Chasing the Brass Ring to Success

Introduction

Every year literally thousands of high school and college majors in theatre arts make their way to New York City and Los Angeles, hoping to make a big splash on Broadway or in Hollywood films. The quality of talent is truly amazing, thanks to the dedicated efforts of talented teachers, musicians, vocal and dance coaches all over the country. There is certainly no lack of talent, yet statistics show that only two percent (2%) of union actors earn over $3,000 in any given year. Add into the mix the vast number of starry-eyed hopefuls, and the number of gainfully employed actors, dancers, singers, musicians, variety performers, and behind-the-scene artists and technicians goes down substantially.

When I was making the rounds on Broadway in the 1950s, the first words out of any agent’s mouth were, Do you belong to Actors Equity? (Or Screen Actors Guild, or AFTRA, or AGVA.) Every aspiring actor soon learned that in order to get in the door and qualify for a reading, you must belong to the union. Most lied, just to get a chance to read for a part.

In those days the unions weren’t out there begging for people to join. Ironically, you had to have a contract in hand, before you plunked down your cold hard cash at the union hall and became legit. Today getting into the union is easier, but it doesn’t guarantee you’re going to find work, especially if you hope to work in motion pictures. This dilemma is mostly due to the fact that producers, directors and big name stars are taking their projects overseas to Eastern Europe, to Asia, and to remote areas in Canada, in order to avoid paying high union wages, which make it almost impossible to stay on budget. (Besides the actors appearing on screen, there are many other union employees working behind the scene: carpenters, set painters, designers, stunt doubles, animal trainers, script writers, wardrobe and make-up personnel, etc.)

Making a profit for their investors ensures that the company will have money to finance its next project. If this sounds unreasonable to some of my young readers, I suggest you enroll in a few basic accounting courses. Without money, nothing happens. Nobody gets hired. And don’t forget that audiences stay home when the price of admission to a Broadway show or musical, or to a motion picture, is higher (to cover expenses) than most people are willing or able to pay.

I know, I know. Artistically inclined people feel uncomfortable talking about money. So let me assure you that this book is not about how the producers, directors, and number crunchers do their jobs. Let them deal with the cold realities.

Instead I hope to prepare you, as an aspiring, one-of-a-kind, sensational talent, for the fact that you and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other gifted people are going to be competing, often for the same job. Marketing yourself successfully, while avoiding being suckered in by exploitive individuals, who will only try to drag you down to their level, and staying focused on enhancing your gifts, even when the pressure is on to go with the crowd, are crucial for success.

I am assuming that you aren’t interested in scrambling to the top of the dog pile at all costs. Too many young people have become casualties by sacrificing their principles. If you want to avoid the usual pitfalls and last in the business, there’s a good chance you and other aspiring actors, singers, dancers and artists may benefit from my experiences. So make sure you have a back-up plan to keep yourself financially secure, i.e., job skills in a high-demand field.

Many may wonder why I have waited so many years to break my silence and share my story. In a word, genes. A few acorns on my family tree have fallen uncomfortably close to the tree, so perhaps a word of wisdom will be helpful to them, as well as to my other readers.

And while we’re speaking metaphorically, let me add that my main reason for sharing the first twenty-five years of my journey is to provide 1) a better understanding of early childhood development, 2) insights into what draws some of us into the entertainment industry, and 3) where to look for spiritual and/or emotional healing, should the need arise. What my readers decide to do with this information is strictly up to them.

Ah! Perhaps like a few members of my family, you are beginning to wonder: "Who is this strange old lady, and how could she have a clue what life for us moderns has been like, growing up? And all those crazy plots for the historical novels she’s still writing at age seventy-nine—what’s that all about? Who cares what life was like so long ago? She is so ancient! Surely none of what she went through in show business could possibly be relevant to my life." Blah blah blah.

Oh, sure. My children think they have me figured out, too. After all, they’ve been trying to outmaneuver me for years! But raising a bunch of delightful non-conformists came after all those challenging years I spent in show business. In fact, three more generations have sprouted on my family tree since the 1950s, yet the mystery still remains untold.

"What preceded my marriage to John Dan, an actor I came within a hairsbreadth of writing off as just another Hollywood wolf?" (Fortunately that didn’t happen!)

In 2005, our family celebrated my late husband John Dan’s life growing up as the son of Rumanian immigrants, his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II and the Korean War, his love of America, his acting career in Hollywood, where we met in 1958, and his amazing Christian ministry which touched so many lives, including our family’s.

Now the time has come for me to make a full confession.

Seriously! Was Barbara McDougal Griffin Dan just some rich guy’s daughter, who got infected with the show business bug and finally settled down with a Baptist preacher who worked seventy hours a week and earned $75-$95 a week for several years, before the Lord led him into full-time counseling for the State of Nevada? (Clearly this question is only meant to pique your interest, not fill in a lot of information gaps!)

So hang onto your hats, my friends, and prepare for some straight talk about what lurks beneath the shimmering, glamorous façade of Broadway and Hollywood. This old Grandma may appear to be falling apart on the outside, but the memories are still sharp, and believe me, things haven’t changed all that much since the good old days when I tripped the light fantastic. 

News Flash! A shocking last minute pre-publication disclosure: Just before press time, my portfolio of theatrical photographs mysteriously disappeared! Perhaps this reckless act by a family member was inspired by a desire to protect the family honor—do you think? Pshaw! As if depriving me and my publisher of a few paltry photographs for use on the book cover would force me to suppress the truth at this stage of the game. At any rate, I want to reassure my readers that my photographs have been restored in the nick of time. So let’s go on with the show, shall we?

—B.G.D.

SECTION I – Early Influences that Fueled My Ambition

Chapter 1 – None of Us Gets to Choose Our Parents

Because the first quarter century of my life was the toughest, the Great Depression seems the perfect place to begin filling in the blanks.

On January 19, 1932, my parents, Marjorie McDougal and Frank L. Griffin, Jr., began their tumultuous eighteen year marriage by exchanging vows before a Justice of the Peace in Newark, New Jersey. Neither of them had any idea what they were getting into.

They had met at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and my mother, unable to forget the handsome young sandy-haired math student who had played Romeo to her Juliet in the college play, had followed him to the East Coast, using the pretext of pursuing a Master’s Degree in French at Columbia University. This she quickly abandoned, as friendship turned into something warmer. When they married, he was twenty-two and she was barely twenty-three.

As the only son of a world famous mathematics professor, my father was, by 1932, an actuarial student employed by the Prudential Insurance Company. (His father’s reputation was so far reaching, even during the Great Depression, that after a long trek across country in an old Model A Ford, this fair-haired math wizard was welcomed with open arms by the Prudential’s upper echelon.

My father was raised with two older sisters and a younger sister. Their beautiful mother, Mary, was musically gifted and adored by her husband. In fact, it was love at first sight when Frank Loxley Griffin, Sr., spotted Mary singing in the Baptist church choir, his very first Sunday in Chicago. Well suited temperamentally, they married soon after he earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago, and together they moved to his first teaching post at Williams College in Massachusetts.

When Reed College offered my grandfather Griffin a fulltime position as head of the Math Department, they packed up and moved to Portland. Expecting her fourth child, his wife Mary persuaded her entire family of opticians to resettle in Portland, thus surrounding herself, her husband, and their children with extended family, a decision which perhaps had more positive benefits than negative ones. However, it did spell the end of their reproductive years, for Mary, though an excellent mother, flat out did not want any more children. Dr. F.L.G., Sr., accepted his fate good-naturedly and focused on building his phenomenal reputation as an educator. Evidently they both got what they wanted out of the relationship. There was never any scandal or discord between them.

On my father’s side, the dominant genes were mathematics, academics, languages, music, and the arts. On my mother’s side we see practical, earthy, analytical Scots, shrewd about people, and skilled accountants with an innate instinct for combining business, law and commerce.

My mother, Marjorie, was the granddaughter of a hardworking Scottish immigrant who worked his way up from bank messenger, at age fourteen, to President of the bank in his late twenties. By the time the Great Depression struck in 1929, her grandfather Elliott McDougal was a multi-millionaire in Buffalo. Through his keen oversight, the Midland Marine Trust Company survived the 1929 Crash that devastated the entire country far longer than it should have, but alas, FDR used this great economic tragedy to extend the Depression for an extra decade and implemented many socio-economic policies that plague us even today. If it hadn’t been for World War II, the United States might never have recovered, but that’s another story.

My mother’s father, Walter, married Madge Colt (of Colt Revolver fame), at eighteen in a shotgun marriage. They had three daughters, Wilfred, Marjorie, and Lydia Jane, during a stormy relationship that ended in 1912. Due to the scandal their divorce caused, he was permanently labeled the family black sheep and left Buffalo, never to return.

Walter wasn’t a bad person or mean-spirited. In fact, he was very sociable and loved to travel. Part of his problem was birth order: he was the third of four sons. He also liked to hang out with his alcoholic grandfather, who was a ferry boat captain on Lake Erie. Anyway, my fictional account of my grandfather’s early life in Salem, Oregon, The Outcast: The Long Road Back, portrays Walter’s struggle with alcoholism.

While I’m on the subject, let me confess that I took considerable poetic license by giving my grandfather a totally different second wife, since his real second wife was a self-absorbed gold-digger and an enabler. [In real life Walter checked himself into a rehab center every six months for forty years. It was called a sanitarium in the good old days.]

So now, dear reader, you have the key players who shaped my parents’ lives and, by osmosis, mine.

* * * * *

Taking Center Stage for the First Time

* * * * *

In April 1934, two years and three months after my parents married, I was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Judging by the numerous baby pictures, I conclude that my parents were fairly well pleased, even though I wasn’t the son my father expected. I was named Barbara (after Santa Barbara, where my mother attended dog shows with her father as a child.)

In celebration, my grandfather Walter immediately shipped a one month old black Scottish Terrier, Cadet, from his kennels in Salem, Oregon, to guard my crib. Cadet grew up to be a merry old soul and did a great job watching over all of us until he died of cancer at age eight. Soon thereafter, Father purchased two hyperactive German shorthaired pointer puppies to replace Cadet. (Rowdy was poisoned by a neighbor. The other pup, Cheeky, saved my life when I was eleven. More about that later.)

In addition to Father’s $35 a week salary, which was considered generous for an actuarial student during the Depression, Mother received $25 a month from her father Walter. This enabled them to hire a part-time maid after my brothers were born: Alan in November 1935, and Peter in July 1937.

During the 1930s FDR introduced Progressive Education, a system designed to make children conform to a social model which nobody in their right mind should adopt. It basically focused on the intellectual development of young children. Touching, hugging, coddling and outward displays of parental affection were frowned upon. Supposedly such physical manifestations of parental love