Last week I thought of Julia Hills.
As a kid growing up in Bakersfield, I regarded Julia as the epitome of sophistication. Her skin was pale poreclain, her dark hair always swept up into a French twist and she wore black no matter what occasion or time of day. A close family friend, she was the ladieswear buyer for the fine fashions department at Weill's department store, back when every city had a local full-service department store--before Federated swallowed up everything in its path.
Twice a year Julia traveled to Manhattan for buyers' week to order lines and styles for the coming season. From Bakersfield, New York seemed a distant rumor of a glamourous dreamworld. I hardly knew what to ask about, but I knew for certain that Broadway was the absolute center of the theatrical world. I had caught the drama bug early on; Mom and Dad had taken me to shows in Los Angeles, and we always went to see national touring company productions of Broadway musicals that played locally at Harvey Auditorium.
My parents regularly went out to Saturday night dinner with Julia and her husband, Fred. Occasionally I got to go along--a dress-up night out with the adults. Whenever Julia had recently returned from an east coast trip, she always brought me two or three programs from shows she'd seen in New York. As I thumbed through the Playbills, a whole world unfolded for me. There were advertisements for Chanel and Cartier, featuring aloof, elegant models and impractically swank jewelery and accessories. Then past all the ads was the heart of the Playbill, where there were production photos from the show and the cast list, star-studded with legendary names. The black and white pictures of the big musical numbers or key dramatic moments in the play could only hint at the excitement and intensity onstage, but it fueled my curiosity and passion for the theatre. I can recall looking at the names of the cast in the original production of The Miracle Worker, seeing Anne Bancroft's name and marvelling at Julia's good fortune to have seen this performance.
I kept Julia's Playbills for quite awhile, as if they were souvenirs from a faraway exotic land, but eventually I tossed them out. The plays were not really my memories, so I let them go. As time has passed I've collected my own theatre memories, and two shelves in our bookcase have filled with programs from London, Stratford and Los Angeles, but no New York Playbills.
I haven't seen Julia Hills in over thirty years, and I haven't thought of her since I heard she had died about five years ago. But just a week ago, waiting for the overture to begin at my first Broadway musical, I held a Playbill in my hands and thought of Julia. It is remarkable that despite all the things that have changed in the world in the past forty years, one thing that looks pretty much the same is a Broadway Playbill. The logo, the yellow stripe and the black and white photo on the cover look pretty much like those old mementos. The pictures inside, which could easily be printed in full color, are still black and whites, and the very size and heft of the little fit-in-your-hand program is just as it always was. Maybe it's a Broadway tradition.
I'm sure Julia would have enjoyed the show, 110 In The Shade; it was a revival of a 1963 musical, and even at that it has its roots in older traditions of American musicals. Come to think of it, she may have even seen the original. Although I don't recollect a Playbill from the 1963 show, Julia in her sweet generosity may have given me that one. I can't help but believe that she played her part in getting me to that seat at a Broadway show.
