English speaker, host of top-rated podcasts on Spotify
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Dean frankly didn't need it. He was more popular on his own in movies than ever before. He just started making some campy action movies about a mock James Bond named Matt Helm and he'd been given his own variety hour on NBC. The Dean Martin show debuted in September 1965. The very same day that marriage on the rocks slunk into theaters. The first episode featured Bob Newhart, Diane Carroll, Joey Heatherton and surprise surprise Frank who stomped all over the host rendition of his monster hit. Everybody loves somebody which Dean had already mangled during the show's opening, getting pregnant while she was single was something I don't think my mother ever got over. That was really a heavy situation. In 1919 girls, killed themselves, became prostitutes or got married and carried the guilt with them all their lives. Mom took the last route. Mom's unmarried name was Gladys Gill. And early pictures show an outdoorsy girl with devilish eyes and her own kind of prettiness. There, she is crouched in the crotch of a tree holding a rifle and the squirrel she's just bagged or on another occasion, she's asri a horse wearing a jockey suit at a time when most women didn't wear pants. But by the time I became old enough to remember her, she was solemn, if not downright grim. Mom and dad were both from Kansas City, Missouri. Mom had a half sister, Aunt Bell, whom she was closer to than anyone else in the world. Aunt Bell stepped in and took care of her after their mother died until mom was old enough to go to work in the Box factory. That's where she met dad whose name was James Colton. Dad was an only child, a happy cat, a personality kid. He was tall, slim with dimples and a delicate bone structure, all of which I inherited. He was also handsome, sandy haired and he drank a lot. He was a real ladies man and wound up having 10 marriages and nine wives before he was 50. He must have had a great line to get mom to go all the way as they said back then anyway, he did what nice guys did when mom told him she was pregnant, he married her too bad. He couldn't have been a cat. Too bad for her, too bad for him and too bad for me. As soon as they were married, mom and dad moved to Chicago where no one was going to be minding their business. Mom always told me that I was born at Michael Rees Hospital on December 18th, 1919. But when I needed a birth certificate to get my passport for the European tour with Benny Goodman. In 1959. I was stunned to learn. I'd bowed into the world as Anita Bell Coulton on October 18th, 1919. That was about six and 1.5 months after they cut out from K C. Finding out about my real birth date, put a lot of things into focus for me that had bothered me all my life. I couldn't explain it. But I'd always felt that in some way I was to blame for whatever was wrong. Eventually, I could see that dad had done the right thing in marrying mom. But as soon as they moved into an apartment in the uptown district of Chicago, dad abdicated. He got a job as a printer when they came to Chicago and worked for Ken, the biggest outfit in the city. He made good money, but like a lot of other people, he'd drink up his check on the way home on Payday. During my earliest years, I don't have any memories of him at all. Between the time I was a little over a year old and when I reached seven, he just wasn't around. I can't say the same about mom. She looked after me, but there used to be a popular phrase, excess baggage. And that's what she made me feel like. Not that she ever complained, not mom. She was a straight laced old style martyr who pitied herself because she had to work and was left with a daughter to raise. I didn't realize it at the time, of course. But she made me feel I was keeping her from living her life. She worked hard all day, took me to the babysitters, picked me up after work, cooked dinner and went to bed. I guess she was tired, but I couldn't understand why she never cuddled and kissed me as I saw other mothers do with their Children. From the time I was two years old, I was sent off to Kansas City to visit my grandparents on my father's side. Each summer, they were churchgoing people. And it was there that I began singing. I enjoyed Sunday school for that reason. But when I'd get adjusted to life with grandpa and grandma Colton, they'd take me back to Chicago or mom would come down and get me. I don't think I had any clear idea where I belonged. And I suppose I interpreted those changes of locale as some kind of punishment. Mom liked music. And after I returned from Kansas City and sang a little song, she seemed very pleased. I must have been starved for attention because after she started me in kindergarten at 4.5, I really enjoyed learning little songs at five. I took the leading part in a Christmas play in which I sang and danced. It was one of the few times mom showed any pride in me when I was a kid. I was so proud. I almost popped my buttons. When I first started to grade school at Stewart. I did ok, because we talked our lessons and I could remember whatever was said, but I began floundering when we got into identifying printed letters and numbers. I don't know why. Nobody thought it's strange that I couldn't learn to read and that I printed so much larger than other kids. Me, I thought I was dumb mom. She just sighed and accepted it as another burden for her to bear. I guess teachers then didn't give much thought to why a kid had trouble learning to read. I know that none of them ever sent a note suggesting that I have my eyes checked. So I tried to make myself invisible to escape. Getting called on and making some stupid mistake in front of the whole class in my mind. I wasn't worth a whole lot and nobody went out of their way to make me feel good about myself. Then when I was seven, a wonderful thing happened, my dad started showing up at the apartment again. He laughed and joked and won me over the same way. He must have won the heart of any woman. He went after, to be honest, dad never looked after me and he contributed very little to my support. But even so he probably gave me more love than mom. I don't think I was aware that he and mom had divorced first because of his drinking, gambling and chasing pretty girls. But after he began coming by more often, mom began to bloom. After a few weeks of this, they had a long private talk when it was over. They told me they were remarrying and we'd all be living together again. I guess the short period that followed was the happiest of my childhood and it came about in a strange way. It seems dad had been shooting craps and had cleaned this other cat out of cash. His opponent was one of those never say die types who put this seven room west side apartment against dad's money. Dad accepted the challenge and won so you might say that mom and dad's second marriage depended on the roll of the dice. I was at an age when mom felt I needed a father and I did because dad really knew how to make a girl's heart flutter. He got me a dog, Kale who was really something you could send Kao to the store with a note in the bag, ordering anything even hamburger and he'd bring it back untouched for a while. I didn't know whether I loved dad or Kao. Most certainly mom wasn't in the running about a week after we moved into the apartment, a piano was delivered. Dad told me he'd bet on a horse named Anita. A long shot that paid off and he'd used his winnings to buy a piano. Who knows whether it was the truth or just some of dad's Blarney. True or not. It really made me feel good. That piano was intended to play a big part in our home life. Mom felt that if dad couldn't or wouldn't give up drinking, at least he could do it at home with a big apartment and piano for music. They could have his friends in, for parties. So dad mixed a batch of home brew which he put in the pantry and it wasn't long before the yeast began to work and caps were popping off the bottles in the middle of the night. In the beginning, the piano provided entertainment for everybody. Mom would sit down and play songs like moonlight and Roses. She'd sing tenor. Dad would sing the third part pretty good and I'd put my fingers in my ears and learn the melody. I guess those sessions are the most satisfying memories I have of our family. Of course, I didn't realize then that music was going to be such a large part of my existence. Once the home brew had worked, the parties started. Dad's crowd turned out to be poker, playing hard drinkers. The get togethers, mom had encouraged, turned out to be drunken brawls. And even so that didn't stop dad from going out on payday and showing up at home on Sunday night or Monday morning, empty handed. But mom was determined to play at home style. So she tried to be out at the plant to catch dad as he left on Payday. I don't think she caught him more than once or twice. So, even though he was earning 100 bucks a week, not bad for the time, money was always scarce at our house. Finally, mom gave up on reforming dad. She went out and got a new position as Compton meter operator at Armor's packing plant. And when dad came home, she had the door bolted from the inside. They had terrible fights screaming at one another through the door, blaming each other while I cowered in one of the back rooms. Praying as my grandmother had taught me to that, they wouldn't hurt one another and my prayers were answered because dad would always eventually disappear. Mom found a one room and kitchenette and gave up the seven room apartment. We sold the piano and used the money to move and that was the last I saw of my father until I was grown and out on my own. I never let mom know how much I missed him or the pain. I felt that he didn't care enough to come around and see me when she wasn't there like a turtle. I developed a hard shell to protect myself. I might be vulnerable, but I learned how to hide my pain with a flip remark or a hard boiled attitude. Elizabeth would be the first to admit that she adored food and drink. Our credo might have been eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow. We report to work. She wrote in her 1987 memoir Coom diet book Elizabeth Takes off. But for Elizabeth, that kind of indulgence was dangerous to her profession while Richard seldom gained an ounce nor did his prodigious alcohol intake seem to damage his amazing memory. Elizabeth gained weight easily and had to work at taking it off and she hated exercise even as early as 1959. When at 27 she appeared in that revealing white bathing suit in suddenly last summer, Joe Mankowitz had told her to lose weight and tighten up those muscles. It looks like you've got bags of dead mice under your arms. It seems hard to believe that someone whose reputation and livelihood depended on flawless beauty would risk it all by sheer overindulgence. Yet it's possible that Elizabeth had a love hate relationship with her beauty. It was part of her identity and a source of her enormous success, but it was also what had stolen her childhood and imprisoned her in an unreal life.