I'll Cry Tomorrrow Read online

  We began to read the “Runner’s Bible” a collection of excerpts from the Old and New Testaments, studying the words of sages and prophets, seeking to find a philosophy to live by. We read together an hour a day.

  One evening we spoke seriously about our feelings for each other. I had thought it was love too many times before. I wasn’t sure now. I knew that I was very fond of him, and felt lost when we weren’t together. He, too, was not sure what the actual meaning of love was; but he was content and happy with me. Yet it all seemed quite hopeless. I was a Jewess, he a Catholic. The gulf between us was widened not only by religion but by my past. I could understand why his friends cut him when they saw him with me. In only one respect were our backgrounds alike: we’d both once had money—he because he’d been born to it, I because I had earned it—and now we were both broke. Both of us had been at the top: now both were at the bottom, given up by those who once loved us.

  “But the differences aren’t so terribly important,” Burt said earnestly. Then he added, with a rueful smile, “Of course, with this bum leg I couldn’t take you dancing, or do any wild gallivanting. I’d slow you up too much.”

  “Oh, Burt,” I said, aghast. “Believe me, I never think of your affliction. To me you are perfect. I’m the one who is not complete. Even if we married, I could not have children. I’m the one’s who’s not whole. I’m only a shell of myself.”

  Now he was taken aback. “That’s a terrible way to think!” he exclaimed. I see. you as perfect. I see you in God’s image. I see amazing things happening to you. I’ve seen the change in your personality for the better—gradually you’ve gone from negative to positive thinking. I know it by your search for knowledge, by the way you study the various philosophies and toy to reach God as you know God. Why,” he went on, suddenly, “Lillian, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you speak in churches some day. I can just see you challenged by people who won’t understand in the beginning.”

  As I regained myself, he said, I would reach the top again. I would be in the public eye. “By then” he continued, “you will have built yourself a glass house, and it will be good for you, because it will keep you firm in your belief and keep you studying. Remember,” he said, and he put his hand on mine, “you’re going to be back in your career, on the top.”

  I thought, now, wasn’t he wonderful? Maybe he really is in love with me, because he must be slightly mad to believe I could become all that. And how would someone like me be asked to speak in churches? And what would I speak about? And reach the top again….

  No one could ever know how Burt rebuilt my deflated ego, and what confidence he instilled in me. When a woman is down as far as she thinks she can descend, and a man meets her and sees potentialities and a beauty which she thought long since gone…When a man has such dreams about what a woman can be again, and places her on a pedestal, she must try to attain that goal. She can do no less. I had thought everything in me had disintegrated, deteriorated, vanished. But not in Burt’s eyes.

  “We have to decide what you and I can accomplish together,” he said. “But we have to start with you. Suppose I try to get you some steady bookings.” He leaned over and kissed me on the tip of my nose. “Not suppose,” he said. “I will.”

  So we pooled our interests and our efforts. Burt took me to Werner’s of Switzerland, on Fifth Avenue, a beauty parlor to which he used to take aspiring models when he was associated with John Robert Powers. “We’re going to redo you,” he said. He made me change my dark hair to blonde. “It’ll help you feel like a new person,” he explained. He borrowed money to buy me a few dresses. At every turn he was there to advise, encourage, counsel.

  As for marriage-perhaps, we thought, that had better wait a little while. Katie had met Burt and liked him. “But Lilly,” she said, when she realized how I felt about him, “don’t rush into this marriage. So many mistakes so far, so many mistakes!”

  In late 1946 Burt booked me into a small nightclub, the Chateau Madrid, in New York. For the first time in years I was singing again in the Big City. My photograph, blown up, big as life, was outside. With Katie, Burt, Minna and Edna in the audience, I sang songs from “The Vagabond King;” I sang, “Sing, You Sinners!” “Ain’t She Sweet,” and other numbers I had introduced, as well as many new tunes. And one rainy day in January, 1947, Burt, escorting me home from the AA clubhouse, said casually, “Let’s get married.” I hesitated. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get married. This one is for keeps.” I could not—I did not—want to say no again.

  We went to West New York, a sleepy New Jersey town, and were directed to the marriage bureau by two men, a little the worse for drink, who were lounging aimlessly in front of City Hall. After we obtained our license, we emerged to find the men still there. We looked at them, Burt and I, and knew them for our own. Burt said gently to them, “Would you boys do us a big favor and be our witnesses?”

  They came into the clerk’s office and stood at our sides as we were married.

  CHAPTER XXV

  IT DIDN’T FOLLOW, just because I had been sober for six months, that bookings fell into my lap. Burt’s job as my manager was no easy one. I had been out of sight too long.

  The Chateau Madrid was followed by La Martinique, one of New York’s top nightclubs. I was held over for four weeks. Then I was invited to the Five O’clock Club in Miami. Audiences and critics were enthusiastic.

  Then silence. No bookings. Our money dwindled.

  Burt checked into it, “This is how it shapes up,” he said, after making the rounds. “They’re afraid of you, Lillian. In some places they’re afraid to book you because if you’re successful, you might get drunk. Others fear that if you fail, you’ll turn to liquor. Still others won’t engage you because when your name comes up, someone says, ‘What do we want an old bag like that? She must be sixty by now.’”

  We looked at each other, and I must have appeared so woebegone that he laughed and kissed me. “We’ve had tougher times,” he said. “It won’t be easy, but we’ll make it.”

  Apparently, it was going to be tougher before it would be easier. New complications arose because of an article about me in Look magazine, which traced my return to sobriety and attributed it to my association with a group of ex-alcoholics.

  I had wished to remain anonymous, but after consulting some AA friends, they agreed that my story would help others. In addition, as Burt put it: “You weren’t anonymous when you were drinking. If the press could print stories and pictures about you beaten and disgraced, it’s only right to let people know you’re soter again.”

  Yet I was criticized. Some said I was glorifying a drunken career. Others accused me of using AA for personal publicity, although in the Look article I made no mention of the organization by name. Still others, meeting me on the street, if they did not turn aside (this still brought tears to my eyes) tried to joke about my sobriety. “Don’t kid us, Lillian,” they’d say. “Once a lush, always a lush. You’ll be back on the bottle again.” One erstwhile friend said laughingly, “I wish you luck, kid, but you were sober when you came out of the hospital and it didn’t take long before you were pie-eyed again.”

  For the first time since my sobriety I felt almost despondent. Again, it seemed I’d hit a stone wall. Then an invitation came. The Tivoli Theatrical Circuit in Melbourne, Australia, wanted me for a six months’ tour through Australia and New Zealand.

  We were broke. The adverse criticism of the few became magnified in my mind; I was heartsick about it Burt and I agreed it would be helpful to get away for a while and obtain a new perspective. A final argument was that the tour would enable me to earn enough money to take care of Katie as I wanted to.

  We accepted.

  Burt hadn’t seen his mother since our marriage. “We’re going on a long journey,” I said. “I think you should visit her. I can’t blame her for not understanding our problem, or for being unsympathetic toward our marriage. She doesn’t know me, I’m of a different religion, and what she’s
read about me can’t make her feel very happy about us.”

  Burt made the visit, and returned beaming. His mother wanted to meet me. I went to her Park Avenue apartment, my heart in my mouth. I knew I could never be the girl she had envisaged as her son’s wife.

  She took me in her arms when we met, and embraced me. “Can you ever forgive me for waiting so long?” she asked. She was a slight, gentle woman, not at all the formidable dowager I had expected. “I’m surprised you even asked me to come,” I replied. “My record doesn’t look very good in print.”

  “We must forget all that,” she said. “We should be great friends.” Later she added, “You know, our Lord is a Jew, the greatest Jew that ever lived.” When we left, she kissed me again and gave me a small book entitled, Prayer and Intelligence. “Some day you may want to read this,” she said, almost shyly. “It was translated by a Jewess.”

  A week later we boarded the ship at San Francisco, only to be told that it had been a troop carrier, and was still divided into separate quarters for the sexes. Burt and I would have to be separated.

  I became panicky. I had not been apart from Burt since our marriage, and very little before then; and on those occasions, an AA had been with me nearly every hour. I was physically sober, but, without Burt, might I not suffer the dry jitters…

  I became even more frightened when I saw my bunk, one in a tier of bunks in a barracks-like lower hold with nearly 30 women and children. And my first night was almost as bad as my first night at Bloomingdale’s. There was scarcely six inches between me and the bunk above. I suffered from claustrophobia. My bunk was over the engine room, and I lay alone, almost smothering, the engines droning in my ears. Somewhere an electric fan whirred weirdly. I began to gag; I broke out into cold sweats: all the symptoms of my alcoholic insanity seemed to come back. The awful thought beat at my brain: maybe I wasn’t sent to Bloomingdale’s for alcoholism, but for insanity! Hadn’t I been sober for months, and wasn’t I lying here, suffering the agony all over again?…I lay weakly, and the engines seemed to spin out the words, “Holy Night, Silent Night,” over and over again: a steady drone. And finally I fell asleep.

  In the morning, Burt comforted me. “It will take time, darling. You’re still thinking alcoholically. But easy does it…”

  That day the voyage was brightened by the meeting with a minister, the Rev. William James of Melbourne, who was returning home after a visit to the United States. We told him about the work being done by AA. Perhaps he could pass the word along in his church.

  “It helps us, you know, when we can help other alcoholics,” I told him. “If you ever meet any one with a drinking problem, will you send him to us when we’re in Melbourne?”

  “I have one back home I’ll give you as a gift,” he said, with a half-smile. “I can’t do anything with him. He drinks up my collection box. God help him, he’s been a hopeless drunk for twenty years.”

  “We’ll do our best,” I promised.

  His Majesty’s Theatre representative who met us when we arrived in Auckland in July, 1947 made no attempt to conceal his surprise. “I expected to see a much older woman,” he confessed.

  I perked up. He said it as if he meant it.

  I did well in New Zealand, although I was never certain about the applause. For the theatre was so cold that people wore overcoats and carried blankets. Often I wondered if their applause was for me, or to keep themselves warm.

  A charming gray-haired little woman dropped in one day to see us backstage. She introduced herself as Karen Wilson, a member of Parliament. She’d heard that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, she said; New Zealand knew nothing about the organization or its work, she added, and she felt that a group similar to AA was desperately needed in the country. Were we prepared to help start such an organization here?

  I explained my wish to remain anonymous. In the States my membership had become known and I didn’t want to risk further criticism. “Of course, each member decides for himself whether he wishes anonymity,” I pointed out. “In my case I want people to think of me as an artist, not as a kind of freak who’s overcome a problem. But I’d be glad to work behind the scenes with you, and Burt and I will help you in that way to form a group.”

  Miss Wilson, who masked an iron will and a tremendous amount of energy behind her frail appearance, understood. Quietly she introduced us to her associates, among them a film producer, a newspaper man and an advertising executive who had attended AA meetings in the States. With them we launched the nucleus of an AA group in Auckland.

  Alcoholic fumes still tantalized me. I resented the fact that others could drink with impunity. A considerable amount of social drinking went on around us, wherever we were. Now and then some of our heartier friends pushed a huge brandy glass under my nose and said with heavy jocularity, “Take a sniff!” At a dinner party one man remarked with some impatience: “Oh, you Americans and your isms. Americanism, radicalism, Momism, and now alcoholism! No such thing. It’s all absurd.”

  We had been only a few days in Melbourne, Australia—where I opened at the Tivoli Theatre—when the doorman rapped on my dressing room. Distaste was written on his face. “There’s someone here called Jack and he says the Rev. Mr. James sent him to see you.”

  The Rev. Mr. James? Of course—the minister we met on shipboard.

  At the stage door stood an emaciated, unhappy man. His frayed sleeves were too short, his trousers looked as if they had been taken from a rubbish heap, the soles of his shoes flapped. He stood there, shaking. He managed to get out a few words: “The Reverend said you could help me, ma’am, and I need help very badly.”

  I looked swiftly at Burt. This man needed a drink, as I had needed one my first day in AA. We had a bottle in our trunk. Perhaps we had taken it with us so I would know it was there: perhaps we had taken it with us in anticipation of such a case as we had now. But we had it.

  I took the man’s arm. “Come on in, Jack, I know just what’s bothering you.” We led him to a chair in our dressing room. “How’d you like a little drink to stop those shakes?” He looked up gratefully, his teeth chattering. He was too far gone to speak again.

  I poured the drink, and held the glass for him. But my hand shook, too, and Burt had to steady my hand with his as I held the glass to Jack’s mouth. Little did our visitor know how I felt as the liquid went down his parched throat and the fumes went up my nose—if only that were going into me! But he needed it—and he needed me.

  He still trembled, but he knew he was among friends now.

  I was due on stage in ten minutes. We had to keep Jack under surveillance. He had to be talked to, watched, comforted.

  Adjoining our dressing room was that of a dance team, Cabot and Dresden, a married couple who had been friendly to us. I hurried into their room. “You must do something for us,” I said. “We have an alcoholic in a bad way in our room. I’m due on stage now and Burt has to stand in the wings. Would you pretend that you’re alcoholics? Because usually when we have something to do, we pass him on to another AA. If he thinks you’re alcoholic, he’ll feel at his ease.”

  Of course they would, said Mrs. Cabot. She led our new friend to their room, and began unfolding a fantastic story of alcoholism. Later we gave Jack a dollar and told him to return whenever he wished. We knew he would buy liquor with it, but he could not buy much. We had planted a seed, however small. He would be back.

  Next evening, at the stage entrance, Jack was there with another man. Both stood, shaking. “My buddy here,” Jack said with a weak grin, “he needs help, too.”

  Undoubtedly Jack told his friend he had found two soft-hearted Americans who were good for a touch of a dollar, and even a free shot of liquor. All you had to do was to listen to them talk.

  Burt and I conspired together. We asked Jack’s friend to go into Cabot and Dresden’s room. While I spoke to him there, Burt spoke to Jack in our room. I told our newest friend: “Jack had a fair amount of sobriety for one day, but I can tell that yo
u know more in one hour than he knows in a day. Now, Burt and I have a dinner engagement we can’t break. I want you to take care of Jack. Here’s some money and you take him to dinner and see that he doesn’t touch a drink.”

  Then I took Jack aside. “Jack, you’re a little shaky yet, but you’re the stronger one. You’ve had nearly a day of sobriety. Take care of your friend. See that he doesn’t drink.”

  Two hours later they returned. Each told me separately how he had watched the other. Neither had taken a drink.

  After that we kept one with us, in our room or that of our friends’, while the other sat in a box to watch the show. Thus neither one was able to get a drink.

  Meanwhile, a third candidate arrived. The word was out. By week’s end, we were dealing with six alcoholics, and had an AA nucleus. We knew three would make it; the statistics never failed. Fifty per cent would become sober; twenty-five per cent would leave, but return; the remaining twenty-five per cent would be lost.

  Presently we were holding meetings in our dressing room. Alcoholics were with us sometimes until three a.m. Then we left for the hotel, and back again the next day. We spoke with them for hours; we went through the DTs with them, walked miles with them, poured black coffee in them—what had been done for me nearly a year before, and for Burt two years before, we now did for them.

  In the midst of this activity, a ruddy-faced heavy-set man who exuded strength and good humor, called on us. He was the Rev. Irving Benson of All Souls Chinch. He conducted a national radio program from his church each Sunday, called “A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon,” to which he invited distinguished guest speakers. Recent visitors had included Winston Churchill and General Montgomery. Would I be good enough to come to his church next Sunday and speak to his congregation, and to the listening audience throughout Australia? On alcoholism?

  Speak from a pulpit? Burt was prophetic! I was overwhelmed. Awkwardly and in embarrassment I had talked before small AA meetings in the States. But to speak on the air to millions….”It’s against the principles of AA,” I protested. “I will be criticized. I might be accused again of seeking publicity.”