Shirley Jones Read online

  I was willful, stubborn, and determined to do exactly what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. I was unable to follow rules, or to act in the way in which a well-bred young lady was supposed to act. From as far back as I can remember, everyone who knew me agreed that I was already my own person.

  The dentist incident caused me to loose trust in adults, but I think yet another reason for my tendency to rebel at every turn and to be a tomboy so early on was because I knew that my father had always wanted a son, and because I loved him so much, I wanted to please him.

  So I yearned to be a boy and to do everything that boys did, only better. I refused to wear dresses and did whatever I could to prove that I was as tough as any boy and could do exactly the same things as boys could, only better.

  After my father taught me sports and took me to all the Pirates games, I became a great baseball and softball and basketball player and, down the line, became head majorette in high school.

  My father was delighted by my sporting prowess and made sure that I knew it, praising me at every turn. My mother, however, was not amused that I wasn’t evolving into a nice, well-brought-up, little Shirley Temple–type young lady. Practically every morning, after I refused to wear a dress to school, or to comb my hair, my mother paddled me with whatever she could lay her hands on, from a hairbrush to a spatula. If I came home covered in mud or threw my clothes all over the floor, in the evening my mother paddled me again.

  In retrospect, I don’t blame her, because I just flatly refused to take orders. The moment she—or anyone else—told me to do anything, I did exactly the opposite.

  When I wasn’t rebelling against authority directly, I was causing trouble in other ways. One Sunday night at around seven o’clock, when I was nine years old and hanging out with my best friend, Red, and my cousin Joanne, I pressed the town’s fire alarm, just to see what would happen. The second I did it, sirens blared, and the Smithton Volunteer Fire Department truck pulled up outside the café where we were hanging out.

  Red and Joanne and I ran away as fast as we could, but someone ratted on us. Before we could make our getaway, we were hauled in front of the sheriff, who read us the riot act, in front of our parents, who had been called down to witness our rebuke and disgrace. Terrified, I mustered up the courage to ask the sheriff if we were facing jail. Jail, he told me gravely, was a real possibility, reform school at the very least.

  Red, Joanne, and I were white with terror. Luckily for us, though, the sheriff took pity on us and relented. We were too young to go to jail, he announced, and instead he presented each of us with a piece of paper, ordering us to check in with him once a month for the entire year, without fail. We did and thanked our lucky stars that we got off so easily.

  Apart from my sporadic bursts of rebellion, life in Smithton had a leisurely rhythm to it, a serenity in common with that of many American small towns. Every Sunday, my mother would make a big dinner at our house. She was a good cook, and her signature recipe was City Chicken—chicken, beef, and veal meatballs on a skewer, coated in bread crumbs, then put in the oven with vegetables.

  Usually my grandmother ate with us, and so did my aunts, and during dinner and afterward we would all sit around talking local talk—about the brewery, what Mrs. so-and-so did today, what the grocery man said—the kind of conversation that only goes on in small towns all over America. If anything out of turn happened to disturb the routine of the town, that became a big deal indeed.

  Animals were always the biggest deal in my life. Many times when my father came home late at night after being out all day on the road selling beer—often starting at eight and getting back home to us at three in the morning—to my delight he would bring home a puppy or a kitten as a gift for me.

  Best of all, when I was very young, he brought home a dalmatian puppy, whom I instantly named Spot. I was devoted to Spot; he swiftly became my chief confidant, and I told him my deepest secrets constantly, so I was devastated when—around my tenth birthday—I came home from school one day to find that Spot had disappeared.

  Distraught, I ran to my mother and demanded to know where Spot was.

  My mother shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Last thing I saw, he went over to visit your grandmother.”

  I ran over to my grandmother’s part of the house and begged her to tell me where Spot was.

  All my grandmother would say was “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I gave Spot a piece of cheese and he ran away because he didn’t like it.”

  Young as I was, I didn’t believe her. Particularly when I remembered that, the day before, Spot had raced out into her garden and dug up her cherished rhubarb plants. I drew my own conclusions, and I was not happy. For a while, my feelings toward my grandmother altered radically.

  Instead of mourning Spot for too long, though, I drowned my sorrows in playing with my other pet, a little terrier I called Snoopy, who was no bigger than a Chihuahua.

  Then there was school, which I adored. Our school housed two grades in a single room and went up to eighth grade; then you went on to high school.

  From third grade on, my best friend was Red, who is still my best friend today. I lived at one end of the town, and she lived six blocks away from me at the other. Red and I were always together, and when the boys came up to me and yelled, “Who do you think you are?” (because my family owned the Jones brewery), or threw mud at me, Red would be right there, sticking by me.

  Not that I needed any support, really. I was always a big fighter and would think nothing of battling the boys until my nose was bloody and my hair torn out in shreds. I didn’t care. I just wanted to win, and I usually did.

  Part of the problem, I think, is that a few of the boys thought I was some kind of princess—the heiress to the Jones Brewing Company—and spoiled. But that wasn’t true. I wasn’t in the least bit spoiled. Although I was an only child, I never felt that I was given more than anyone else. My friends were never jealous of me or competitive with me or treated me as if I were in any way different from them. I was one of them and always would be. I still have friends whom I first met when we were in the third grade together.

  But while I loved school, I didn’t love what awaited me when I got home from school, the paddling that my mother invariably gave me. At times, it seemed to me as if I got daily paddlings, and maybe I did.

  I was so strong, so determined; I wanted what I wanted, and no one could divert me from it. I hated authority, and I was set on getting my way, come hell or high water. So I got paddled, over and over.

  To me it seemed that my mother thought that everything I did was wrong—and she punished me accordingly.

  I was constantly shut up in my room, banned from going out with my friends, and paddled. I took my punishment stoically, rarely cried, and in a way the paddlings became part of my life. Then one day, I just had enough.

  I was nine years old and, after a particularly heavy paddling (I’d moved the blackboard from one wall to another in my room, had undone my ponytail, or whatever other transgression had made my mother mad), sat on the landing with my dalmatian, Spot (who hadn’t yet vandalized my grandmother’s garden and been spirited away by her), next to me. I was sore and sad. The only one around to comfort me was Spot.

  So I put my arms around him, held him close, gazed deep into his eyes, and started confiding in him. “Spot, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. It’s just not working out for me. I guess I’ve got to change my ways,” I said ruefully.

  Spot looked up at me and wagged his tail.

  The next morning, just before school, for the first time in my life I put on a dress. I remember that dress to this day: peach-colored taffeta with puffed sleeves.

  As I came downstairs into the kitchen, my mother was making breakfast and had her back to me. My aunt Ina, however, did not.

  “Look at that, Marge, Shirley’s wearing a dress! Isn’t that exactly what you wanted?”

  My mother spun around, looked me up and down, and smiled radiantly. “W
ell, Shirley, how nice you look! How lovely you look! Isn’t that wonderful? I’m so proud of you!”

  I felt great. I guess I’ve got to start pleasing my mother more, I said to myself.

  And that’s what I did for quite a few years, until I hit my early teens and all hell broke lose.

  Until then, I was basically a good girl, who, when she wasn’t playing the tomboy and getting dirty, loved playing with her dolls. Dolls were now things of the past for me. Instead, I was obsessed with movies and movie stars. I plastered the walls of my bedroom with pictures of my idols: Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Howard Duff, and—my all-time favorite—Burt Lancaster. If you had told me then that one day I would meet him and make a movie with him—Elmer Gantry—I wouldn’t have believed you in a billion years.

  I adored movies and movie stars and longed to look like one. When I was nine years old, I wore lipstick for the first time. I wore full makeup a year later. I cut my hair before all my friends did, and I was the first girl in town to wear a strapless dress to the prom.

  A rebel in everything, in my early teens I tried sloe gin and got so sick that my friend Red had to put me in the shower so that my parents wouldn’t smell it on my breath when they came home.

  I was wild, willful, and independent, and only three elements in my young life served to make me toe the line to some degree.

  The first was my father, for whom I could do no wrong. I would have died if I had disappointed him, and that sentiment kept me on the straight and narrow.

  Then there was my love for animals, and for nature, both of which tamed my unruly personality.

  Last but not least was the other great love of my life: singing.

  When I was four years old, Aunt Ina and I were playing on the swings together. Out of the blue, she asked me if I knew how to sing “God Bless America.”

  Without any hesitation, I launched into “God Bless America,” both word-perfect and pitch-perfect, and Aunt Ina practically fell off the swing in shock.

  Within moments she was yelling at my mother, “Marge, have you heard your daughter sing?”

  My mother rushed out into the yard, and Aunt Ina asked me to sing “God Bless America” again. For the first time in my four years, I was an obliging child and, on cue, sang another chorus of “God Bless America.” My mother was ecstatic. From that moment on, she would always encourage me in my singing and would years later always write the lyrics of the songs I sang on three-by-five cue cards, so that I would never forget them.

  To me, my aunt and my mother seemed to be praising me for something that I took for granted. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I thought all children could sing like me, and as easily.

  At my mother’s and my aunt’s behest, from then on I sang at all our family functions, in particular at my grandmother’s end-of-summer family party, which she held at Sweeney’s Restaurant and Lounge, where we had all our big celebrations.

  Most of the time, young as I was, I sang my favorite song, “Frankie and Johnny,” about the gal who “shot her lover down.” I sang it at one Christmas party and shocked my family to the core. When my choice of song was more suitable for a child of my age, sometimes my cousins joined in, and though I would try not to, I invariably drowned them out.

  At six, I was the youngest member of the Universalist Church Choir, and I knew all the hymns by heart. Everyone said that I had a magnificent voice, but I was never vain or conceited about my singing talent. I believed—and still do believe—that my voice was a gift from God.

  I loved singing, and I loved my mother’s reaction to my singing. My voice, she said, was “wonderful,” and I basked in the warm glow of her praise.

  But that didn’t mean that I was suddenly transformed into an obedient, well-behaved child. After my mother suggested that I take piano lessons, and I had five, I flatly refused to take any more because I hated the lessons, and besides, I just didn’t like playing the piano.

  But nothing would stop me from singing and glorying it. In the summer of 1946, when I was twelve, my parents sent me to camp on Lake Erie. Over eight weeks, I spent every evening with the other kids, sitting around the fireplace, roasting hot dogs and singing song after song, popular songs, patriotic songs, and religious songs—“The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Lord’s Prayer.” For the first time in my life I could sing my heart out, and I adored every minute of it.

  Not only that, I had an angel watching over me, my camp counselor, Peggy Demler, who had platinum hair down to her shoulders and played Broadway show tunes on the piano as if she were born to do so. From the first, she made no bones about how she considered my voice to be God-given and special.

  Peggy loved to play the piano while I sang and gave me guidance on how to enhance my singing voice. When the summer ended, Peggy called my mother and told her that I had an extreme talent and that I ought to have singing lessons.

  Moreover, Phyllis Decker Rocker, my singing teacher at South Huntingdon High School, also believed I was already a talented singer and encouraged me to pursue singing as my career. Luckily for me, my mother listened to Peggy Demler and Phyllis Decker Rocker and enrolled me with singing teacher Ralph Lewando, who was the music critic for the Pittsburgh Press and who, along with his wife, Olga, was famous as being the top voice coach in Pennsylvania.

  My father drove me to and from Pittsburgh once a week for my lessons there, an added bonus being I would be alone with my beloved father during the journey. He was delighted that I was having singing lessons, predicted that my name would one day be up in lights, and always treated me as if I were the princess of the world.

  However, my singing teacher, Ralph Lewando, was quite another story. Although he was enchanted by my voice from the very first time I sang for him, he had firm ideas about my future and exactly where he thought my singing talent should lead me.

  After I’d sung just a few notes, he stopped me in midsong and announced that I was a born opera singer—a coloratura soprano—no question about it. That was my talent, my gift, my mission in life, he decreed; my God-given vocation was clear.

  Much as I respected Ralph Lewando, I didn’t agree with him. I didn’t want to be an opera singer. So I plucked up the courage to tell the august Mr. Lewando that actually I wanted to sing musical comedy as well as opera. He was taken aback, and although he reluctantly agreed to allow me to sing the odd Broadway tune now and again, he made it clear that he thought singing show tunes was harmful to my voice. I didn’t argue with him. I just listened to his instructions, studied hard, practiced religiously, and sang aria after aria, but deep down, I knew that however beautiful the arias were, my heart still belonged to the Broadway musical.

  Peggy Demler, my camp counselor at Lake Erie, had played Broadway songs to me so enchantingly, and my father often took me to see musicals when Broadway touring companies played Pittsburgh. My passion for Broadway and the Broadway musical began early in my life. Every summer from as far back as I could remember, my parents and I drove from Pittsburgh to New York and spent a week there, the highlight of which was seeing a Broadway show together.

  The very first was Oklahoma!

  TWO

  A Beautiful Day

  From as far back as I can remember, my husband Marty has always marveled at my Academy Award acceptance speech in which I said, “This is the happiest day of my career.”

  “Not your life?” he always exclaims, scratching his head.

  “Definitely not” is always my answer.

  The plain and simple truth, you see, is that my career has never been my life, and vice versa.

  Even in my early teens, when I was singing at Lions Club events, local amateur events, and at clubs in and around the Pittsburgh and being complimented by all and sundry for my singing talent, much as I loved singing, I had other, equally important things on my mind.

  My love for animals, of course. And more and more, my passion for boys. One in particular, a boy named Lou Malone. I first became aware of Lou when
he was fifteen; I was twelve. He lived across the road from me. A Smithton boy to his fingertips, Lou was tall, blond, with dazzling blue eyes, and made the heart of every girl in town beat much faster. I was no exception.

  After Lou and I took a stroll around the neighborhood one night, we ended up in front of my house, as usual. Only this time, I leaned against the old oak tree and Lou kissed me. As he did, I was overcome with a mixture of passion and revulsion.

  Chivalrous and polite, Lou quickly said good-night and left me standing there in the moonlight. Confused, and torn between my burgeoning desire and my revulsion, feeling momentarily bereft, I stripped a piece of bark off the old oak tree and sequestered it inside my little memory box as a souvenir.

  I was given that box at my third-birthday party and right away hid an artificial flower and a dog’s collar, both presents from my friends, inside the box. In time, more of my childish souvenirs joined those first two in my memory box, but this, the bark from the oak tree under which Lou had given me my first kiss, was the most evocative.

  The night of my first kiss, I dallied outside, under the oak tree, long after he left. Partly because I felt as if I were floating high above myself, partly because I was afraid that if I went back inside the house straightaway, my mother would sense just by looking at me that Lou Malone had kissed me, and she would get mad at me. Even though Lou was a straight-A student, a football star, and went to a local high school, he was a Catholic, and I knew my mother wouldn’t be happy about that.

  Fortunately, Red was dating Lou’s best friend, which seemed to make it all right when the four of us went to the movies together on one special Saturday night. After a few more Saturday-night double dates like that, my mother grudgingly accepted that Lou and I were an item for keeps.