews was making her American stage debut in The Boy Friend. It was funny how we both got our “big break” at the same time. We became friends and spent a great deal of time together—and we’re both still here!

Change and growth during the time of Fanny happened in a great spurt. Generally speaking, I was happy emotionally. The relationship with Ira felt right. I was in a very successful show, studying and learning a lot. My sister had come to live with me, and I wanted to make sure she was happy too. But there were undercurrents simmering that would not stay dormant for long.

CHAPTER 8Yes, I Was a Virgin!

Eventually, I said yes to Ira’s marriage proposal. The circumstances felt right. I wanted to be married and felt ready to have a family. The fact that we had different faiths was not an issue for either of us. He understood that I was Catholic and very active in my faith. Ira was less so with Judaism and rarely went to temple, although he had great respect for his religion, and so did I. Importantly, he had no concern about my insistence that any children to come would be raised Catholic. We made it a special point to say grace before our meals in both traditions.

I was about to turn twenty when we got engaged. Ira loved practical jokes, so he had quite a laugh when he gave me the ring.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” I cried after opening the little box.

“No, no, that’s not the real ring,” he chortled. Given my background, I could hardly decipher the difference between a piece of glass and a diamond. He took out of his pocket another little box with the real thing, and a gorgeous one at that.

We still took our time before we actually tied the knot, some thirteen months into the run of Fanny. It was not easy to get time off in a David Merrick show, but the procrastination was more on my side, the fear of the unknown. It was easy to get hung up in doubts. What was sex going to be like? (Yes, I was a virgin!) It frankly wasn’t something I could talk about with my married sisters or close friends. If anything, Ira was the most help in this regard because I didn’t know anything about the reality of what I was getting myself into. Such moments are always a test of faith. Either you believe it’s going to work out or you don’t.

The actual ceremony of getting married in the church proved a little complicated because of our different faiths. In those days, you had to get a special dispensation to marry a non-Catholic. The diocese in New York turned us down, but we got permission across the Hudson in New Jersey. I was friends with a couple of priests there, and they allowed the ceremony to take place, at the altar of the main sanctuary, no less, which was also a big no-no. It is a wonder we did not all get excommunicated.

It was raining and icy that day, January 9, 1956. I paid for the wedding. Afterward, my agent Barron Polan threw a reception for us at his town house in Manhattan. As we were leaving and getting into the car to go off on our honeymoon, the wonderful theatrical photographer Leo Friedman snapped my favorite image of that day. In front of our car was a bakery truck, and on the back of it as if divinely ordained was a sign that read “Long Life” (the name of the company). We then drove off for a week at Barron’s house in Redding, Connecticut. An understudy went on in my place, David Merrick’s girlfriend. It was the first performance I had missed during the entire run.

One month later, just to make things a little more interesting, I was pregnant. I was so happy that I was going to have a child. With so many older siblings, I had babysat an assortment of children throughout my youth, but now I was going to have my own. When the reality hit, I also had to take stock about what might happen with my career. Gloria Steinem had not yet arrived on the scene. There were few road maps on how to manage a career and parenthood. Most women heeded the conventional thinking of the time and quit their work. I knew I would have to find another way.

One of the first orders of business was to find an obstetrician. I was referred to one on Fifth Avenue. Ira was very concerned about the cost. The doctor pooh-poohed, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. We’ll talk.” Translation: “You’re a big Broadway star, so it ain’t going to be cheap.” The reality was that we hardly had a lavish lifestyle. Just before we married, we got an apartment at 140 W. 55th Street. My name may have been up in bright lights on the marquee, but remember that I worked for the very unwarm and unfuzzy David Merrick, who held his