the past nudged by the present

A million years ago, I was "coaching" in New York City at a place called VAMP Studios. Voice, Arrangements, Music, and Production...V.A.M.P.
This was the full service place for the budding singer and in some cases for the already Performing Professionally, singer/actress/actor.
The 'principals' involved in this fantastic one-stop service were, VOICE: Richard Camillucci, of whom I have spoken before....
Arrangements: Luther Henderson (pictured to the right) one of the finest Musical Arranger/Conductor/Composers of the 20th Century---(Google him, please....he was one amazing gentleman), and Music...well, everything these men did involved 'music' but indeed, there were a number of accompanists that played for the recipients of these services....and they were all fantastically talented....and last but not least, Production: Buster Newman. Buster was an amazing man that knew how to bring out the best in you and the best in producing a professional 'nightclub act'. As a team, these guys were unstoppable.

I met a lot of wonderful people through VAMP Studios....many of whom remain in my life, or did till they passed on, to this day....One of the Great Great people I met was a woman named Marcella Markham. She was an actress and a singer working with Buster and Cami on improving and refining her skills. She was married to a very interesting man...quite a bit older than she was...Frank Kingdon and they had a little boy about 5 years old, named Tom. Frank was a wonderful writer and a liberal activist---having backed Henry Wallace and The Progressive Party back in 1947-48, but who had fallen into the Blacklist Hole of the early 50's, which had sent him packing....and had also sent him to the 'ghost writing'-farm where he wrote for some of the most famous political men of his generation who were not afraid to hire him to pretend he was them, as long as no one found out. This is where things were, when I met Marcella. She had been in the Original Broadway production of Eugene Oneill's "The Iceman Cometh"...playing 'Cora'....a landmark production which opened on Broadway in 1946. I met Marcella in 1953. She was nine years older than me.

Marcella was a born and bred New Yorker and we really hit it off, big time. She had a great sense of humor and was incredibly bright and endlessly interesting to me....She was in my eyes a very sophisticated woman with great heart. A woman who followed her own star so to speak and was not anything like anyone I had known before that time, and certainly not like any one of my peers....and, it turned out she had a very handsome brother who happened to be a trumpet player then working as a salesman for the then rather large department store in the Bronx called Alexander's. And I met him because Marcella thought we would make a nice couple. We began dating and I was crazy about him. Sometimes I would stay overnight at Frank & Marcella's apartment in the city....so that Bob and I could have more time together....It was a very exciting time....

This memory of Marcella and in turn her brother Bob was stirred by an article I read in the New York Times the other day. It was about that fascinatingly gifted English actor, Bill Nighy. Remember him in "Love Actually"? He was the over-the-hill Rocker guy who has a comeback with his most famous recording....I LOVED that movie a lot! And I adored Bill Nighy a lot, a lot!! Since that time he has had a much higher profile in the United States, being cast in many many films, three of which are coming out soon...and he is opening at The Music Box Theatre on Broadway in a play called "The Vertical Hour" on November 30th....thus, this interview-article in The Times titled "A Veteran Actor's New Role: Thinking Woman's Crumpet". It is a charming artcle and covers the fact that at 56 Bill Nighy is suddenly the 'leading man' who gets the girl...it was charming and very informative, too.

In the article he talks a great deal about his early years as an actor and his even earlier years as a young teenager, leaving home after listening to Bob Dylan's first album...and what happened to him after that...Okay, Okay...I'm getting to the Marcella Markham part....
He speaks about his very first professional job as an actor where he played a body guard. This was in a production of Tennessee Williams play "The Milktrain Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" and the actress playing the lead who's body he would be guarding was named Marcella Markham....(Parenthetically here: Marcella and Frank were divorced and Marcella moved to England, re-married and began having a 'real' acting career again, their in the UK which is where she was when this incident happened....this was now in the late 60's and early 70's.....and just fyi: I wrote an original score to this same T. Wiiliams play for a production here in Los Angeles in the mid 60's....)

In the article Bill Nighy talks about the first day of rehearsal of this play and I quote: "My process, which hasn't changed was to create a hostile parallel universe in which I was about to get fired. She, (Marcella that is) looked at me a long time and in an act of tremendous kindness, which I have never forgotten, she said; 'Where did you find him? This kid is fabulous'....." And that was truly the beginning of his serious career as an actor. After reading this article I found another quote from him about this incident with Marcella, which was more extensive and actually covered this same story in a much more complete way....:


"The leading lady was the beautiful and glamorous American Actress, Marcella Markham....She came in, in a big coat and huge shades and sat while I spoke the lines for the first time in rehearsal. I was very nervous and my breath was short, so I had a little difficulty delivering them. I couldn't move, either, it turned out, which was disappointing because I had a gestrure planned: I was going to point. I finished, and, rather than replying, Marcella continued to stare at me from behind her big dark glasses for what seemed like an eternity, during which time I invented a hostile parrallel universe where I waited to be punished. This has since become traditional in my work, It's as near as I come to a process. She then turned to the director, Nicholas Kent, and asked: "Where did you find this boy?" But rather than going on to say 'And why are you wasting my time?' as I was expecting, she turned back to me and said, "He's sensational." Trust me, I wasn't - and no one else in the room was that way mistaken - but she'd watched me suffering and was moved to a great kindness. I was humbled by it and built a cave of love around her from that moment on."

Well, I loved reading this story for so very many reasons....first of all, one rarely if ever hears of Marcella any more----she died of breast cancer a number of years ago I'm sorry to say---and to read this truly great story from an actor that I admire so very very much is delicious, plus third and most important, it reminds me how encouraging and supportive Marcella Markham was...and that she continued to be so is not really a surprise but more of an affirmation about this woman that I knew to be a very generous and loving spirit. I know that knowing Marcella when I did changed my life in a big way....she couldn't have been more supportive of me as 'an artist' and also as a woman....And maybe more importantly I saw that a woman could have a career in show business and a life, too, an important thing to learn at not quite 23 years old in the early 1950's---and a very very young 23, a that.....I loved Marcella a lot and I was 'in love' with her dear brother---and he was one of the men that I dreamed of having a baby with....Remember, I was a very young 23 going on 12!

This picture above and to the left is from that Original Broadway production of "The Iceman Cometh"....
and this one to the right is also from that production....and in this photograph, Marcella is second from the left
as you look at the photograph....I wish I had some other pictures of her and of her brother Bob, too...and somewhere I do have a picture of him but I couldn't find it....I promise that if and when I find it I will post it....And somewhere I have a picture of Buster Newman, as well....(A lifetime of photographs that need to be scanned into my computer...it will take forever, I swear.....)

Having my memory jogged about Marcella was a wonderful thing because it took me back to a time when I was truly naive and rather innocent about show business and when I had my whole life ahead of me with everything to look forward to and, most importantly, when I was surrounded by incredibly supportive and encouraging people who were happy to help me along my way....

One other interesting fact about Marcella: She wrote a little book that was first published in 1978....it is called "OLD is...GREAT!" It is truly a "little" book---6" X 4 1/2". It was a collaboration with a wonderful illutrator named Dominic Poelsma, who took Marcella as his Muse....
It's a charming little book that has one sentence on each page with a drawing illustrating the text...for instance: 'Old is...when candlelit tables are no longer romantic because you can't read the menu'...and the drawing shows you just that...and one other example...'Old is...when you can tell the truth openly because no one would believe it anyway'....It's not a deep book, but it is very amusing and the drawings are delightful...Marcella always had a great sense of humor and especially about herself....She was a truly wonderful friend to me and it was lovely to read what Bill Nighy said about her all these many many years later.....



More To Come.....