Life As a Tarantella: A Memoir

By Jill D. Sweet

This memoir describes the life and times of the author’s mother, Barbara Adams Stephens, a Broadway dancer and stage-manager in the 1930s. Barbara’s story is a classic feminist tale. It is also a narrative of resilience.

Barbara was an only child, born in Toronto, Canada in 1915. Her mother, Ethel was a want-to-be Bohemian artist and her father, Stanley was a professional singer. Neither parent concentrated on raising Barbara. It was after Ethel took her daughter with her to Paris in the 1920s that Barbara learned her parents were getting divorced.

It was also in Paris that Ethel enrolled Barbara in a Catholic boarding school run by nuns. This gave Ethel freedom from parenting, but it was also the most miserable period of Barbara’s life. She was the only American student. No one spoke English. She quickly learned to speak French, but until she stressed her ties to Canada rather than America, no one befriended her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483430225

Book preview

2012

Life as a Tarantella

a memoir

JILL D. SWEET

Copyright © 2015 Jill D. Sweet.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3023-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3022-5 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/05/2015

Contents

Prologue

I   Hiding Under the Piano

Toronto 1918

II   School, a Rabbit, and Ave Maria

Greenwich Village 1919

III   Woodstock Maverick Festivals

1915-1931

IV   Crossing the Atlantic

1920

V   Paris and Sainte Marie Convent

1920-1921

VI   Fontainebleau and Giverny

1922-1928

VII   Back from France

Greenwich Village and Brewster 1929

VIII   Big Sister Claire

Hollywood 1921-1934

IX    Vermont Summer Camp

X   Roberta and the Women

1933-1938

XI   Beverly Hills and Hollywood 1938

XII   Personal Regretes, Professional Opportunities

Broadway 1941-1948

XIII   Pivotal Transitions

XIV   South Pacific and a Family of Five

Connecticut 1947-1954

XV   The Move West

California 1954

XVI   North Hollywood 1954

XVII   Studio City: 1956-1963

Finale

Acknowledgements

Her Gifts

I think of the great minds,

Those whose lives touched me,

Masters of stage, written word,

Dance, music, art.

My mother whose instincts discovered

The unusual, the fascinating, the avant-garde.

The learning trees of the world

In which she found herself,

Gifting it all to my young mind.

Today I weep at a symphony,

Sigh over a poem, am moved

By sculptures, and in passion

And great love, embrace

All that she gave me.

Barbara Adams Stephens

For My Niece, Marika Stephens

Who, Like Her Grandmother Barbara, Is Becoming a Woman of

Strength, Courage, and Compassion

Prologue

In the spring of 1983, I am completing my second year teaching Cultural Anthropology at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. I regularly talk long distance to my mother, Barbara Adams Stephens and my father, Harvey Stephens who live across the country in a southern California retirement community. Their retirement home is located about 20 miles from Laguna Beach where they raised my two brothers and me in the 1950s and 60s.

Whenever possible, I fly out to visit them in California, or they come see me in Saratoga Springs, New York. One year I ask Mom to fly east during my spring break and come with me to Vermont where I can interview her about her life. I explain that I want to use my anthropological skills to ask her about her youth and her career, first as a dancer and then as a stage manager on Broadway. Mom agrees to the plan, but after thinking about it, feels intimidated by my scholarly approach and the idea that she is to be my informant.

I try to ease her worries by explaining how anthropologists refer to this kind of research as the life history method. I can imagine her perplexed expression at the other end of the line, as she thinks how she never had the chance to go to college and as a result occasionally feels intellectually inferior to college graduates including her three children. I tell her not to worry, my purpose for interviewing her is straightforward.

First. I want to learn more about her life and what it reveals of my great grandmother Mary, teacher of advanced math and astronomy, my artist grandmother Ethel and my silent movie actress aunt Claire. In other words, I want to better understand three generations of women who share a family history as well as an involvement in teaching, art, and performance. Second, I hope to see how the anthropological perspective and skills I used when studying Native American families in New Mexico can be just as useful when exploring one’s own family.

After a pause, Mom asks me, why Vermont? I remind her that she is always telling me the happiest times of her life were in Vermont when she attended a summer camp called Killooleet. Mom conceded that camp Killooleet was where she began to feel free from the hardships of her youth. It was where she began to dream of a life in the theater. Further, Killooleet was where she gained confidence in herself. Nevertheless, Mom seems nervous about my Vermont plan. She wonders if her stories are interesting enough. Will she remember the details? Will I find fault with her attempts to reconstruct events from so many years ago? Will she see me as an anthropologist or will she see me simply as the youngest of her three children—the child who is a perfectionist and can be temperamental like her actor father?

These questions and doubts are not as strong as Mom’s desire to please me. On the designated date, she says good-bye to my father and boards a plane for Albany. I meet her at the airport and we drive on to Vermont where we take a room for a weekend of uninterrupted talk and reflection. I have my tapes and tape recorder ready to catch the tales of her youth and her struggle in the 1940s to become a Broadway stage manager at a time when it was considered strictly a man’s job. I had heard bits and pieces of her stories over the years, but I never listened fully or stepped back to see them as related parts of a whole life.

Choosing a place to stay for the week is complicated by the fact that I have multiple sclerosis, which makes climbing stairs difficult. Most of the cute bed and breakfasts involve stairs so we settle instead on an off-season ski lodge with lovely grounds and paths for walking. The interior of this lodge turns out to be less inviting than the grounds, but we both are tired from the drive and decide to stay put, in spite of the dreary halls and dark rooms with slightly smelly carpets, damp and stained from years of winter guests tracking in snow and ice melt.

After we settle in our sparsely furnished room; two double beds, a side-table, a dresser, and a round table with two chairs where I can spread out my notebooks, tape recorder, and lists of questions, Mom and I begin to work together recording her stories. As mother and daughter we are alike in many ways and we are very close. Nonetheless, she always has to protect herself because I can hurt her deeply with a quick look or thoughtless remark.

Take the case of shopping with her for school clothes when I was a teenager. It was always a terrible scene. I am in the dressing room nearly in tears. Mom is on the floor looking for something to replace what didn’t fit.

Mom, this size 10 doesn’t fit me either! I step out of the skirt and leave it on the floor beside other garments that I have rejected.

I told you I was gaining weight, I announce with disgust. Mom replies, Sizes vary from maker to maker, Jill. I’ll bet we can find a size 10 in a better brand. Here, try this, Mom says hopefully.

After one quick look I say, God no! That is so-o-o ugly! This is what the girls are wearing this year, Mom says defensively.

Who says so? What girls? I ask. This girl isn’t wearing that. Oh God, I hate shopping for clothes. I am so fat I’ll get kicked out of the corps de ballet! No you won’t, says mom. I end our conversation by rudely stating, Mom, you don’t know anything! After that mom is silent and I feel badly that I hurt her.

As I begin to interview Mom in our Vermont room, I have no way of knowing that it will be a little over a decade before she becomes incapable of sharing her stories with me due to her developing dementia. By 2006, several years after my father died, her dementia became worse and resulted in her need to enter a nursing home. I found a nursing home near my work and home in Saratoga Springs.

When Mom first went into the nursing home she was 91 years old, weak and recovering from a fall, but she soon gained strength and was considered by the staff to be one of the most interesting and lively patients on her floor. The nurses loved to talk to her about her life as a dancer in New York City and Woodstock during the 1930s and later as a stage manager in the 1940s. They asked about her glamorous publicity photos