Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey
Continued from Part 1
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In Chapter 1 (pages 21 - 39), titled "Life Is a Cabaret", Grey tells mainly about her relationship with her father Joel Grey in the years 1966-1968, when she was six-to-eight-years old and he was performing in the Broadway musical Cabaret. This chapter is delightful.
Joel Grey had become a Broadway star in 1961, when Jennifer was one-year old and he played the lead role in the musical Come Blow Your Horn. In the following years he played a series of leading roles.
Then in 1966 Grey brilliantly created the role of the Master of Ceremonies role in Cabaret and continued to star in that Broadway hit into 1968.
He performed the role on Broadway eight times a week, and little Jennifer often went to the theater with him and watched him in his dressing room as he prepared and then from backstage as he performed.
For me, there was no place cooler on earth than hanging out backstage with my dad on Saturday matinees, following his every move as his diminutive shadow. Watching him apply his Kabukiesque makeup ....
I was thrilled when I got him all to myself on a Saturday afternoon. I would sit quietly in his dressing room, fully cognizant of the special honor and privilege it was to bear witness to this secret preshow ritual and transformation.
It felt like a delicious mix of fizzy and calm, but mostly of reverence. The makeup mirror was an altar, my dad's face, like the center of a sunflower, both making the art and being the art simultaneously. One step removed, I'd watch every brushstroke in rapt attention, gazing at my father's reflection from behind him, the image framed by the tiny globes of vanity mirror lights. From inside his dressing room, I could feel the kinetic energy of the company percolating just outside his open door, the raucous laughing, singing, vocal warm-ups with booming scales echoing through the stairwell. ....
The scantily clad Kit Kat girls warmed up their powerful legs like giant nutcrackers, doing their grand battlements in the bowels of the Broadhurst Theatre. These idols of mine, their powdery faces in dramatic showgirl makeup, smelling strongly of hairspray, pressing scratchy sequins and satin against me as they fawned over me, Joel's little girl, Jenny. Kissing and hugging me gingerly, careful not to smudge their applied greasepaint.
The visceral pressure mounted as we drew closer to the entrance of the stage. I could hear and feel the thrum of the audience's rowdy anticipation, muffled by the heavy velvet curtain. It was a serious thing, this transition from skipping down the sidewalk with fun dad, to focused dad, gathering energy ....
The writing is eloquent, full of sensations, details and thoughts. Although Jennifer was very young, she lived this experience many times, and she recalls it vividly.
After the matinee, the Grey family often ate in a Broadway restaurant "where all the show folk congregated, where my did knew everyone, everyone knew him, where there was always a good table and a warm welcome waiting. He was beloved, and he lived us."
In general, the Grey family's social life was full of actors, musicians, writers, directors, producers and other "show folk". There were many parties. Since Joel Grey was so successful, the family lived comfortably and happily in Manhattan's Upper West Side.
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| Jennifer's mother, Jo Wilder |
Jennifer's mother Jo Wilder was a theater actress too, although not as active successful as Joel Grey. She had to sacrifice her career somewhat to be a mother to Jennifer and to a younger, adopted son, James. As an actress herself, Jo Wilder fit in well with Joel Grey's theater life. The mother and two children were "a team" that supported the father.
Jennifer was a "daddy's girl", and he doted on her. She remembers that when she got sick, then he more than her mother took care of her.
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| Jennifer and Joel Grey |
The book describes in detail how excited and proud she was to watch the television broadcast of her father winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1972 movie Cabaret.
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Continued in Part 3
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