Lady Blue Eyes Read online

  “Who are you talking to in there?” Mother would ask through my locked door.

  “It’s the radio,” I’d lie.

  At six o’clock on the morning of the screen test, I arrived at the Fox lot and spent two hours in makeup before being zipped into a beautiful white satin gown. Then I was led to the set and introduced to my leading man as the crew stood waiting. The clapboard clapped, the director yelled, “Action!” and my costar held me in his arms. “I want to go with you, Gilda,” he said. “Please take me. I know I did everything wrong.”

  My mind froze. The first line my character had to say was “Johnny, isn’t it wonderful?” All I could stammer was “J-Johnny, I …” Unable to remember the rest of my line, I gulped, stared at the director helplessly, and looked to my lead for inspiration. Not only had my memory blanked but my throat felt cut.

  The director told the cameras to keep rolling and tried to reassure me. “Barbara, sweetheart, you look stunning. You’ll be wonderful in this. Just relax.”

  Each time I tried again, little more than a squeak came out, and then I broke into an unstoppable attack of schoolgirl giggles.

  “Cut!”

  Half-laughing, half-crying, I wanted to run from the stage, but somehow, in an endless series of retakes and hand-holding, we managed to shoot the entire scene. A few days later, I received a call from the studios. “You have no future in pictures,” the voice said with practiced finality. “Don’t even bother taking classes.”

  Grateful that I’d told no one about my screen test, I accepted with some relief that Hollywood stardom wouldn’t be my future after all. What had I been thinking? I was just a farm girl from Missouri, after all. When Bob Oliver called again, I agreed to go out with him, curious what this loony boy might do next.

  By our fifth date he’d calmed down a little and stopped begging me to marry him. Instead, he took me to meet his family, who welcomed me as one of their own. His grandfather Joe, who had a thick Italian accent, reminded me of dear old Pa. Bob’s father, whose nickname was Butter, for Buttermilk, was a remote southerner who drank too much. His mother, Marge, was a tiny terror of a woman who ran the Rose Room single-handedly and seemed to like me.

  The family would gather every Sunday for a delicious but quarrelsome dinner. Throughout the meal and poker game afterward, everyone seemed to do or say terrible things to one another and then kiss and make up. I’d never seen anything like it. This volatile Italian family couldn’t have been further removed from my own, and I was beguiled. I wasn’t in love with Bob, but he clearly worshipped me. He had a great sense of humor, and his lifestyle offered adventure beyond anything I’d known. My Belmont Shore crown had been handed back. I was selling clothes at a downtown store and picking up occasional modeling jobs. Life was dull, and my mother had drummed into me that I should never settle for dullness.

  When Bob told me he was going to New York to find work as a band singer, I cracked. Manhattan had spelled excitement to me ever since the days when my mother’s Harper’s Bazaar arrived in Bosworth smelling of ink. We married in September 1948 at the Lakewood Community Methodist Church, Long Beach. Twenty-one years old, I wore an ornate white lace and satin gown with a seed-pearl tiara and had two page boys scatter rose petals in my path. My father gave me away. After a reception for two hundred guests at Le Club Moderne, at which Nat King Cole played piano and Bob and Marge sang, we set off on our honeymoon to Rosarito Beach, Mexico. When we got home, Bob drove me to Bosworth in his Ford so that he could meet the rest of my family and then on to LaFayette, Georgia, to introduce me to relatives on his father’s side.

  I think I began to worry within a few days of our honeymoon that our relationship might not work—and not just because his mother decided to come on the second leg. She was financing the trip after all. Even though she provided some laughs from the backseat along the way, I began to suspect by Bob’s attitude, drinking and flirting with other women, that my new husband wasn’t all I’d hoped he might be. Knowing that my only alternative would be to return home shamefaced to my parents, I prayed with all my heart that I was wrong.

  TWO

  An early modeling shot.

  COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

  New York, New York

  Bob and I flew to New York in the winter of 1949 with the highest expectations. He was in search of fame and fortune, and I just wanted him to prove to me that I hadn’t picked a dud.

  The sights, sounds, and smells of the Big Apple shocked and entranced me. I’d never seen skyscrapers, steam rising from manhole covers, or beggars in the streets. Marge had put us on a tight budget, so we checked into a single room in a hotel somewhere in the West Seventies. I’d dyed my hair platinum blond like Lana Turner’s and saved for a new wardrobe, but my clothes were too flimsy for an East Coast winter and we had to blow some of our precious funds on warmer ones.

  After a day or two of taking in the sights, we set to work. Bob spent his days knocking on the doors of musical agents and his nights auditioning in supper clubs, while I embarked on the tedious ritual of “go-sees” at the studios of commercial photographers. Trouble was, my “book” of modeling photographs lacked polish, and with so little experience and clothes that were hardly New York chic, I was obviously a greenhorn. Through a male model friend of Bob’s named Jay, I finally managed to get an audition for a sportswear assignment for Good Housekeeping magazine. Apart from the promise of ten days’ work, the photo shoot was to be onboard a Furness Line ocean liner, one of the “millionaire’s service” ships that plied back and forth between New York and the Caribbean. When the photographer called to tell me I’d gotten the job at three hundred dollars a day, I was over the moon. Not only would I be earning great money and traveling to places I’d only ever seen photographs of, but I’d be working alongside two models named Lily Carlson and Marilyn Ambrose, both of whom were at the top of their game. Waving good-bye to Bob, I boarded the Queen of Bermuda and sailed down the Hudson River bound for Nassau, barely able to believe my good fortune. Almost immediately my insides began to churn.

  I’d never been on a ship before and had no idea that I’d be so seasick. For probably 70 percent of that cruise I couldn’t even leave my cabin. Strangely, although I was unable to keep food down for very long, I was also ferociously hungry, with a particular craving for spinach. Lily and Marilyn took pity on me and went to the restaurant to bring me food. Whenever I was not looking quite so green, I’d be up on deck sporting madras shorts, halter tops, and cork wedges with a fixed smile on my face. While I lay recovering in my bunk, the girls gave me the best modeling tips I’d ever learned. New York modeling was very different from that taught by Mary Kaye. The girls told me to relax more and lean into the camera rather than away from it. They showed me how to utilize light to my best advantage and when to pad my clothes to enhance my shape. Needless to say, Lily and Marilyn became lifelong friends.

  Our ship stopped at the newly opened Paradise Island, owned by Huntington Hartford, who asked us to pose for some publicity shots. Then we went on to Nassau, where I finally felt well enough to join a party at the Fort Montagu Beach Hotel. Four men were sitting at the next table, and one came over to introduce himself. Pulling up a chair, he sat beside me and turned on the charm. His name was Jack, and he was sailing in the area. He was very attractive with his bleached blond eyebrows and wavy brown hair. Jack was such a big flirt that he told the crew of his yacht to sail on alone because he wanted to travel back to New York with us. I liked his spontaneity, but I still wasn’t interested, even when Lily informed me later that he was a well-known politician. “That’s John F. Kennedy. He’s a member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts,” she told me. “People say he’ll go far.”

  Far or not, Jack acted so rashly in jumping ship that he didn’t give himself time to pack and boarded without a tuxedo for the liner’s first-class restaurant. Obliged to eat alone in his cabin, he’d plead with us to join him, but we never did. Throughout the journey home, he continued to
make passes and was always trying to separate me from the others, but it didn’t work. Not only was I seasick but I was practically still a bride. When we docked in New York, Jack introduced me to his two beautiful Weimaraners, which had been brought to meet him. In truth, I liked his dogs more than I liked him. Jack also introduced himself to Bob. “You must be Barbara’s husband,” he said, shaking Bob’s hand. Kissing me on the cheek, Jack gave Bob an enigmatic smile and walked away. It would be more than ten years before I’d see him again.

  When my nausea didn’t stop even after I reached terra firma, I realized I was in trouble. It wasn’t seasickness after all. I didn’t dare tell a soul I was pregnant, especially not Eileen Ford, who’d agreed to take me on at her Ford Modeling Agency after Lily and Marilyn recommended me.

  “Fashion photography, not runway, I think,” she said, examining me with the precision of a biologist. “And of course, you’ll need to lose weight.” I could have laughed and cried all at once. Within days, I was offered work with Vogue and Life magazines, although not quite what I’d imagined. In one shoot for Noxzema sun cream, I was plastered in bright red makeup to make me look sunburned. The caption read: “Don’t Fool with Sunburn!” I was so embarrassed by the results, but Bob cut out the advertisement and proudly showed it to everybody in his favorite West Side bar.

  As our baby grew inside me, so did my nausea. Work became a disaster because I kept throwing up or passing out. In the end, Eileen Ford peered at me through her enormous spectacles in her brownstone offices on Fifty-fourth Street and informed me that no one else would hire me. She offered me dry congratulations when I finally admitted my condition and bade me a brisk farewell. Bob and I had no choice but to head home. He was so mad at me for getting pregnant and cutting short his freewheeling nightlife, while I was mad at him for flirting with my modeling friends. Not only wasn’t he ready to be a father, but he wanted to stay in New York even though he hadn’t found any work and spent most of what I’d earned on booze and horses.

  Back in Long Beach living above the Rose Room, we had no money and quarreled about everything. Bob tended bar downstairs until 2:00 A.M. closing, and I fed myself from the restaurant kitchen. Not that I could cook anyway. His grandmother tried to teach me how to make pasta once, but I told her, “Good luck with that!” I never mastered the art. One day I came up with the idea of starting my own modeling school. Anyone interested in fashion would surely be eager to know what I’d learned about posing and lighting, makeup and trends. If I opened a school and shared my experiences, I could work until the baby was born, and besides, I liked the idea of mentoring younger girls.

  So did Bob suddenly, who styled himself general manager and could hardly wait for my pupils to arrive. With a three-thousand-dollar loan from the bank (which Marge guaranteed), I found premises at Seventh and Alameda streets. After fitting it out with floor-to-ceiling mirrors and painting it in peach hues (kinder to the complexion), the Barbara Blakeley School of Modeling and Charm was up and running. On the opening day, girls and their mothers lined up around the block. Some wanted to be models; others hoped to learn etiquette and manners. I also taught elocution by recording students’ speaking voices and playing them back. When I listened to my own voice for the first time, I was horrified. All I could hear was a nasal Missour-a drawl, which made me say things like “Kaaan-sas Ciddy” and “shugg-ah.” Clearly, I had work to do, so for months afterward I stayed late in my office reading Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees” aloud until I had buffed my accent into one that sounded acceptable. “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.…”

  Business flourished, and I soon had ten teenagers in each class, plus some older models who asked me to find them work. I did, and even sent some to Las Vegas for the chorus line. The majority of my pupils seemed to hang on my every word. I wasn’t that much older than they were, and they related to my youthfulness. I think it helped that I dressed and looked the part. I had my hair in a “poodle cut” like Kim Novak’s and always wore the latest styles from my mother’s store.

  When Bob wasn’t trying to hit on my students, he continued running the bar, singing, and gambling. If ever he had a pocket full of money, he certainly didn’t give me a dime, and I learned to stash what I earned. One time he slammed into our bedroom in the middle of the night sporting a black eye and demanding the money I’d saved for our baby. He claimed men would kill him if he didn’t pay them what he owed. Sobbing as I handed him the six hundred dollars I’d taped to the underside of a drawer, I felt our baby kicking inside and knew that my marriage was doomed.

  On October 10, 1950, after a two-day labor that Bob walked out of because he couldn’t bear my screams, I gave birth to an eight-and-a-half-pound baby boy. We named him Robert Blake Oliver—forever and always my beloved Bobby.

  I was very happy with the baby but not with his father, who flew back to New York to pursue a singing career soon afterward. It was a separation, although neither of us used that word. Marge doted on her first grandson to her dying day and was a great help looking after him, but she couldn’t do anything about her errant son. Resigning myself to life as a single parent, I realized that it was up to me to make enough to raise my child. Mother gave up her job to help me, and my sister, Pat, joined me at the school. As soon as one class graduated, another would be ready to start, and we had two classes running at any time.

  Then Oscar Meinhardt of Catalina swimwear contacted me. He was setting up a rival to the Miss America pageant called Miss Universe, with entrants from around the world. The first contest would be in Long Beach the following year, and Oscar asked me to be its official beauty consultant. I leapt at the chance. It was hard work but so glamorous and exciting. I loved cajoling dress shops into lending the girls evening gowns, coaxing hairdressers into offering their services in return for a credit, or persuading local citizens to take in nervous young women who barely spoke English. When the contestants embraced the makeup tips I gave them, I came up with the idea of my own cosmetics line. I persuaded Buffums’ department store to stock the new Barbara Blakeley Cosmetics and promoted them via the pageant.

  Bob came back broke from New York and we talked about divorce, but I was too preoccupied to pursue it, so we muddled along as before. The first Miss Universe Pageant was held on June 28, 1952, at the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium in front of twenty thousand people. I had a dressmaker copy a gown worn by Lana Turner in A Life of Her Own, a favorite movie of mine about an aspiring model who leaves her small Midwest town to seek her fortune in New York. In that dress, I truly felt like a film star. The actress Piper Laurie, who’d just starred in a movie with Rock Hudson, crowned our winner—a teenager from Finland. Bob had somehow talked his way into becoming an executive to the pageant and an assistant to Oscar Meinhardt. It was, I soon discovered, the perfect excuse for him to flirt with the contestants.

  When Bobby celebrated his second birthday a few months later, I knew that his father and I wouldn’t still be married by his third. I was only in my twenties, yet everything seemed to have happened in such a rush since I’d left Bosworth. In the space of a few years, I’d married, been a model, set up my own school, and was a founding member of Miss Universe. There was even a lipstick with my name on it. Now I was heading for a divorce, yet I’d planned hardly any of it. I’d just let things happen, which is what I continued to do my whole life.

  The happy by-product of all this was that I was making a name for myself professionally. Bob tried to cash in on it too and set himself up as a promoter, producing a concert starring the singer and television presenter Joe Graydon, most famous for his number one hit “Again.” Like most things Bob attempted, though, the night fell apart. The evening coincided with one of the worst storms in the resort’s history, so Joe and the full orchestra Bob had hired played to an empty house. Not long afterward, Joe invited me to appear on the pilot of a new one-hour afternoon show he was hosting on KABC television in Los Angeles. On what was one of the first talk shows of its kind with mu
sic, I showcased my best students under the banner “Barbara Blakeley and Her Cover Girl Models.” The pilot was such a success that it was made into a yearlong series. Television was the future for modeling, and I knew the exposure would be good for my school. I was right. Before long, I was able to open a theater next door in which to host fashion shows. Strangers began to recognize me on the street.

  For a while, I thought I might enjoy being successful and famous, but in my heart I knew that had never been my burning ambition. From the day I’d failed my screen test, I’d felt only relief at being one step out of the spotlight. With the dawning realization that I was about to become a single parent working full-time and raising a son, all I really wanted was security. I longed to meet someone who’d take good care of me and Bobby. Would I ever find such a man?

  My affair with Joe Graydon was, I suppose, an accident waiting to happen. After working on his TV show and developing an easy rapport, we soon became lovers. Lonely and sad while Bob was away gambling or womanizing, I fell easily and I fell hard. Joe became the great love of my life—or so I thought.

  Romance and humor mean everything to me, and Joe had both in spades. He was kind and thoughtful, all those things I’d been missing in my life. By the time we hooked up, Joe was asking his wife for a divorce. We had a lot of laughs together and would spend weekends with my friend Bobby Lasley and her husband, Jack, a bartender known as Big Jigger Jack, at their place in Corona del Mar. My Bob was still hanging around and, despite his infidelities, insanely jealous. One night I went to see Joe singing at the Circle Club in Long Beach with two of my models. Standing on the stage looking dashing in his tuxedo, my new beau proved what a consummate professional he was, singing Sinatra standards such as “All or Nothing at All.” By the time he performed his signature tune, the audience was his. Singing directly to me from the stage as my girlfriends giggled, he knew I was smitten. “This is that once in a lifetime. This is the thrill divine …” When he strolled toward me in the middle of another song called “(I Like New York in June) How About You?” and changed the words to “Barbara Blakeley’s looks give me a thrill,” I thought it heady stuff.