Transcript of interview with Diana Saunders by Barbara Tabach, April 17, 2017

AN INTERVIEW WITH DIANA SAUNDERS An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Amanda Hammar iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Diana Saunders was born Diana Salshutz in the Bronx, the northern most borough of New York City. She was raised in a Jewish neighborhood and recalls how her maternal grandparents pickled pickles, tomatoes and other traditional Jewish delicacies for Wolfie?s Deli. By the time she was twelve years old, Diana was bustling through the city to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer. Encouraged by her mother Rose?her father Sidney was not as eager for this pursuit?Diana was accepted into High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan. In addition, she was accepted at the School of American Ballet where she studied classical ballet during the leadership of renowned choreographer George Balanchine. Her first professional performance was in the Nutcracker for American Ballet. At the age of seventeen, Diana was on her own, confident in her dancing potential, and eager to study jazz dancing. This led her to Matt Mattox and to her important mentor, Luigi (Eugene Louis Faccuito). In time she was a featured dancer for Steven Lawrence and Eydie Gorm?s show Golden Rainbow. This was soon followed by a position on Sammy Davis Jr.?s television show in the 1960s. Diana also studied musical acting and showed talent for comedic performance. In the 1970s, Diana crossed paths with Las Vegas venues. She relocated to Las Vegas in 1974 when Donn Arden offered her a dancer position in Hallelujah Hollywood at the MGM. She met and married musical theater actor/singer Joe Bellomo, whose career spanned four decades. He passed away of complications of early onset Alzheimer?s in 1996. Always true to her personal mantra?Wake up; Dress up. Show up?Diana maintains a busy schedule. At the time of this of this interview, she is currently a manger of gondoliers at the Venetian. She brings to life that career and also talks about being a part of the former Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. Diana shares stories of long career as a dancer, from substituting in the black dancer line to continued study of dancing with Anglo Moio. She also talks about the AIDS fundraising event Golden Rainbow, having dinner at Rabbi Shea Harlig?s home and observations of local theater. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Diana Saunders April 17, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Barbara Tabach Preface??????????????????????????????????..iv Talks about searching for ancestry information; American roots are in New York City; born and raised there; story about fearfulness her parents had when lights in city went out; traced family history to Austria, Romania and Russia. Tells about growing up in Bronx, a Jewish neighborhood; the move of Jews to Brooklyn; learning about Holocaust and Auschwitz, neighbor?s tattoo. Her pride in being a Jew and a New York Jew; maternal grandparents had Kapchuck?s store, made and sold pickles and such; sold them to Wolfie?s Deli?????????????????.1 ? 6 Explains encouragement of her mother (Rose nee Kapchuck Salshutz) and father?s discouragement to becoming a professional dancer, particularly ballet. Acceptance at High School of Performing Arts; School of American Ballet. ??????????????????????....7 ? 11 Invitation to be in Balanchine?s Nutcracker ballet in 1960; rehearsals while still in school; graduated at age 17. Eager to learn jazz dancing, studied with Matt Mattox; then Luigi (aka Eugene Louis Faccuito). Featured in Golden Rainbow, a show with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorm?. Then wonderful experience working with Sammy Davis Jr. television show [1966-1967] and story about his guest Judy Garland????????????????????????11 ? 14 Talks about her joy of working as a dancer; auditions; weekly bowling with coworkers; regular on Sammy Davis? show; production numbers. Discussion of recent performance at The Smith Center of An American in Paris. Mentions Book of Mormon; getting together with friends for Easter egg hunt; Passover Seder. Mother?s battle with lupus disease; growing up on her own from age 17; attended Hunter College?????????????????????????.?15 ? 19 Discusses more about impact of The Smith Center and value of community theater; her acting lessons, like drama but leans toward comedic acting. Tells her Las Vegas story; back and forth to New York for work; Dunes audition in 1970; then Australia position; call from Donn Arden for Hallelujah Hollywood at MGM. Story of meeting Joe Bellomo, actor and male lead, who she married in 1978; his diagnosis of Alzheimer?s and death in 1996; decision to remain in Las Vegas rather than return to New York; hired by Hilton?s Star Trek Experience??????.?20 ? 23 Explains difference between ?dancer? and ?showgirl?; height requirements which have changed over the years; being in Hallelujah Hollywood and filling in on the black dancers? line; choreography. Next, danced for Jubilee; did an illusion for Siegfried and Roy at Frontier Hotel. vi Describes learning of the MGM fire; loss of a coworker; recalls an episode when light booth glass crack and fell on audience; how that has been replaced with Plexiglas to avoid injuries. Describes off-stage working environment?????????????.?????.?????24 ? 28 Discussion of anti-Semitism; friends and use of racial nicknames. Mentions Grant Philipo and his collection of MGM costumes and effort to open a showgirl museum. Talks about Golden Rainbow event to raise AIDS funds and awareness; started in 1987 by dancers, Bree Burgess and Peter Todd; Gary Giocomo did choreography for the event, support from major Strip shows; would like to see Tropicana showroom used more????????????????????..29 ? 33 Talks about her mentors: jazz dancer Eugene Louis ?Luigi? Faccuito; musical acting teacher David Craig; ongoing dance classes with local teacher Angelo Moio. Long-term friendships. Meeting Rabbi Shea Harlig and invitation to his home for dinner, Shelley Berkley was there too. Elaborates on her current work as supervisor of the gondoliers at the Venetian hotel; how people audition for the job; her responsibilities?????????????????????????34 ? 38 Explains her previous position at the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton; being a character actor and manager. Talks about how after marrying Joe in 1978 she ceased to audition for dance positions; signed longer term contracts. Talks more about high quality of local community theater productions at Spring Mountain Ranch; Henderson Pavilion and performance of Little Mermaid in 2017 season; The Smith Center and Cabaret Jazz room?????.39 ? 44 Talks about Las Vegas Academy of Performing Arts and local opportunities for would-be dancers; urges young aspirants to go to New York and why. Cirque du Soleil shows. Backstage Dance Studio and Angelo Moio. Misses ?old New York.? Other local productions she has been in: was Hannigan in Annie at Summerlin Library???????????????????..45 ? 49 Appendix: 1996 oral history Diana provided Joyce Marshall for a project focused on Las Vegas dancers???????????????????????????...?????.50 ? 74 vii 1 This is Barbara Tabach and I'm sitting in my office today with Diana Saunders for the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage project. Today is April 17th, 2017. Diana, first spell your name for us. D-I-A-N-A, Diana, not Diane. I hate Diane. So it ends in an A. Saunders, S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S. Great. Thank you. What do you know about your Jewish ancestral roots? Actually I don't know a whole lot. Ironically, some reason, it's been bugging me because everyone is going on to Ancestry.com and all that that I'm really curious as to where my whole family was from. On my mother's side there was thirteen siblings. When I had to renew my passport?because I had to do a name change now with the whole security; everything has to match and I kept my husband's last name including mine on some documents. Then all of a sudden now it all has to match. As an immigrant I had to go get a new passport, a new this, a new that. So a friend of mine who is very good on the computer?I'm not bad, but I'm electronically challenged, let's put it that way. So she found it and wanted to know where my parents were born. I just know I was born in the Royal Hospital in the Bronx, New York, and that's where I remembered them because I looked up and go, "Oh, hello." So I didn't really know where; I just assumed New York. So a friend of mine, Marisa, who is very computer knowledgeable, she found out and she said, "I think your dad or your mom was born in Austria." I went, "Wow." I have a cousin that lives in Connecticut and I mentioned it to her. Her mom and my mom were sisters. So she says, "No, all the kids were born in Manhattan because our grandparents"?this is during the war? "somehow got out and came over with all the kids when they were two feet tall and got them all out and landed on Ellis Island." They were all here. On my father's side, I think my dad is from Austria and only one sibling, his sister, 2 survived. Oh my. And you didn't know that. And I didn't know that. I think he might have been born in Austria because we don't know his side because there was no nobody. All I met was his sister Matilda. Mattie we called her, Aunt Mattie. Every time I'd try to say, "Well, where is your...?" He couldn't talk about it. So I've just kind of put two and two together. When you get older you want to find out who you really are and where you're from, so that's something. If I was really smart I should have done it before this interview, but, no. I'll do it when I get home and then I'll send you a letter. So I do remember when I was very young?I was still in the single digits?that there was a blackout in New York and my family panicked. Oh, sure. They panicked and they wanted to move out of the state. They had a suitcase and they were running around like crazy with a flashlight. It was just a simple blackout, but they freaked out because it brought back memories. My grandparents said, "Oh, we've got to get out; let's get out; let's get out; let's move to Florida and get out of the state; there's something going on." By the time we got everything all organized to leave, we had lights. So you were impressionable. You remembered that. Very. Oh, definitely remember that. I remember that very well. About how old do you think you were? Oh, I couldn't have been more than five or six. I remember when I had my tonsils out. I was six years old. We went back to the Royal Hospital. They said, "Well, go back to the place you were born and they will take care of you." I remember the bed I was in and I remember they said, 3 "Well, if you're a good girl, when it's over you get ice cream." Oh, ice cream. I remember in the bed next to me catty corner because all the children, kind of four in a big room, it was a boy and he had attitude. He said, "My mom is the nurse here." He had a very cocky attitude. All of a sudden his mother came in and gave him a shot in his butt to shut him up or whatever that he needed, because of his attitude. He started crying and I went, "Well, we're not so smart now, are we?" I remember that. I was six years old. So I think when you're that age you're very impressionable. So if they say you don't remember, that's a big no-no. You do remember. I guess the older I'm getting, it's funny, is that all that is coming back. That's kind of cool. Yes. But Austria, I had no idea. I knew that my grandparents escaped and I guess they escaped with the kids because I was born in the forties, let's put it that way. I was like the end-of-a-war baby and they were definitely part of that whole... Yes, it would be interesting to know when they came and what circumstances, yes. Yes. My cousin might. I'll do you that favor and I'll call and find out from her because she's very family oriented. She's still taking care of her uncle who married into the family. He lives in Miami, Florida. He'll be a hundred and six next month. He says, "I ain't going. I'm not going." So, okay. Isn't that wonderful? He's going to be a hundred and six. Unfortunately, dementia has set in a little bit. You'd think at a hundred six dementia set in, for God's sake. So you can't really talk to him about all that. But his daughter took notes, let's put it that way. So for you I will call and find out and let you know. We can add that to this story. 4 My mother side: My grandfather was Russian. My grandmother was Romanian. One aunt kept hush hush; wanted it to look like a US birth. All the other twelve were in Brooklyn. My dad is a question mark. So you grew up in the Bronx. Yes. What was childhood like in the Bronx? Well, it was a very Jewish neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody. We all went to synagogue for the holidays. We all fasted. I had an older sister who is five years older. It's almost like, okay, I can last longer than you can. I really believe that when my dad left the wine for the angels that when some was gone, not knowing then?you're impressionable?that it evaporates, I went, "Oh, look, they came during the night." I remember all that. He'd hide the matzah. You had to find the matzah. We were very big in the Jewish faith mainly because of the area we lived in. Was it mostly orthodox? No, not orthodox. No, we weren't extreme. Just a normal Jewish area. We'd go on Saturdays to shul and all the kids would play. It was just great. It was a very bonding upbringing. It was close-knit. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody took care of everybody. That was the day which I'm sure that you hear now that life was simpler then. You cared about your neighbors. You cared about people. I remember all the mothers would sit outside on their lawn chairs, because I lived in an apartment building, and we'd all sit outside and the kids would play in the schoolyard next door. It was just safer. You didn't worry about some stranger walking up and down the block. Everybody knew everybody. So if there was a stranger, literally you'd go up 5 and say, "And you are?" They wouldn't talk behind his back; we'll just go right out and ask. There was a lot of little shops and everybody knew everybody's name and it was just great. It was just great. Now that area is like a slum area. It changed. It changed. The Jews moved to Brooklyn where my grandparents are. They moved out of there little by little because it was integrating, and not that they didn't talk to people. It's just they bonded. I remember that there was a couple that lived underneath me. I lived on the third floor and there was this couple on the second floor that were always very quiet. She never came out. They didn't have any kids. It was just the two of them. They were very quiet. They were Jewish as well. I remember asking my mom, I said, "How come she never comes out and plays with you?" She says, "Oh, they were in Auschwitz." So you're pointing. They had the tattoo numbers. Yes, they had tattoos, because I remember saying, "What is that on her arm?" So my mom explained it all to me. She said, "They haven't gotten over the war. They lost the family and they're the only two that got out." So it was like, oh, my God. I would kind of, "Hello," when I'd see them. But they got hit hard. They got hit hard and they were just lucky, I guess, to be alive. They just stayed with themselves. I have to say I'm really proud to be of Jewish faith because it's like when you see somebody else that's a Horowitz or a Schwartzberger, you're back, "Oh, one of mine, one of my people." And I don't go around flaunting, but there's a bond. There's a certain bond that even though I was never part of the Holocaust or any of that I feel for those people. Whenever I'm flipping through and I see on Channel 10 that NOVA they will talk about the Holocaust or they will show it, immediately everything stops and I watch. Everything comes to a stop in my life 6 and I have to watch it. That's part of your identity. That is. That is definitely my identity. I don't let it take over my life, but it will always be a part of my life. I definitely bond with New Yorkers and especially New York Jews. We can sit and talk about food and delis and Chinese food. Every Sunday my parents would go for Chinese food; that was a given, or go to my grandparents' in Brooklyn; she'll feed everybody. My grandparents made their own pickles. They had a little store on Troy Avenue where they had the barrels and they made pickled tomatoes, sauerkraut, coleslaw, dill pickles. One uncle out of thirteen siblings?there were seven girls and six guys, I think, or six brothers, six sisters, seven brothers?one of those; there was a lot?he was moving to Miami. He did business back and forth. So he was going to relocate. He said, "Ooh, I can make money here." And to jump ahead, he got the recipes from his parents, my grandparents, and started this Seashore, Inc. and it was a company that ended up selling them. If you go to any hotel or Wolfies Restaurant and they have the pickled tomatoes on the table? In the bowls. ?the bowls of pickled tomatoes, that was my grandparents' recipe. He sold to all the restaurants, the Fontainebleau, the Eden Roc, all the hotels and all the little restaurants, the delis. So any time I was at a New York deli, I probably was sampling that. You ate a pickle, you ate the Kapchuck recipe, you were eating the Kapchuck's (pickle). Is that your maiden name? No. My maiden name was Salshutz, S-A-L-S-H-U-T-Z. That's on my father's side. But Kapchuck is on my mom's. They started this whole...the pickles. They lived above it. They had one of those they called railroad apartments that it's a long hallway and all the rooms from 7 kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and at the end of the hall was this big living room. So the end of the hall, the game would be on, all the men would be sitting around?the whole room was like nothing but a big table and lots of chairs because feeding thirteen plus the wives and the husbands plus the kids running around, lots of people. The women would be in the kitchen cooking. This is at least twice a month they would have all these things. I started dancing then because I started at eight. My mom was always watching my weight because she wanted to be a dancer, but my grandfather was...At that time that was elicit. No one dances. Really? He didn't realize the type of dancing that she wanted to do?She just wanted to do ballet and..."No, no daughter of mine is going to be a dancer on stage flaunting her body like that." So she said, "One of my daughters will be." And that turned out to be me. So you have a sister? I have an older sister. There's just the two of you? Just the two of us. My mother was always watching my weight and she would watch what my grandmother would put on the plate. My grandmother would always say, "Oh, she's too skinny. She needs fat. She needs food for fuel." There would be a letter leaf and there would be food under the lettuce leaf that my grandmother would shove onto on my plate. My mom would put food on the plate and my grandmother would lift the lettuce leaf and put some more stuff underneath the lettuce leaf. It was hysterical. Oh, that's funny. When my dad would go to get the paper?on weekends, he'd go out to get the paper and hang 8 out with his friends to the newspaper store where they sell candy and stuff?he'd come back and under the pillow or the couch he'd put a piece of halava unbeknownst to my mother because she would have had a fit. If I would tiptoe into the kitchen and try to open the fridge to see what..."Uh, Diana, I hear that. What are you getting? What are you doing in there? There's nothing in there. You ate dinner. Come in here." So what kind of dancing did she encourage you to get into? Ballet. I started with ballet. By the time I was ten I knew that's what I wanted to do the rest of my life. Wow. That's wonderful. I really enjoyed it. How many people can say that? Yes. I can. Like I said, I was living in the Bronx. At eleven I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts, which the movie "Fame" was based on. Literally I auditioned. You have to make up your own routine. There's a panel and it's all the teachers. They have world renowned teachers in that school. I got accepted, and so I started at twelve years old. I'd be up at six a.m., take the bus, take the subway into Manhattan because the school was in Manhattan. Then after class I was studying with the School of American Ballet, which is Balanchine's company. I'd be studying there after dancing for four hours. It was a very small school. The original building is still standing, but it's no longer; it's been a fire hazard since it was built. It's still standing. It's a historical building. They don't have classes there. But they only had six hundred in the whole school and that's freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. They had a dance department, a drama and a music. How they would incorporate, when you were a freshman and sophomore, you had your vocational classes in the 9 morning. Then you had lunch. Then you had your technical whether your math, your English. The core classes. The core classes in the afternoon. When you were a junior-senior, it was vice versa; you had your core classes in the morning and your vocational in the afternoon. Like I said, it was only six hundred. It was a small school. So they worked it out that way. Lots of people came...If I went online there's a lot of actors and dancers. Debbie Allen came from that school. Prestigious people came out of school. A lot of other schools would say, "Well, they don't have any of the classes; it's all about your dance, drama and music." We had all the classes we needed to graduate and to go on to college if we so desired. We just didn't have gym. We didn't have sewing. We didn't have economics with cooking and cleaning like they would have. We didn't have all of those odd classes. Your electives were vocational. Yes. We just had your language. We had math. We had English, or a foreign language if you so choose. We had the basics that you needed to go on, but we just didn't have all the minor courses. Did you ever get tired and regret? No. Never a moment of regret. No. When I'm thinking about it, I was twelve years old. That's when I say it's simpler. You're reading these sites and you're saying, "Oh my God, these horror stories on the subway." I traveled by myself at twelve years old. In the middle of the winter, walked to the bus, took a bus to the subway. Sometimes I didn't get home until eight o'clock at night because after four hours of dance then I'd go to School of American Ballet, because I wanted to be in the company, and 10 take an hour and a half class over there, then get back on the subway, come home, get home at eight o'clock, eat dinner, do homework, get to sleep and start again the next day. So you were raised a very independent person. Yes. Bottom line. Bottom line, independent at twelve years old and I knew what I wanted to do. Tell me a little bit about your dad. So your mom had this dream; she would have liked to have been a dancer. I should have asked more about her. Did she work outside of the home? No. She was a homemaker, stayed home, took care of the kids. What did your dad do? Dad worked in a supermarket in the produce or butcher section. He'd always come home with stuff. The food. He would come home with leftovers and say, "Oh, look, we had this whole turkey. I just took a couple of legs." So he did that and it was just down the block. So he just would walk home. Like I said, life was simpler. The cost of living was simpler. Now there's no way. It's sad that both parents have to work to survive. But the kids, they don't...I don't know whether it's just being in the entertainment that they're more structured because I knew what I wanted to do and all the others in the school did too. If you didn't keep up, they would fire you and you'd go back to your local high school. Because it was such a small school, you had to be dedicated. They had to be strict. If this wasn't what you wanted to do but you did the work, you were fine. But if they see that you're not giving your heart and you don't really care and you kind of slough... 11 Was it a public school? Yes. So you didn't pay tuition or anything extra to go there? No, no. There was another school, a PCS, a Professional Children's School, and that school wasn't public, but a lot of those kids were working. Like if you see shows that have kids on TV, they were all from that school. So they would work their academic classes around their work schedule, whether they have a tutor or they'll go on the set or on a Broadway show at intermission, "Here, read this chapter and report on it after." So that was that school, but ours was nine to three?or eight to three, actually. That's wonderful. So you get through that high school. You mentioned to me that you went to Hunter College for a year. Yes, in psychology. I always had a thing about the mind and the brain. I don't know why, but I just did. I went there for a year, but I went at night so I had my days free. So I was taking classes. I also should interject when I was fourteen when I was at Performing Arts and I was still going to School of American Ballet, I was asked by Balanchine to be in his Nutcracker [1960], his ballet. That's an important thing. Yes, it was. Thanks for introducing it. Everybody in school, all of the teachers, "Congratulations." "Thank you." That's what I wanted to do and here I was doing it. I was still going to school, still taking classes and now rehearsing as well for the ballet. Somehow I did it. I don't know how I did it. My classes didn't suffer. Because you can't...The teachers say, "Hey, you still have to do your academics. I don't care how 12 you do it, but you have to do it. I don't care how you take this test. The paper is due this day." They didn't make it easy. They didn't make it easy on you and say, "Okay, well, you get a pass for this one." No. I had to do it even if I took it during rehearsals at the ballet school. I would be adding and subtracting and doing my homework while I was rehearsing the ballet. So when I graduated I still kept continuing because I wanted to be in his company. I got to advance to the professional level, which in the school it's A, B, C, D. A is a beginner. B is intermediate. C is advanced. D is professional, when you get to professional level. They look at you in the class and they say whether they want to advance you depending on what they see. When you get to professional, your chances of getting into the company are pretty good. I was already in the professional since I was fourteen. Then when I graduated at seventeen I wanted to do more than just ballet. I just felt restricted because I saw a couple of Broadway shows and I went, "Ah, look at that." [Pause in recording] So I wanted to do more than just the ballet. Like I said, I saw a couple of Broadway shows. So I started learning jazz and I went with Matt Mattox at the time. He just recently passed away [Died 2013 in Paris FR]. He was a top jazz dance teacher. If you Google him, he's world-renowned. He ended up teaching in Paris and that was his dream was to live and teach in Paris and he did and that's where he crossed over, so to speak. But I studied with him and I was a typical ballet dancer, which is so opposite jazz. But he taught me the technique. Then I went to Luigi, who passed away in 2015 [Eugene Louis Faccuito], and he became my mentor. Luigi? Luigi, L-U-I-G-I. He taught Gene Kelly. He taught me a jazz style and I said, "Ah, that's what I want." So I did that during the day and go to Hunter College at night. I said, "Okay, I have to 13 make a choice," because then I started auditioning for shows and getting them. I think my first Broadway show was Baker Street, which was directed by Hal Prince [1964]. Tommy Tune was in it. Christopher Walken was in it. Then I said, "Okay, then I can't do school." I had to make a choice and I said, "Okay, I've been doing this for ten years. I can't." So that was the end of that; I finished the first year semester and then I graciously bowed out. Then the rest was history. I've been performing. I did a million?well, I won't say a million. But I did regional theater all around New York from Kiss Me, Kate to Wildcat to Sound of Music to West Side Story. You name it, I did them all. My first Broadway show was Baker Street and that opened up another venue. I studied acting with Sandy Meisner of Neighborhood Playhouse, which is world-renown in New York. Then I went on to doing Sweet Charity?oh, wait, I think I did A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in the middle. Then I did Sweet Charity, the touring company, which brought me out here, but not permanently. Right. But that was just first stop. That was my first. It was with Juliet Prowse and we played Caesars Palace. It was a small town. We came in like a bang. We were only supposed to be here for three months, twelve weeks, and they extended us for six months because it was standing ovation every night. We were all New York dancers and it was just a great show. We stayed for six months and then we left and went to California, toured California. Then I went back to New York. I was hired out there to be featured in Golden Rainbow, a show with Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorm?. It was based on a Frank Sinatra movie, Hole in the Head. They did a musical version of the movie and that played a year. Then this choreographer came in and said he was putting together a show in Paris; would 14 I be interested in going and being featured in the show? And I went, "Sure," because I loved traveling. So I did that and then I came back. Then Sammy Davis' choreographer, they were putting together a TV show [1966-1967]; would I like to be part of that? So I did that for a year. Working with Sammy Davis was wonderful. It didn't even feel like work even though you were working because it was a little family. It was just lots of laughter. Judy Garland was a guest once and that was a very sad moment because he told all of us that she's coming in and she's kind of nervous, so let's make her very comfortable. Then we all sat around the piano and we were singing. She was very humble. We rehearsed all that week. When we were rehearsing, Sunday was taping out in Brooklyn, the NBC Studios of Brooklyn. We go out there on the Sunday and it was a live audience at that time. We were supposed to go at eight o'clock and eight o'clock there was no Judy. To make a long story short, she was paranoid, afraid to come out and locked herself in her dressing room. So Sammy had to go in there. Somehow, lots of coffee and whatever, he got her up when she was gone. We had to rearrange on the spot the whole format of the show. We didn't get out of there until eleven o'clock. We told the audience, "If you want to leave, you can leave." Nobody wanted to leave. They stayed until eleven o'clock. Instead of her singing by herself, because she couldn't stand by herself, Sammy Davis was there holding her and the two of them would sing duets. Nobody was the wiser. It came across as nobody was the wis