Read Online The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner - Free Book Online Page B

a half-mile loop around a cornfield. Our families also celebrate some of the Jewish holidays together, now that we’ve all got skeleton crews. Her husband, Arthur, is my favorite of the Bridge husbands. He was loyal to my father in the aftermath of his stroke and long past the point when most friends fell away. And after my father died, he’d readily volunteer to help my mom with things around the house, often “fixing” an appliance by just plugging it in, always more amused than chagrined.
    Bette also comes to all of my daughter’s plays. She comes in part because of her friendship with my mother, but her fidelity to these fledgling productions isn’t a chore; she loves watching ninth graders attempting The Tempest , or hoofing their way through Thoroughly Modern Millie . Bette had been the star of the drama club at Hillhouse High. When the cast list was put up, she was confident that she would land the lead in all the school plays, and she always did. “I thought I was the greatest thing going!”
    Bette isn’t at all reticent to talk with me, says she’s been looking forward to it, clears her throat and leans in.
    â€œSo when did you win your first Oscar? When did it all begin?”
    Bette laughs, settles back into her chair, but she doesn’t need to search her memory. She might as well be telling me about something that happened that morning.
    â€œWell, actually, it started in the second grade. I was playing the part of Mrs. Upper Lip, and I opened my mouth and out came this wonderful voice, and I remember looking around and having everyone pay attention to me. I decided then that drama was going to be the thing that I would do with my whole life.”
    Bette has a deep sonorous voice and perfect articulation. When she speaks it’s as if she is reading a short story aloud, speaking in full sentences with well-placed pauses. No ums , no ahs . All of this dates back to a Chapel Street studio in downtown New Haven where Bette first took elocution lessons.
    Enter Julia Jacobs. Masculine like Joan Crawford and angular like Katharine Hepburn, she was the embodiment of the young actress’s dream. “I loved her. As a matter of fact, I would imitate her when I got home. The way she pronounced certain words, I would pronounce certain words. I just worshipped her. And I was her star.”
    Elocution lessons were popular in the 1930s and 1940s for people who needed professional coaching and for new immigrants hoping to shed their accents. Most of the kids in Bette’s class were there to work on “self-presentation,” which basically meant manners, but not Bette Cohen. She was there to hone her craft. Her dream solidified when she saw the movie and performance that would change the course of her life: Bette Davis in Dark Victory . From that day on she changed the spelling of her name from Betty to Bette in homage to the great actress.
    â€œYou were just a kid. How did your parents let you do that?”
    â€œI just did.”
    Bette’s father had no use for his daughter’s fancy lessons. When she was old enough to drive, he refused to let her take a car from the lot. A tight-fisted used-car salesman, his constant refrain was: If you crack up the car we’ll go broke. Bette didn’t care; she even enjoyed the two-mile walk to the studio, rehearsing the monologues in her head, preparing to recite them for Julia, or incorporating her feedback on the walk home. When Bette’s father threatened to renege on the dollar for lessons, Julia cut the price in half.
    â€œI still think about her to this day, sometimes I even feel myself leaning in the way she would, the angle of her body.”
    Bette admits that she befriended Ginger Bailey because her grandfather owned the storied Shubert Theater. All theBroadway-bound shows previewed there, including Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! , The King and I , and Carousel .
    â€œI felt so guilty