First Tour of Sugar

Dr. Beninfeld

My dancing doctor had delivered my three children and now he was coming on tour with us. He auditioned for the part of Mr. Beanstock, the road manager of Sweet Sue’s Society Syncopaters and not only got the part but managed to get himself an increased salary by becoming my hairstylist. He was the best hair stylist I ever had. The added blessing was I had my personal physician traveling with me and my children.

While on tour with SUGAR, I was performing eight shows a week, traveling with Andy and my babysitter/niece and three children. I split the tour between two of my nieces, Torianne Maiorino and Laura O’Reilly. They had never traveled before, so it was a new adventure for us all. We created wonderful memories we will never forget. In each city, I managed to book myself into the show room of each hotel we stayed at to “try out” my one woman show. So, on Saturday night after my eighth performance as SUGAR I would shift gears and do a late-night performance of my musical comedy act on motherhood. The women in Tulsa in 1979 were not ready to expose their feelings in front of their husbands and placed their hands over their mouths to stifle their laughter. Their eyes gave them away, they were definitely relating to my honest, irreverent view of motherhood. Sunday, our free day, would be spent packing up for the next city. Monday morning, we would leave early for our flight to our next destination. Upon arriving Andy and I would check into our hotel, say goodbye to the children and my niece and head for the theater for a tech rehearsal and press meetings. We would go back to the hotel for dinner and then right to the theater for our opening night for reviewers. The show was hilariously scripted right from I.A.L.Diamond and Billy Wilder’s screenplay of SOME LIKE IT HOT. Robert Morse was and is a comic genius and every performance I learned something new from the master. Show after show the laughter was deafening and each audience celebrated us with a standing ovation. I have been blessed to be part of shows that always got standing ovations. Our schedule was hectic, after the two weeks rehearsal in Atlanta we performed there for another two weeks then it became week to week traveling to Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Half of these engagements were at outdoor theaters in ninety-five-plus degrees and sweltering humidity. After my ten-minute dance routine (Sugar Shell) in the opening of the second act, my quick change was nearly impossible due to the excess moisture covering my body. I had three wardrobe ladies (dressers) blotting me down with towels and helping me slip into a slinky satin negligee, in record time for my next scene.

Leading Lady

While on tour I would hang out with Donald O’Connor and his wife Gloria. Every day, she insisted I was the reincarnation of Carol Lombard, come back to hang out with them. She said it was uncanny how much I looked and sounded like her and had her same personality. After seeing my one woman show Donald was excited to hear all about my “musical.” During this same period of writing binges, I had written a musical about a day in my life in Brooklyn titled ARNIE’S WAKE. It became another one woman show as I would take Donald through each scene complete with an impression of each character. He seriously wanted to play the part of my father in my musical, but it never came to be. We laughed a lot and he loved my songs and gave me the second-best compliment of my life, he told me out of all the women he had worked with I was the funniest. My best compliment was when my mother came to Atlanta to see the show and afterward said, “I got so into it I totally forgot it was you up there.” Donald and Gloria would share wonderful stories of a time long gone. Not just about old Hollywood, but all the way back to his years as a child, performing with his family in Vaudeville. He had us enthralled telling us about the number he did with his family that concluded with him taking a running leap out over the orchestra pit and his brother was supposed to catch him by the back of his jacket and pull him back on stage. One night his brother missed, did a double grab and hook him through his ear, keeping him from a worse fate of crashing in the pit. As he told it, he finished the number with blood running down his face from the hole in his ear. Another time he told us about the filming of the famous “Make em Laugh” number from the Classic Hollywood Musical, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. It was filmed in one sequence with the camera following him and at the end of the number he runs up the walls and the last run he was supposed to crash through the wall which was a heavily painted paper. He was so slim that he couldn’t break through the paper wall. So, after four attempts and having to go through the entire number straight through each time he solved his problem by doing a rabbit kick with both feet and broke through. If you watch carefully you can see it in the movie.