In unpacking my new place, I found a battered cardboard box that I don’t believe I have looked in for 76 years. I glanced in it yesterday and saw a pile of papers with my childish writing on it. I have kept most of my stuff from when I was a kid – it is amazing it is still intact – after being moved from Rhode Island to California to Chicago to New York – Hard to believe I still have all of this stuff. I wrote novels when I was a kid. You know, sometimes I took the plot from TV movies that I adored (phone call for Orphan Train), other times I made stuff up. I wrote a 300 page novel that was the fictionalized life of Andrea McArdle. I was kind of a weird kid. Just as weird as I am now. I was OBSESSED with things, and I handled it by writing novels. All hand-written.
A week or so ago because of a photo of some Ziegfeld girls on another site, my memory was jogged that I had written a novel about a dance troupe who were hired by Ziegfeld. Or something like that. I was 12 years old when I wrote it.
I can tell I was 12 years old because the lead boy in the story (not man, but BOY) is named “Jeremy”. Where did I get the name Jeremy? It’s quite simple. Jeremy was the name of the character Ralph Macchio played on Eight is Enough. (My essay about Jeremy on Eight is Enough here). So of course: I was working through an obsession, so I had to place a character named Jeremy in the middle of my story about a vaudeville dance troupe. So there’s that.
I have no memory of any of this.
Oh, and the other “influence” on me at this time was that I had just seen Bugsy Malone, which catapulted me into a many-pronged frenzy involving a love of the 1920s, an obsession with KIDS who got to be professional actors (something I wanted), and a love of anything that had to do with show business.
I can feel the Bugsy Malone influence here in my novel as well.
Please remember:
— I am 12 years old when I wrote this.
— I was a good Catholic girl.
— I had a vivid imagination.
— I didn’t REALLY know anything about vaudeville and Ziegfeld, but that didn’t matter to me. It was a world I had gotten a glimpse of here and there, through Bugsy Malone primarily, and I wanted to slip into it.
Here is the opening couple of pages of my un-named novel about a bunch of Ziegfeld girls (and a “boy named Jeremy”).
CHAPTER 1 The Show
“Mitzie, would you stop twirling your tassle? It distracts me when I look in the mirror!” Fifteen-year-old Blowsy swirled in her seat to face Mitzie.
“Well, excuse me!” Mitzie flounced off to another corner of the dressing room.
With a sigh, Blowsy turned back to her makeup mirror and proceeded to smear some pink lipstick over her lips.
“Fifi, you took my mascara! Give it back!” Irene stood up angrily. Pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed Fifi did not stop putting on the mascara.
“Come on, Fifi!” Irene wailed, smoothing out her blue skirt.
“Just a minute.” Fifi murmured, not taking her eyes off her reflection. But Irene did not want to wait, she never did. With Irene it was now or never. Shr snatched the mascara brush out of Fifi’s hand, causing the black makeup to smear across Fifi’s cheek.
Fifi shrieked. “Irene! Look what you made me do! Oh!”
Irene laughed. “You’re ruined for life, huh, Fifi.”
Furiously, Fifi snatched some Kleenex out of a box on her table and carefully began to wipe the opposing smudge off her face. “Thanks to you Irene, I’ll have to put on my rouge and mascara all over again,” she was muttering.
After putting on her lipstick, Blowsy stood up and went to the big yellow wardrobe to get her costume. She ruffled through the dresses and suits there to find her nametag. When she found it, she carefully took out her green and gold flapper dress that had just become the new fashion after the war that ended in 1919. At first, they were looked down upon, but now, in 1920, everyone wore them. Blowsy carried it back to her makeup counter.
Just then Dolly approached her in a ruffley plum-colored dress.
“Blowsy, do you think this looks o.k.? I have to wear it to be Uncle Dave’s magician assistant. Does purple look all right on me?”
Mitzie, who was slumped on a pile of extra material near by, heard this and called out, “Dolly, if yellow and red and pink and blue and green and white don’t look good on you, I don’t think purple will.” She laughed cruelly.
Dolly looked hurt and said softly, “Come on, Blowsy, what do you think?”
Blowsy looked Dolly up and down. She shrugged. “I don’t know, Dolly.”
Dolly looked disappointed and walked over to Sally, who was reading, to ask her opinion. Blowsy stared at her reflection; short, curly brown hair, big blue eyes, slightly turnedup nose and small gold earrings in her ears. Seeing her hair a little tousled she took up a red comb off her counter and combed out her curls. After doing that, she dressed in her flapper and put on her high-heeled green shoes.
Mitzie stood up and began her voice exercises. Mitzie had a loud, brassy voice, and it was not pleasant to hear in a small stuffy dressing room crowded with teenage girls. Everyone began to shout.
“Oh, Mitzie!”
“Stop it!”
“You’re killing my ears!”
“Have a heart, Mitz!”
Blowsy went to the practice area in the room next door. There many girls and boys were singing and dancing and doing acrobatics. She approached a group of Charleston dancers in the center of the room. The phonograph was playing “Varsity Drag” full blast and the girls and boys were lolling about.
A girl with bright orange hair tied up in a bun spotted Blowsy and shouted, “Here’s Blowsy! Let’s get started!”
As Blowsy hurried towards them a girl did a backflip in her way. She halted and then started again.
A tall girl with flouncy blonde hair stopped the record and cried out in a loud, tough voice, “All right. Let’s get going. We only have a half hour to go over this. Blowsy, don’t be late again.”
This girl, Stephanie, was only fifteen, but she acted like the leader of the whole vaudeville show. She didn’t have a lead in any of the numbers she was in but she acted as if she was the leading lady.
Muttering angrily under her breath, Blowsy took her place in the group. This number was her big moment in the show. She led sixteen girls and boys in a marvelous Charleston dance which always turned the audience on. The song to go along with it Blowsy loved. It was very uptune and Blowsy’s unusual voice went well with it.
“All right now! Take your places everyone!” Stephanie called.
A boy with dark brown hair, tanned skin and deep brown eyes sauntered over to Blowsy. His name was Jeremy and he and Blowsy were “going together”. It was a known fact among the troupe. Since he was so close to her height, he was her partner in all the dance numbers they were in together. He gave her a spunky grin.
“Hey, Blowsy, how ya doin’?” he asked.
Blowsy shrugged and smiled up at him. “O.K.”
Anita, a girl with auburn bobbed hair, poked her head between them. She grinned impishly. “Come on, you two lovers. Let’s get going.”
Jeremy made a playful attempt to grab her but she darted away, giggling. Jeremy and Blowsy rolled their eyes at each other. They got in the position for the beginning of the dance. Jeremy put his hands tightly around her waist.
“Jump, Blows,” he said.
Blowsy jumped and he lifted her up onto his right shoulder. She crossed her legs and tried to steady herself. She looked around at the others. Sally was having problems getting onto Larry’s, a tall lanky boy’s, shoulders. Stephanie was stretching out and Monica, a girl with pumpkin-colored hair was setting up the victrola. As the needle touched the record, a scratchy silence was heard and Monica leapt easily onto Jeff’s, her partner’s, shoulder.
Walking unsteadily because of the girls on their shoulders the boys formed a V with Blowsy and Jeremy at the head. As the zippy music began, Blowsy began to sing the fast clever words in her strong, clear voice which had a lot of pizazz. When the cue came, all of the girls leapt off of the boy’s shoulders and landed easily and quietly on the floor. Sally made a loud clatter with her shoes but everyone ignored it. They were professional children and they had well learned in the early days of their performing careers that mistakes had to be ignored and then the audience wouldn’t notice it either.
Blowsy sang her favorite line with the clippy words:
Here is the drag
See how it goes
Down on your heels
Up on your toes
Everybody do the Varsity Drag
Well! Sheila, your 12yo-authored story appears to be shaping up better than my 19yo-authored one, which was a bifurcated-structure novel about 19yo twins who were separated for the first significant time in their lives. One half of the novel would feature lots of description of stuff, and the other half would have no adjectives at all, and every few pages I’d switch back and forth between the two halves, throwing in a double-carriage return and three asterisks to alert the reader. Plus, I threw some stuff in there at various times about De Tocqueville’s Democracy In America. Plus a capella singing. The novel was called Dubble.
I stopped after five or eight chapters (depending on how you counted the short stories I was sticking in, so that my novel could also be considered an anthology) when I realized I didn’t have any idea of what was happening in the story.
Two things I noticed off the bat about your terrif Ziegfeld story:
a) you appeared to be more influenced by movies and tv than by other literature;
b) better send out for another box of exclamation points!
Heh. Thank you for sharing!
Umm…I have to say I would TOTALLY read this novel. Totally.
And can I just say, the fact that you quoted “The Varsity Drag” is absolute GENIUS!
“You’re killing my ears!”
I’m also never going to stop saying that.
“Have a heart, Mitz!”
Like: Mitz, Sheila??
Mitzie is obviously based on every bitchy mean girl I knew in junior high who made fun of my clothes!
“Mitzie, would you stop twirling your tassle? It distracts me when I look in the mirror!”
Best. Opening. Line. Ever.
I am speechless. ‘Have a heart, Mitz’ has joined the canon along with that other line (you know the one I mean!!!)
I LOVE THIS!!! I love how they know they have to ignore the mistakes so the audience will too! Did you just come up with that or had you learned that while doing a play or something?
Is there more? I want more!
Jean – The novel is unforgivably long. There is oh so much more.
I describe, step by step, their every dance routine – it’s mortifying to read!
There is a glamorous mother who is also on vaudeville, a father who walked out on Blowsy, a boarding house where all the girls live, and Jeremy is an attentive and sensitive boyfriend (of course).
I am not sure what the CONFLICT is … I only know that I loved all these girls and I actually had written out a CHART on the back of my notebook, where I kept track of everyone’s hair color and eye color.
So embarrassing.
Fifi: blonde hair, blue eyes
Etc.
I was just trying to keep everyone straight in my crazy little head!!
I will post more, even though it gets even more embarrassing and more revealing. Yikes!!
Also how about how Blowsy kind of blows poor Dolly off??
Like Blowsy is supposedly the lead of our story – but when poor Dolly looks for some validation, Blowsy just shrugs.
What is that about?? Inquiring minds want to know.
Bren – Everything I know about ANYTHING I learned from Jan Grant. hahahahaha
Yeah – “Have a heart, Mitz” is pretty damn funny. Funnier every time I think about it.
You know, it was very brave of 12-year-old you to write this from her heart. A lot of kids have stuff they HAVE to get out… and not every kid can. 12-year-old you was right to trust the current you with this, and current you is right to trust 12-year-old you by sharing it with us. I’m grateful to the two of you by being in on this.
I want to play the glamorous Mother, please.
Alex – Her name is Corinne. She is gentle and loving, and also a giant star. I believe she does a dance with fans that goes over like gangbusters with the vaudeville audience.
I think you are born to play the part.
I love this! I can’t quite get over the name of the lead – Blowsy, though. I have flashes Carol Burnett in Annie when I hear that word…
Did you ever show your novel to your teachers? It would have bought you a ton of extra credit, if you needed it. You hadn’t lived enough for it to be durable as writing, but it is heavy-duty evidence of your young powers of observation and vocabulary, your love of books, and your sense of initiative. I don’t even know you beyond this blog, but as a novelist (I wrote my first at 19, and it took me many more tries before I became “publishable”), I find this document deeply touching. Even at this age, in your world of books, you wanted to throw your voice like dice onto the same floor where Yeats and Joyce and all the other names special to your family had proved their merit. I can’t imagine the pride your parents must have felt — not only that you tried, but that you kept trying until it became doing, and that you kept doing until it was done.
Okay, Tim, your comment has made me weep.
In a good way. You honestly cannot imagine how much I needed to hear that today.
Thank you.
No more words – just thank you.
So is Blowsy pronounced like low or more like ow as in crowd. I think that is going to be important to know going forward.
Do we get to read the second chapter? The names are killing me!
/When she found it, she carefully took out her green and gold flapper dress that had just become the new fashion after the war that ended in 1919/
I love this line for some reason. I like how you skirt the issue of calling it the First World War, since at that point there wasn’t a Second one, and I like how you work in the fact that what was shocking a year ago is all the rage today (cue “Anything Goes!”).
I love it all and will read every single post! Fantabulous and ever more proof of what a phenomenal person you are/were/always will be. Love xxxx Stevie
I honestly don’t think that I knew that “Blowsy” meant frumpy of the middle-aged variety. I thought it sounded nice and rather show-trashy. Like all of these girls are on the fringe of being truly marginal and I wanted their names to reflect that. They are one Charleston revue away from being flat-out burlesque dancers.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Dave – in my head it was pronounced “ow” like “crowd”.
I am trying to remember why I picked that name – I MUST have seen it before, in a TV movie, or short story or something.
“with the clippy words”- for some reason, that line is killing me, baby Sheila!!!
I cannot even comment. I’m howling, but I can’t seem to decide if it’s tears or laughter — or just both.
/The phonograph was playing “Varsity Drag” full blast and the girls and boys were lolling about./
Hahaha. Yes, naturally.
I love that they are a teenage vaudeville troupe led by teenagers.
The whole thing is brilliant. SO glad you found this.
I love this. I love that you started writing at an age where I was probably still slogging my way through Hardy Boys books. This is such a fantastic window on your young self. Thank you.
You’re very welcome, Sheila, and I’m very glad if my words gave you back something you needed.
I’m intrigued by Dolly. She seems too soft to be in this crowd. And isn’t plum a lovely color on most anyone? Is she later described as “pleasingly plump” as Bess was in the Nancy Drew series? If we’re casting, I’ll take Dolly (which was also my grandmother’s nickname).
I cannot believe the level of detail. but then again… yeah..I can believe it.
Stevie – hahaha I know – I refer to “the war” so knowledgeably – and I love how a little information goes a long way. The war ended, and the 1920s began – and suddenly everyone is wearing flapper dresses, and I make it sound like it happened overnight!
Tracey – Yes, “lolling”, because isn’t that what you do backstage at vaudeville??
And yes – no adults!!! Maybe THAT’S the gimmick: a teenage-run dance troupe.
Mere – hahahahahaha