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  In 1951, propelled by the fear of the atom bomb (a common preoccupation in the 1950s), Dad moved us to Ashland, Oregon, a small, picturesque mountain town, where we stayed for three years. Ashland seemed remote compared to where we’d lived in New Jersey and California, but that was the point. It was much less of a target for the Russians!

  In Ashland, I started junior high and enrolled in the Colleen Hope School of Dance. For the first time, I was moving away from ballet and into other styles, such as tap and tumbling. My mother continued to make the costumes that I performed in at recitals and benefits, painstakingly sewing each outfit by hand, as she had done ever since my snowflake debut. For a routine set to “In a Persian Market,” she made me a two-piece fake-leopard-skin number, complete with a matching cap that had huge hoop earrings attached to it, and a floor-length fuchsia chiffon scarf edged in gold trim that trailed off of the cap and attached to my wrists. I had the potent theatrical realization that one’s costume was exceedingly important. My outfit made me feel both dramatic and free and inspired me to whirl about the stage clinking my finger cymbals with abandon.

  Despite the elaborate costume, I wasn’t exactly glamorous. I had no breasts yet, and my waist was still short, so my widest point was my midriff. I might have looked like an egg with legs, but I felt like Isadora Duncan. “In a Persian Market” was in such demand in every Lions Hall and Rotary Club in southern Oregon that I didn’t have time to feel bad about my physique.

  In addition to giving me dance lessons at a new place called Miss Pat’s, Mom took Don and me to the Ashland roller rink several times a week. In the beginning, I skated around the rink, holding Don up until my arm ached. In a matter of months, he was speeding past me like a bullet. Don was as addicted to racing as I was to performing. As devoted as I was to dancing, part of me thought I might become a professional roller skater, if there even was such a thing. I learned to roller-dance with a partner and participated in roller shows in towns all over the Rogue River Valley.

  Billie Graham, whose husband owned the rink and had lived in Hawaii, gave hula classes, which, naturally, I had to take. Again, my mother made my costumes—an iridescent hula skirt with colorful tulle and a skirt and lei made out of oilcloth so I could do a hula number in the pool at a swim show. Whenever my mother suggested fun activities, I turned them into performance opportunities.

  During those years in Oregon, Dad was gone on more frequent and more lengthy road trips. As a result, Mom was alone a lot, so much that she was virtually a single parent. Since Don, Leah, and I were too young to drive, Mom had to chauffeur us wherever we needed to go, which left her little time to herself. One day I saw her trying to conceal tears while washing dishes, and I offered to stay home from the movies and keep her company.

  “You are my darling twelve-year-old, and I love you, but sometimes I really need adult company. Now, you go and have fun.”

  I didn’t want to leave, and I felt bad that there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. I know now that she would have been much happier going back to nursing—something she did several years later.

  When my father was home, the discord between my parents became more pronounced. There was a low-grade but palpable tension in the house. As much as I loved Dad, things were easier in the house when he was away.

  Except for the strained atmosphere at home, living in Ashland was wonderful—a small-town American idyll complete with a stately old library and a party line on the telephone; I was even a baton twirler on the school drill team. As usual, I made friends easily. Phyllis Knapp and her younger brother, Don, were very tight with me and my younger brother, Don. The boys were absolutely fascinated by cars and anything with an engine—a passion that my little brother would carry into adulthood. Phyllis, who dreamed of being a singer, and I shared intense show business aspirations. Mom accompanied Phyllis on the piano at a talent show in Grants Pass where I also performed the hula. I came in second. Sadly, Phyllis with her sweet soprano voice didn’t place. It was a somber ride home through the mountains. But real girlfriends abide and we became even closer after this experience.

  Meanwhile, Leah had grown wilder and more independent—and just a little bit boy-crazy. She often sneaked back into our bedroom late at night smelling of alcohol and cigarettes. Long gone were the days of wearing matching outfits and singing around the piano. She had begun hanging out with a fast crowd, and her older friends seemed scary and dangerous to me. When she was only fifteen, Leah ran away to Reno, intending to marry a great-looking blond sailor—an impetuous move that was swiftly shut down by my parents.

  While Leah was confident around boys—clearly too confident—I was a complete prude. I was acutely afraid of the romantic side of dealings with the opposite sex. Friends, buddies, pals? Great! Boyfriends? No. It didn’t help that my mother had several medical textbooks filled with graphic imagery of venereal diseases. That’ll scare you into celibacy if nothing else will. When I heard that a boy in junior high had a crush on me, I avoided him at all costs. I did, however, experience my first kiss during my time in Ashland. It wasn’t terribly exciting or romantic. I was helping my neighbor Kenny do some yard chores. His parents had asked us to carry a bucket of slop out to the pigs in their yard. (Ashland was that kind of town.) On our way to the pen, Kenny stopped dead in his tracks with the slop in one hand, turned, and pressed his closed lips against mine. I pulled away, startled, and ran home. It was a decidedly unglamorous kiss, but you always remember your first!

  When the lighting company offered Dad a promotion back east, my parents jumped at the chance—they were eager to get Leah away from the kids she’d fallen in with since moving to Ashland. Odd as it might seem, they figured she’d be safer in a city where she’d be less likely to succumb to boredom and run off to Reno to get married, which was what many of her classmates were doing.

  Even though it was October, Dad, Leah, and I (maybe my parents believed I’d be a good influence on my sister) got on a plane to New Jersey as soon as we could. Mom stayed behind to close up the house and let Don finish the semester. When we arrived in New Jersey, it was too late to enroll in school, so Leah and I had to wait until January to start the semester. This was terrific. We went on business trips with Dad to New England, and when Dad was working, Leah and I took the train or the bus to Manhattan. We headed straight for the movie theaters in Times Square—some of which were a little scuzzy, though more run-down than disreputable. Still, I felt like quite the adventurer, setting off for the city to catch a double feature before riding the bus back home.

  Mom and Don joined us before Christmas, and after the New Year I started P.S. 11 in Jersey City. Before the move to Jersey City, switching schools had never bothered me. I’d come in like gangbusters, make friends, and adjust. But attending P.S. 11 was a huge culture shock for me, so different from Ashland. I was surrounded by all these streetwise, big-city kids with tough-sounding accents. Mistaking my accent for Southern, Gerald (Bubbie) Salerno nicknamed me “Florida.” All through grammar school, back when Valerie was still an unusual name, classmates called me “Celery,” “Calorie,” and the real stretch, “Malaria.” Thankfully, some new Jersey City girlfriends came to the rescue: Dottie Norton, a dead ringer for Rosie O’Donnell, Carol Newton, whom we called “Fig,” Maureen McGowan, a fabulous volleyball player, Lucille Acovelli, cut-up extraordinaire, and the sweet Carbanaro sisters, Suzanne and Stephanie. These new pals introduced me to pizza, egg creams, the great joy of hanging out at a corner luncheonette, and that famous city pastime, loitering on street corners. My parents threw a graduation party for the whole class at the end of eighth grade. I’d finally begun to take an interest in boys, and I remember them vividly—mostly Italian American, each one more dark and handsome and exciting than the next. We played spin the bottle (yoicks!), and that was about as racy as things ever got for me.

  Once we’d settled into an eight-room apartment on Kensington Avenue, I began to focus on dance again. I would move all of the furniture again
st the walls of the living room so I could practice dance steps until I was exhausted. Mom knew that New York City was the place for me to study. She found a top-rated school called Ballet Arts, which was in Carnegie Hall. One of the major perks of studying at Carnegie Hall in those days was the chance of spotting Marlon Brando, who lived in the building, which I did once or twice. Studying ballet in the heart of Manhattan in one of the most renowned buildings in town with teachers from famous dance companies filled my teenage heart with hope. Maybe I really could become a dancer.

  By the time I was in high school, I was commuting into the city four times a week to dance. I was living two separate lives but equally enjoyable ones. Lincoln High was a great adventure—football, homeroom, cute guys, and a group of great girlfriends: Barbara Zimmerman, Gilda “Cookie” Glaser, Lois Mischel, Ellen Rotkin, and Arlene Kahn, all Jewish girls who would have been Rhoda’s high school gang, too.

  In the city, I had a circle of friends from ballet: pretty little Barbara Monte; graceful Pat Hayes, who married our teacher, the spectacular Vladimir Dokoudovsky; and exotic Toriana Santiago from the Bronx, who studied Spanish dance as well as ballet.

  When I wasn’t at Ballet Arts or hanging out with my friends from Lincoln, I was going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Kathy Dugan, one of my best friends and an Egyptology buff, roller-skating at the rink in Bayonne, or staging backyard performances for our parents with my neighbor pal, Elaine Gray, who was hilarious. Our big musical number was “Side by Side.”

  During my second year at Ballet Arts, a new teacher named John Gregory came to teach a class in jazz dance. It was like nothing I’d ever seen taught before—exciting, distinctive, and, well, jazzy. I was still a ballet purist, and I was scared to try something so wild and sexy. Along with a group of curious ballet girls, I watched Gregory’s class for two weeks until I worked up the courage to try it. And I loved it. Ballet training enabled me to learn the steps, but the music—with songs like “Night Train”—helped me find the sensual style of jazz. Eventually, I enrolled at the famed Luigi Jazz Center, where I take classes to this day.

  Despite my interest in jazz, ballet was still my first and best love. I worked hard to improve my technique, determined to achieve my dream of joining a ballet company one day. When my parents saw the depth of my commitment, they pushed me harder. “If you’re going to be taking class four days a week, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be dancing full-time,” they reasoned. When it came to encouragement and support, my parents were world-class. They never wavered in affording us every opportunity to study, work hard, and find success. A lot of little girls wanted to be ballerinas. How many had parents like mine?

  Through a classmate at Ballet Arts, I learned about a fully accredited school in Manhattan called Quintano’s School for Young Professionals. It was a private school for kids in show business, run by a stylish gentleman named Mr. Quintano out of a dance studio on West Fifty-sixth Street, right behind Carnegie Hall. So I left Lincoln High and enrolled at this new school, where the flexible class schedule allowed me to spend the majority of my time at Ballet Arts while still finishing high school.

  Quintano’s was a tiny and eclectic school with eclectic students, including Sal Mineo, Carol Lynley, and Tuesday Weld. Our classes—English, German, history, and math—were held at various card tables in different corners of the studio.

  My best friend from Ballet Arts, Barbara Monte, enrolled at Quintano’s, and we stayed pretty much joined at the hip. Barbara and I were good pals with Mike Mineo, Sal’s older brother, and he got us into our first movie premiere—Crime in the Streets, starring Sal and John Cassavetes. Like the other girls at the theater, we screamed for Sal even though he was our classmate.

  Between being around show business kids and going into the city every day for classes, I felt part of a new, scintillating world. It was probably a good thing that I was out of the house most of the day, as my parents’ marriage was disintegrating quickly. Family dinners were particularly tense. There was a lot of drama, a lot of jumping up from the table and storming out, and plenty of sour looks and bitter words.

  One particularly strained Thanksgiving dinner was punctuated by Mom slamming pots around in the kitchen while Dad sat at the head of the table, clenching his jaw and kneading his napkin in anger. To break the tension, my very funny but sarcastic sister said in an announcer voice, “And now we bring you The Emotional Hour.” Don and I burst into laughter. Poor Dad headed for his office. Poor Mom headed for the bedroom. The three of us shrugged and ate more dressing.

  My parents tried to stay together for the sake of their children because that was what people did, but we all could see that they might be happier without each other. They were both remarkable people, but they didn’t work well together. There was nothing clichéd about my parents’ eventual separation—no violence, no cheating, no drinking or gambling, just deep incompatibility.

  My father still traveled a lot for work, which relieved the tension in the house. But we sensed that these absences were only a temporary solution. My mother and my brother weren’t happy in New Jersey. Don missed his friends and the quieter small-town life in Ashland, and Mom wanted to get out of the marriage and back to working as a nurse. Leah had just graduated from high school and broken up with a long-term boyfriend and needed a change. When Mom told me that she, Don, and Leah were moving back to the house we still owned in Ashland, I wanted to go, too.

  But Mom wouldn’t hear of me returning to Oregon. “Val, honey, you’re really getting to be a good dancer. I don’t want you to come back to Ashland with me and ruin your chance for a real career. It’s a young person’s profession, and you need to take advantage of it while you can. You’ve already invested so much in it.”

  Again, Mother knew best. If I moved to Ashland, I would lose two years of first-rate training while I finished high school and consequently might never get into a ballet company. It was painful for me to see them go, but Mom convinced me that staying was the best thing for my future. Close as she and I had always been, it couldn’t have been easy for her to come to this decision. But Mom had boundless faith in us and always put her kids’ best interests first, no matter the cost to her. She assured me that if it didn’t work out for me, I could always join them later. Like she always said about new foods when we were little, “You don’t have to eat it, but you must taste it.” Mom wanted me to give living on my own a chance.

  Since my dad would be traveling for work a considerable amount, Mom had to figure out a way for me to stay on the East Coast and be looked after. She soon discovered the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls in Manhattan (obviously not the Pretty Woman type of working girl). The perfect solution—she was confident that I would be safe there, and I could attend Quintano’s and Ballet Arts during the week and return to the apartment in Jersey City with Dad on the weekends. My father’s office was in the Empire State Building, so if I needed anything, I could contact him or ask his secretary, a marvelous, warmhearted young woman named Angela.

  I loved living at the Clara de Hirsch Home. It was a grand mansion on Sixty-third Street between Second and Third avenues. It had a gorgeous foyer and a reception room for entertaining male visitors, who obviously were forbidden to go upstairs. There was a communal kitchen where each resident kept a little basket in the massive refrigerator with her own food in it.

  Living in the city on my own was exciting. Even though my father kept close tabs on me, I felt like a big deal. I was on course. I was determined to finish high school in case I decided to go to college, but I was more focused than ever and doing my best to become a working professional dancer.

  Despite my independence, I was an inveterate prude. I didn’t mind that the boys from the trade school near the Clara de Hirsch Home whistled at me, but I wouldn’t dare talk to them. I dressed conservatively in sensible pumps, maybe a black-watch-plaid sheath dress, and always crocheted white gloves, even on the grimy subway in the height of summer! It was a 1940s holdover from
my mom, who would say, “A lady never goes out without gloves!” A true child of the 1950s, I idolized sweet, demure stars like Natalie Wood, Doris Day, and Debbie Reynolds. The overt sexuality of Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell embarrassed me. I was convinced that if I had sex, I’d immediately get a venereal disease, get pregnant, or both. I also knew that sex meant losing the respect of the man you’d “given in to.” Although, I still think a little savvy self-preservation is an asset for any female.

  Since moving to the city, I had much more time and freedom to take performing arts classes outside my comfort zone of ballet. A classmate at Quintano’s suggested that I sign up for an acting class at John Cassavetes’s studio. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I went for it.

  I was nervous—no, terrified—before my first acting class. I dressed in what I thought was appropriate: a pink and aqua tweed skirt, a pink angora sweater with a Peter Pan collar poking out, and high-heeled pumps with seamed stockings. I arrived early to my first class, pencil and steno pad in hand, ready to take down every word Mr. Cassavetes said. Soon the rest of the class began to slink in, shabby, glowering beatnik guys, all of whom were dressed in black and oozing attitude and acute self-importance. I must have looked like a sight gag.

  I lasted only a couple of weeks. While I loved hearing Cassavetes, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Since I was the new girl and something of a refined novelty, a few of the men in the class asked me out. I lied and told them I lived in New Jersey—quite an effective deterrent. I couldn’t admit that I lived in the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls. That would have seemed like an open invitation. As my sister once warned me, “With men, if you don’t want to do something, don’t do it.”

  “Okay, Leah,” I said. “Do you hold back?”

  “No! Because I want to do it,” she said, and giggled.

  Acting class and sexual activity both could wait. Dance was infinitely more important. While attending Quintano’s, I auditioned all over town, hoping to get into a ballet company. But I had no such luck. I was so jealous of my pal Pat Hayes, who had gotten into the Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company. In 1956 I finally landed my first paying job as a replacement dancer in the Corps de Ballet at Radio City Music Hall. It was only a six-week run, but I was elated. The Radio City Corps de Ballet might not have had the prestige of Ballet Theatre or Balanchine’s company, but to a sixteen-year-old, it was a gigantic deal.