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

been more knowledgeable about postpartum depression, I might have talked to my doctor about it. Absent that, I was too ashamed to tell anybody about my condition. But the change in me was palpable and disturbing to family and friends who were so used to seeing me always happy and up. Understanding it later as a mix of hormonal imbalance, exhaustion, poor nutrition, and emotional stress, I could have truly been the poster child. Tears of such enormous sadness rolled down my cheeks. I had coped so well with everything in my life up to that point. But now I was overwhelmed, fearful, and sleepless. My appetite for food was supplanted by an emptiness in the pit of my stomach.

When you’re depressed with a new baby, everybody tells you that you should be so happy and you should feel so good. Ira, too, felt bad about what I was going through, but he added to the chorus. “You have so much to be happy about.” So add guilt to the list, a horrible guilt that I was not happy and joyful when I should have been. I would see other mothers with babies who were on top of it, and it made me feel worse, totally inferior. Oh, and what about the baby? Infants are sensitive to the energy around them, especially coming from their mother. My state of mind was bound to affect her one way or the other. I didn’t want her to pick up on my toxic feelings. More guilt.

You wake up every morning and hope that you will discover that the fog has been lifted and the birds will be singing again. Instead, you’re locked in hopelessness. “I’ll never get out of this,” you think. “What’s the point?” It is easy to convince yourself that there is no help and no relief.

My brother Joe knew that I was having a tough time and came to New York. I spoke to him about my fears about my death or the death of the baby and how my once steadfast faith had been rocked to the core. He assured me that if I died that he would take care of the baby. When I asked, he told me that he was not afraid of dying. “What do I think about death? I think it’s the best experience of life. I think my soul will be in the presence of a great light. I will find perfect peace.”

One day, I was feeling really bad. I decided to take Barbara out for a walk, and I noticed all of these people across the street as I left the apartment building. I was curious why they were all there and walked over to see. What the crowd had gathered to witness was utterly horrific. A lady had jumped moments before from the building. I can still see the position of her lifeless body on the pavement and all the blood. I went into the phone booth at the old Ziegfeld Theater magazine stand and immediately called Ira. I did not think that anything could possibly get any worse, but that experience proved otherwise.

On another day, one of those walks with Barbara led to a more helpful development. A producer named Frank Egan saw me with the stroller walking down 55th Street. He put together “industrial shows,” corporate concerts, and stage performances for specially invited guests. “Hmm, she must be available,” he said to himself, seeing that I was a new mother and consequently not able to work full-time. Unbeknownst to me, Frank and his wife, Jane, loved Fanny and had seen the show six or seven times. He had been a performer himself with a Broadway résumé and had sung with Fred Waring’s orchestra. Spotting me on the street, he called my agent, and I went and met with him. Not only did I get the job, but Frank and Jane fast became great friends and remained such for the rest of their lives.

The new friendship also broke through my formidable self-imposed isolation. “Why would I want to be around anybody in that state, and why would anybody want to be around me?” I had thought. It was certainly not helped by a childhood pattern of not imposing myself on anyone harkening back to that appendicitis incident, among others. But Frank and Jane were different. Without imposing a lot on me, they seemed to understand. I confided in them what I was going through. Little by little, I started functioning more and trying harder, but it wasn’t easy.

Thanks to Frank’s initiative, I gently started going back to work, doing a series of private dates for General Motors’ Oldsmobile brand. The performances were lavishly staged but shortened versions of Broadway shows like Girl Crazy or Good News. GM spent a fortune on these shows, hiring the best choreographers like Bob Fosse or Carol Haney and arrangers like Luther Henderson. The great costumes, dancing, and singing were a big buildup for the grand finale, the presentation of the star of the show: “Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you have all been waiting for—introducing the new Oldsmobile Rocket 88!” The audience was mostly composed of car dealers and their families.

It was great fun, and I continued doing these industrial shows for several more years when the schedule permitted. I also started doing Oldsmobile television commercials. They probably look silly today, dancing and serenading a car, but they were sophisticated production numbers with precise choreography. If it were broadcast on live television, the timing had to be perfect, and it was quite satisfying to nail the two minutes perfectly. Others were put on film, showing me gloating over fins and mufflers while running my finger along a car’s top or against its sleek door panels. There were no cue cards or teleprompters either, so everything had to be memorized. Print ads also appeared in magazines: “Broadway star meets road star! That’s Florence Henderson admiring the new Olds Starfire.”

Returning to New York one night on the