Marla Letizia clip 2

How did you choose to go to Arizona State? I had no college counseling. I had wanted to go to USC, which I was accepted to, but my parents were getting divorced and there was no money for college. I thought that I could probably swing ASU, and I got in and I did. I worked as a cocktail waitress through my four years of college. I made a hundred dollars a night and was able to pay my tuition. That's what I grew up with. My mother was a cocktail waitress. So it made sense to me. Where was she a cocktail waitress? Sahara Hotel. She was there in the years when Louis Prima, Keely Smith, Danny Kaye, Sam Butera and The Witnesses were there. For my third, fourth and fifth birthdays, she would take me to the dinner show and they would always call me up on stage. They'd sing "Happy Birthday" to me. That was part of my growing up. The ma?tre d's all knew us. They'd always put us at ringside and ma?tre d's would tell whoever it was?Danny Kaye or Donald O'Connor or Louis Prima and Keely Smith?that it was a common thing for me to go up on the stage and be sung "Happy Birthday" to, and they just happened to be there that year, so let's do it, guys. So I grew up always going up on stage, just part of the glamour even at the age of three, four, five years old, or being out at the pool on a Saturday. My grandmother used to always take me to the pool on Saturdays at the Sahara Hotel because my mother and my grandmother would have their hair done at the beauty shop. My mother worked four a.m. to noon, and then we would swim at the pool, and their hair appointments were probably one and two o'clock. I'd go in with them and maybe somebody would do my hair if they had time. We'd be out at the pool at the Sahara on a Saturday and Connie Stevens would be out there, Connie Francis, whoever happened to be staying or playing at the hotel at that time. We used to go out on the lake and Tom Jones used to come out there and Sammy Davis, Jr., who was my all time hero. Why do you say that? I don't know why. See, I even get really choked up about it. He's the only star that ever passed away that I cried when I heard it. I watched him perform so many times as a child and the passion that he took up out on that stage when he performed; he gave so much off that stage. I just felt his energy. And yet, when he wasn't on stage, you could feel, even as a child, that he was a very troubled man. You could feel his insecurity; I could. He was such a loving man, but he was a very pained man. When he was up on that stage performing, whatever that pain was within him was erased. You could just feel the difference in the man.