bright hot sun. Their hats were slung down their backs, and their long hair shone. They looked several years older than the teenagers they were.
A roar from the crowd rose above the hot and dusty hills.
“Hello,” a fortysomething man said. He had a funny accent and was smartly dressed in a dark suit, not an ounce of sweat marring him.
The dark-haired man introduced himself as “NTG,” or Nils Theodore Granlund. He said he produced a show at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood and he could always use a couple of beautiful girls like them. Would they be interested in trying out as showgirls?
The girls giggled. They had no idea what or where the Florentine Gardens was, but it sounded exotic. Sure, they said.
“How tall are you?”110 He asked.
Both girls stood up, and though he was tall himself he was impressed. “Six feet,” Dardy said, and in heels she was.
“Here’s my card. Here’s my address. Day after tomorrow we’re having auditions. You girls come on down.” He could just about guarantee he would hire them. He tipped his hat and left. NTG often sponsored rodeo beauty contests and most likely that is why he was in Saugus, scouting for girls.
The girls told Ian when he came back with hot dogs in hand what had happened.
Ian promised to personally call this Granlund.
Mr. Granlund assured Ian that indeed he was auditioning for girls and wanted the sisters to come down. It was a swanky nightclub and he meant no funny business. It was a class joint. Errol Flynn came nearly every night, enjoying the $1.50 fee that got a decent meal and an eyeful of beautiful showgirls parading by.
NTG, a former reporter, press agent, producer, and host, would be credited as being the “creator of modern nightlife.”111
Ian decided that if Lili, now twenty-three, chaperoned her sisters, they could go. Lili had been adrift since returning from London. She was no longer seeing Maury and his snobbish friends.
Things seemed to come easier for her half-sisters; Miss California, ribbons and titles in horse shows, now an offer of work in a club. Though she would act disingenuous, most likely Lili—an avid movie magazine reader—knew all about the glitzy club in the heart of Hollywood frequented by John Barrymore, Rudy Vallee, and many other movie stars. Live radio shows were broadcast from the Gardens. Unlike other clubs on Sunset Boulevard, the Florentine catered to the “meat and potatoes” crowd, compared to the caviar set over at Earl Carroll’s, a nightclub west on Hollywood Boulevard.
The Gardens was a spacious supper club with floor shows featuring beautiful girls. There was a revolving stage and seating for 1,160.
The three girls arrived at the appointment, a little wrinkled and dusty after transferring buses from Eagle Rock. One can imagine the scene that confronted them: a vast club where they would be swallowed up by its current emptiness, dimly lit, a couple of boys sweeping the outer edges of the floor, sticky with spilled drinks. Various long-limbed girls sitting around the unadorned square tables. And the tangy smell of all nightclubs, old smoke, sour fruit, liquor, and sweat. The smell the girls would grow to love. It would be the smell of work and good times and carefree nights of their youth.
Interior of the Florentine Gardens. Barbara’s nude is prominently displayed.
SINCE LILI WAS NOT THERE TO AUDITION SHE SAT IN THE AUDIENCE and opened her Vogue while a stage manager assembled Dardy and Barbara among the other girls. Lili had to be feeling turbulent, no matter how cool she acted. She was between boyfriends and jobs, drifting aimlessly, wasting afternoons doodling costumes and outfits in a notebook, listening to Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky or Tommy Dorsey and Judy Garland on the radio. She toyed with the idea of designing clothes. She was excellent at sewing and loved pretty things. She would later claim that something told her—on this very day—to pay attention to what was going on around her. She felt luck was in the air.
NTG was scrutinizing the lineup of girls. He stopped and gave the Vogue-reading, long-legged blonde a look up and down, wanting to know why she wasn’t on the stage.
Barbara, on the left, easily outshone Lili—at the Florentine Gardens
Though elegant, he was hardly handsome, with a sagging chin, receding hairline, and large nose. But NTG was very good at producing live entertainment.
Did he ask if she could dance? Did he care? With her almond-shaped eyes, wide cheekbones, and statuesque body, she was made for the stage. He could hire three sisters as easily as two. No one else was as tall as the trio.
He insisted they call him Granny.
It looked as if all three sisters had a job until someone asked Dardy her age.
“Well, I was wearing my school outfit,” she later admitted, apparently including skirt and ankle socks. They needed to fill out some paperwork and though she lied and said she was fifteen, it was obvious Dardy was underage.
“Get off the stage,” someone yelled at her. Dardy was devastated, possibly jealous. Her time onstage would have to wait.
At the time, hiring girls under eighteen was prevalent in the clubs. However, the Board of Equalization was stepping in and preventing the practice. Though Barbara was only sixteen she was deemed safe to hire. By the following year both NTG and nightclub king Earl Carroll were “stripped of” the practice of hiring underage girls. Carroll was forced to fire a fifteen- and a seventeen-year-old.112
Lili and Barbara were exactly what NTG had been looking for. He positioned each one on either side of the ponies—chorus girls—who were shorter. They would be his bookends.
AT LEAST THAT IS THE BASIC STORY LILI TOLD OF THE BEGINNINGS OF her show business career. There would be variations over the years as if she was embarrassed to have wanted a career. In her telling it would always happen accidentally.
But according to Dardy, all three sisters took four buses to arrive at their mutual audition for a Harry Howard–produced show. The Blackadder/Klarquist girls were literally heads above the others. As in Lili’s version, Dardy was shouted off the stage and Barbara and Lili were hired.113
Barbara and Lili were now officially in show business. They signed contracts for a whopping $25 a week.
The girls began rehearsals. Barbara and Lili shimmied into skimpy outfits wearing tall gossamer headdresses, net pants, and rhinestone-covered bras across their nearly flat bosoms.
If anyone worried what Alice would think about the girls parading about nearly nude, it didn’t seem to be a concern. None of the girls were self-conscious about their bodies. Idella, of course, would thrill that her girls—especially Barbara—were in the spotlight. And in fact, Alice loved it too. She thought her granddaughters were spectacular and they should enjoy the adventure, the attention, and the paychecks.
The
