Life Is Not a Stage Florence Henderson (13 ebook reader .txt) 📖

were on tour in Australia. One night after a show, a group of us that included Kayla, my conductor Allan Alper, and a wonderful drummer named Evan Diner decided we’d get together for a game of Scrabble. I don’t know if it was passing any judgment on the fun (or lack of it) we were having as the game began, but Evan volunteered that he had some marijuana that he would be only too glad to share.

I asked Evan how he had managed to smuggle it into Australia. “I put it in my jockstrap,” he replied. He explained that he had put it into a baggie and “made it the size of my left nut.” Sounds sanitary enough, I thought. He then took out an appliance he called a carburetor and placed the joint into a hole on it.

It was my turn at Scrabble.

“Have a puff,” Evan suggested.

I told him, “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, just try one.”

“Well,” I thought, “why not?”

“Breathe deeply,” he instructed.

Yes. I did inhale.

The others around the Scrabble board were clearly starting to get impatient. I knew the word I wanted, but for some reason, the signal from my brain down my arm to my fingers was taking its sweet time getting there. I sat there at the board immobilized for God knows how long. They were laughing at me.

Later, I said I was really hungry. I’m not a sweets eater, but I asked if they could get me some ice cream. That was my first and last puff of marijuana.

All the laughs and fun aside, it is a true testament that nearly forty years after she came to work for me, Kayla is still my manager and my best friend.

The other great friend and confidante who came into my life at the same time was Elsie Giorgi, my doctor. She was the one I called when I woke up that morning after to find out what to do with all the little creepy-crawlies on me. My doctor in New York had referred me to her when I came out to live in California. She had a thriving practice in New York but moved out to California, where she attracted a big following too. She had a super intellect, the first woman to graduate from Columbia University’s medical school and the one who diagnosed John F. Kennedy with Addison’s disease. She wrote health-care legislation for the Veterans Administration. She was way ahead of the times in recognizing the dangers of AIDS early on, and helped so many of her gay patients avoid the devastation of that epidemic in its early years.

When I first contacted Elsie, she barked back with her Bronx accent, “I’m not taking any new patients.” Click.

“Okay, jeez.” I told my doctor back in New York what happened.

“Yeah, she’s kind of tough.” But before long, she showed up at my house anyway, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, on call for the doctor I found in her place when one of my kids was sick. We clicked from the first second, and she became an immediate part of our family. She knew what I was going through.

“Dearie, you’re the glue,” she surmised after seeing the dynamics of my marriage on display.

If you came to her office for an exam, chances were that she’d give you something to eat first. It was her trick to get her patients to relax and open up more if they had a nice snack. She spoke with perfect diction, but if you got her started her Bronx side would come out.

“Dearie, oh please, he’s so full of shit.” Italian by birth but more Jewish in personality, Elsie told it like it was. That hybrid came forth with her exclamation “Oy Vey Maria.” She told wonderful stories about her life in New York. For example, she worked for a trucking company in New York to put herself through medical school.

“You must have known the Mafia?” I asked her. Did she! Her stories about big figures like Johnny Dio and others were priceless. She was pretty proud of her Mafia connections.

Everyone comes into your life for a good reason, and Elsie herself would prove to be the very glue that helped keep me together through some turbulent times to come.

CHAPTER 18Days of Wine and Roses…and Clam Chowder and Chicken

When The Brady Bunch ended its network run on March 8, 1974, things hardly slowed down. On the contrary, I was busier and in more demand than ever. The bounce from a popular television series meant dramatic improvement in the recognition factor and increased the fees I could now command. I was back onstage, a good percentage of the dates in Las Vegas, where I appeared with Shecky Greene for three years at the MGM Grand, plus a host of other performers like Joel Grey, Bill Cosby, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bob Newhart, Sammy Davis Jr., and, not to forget, Milton Berle.

Being Carol Brady all those years also made Florence Henderson a more viable commodity as a commercial spokesperson. Some actors can be quite condescending about doing ads. It’s that “I’m sorry I’m doing this commercial because I’m really a great actress” attitude. I never felt that way. Instead, I approached it no differently than I did any other performance. I’m there to fulfill the fantasy of the viewer, whether it’s about selling tickets or moving products off the grocery shelf. Look around at almost anyone who has had longevity in the business, and you’ll see that they all did commercials. If the performer’s personal image and the brand come together in a natural way, it’s a win-win situation. It is as though you’re the star of your own sixty-second movie that is repeated over and over again. If you pull it off, you have a great relationship with the public. To this day, people still remember all those Wesson Oil commercials I did for twenty-two years. I ended up surviving five ad agency changes, which is probably a record,