Before My Interior Design Career I was a Gangster’s Moll

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone is doing well this election day.

This is a short, fun post inspired by my Halloween costume. If you missed my former 1920s gangster moll who married well, you can see it here.  

 

Okay, it’s not particularly short, but I hope you will enjoy a slice of my youth in New York City.

 

Did you know that I was once a gangster’s moll?

Okay, I played the part of a gangster’s moll in The Cotton Club, starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere. While I did a fair amount of “background” work in films back in the 1980s in New York, this was the only time I actually saw myself on screen.

If you’ve seen this March 2015 post, 12 Things You Don’t Know About Me, you might be able to see a clip of me at the top of the scene. In it, I’m sitting in a chair and directed by FF Coppola to be reading a book as part of a scene shot at the NYC Plaza Hotel.

Sit in a chair and read. Hey, I can do that. In fact, all of the extras were upgraded to Silent Bit part, which paid us more money.

 

Oh, Laurel, how exciting!

 

Yes, it really was. It was one of the highlights of my life.

 

How did you get the part?

 

Oh, it’s a funny story. I read that casting was happening for the Cotton Club and to send pics/resumes to the casting director.

It was the day after Labor Day, and since the CD’s office was only a 20-minute walk from my upper westside NYC Apartment, I marched myself over. I walked into his office, but damn it, he was on the phone. He barely looked up but motioned me to put my headshot/resume on his desk.

I was a little disappointed because I was hoping for a better response, but I did as I was told, and then, feeling the familiar sting of rejection, I turned around and left the office.

 

Now, what happened next sounds like fiction, but it’s not.

 

I was about to hit the elevator button when I heard the casting director’s door open, and his assistant shouted at me.

“Hey, don’t go! Please come back. We want to talk to you.”

Again, I did as I was told and walked back into the room to find the casting director still on the phone. Now that I was present, he was gesticulating wildly with some secret message only his assistant could understand.

 

Shortly after that, the CD got off the phone.

 

Smiling broadly, he told me they were pulling their hair out because they needed a bunch of attractive young women with no trace of a suntan and, God forbid, TAN LINES for a scene they were casting for the Cotton Club film. And blimey, it was the end of summer. He said I was the only one they had found in the last several days with the necessary lack of tan.

Yep, that’s me. I hadn’t been to the beach once that summer. In addition, I’m a very fair brunette, which was a help. One of my ballet teachers back in the mid-70s was fond of telling me that my skin was the color of vanilla yogurt.

Thanks, I guess.

 

Here’s the reason why.

 

My grandparents–

 

 

From left to right, my paternal grandparents, Burt and Elsie Bern (AKA, Nonnie), and my mom’s dad, Lawrence Lewis.

I’m not positive, but this might’ve been my parent’s October 17, 1943 wedding. My mother’s mom, Hannah, had passed away from cancer the previous summer.

As you can see, my Nonnie had the most beautiful peaches and cream, pale complexion. By the way, Bert and Elsie are the grandparents who lived in Chicago. Cale and I visited their building in April 2022 on our fabulous trip back in time.

 

Okay, fast forward from October 1943 to September 1983.

 

The CD told me I needed to go for a costume fitting immediately. However, the costume designer had the final say. I went up the elevator with another gorgeous blond actress, and she was very sweet, too. Blondy, we’ll call her. Oh, brother. Is that what I’m supposed to look like? No matter. I was a dancer. I had a nice figure and the requisite vanilla yogurt skin tone. Hopefully, it’ll all work out.

I tried on a few dresses, but the one I presented to the costume designer looked fantastic. The shoes fit, too. Blondy looked lovely, as well. After scrutinizing us within an inch of our lives, Academy Award-winning costume designer Milena Canonero said, “You’re both fine. You’ve got the part.”

I felt on top of the world, and then, still in my beaded gown, I turned around. Standing there beaming at us young women was the legendary Gwen Verdon! Surely, I was dreaming.

 

The film shoot was soon after. It was a three-day shoot at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, and each day was 12 hours long.

 

The call time was 6:00 AM.

Ouch, but of course, I did it.

I walked into a fairly large room attached to another large room. Sitting at one end was 18-year-old Diane Lane, who looked barely old enough to be a young teenager, much less a grown woman. She was getting her nails done. She looked up and smiled at me, too.

Shortly after that, one of the assistant directors excitedly walked over and told me they wanted to cut my hair and would give me extra screen time.

 

And then came the transformation process.

 

First, they did our nails, too, and with a French manicure that was very popular then. If you don’t know, that’s the manicure with the little half-moons. After my hair butchering, they washed it and coifed it into perfect finger waves with tons of hairspray.

Then came the makeup, skillfully applied by my very own makeup artist. I think each artist maybe had two or three girls they were in charge of. Some dressers helped us get dressed. Our costumes included lots and lots of sparkly jewelry and cigarettes in holders.

 

Coppola was known for insisting on this level of detail even with his background actors.

 

But you know… it worked. Between the hair, makeup, clothes, and fingernails with perfect half-moons over the cuticles, I was transported to another place, time, and person who lived inside my body but wasn’t me.

 

And then… There was the elegant Plaza Hotel. (A little interior design career foreshadowing, perhaps?)

Alas, most of the time on the set was spent waiting in a long hall.

But what astonished me the most was the amount of equipment in this room. There were big lights and massive cables—like humongous snakes—everywhere. I couldn’t understand how none of it showed in the shots. Coppola did dozens of takes of each shot, and then he’d run into the next room to view what had just happened on the video.

 

When these short breaks occurred, the makeup artists would find us and fix our hair and makeup, whether it needed fixing or not. This went on ALL DAY LONG, dozens of times.

 

During parts of this scene the gangster actors were in another room having a “meeting.” However, we were often sitting in the hall together–waiting.

I met the actor, John Patrick Ryan, who was about to get butchered with a huge knife. He told me they had to do the scene in one take because it would make a bloody mess. (pun intended) And then he showed me how they crafted a pouch on his neck filled with fake blood. No, it’s not ketchup. lol

 

Okay, folks. Hang onto your hats; I FOUND the scene I was in on YouTube!

 

Oh, Laurel, can we see it?

 

Yes, you can, but please listen up.  I have only shown a clip of one minute of the entire video. That’s because at around 2:00 into the video and after a bunch of hideous racial slurs is the most graphic onscreen murder I’ve ever seen. These guys are amazing actors. I promise you that John Ryan was perfectly fine. Still, I would be remiss not to give you fair warning if seeing something like this would make you want to kill me.

So, the video below is safe, but if you want to see it all in its horrific glory, click where it says “Watch Entire Video.”

 

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Below are screenshots from the video and the 2019 remake, where it says “encore.”

 

This is at the beginning of the scene when Diane Lane arrives at a party. You can see me on the far right.

 

This shot is at the top of the video clip, above. If you hear the word “whiskey,” you’ve missed it. If you don’t recognize me, that’s me with my back to the camera on the right. As promised, I got more screen time. Hahaha! Well, they had to show off “the hair!”

 

Below is the same scene from the opposite viewpoint.

 

In case it’s not clear, that’s me in the bottom left. The party hadn’t started yet, and we were supposed to be bored.

 

Above, you can see my jewels and manicured fingernails.

 

This is a shot from the German trailer for the 1984 original film, which you can see in this post if you missed it.

 

But then, the gangsters showed up, and the fun began…

 

In the film clip,  you will see me slink into the scene where I’m standing in profile between Diane Lane and Richard Gere.

 

 

I was not aware of that. I was only doing what I was told to do and flirting with the cute guy actor. Two years of acting training definitely paid off. ;]

 

The room was very smokey, and we were encouraged to smoke.

 

After all, us molls, by definition, were a bunch of loose women. Hehe, I don’t smoke, but since I was no longer me and in the name of art, my character permitted me just this one time.

I’m behind Diane Lane’s head for a few seconds, and my jewels sparkle in the light. It’s such a subtle thing—nothing anyone would ever notice, especially with the gorgeous Diane in the foreground—but it adds another layer of elegance and texture to the scene.

 

I’m in here somewhere, I think, behind the beautiful woman on the right. I recall that she was an especially lovely woman on the set. Most of these women were professional models and refused to have their eyebrows tweezed. I don’t blame them. It could’ve hurt their chances to get other jobs afterward. Oh, it’s a very bad picture, but there’s Blondie on the left laughing with her beau. She wore this melon-colored dress and was truly stunning in it.

 

While I had done a lot of theater work, this was my first film, and it was all downhill from there.

 

While it sounds like fun, doing extra work was mostly a massive degrading drag. Commercials, which I also did, were a much better experience. I did about ten of those. My best commercial job was as a flight attendant for United Airlines. We had some massive overtime on that one.

 

OMG! I found it. I found it! Would you believe it took 40 hours to shoot this 30-second spot? That’s partly because the little girl couldn’t get out her freaking line.

 

MOMMY, SHELLY WON’T WAVE ANYMORE.

 

This was the understudy. I believe they shortened the line. It was originally: “Shelly’s arm won’t wave anymore.” Would you believe we spent all the first day on about 10 seconds of the commercial? It was at least 100 takes. Day 2 was 20 hours long. There’s a union rule called Golden Time. The actor receives an entire day’s pay for every hour over sixteen hours. That was a pretty good day!

Day 3 was a week later, on my 28th birthday.  I know you don’t see me. I wore a brown flight attendant’s uniform. As soon as the little girl said her line, I had to cross in front of the camera, but they cut the shot before that happened.

On day two, someone stopped me in the restroom to ask a question, and she was perplexed when I told her I wasn’t a real flight attendant. lol

Here’s the entire reel of 80s United Airlines ads.

 

Okay, one more.

 

Who remembers those hokey ads for the National Enquirer? The three people reading the paper, and the tagline is “Enquiring minds— Like Me!” Well, I was the first or second pair of eyes in one spot. They used different people every week. Since I was only shot from the eyes up, they only made up my eyes.

 

 

 

What other stars did you work with?

 

Well, working with is a bit of a stretch except for a bit of interaction with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty in the massive flop, Ishtar.

However, I was on set with Meryl Streep, (twice) Robert Deniro, Warren Beatty (a second time), Robert Downey, Jr., Molly Ringwald, Meg Tilly, Judge Reinhold, Joe Mantegna, Heather Locklear (in a commercial)

 

So, how did you go from all that to an interior design career?

 

That’s a terrific question. ;]

The summer after I turned 30, I had had it with show business. I was booked for five jobs, and ALL of them fell through, which, contractually, they were allowed to do. It was incredibly depressing because I was flat broke and had given all my waitressing shifts away.

 

That’s when I got a job in an art gallery in SoHo.

 

The owner turned out to be a real crook, so I quit at the end of August 1987. And then my dear brother, Donald, passed away from a heart attack at age 38 two weeks later.

That is when I went to career counseling, did a lot of soul-searching, and decided to return to college for interior design. I was just about to turn 32.

It wasn’t a fortune, but I inherited enough from my brother’s estate to pay for my tuition.

Okay, as they say.

“That’s a wrap.”

I hope you enjoyed learning about a period in my late 20s, shortly before I began my interior design career.

xo,

 

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