After 21 Years

At 14, a fat, bright-eyed little Negro girl from Keyport, NJ. rolled into Manhattan with a high-school diploma in her hand, and an idea in her head that she would become a "high dramatic soprano." But the big time was hard to break into: Juanita Hall was 35 before she padded onto a Broadway stage as Bloody Mary, the betel-chewing Tonkinese mama in South Pacific (TIME, April 18) and stole a considerable piece of that smash hit from Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza.

Last week the big time was really beginning to bring its fat returns to Juanita.

Right Role. In the genteel bedlam of Manhattan's Cafe Society (six nights a week, after the curtain rings down on South Pacific), she was making her own solo hit. Slick-haired, flat-faced Juanita just hauled off from the microphone, braced her 61 inches and 165 pounds, and let the customers have it in a full, strong voice that ranged easily from deep purple to high yellow. She moaned Am I Blue and her own Lament over Love, and usually she gave them Bali Ha'i and Happy Talk, her South Pacific hits. Offstage, she had nothing but happy talk: "Despite all you can say, when you are ready, you will get the right role."

Juanita was getting ready as far back as she can remember. Her grandmother landed her first part, the role of the Christ child in a Christmas play: "Grandmother was religious enough, but it took a theatrical turn." Soon after she reached New York, Juanita landed a chorus job in the original Show Boat. For the next 15 years she did bits or sang in choruses in The Green Pastures, St. Louis Woman, Sing Out, Sweet Land!, etc. She also organized her own choir, for five years led it over the air. It was not until Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein saw her in audition for Talent '48, a private revue put on by the Stage Managers Club for their Broadway friends, that Juanita got headed for that "right role."

Right Voice. Said Rodgers: "What an actress!" Said Hammerstein: "And what a voice!" They signed her to play Bloody Mary. When audiences and critics agreed with Rodgers & Hammerstein, Juanita switched to champagne ("I love the stuff, and then I feel so bloody rich") and began shopping for a 14-room house to replace her apartment on Manhattan's St. Nicholas Terrace. Says she: "I want to make big money because I want to be comfortable myself, as who doesn't, and because there are a lot of people I want to help."

The "good money" she makes every week at Cafe Society, plus her pay from the play, will go a long way toward meeting both ends--even if it isn't exactly easy money. Says Juanita of nightclub work: "The first week was awful, but I just realized that a drunk is a drunk wherever he is, and I didn't care if they stood on my eyelashes."

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