Babes of Broadway

When Playboy editors began to beat the publicity drums about a proposed feature called Babes of Broadway, we weren't sure what kind of response to expect. Would we be shunned as sexists invading the Great White Way, or would stars and starlets throng to us like moths to a flame? Or would we merely be inundated by off-off-Broadway hopefuls and part-time waitresses who save their tips to subsidize acting-singing-dancing lessons? To all the above questions, the answer turned out to be yes. We were turned down, turned on, knocked in the aisles, bowled over and sent to our thesaurus to dig up new adjectives in praise of the beautiful (also comely, exquisite, fair, the thesaurus said), talented (also accomplished, gifted, endowed) and exciting (also alluring, bewitching, fetching, enticing) young showstoppers who agreed to show and tell us what it's like to be a Broadway baby circa 1984.

Contributing Photographer Arny Freytag, in effect our casting director, had to pick the likeliest babes from a long, delectable list. He gave his chosen subjects the kind of collective rave review they might dream of getting from an influential theater critic. Says Arny, "I can't remember when I've photographed a group of women so vital and exciting. They're involved in so many things and really have their acts together. Working with them was a pleasure."

Showtime, folks--meaning time to raise the curtain on some babes taking bows in front of Freytag's camera.

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Well into the second act of 42nd Street, a (text continued on page 142) tap-happy smash hit in its fifth year on Broadway, the wide-eyed heroine tells a hard-bitten director, "Show business isn't for me. I'm going back to Allentown."

The director (played by Jerry Orbach) looks as stung as if his ungrateful ingénue has threatened to set fire to the flag. "What was that word you said? Allentown? I'm offering you a chance to star in the biggest musical Broadway has seen in 20 years, and you say Allentown?"

That's the cue for one of the big production numbers, the vintage take-home tune Lullaby of Broadway (words by Al Dubin, music by Harry Warren) and a golden opportunity for Michigan-born Karen Ziemba to grab the spotlight, dancing her way to "the hip-hooray and ballyhoo" that are the essence of showbiz. As the third Peggy Sawyer since 42nd Street opened in 1980--chorus girl Peggy zooms to stardom because the leading lady's leg is in a cast--Karen herself has enjoyed a meteoric career since her arrival in Manhattan some five years ago. "This is the best role on Broadway," she declares with enthusiasm. "It's what theater is all about. I'm not from Allentown, but virtually the same sort of thing has happened to me."

Today, she's starring in the Big Apple, yet Karen served her apprenticeship in the classic manner, taking bread-and-butter jobs as waitress and theater usher before she landed in the chorus of a touring company of My Fair Lady. Then came the national company of A Chorus Line and her first Broadway gig in the same show, cast against type as the Hispanic hoofer named Morales. She moved up to 42nd Street about a year ago, when the Peggy Sawyer in residence left to have a baby. "Everybody's having babies," Karen notes, "but I'm not ready for that. I've got too much to do." She was recently married, however, to actor Bill Tatum, a regular in the TV soap opera Edge of Night. They met in an Equity Library Theater production of Seesaw. "He had the lead. I was just a chorus girl and had to help him with the dancing. I'd hate to say Bill's not coordinated, but he's no Baryshnikov." With unfailing humor, Karen recalls their first liaison. "I wore a garter belt and hose, because I wanted him to think I was sexy. And when I got undressed, he said, 'What's this with the hardware?' "

As the granddaughter of retired New York City Opera mezzo-soprano Winifred Heidt, who was also a singing star on radio, Karen considers her talent a family heritage. "My grandmother sacrificed a lot to become an opera singer. And my mother is a beautiful woman who always encouraged me but taught me humility at the same time--too much so, my husband thinks. He says you've got to let people know what you're worth. Well, I'm a very good dancer and actress. And right now, my ambition is to originate that role. Not just to take someone else's place."

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Enter Catherine Cooper, a sultry blonde who earns top pay but lower billing at a theater down the block, where she's understudy for three key roles in A Chorus Line, Broadway's longest-running show--and where she used to share a dressing room with Karen Ziemba. "Catherine is a terrific actress," notes Karen.

Catherine won't argue the point. When she isn't playing Cassie, Val or Sheila, she's singing backup vocals in an offstage booth. "People say they think of me as an actress who happens to dance very well," says Catherine, who studies hard and bides her time. "I played a barfly character named Harmony Devine on a soap, One Life to Live. I've spent so many years of my life dancing, now I really much prefer to act. As Val says in the show, 'It's fabulous to find out you can talk, too.' "

Born in Maryland, Catherine attended the same ballet school that claims Shirley MacLaine as an alumna. She joined a ballet troupe, got married, divorced, migrated to Manhattan (not necessarily in that order) and nowadays considers A Chorus Line a solid base for professional upward mobility. "Life is more giddy if you're on the road. People are thrown together; there's more sleeping around. In New York, you just go to work and lead your own life. I'm generally at home asleep by midnight, but I'm not here for the social whirl. If that's all I wanted, I'd go somewhere else."

Meanwhile, Catherine's photo fantasy for Playboy allowed her to vent some of the energy she usually channels into hard work. "Who wouldn't want to be wearing an expensive fur in the back of a Rolls-Royce? That's Joan Collins time, the kind of stuff that makes people tune in to Dynasty."

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Unique among the babes of Broadway because he is, in fact, a guy, Sam Singhaus danced for three years at Radio City Music Hall ("I partnered Rockettes") before he got his first legit role as one of the suitors in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. (That musical, a resounding flop, starred Debby Boone.) When he got to the final auditions for La Cage aux Folles, Singhaus had to dance all day wearing high-heeled shoes and a girlfriend's dress. "With Tootsie, Torch Song Trilogy and Boy George," he notes, "this is the age of gender confusion. You get used to it."

Sam declares he felt "honored" at being picked as the Cagelle to appear in Playboy. "I couldn't wait to tell my father and all his golf buddies." Sam's dad used to be a football coach in Florida, which may explain why Sam feels that playing in the Broadway Show League with the Cage baseball nine "helps balance things out." Even so, he admits to being drawn to fashion magazines nowadays, studying the way top models do their make-up. Sam does his own. Eventually, he expects to get out of drag and into pop music. "For now, though, the show has opened a lot of doors. And as our director, Arthur Laurents, keeps reminding us, we're not drag queens; we're actors playing women."

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She's taking her bar exam, just in case, but Anna Nicholas moved to New York from Boston because "I want desperately to do theater.... You have to develop that part of you that makes you a real actress, which means working in a fine play with a strong director." Meanwhile, like many of her peers, Anna has to settle for what she can get--recently, a youth-oriented comedy called Hot Resort, filmed on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. "I'm the brainiest of four girls who go there on a cruise ship full of geriatric cases."

As an actress, Anna still doesn't have an agent, though she was signed by a prestigious modeling agency after Cosmopolitan picked her to be a make-over subject. "Someone from the magazine stopped me on the street and said, 'Hey, we can make you look really exotic.' Since then, I've done a slew of commercials."

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"I get work because I hustle to find it," declares Laine Jastram, "and once they hire me, I'm usually upgraded to a speaking role or what's known as a silent bit." Laine's film credits so far include the latest Muppets movie ("I'm the blonde producer who goes screaming down the hall, with Animal chasing me"), Beat Street ("I don't know why I keep getting into these break-dance movies") and something called Model Behavior ("It's not X-rated or anything, more like a sex spoof. I play a showgirl who just has a real good time").

Although Laine herself has near-perfect teeth and a figure to match, she met her dentist husband in New York while having a cavity filled. "He loves my appearing in Playboy. His ideal for years has been to be with a girl who's been in Playboy, and now he's got his wish."

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Before she joined The New York High-Voltage Broadway Cheerleaders, who have entertained Mayor Edward Koch and performed in a Cavalcade of Stars benefit at Madison Square Garden, native New Yorker Ivy Frank danced solo on a Pacific Air Force tour of Korea, Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines. "It was hectic," she recalls. "Those guys hadn't seen a girl in a long time. I couldn't even go to the bathroom without being cornered. But PAC-AF had made me an honorary general in the Air Force, thank God, so I outranked most of them."

Linda Russo also dances with The High-Voltage Cheerleaders, "going anywhere that has anything to do with New York." Between bookings, she takes modeling assignments and works as a hostess in a (concluded on page 146)Babes of Broadway(continued from page 142) restaurant called Hobeau's. The dance group's immediate aim is to become city mascots representing the Big Apple. Mecca, of course, still means Broadway. Ivy sums it up succinctly: "I'm ready. I've paid my dues. At 27, I've been dancing for 18 years. What I want now is to dance and be happy and get paid for it."

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Down in a Greenwich Village loft, Donna Williams thrives as a superchic latter-day bohemian who divides her time between acting and designing haute couture. She doesn't like to name them, but several rrreally big pop stars perform while wearing her threads. So far, Donna prefers her fashion sense to her film credits (The Bubble Gum Murders wasn't really her style). She speaks Japanese fluently and had a TV following in Tokyo. "I worked on The Taka Chan Show, a comedy that was like a Japanese spoof of Superman." The money she makes as an actress, says Donna, "gives me an overwhelming feeling." You might call it her favorite yen.

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Working at Ben Benson's Steak House on 52nd Street is only a stopgap job for ambitious, effervescent Kasey Cameron. "I'm not going to be a waitress my whole life, I swear. I'm a good actress and a terrific singer. I have a big, phenomenal voice, like Barbra Streisand's and Liza Minnelli's. But people see me and think I'm an ingénue."

Ambitious though she is, a girl has to draw the line somewhere. "I turned down a role in Porky's because they wanted me to soap up a flaccid penis," Kasey reports. "But I do lingerie modeling for Berlei, and I'll tell you why I'm here in Playboy. Because I hope someone will see me and think, Well, this girl has a good body ... maybe she has some talent, too."

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Like countless actress-models who have to be ready for anything and everything, Christina Belton itemizes "special skills" on her professional résumé. Among her listed talents are "roller skating, tennis, mime, baton twirling, Southern, street and West Indian dialects, licensed to drive standard-shift car and motorcycle." Thus far, her limited credits include such film bits as "attending Miss Piggy's wedding" and "being a mourner in S.O.B."

Physically, Christina appears to be richly endowed, though one old acquaintance claims she has no head for business, "or she could have been a star a long time ago." Even so, in showbiz, a girl can go pretty far with Belton's basic equipment.

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Dancing for tourists and tired businessmen in an ooh-la-la cabaret show called Paris, Je t'aime isn't quite the same as being the toast of Broadway; but at the Café Versailles, blonde Belinda Andretti occasionally gets mash notes, phone calls or bottles of vintage champagne from stage-door Johnnies. "If a waiter says some guy wants to meet me, I peek through the curtain first," says Belinda. "Of course, if he's ugly, I don't go out." Generally, she's too tired to be a girl about town. She'd rather be Debra Winger or Meryl Streep. "And I'd love to be in a James Bond movie." Meanwhile, she studies at the Lee Strasberg studio to get ready for the time when "your knees go.... I'm tired of dancing, anyway, and want to do movies or straight theater."

Belinda's sentiments are echoed by Cindi Thomas, who shares the Versailles spotlight and never dreamed she'd wind up in New York dancing topless. "Two years ago, I said I'd never be able to do it. But you can't be embarrassed about anything you do and still do it full out. Now I find it's nice, rather sensuous." Cindi is married to a male performer in the show and figures she has another decade to dance. "This fall, I'll start auditioning for Broadway, because you can be an actress for the rest of your life."

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Debbee Hinchcliffe tap-dances a bit and practices plenty but goes to auditions ("I pound the streets in cold, sleet and rain") hoping no one will ask her to sing. "Not with this voice; the only thing I could really sing well would be Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." That notion elicits a giggle and a squeak from Debbee, whose high-pitched vocal beep tones are like nothing heard onstage, onscreen or elsewhere since the late Judy Holliday knocked 'em dead in Born Yesterday. If they ever get around to putting Playboy's Little Annie Fanny on film, Hinchcliffe ought to be a front runner for the title role.

"People typecast me in sexy dumb-blonde roles, which I'm pretty good at. But I'm not dumb," says Debbee, who worked in the computer industry and spent a year on Wall Street, sneaking off to auditions during lunch hours until she realized she was a babe whose heart belonged to Broadway--her first love. "Romance? Forget it. I don't have time for that stuff. I don't want children. I want an Afghan hound and an Akita and two parrots. Men will always be there, even when I'm 50. I'll still have a figure and can get a face lift if I have to."

Debbee strikes a theme common among Broadway's ambitious, dedicated new generation of women, who put marriage low on their list of priorities. In general, they prefer top billing to top cooing. And if you think that's something new in actresses, fella, better check your program.

" 'I've been dancing for 18 years. What I want now is to dance and be happy and get paid for it.' "