Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

VAUGHN MEADER continued Back Bay section. Still lives in a tiny, unimpressive apartment in New York City’s unfashionable Yorkville area. Young man with a sad past but a sensational present. Future uncertain. Funny man. Serious man. Interesting man. All man. Lots of men rolled into one. Vaughn Meader is the name. Come meet him with us . . . It’s a Saturday night. The place: Baltimore — backstage at the mammoth and ultra-new Civic Center Arena. The time, 8 :20 — ten minutes to show time. “The First Family” company is about to play performance No. 24 of a grueling tour that is taking them to fifty different cities in just about as many nights. They should all be pooped by now, but they’re not. The tour is a success. The customers have been flocking in. There’s cash in the air. And anticipation, too — everyone looking forward to the finale at the Sahara in Las Vegas, where Vaughn and company reportedly will earn $22,500 a week for three or four weeks. There’s lots of good stuff in the air — so who’s tired? Except Vaughn. He looks tired. The burden of the whole show is on him. And they never let him be. Fans beg for autographs. People mill around him, staring. “Gee, yeah, he does look like President Kennedy.” Newspaper reporters in every city grab hold of him with their questions. The interminable round of TV and radio interviews goes on. Tiring business. A nice, profitable way to get tired — sure. But tiring business nonetheless. And so when we poke our way into his dressing room at 8 :20 and ask, “Would you like us to hold off on you for a little while?” Vaughn yawns a mock yawn, smiles and says, “Yep, if you don’t mind.” Then he makes a suggestion. “Why don’t you talk to some of the others in the show first? They’ll tell you what kind of a rat I am. Then you get back to me at intermission and I’ll tell you how wrong they are.” He smiles again. “Okay?” Suddenly we feel a little spooky about all this. Vaughn has been getting into his costume (an expensive looking tuxedo) , and in makeup, and damned if he doesn’t look like the President of the United States. We resist the urge to say, “Yes sir.” We manage a smile and a quick, “Okay,” and we’re off to talk to the people who know him. First stop: Dressing Room No. 2. We knock. Jacqueline Kennedy opens the door. Oops, sorry! It’s Naomi Brossart, who plays Jackie in the show. A tall girl. Twenty-four years old. Three years out of her hometown, Mt. Prospect, Illinois. Vividly pretty. Short cropped light-brown hair under that First Lady wig (as we find out later). Elegantlooking as they come. She’s wearing a white sheath gown straight from an Igor Cassini drawing board — it looks. Very, very elegant. Until we mention where we’re from. That’s when our First Lady look a-like breaks up and shrieks, “Oh golleeee, I’ve always wanted to be in Photoplay! I mean it!” Obviously, she really meant it. We chat with Naomi for a while, about her ambitions: TV, Hollywood, stardom, the big dream coming true. Then the talk turns to Vaughn and she says, “He’s a quiet fellow, real quiet. I met him a few times when I was trying out for the record — and always, Vaughn would be the fellow sitting in the corner, just listening to me, never saying a word. Then one day — I still didn’t have the part — he got up and came over to me and told me that Jackie would never say ‘tehr-riffic,’ the way I’d just said it, she would say ‘t’riffic.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Why, yeah, that’s right.’ And then I thought, ‘I don’t know who you are, sir, but thanks a lot.’ “Well, a few days later, I’m sitting at my desk — I was a receptionist for the Playtex people, girdle division — and I get this call saying I’ve got the part. I nearly flipped for joy. Then I thought about this fellow who’d helped me with ‘t’riffic’ and a few other words, and I wanted to hug him in gratitude. I had no idea he was Vaughn Meader. When I got to the first rehearsal and we were officially introduced there wasn’t even any time for a hug. We got down to work, right away. And it was amazing, but as Vaughn read his lines, his voice was so like the President’s that I felt a terrible responsibility to do my part precisely right. And I felt so inadequate. It’s a tough job, imitating Jackie’s voice. Basically it’s a boring voice, and so I have to caricaturize it to get any good effects. But Vaughn’s interpretation of the President’s voice, I saw right away that first time, was not a caricature, but John F. Kennedy’s voice — but precisely. And amazingly. “Vaughn was very relaxed the day we actually made the recording. Before we started, he sat at a piano and played away. He’s always playing the piano. He’s very good at it, too. So that day he’s playing away and he begins to sing. And I walk over to him and say, ‘Why don’t you sing like Kennedy?’ He says, ‘Yep’ — and he does. Then I begin to sing along with him, like Jackie. And the producer heard us and laughed, and that’s how we got the ‘Auld Lang Syne’ bit into the record. But I’m afraid it was my only contribution to the material. “That day we cut the record was the first time I met Vera, Vaughn’s wife. She came in on her lunch hour, I remember, and she sat there, very quiet. Very sw’eet. They have such a beautiful love story — how they struggled together these past six or seven years, how Vera supported Vaughn. It’s funny about Vera, but it seems that with all this success of Vaughn’s she’s become even more quiet and withdrawn recently. It’s understandable; at least to me it is. All this sudden fuss and everything. And Vaughn is so kind with his wife — the ( Continued on pat/e 79) 56