Exit Stage Left

As a missionary living in Shanghai, my father never imagined his daughter in show business. My mother, on the other hand, aspired for me to become a glamorous movie star once we returned to the states.

“I’ll not have my daughter as a show pony,” Daddy huffed. “It’s not dignified.”

“Oh, hush, Carl,” responded my mother from behind her lighted mirror as she applied bright red lipstick to her oval mouth.

As a child, I acted in several plays back home in New Jersey. The crowd roared with applause at my every performance, convincing my mother that I was destined for stardom.

“Our daughter will be a proper lady when she comes of age, Molly Mae. She’s to marry, have children, and keep house.”

Mother beckoned me to her favorite chair and began brushing my long blond hair. She loved the way the bristles on the Victorian hairbrush gently unraveled my unruly knots.

“My darling Dorothy, what do you wish to do when you come of age?” she asked.

“For Pete’s sake,” my father hollered. “Stop playing with the girl’s mind.”

Upon hearing my answer, he stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door. Daddy didn’t think I had a mind of my own. Any notion of show business had been ingrained in my brain by Mother, according to him.

A week later, an American moving picture company came to Shanghai looking for actors. One of the managers spotted me walking with Mother.

“What a lovely young lady,” the man uttered from across the street. “How old is she?”

“She just turned sixteen,” Mother replied.

He told us his name, but all my mother heard were the words moving pictures. She wasted no time having me take up a dramatic pose while reciting a few lines of Shakespeare, which she had forced me to memorize some time ago.

Despite Daddy’s objections, I became a professional actress. Mother and I traveled with the moving picture company. We went everywhere from China to Japan, India to Siam.

Once we returned to America, Mother rushed me off to New York where I began acting at the Manhattan Opera House.

My big break came when I auditioned for Florenz Ziegfeld. Thousands of girls sang and danced their way across the stage, all of them beautiful. He would have it no other way.

Mother had always insisted that I had a commanding stage presence. Mr. Ziegfeld agreed and hired me on the spot. Of course, my beauty and strong singing voice helped usher me through the audition process.

The moment I slipped into one of the extravagant costumes, Mother had a fainting spell. She had fancied her little girl would one day become a star. Her dreams were coming true, and the excitement overwhelmed her.

My persona disappeared beneath the feathered headdress and sequins. I was instructed on how to walk, talk, and smile. Happiness would be a permanent fixture in my life, whether I felt it or not.

“We must do something about your name,” Mr. Ziegfeld stated.

Daddy protested. “Dorothy Drake is a fine name.”

To which Mr. Ziegfeld rebutted, “Dorothy Drake is the name of a school Marm. Your daughter shall be known as Caterina Sinclair.”

The smelling salt wore off, and Mother drifted back into oblivion. Her darling Dorothy existed no more. In her place, Caterina Sinclair.

All the glamour of being a Ziegfeld girl wore off the first time I stepped onto the stage for rehearsal. I was aware of the grueling schedule, yet nothing could have prepared me for strained calves and trails of blood that dripped from my size 8 heels.

We were expected to perform through mental and physical exhaustion, which often led to one of the girls collapsing on stage. The stage manager would come out, drag the girl off stage, and order another to take her place.

Although illness did not often cause dismissal, drinking did. Such was the time when one of the girls treated her persistent cough with whiskey. She’d been seen in a bar, sloshing her lungs before a performance. All through the show I grabbed her wrist to steady her until Mr. Ziegfeld motioned for her backstage.

“Let me be clear,” he said to all of us after the show, “I don’t care if you’re hemorrhaging. You will perform. But drunkenness will not be tolerated.” He went on to lecture us on the importance of putting on a good show, reminding us that wealthy, renowned men would be scouting the audience for a wife. “No man wants a sloppy drunk as a bride.”

As a rising star, I no longer required the supervision of my stage-struck mother. She grudgingly faded into the background. Whenever she attended one of my performances, she sat ten rows back so I wouldn’t notice her in the audience. She kept her sobs at a whisper, but I could never mistake the distinct sound of the foghorn as she aimed her slender nose at a handkerchief.

Daddy refused to see me perform. He had resigned that his daughter would never take part in an industry which sought to dispose of women once new flavors came along. He kept me hostage in his mind as the “proper lady” he had envisioned long ago.

For the most part, I did not disappoint him. Until that is, I did.

It happened one night after I left The New Amsterdam Theatre. The unforgiving summer unleashed its wrath, triggering my girdle to embrace me tighter than usual. My body rained with sweat that trickled from my forehead onto my lips. I ran my tongue over the salty moisture just as a voice called out to me.

“Hey, there!”

Turning, I saw a tall man dressed in a three-piece suit. He used his right shoe to kick at the cuff on the other pant leg.

“Hey, what?” I called back.

“You move fast for a lady.”

“I wasn’t aware that one’s gender determined how fast they walk,” came my snide response.

He removed his fedora and bowed. “The name is Vincent Harvey.”

“What a strange name.”

“Why so?”

“Because you have two first names, that’s why so.”

“I’d have you take it up with my folks, but they died when I was a boy.”

The remark brought about remorse, and I apologized to Mr. Harvey. He offered forgiveness if I should allow him to walk me to my destination.

“Aren’t you hot in that suit?” I asked.

“You would rather me wear nothing at all?”

Never one to refuse good humor I answered, “Let’s get to know one another a few more days before I render a decision.”

A light snicker filled the air. I then realized that Vincent, as he asked to be called, did not know my name.

“Ah, but I do know your name, Miss Sinclair. In fact, I know all about you.”

He informed me that he was a director of silent pictures, working at Fort Lee Studios in New Jersey. He extended his index fingers and thumbs, panning my entire body.

“I think you’d be breathtaking on film.”

“If you knew all about me, then you’d know I was in moving pictures. I prefer the stage.”

“I’ve been to every one of your performances,” he confessed.

“And you never bothered to say hello?” I wondered aloud.

“To be honest, Miss Sinclair, your beauty frightens me. Until this moment I could do no more than admire you from afar.”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.” I noticed that a thread on my dress had come loose, and as I bent down to remove it, Vincent swept me in his arms with a gust of adrenaline. Our hearts drummed in unison, throbbing as the energy of our embrace increased.

“You’re everything to me,” he whispered. “From the moment you sauntered across the stage, my heart leapt because I’d found my true soulmate. We shall be married.”

He showered me with passionate cliches about his immediate love for me, and in a state of infatuation, I willingly surrendered to his every utterance.

“Absolutely not!” my father yelled from his chair a few months later. “My daughter will never marry a director.” The evening paper dangled from his unstable hands.

“Daddy, he loves me,” I declared.

“Rubbish! He saw you on stage a few times and that constitutes love?”

For her part, Mother remained silent. She hadn’t known Daddy long before they married. They’d been promised to one another by their parents. It’s how things were done back then.

Daddy’s indifference perplexed me. Hadn’t he maintained for years that I should marry and have a family?

“Not with a director,” he corrected. “You need a solid man with a good foundation. A real man with a real job.”

I listened as Daddy likened Vincent to a charlatan. He theorized that any man who engaged in fantasy rather than doing honest work could not be trusted.

My body trembled as I shifted from one foot to the other. There would be no gentle way of breaking the news to Daddy. He would either take it like a man or vow to disown me out of shame.

“Vincent and I have to marry soon,” I said, my voice breaking mid-sentence.

“Why must you marry at all let alone soon?”

“Because I am going to have his baby.”

The blood drained from my father’s face faster than a body being embalmed. He rose from his chair, tossing the newspaper onto an adjacent table. He took his thick fingers, still soiled with ink, and moved them through his thinning hair.

Mother rested her head against the palm of her hand. She had encouraged a life of entertainment for her only daughter, yet lines of regret now formed on her ivory skin.

“I can’t look at you right now,” was all Daddy could muster. He turned from my gaze and closed the door to his bedroom with such force, our family portrait on the wall rattled with anger.

“Are you ashamed of me, too, Mother?”

“No, I am ashamed of myself for not wanting better for you.” She trailed Daddy into the bedroom and left me to wallow in my distress.

Vincent and I married at City Hall while the baby remained concealed behind my near-flat stomach. Neither of my parents attended.

We relocated to Hollywood to begin a new life. Mr. Ziegfeld let me out of my contract so that I could act in one of my husband’s latest pictures, that is until the bump in my belly grew too large to ignore.

In the months following the baby’s birth, I swapped fancy clothing for an adjustable wardrobe, silk handkerchiefs for cloth diapers, and the stage for the kitchen. Where once I slept until noon, I now awakened at dawn. Babies do not care a lick for a mother’s attention to splendor. Their deliberate attempt to cause under-eye swelling is a direct result of spite.

Yet something in me began to change. The adorable creature who cried for attention, chewed on a rattle, and put fistfuls of my hair into her small mouth, replaced my love of show business.

“You would be foolish not to return to the stage,” Vincent said one evening, as he added brandy to an empty glass.

“Honey, I don’t need to perform anymore. You and the baby are enough.”

“What kind of talk is that? You’re meant for so much more.”

The baby released a delicate burp when I put her over my shoulder. She gurgled and cooed as Vincent tickled her cherubic face.

“It’s over for me. No more show business.”

“You’re beginning to sound like your old man.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” I asked, wiping drool from the baby’s chin.

“Your parents are common folks,” he answered. “Me, you, and the baby, we’re not common. We’re meant to shine.”

The debate lasted well into the night with Vincent’s stunning revelation that once the baby could walk and talk, she’d share in the spotlight, too.

“Over my dead body,” I proclaimed. “I’ll not have my daughter as a show pony.” My father’s words glided out of my mouth, through the air, and into Vincent’s deaf ears.

He prattled on for hours about how our blue-eyed, blond-haired baby would become a star. “Since you refuse to return to the stage and screen,” he complained, “she will take your place.”

Unable to placate my husband’s growing obsession with fame, I swallowed my pride and went back to New York, where I performed in Follies alongside Marilyn Miller.

Occasionally after a performance, Marilyn and I would make the rounds together. We’d go from our costume to a slinky number, which shimmered if the light hit in just the right spot. Then we’d walk along the forties until we found the perfect Cabaret. It felt nice being on the other end of the stage for a change.

“Give me a highball,” Marilyn told the hostess. “Make it two.”

Never one to be outdone, I said, “Same for me.”

“Darling, I’ve never known you to have more than one,” Marilyn admitted.

“My nerves need calming.”

“Is that rat husband of yours still pressuring you?”

“All the time. He wants our daughter to perform, but I forbid it.”

“Nothing wrong with a child actress. After all, you and I started as such.”

“Marilyn, it’s been a long road for us in this business. Don’t you ever tire of living out of a trunk?”

“Never,” came her swift response. “I wouldn’t know how to live if not for the stage. Real life can be so monotonous.”

“Vincent thinks I’m star material. Can you imagine?”

At one point in my career, I may have been a hot commodity as a Ziegfeld Girl, but Marilyn was the headliner now. She would not be outdone by anyone, not even me.

“Of course, leaving the biz for motherhood isn’t all bad.”

Marilyn coveted her role as Mr. Ziegfeld’s latest “it-girl.” Friend or not, she wasn’t going to let me steal her thunder.

My parents came from their home in New Jersey to care for the baby while I worked. They relished their roles as devoted grandparents once we buried our discord.

Vincent kept busy directing silent pictures, but his attention for my rising star began to swing. He felt I should stay in New York even after I’d made the offer to continue in films.

“Not right now, Sweetie,” he wrote in one of his letters. “Stay in the city and work with Mr. Ziegfeld. I’ll call for you when a good part comes along.”

“Are you planning to visit the baby?” I replied in a letter of my own.

His answer was always the same, “soon.”

He may have thought me a fool, but I knew of his chosen form of entertainment other than directing. A neighbor in California had intimated in written correspondence that Vincent spent time in the company of another kind of baby doll, one who didn’t burp or spit-up. He of course denied any wrongdoing. One expects that of a philanderer.

His latest paramour sported a black-haired bob and a prominent beauty mark on her right cheek. An actress who turned men into blithering idiots with her faultless smile lined with porcelain teeth.

“There’s nothing between us, Vincent reiterated. “You’re my star now and forever.”

He should have been the actor in the family instead of me. He gave a profound performance when he finally came to see us in New York.

His repetitious word salad, however, lacked truthfulness. My left temple began to throb the more he spoke.

“So, I’m a liar now, eh?” he asked, as he wore out the floor with his incessant marching.

“Oh, Vincent, do be honest for once.”

In one of his infamous tantrums, he picked up a vase and hurled it at the wall, while I tapped my fingers in tempo on an armchair.

“Are you finished having your fit?”

“Not quite.”

“Do hurry, my parents will be back with the baby any moment.”

“I will not be patronized, Caterina.” He broke a small wooden end table, then squealed when rewarded with a sharp splinter.

“For pity’s sake, Vincent,” I scolded. “The hotel will make you pay for the broken furniture.”

“I don’t care. Do something about my splinter.”

“Have your floozy fish it out after you return to California.”

Vincent stormed out as Mother and Daddy returned with the baby.

“Would you look at this place?” Daddy said.

“Did he hurt you, Dorothy?” Mother asked.

“It’s Caterina, and no he did not.”

“It’s a good thing for that,” said my father. “I’d see to it that he never saw the light of day again.”

“Daddy, Vincent doesn’t scare me. Besides, I’m the one who gets physical with him. Like the time he came home with lipstick on his shirt collar, insisting it was cranberry sauce. The wall in our apartment didn’t crack on its own. My husband’s gangly body Christened it thanks to a good push from me.”

Mother’s lips bent into a smirk. She used her handkerchief to veil her amusement since it was not proper for a lady to practice such volatile conduct.

“Even so,” Daddy continued, “what right does that louse have to destroy a hotel room?”

“I made accusations against him.”

Mother sat on the sofa next to the baby. “Such as?”

“Mother, Daddy, Vincent has been seeing other women.”

To my utter disbelief, my father, a proud man of God, suggested divorce, even after I maintained that a divorced actress with a baby would create quite a scandal.

“I don’t care,” Daddy said. “It’s better than being married to that disgrace. Mother and I will help take care of the baby.”

“No, I will take care of the baby. I’m quitting show business once and for all.”

Before Vincent flew back to California, he dropped by the hotel to patch things up. In his hands he carried a box of chocolate and a bouquet of flowers.

“Chocolate makes my skin break out and flowers make my allergies act up.”

“You’re impossible to please, Caterina. Do you know that?”

He tore open the box of candy and sat on the sofa, pitching his leg over the arm. When he opened his mouth to toss in a caramel, I educated him on the state of our marriage.

“It’s not working anymore, Vincent.”

“What’s not?”

“The marriage. I want out.”

“Like hell.”

I led the charge by reminding him of his infatuation with other women and the desertion of his daughter.

“How have I abandoned my girl? By working to put food on the table?”

“You never spend time with her.”

“Someday she’ll be in my movies. Can’t you just see it, Caterina? Father and daughter taking Hollywood by storm.”

“You’ll not use our daughter the way you’ve used me.”

“In what way have I used you?”

My feet wandered around the room. I kept my hands clasped together as if in prayer. Vincent continued to fill his mouth with candy.

“Looking back at our relationship, I’m not sure if you wanted me or a star.”

“I had eyes for you when you were hardly what I’d call a star.”

“That’s right, Vincent. You swore you’d make me into a star, even when it wasn’t my ambition.”

“Well, you needn’t worry. You’re nothing more than a has-been.”

I picked up an ashtray and flung it in Vincent’s direction. He seized my flailing arms and pulled me closer. He attempted to kiss me, but he caught the side of my head.

“Come on, baby, you know we still got something. You can be the biggest star of Hollywood, or theatre for that matter.”

“You don’t get it, do you Vincent? I don’t want stardom. All I want is to settle down and raise my baby like a normal mother.”

“Then maybe we want different things,” he said. He bent over the coffee table to pick up a copy of Theatre Magazine, where a photo of Marilyn Miller dominated the front cover. “Did you see this?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“Maybe I chose the wrong dame. I don’t recall your picture having ever graced the cover of a magazine.”

“Get out this minute!”

“Sure, baby, but remember one thing. You could have been somebody instead of just a missionary’s daughter.”

Actress Seeks Divorce From Director Husband.

Reporter: “Ms. Sinclair, what made you decide to leave acting?”

Caterina Sinclair: “I’ve had enough. Having been in this business since childhood, I no longer have an appetite for this sort of thing. My place is with my daughter.”

Reporter: “Will your daughter become an actress one day?”

Caterina Sinclair: “Not if I can help it.”

Reporter: “Does your husband have any objections to the divorce?”

Caterina Sinclair: “He is quite comfortable with his new girlfriend in Hollywood.”

Reporter: “Do you have any advice for aspiring actresses?”

Catherina Sinclair: “Yes, don’t go into show business. If you must go into the business, don’t get married. And if you do get married, don’t marry a director.”