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

GM private plane after a show in Michigan, I looked out the window at the big full moon. I told Frank and Jane of a memory of such a moon when we had a party on the beach when I graduated from high school. My brother Joe had given me the present of a ticket on the Greyhound bus to come visit him in Florida. He knew that I was soon going to New York, and how ill-prepared I was emotionally. I think he saw the situation Babby and I had been in, and in this gesture stepped forward as a surrogate father. He wanted the time for some long talks to make sure I was a little more savvy in the ways of the world before landing in the big city.

That night, as he always did, Joe made me sing. As we looked out at the water and the reflection of the moonbeam on its surface, I sang “Ave Maria” at the top of my lungs. I told Frank and Jane how the light beam on the lake appeared like a magical stairway we could take to walk up to the moon.

When I got home late that night to the apartment on 55th Street, I knelt down to say my prayers at around 2 a.m. I asked for the usual things about taking care of my child and husband, and the rest of the family, including my sisters and brothers. My husband told me just before bed that Joe had called. He worked for the telephone company, and there had been a hurricane in Florida. He had probably been working around the clock and would be exhausted, so I thought it best not to call him back in the middle of the night.

While I was saying my prayers, the phone rang. It was my other brother, Tom. He told me that Joe had died. He had fallen asleep smoking. There were no windows open, so the smoke inhalation from the burning mattress killed him. Ironically, his wisdom from our talk just weeks before about death seemed prophetic when a fireman later told me how smoke inhalation is a very peaceful death. Joe was only thirty-seven years old. I often felt that if I had called him, maybe I would have awakened him and prevented his death. My mother, too, who lived with him at the time, was away and felt horrible knowing that if she had been there it probably would not have happened. It was May 10, 1958. I still think about him every day.

Joe’s death brought my situation to a dramatic and unmistakable point of no return. The drive, energy, and inertia that I could always count on now had to take a backseat to something else. Religion and faith, where did you go? It was akin to standing naked and unprotected. With this spiritual crisis along with the physical and emotional factors, my eternal optimism was nowhere to be found. Added to this mix of confronting Joe’s passing was that I had never really allowed myself to grieve my father’s and my other brother’s deaths. I tried to get answers to what all of this meant. I researched and read to find positive explanations but came up empty. Dr. Weinstein advised me to immerse myself in a topic that I had no real interest in to force myself to take my mind away from things. How about reading up on the Civil War? he suggested. I am glad there wasn’t a quiz afterwards, because I did not retain much. But it helped a little bit.

It would be a full two years before this pervasive cloud of gloom finally lifted and I would start to feel like myself once again.

CHAPTER 9The Today Show Girl

As I was coming out of my postpartum funk and getting active again, the medium of television stepped up to become an increasingly important part of my life. Some actors are terrified about being on live television, helpless and at the mercy of Murphy’s law. More than a few did not thrive on the spontaneity of being unscripted. After my baptism of fire nearly fainting on The Ed Sullivan Show during my appearance at the time of Fanny, I quickly grew to love it. It was fast and it was live. You had to memorize and be prepared for anything. Here again, my childhood experience proved to be a valuable asset. After all, I had already stared down hell. What’s the worst that could happen to me? So when that little red light on top of the TV camera went on, I was fearless. But even if I had been afraid, my psyche would thrust me forward, forcing me to confront whatever it was head-on. Swinging high up on a circus trapeze hanging by the bar? No problem. Just go ahead, dare me! (And it happened.)

For better or for worse, television exposes people, and if you’re on long enough and often enough, they are going to learn who you are and what you’re like. But the more I developed, the more comfortable I felt. If you’re a phony or think you are funny when you really are not, there is no place to hide. It is all going to come out. Thankfully, I was privileged to constantly be around a multitude of very funny and talented people, and I was always trying to learn from them.

Jack Paar and his Tonight Show were right up there at the top alongside Ed Sullivan in terms of must-see television. Intelligent, witty, emotional, spontaneous, and highly unpredictable, Paar fascinated the public and media alike, and all tuned in with as equal passion to see him as to see his guests. I told my agent that I wanted to do the show. “I don’t think you’re right for it,” he said. Undeterred, I got on through another contact. Bill Hayes (my costar in the industrial shows) and I went on the show and sang a song