012 Auditioning For Rogers And Hammerstein

Bob Smith 00:00
What was it like to audition for Broadway’s greatest team Rodgers and Hammerstein at the age of nine,

00:07
my mother gets a call that I’m to go to the office of Richard Rogers in Rodgers and Hammerstein at the time, were absolutely the kings of the realm. And he had a huge, huge office. Oh my god. It was enormous.

Bob Smith 00:23
Coming up the story of a little girl who modeled, acted on stage, worked on network radio, and performed on Broadway with Marlon Brando before retiring at the age of 12. Here on the off ramp with Bob Smith.

Bob Smith
Welcome to the off ramp with Bob Smith. Some people can tell his story so well with so much detail and delight that if you shut your eyes, you can actually picture what they’re talking about. That’s the way I described today’s guest, Alex Lamoreaux. I met Alex in church 10 years ago, and we hit it off right away. I’m certain if we’d have gone to school together, we’d have been separated by the end of day one for talking too much or engaging in some kind of shenanigans. Alex is one of those eternally young people the kind with a smile on their face and a twinkle in their eye. She’s got a great sense of fun, and we often engage in mock insults, treating everyone else nice, but pretending to hate each other, greeting each other with mock scowls and then quickly breaking into laughter. You think we would have grown up by now? Actually, Alex had to grow up fast during the Great Depression. The daughter of Scottish parents who met in Canada and settled in Chicago, she was born with a gift, the ability to entertain a gift that helped her family make do during a very difficult time. Hers is a unique brush with fame story, modeling, network radio, in audition with Rodgers and Hammerstein and a stint on Broadway acting night after night with Marlon Brando. Then retirement at the age of 12. Retirement at 12. I told you it was unique. Alex, you kind of started this by saying I It started when you were four years old. So I’m really more than willing to hear this whole story how it happened. It

Alex Lamoreaux 02:55
It was during the Depression. My folks were extremely poor. Nas was everybody. And my dad was very lucky to get a job and a 16 story building in Chicago, with lovely apartments for the wealthy. And we got an apartment with it, really, and that otherwise we probably would have been in a homeless shelter because everybody we knew had no jobs, no money, nothing. So one day, I was four years old. It was a knock at the door of our apartment and this gentleman that lived in one of the beautiful apartments upstairs. He said, can I ask you a question to my mother? She said, of course. And he said, I’m a photographer. And I just I’ve just been told that I have to get a picture of a child. And he said, I’ve seen your little girl running around. She’s just the right age. So would you be willing, if I pay her to have her come up to my place, and you come up with her, and I’ll take a picture? And my mother looked at me and I was smiling. And she said, Okay, you know, it meant a little money two days. So he took the picture, and it ended up in, I think it was the newspaper or someplace where a lot of people saw it. So anyhow, it wasn’t very long than before. My mother started getting phone calls from agents from people that were looking for small children to do this or that. And I was always willing to do any of it. You know, I thought it was fun. And like I say they were always looking for a little money. They got the apartment. You were lucky if you got a potato for dinner, you know. So I ended up getting so many catalogs and magazines and newspapers with my picture here. My picture there that my mother started getting calls from an agent. And the agent said, we’ve seen her all over the place and we’d like to, you know, have her work with us. Some my mom and dad agreed to do that. And then I started singing Just for fun. And before long, there was a place called the butler house in Chicago. They called and said they had heard that I had a decent voice and what I come in being Gretel, and Hansel and Gretel. Well, my mother was very surprised. So as my dad, and I did it from that, I ended up in the children’s chorus and Carmen at the Civic Opera House. It was like, there weren’t kids doing all that stuff in those days, and my name got around the city. So I sang in the children’s chorus of Carmen. As

Bob Smith 05:27
Alex tells it, one thing led to another radio was next. her hometown of Chicago was a major center of network radio shows. Amos and Andy, February McGee and Molly Jack Armstrong, and the quiz kids all originated in the Windy City. So did the world’s first soap opera.

Alex Lamoreaux 05:44
Again, the agent called and said that they were looking for a child to go on the radio, for Painted Dreams and Guiding Light soap operas. And I was still going to a normal school. But the teacher was very understanding. And if I had to miss a morning to go and have my picture taken someplace, she would give my mom something or other that I could do at home. So one thing led to another and I ended up being on these two soap operas on the radio every day. One was in the tribune tower, and right across the street, the other one was in the Wrigley Building. So that was taking up lots of time.

Bob Smith 06:23
So the studio was in the Tribune tower. Yeah, I’ve recorded in that. A few years ago, there was recording studio up there. Yeah, you could look out over the city.

Alex Lamoreaux 06:32
Yeah. So I was on that every day. And I stood on a little little stool that they put right up against the microphone, because I was so small.

Bob Smith 06:40
What was the drill? How did when did you go in? And when did you see your script first?

Alex Lamoreaux 06:43
Oh, you saw it the day of five or 10 minutes after you got there? You were handed a script. And then you go up there? I was just lucky. I could read that. Well, yeah. You know, cuz I had to have been seven years old.

Bob Smith 06:55
Was it like an hour before the show went on that you’d rehearse?

Alex Lamoreaux 06:58
I think it might not have been quite an hour, but I’m pretty sure it was at least 45 minutes, you know, we’d rehearse at least once and then we do the show.

Bob Smith
And you did the show live, right?

Alex Lamoreaux
Oh, yeah. It was all live. And then I go across the street to the regular building. And I think it was kind of the same there. Where you had time to read the script, go over, whatever, you know, if you’re going to change something, and then just go on the air, but it was every day, five days a week for a long time.

Bob Smith
That sounds like fun, though.

Alex Lamoreaux 07:27
It was a ball.

Bob Smith
That was in the middle of the afternoon or morning?

Alex Lamoreaux 07:31
Oo I’m guessing it was the morning. But I honestly don’t remember.

Bob Smith 07:37
They had local shows, and then shows that went out over the network that went all over the country from Chicago

Alex Lamoreaux 07:41
Guiding Light. Painted dreams. I think Painted Dreams was local.

Bob Smith 07:47
So you played the young child in the

Alex Lamoreaux 07:52
Oh, yeah. I mean, there’s kind of typecast, right?

Bob Smith
Yeah.

Alex Lamoreaux
No kidding with a little voice.

Bob Smith 07:56
That must have been great. Oh, yeah. Well, it was great. Fun.

Money was still tight. Even with Alex’s talent fees.

Alex Lamoreaux 08:05
I’ll never forget it. My mom and I, we were in some department store. And I saw this tiny little dollhouse, just a little house and I fell madly in love with it. And my mother must have gone home and said to my dad, let’s get that for her for Christmas. It was about six months before Christmas. They had to save up for six months. Honest to God, I think it cost about $2. I mean, money was just unbelievable. At that time. Nobody had any. That’s how things were. Everybody was broke. Then my mother gets a call. Could your daughter take over for a role in a play that’s coming to the Civic Theater. They just lost the little girl they had hired, I think in New York or wherever. And they’re frantically looking for someone to replace her. So my mother always asked me if I would be interested in stuff. That’s how she was if I had said no, she would have said no. Well, God bless her. Oh, she was a saint. She was she was the most wonderful mother. But anyhow, I got the role. And we played in Chicago for quite a while. And then we went out on the road all over the country. That show is Janie J A N IE.

Bob Smith 09:21
The play Janie was described as a wartime romp where a high spirited teenage girl and her friends, unbeknownst to their parents throw a party for soldier boys from a nearby army camp. Things get out of hand and the house is in chaos. Alex was an adolescent actress, but a winning member of the young cast.

Alex Lamoreaux 09:41
It was a wonderful, wonderful show. A great story all young people, a lot of them in uniform, military uniform, young women, young men, and it was a fabulous comedy. And the role that I got was one of the leading roles, even the child here In a leading role, I was having a ball. I loved it. It was during the Second World War. And we would take troop trains to get from one place to another, we’d sit in the aisle on our suitcases. Wow. Because the soldiers or sailors or whoever was on the troop train, wanted to give us their seats, and we wouldn’t take them because the war was going full blast. So we ended up going all over the country and then up into Canada, and your mother was with you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she became the mother of the cast. Okay. All fell in love with her. They’d ask her advice on things, you know, and we became a family. It was just a wonderful, wonderful experience. Everybody loved everybody else, which doesn’t always happen in the theater.

Bob Smith 10:46
And what was your name? What was your stage name, Mary

Alex Lamoreaux 10:48
Killen, K-I-L-L-E-N. That’s my real name.

Bob Smith 10:52
Early in the run of Janie, something happened that Alex never forgot.

Alex Lamoreaux 10:56
There was a maid and a butler in the show, both black actors, just marvelous people and great actors. And the director came up to my mother, and he had a very long face. And my mother thought something was really wrong. And he said, I have a question to ask you. Do you have a problem with the fact that Mary has to share a room with the black maid when she gets made up and everything? And my mother wouldn’t have thought of anything like that? She said, Why would I have a problem? But in those days, there would have been a lot of mothers who would have said you have to be kidding, she’s not gonna sit no dressing room with a black person. So anyhow, the black person Roseto Anwar was a lot like my mother. She was an angel. I just fell in love with her. She fell in love with me. We were leaving the theater after a matinee. And Rosie said nah, Mary, she said, if there are people out there that want an autograph. Even if you’re in a hurry, you stop and you do the autograph. Don’t ever turn anybody down that wants an autograph? And she was like my second mother. I said, Oh, okay. She had a big role on the show. And she was a terrific actress. And at the end of the show, the people would clap. You know, when we were all taking our vows. Yes. They just thought she was wonderful. But when she’d walk out with me, after we took our makeup off, and all this kind of stuff, they would ask me for an autograph. And they’d ignore her because she was black. She knew that was going to happen. She didn’t tell me it was going to happen. It went on all the time. It was disgusting. I couldn’t believe it.

Bob Smith 12:42
Today, Rosetta Lenoir is famous. She was just 33 When Alex met her. She’d already appeared in Orson Welles all black cast of Macbeth, she went on to become a groundbreaking African American Broadway stage screen and television actress and a top Broadway producer. Since 1988. Actors Equity has presented the Rosetta Lenoir diversity award to a who’s who of black entertainers, including Ossie Davis, Ruby D. Jeffrey holder, Leslie Uggams, Maurice Hines, Felicia Rashad, Dionne Warwick, and the author and star of the rap musical Hamilton. Lin Manuel Miranda. That’s how significant Rosetta Lenoir is today, but Alex knew her in a very different time.

Alex Lamoreaux 13:31
For many, many years after I lost track of her. I thought of her Rosie, because she was just she would buy little gifts from me. I mean, we were like sisters, and I adored her. I read in our newspaper here. Her picture was there and I thought, oh my god, it looks like Rosetta, and it was Rosa noir, one of the top producers on Broadway. She died. It was an obituary, and I looked one of the top producers on Broadway. And how people snubbed her in the past. I thought good for you, Rosie.

Bob Smith 14:07
One of Alex’s favorite memories of Janie was how as a child actress, she had to improvise on stage for several minutes when an actor didn’t appear as planned.

Alex Lamoreaux 14:16
In one scene, I was on the stage, probably two or three, four minutes max, before the door would open into this big living room. And the butler would walk in and there was a grand piano at the front of the stage that was never used. It was just a prop. So I gave him his cue. The door didn’t open. And I thought oh, what’s happening? He got locked in his dressing room on the second floor. He was banging. So someone would hear I’m gonna get him out to get down on the stage. And I was scared because I thought we see what happened because that had never happened before. Then I saw the piano I went over and said Sit down, started playing this, just in case it was going to be 15 or 20 minutes or something before he showed up. I don’t even know if I got to the end of one number and all of a sudden came off. I think it hit the wall. And at the end of the play that night, the director came up to my mother and said, I can’t believe she was so clever, you know, take some time on the stage. And we none of us knew she could play the piano. Because no one had ever touched that piano before. It was just a prop.

Bob Smith 15:35
The highlight of the Janie tour occurred in Toronto, when a local theatre critic gave little Alex a rave review.

Alex Lamoreaux 15:43
He gave Janie a fantastic write up. He said, Don’t let this show leave the city until you see it. Because it was a great show. It was one laugh after another. And then at the end of this critique in the paper, he said, and my very favorite person in the show was the little girl Mary keel. And so of course, all these guys and these young women are saying, Did you pay him off just that was the big kid of the day that Mary was the favorite. So anyhow, we ended up on the East Coast. And I think it was Hartford. And then the show ended. So I was having such a ball. I wanted to say doing that kind of work. So we decided my mom and I got this very small apartment in New York. And I started trying out for different roles.

Bob Smith 16:33
Coming up, childhood memories of auditioning for Rodgers and Hammerstein when the off ramp continues.

BREAK

Bob Smith
Welcome back to the off ramp with Bob Smith. We continue with the story of Alex Lamoreaux. In New York, Alex says the steady work stopped and she found herself struggling for parts. Keep in mind, she was still less than 10 years old.

Alex Lamoreaux 16:58
Well, you know, in New York, it’s a lot different than it had been in Chicago. I would go for a role and there’d be 30 kids, they’re all for the same role, you know. So sometimes I got turned down, and I was dejected about that. And then finally, my mother gets a call that I’m to go to the office of Richard Rogers and Rodgers and Hammerstein at the time, were absolutely the kings of the realm. I mean, they couldn’t do anything.

Bob Smith 17:26
Right. Yeah, say hit hit, hit after hit is unbelievable.

Alex Lamoreaux 17:29
So my mom and I get there. And when we were told we, we could go into his office, the door to his office was partially open and partially closed. My mom was small like I am, so we just didn’t push the door open or anything. We just walked around the door. And he had a huge, huge office, oh, my God. It was enormous. And he’s sitting in his office and he looks at me, my mom and I sat down at his desk. He was very nice. And he said, Oscar and I are not writing the show. It’s not a musical or anything like that. We’re just producing it. But we want to be the ones to hire the cast. And he said, I’m going to cue you. And you’re going to do the role of Dagmar I said, okay, so he started, it went on for 15, 20 minutes, maybe. And then he puts the script down and looks at me with kind of a long face. And I thought, Oh, he didn’t like the way I read the lines. And my mom thought that too, because it’s over.

Bob Smith:
He doesn’t like us.

Alex Lamoreaux
Yeah, exactly. So I looked at him and I thought, Oh, I didn’t do so good. And he said, I’d hire you in a minute. He said, You did extremely well, you could do that role. But you’re supposed to be Scandinavian, and you look so Irish. At which point, I put my hand on my hip. And I looked at him and I said, I’m not Irish. I’m Scottish, just like that. And then this deep, male voice from behind us in the room. He was behind that door. That was partially we didn’t know he was there. The whole time that I was reading it was hammer stuff. And I’m going to swear now because I’m going to tell you what he said. He said, Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dick hire her. She’s got spunk. And I got the role. But he looked at my mother and he said, I’m not asking you for us to dye her hair blonde to make her look Scandinavian. He said but would you mind if we rinsed her hair so that under the lights it would look kind of dark blonde but really won’t look blonde? If she’s out on the streets, you know? And my mom looked at me she always wanted me to say yes, that’s okay. And I wanted the role. You know, I knew Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers were big stuff and – and she said, Yes, that’s okay with me. And I said yes. And then we sat there for at least another 15 minutes, probably what was well over half an hour. But when I left, I knew I’d gotten the role, you know, and I was happy because they had such a big name at that time.

Bob Smith 20:16
The play was I Remember Mama, the story of a Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco in the early 20th century. It premiered on Broadway on October 19 1944 at the Music Box Theatre, and ran for 713 performances. Alex says getting the role of Dagmar wasn’t the end of her thrills. It was just the beginning. She had the experience of working with a rising star in his first Broadway play. The only other youngster in the show, a teenager named Marlon Brando.

Alex Lamoreaux 20:49
When I found out who some of the players were in the play, I was very impressed. But the biggest thing that sort of changed my life for that play, was that I was Marlon Brando’s sister. It was his first play. I think he had been at the Actors Studio, if I’m not mistaken.

Bob Smith 21:07
Stella Adler and oh, Yeah, this is his first professional role ever. He was like 17, or 18 — 18.

21:15
And I was nine, I think, by this time, and we were the two youngest in the play. And he took a liking to me and I took a liking to him. And neither one of us could stand the man that was the lead actor is a wonderful actor. But a real male diva. He looked down his nose at everybody gives Oscar Homolka I don’t know whether you ever heard of him. He was a top actor on Broadway. And maybe Christians was mama. And it was so funny because Marlon Brando and I just clicked, and at least 20 times that I can remember. He would come over to me and say very quietly. What do you think of this idea? I want to do this to him. And he would do something sneaky to Oscar Homolka Oh, really? Yeah. Something sneaky. And he’d say, What do you think? Is that okay? And I said, Yes, every time. I liked him, but I didn’t like Oscar.

Bob Smith 22:12
Even as kids you knew you didn’t like this guy.

Alex Lamoreaux 22:15
I know. All you have to do is be around him for an hour. Disgusting he was.

Bob Smith 22:19
And most people don’t think of Marlon Brando being that young, being in a show like that.

Alex Lamoreaux 22:23
Well it was his first, it was his first show. And almost every trick he played on Oscar Homolka, he got away with. He was so sneaky, he would do it. And then he’d come afterwards and tell me, it worked. It worked. But the other cute thing I have to tell you is that I made an impression on both Hammerstein and Rogers with the fact that I was so proud to be Scottish. On opening night on Broadway, we went to Hartford and we went to several places. And then we opened on Broadway. And on opening night, all the women in the show got these giant, absolutely beautiful floral things, you know, for opening night. What I got flowers in a little crystal, Scottie dog. Oh, how sweet Scotty. Mother and I both burst out laughing. Because that’s how we felt how thoughtful. And I still have it. It’s in my bedroom. But anyhow, I was on Broadway then in that role for, I think, almost a year,

Bob Smith 23:36
Every night then and twice on Saturdays or something like that, right?

Alex Lamoreaux 23:40
Yeah. All the matinees. And I reached the point finally, where, I don’t know – it was just different. Being in that show was so different than the play Janie, where we all loved each other. And it was so family oriented. With these people that were sort of snobbish — some of them, not all of them — But it was just different. And I missed my dad, you know, and I, I just reached a point and my mother could see in me and I hated going to Professional Children’s School.

Bob Smith 24:09
It was awful.

Alex Lamoreaux 24:13
Where it was awful. He other children. Some of the children, are disgusting. The mothers were all disgusting because they were stage mothers. And they acted like such snobs that I’ve I just thought I hate this.

Bob Smith 24:24
So at the age of 12, Alex essentially retired from showbusiness. She and her mother returned to Chicago to rejoin her father. But in high school, there was one last flirt with potential fame. I

Alex Lamoreaux 24:38
I was modelling because that word got out in Chicago that I had been a model years ago. And I was in some catalogs and a couple of magazines. But on the whole when I started high school, I just decided I’m going to be as normal as we started just turning stuff down until it was … One thing that turned out to be kind of funny your wife when I tell you this, the agent found out that I was back and hadn’t seen me in a few years. You know, she gave my name to somebody in LA, for a tryout for a movie they were going to make, because she said this girl can act. She’s acted on the radio, She’s acted on the stage, she’s been on Broadway. So they became sort of interested for what I can gather, until they found out that I had never been on a horse. National Velvet. And the role went to Elizabeth (Taylor). I had never been on a horse. And when they heard that, they said …

Bob Smith 25:41
Oh, you were in the running!

Alex Lamoreaux 25:45
And because I’d never been on a horse. Yes, she got it. So — I could have had seven husbands!

Bob Smith
There you go!

Alex Lamoreaux
But I mean, it’s just, it felt good to me to get back into normalcy. Yes.

Bob Smith 25:59
You’re entering your teenage years. Yeah,

Alex Lamoreaux 26:02
Yeah exactly.

Bob Smith 26:03
I know how hard that can be.

Alex Lamoreaux 26:04
I know. After I started getting normalcy, I liked it.

Bob Smith 26:09
Most people who go into showbiz — it’s the opposite, right? You know, normal life. Then they go into this! But I can imagine that craziness of it all, and you’re not in control of things right now. Because there’s always somebody else deciding your fate, whether you win the audition or not, when you’re gonna go here, especially when you’re a kid. Yeah, thank God, your mother was such a kind and nice person.

Alex Lamoreaux
You would have had to know her.

Bob Smith
Decades went by Alex grew up and entered the travel business, Flying cross country and back and forth to Europe many times. Later, she went into financial services. Ironically, it was her mother who got her back into performing when she resided in a nursing home, where Alex was a regular visitor who played the piano,

Alex Lamoreaux 26:51
The last two years of my mother’s life. She couldn’t talk. couldn’t utter a sound, no talking. I went there every day to see her and they had a lovely piano and I played the piano. She couldn’t talk, but she could sing and her beautiful soprano voice. And she’d sit there and sing. And then it dawned on me right around the very same time that this ex-Marine who had been hurt in the war, and he was quite crippled. And he’d always say to me, “Play Marine Hymn Alex.” And that’s how he talked all the time. But he could sing like crazy. So I got the head nurse one day and I said, I don’t get it. If they can’t talk, how can they sing? And they both have lovely voices. She said, Alex, she said you’re giving them musical therapy. It’s two different parts of the brain. The part where they’re singing is fine. And the part where they talk is very bad. And when I went back there after my mother passed away, to see that his nerves because she’d been so nice to me. She said, have you even thought about going out to other places and playing the piano for people because they can’t wait for you to get here every day. Three months after she died, I tried it. And I’ve been doing it ever since.

Bob Smith 28:16
And that’s another way Alex affects me through her music. I can’t explain it. But when Alex sits down in our church sanctuary, her piano skills send my mind off on reveries and adventures. One Thanksgiving service, her playing triggered a family history movie of sorts. I shut my eyes and for the three minutes she played, I watched a weird silent movie unfold seeing generation after generation of my family emerge from Pilgrim ancestors through my grandparents. I told her about it afterwards. She says more than one person has reacted in the same way. Why? Maybe it’s the way she plays piano.

Bob Smith
Where’d you learn piano? Because I love to hear you.

Alex Lamoreaux 28:57
From my father. He played on the black keys. And he taught me on a little tiny toy piano. He played on the black keys and I play on the black keys. Which people think is totally totally weird. I mean, I’ve had musicians that have stood looking. Why are you playing, black?

Bob Smith 29:14
You only played the black keys.

Alex Lamoreaux
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Alex Lamoreaux 29:18
I don’t even know what key I play and I can’t read music.

Bob Smith 29:21
And you know, whenever you’ve played I have just shut my eyes. images come to mind like it was like movies in my mind. I’ve told you this,

Alex Lamoreaux 29:29
Somebody else, I don’t remember who it was told me the same thing. Really. It brought back all kinds of memories even if the song wasn’t there. It just brought back memories.

Bob Smith 29:39
Yeah it was just magical it like it unlocked. I

Alex Lamoreaux 29:42
I should charge you.

Bob Smith 29:47
And sell it.

Alex Lamoreaux 29:48
Just bring back now.

Bob Smith 29:50
If it is the black keys. Alex never really gave up entertaining. A few years ago she worked with my friend Matt Partridge and recorded an album of Christmas songs, donating the proceeds to the Salvation Army. Today this former child actress continues to perform, playing for nursing home residents, mesmerizing listeners with little gems played on those black keys.

Bob Smith
Well, that’s it. Thanks for joining us for this special brush with fame story on my friend, Alex Lamoreaux. I hope you’ll join us next time on the off ramp. This is Bob Smith the off ramp with Bob Smith is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarburg Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

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