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Transcribed by Margaret Cheung
by SEYMORE PECK
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A young girl who only a few days ago, could have walked down West Forty- fourth Street without stirring a ripple of attention, today finds the same walk rather a struggle- in a wonderful stort of way. Autograph hunters, the betes noires of more seasoned Broadway performers, descend on her in droves and she takes pleasure in them.
"My name's Joe," says one. "Would you write "To Joe'"?
She takes his pen and writes "To Joe, Good luck, Carol Haney."
"Thanks, Miss Haney," says Joe.
"Thank you," she replies cheerfully.
For everyone in "The Pajama Game" there is the glow of excitement and triumph that comes of being part of a new musical hit. For Carol Haney, an unknown making her first try at Broadway, there is the extra dividend of being saluted by critics as "brilliant", "delightful", "terrific", "superb", "great", "this year's overnight star". For her fey, funny and frenetic acting, singing and dancing as Gladys, the secretary to the boss of a pajama factory, Carol was compared to Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron, Huckleberry Finn, an animated cartoon, a bowlegged gosling, the drawings of William Steig, a gamie, Kay Thompson and U.S. Rubber (ed: ?? again!).
"It's a weird feeling," said Carol at dinner fter a matinee last week. "The opening audience was so great, everyone soared. I don't think any of us touched the ground the whole evening. We'll get there yet." To help bring her back to earth- and to restore twelve pounds lost in preparing for "The Pajama Game"- Carol ordered a sirloin steak, medium, and topped it off with a chocolate sundae.
"There was one thing I hadn't thought about," she went on, "until the opening when we came out for curtine calls and that terrific roar hit me. It sounds hokey but I remembered that when I was very small my mother went to a Portuguese fortune teller in New Bedford, Mass. where I was born. 'You have two children, two girls.' the fortune teller said. 'Your younger girl wil some day be top of the avenue.' And my mother believed it. It was kind of silly but it was important to me- my mother died two years ago."
Now 29, Carol has been earning her living as a dancer for fourteen years, the last five spent as Gene Kelly's assistant. When Kelly offered her that job, Carol recalls she "screamed, hollered, jumped up and down for joy and said yes!" It was while Kelly's latest, "Brigadoon", was in production that Carol was summoned to New York to audition for "The Pajama Game". bob Fosse, the show's choreographer, had danced with Carol in the movie, "Kiss me Kate" and recommended her to George Abbott and Jerome Robbins, the show's co-directors.
"They had seen me in 'Kiss me Kate'", Carol said, "so they weren't worried about my dancing, but my acting." One "mad" weekend last winter she flew to New York, auditioned for Abbott and returned to Hollywood in time for Monday's work on "Brigadoon". The moment "Brigadoon" was completed, she again flew to New York, this time with a job in "The Pajama Game".
It was soon apparent to George Abbott that Carol was something special. She began rehearsals as a dancer with a small speaking part. "But we had a run through ten days later," Carol noted, "and Mr. Abbott came back the next morning and said he wanted to combine two parts, mine and the boss' secretary." Thus Carol wound up with a lead, though this is "the first time in my life I've played a role, spoken lines or sung."
In recent years, working with Kelly behine the cameras and appearing infrequently in front of them, Carol began to see her future more as a choreographer than a performer. She was learning film technique. Neither she nor movie producers pondered greatly her potential as an entertainer. "So when 'The Pajama Game' came along, I didn't know if it was the thing to do," Carol said. "I had to ask myself, 'Could I do a show'? I had a decision to make. I finally thought if I didn't do a show now, I'd never know. So I took the plane."
It was a wise decision, like most of Carol's decisions since the inarticulate age of 5. "When I was 5, I cried all the time. I didn't know why and my parents didn't know why, but it finally came out, I wanted to take dancing lessons. To this day I don't know where I got the idea. No one in my family had ever danced. But for me, that was it from the word go. I had my own studio in New Bedford when I was 15, and I had 125 students by the third year. How did I open my own studio at 15? I earned the money working in a golf ball factory for $13 a week, I also worked at a grocery, sold greeting cards, was a soda jerk, baby say, and danced for all the ladies' clubs in New Bedford. My parents wouldn't let me quit high school, so I ran my studio, also taught in Fall River a couple of days a week, went to New Bedford High, studied ballet in Providence, and did my Latin homework on the bus between New Bedford and Providence."
At 18 Carol was graduated from high school and went to California. She was a Goldwyn girl in Danny Kaye's "Wonder Man", toured night clubs with Jack Cole before her stint with Kelly. Hardly an overnight success story, a reporter observed recently. "I don't know anyone really," said Carol, "who got there overnight. You have to work for years. The only thing that happens overnight is recognition. Not talent."