The Child Performer ( 1st. Blog)

My name is Jeanne Tanzy, I was born and raised in New York City and grew up as a child performer having worked on Broadway and in TV, Films, Commercials, Voice Overs, Print Work,...you name it, I did it! Judy Garland who sang the song, "Born In A Trunk", is just about the way my childhood began. For those of you who don't remember Judy Garland....well she was the young girl in "The Wizard Of Oz" who wore the Ruby Slippers. It comes on TV once a year so I'm sure you've seen it. In fact, I actually worked with Judy Garland.....but that's another story later on. The very first Broadway show I ever did was the national tour of the original company of "Gypsy", with Ethel Merman in 1961. I was seven years old at the time and I got into the show because my older sister Jan Tanzy had the lead role of 'Baby June'. Because my father Eugene (Tanzillo), had to work, my mother had to take me on tour with my sister. As to not make the tour uneventful for me, (or unprofitable), my mother FiFi Tanzy asked the producer, David Merrick, if he could put me in the show, to which he agreed. I ended up playing the role of the 'Hawaiian Girl', a bit part in the opening scene of the show. I stood on stage with a bunch of other kids, it was supposed to be a kiddy show audition for the character Uncle Jocko, each kid wearing some crazy costume, me wearing a grass skirt and a tiny little bra with flowers all over it. The little boy that stood next to me in the line up of kids would pull on my skirt every night until finally one night I left the stage with my ass exposed to the audience! We traveled all around the US and played some really great cities; Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Fransisco, and a bunch of other places that are now a blurr to me. I loved traveling and I really loved being on the stage! So you can say that at the tender age of seven, I KNEW what I wanted to do for the rest of my life......be a Performer! I say performer because in those days nobody was just an Actress, or a Dancer or Singer. You had to be what we called a 'triple threat', meaning you had to do everything well. (If you wanted to work, that is). After the tour ended I begged my mom to put me in classes for dance, acting and singing, which she did. I knew that if I wanted to succeed in 'showbiz' I would have to have real talent! So I danced and I sang and I even brought tears to the eyes of my acting teacher. By the age of 10 I was ready to conquer the world!

By the time I was 13 years old I had five Broadway shows under my belt. I played the role of 'Rowena' in a 'flop' called "Once For The Asking", which to my recollection, closed the night after opening. It was a bomb! Then came the musicals "Bajour", where I played 'Marfa', the Gypsy daughter of Actor Hershal Bernardi and Actress Antonia Rey. It was about a gang of Gypsy's settling in Manhattan whose only agenda was to rip off the good people of New York City! It was a great show with fantastic chorus and dance numbers, one of which, "I'm Mean", sung and danced by Chita Rivera was a show stopper! Unfortunately....it too was not a big success. I think we lasted 4 months on Broadway!

Not wasting any time, I went from "Bajour" to the original musical, "Anyone Can Whistle", which starred Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury and Harry Guardino. The show was political and way ahead of it's time. It too closed after a short lived run on Broadway. But the show was not forgotten and many years later many company's have since performed the show to fantastic reviews. The old saying is true; being at the right place at the right time! The world was not ready for this show back in 1966!




























My career was really on the move and as soon as that show ended, I landed the role of 'Jesse Oakley', sister to 'Annie Oakley', played (again) by Ethel Merman. It was the twenty year revival for Merman, who had originated the role in 1947. The show opened at the State Theatre at Lincoln Center in 1967 and was so successful that we went on tour with it, brought it back to Broadway for a limited engagement, and then it was made into an NBC TV Movie of the week Special! It was such a success that, at the age of 13, I was able to buy myself a mink coat!! OK....so I was a tad precocious for my age. But hey.....I was working and earning a living!

By the time I was 14 years old, now at that 'between age', between child and teenager, my work on Broadway was now fading in the background. Too young to play an ingenue and too old to play a child. It's that time in an Actors career where you either push through it or fall off the face of the earth. I was very fortunate because around that time I auditioned and got hired to be in a group of kid singers called 'The Dick Williams Kid Singers'. Dick was the older brother of Singer Andy Williams, who at that time, had a weekly television show called the Andy Williams Show.

Below: Singing with Soupy Sales.


Above: Singing with Steve Lawrence. I'm the long haired brunette just to the right of Steve Lawrence with the black circles running down my dress.


It was during this time, (late 1960's - early 1970's), That I worked on many television shows with the group to include The Andy Williams Show, The Steve Lawrence Spectacular, The Soupy Sales Show, and a Hullabaloo Christmas Special with Jerry Lewis. (Who is not a big fan of kids!) We recorded several albums as a singing group, one of which was
"Little Kids Sing For Big People".

But the greatest experience of all for me, and still is to this day, was the week of Christmas, 1967 when the Kid Singers worked in concert with Judy Garland at the (then) new Madison Square Garden at the Felt Forum Theatre! It was a week I will never forget for as long as I live! For that engagement we brought into the group Judy's son and daughter, Lorna and Joey Luft, who sang and danced with us in the concert show. We did all the old great songs including 'Swanee River', and the show ended with Judy singing 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow', (from the Wizard Of Oz), which brought tears to everyone including myself as I sat on the stage to her right as she sang it. She liked me for some reason, as we had spoken backstage before the opening number, even asked me if she looked OK.....and of course she did! You see, the theatre was so new they didn't have mirrors in the dressing rooms yet! I had a huge lump in my throat as I told her how beautiful she looked in her red satin dress covered with sheer red chiffon! I couldn't believe how nervous she was as she waited for her cue from the orchestra, (a cue they ended up playing several times before she could walk out onto the stage). So when she turned and looked at me square in the eyes and held my chin in her hands as she poured out the final bars of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", I did a very unprofessional thing......I cried.

Judy performed that opening night but got very sick the next day and had to cancel the rest of the weeks shows. I felt so sad for her....cause she looked so very weak and frail. It was around this time that my mother, FiFi Tanzy had gone into business as a personal artist manager. I had been attending the Professional Children's School on West 60th street, a school designed for professional children which offered a correspondence course for kids who had to go out of town to work in the business, i.e., out of town try outs, as we call them, before we bring a show back to New York and the critics! But now that I was not traveling as much as I had in the years before, my mom decided to open her business out of our apartment in West 58th Street. After school I would come home and help her man the phones. I learned a great deal about the 'business' of the word 'show business' from her. She is gone now, as is my father and not a day goes by that I don't find myself remembering her words and well.......becoming my mom! We always say Lord don't let me become my parents......but we do! It was after the concert that Judy and I really became friends. She invited me to her hotel suite at the Sherry Netherlands several times and I have a confession.....we often had drinks and got blasted together! She was an incredible woman with incredible stories about how she grew up in the industry. It was a sad story she told. The abuse and misuse of the young performers by the big studios back in the day. Uppers in the morning and downers in the evening to help them sleep. Thank God since that time laws have been past with regard to under age children in show business. Unfortunately there is still abuse and it often comes from their very own parents. But that's another story I will tell in later Blogs. It involves my work in the music industry and boy groups that I had a large hand in developing. But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I will always say my life has been very blessed having worked with some of the greatest of greats in the entertainment industry. I have so many stories to follow and I hope that whoever reads this Blog will 'tune in the next time', as I have a few surprises left to tell. Let's just say my career hasn't ended yet, nor has my story!

JT