The self-enchanted : Mae Murray : image of an era (1959)

and Lucille Cavanaugh kicked and twirled, stage left. Workmen were pounding somewhere down below. The piano thudded. In the midst of it, Mae made a quick turn, bent back until the whole noisy stage was upside down, swung up, arms outstretched, light as air. She laughed to herself, dusted off her pink leotard where one knee had brushed the floor and went on, hearing music inside her, her own rhythm. "Remember what you did? Try it again," called a nasal voice, from far off in the gallery You never knew where he was or what he saw, this Ziegfeld. He was everywhere, no detail escaped him. "Show me something, Mae. Go ahead, it looked good." She giggled, going into a quick turn, repeating the cadence, adding to it. By the time she'd finished, he was standing beside her on the apron with Goldie, his secretary. "Having fun? Good," he said. "Improvise a little more. You're a graceful girl, Mae. Your feet never touch the ground. This can work into your East Indian specialty. Slow down the tempo," he called to the pianist. "All right, now." It wasn't hard to improvise. She was the Persian princess dancing beside the pool, wooing the prince, yielding and withdrawing. "Good," Ziegfeld said. "We'll use that. Now something else. Something excellent for you. We're going to do a travesty on motion pictures and you'll play the heroine, Merry Pickum." "I don't like motion pictures," she said quietly. "You've seen Mary Pickford?" "No." "This is going to be an amusing take-off. Picture this: you'll come running down the center aisle, the spot picks you up, another spot catches Ed Wynn in the audience. He rails against the interruption like a disgruntled customer while you breathlessly announce that your picture's about to be shown." He droned it all in his thin whine — how she'd run along the orchestra rail, up onto the stage and into the proscenium 28