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

off,” he told me. In that state of mind, my response to him was to get upset. I quickly realized that he was right, but that was hardly the end of the story.

Salvatore Dell’Isola was Richard Rodgers’s musical director and longtime right-hand man. A fixture in the pit of many Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, he was a wonderful conductor but quite dictatorial like many in that job can be. It takes two to tango, and I am quite sure that his fuse was short as well, probably because he was not all that enthused about being on the road.

Keeping a consistent tempo to a song was never a problem for me. But when your accompaniment is not being consistent in that regard, it can be a big problem for a singer. I must not have been diplomatic enough when I tried to talk to him about it after the show. With so little in my tank, I probably said something to him in a way that he didn’t appreciate, and he picked his moment to get back at me with “Do Re Mi.”

“Do Re Mi” is one of the show’s longest numbers. I played the guitar, and I would give a nod of the head to the conductor for the orchestra to come in. Sal refused to take the cue. After a couple of seconds of dead space, I was left no other choice than to motion to the pit for the whole orchestra to start, overriding his authority. He went ballistic. He was so furious with me that he threw his baton down on the floor in disgust.

A few days later, Richard Rodgers called me and said, “I hear you’re having trouble with Sal.”

“Yes, he’s hostile,” I replied.

“You know, he’s been around for a long time, but if you’re really, really unhappy, we’ll do something about it.”

“Lord, no, don’t do that,” I countered. A conversation was apparently held with Salvatore as well, and the result was that Ira and I were invited over to the Dell’Isolas’ apartment for dinner.

The Italians, as I always say, have a magic pot. His wife’s cooking was no different, so much delicious food, so many different courses, and a seemingly endless supply of each. I was already tense and uptight, and under the best of circumstances have never been a big eater. But his wife had made all this food, and I didn’t want to further upset him and his wife by not eating everything on the plate. I bit the bullet because I felt so bad about the situation and was rewarded with well-deserved indigestion. The good news was that the end of the tour was in sight, and despite my struggles, I got through it.

The saving grace with this show (and even more evident in the show I did a year later) was that no matter how difficult things were in my personal life, it didn’t seem to show when I was up onstage. The act of performing has always been a love affair for me, and singing for an audience from the time I was a small child was the best medicine for my soul. You are sending out all this energy, and honestly, you can feel it come back in a tremendous way. When you can create that give-and-take, it is an exciting process. It is very clean and simple, and you can only wish that you could bring that same energy to all aspects of your life. But how I was raised made that more difficult to achieve. Children were not encouraged to express a lot of their feelings. You simply got on with it, stoically riding that galloping horse. If you were a sensitive child, somewhere along the line you have to come to terms with the stored-up feelings—loss, sadness, grief, and anger. So when you’re giving so much to please everyone but you’re not taking care of yourself in the process, the energy does not recycle like on the stage. Nobody applauds you for giving your all in the real world. Like the title of this book says, life is not a stage. If you are fortunate enough to find a way to get beyond to that place of peace and forgiveness about all that you have suffered in your life, that anger and acting out dissipates instead of lying in wait like a loaded cannon. That’s when you start to be more compassionate toward yourself and others.

Recently, my housekeeper Shelley and I had a surprising reminder of how important even the simplest gesture of compassion can be. We were having lunch at a little café called Nichols not far from my house. There was a very pretty young woman sitting by herself right behind us in a booth. She was talking on her phone, and when she hung up, she immediately started sobbing, got up, and ran to the restroom.

“Shelley, my God, I have to talk to her. Maybe we can help her.”

When she came back, I said, “I feel so bad that you are sad. Can we help you in any way?”

She thanked us and said, “I just got the news that my mother is dying.”

We sat and talked to her for a while, then hugged and said goodbye. I did not tell her who I was, nor do I assume that everyone is going to recognize me. It was not a big deal, just a passing moment. But several weeks later, I got an e-mail out of the blue from the young woman’s sister. She told me that her sister had told her about this incident.

“Our mother passed away, but I wanted to tell you how much that meant to us and my sister Kaylee.” Some people go through these life traumas and close down in bitterness. Would I have had any positive effect on that young woman had I not experienced losses of my own and worked to find a place of peace in my grief? I don’t know.

Just as I had to