ENCOUNTERING PEARL BAILEY

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Forest Park in St. Louis was the sight of the 1904 “Louisiana Purchase Exhibition” which became the back drop of the MGM classic Judy Garland musical “Meet Me in St. Louis” which eventually spawned a stage musical of the same name.

Many of the buildings and structures from the 1904 World’s Fair survived in the form of the St. Louis Art Museum, The Pavilion, the Jefferson Memorial and the lake, canals and lagoons for boating. According to the Municipal Opera’s (Or the Muny as it has become known) website, public demand for an outdoor theatre began in 1917 and construction began on April 16th and was completed in 49 days. The first production was Verdi’s opera AIDA and opened on June 2nd.

In honor of The Muny's 50th season, Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway brought the entire cast of Broadway’s African-American production of Hello, Dolly! to The Muny. The pair made return appearances in the roles of Dolly Levi and Horace Vandergelder in 1971.

For those of you who are too young to remember Pearl Mae Bailey, she was one of the premiere female vocalists of the 1940’s and 1950’s, beginning her career at age 15 appearing in night clubs and theaters also performing with the Count Basie Orchestra and other contemporaries as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Nat King Cole, and Duke Ellington, as well as appearing in motion pictures.

She also married the great drummer and band leader Louis Bellson in 1952. She was considered to be , in today’s parlance, a superstar. She was appointed a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations by President Herald Ford in 1975. At age 67 she enrolled in Georgetown University earning a bachelor’s degree in theology. She was equally adored by the public and her show business peers making frequent appearances of the top variety shows of the era.

I was privileged to be in the audience for that 50th Anniversary performance. I was dating a young lady who was the daughter of the official Muny’s men hair stylist, so we had pretty good seats. It was a fun and spirited performance. During the “Hello, Dolly” production number she stopped the show in the middle of the song, walked down to the conductor in the orchestra pit and announced in her inimitable style “ Honey. I like that number so much, we’re gonna do it again” and went back up the stairs and started it all over again to the joy of the 11,000 audience members.

At the end of the show there was a 30 minute encore. Pearl several of her best known songs and the amazing Can Calloway performed his signature song “Minnie The Moocher” to the cheers and delight of all.
A sidebar for those of you unfamiliar with the Muny stage. Its enormous boast a 40 foot diameter turntable at its center. This feature allowed the gigantic sets to be moved from act to act with great ease and only added to the performance. The running joke about the Muny stage was that it was so big an actor had to start to make his move five minutes before his cue so they could hit their mark on time.

My tradition was a late dinner after the performance at the Hunt Room at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel, which was located on Kingshighway and Lindell, just outside the Northeast corner of the park. The Chase was always where celebrities who were performing in St. Louis, whether it was the Muny or the American Theater, always stayed, so it was no great surprise to run into them there.

This particular night we took a booth in the back corner. As we waited to be served, suddenly Pearl Bailey and a small “entourage” (it turned out to be her manager and family members) entered and took a table next to ours on the far side of a sort of partition; a short wall topped off with posts; which didn’t allow for a great deal of privacy.

After we ordered, I persuaded my date to approach Miss Bailey and tell her how much we had enjoyed the show. We got up and went over to her table and waited silently for she was in a conversation with, who we would learn later, was her manager. We waited quietly, hoping for a lull in her conversation so we could quickly jump in.

She eventually looked up at us and said, “Honey, I’m talking to my manager. If y’all give me a minute I’ll come over to your table.” That caught us off-guard, but I collected myself quickly and replied “We just wanted to come over and tell you we just saw the show and wanted to tell you how much we enjoyed it.” She thanked us and then excused ourselves and returned to our table.

Now we had approached her quietly, politely, and with respect. Our order came and we watched Miss Bailey while we ate. During the interval from our returning to our table and the time we left, Miss Bailey was approached by several other people, some asking for autographs (which she refused), almost all of them interrupting her, discourteously, and being turned away.

The worst “intruder” of the evening was a tallish man who managed to spot Miss Bailey from the entrance to the restaurant (which wasn’t easy because she was sitting with her back to the entrance), and calling her name out loudly across the room. Now The Hunt Room was not that large a room to begin with so you can imagine how this loud mouth’s voice carried.

As I recall, he barged through the restaurant directly to Miss Bailey’s table and pulled out a dollar bill, demanding an autograph, which she politely but firmly, and repeatedly refused. I honestly can’t remember how they finally got rid of him, but her finally left.

My date and I had finished our meal and patiently waited to see if Miss Bailey would, indeed, join us, still seeing people intruding on her the entire time, rather inconsiderably in my opinion. We had finally decided to leave when Miss Bailey suddenly looked up and saw us. She grabbed a paper place mat, signed it and handed it to a young man who brought it over to us. S he handed it to me he said, “My mom asked me to give this to you.” Somewhat in shock, we thanked him and he returned to rejoin his mother.

As we get up to leave, we went back to Miss Bailey’s table, thanked her, told he we hoped she would have a good run with the show while she was in town, and we left.

Now you have to know, we were the only people who had approached her that evening, just to thank her for an entertaining evening and at no time had asked her for an autograph…and ended up with one and everyone who had interrupted her asking for one, didn’t get one. There’s a lot to be said for common courtesy.
Fast forward to the mid-1970’s. I’m now working as a messenger driver in Los Angeles. One of our biggest clients is ABC Television. Everything from running scripts for “General Hospital” writers and actors to the corporate offices which were then in Century City (Pre-Pre Disney ownership).

On this particular day I get a call for a run from ABC Studios on Prospect to Richard Dawson’s house in Beverly Hills. I get to Mr. Dawson’s house, with instructions to put the envelope in his hand. I get to his house, ring the bell, no answer. I ring it again. No answer, I use the door knocker. No answer. I’m about to go back to my car and call in for instructions when the door finally opens and I’m confronted with a very tanned Richard Dawson wearing nothing but a bath towel.

As he signs for the envelope he explains he had literally just returned from Hawaii and had been in the shower and apologized for taking so long to answer the door, We got into a very nice conversation when he told me they were shooting a celebrity “Love Boat” version of Family Feud and asked if I’d like to be his guest. I told him that I would enjoy that very much and he said he’d put my name on the guest list, then tipped me a dollar (only one other person ever tipped me for a delivery and that was Dolly Martin, Dick Martin of Rowan and Martin’s wife; interesting enough they were both British).

I invited my friend Sue Barrano to go with me, I think she was working as the receptionist at Electra Records at the time. I told her I wasn’t sure how this was going to go and if my name wasn’t on the list, it was no big deal.

We get to the ABC Prospect studio and parked in the main lot where there was a herd of tourist buses already parked. I went up to the security desk and gave one of the pages my name. It wasn’t on the list. When asked who invited me, I told them the truth and said it was no big deal. Suddenly the four pages burst into a flurry of activity, making phone calls, running to the studio, generally running amok. I was prepared to leave.

Then one of the pages hung up the phone and said, “Come with me, please.” And he led Sue and I to the V.I.P. bench, ahead of all the tourists still waiting by the gate. When the time came to go into the studio, the few of us who were in the V.I.P. area where escorted in first.

We took our seats and when the show started I was surprised to find that Pearl Bailey was one of the guest stars that night. The taping was fun and hilarious and as soon as the show ended I told Sue I’d meet her outside and ran up the aisle.

Being familiar with ABC lot, I knew that directly to the right of the stage entrance was the performer’s entrance. I burst out of the doors and headed for the performer’s entrance just un time to run into Miss Bailey. As I started to introduce myself she paused and looked at me, interrupting me.

“Oh, yeah, honey...St. Louis. Hello, Dolly. How’ve ya been?” Flabbergasted, I muttered some kind of response. “It was good to see you, but I’ve got to go. Y’all take care”, and she got into her limousine and drove away.

This is why she was the Good Will Ambassador to the U.N.