Sticking up for yourself and your well-being is not always easy. It was especially hard for me when I was starting out in show business, because I really wanted to keep my job and not make waves. But, as you pursue your passion, there will inevitably come a time when you are going to have to speak up and stand your ground. As you’ll read below, my lesson was learned the hard way while wildly cavorting in the musical Paint Your Wagon. Don’t paint yourself into a corner like I did. There are times when you might have to kick up a fuss.
Please enjoy your next excerpt from
Long Legs and Tall Tales: A Showgirl’s Wacky, Sexy Journey to the Playboy Mansion and the Radio City Rockettes
by Kristi Lynn Davis
Game over! With our Chess match complete, we moved right into Paint Your Wagon—a show about the California gold rush back in 1853. It opened on Broadway in 1951 and featured the famous ballad “They Call the Wind Mariah.” Clint Eastwood starred in the movie version. Along with this new endeavor came yet another new director and choreographer.
Cross-dressing Prospectors (I’m the wo-man on the far left.)
You can’t have a gold rush without prospectors, and since there weren’t enough real men to fill the bill for the opening scene, all the ladies got a lesson in cross-dressing. Our transformation from females to males generated uproarious laughter, as we donned scruffy wigs, beards and mustaches, ratty old clothes, hats, and boots in an attempt to disguise ourselves as male miners. It was the best gender conversion we could muster without a mega-dose of testosterone. There was much guffawing from the guys in the cast. “You look like Michael Landon!” they told me. “Oh, really? Well, he was very handsome, so I’ll take that as a compliment,” I replied remembering that Michael Landon made a pretty sexy “Pa” in the TV show Little House on the Prairie.
Every night, we prospectors embarked on what felt like a secret reconnaissance mission. About ten minutes prior to show time, after most of the audience members were seated, the stage manager gave us the “Go!” to head to the hills. In order to avoid being prematurely discovered, we crept and crawled, tip-toed and snuck, stationing ourselves behind bushes, trees, and hills immediately surrounding the theatre. I crouched behind a shrub and tried not to attract attention for so long I felt my brown beard turning gray. When the opening number finally began, we popped out of our hiding spots and journeyed to the stage as if we were really traveling to California. I mustered up my manhood as much as possible, but I could feel the audience eyeballing me and doing a double-take.
The most annoying part about being men was that we couldn’t wear any make-up, except for perhaps a little base, until the opening scene was over. Then we had to hurriedly metamorphose into beautiful women. I yearned for my pre-performance hour of makeup time, as that was when I’d relax and get my mind out of my day and into my role. It was my calming period which gave me the opportunity to switch gears from normal life to entertainment mode.
As surprising as it was to see myself transgendered, the real shocker came at rehearsal when the choreographer announced, “Kristi, you will be doing the dream ballet adage with Fred.” My jaw dropped to the floor. Now you would think that I would have been thoroughly elated to be doing the slow partner dance, especially since 1.) Fred was a strong, tall, handsome, straight, blond guy, and 2.) this was a featured dance spot!
However, getting selected for the special part was bittersweet, as I worried that other cast members would scrutinize my performance and think they should have been chosen instead of me. I was nervous, as it had been over ten years since I had done any partnering or serious ballet, but I was determined to do my best. Even so, I was a slightly unsettled settler, never feeling completely confident about the adage. Plus I found out that Fred was married. Another one bites the gold dust.
No Wild West is complete without a bevy of raucous dance hall girls in a brothel-esque saloon setting. Naturally, I was one of them. While fun at first, after a while too much Can-Can can do a girl in. It required so many kicks and jump splits that I wondered if I’d permanently stretch my inner thighs to the point where they’d stay in the splits and never go back. I liked kicking well enough and was good at it, but it certainly took its toll on my body.
Our big dance hall dance number was a 911 call waiting to happen. It was organized chaos, with multiple partnering tricks happening simultaneously in close proximity to one another. As I dutifully cartwheeled holding onto my partner’s thighs with my head in his crotch, other duos whizzed and whirled around me, their spinning, kicking bodies too close for comfort. Yikes! “I think my partner and I are too close to the couple next to us. Would you mind moving us?” I pleaded with the choreographer. “You look fine to me. Just stay where you are,” she rebutted. Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one trapped upside down with her face exposed, vulnerable to the flailing feet. Still concerned but too shy to push on, I chose to trust the choreographer and not make a big stink about it.
Sure enough, one night, in the midst of all the hootin’ and hollerin’, I put my head down toward my partner’s privates in preparation to cartwheel, and the guy next to me spun around and kicked me right in the temple with his heavy boot, like a football being punted toward the goal posts. Somehow I finished the number, then ran off stage and burst into tears. I cried all through intermission and then miraculously pulled myself together enough to finish the show, even with what was surely a mild concussion. One of my best friends in the cast was the culprit. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry, Kristi!” he apologized profusely. But really the choreographer should have taken me seriously.
I was too clueless to know about accident reports or to have stage management take me to the hospital. Had I suffered permanent injury from the incident, I would have needed the accident report in order to claim disability or file a law suit. I should have insisted that the choreographer move my partner and me to a safer spot. But it’s hard to pull rank when you are a newbie and a peon.
Although Paint Your Wagon was my least favorite show to perform, I had the most fun in the dressing room and got a reputation for causing people to laugh soda pop out of their noses. A couple gals made Paint Your Wagon-themed backstage activity books (word games, crossword puzzles, hangman) for everyone. It was becoming apparent that backstage is where much of the best entertainment happens.
Your welfare is worth hollering for. Speak your peace, then paint the town red. Thanks for reading.
Act like a banana and split,
Kristi
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