Hold the Roses Read Online Free PDF Page B

And
they left.
    Dick came over and said, "I'm going to talk to the people at Warner's
and see what I can do."
    My father said, "Thank you so much for everything."
    It was getting late and everybody was leaving, so my father, Jack Carrol
and I got my music and we left. We stopped for a bite to eat and went back
to the hotel.
    The next day, we were expecting all kinds of calls ... and nothing
happened. My father called the guy at Paramount.
    The Paramount guy said, "There's nothing right now, but keep in
touch."
    He then called Universal ... same thing: "Who's her agent? She should
have an agent."
    My father said, "I'm her manager."
    "No, she needs a big agent. Call us when she's signed with someone."
    Then Dick called and said he was sorry. He did everything he could, but they weren't interested in kids right now. He felt awful and asked,
"How long are you going to be here?"

    My father said, "I don't think we'll stay too long. We're running out
of money, her mother is pregnant and wants her home for Christmas. It's
been a long tour."
    Dick said, "Call me before you leave and I'll keep trying."
    My father thanked him and that was that.
    Three days later we went back to Jersey and NBC had called. What a
nice Christmas present!

     

    Tastgeast Is Twiptiq
    We arrived back in New Jersey about a week before Christmas. It was good
to see my mother again after such a long tour, and to see the house all
decorated for the holidays. Christmas was always very important to my
mother, and I know now that I inherited her love for this special time of
the year-I especially love preparing for it. Today, no corner of my house
goes undecorated. There have only been two times in my life that I have
agreed to be away from home to work at Christmas.
    NBC had been calling for about two weeks, and my mother said it
was very important to return the call. My father called and was told that
they had come up with another coast-to-coast radio show. Same time and
day ... 12:15 Sunday afternoon for fifteen minutes. Just a piano player, an
announcer, and me. This time the sponsor was Tastyeast, a nutritious candy
bar intended to stimulate children's appetites. We didn't have the same
kind of junk food then, and kids just didn't care about eating. The idea was
that this candy bar would increase their appetite. At least it was a national
product known and available over the entire country. Not like Julius
Grossman Shoes, with the one store in New York. They felt I would be a
walking example of how good this candy bar was, since I ate it, liked it,
and was even gaining weight from eating it.
    We moved again. This time to 729 Kingsland Avenue in Grantwood,
New Jersey. It was close to New York City and NBC (five minutes to the
George Washington Bridge and then thirty minutes into the city). Another double-decker. We lived on the bottom floor. My grandmother, God
love her, kept after my mother about getting our own home, to have some thing solid. She believed in knowing where you're going to sleep every
night and knowing where you'll sleep when you die. I remember her words,
and when I got my own home, I immediately bought cemetery plots.

    With my radio sponsor, "Tastyeast"
    We started making preparations for my new NBC show. It was only
January and the show wouldn't start until May. There was a lot to be done.
My father called my old piano player Herbie Steiner and got Sammy Ward,
a well-known writer of special material. We were getting the new songs
from music publishers and picking the ones we liked. Sammy would change
the lyrics to some of the songs. They were mostly love songs-he would
make them "mother" songs so they didn't sound too grown-up for me to
sing. Herbie and I would make a little arrangement for the songs. We went
to Shapiro Bernstein Music Publishers, where we had some sort of halfassed office in which I rehearsed every day.
    Now that I would be working at NBC and not traveling for a while, Two-page