Read Shirley Jones for Free Online

happened ten times a day on Broadway. I assumed lots of unknown kids with no experience walked in off the street and ended up singing for Rodgers and Hammerstein. Had I known that I had got a break in a billion, I would have been overcome by an avalanche of nerves, but as I didn’t, I was not.
    “Miss Jones, do you know the score to Oklahoma! ? Mr. Hammerstein asked.
    “I know the music, but I don’t know all the words,” I said, probably committing the gaffe of a lifetime, as Hammerstein was the lyricist. Fortunately, I was oblivious.
    I was handed the score, and, as the gravity of the moment started to dawn on me, I held it right in front of my face, so that I wouldn’t have to look at either Rodgers or Hammerstein. Then I launched into “People Will Say We’re in Love,” followed by “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”
    Mr. Rodgers thanked me and went into a corner, where he conferred with Mr. Hammerstein in a hushed voice.
    “Miss Jones, what are your plans?” Mr. Rodgers called out from the auditorium after a short while.
    “I’m starting college in a couple of weeks, Mr. Rodgers.”
    “Miss Jones, we would like to make you an offer,” Mr. Rodgers said. “We have a spot for you in the chorus of South Pacific .”
    I accepted his offer without a moment’s hesitation and, soon after, with Gus Schirmer’s help and advice, became the only performer ever to be put under contract to Rodgers and Hammerstein. A seven-year contract, no less! My future as a Broadway musical star, it seemed, was assured.
    So that’s how it all began.
    I owed it all to Richard Rodgers. He was my fairy godfather, and I was grateful.
    Well, perhaps not as grateful as he hoped I would be.
    A year after my first audition with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, I was cast in the movie version of Oklahoma! and was being hailed as “Hollywood’s new Cinderella.” Mr. Rodgers invited me into his office and made a cold-blooded pass at me.
    I was shocked, but I somehow had the presence of mind to say, “You are very kind, Mr. Rodgers”—removing his pudgy hand from my knee—“and I will always think of you as my grandfather.”
    It is a tribute to Richard Rodgers’s professionalism that he didn’t take steps to fire me or ensure Oklahoma! was the last movie I would ever make.
    With my parents’ support and encouragement, I moved into the Barbizon Hotel for Women, on the corner of Lexington and East Sixty-Third, where Grace Kelly, Joan Crawford, and Gene Tierney had stayed at the start of their careers, and I lived there for a year.
    Meanwhile, on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s instructions, I observed South Pacific for three weeks before joining the show, which at that time was in the last six months of its Broadway run. I was paid the massive sum of $120 a week and cast as a nurse in the chorus. I did some dancing and had just one line in the show: “What’s the trouble, Knucklehead?”
    I danced in the “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy” scene as well as in “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.” The chorus guys were terrific and I loved every minute of my time in the show.
    After that, Rodgers and Hammerstein cast me in the last six weeks of the Chicago run of Me and Juliet , a play within a play, revolving around a backstage romance. Me and Juliet was set in a Broadway theater where Me and Juliet was being produced. It’s been likened to the concept behind A Chorus Line , but Me and Juliet was before its time. It turned out to be one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s rare failures.
    Although my roles in these shows were minor, Rodgers and Hammerstein didn’t forget me. They arranged for me to study in the daytime with an acting coach and a vocal coach, and at night I was understudy to leading lady Isabel Bigley, who sang the great American standard “No Other Love.” I also danced in the chorus, and with me was another Shirley, a Shirley who was my polar opposite in every single way.
    Five foot seven, with a pixie haircut