What one person learned from Gene Kelly
She was an aspiring actress fed up with the theater, but the famous dancer gave her a new perspective.
By Colleen Lesterfrom the March 29, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 3
A star caught me as I was falling. He didn't have to do it. But he did it just the same. I never really thanked him. And when the news of his death reached out across the years to find me, I wept like the girl I was when I knew him in 1973.
It was hard that summer. The life of an apprentice actress on the star circuit has no glamour: 16 hours a day, seven days a week, often lost in the prop room or hidden offstage among the folds of dark curtains while others stepped out into light.
"Hide and ego-seek," some call it. The hiding I understood all too well. The ego had flown long before the first star ever appeared.
Apprentice actress is merely a glitzy term for slave labor. You're promised you'll get on stage somewhere, sometime, but in the meantime you do anything the producer, director, or actors need you to do.
I was the person responsible for making sure all the items required throughout the run of the show were found, refurbished, and in place for each actor to use.
The pace was grueling; no time for star-gazing. Celebrities came and went like subways – in for a week to rehearse, "on the boards" the next week, and then gone just as suddenly as they appeared.
After awhile, nobody cared how famous someone was or who had just appeared in a smash television sitcom. They all became a blur with irrational demands and gargantuan egos.
And then Gene Kelly arrived. He was there for a pre-Broadway tryout of his new musical, "Take Me Along."
The afternoon of his arrival found me wandering half-lost through the Ohio hills, searching for a winery. The prop list called for a 50-gallon cask that the shop boys could mount on casters. It needed to be strong enough for Gene Kelly to dance on while chorus girls made it turn.
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