Before leaving for the evening’s performance, I found an anonymous note taped to my door that read: “The couple who were racist toward you this morning are in suite number 2908. Handle your business, Miss Lewis.” It felt good to have the support of the building staff, but I decided to let it go. You’ve got to choose your battles, and I had a show to do.
That night on stage in Hairspray, I sang my asssss off performing “I Know Where I’ve Been,” the showstopper about the Civil Rights Movement, thinking about racism, segregation, and my own experience that day having to “separate the whites”!
THREE
DON’T TELL MAMA
About a week after I first arrived in the Big Apple, Miguel left for the Dominican Republic to care for his sick grandmother. That was fine with me because I was feeling a bit cramped by his requests for marriage. Miguel’s departure spurred me to say goodbye to his mom’s apartment and move into a small one-bedroom with Mark Alton Brown and Robert (Bobby) Cesario. Mark and Bobby were friends from Webster University whom I met during my first week there. I’d walked into the busy dining hall sporting Afro puffs and a checkered pantsuit and spied two men sitting together. I sashayed over to where they were seated and without so much as introducing myself, I leaned over and put my elbows on their table so my face was level with theirs. “Which man in this cafeteria do you think I slept with last night?” I asked, glancing around the crowded hall, allowing my gaze to land on Miguel.
Both Mark and Bobby fell in love with me in that moment. At the same time, they fell in love with each other. For the next two years at Webster and then throughout our lives, the three of us have been thick as thieves.
Mark and Bobby were already juniors when we met at college and they had moved to New York City about two years before I arrived. Like me, Mark and Bobby had showbiz aspirations. But when I moved in, Mark was scooping ice cream at H?agen-Dazs and Bobby was pounding the pavement for acting jobs.
I’d been living at Mark and Bobby’s place on Broadway and 101st Street for just a couple of days when I decided to hike the thirty or so blocks downtown to one of my favorite places for a cheap delicious meal. The Upper West Side of the late 1970s was a gritty neighborhood rich with an abundance of dive bars, diners, and coffee shops. At Gray’s Papaya on the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway, I could get a couple of hot dogs slathered in mustard and a little relish along with a sweet, fruity beverage for around two dollars.
It was late evening. I stood on the filthy street corner jamming the second hot dog into my mouth and suddenly recognized a face in the stream walking by. It was Danny Holgate, the music supervisor for Eubie!, the hit show of the 1978–79 Broadway season. The previous November, I had flown to New York during my senior year to audition for the Eubie! national tour. At the audition, Danny had accompanied me as I sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy. I was so green it didn’t occur to me to sing a “black” song or even a song by the show’s namesake, Eubie Blake!
“Everything’s coming up roses, for me and for youuuuuuuuu,” I’d belted the iconic song, finishing the audition in a full backbend and holding the final note so long that Danny was forced to look around the upright piano to see when I’d finally release it. I didn’t get the gig.
I pushed myself into Danny’s path in front of Gray’s Papaya as I wiped my mouth with a damp yellow-stained napkin. “Danny! Danny! Remember me? Hi, Danny, it’s me, Jenifer Lewis—you don’t remember me, but I auditioned . . .” He interrupted me, “Oh yeah, you’re the one that did that backbend.” (Obviously, I’d made an impression.) “I think they need somebody in the show right now,” Danny continued. “C’mon, walk with me. I’m going to pick up some Chinese food.” I was nervous because I had mustard smeared on my blouse and he was a big, important person in the theater world.
Well, timing is everything. Turned out Eubie! was looking for a replacement for a wonderful actress named Gina Taylor. Long story short, on June 5, 1979, exactly eleven days after graduating from college, I made my Broadway debut in Eubie! at the Ambassador Theatre.
Broadway! I had never doubted that I would perform on the Great White Way. (No joke here, folks. That one’s too easy!) Mark Brown told me he cried when he saw my name on the marquee at the Ambassador because he knew I had dreamed of this my whole life. “It only took you eleven days, Jenifer.” I felt pride, amazement. But I also was keenly aware of the 8,030 days that had brought me there. (Yes, I did the math!)
Eubie! was a revue honoring the work of James Hubert Blake, the first African American to write, direct, and star in a musical on Broadway. The acclaimed musical revue starred Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines.
I barely remember my first Eubie! performance. I stood in the wings awaiting my cue, a little nervous but definitely not scared. My only concern was that I not disappoint my fellow cast members. I wanted them to see me as their peer. Suddenly I was on stage, singing and dancing in a hit show with some of the most talented entertainers on Broadway. After I sang my featured song, “If You’ve Never Been Vamped by a Brownskin, You’ve Never Been Vamped at All,” I barely heard the applause. It was the faces of my castmates that told me I had done well.
I had stepped into a new world, the world of my dreams. I was the baby in the cast, but I felt safe with the veterans. I knew they were rooting for me. Even though I was not creating the role, I found ways to make it my own. Like, if the choreography called for two steps, I might take two and a half. Nothing to disturb my fellow actors; just a little something to put my stamp on it!
I was attracted to Gregory Hines (who wasn’t?), and we flirted a bit, but mostly just became friends. He was a big prankster. Once, as we performed a sophisticated Blake-Sissle song called “A Million Little Cupids in the Sky,” in which the choreography called for Gregory to hold me with my back to his front, I felt an enormous lump pressing against my ass as we swayed and dipped. I barely held my giggles as I realized Gregory was sporting a pair of rolled-up socks in his pants!