Modern Screen (Jan-Nov 1956)

to be asked to go abroad that fall to the Berlin Art Festival with Oklahoma! But it also meant signing for a road tour afterwards, which meant; not graduating from high school. Shirley called the folks down south for advice. "Make up your own mind," they told her. Shirley did. She settled for the diploma instead of $75 a week and the European trip. She's never regretted it. But the minute she got it she beelined back to New York. This time she stayed — and strictly on her own. She had just turned eighteen. Things started off okay. Shirley got a summer job with St. John Terrell's Music Circus at Lambertville, New Jersey. She danced one musical by night and rehearsed for the next by day, and loved it. But that fall Broadway lowered the boom. "Fifty-one was a very rough season," Shirley remembers. "Out of 8000 Actors' Equity members, only 800 were working. I belonged to the 7200." She snatched the want-ads practically off the newspaper trucks, haunted theatrical agencies until the secretaries got insulting and auditioned for anyone who'd look and listen. But it was only, "Well call you" which is the same thing as "Sorry Kid." She cut off her last name, also her red hair. No use. Then she was asked to travel as danseuse for a trade show. Glamorizing refrigerators wasn't exactly what Shirley had slaved all those years for, but by then she wasn't picky. So the rest of the year Shirley barnstormed the South and Midwest on one night stands, pirouetting around her frigid partners while the salesman delivered his pitch. "We set up in every two-bit place you could think of," says Shirley. "Tank town hotels, auditoriums, drafty halls and casinos. We slept on busses and at fleabag hotels. I got an infected foot but had to dance anyway. It wasn't elegant but it was a living." It was more than that. She made $165 a week and expenses. By spring she'd piled up a stake for another crack at New York. Ironically, when she got it she didn't need it. "Because right then," Shirley grins, "I got lucky." "Hey. Red!" The first job she tried out for she bagged — in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Me and Juliet — although she was the last chorus girl picked. In fact, Shirley was halfway out the door when Bob Alton, the choreographer yelled, "Hey, Red — you didn't leave your name and address." "Why?" inquired Shirley bitterly. "Don't you want your job?" She's always thought that was a silly question. Shirley wasn't too surprised at this luck. It was fourth day of the fourth month, April — her birthday. Me And Juliet kept Shirley in a steady job for almost a year. Then kind fate provided her with a steady date — a man named Steve Parker. That's Shirley MacLaine's legal handle today — Mrs. Stephen Frederick Parker. She met Steve in the Theatre Bar across from the stage door of the Majestic. A chorus mate took her there one September night after the show. It was the first bar Shirley had ever entered. She doesn't drink. But when the girl friend, who knew Steve, introduced him, Shirley remembers a sudden dizzy spell which couldn't have come from her 7-Up. "I just flipped," she sighs. "It was boom! — like that." Steve Parker's a handsome, dark-haired Veimonter, twelve years older than Shirley. He was already a veteran actor, stage director and producer. At that point he was staging the famous Lambs' Club shows. He seemed to know everybody in and everything about show business. As | Class lastex sheath with matching cotton print panels. Removable foam inner bra pads . . . ... a plus note. Choice of floral colors. Sizes 30-36. About $9 nymph glamour swim suits JORDAN MANUFACTURING CORP., 1410 B'WAY, N. Y. 18 • SEA NYMPH OF CANADA, 425 RIVER ST., MONTREAL