We’ve just celebrated that special day when we take time out to thank and honor all our mothers. I’m going out on a limb here in assuming that we’ve all had mothers, except for a few members of Congress.
I’ve written about my own mother, Ruby, in the past, but this year I thought I’d focus on a different side of her life. Ruby was interested in the entertainment world from childhood. She grew up in poverty in Chicago, just north of the Loop. Her father deserted the family, leaving Ruby to help earn money for her mother and younger sister. One way she did this was to enter Chicago area talent contests for kids, and more often than not won cash prizes of 25 cents or 50 cents. My grandmother’s best friend was Agnes Ayers, an aspiring young actress at Essanay Studios in Chicago. When Agnes received an offer from Hollywood, she tried to convince my grandmother to escape her hardscrabble life and join her. My grandmother was tempted, but declined. With two children to care for, she felt it was too risky to leave Chicago behind. This offer may have piqued Ruby’s interest in entertainment, because Agnes achieved great success, as a star with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik and other films.
Years later, on one of our family vacations to Hollywood, my mother found silent film star Francis X. Bushman, who had been a co-star of Agnes’. He spent at least 20 minutes visiting with us, but for me as a punk teenager, I was anxious to get down to the beach and the surfer girls. Later back home, I saw Francis X. on Perry Mason and other TV shows and wished I would’ve paid more attention to his stories.
Growing up, my mother gave me and my sister the opportunity to take many types of lessons including dance, accordion, piano, voice and ballet. We attended gobs of live shows because of my mother, mostly at the Chicago Theater and the Amphitheater. I remember Sid Caesar and his Show of Shows with Carl Reiner and Imogene Cocoa; Jackie Gleason’s Review with The Honeymooners, The Poor Soul, Joe the Bartender, and all his other characters; Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. In grade school, Ruby had been in choir with Frankie Lane (Mule Train, Rawhide) and after his show we had a backstage visit with him. I met Win Stracke, a Chicago folk singer, actor and a regular on Stud Terkel’s TV show, Stud’s Place. She had dated Win back in the 1930s, so we visited him after the program You may have noticed my mother took us everywhere with her.
She was bold but not pushy, never hesitating to possibly get backstage, which is how, after Jim Moran’s Midnight Ticker Show, we met Carol Lynley and Red Skelton. She liked to improve our seats for performances. For Martin & Lewis, we were a dozen rows back. Once the show started, she saw three empty seats in the second row, just right of center. She took our hands and made those seats ours. We even stayed there for the next show when you could do that in those days.
In Summers during the 1950s, Chicago used to put on entertainment festivals at Soldier Field. One time we were in seats far left, opposite where the goal post would later be, about halfway up in the stands. No good. Again with us children in tow, my mother took us down the stairs and on to the asphalt area where the performers waited until it was their time to go on stage. We met humorist Herb Shriner, Chicago’s Blue Fairy, Brigid Bazlen, Leo Carrillo (Pancho on The Cisco Kid) and even Bob Hope. Leo was especially exciting because he was in his Pancho outfit and rode his horse, Loco. When he saw us he climbed down and came over. Even to me, it was obvious Leo had been knocking back a few. When it was nearly time for his entrance, he picked up my sister, jumped up on Loco, and yanked the reigns. Loco reared up on its hind legs. Too scary for my sister, who started crying, so Leo handed her down to my mother and trotted off with an “Adios, amigos.”
My mother was destined to remain on the entertainment periphery, choosing marriage and children rather than the spotlight, which was probably fortunate for me because you wouldn’t be reading this column. Some how I believe she lived vicariously through her younger sister, Violet. Vi became a professional roller skater. She and a lady partner formed a skating duo, touring with the Royal American Shows and later, on their own, as the opening act for Danny Thomas. My crying sister, Beverly, worked in various circuses swinging high on a rope doing aerial ballet. She and her ringmaster husband performed three times on television’s Bozo’s Circus. They joined a British circus and later lived for years in Ireland, where they had their own radio show. She even got to meet Princess Diana.
Because of my mother’s inspiration, I spent quite a few years as a musician in a rock band under contract with King Records, and as an independent studio musician. And, as I’ve blatantly written here ad nauseam, I did some paid acting on stage and screen.
Thank you, Mom, for the opportunities you gave us. Love to you and all mothers every day, every where.