I had sung all my life in choirs and glee clubs and barbershop quartets, played fiddle well enough in high school to sit 4th chair in the 1st violin section, had sung with Dave Simpson’s dance band The Thorntoneers, acted in school plays and musicals, had even acted in a couple plays with my dad.  In You Can’t take It With You, for instance, he portrayed Grampa Vanderhof and I did Donald the butler.  So I had already felt the high that comes from entertaining.  But the only times I ever got money for it was when the dance band got paid and we’d split the take (average $1.50 for each musician).

FATEFUL AUDITION (1947)
That summer of 1947, my young brother Phil—at age 18—somehow knew enough about commercial show business to write the Stage Manager of the National Touring Company of Carousel and request an audition.  At my advanced age of 22 I didn’t know to do that, but Phil did.  A penny post card arrived for him from Jerry Whyte, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Production Stage Manager, telling Phil to come to the stage door of the Shubert Theatre in Chicago at 2:00pm on Tuesday, prepared to sing a song, for which an accompanist would be provided.  Though Phil was quite elated, he had a problem.  On that Tuesday my little brother had a severe strep throat, could not croak out a sound let alone sing a song, and he was in bed with the sweats, laryngitis and a very high fever.

In one of those quick-action moments that change a person’s life, I took that card, scratched “Phil” off and wrote in “Bill,” grabbed a piece of my dad’s music off the piano, raced five blocks to the Illinois Central and caught a train into the city.  In the dark alley alongside the Shubert Theatre, amid the splendor of cigarette butts, blowing candy wrappers and empty bottles, I located the stage door, slipped inside and followed the appropriate sounds to the side of the stage.  I could see a tired accompanist hunched over an upright piano, I could smell grease paint and powder.  Stage Manager Andy Anderson squinted at my card, ushered me out to the center of the stage, announced “Bill Hayes!” to the black cavern beyond the footlights.  I stood there.  To me the stage manager said, “Hand your music to the pianist, Bill, and stand back there next to the work-light.”

Arpeggio.  The accompanist led me quickly through “I Love Life.”  I cracked on the high note, finished the song with a red face, stood there feeling strangely naked.  A voice from somewhere out front said, “Do you know ‘Make Believe’?”  I said, “Sort of.  Not really.”  The accompanist handed me the music and gestured me back into the light.  Arpeggio.  Holding the music, and suddenly tight in the neck and shoulders, I sang “Make Believe.”  The voice said, “How tall are you?”  “Five nine,” I replied.  A second voice said, “He can fit Johnny Henson’s costumes.”  Voice One said, “Come over to the side of the stage, please.”

At the side of the stage I met Voice One, who was Production Stage Manager Jerry Whyte.  Jerry smiled and said, “Okay, Hayes.  You’ll replace Johnny Henson who’s leaving the show Sunday.  Come here every performance for the rest of the week, starting tonight, watch from the wings and learn his lines and what he does.  Here’s the music; memorize the second tenor part.  You’ll go in next Monday night.”  I stood there.  He went on, “The pay is seventy bucks a week.  Okay?”  I smiled, nodded, took my music, floated out the stage door into that sooty, sweltering, windy alley, smirked my way back to the Randolph Street Station, and wafted home on a magic-carpet train.

That one decision changed my life forever.  I was in…(pause for effect)…SHOW BUSINESS!

The seventy bucks a week sounded like heaven to me.  My first three jobs (cashier in the high school cafeteria, Western Union bicycle-delivery boy, and stock-boy/salesman for Marx Toggery, Harvey’s main street haberdashery) had all paid a grand 25 cents an hour, which came to $10 a week, $12.50 if I worked six days.  My three-month summer job as Crew Dispatcher for the Indiana Harbor Belt Rail Road had paid $50 a week.  And my stint in the Navy had paid $50 a month, upped to $75 when we started flying.  Here I was being asked to get my kicks—in a show, on stage, in a commercial theatre—and was going to be paid to do it.  What could be better than that?

Yessir, changed my life forever.  I was now a professional performer.  Been one ever since, and I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never had to go out and get a real job.