Then and Now by Barbara Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

of Modern Art, and one afternoon as I was plodding through all of those numbers, I remembered that there was a Rudolph Valentino silent playing at the Modern. I went into the ladies’ room, rubbed spit on my mascara and daubed it under my eyes, and, trying to look suitably peaked, told them I was feeling dreadfully ill. Off I went to have my first experience with The Sheik. Heaven.
    When I worked for Shell Oil we were on the top floor in one of the tallest buildings in Rockefeller Center. I loved gazing out at the view, taking special note of the light in winter, that deep, rich, radiant blue just before nightfall. There was a sense of camaraderie with my coworkers, and after hours we would wander to a nearby bar and have drinks. I would sit at the bar, singing snatches of arias from opera. I really didn’t know much about opera despite all those years of listening to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, but I remember singing “ Una furtiva lagrima ,” the beautiful tenor aria from L’Elisir d’Amore just because I thought it was a pretty tune. Ditto for the “Habanera” from Carmen . Because Iworked in Rockefeller Center I was eligible to join the Rockefeller Center Choristers and was thrilled when I was accepted. The chorus director said I had the most beautiful voice he had ever worked with; and, starved as I was for a chance to sing, his words came like manna from heaven. The Choristers often sang in the outdoor skating rink under the big statue of Atlas, and sometimes our performances were televised. Nelson Rockefeller visited us during rehearsal one day—such was life in the big city, and I was gobbling it up.
    In the fall of 1948 I performed in the Shell in-house review Shellebrities . Or to be more accurate, I performed in, choreographed, and directed Shellebrities . I grabbed any theatrical work I could. It was a chance to learn.
    It was also at this very time that one of the dichotomies in my performing career was beginning to emerge full-blown: as much as I loved to sing, I was terrified of auditioning. On the one hand, I had faith in my talent; but, on the other, I felt extreme anxiety about actually performing. I’ve always been a nervous human being, so much so that I’ve often marveled that I ever really got into this business. I was terrified about meeting people, and simply greeting a prospective agent would leave me sweating profusely.
    In fact, sweating profusely— hyperhidrosis is the medical term—had been a problem for me ever since I was an adolescent. In school I used to have to put a piece of paper over the test paper so the sweat wouldn’t drip down and blur my answers. When I was asked to go to the blackboard to work out a math problem, I would be so nervous that the perspiration would run down my arm and drip off my elbow. I remember once having on a short-sleeved sweater and sweating so much that there were puddles at the top of my skirt from the perspiration running down my arms. Evenafter I began performing on Broadway, I used to have all sorts of extra material placed underneath my costumes so that the moisture wouldn’t show.
    But much as I feared auditioning, my determination to succeed proved to be even greater, and when I met a woman named Teddy who gave voice lessons, she helped me put together audition material. It was surprisingly easy to audition in those days: you just looked in the show-business periodicals that came out and then showed up at the time and place indicated.
    In the fall of 1949 I was offered a job at a very nice supper club in Boston called the Darbury Room. The owners had something new in mind for their room and I had no way of knowing, nor did they, if this would last. I was scared, but I finally decided to take the job after getting a two-week leave of absence from Asiatic Petroleum. What if the show flopped? What if I lost my job at Asiatic Petroleum? I’m afraid I didn’t care one hoot about