“Let Me Belong”—Sheree North
Say SHEREE NORTH and you see the exuberant elf who broke into glory on Bing’s rv show. You see the wisecracking babe who, via 20th Century-Fox, has made herself very, very popular since. You see her aglow with life and mischief and probably think what fun to be gay Sheree North, breezing your way star-ward from the first. Which goes to show how deceptive
appearances are. Through twenty of her twenty-two years, it was no fun at all to be Sheree North or Dawn Bethel (her real name) or Cookie or Bubbles or any of the dozen handles she tried out, hoping to establish a new identity. It was nothing but a long, blind, lonely, often despairing quest for emotional security.
“I always felt like the wrong kid,” says Sheree, “rejected and cast out. I always hungered to be somebody else, almost anyone else, so long as it wasn’t me.”
Close-up she’s not the character she plays. The platinum top’s dyed, She’d rather keep it dark but bows to the gentlemen who prefer blondes. The hazel eyes hold sadness. The lines of the face are soft, the voice is low. There’s nothing brassy about her. While her command of English may include jive, it doesn’t stop there. She talks like a person who thinks.
“The change that came in me wasn’t due to success. Nor to money nor a man. All three can make life pleasanter. Or, with all three, you can be as and lost as I used to be. There’s just one place where you can find security, and that’s within yourself.”
Dancing’s a profession with her, not a way of life. Eight years ago she tagged herself a flop. “I’ve danced enough. If you can’t make the grade at fourteen, you might as well quit.” Three years ago she was all set to turn in her taps for a typewriter. When they kinescoped the Crosby program, she and her sister Janet watched for a minute. “Ech!” shrugged Sheree, flicked the knob and went back to the more engrossing project of building an upside-down pineapple cake. Ambition never drove her. The cry of her heart, if she could have given it expression, was, “Let me belong.”
She had it rough. Her father walked out before she was born. They were on relief, eked out by what her harassed mother could earn. Grandmother’s hands were full with the cooking and housework. The kids took care of themselves as best they could. Close in age and feeling, Janet and Don, her half-brother and sister, got some moral support from each other. Sheree was the fifth wheel who didn’t speak their language nor play their games. They were old enough to look on her as a nuisance but too young to be aware of her need for them. Besides, they were out fighting their own battles.
She had it rough. Her father walked out before she was born. They were on relief, eked out by what her harassed mother could earn. Grandmother’s hands were full with the cooking and housework. The kids took care of themselves as best they could. Close in age and feeling, Janet and Don, her half-brother and sister, got some moral support from each other. Sheree was the fifth wheel who didn’t speak their language nor play their games. They were old enough to look on her as a nuisance but too young to be aware of her need for them. Besides, they were out fighting their own battles.
The sense of not belonging came into cruel focus the day she matriculated at kindergarten. There she faced an array of scrubbed and shiny children, dolled up for the occasion. She also faced a battery of critical eyes, which appraised the holes in her stockings, her unkempt hair, the patched and tacky dress—a hand-me-down from a hand-me-down of Janet’s. She saw that every girl wore a ribbon in her hair, and would have given her right arm for a ribbon. At home they had no nickels to spare for ribbons. At home they had no time to see whether you took a bath or not, so naturally you didn’t. Up to then it hadn’t mattered. Now it did. She felt the wave of disapproval surging toward her and cringed under it. She felt ugly and dirty and alone. She felt that a wall had gone up, with all the rest on one side and her on the other—an experience repeated over and over until it bit deep.
The neighborhood where they lived wasn’t well-to-do. Some families fared better, some worse. But the other kids had fathers. Unlike Sheree’s mother, theirs could stay at home, concentrate on the youngsters, do much with little. In addition, Sheree was a highly sensitive child. With a thicker skin and more aggressiveness, she might have defied her peers and thus won their respect. Instead, their hostility cowed her. Realizing their power, they’d abuse it, mocking her openly or behind their hands. Taunted at length beyond endurance, she’d cry out. Kids are kids and don’t know when they’re being brutal. Grownups are supposed to be endowed with more sense. But one teacher of Sheree’s must have had problems of her own. She seemed to lie in wait for that desperate cry, The minute it rose, she’d haul the culprit to the desk, stick a paper bag over her head and stand her by the hot radiator till the sweat poured down. This unique method of discipline failed to do anything for Sheree’s morale.
It never occurred to her to complain at home, where complaints weren’t encouraged. Anyway, suppose Mother should go riding to the rescue. The very thought stood Sheree’s hair on end, because then the teacher would really have it in for her. By now she was thoroughly intimidated, terrified of authority, terrified almost of her shadow. It showed in the way she walked, head down, shoulders sunk. It showed in the way she couldn’t lift her eyes nor speak up to an adult, having learned in a hard school that your safest course lay in keeping your mouth shut. Only by herself was she unafraid, in a fairyland she created to escape reality. On the way home she’d filch a flower from a bush. In the bedroom she’d put on a dress of her mother’s, crush the flower between her palms to make perfume and pretend to be a movie star.
There remained the compulsive need for acceptance, to be part of the group. Once, for two rainbow days, she thought she glimpsed her way in. When the teacher asked for Girl Scout candidates, she found the temerity to raise her hand. Then the matter of uniforms came up. Uniforms cost money. Who, Sheree asked herself fiercely, wants to be a Brownie? Brownies are corny. Tears stinging her throat, she bowed out of the promised land.
Disciplined to control her emotions, they’d overwhelm her sometimes in solitude and then sobs racked her thin body. “If they’d only like me. If I could only do something to make them like me.” To achieve that end, she’d try every dodge open to a hurt and bewildered child. When two gangs on the block had a fight, she’d buddy up to both sides, running from one to the other, currying favor with each by knocking the foe. To gain even momentary attention, she’d lie. “I’ve got a pool underneath my house. I’ve got a closetful of candy.” She lied plausibly, with imaginative flourishes, and the kids were impressed. But next morning some indignant classmate would pounce. “My mother says you’re lying and I’m not going to talk to you any more.” She never had the assurance to stick by her guns. Her only recourse was to dream up some better lie.
By the time she was twelve, she’d gained recognition of a kind. For one thing, the children were used to her. For another, she was a stand-out dancer who took part in all the school plays and was even allowed to put on some of the numbers. As a three-year-old, attending a Hollywood Christmas party where they gave you free toys, she’d climbed up on the stage and started whirling. At six, the Falcon Dance Studio took her in. In return for tuition, her mother did chores around the place, assisted by Sheree as she grew older. It wasn’t so much the dancing that attracted her as the vistas it opened. That she’d be a great ballerina went without saying. This would give her a chance to wear sequins, feathers and shiny nails, representing glamor. Being glamorous, everybody would like her. That was the goal of all her dreams.
Through her dancing, through her skill in competitive sports, she derived comfort. But not enough to dislodge the heavy backlog of self-doubt and humiliation. Her triumphs were short-lived, touching only the surface. The kids, she felt, admired her as a dancer, not as a person. How could she know that, if they failed to like her, it was because she’d never learned to like herself? Nothing in her background or make-up had gone to build confidence, everything had combined to tear it down. Except for her well-trained body, she felt hopelessly inferior. In physical combat, if attacked, the adrenaline flowed and she’d defend herself like a wildcat. Psychologically attacked, she’d crumble.
Matters grew worse when they moved, just as she entered Junior High. It was kindergarten all over again, a whole new sea of strangers that had to be faced. Under their gaze, Sheree shriveled, sure they were making fun of her awful clothes. Any new togs squeezed from the Bethel budget went to Janet. Janet was four years older and needed them more. If Sheree protested, the answer silenced her. “You get to take dancing lessons. I don’t.” The misery of self-consciousness, of being more apart and alone than ever, proved too great. She changed schools and changed again, lying about her address, since you had to live in the district of the school you attended. Even she realized this was a futile flight but, like a tormented little animal, she kept running to cover till an understanding teacher talked to her one day. Shy about spilling all her woes, Sheree told enough to make the situation clear. The teacher offered a suggestion. “If your mother would write a note, giving the reasons, you could be excused from classes at noon and spend the rest of your time at dancing school. I think you’d be happier, don’t you?”
“Oh yes!” breathed Sheree. And so it was arranged.
She was already a professional. The summer before, all of thirteen, she’d built herself up, borrowed a pair of Janet’s high heels and auditioned successfully at the open-air Greek Theatre. She liked her first taste of independence, she liked knowing she was good enough to be hired, she liked earning money. Before season’s end, disenchantment set in. You started at ten, you rehearsed all day, you cleaned up for the dinner break, you dashed back to get your make-up and costume on, you did the show, you flopped exhausted into bed so you could start all over again at ten. You wore sequins, feathers and shiny nails. Maybe it looked like glamour from the front. From where you hoofed, it was drudgery pure and simple.
She kept at it for three rugged summers because now it was her job. Winters she went to school for half a day. Until she drove down to the beach with the girl next door and met Fred Bessire. He took her to dinner and asked her to marry him. It was the third date she’d ever had. Perfectly willing to talk about anything else, this is one chapter she’d rather skip. At fifteen, knowing nothing about herself, she must have believed it was love. She must have felt joy that here was an older man of twenty-five who’d chosen and therefore wanted her, the unwanted, sealing his choice with his mother’s diamond ring. Vistas opened again, but different ones this time—escape from the treadmill—escape from the derision, actual or imagined, of schoolgirls—escape into the lovely, secure pattern of wifehood. She’d cook and clean and market at the Safeway, she’d exchange recipes with neighbors and greet her husband when he came home at night and surprise him with an upside-down pineapple cake. She’d be like other people. She’d belong.
It didn’t pan out. Some fifteen months later, as disillusioned with marriage as with dancing, she took her infant daughter back to her mother’s. The daughter had come as a revelation. Married or not, Sheree remained an innocent. That you could have a baby at sixteen never entered her head. She refused to take the doctor’s word for it. “I didn’t feel like a woman,” she explains, “nor any kind of human being. I simply didn’t believe it could happen to me.” But the scrap of humanity they laid in her arms was real. It filled her with wonder and a passionate protectiveness. At least they were now two against the world.
With Dawn as well as herself to support, she returned to the only work she was trained for. Chance led her to the Florentine Gardens. Passing one day, she noted the pictures outside and walked in. The place was loaded with girls. A man rapped for attention. “Okay, kids, get your bathing suits on.” They scampered, leaving Sheree high and dry. “Well,” he demanded, “why don’t you get your suit on?” Her eyes widened. She’d just come in to look. Night clubs and what she’d heard of them frightened her. Unpaid bills frightened her, too. After a moment’s hesitation, she ran out to the car for a sweater and pair of tights. As at the Greek Theatre, they hired her pronto.
The kids were nice to her. They really softened up when she started bringing Dawn to work, bedding her down in feather fans or a big herpes she liked because she could see through it. Chorus girls are notoriously tender-hearted. Yet Sheree wasn’t one of the gang. She was younger, more fearful, less hep. She’d been strictly brought up. At home you never started for school without reading the Bible. She’d studied Scripture hard. At first it was another form of competition, vying with sister and brother for their mother’s approval. But whatever her childish motives, the teaching stuck. She clung to religion as something that wouldn’t fail her, though people failed. She wouldn’t touch liquor. Where the others sported glad rags, she showed up in Levis. She wouldn’t go out front to mix with the customers. “I’m married,” she said and technically she was, the divorce being held up for several years. “Anyway, you need someone back here to watch the wallets.” The issue wasn’t forced; she was too good a dancer to be fired. So between shows she watched the wallets, plugged in the iron she’d brought from home and ironed Dawn’s diapers. Nobody’d ever told her that even Park Avenue babies wear their pants unpressed.
Followed the dreary rat-race for survival—modeling, a couple of tv spots, always the chorus line to fall back on. Against the harsh facts of life, dreams had long faded. Ballerina? Movie star? Career? Don’t make her laugh. She was a thoroughgoing realist now. All she asked was the chance to scratch up enough for food and rent. When she took an out-of-town job, Dawn stayed with Grandma. While the baby’s needs remained simple—feed her, change her—it wasn’t too bad. But the baby grew older and, with Sheree away, naturally turned to others for love and comfort. “Your Mommy’s on the stage,” they’d tell her, and to Dawn Mommy became a kind of plaything who came and brought her toys and left again, but formed no part of the solid background of existence. For Sheree, this was a fresh wound on top of the old.
She determined to do something about it.
She wanted more time with her daughter, and she wanted the safeguards of conventionality. Conventionality looked beautiful, symbol of the social acceptance denied her as a child. There was someone she knew whom she wistfully set her sights by. Like her, this girl was divorced. She had two children and worked as a secretary. Without being glamorous, she looked well-groomed, she had class, she seemed quietly sure of herself. People admired her, nobody called her a chorus girl. She was Sheree’s ideal.
With Chris, her roommate, also pining to be an ex-dancer, she applied at the Hughes plant. They had openings for receptionists and secretaries. Secretaries got fifteen dollars a week more, which was plenty more. “Okay,” said Chris, “let’s hoof for the last time. Just long enough to save up money for trade school.”
They got jobs at Macayo, where fate entered in the guise of Bob Alton, dance director, hunting material for the Broadway show, Hazel Flagg. He asked to see Sheree and told her what he had in mind.
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’m quitting the chorus line.”
“This might be more than the chorus line. You’re good, you have talent.” She shook her head. “Do you mind telling me why?” She explained briefly. He gave her his card. “I’d like to use you. I could use your friend, too. If you change your if mind, let me know.”
She had no intention of changing her mind and didn’t let him know. But Alton wasn’t easily dissuaded. He had someone call her. Meantime she’d broken a toe and gave that as an excuse. Another call came. Mr. Alton would like to see her at his home.
“I’m not going to New York,” said Sheree. “That’s up to you. He just wants to talk to you.”
She went with Chris. The elegance of the house petrified her.
But the atmosphere changed when Mr. Alton came in. Bob Alton’s a man of warmth and perception. Instead of ignoring Sheree’s fears, he identified himself with them—told her how he’d once been in her position, divorced, with a child to raise, with a chance to take. It came out that he was of the same religious faith, which effected another bond. He understood the pain of separation from her daughter, he made no gaudy promises of the moon. “But if you do succeed, you’ll be better able to provide for her.”
They talked at length. In the end Sheree turned to Chris. They went through one of those if-you-go-I’ll-go routines, and the bargain was struck.
Going home, Sheree felt flat, thinking of Dawn, feeling she’d broken a promise to both of them. “Cheer up,” rallied Chris. “There’s no other way wed ever get to New York. So we’ll be there two months and come back. Two months can’t make such a difference.”
It was more than two months and they made a difference. Sheree’s Salomé dance put her name up in lights, and overnight she became Broadway’s newest darling. So now she’d gained recognition, now she must have been popping with self-esteem. Guess again. “How does it feel to be a star?” they asked her. She didn’t know, she didn’t feel like a star. She lived in a broken-down room, sending money back to Dawn, she owned no grand wardrobe, she couldn’t afford a rooted home for her child. The razzle-dazzle numbed her. What made her such a knockout all of a sudden? It was bound to peter out. She waited for the ax to fall.
Yet it was in New York that the long road began to turn for Sheree. For the first time she met a group of stable, intelligent people who drew her into their midst, who enjoyed her for her own sake with no strings attached. They had nothing to offer nor gain but the gift of friendship, they were the friends she’d always wanted. Among them was a married couple, for whom she’d baby-sit. These two became the brother and sister she’d dreamed of. That they and the others found her a person of value heartened her more than all the applause that came roaring over the footlights. With them she felt secure, with them she belonged. Their minds stimulated her, their understanding affection gave her the strength to start searching herself for the seeds of misery.
Back in Hollywood things moved fast—the Martin-Lewis picture, the Crosby show—most important, the contract with Fox. Food and roof assured, some of the pressures lifted. There was space at last to think and plan and organize her life with Dawn, who had problems of her own, who needed assurance that her mother could be counted on. Sheree rented a house near a good school where there’d be plenty of kids to play with. She bought twin beds and at first slept in the same room with her daughter. After four years of coming and going, she had to give Dawn faith that Mommy was here to stay. She left the house as little as possible. She established a routine and stuck to it, consistent about the hour of rising, about meals, about reading and music time. Whether promising discipline or a treat, she never broke her word and knew they’d passed a milestone the day she had to go out and for the first time Dawn let her go without tears, sure that her mother’d be back at the given hour. “Thank God,” says Sheree, “when they’re that young, it doesn’t take long.” Within six months she had a well-adjusted child. Nowadays Dawn takes a bad dream in stride, wakes up, gets a drink of water, tells Mommy about the dream and goes back to sleep untroubled.
Working or not, Sheree means to keep her so. From the set of How To Be Very, Very Popular, she’d dash home to help with the reading and spelling. Daughter wasn’t necessarily cooperative. Exhausted after being on her feet since six, it would take all of Sheree’s control not to lash out. Control, plus the memory of another youngster, flinching under some grownup’s tongue. So she’d count to ten and, her voice gentle but firm, say, “Let’s try it again.”
Then there was the time during rope-jumping season when Dawn came dragging her feet, looking really low.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Double Dutch. Everyone’s doing it and I just get tangled up. I feel left out.”
Left out was all Sheree needed to hear. “Bring on-the ropes. I’ll make you the best Double-Dutcher in town.”
Her own re-adjustment was slower, more painful and held nothing dramatic. Through books, through talking with trusted friends, she began to know herself and what had happened to her. Instead of heeding her blind will to bury the past, which can’t be buried, she faced it. That she’d been rejected was true and couldn’t be changed. What could be changed was her understanding of the resentments, suspicions, fears piled up within her, natural enough, but damaging and corrosive. She began to rid herself of them. She recognized that the others in her family had also suffered. She learned that dignity comes of the spirit, not of what you wear nor how you earn your bread. She learned to respect herself for the good that was in her. In the old days she’d been the suppliant. “Like me, just like me, that’s all I ask.” Now she asked more. It was still pleasant to be liked, but not at the cost of integrity. The important thing was to set your standards as a human and abide by them, no matter who scoffed. The important thing was to live at peace with yourself.
It’s a continuing process. You don’t heal the hurts of twenty years in two. When the mother of one of Dawn’s friends asks her to tea, Sheree’s pleased, but shy with women whose backgrounds were so different. Through long habit she still shrinks from controversy but meets it nevertheless when necessary, taking a resolute stand for what she believes in. “I’m better equipped to defend myself,” she laughs, “which is good, because I’m better equipped to defend my daughter. If someone’s unjust to Dawn, I pick up my banner, march out and tell them off!”
She holds her head high and her shoulders straight. She’s part of the community where she lives, of the industry she works in, of a circle of warm friends. She’s a mother who makes her child happy. She belongs to herself, for she’s found herself. It took grit, honesty and brains. Other kids have traveled equally rocky roads. Our courts are full of them, warped, rebellious or shattered. They’re the responsibility of society. From the age of thirteen Sheree was on her own. At twenty-two, she’s coming out whole, with compassion instead of bitterness, with love instead of hate. That’s her greatest triumph.
THE END
—BY IDA ZEITLIN
It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1955
