So what does this say about me?  I’m a flake who can’t hold a job?  There are many acting and modeling jobs in the list that only lasted for one day, so the choice wasn’t really mine.  Since I have never been fired, I’d have to say that I could have held the jobs longer if I really wanted to.

Do I have regrets about moving from job to job?  Not at all. I loved every job that I ever had, at the beginning.  I would stick around until I started to get bored or restless, then move on.

By the way, when they say that you can’t get a job without a college education….don’t believe it.

It was May of 1977.  I had moved to Los Angeles in hopes of pursuing my acting career.  I wanted to keep my days open for auditions and acting jobs, so I no longer looked for secretarial work.  I concentrated my efforts on finding jobs at night.  I had worked three different cocktail waitress jobs since arriving in Los Angeles the previous year, but none of these jobs lasted long.

I was once again scouring the newspaper for a cocktail waitress job when an ad jumped out at me.  “Dance Hostesses”  Earn $200+tips weekly – must be at least 18 years old.  I wasn’t really sure what a dance hostess was but I was over 18 and decided to check it out.  I called the club and made an appointment to meet with the manager.

That evening I made my way to Club Starlight, which was located at 1224 S. Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.  I entered the building to find a dimly lit room with pretty girls seated on red leather sofas.  Before I could see anything else, I was escorted into an office to meet with the manager.  He told me that the owner was a retired police officer.  He explained that the club would not tolerate sexual activity with the customers and that leaving the building during your work shift would get you fired.  He went on to explain that my job (if I were to accept this assignment) would be to show up looking attractive and to have a seat on one of the red leather sofas.  When a man approaches me and indicates that he would like to spend time with me, I will then go to the time clock and punch a ticket and give it to the man to hold.  He will then decide if he wants to dance with me, play pool, watch TV, have something to eat or just have soft drinks and chat.  No alcohol is served in the clubs.  When he decides that he is ready to leave (or find another girl) he will take the ticket to the cashier and pay for his time with me.  I also got a receipt for the time spent with him.  I don’t remember how much they were charging the customers but I made between 7 cents and 9 cents a minute, depending how many night a week that I worked.  It was a little better than the 10 cents a dance that the taxi dancers used to make in the 20’s.  I was also allowed to receive tips.

Well, I needed a job and getting paid to dance, watch TV, play pool, eat and make small talk certainly seemed easy enough.  After all, I was an actress and I could just pretend that I was acting.  I had been doing these things on dates for years, for free, so I took the job.

I started the next evening.  The girls were friendly and full of advice.  Some of them were single mothers just trying to earn a living but most of them were aspiring models or actresses who wanted to keep their days open for auditions and work.

The only women allowed in the club are the ones working there.  Men would enter the club and usually take some time to look over the girls to see who they would like to spend some time with.  Of course, some of the regulars came in to see a specific girl that they had previously taken a liking to.  Then there are the “looky-loos,” who sit there rubbernecking without ever paying for a dance.  The girls alerted me to who the “grabbers” were and also the “big tippers” and the “stiffs.” (no tips)  The most sought after men were the ones who would spend a couple of hours with you chatting and dancing then leave you with a big tip.  Certainly, married men were no strangers to the club.   The first thing they tell you is that they are married.  It’s like they need to confess.  Of course, their wives don’t understand them and they sleep separately.  There are also some single guys who are just afraid of being rejected.  They know that as long as they have money they can have someone to dance with or talk to.

I was fairly popular and was kept busy on most of my evenings but this really wasn’t the job for me.  I only worked there for about five weeks because I found the job kind of sad and depressing.

I checked online and was surprised to learn that this club still exists and apparently it is still quite popular.

Sometimes on Sundays we would drive around and look at open houses. We even talked about buying something in the area but we never pursued it strongly. Since this was usually a fun thing to do, I decided that maybe we should become real estate agents. I thought that holding open houses on weekends would be a lot of fun and we would be working for ourselves, not someone else. Cullen was not crazy about the idea but he wanted me to be happy, so he agreed.

We both took the required tests and got our real estate licenses. We joined up with a company called “My Real Estate Co., Inc.” in Downey, California. We were Century 21 Agents, gold jackets and all. We did cold calls and knocked on doors, trying to get prospective sellers to list with us. This was nowhere near the glamour that I had imagined. Once we did get the listings, the open houses were not quite as much fun as I had imagined either.

Cullen and I were probably the most attentive Realtors that ever worked in the real estate field. If someone wanted a particular kind of house, we would spend weeks looking at every possible house to find the perfect one for our clients. After that we would spend weeks taking them to all of the possible options that we had found for them. Often, after weeks of work, they decided not to buy.

We did sell some houses during the year. Unfortunately, we got into the real estate business when the values on houses were going down and sellers were not happy. At the end of the year we decided that this wasn’t the career for us and we gave it up.

Keep America Beautiful Commercial

My first real acting experience was in 1966, when I played the part of Ela Delahey in my Jr. Class play, “Charlie’s Aunt.” A part of me loved the acting but another part of me was scared to death. Stage fright, they call it.

I never really thought about being an actress again until 1973. I was living in New York City at the time and was getting some modeling jobs. Nothing really impressive. I was too short for any of the big time things. I did some catalogue work, some shoe modeling, some convention work, things along those lines.

On one of my modeling jobs, I met a man named Ron Marshall. He owned a talent management company called Marshall Management. He asked me to stop by his office and meet with his management team. When I met with them, they asked me if I had any interest in being an actress. “Sure” I said, “It sounds like fun.” I didn’t know what it entailed, but it seemed exciting, so I was in.

The first thing they did was get me to change my name. Next, they set up an appointment for me to meet with a photographer and have a portfolio done. In the meantime, I enrolled in some acting, dance and voice classes. This was going to be a lot more work than I had planned. All in all, it was pretty exciting. With the modeling that I had done and the classes I was taking, they managed to build a small resume for me to use. Now I was ready to go on auditions.

First let me explain to you how the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) works. Usually, SAG franchised agents will not let you audition for a union job, unless you currently hold a SAG card. You can’t get a SAG card until you’ve got a principle role in a SAG project. Catch-22. There is one exception. You have to find a casting person who wants “YOU” to perform in a particular commercial or movie. When this is done, you are given a one time waiver. You may do the project, but must join SAG in order to work on another SAG project.

Well, my manager started sending me on auditions for TV commercials. I only went on a few when “The Call” came. I had auditioned for a public service announcement for “Keep America Beautiful.” When my manager called to tell me that I had gotten the part, I was so excited that I screamed and hung up on him. Of course, I called back.

I did my first commercial and got my SAG card. If you would like to see it, check out this clip.  “Keep America Beautiful” on YouTube.  “That’s me in the boat with the headphones on. It’s Donny Most/Ralph Malph (several years before Happy Days) sitting with me in the boat.

Since that time, I have done 4 stage plays, 4 TV commercials, 1 voice-over, 11 television shows and 25 movies. While I have worked with such stars as Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Connery, Harvey Keitel, Diane Keaton, Eli Wallach, Helen Hunt, Sandra Bullock, Chevy Chase, Woody Allen, Alan Arkin, Shelley Winters, Kate Jackson, Antonio Bandaras, Billy Dee Williams, Jodie Foster, and the list goes on and on, none of my acting jobs ever amounted to much more than a few lines here and there. Someone once asked me if I would rather have had a major role in a B movie with unknowns or the small parts that I had with the actors listed above. I didn’t start out as an actress. I fell into it by accident. I wouldn’t trade the experiences that I had working with the above “fellow actors” for anything!

To this day, I am still a card-carrying member of SAG.

While I was working at Atlantic Records, I became close friends with a couple members of the J. Geils Band.  Every time that they came into town we would head over to the garment district.  They would buy lame fabrics, rhinestones and sequins to put on their clothing.  At that time, these things weren’t being manufactured for the masses.  Yes, the Queen of England had hers and Liberace had his, but they weren’t all over the street. 

I was fascinated and started buying the rhinestones, sequins and studs to put on my own clothing.  I had them on everything that I owned.  My t-shirts had them.  My jackets had them.  My hot pants had them.  My jeans had them. Even my boots had them.  Everything sparkled!

I was becoming very good at this.  I was a walking advertisement.  Friends and strangers alike started to ask me to put them on their clothes.  Since everything I did was by hand, it was very time consuming.  I decided to start a business doing this.  I would call the business “Giggles” custom trimming.  I would have my customers give me a piece of their clothing, then I would return it a week or two later with a “one of a kind” design on them.  Everyone loved them.  Since I worked around lots of rock, pop, rhythm and blues bands, I had lots of work.

I now thought that I had found the perfect job.  I could audition during the day and work on my clothing in my spare time.  Well, it worked for awhile.  I had lots of customers until the manufacturing companies started mass producing things.  I just couldn’t keep up.  My work was a much higher quality, but so were my prices.  Eventually, I sold most of my trimmings.  I still have a small container of rhinestones in my sewing tin.  I’ll probably never use them, but I smile everytime I see them.

I became friendly with Johnny, one of the poker dealers at “The Treasury” Casino.  He suggested that since I liked playing poker so much that I go to Poker Dealing School and learn how to become a poker dealer.  It sounded like a great idea to me so I checked out the poker schools and found the Denny Walker’s Academy of Dealing.  I enrolled at the school and started taking classes.  Since I had been playing poker for white awhile my learning curve was small.  I felt ready to start dealing in just two weeks.  Johnny suggested that I talk with Russ Bennett at the Maxim to see if he had any dealer openings.  Russ told me at the time that there was a freeze on hiring but he would be willing to give me a call if they got busy if I was willing to come in and deal for tokes (tips) only.  I was thrilled.  The calls started coming and I started dealing.  I loved it.  I was so happy to be dealing poker that I would have done it for free.  It was like I got to play every hand because when you deal you actually play out every hand in your head.  I would guess what the players had and the more I dealt the more I got it right.  When the hiring freeze was over I was hired as a full time poker dealer.

I started on the graveyard shift which is where most new dealers start.  I didn’t care.  I was just happy to be dealing for a living.  I was dealing both seven card stud and texas hold ‘em.  I eventually moved to swing shift where it was busier and the money was better.  I dealt at the Maxim until 1985 when they closed the poker room.  I took a break for a few months and spent some of that time dealing tournaments in various casinos.  In 1986, I went to work in the poker room at the Landmark.  I only stayed there until 1987 when the poker room at the Las Vegas Hilton opened.  During my time in the Hilton poker room, I also had an opportunity to take some time off and work on several Poker Cruises that cruised to various ports in the Caribbean.  Life was great.  In 1989, I decided to make a move to Los Angeles.  Before I made my move, I had the opportunity to deal the 1989 World Series of Poker.

When I arrived in Los Angeles I immediately went to the Bicycle Club and got a job dealing poker there.  I worked at the Bike until 1992.

Being a poker dealer gave me ten years of excitement and income in a setting that surrounded me with not only customers but many, many friends.  To this day I can hardly walk into a poker room and not recognize someone from my dealing days.  Back then poker was not as glamorous or popular as it is today.  It was a small tight community where most dealers and players all knew each other quite well.  Today the job has blossomed and there are many, many more dealing jobs available than there were back then.  This is definitely a job that someone who enjoys the game of poker and who is personable with people can make a nice, comfortable living.

  I grew up in foster homes and a Children’s home.  During my childhood and even into my teens, I never really felt loved.  I had the impression that if I were a Playboy Bunny that I would be seen as beautiful and glamorous.  I thought if I were a Playboy Bunny, then I would surely be loved.  

In 1972, I was a single twenty-two year old living in New York City.  At the time I was working as a secretary for a major record company, Atlantic Records.   As much as I loved the job, I was starting to get bored and felt that it was time for a change.   I was getting some small jobs as a model and even had a few auditions as an actress.  Since I was working a nine to five job, it made it very difficult to be available to go on auditions.  When I mentioned this to a few of my friends, one suggested that I try to get a job as a Bunny at the Playboy Club.  I could work nights and be available for auditions during the day.  This comment was really meant as a joke since I am small breasted and the likelihood of me getting hired was minimal.

Not being one to back down from a dare or a challenge, I decided that I would go and see if I could actually get a job as a Playboy Bunny.  Of course, I wasn’t about to tell anyone.  I figured that if I didn’t get the job, no one would know, so what did I have to lose.  I called the club to find out the specifics of the interviews.  I just had to show up between 2 and 4, fill out an application and be interviewed.  Sounded easy.  

When I got there I entered the room, gave someone my name and got an application to fill out.  There were at least fifteen other girls waiting ahead of me to be seen.  It felt more like an acting audition.  They were all attractive and most were well endowed.  As each one of the girls came out of their interview, they would tell their friends that the club wasn’t hiring right now but were going to keep their names on file.  I really felt like I was wasting my time but since I was already there,  I decided to wait.

It was finally my turn.  I went in and was introduced to Jadee, the Bunny Mother.  We chatted for awhile and then she told me that she was sending me to wardrobe to have me try on a Bunny costume. ” What!  I thought you weren’t hiring?” I said.  “That’s what we tell the girls who are not Bunny material.” she replied.  “But what about my small breasts?” I asked.  Nothing like pointing out ones flaws at an interview.  She told me that a Bunny needed to have a pretty face, nice skin, hair and teeth and a good butt and legs, the rest could be enhanced.  

I was then sent to wardrobe and put into a Bunny costume.   Amazing what one of those costumes can do for a body.  I was then taken upstairs where I met the General Manager, who had the final say.   He congratulated me and welcomed me to the world of Playboy.

After two weeks of training. I was officially working as a Playboy Bunny.  I worked at the New York Club for about a year.  It was an experience that college could not have given me and it also trained me for future jobs as a cocktail waitress.

I invite all of you to post about about the job that you now hold or have held in the past.  Let us know the name or title of the job, how you got the job and what it entails. Let us know what the job would pay someone if they were to get that job today.  If you’ve been at the job for awhile and are currently looking to make a change, that’s okay.  It may be the perfect job for someone else.