Oral history interview of Helen Eisemann Alexander

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Helen Eisemann Alexander
Creator:: Gantsoudes, Lillian
Alexander, Helen Eisemann, 1922-2014
Date of Original:: 2004-08-13
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Winged Victory (motion picture)
Submarines (Ships)--Germany
Race discrimination--United States
Hart, Moss, 1904-1961
DePaur, Leonard, 1914-1998
Conley, Eugene, 1908-1981
Cobb, Lee J., 1911-1976
Rosen, David, 1910-1990
Nielson, Barry, 1917-2007
Ritt, Martin, 1914-1990
O'Brien, Edmund, 1915-1985
Hepburn, Katherine, 1907-2003
Alexander, Cecil A., 1918-2013
Eisemann, Alexander, Jr., 1924-2002
Biltmore (Hotel : New York, N.Y.)
American Red Cross
United Service Organizations (U.S.)
American Theatre Wing
Max Gordon Plays & Pictures Corp.
Spelman College
Junior League of Atlanta
United States. Army Emergency Relief Act
Location:: United States, California, San Diego County, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, 33.35386, -117.42558
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, New York, New York County, New York, 40.7142691, -74.0059729
United States, Texas, Lamar County, Paris, 33.66094, -95.55551
United States, Virginia, Fairfax County, Alexandria, 38.96872, -77.3411
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: MovingImage
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Helen Alexander tells of her experiences as an actress during World War II in USO Camp Shows. She recounts working in New York City at the Stage Door Canteen, working with child actors and the importance of security in wartime. She was cast in a play called "Junior Miss." She describes entertaining at military training camps across the United States and working with famous actors. She also talks of race relations and racial tensions she witnessed while working with African Americans. She also relates her post-war experiences in Atlanta.
Helen Alexander was an actress and entertainer with the USO Camp Shows during World War II.
LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Today is Friday, August the 13th, 2004. We are interviewing Mrs. Helen Alexander. Mrs. Alexander was with the USO during World War II – HELEN ALEXANDER: USO Camp Shows. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: USO Camp Shows during World War II, and she has some very interesting experiences while she was serving in the USO. We are the Atlanta History Center. My name is Lillian Gantsoudes. And Mrs. Alexander if you would first say your name and tell us where you were born. HELEN ALEXANDER: My name is Helen Alexander. I was born in New York City and the subject is World War II so I'd to describe New York at that time a little bit. It was a very tense time for most of us. They told us there were u-boats off of Long Island and so we had blackouts, and one day – one night I went outside, probably shouldn't have been out there, and it was absolutely eerie, not a light. So I walked around, could hardly see except the moon was out, and all of the sudden there was one shade in somebody's apartment that was up and it made you so angry because that one light could have given away the whole story of New York. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So New York was in a blackout situation? HELEN ALEXANDER: Oh yeah, that's right, sirens and so on. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Where were you when war was declared? HELEN ALEXANDER: I was at the Biltmore Hotel. The American Theatre Wing, which is an organization that helps the theatre and actors and directors and so on, they put on tea dances for servicemen and the Navy. Gentlemen from the Navy were invited to this tea dance, and the music was playing and everybody was dancing, having a great time and all of the sudden the Admiral—I guess he was an Admiral. He had a lot of scrambled eggs and stuff on his hat—came on and he said “Everybody go back to your bases immediately!” Everyone was in shock. Nobody knew what happened and the women were left just standing there, and we just went home. But that was when war was declared. Before that, what civilians did, we took—my mother and I took Red Cross classes and rolling bandages and doing CPR and so on. And another thing the American Theatre Wing did was called the Stage Door Canteen. You may have seen it. There's a movie by that name, which, incidentally, I was in. I'll tell you about that later. But it was like going into a subway. You'd go down the steps on 40—I believe it was 44th Street off of Broadway. And you'd go down the steps and it was a tiny little stage where wonderful bands came to play and famous actors and singers appeared. And the Theatre Wing had actresses there as hostesses to dance with the soldiers and sailors and so on, and we wore special uniforms, aprons, and so on. And one of the situations, now, this was 1942 or three, maybe it was 1944. And there were African American sailors and African American actresses. And sometimes African American sailors would dance with Caucasian actresses and that would create some tension, and we were trained on how to deal with that. Somebody would cut in and we would, you know, talk to them and work it out, but it was another tense time there. It was fun. The entertainment was fantastic and the servicemen loved it. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: A lot of servicemen in New York at the time? HELEN ALEXANDER: Oh, yeah. The place was filled with them. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: The USO Camp Shows, how did you get involved with those? HELEN ALEXANDER: Well, being an actress you keep abreast of what's going on, and I heard that they were casting for this play, Junior Miss, which was an English comedy. Very funny play. And an agent called and said, go over to Max Gordon Theatre, they're casting. And it was really funny because, if you knew the play, everyone was dressed like a character in the play, lined up outside the theatre. Luckily I got the part of Lois in the play. It was the older teenage sister. And we had rehearsal for I guess a month, and they had opening night performance at this Max Gordon Theatre to invited guests. My parents were there, and of course they had a great time. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What was the story about? It's it Julius Miss? HELEN ALEXANDER: Junior Miss. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Junior Miss. HELEN ALEXANDER: It's about two teenage sisters and all their boyfriends and various things that come up. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is it set during the 40s? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How long were you in Junior Miss? HELEN ALEXANDER: About ten months. We toured. There were three different routes that USO Camp Shows would take, the larger ones went. I'm not sure if I have the colors right, but it's red, white, and blue circuit, and I think we were on the red circuit, which was the largest. So we played all the large camps from New York to California, south-north. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What did you experience as you traveled? You were traveling coast to coast? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What sort of things— HELEN ALEXANDER: From one small town to another. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What sort of things did you experience in the towns? HELEN ALEXANDER: Oh, it was fun. We went to—you know, we explored the small towns. We stopped in Paris, Texas, once. It was a little tiny town. It may be bigger now. And I wanted to buy a dress, a Paris dress, but I didn't. [LAUGHTER] LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did you find a dress? HELEN ALEXANDER: I did. We opened in Alexandria, Virginia, and that was a town that had four different military bases so the place was just teaming with servicemen. And there was an advance man that would go ahead to make arrangements where we would stay. And the first place, we stayed in this huge house, and five actresses stayed in one room, huge room. And I woke up the first morning, about four in the morning, I was freezing. So I went over there and I turned on the heater and went back to bed. And then about an hour later the other girls woke up and they started coughing and they said, “What's going on?” And I turned on the gas by accident. You know in New York we have radiators. I didn't know about gas heaters. They fixed it so everything was fine. One of the things that was really amusing, there were child actors in this play and they had got their homework from Professional Children's School, and they of course had to do it every day. And this one kid took a liking to me and he would come into my room and do his homework and he'd show me his little black book. And he had a list of all the military equipment we'd seen on all the bases—planes, tanks, guns, you name it. He had it written down in his book. And one day he was in my room and the Military Police came in and said, “Son, give us that black book now!” Why? I mean this could have— they said, “If this had fallen into the hands of the enemy, you've listed everything at all the bases you've been at.” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How old was this boy? HELEN ALEXANDER: He was about 12. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Oh, wow. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah, he didn't know. He was this kid collecting things, so anyway— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [Unintelligible] HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: As he went. HELEN ALEXANDER: One other thing happened at Camp Pendleton in California. The soldiers wanted to be nice and entertain us, so they took us for a tank ride. So we climbed in this tank and the manager—the stage manager was very fat and he couldn't fit into the tank so he couldn't ride with us. But anyway, we got a big laugh out of that. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How were you received by the troops at the different camps? HELEN ALEXANDER: That's a good question. I was told that if the acting is good and that if you're believable, if they've never seen a play before they would clap, they would be excited. They could tell if, you know, were faking. So we must have been pretty good because they loved us. Once we were in an amphitheatre in California again, and I don't know if it was Pendleton, one of those camps, and I felt so sorry, the soldiers were sitting out in the rain in this outdoor amphitheatre, and we were on the stage, and they still loved it. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And the stage was covered? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah, the stage was covered. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: But the audience wasn't? HELEN ALEXANDER: No. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When you went to the camps, how long were you at a camp to do a show? Was it just one night? Were you there for—? HELEN ALEXANDER: One to three days. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: One to three days. HELEN ALEXANDER: And we would sleep usually in the barracks and travel by bus. I felt sorry for some of the older people there because it was sort of a grueling experience traveling that way. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: The buses, how many buses were there to move a show? HELEN ALEXANDER: One. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: One bus? HELEN ALEXANDER: One for the actors. I don't know how they got the scenery and all that. There must have been another bus, another truck probably. We didn't see that. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How many actors were there? HELEN ALEXANDER: I'll show you this picture. I can count. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Actually, can you show it to the side? HELEN ALEXANDER: About fifteen. Here I am. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Okay. And tell me about your character. You said her name was Lois? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yes. She's a know-it-all teenager who's pestered by her younger sister and the sister's friend is called Fluffy Adams and they're up to all kinds of mischief. And that's my mother and father, and that's the nurse, or maid, rather. That's one of the boyfriends over here. The rest are suitors. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's wonderful. All right. You stayed in the barracks? Did you ever stay in hotels or was it always barracks? HELEN ALEXANDER: Once in a while in hotels, small hotels. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Were there any hotels or any other memories while you were on the road? HELEN ALEXANDER: I remember being on the stage and a dog wanders across the stage so we had to ad lib about that. [LAUGHTER] You never knew what was going to happen. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So if you weren't performing what were you doing? HELEN ALEXANDER: During the day? LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Uh-huh. HELEN ALEXANDER: Oh, we'd sleep until I guess about ten or eleven because the show went on late. We'd explore the towns. It was fun. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Was there a favorite town other than Paris, Texas, where you went shopping for a Paris dress? HELEN ALEXANDER: I don't remember; it's so long ago. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And you said you were on the road for ten months. Was that right? HELEN ALEXANDER: Uh-huh, that's right. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did you come back to New York after that? HELEN ALEXANDER: I came back to New York. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So you're back in New York and when is this? HELEN ALEXANDER: It's '44. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: '44. HELEN ALEXANDER: I heard they were casting for—Moss Hart was going to do a show called Winged Victory. And this was a show, a play with music where 300 men from, soldiers were drafted into the show, men who had been in the entertainment industry but they were in special services.So all the names you can think of were in there, and it was the most wonderful experience. Anyway, again, agents had called and said “Helen, go over and read.” So I went over and Moss Hart's sitting on the stage with this green light that you see in the movies at the table, and he's saying “Thank you, ladies.” He's dismissing everybody, all the actresses that were there, and I went up to him and I said, “Mr. Hart, I came to read for you.” Imagine what nerve I had. He said, “Young lady, you were late.” I was so disappointed. He said, “Tell your agent to tell you to come for call backs.” We were reading for understudy. So I went home and I thought, that man is not going to know me from “Adam's housecat” so I've got to do something to make him remember me. So every night I'd sit down and write a little note and mail it, or send him little gifts like a pencil or a handkerchief, you know, teenage stuff. And when I get there a month later, the agent said, go over there and be on time this time. Moss Hart is sitting there and all the actresses are around him. He's sitting at this table with the green light and he said, “Who is Helen Eastman?” That was my stage name. “You want this part so bad, get up and read.” So I did, and that was the beginning of a two year job. So chutzpah pays off. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You mentioned that there were lots of well known actors. HELEN ALEXANDER: Right. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Do you remember any of those? HELEN ALEXANDER: Right. I do know. Leonard Dupaul [PHONETIC] was one, and there's a story about that and I'll come back to that. Mario Lanza, who was the operatic star; Eugene Conley, David Rose and his orchestra, Barry Nelson, Martin Ritt, Lee J. Cobb. He opened on Broadway in—what's that play about a sales—Death of Salesman. And Edmond O'Brien and so on, Barry Nelson. My roommate was Olivia Deering and, I'm jumping ahead, on tour—we opened in New York and were there for about ten months. Well, I'll jump around. On tour we would stay at very expensive hotels and we couldn't afford to have room service every day so we would—the first day we were there we'd order room service and we'd keep all the dishes. And then we'd go out to grocery stores and buy expensive food and put the food outside the window, because it was very cold, like in Chicago, places like that. And the last day we'd call room service and they'd come and pick up the dishes. [LAUGHTER] One other thing, laundry. With the first show we didn't have a lot of time to do laundry so some of these places, hotels had, motels had ceiling fans. So I thought ah, centrifugal force. So I'd hang my underwear on hangers and hang them on the fan and turn the fan on and it would dry. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Did it work? HELEN ALEXANDER: It worked. It was a little weird when a bell boy came into the room—flying underwear. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You were on the road. Do you want to go back to opening on Broadway? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah, let's do that. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Okay. HELEN ALEXANDER: We opened actually in Boston. And Moss Hart changed the play. They kept rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. And I was an understudy, but I was in all the group scenes, and later on I ended up playing the lead and playing a small part regularly. So we got good reviews in Boston and then we moved on to New York. It was really exciting. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How long did the play run? HELEN ALEXANDER: It ran for a year in New York, maybe 10 months to a year. And then we went on tour. I remember a New Year's celebration at the Astor Hotel—‘44 or '45, I think it was '44—at the roof of the Astor Hotel that's no longer there. And who comes out with a diaper on but Mario Lanza. It's this huge guy, you know, as the New Year's baby. So, let's see, where were we? On tour. Leonard Dupaul was a very talented African American man who was head of the Choral Group, very well known in his field now. In fact, he's head of Lincoln Center now. And we would go out to dinner, a whole group with Leonard, and we'd go to restaurants and they would say “Sorry, no room.” Well, we knew there was room. We'd say, “We don't want to come in any way,” and march out. But that was— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Segregation. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. It happened all over the country. In fact, you know, at the end of the run the Air Force cancelled the show in Washington. They couldn't face touring the show, at least that's my view of it, in the south, because they would have to deal with housing for Leonard. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Uh-huh. We've come a long way, haven't we? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah, we have. A ways to go, but we've come a long way. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: So how did you like performing in Winged Victory? HELEN ALEXANDER: I loved it. Very exciting. We traveled, when we went on tour we traveled on troop trains and there was a, he was a General? Somebody high up there was in charge of the troops in the show at the theatre and at the GI bases. And he could not stand the idea that women were on the train. You know, he wanted it all to be very GI. In fact, there were six actresses and the rest of the women were wives of the husbands who were in the show. He did not allow us to talk to the men as we walked through the cars to the dining car, and when they walked out, when they went out on a railroad siding to exercise, you know, march up and down, we were not allowed to get out. So he did all kind of weird stuff. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Different military protocol at the time it sounds like. HELEN ALEXANDER: Exactly. I think he was different. Anyway, okay. One thing I forgot about the other show— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: About Junior Miss? HELEN ALEXANDER: Junior Miss. We were out west—Iowa? I don't know what state it was, but I'll never forget this. There were these German prisoners there and after they show they ran after the bus and clawed at it. And I felt so sorry for them. I was also scared to death, but anyway. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: They were—so the camp where you were performing the show had some German prisoners? HELEN ALEXANDER: That's right. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And had the German prisoners been brought to see the show? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yes. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And so, as you all left, then they just ran after? HELEN ALEXANDER: Uh-huh. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That would be scary. HELEN ALEXANDER: The bus took off. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Were you in any danger, or was it just scary? HELEN ALEXANDER: No, I don't think so. It was just scary. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's scary. Uh-huh. HELEN ALEXANDER: One thing we did with Winged Victory—this wonderful director named Martin Ritt, he's done a lot of movies, he's no longer living, but he had a workshop for actors. You get really stale if you're away from New York and not working, and we would do scenes and the actors would critique us. It was great. We would critique everybody. Anyway, we would do hospital shows. There was a little unit that was formed, a bunch of units, and one of them was ours. And Red Buttons and Jerry Adler, who was the harmonica player—his brother was Luther Adler—and me, we did a show called Floogle Street— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Floogle Street? HELEN ALEXANDER: Floogle Street. It's an old— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is it Vaudeville? HELEN ALEXANDER: Vaudeville show, that's right. And they thought it would be very funny and they took this up-tight, Park Avenue girl and had her do bumps and grinds, because basically that's what this thing was. It went something like this—I'd come across the stage and I'd say, “I've lost my husband, I've lost my husband.” And I'd do three bumps and grinds, and the police that was standing there on the stage would say, “Lady, I don't know where he is.” Now, this went on three times. The last one would say “Lady, you didn't lose your husband, you bumped him off.” Ha, ha, ha, ha. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: [LAUGHTER] HELEN ALEXANDER: Old Vaudeville. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Old Vaudeville. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. But anyway. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: This group that was Red Buttons—did you all ever perform anywhere or was this just for other— HELEN ALEXANDER: No, we did. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You did. Where would you do that? HELEN ALEXANDER: We performed at hospitals, and we performed— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: The hospitals in New York? HELEN ALEXANDER: All over where we were. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Oh. HELEN ALEXANDER: Military hospitals. And also for, you know, the troops. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Well, Winged Victory, did that continue until the war was over? Which ended first, the war or the show? HELEN ALEXANDER: The show ended. And by the way, the proceeds—the show was put on by the Army Air Force Society—would go to the widows of the soldiers that were killed. So, in closing the show, because they couldn't deal with Leonard Dupaul's African Americanism, they did themselves out of a lot of money. It was sad. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: It's a shame. When the show closed did you go back to New York? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yes. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What did you do in New York then? HELEN ALEXANDER: I was in summer stock for five or six years, and then I did radio and a few films. One thing happened while I was in California. I forgot to tell you. I left—I'm jumping around a lot. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's all right. Is this California with Junior Miss? HELEN ALEXANDER: With Junior Miss. I left Los Angeles. I stayed there to do a part in a movie Winged Victory—I mean, a movie, Stage Your Canteen. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's right. You mentioned that earlier. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. While I was on the set I had to screen test at another studio. You couldn't drive out there because there was no gas and I didn't have a car, so I would hitchhike, and I had a system. If there was a man coming along I would pretend I was fixing my hair. If it was a woman I'd hitchhike. And anyway, who comes along but Katherine Hepburn. Really. She had a driver and she stopped and she said, “Would you like a ride?” I said, “Yes, I would.” So I got in and we had a nice talk and she dropped me at Twentieth Century. I still remember that. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's amazing. HELEN ALEXANDER: Charming lady. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When—I'm sorry, do you have anything else that you— HELEN ALEXANDER: I think that's about it. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Let me just ask you, when you were participating in the shows, and the war is going on, and you're in these military camps, did you realize how—sort of the epic time that this was, that it was, I mean, were you proud of what you were doing? Did you feel that you were part of this larger effort that was going on during the war? HELEN ALEXANDER: Well, in those days everybody wanted to help, and we all did in many different ways. That was one thing except—you know, I was an actress and I loved to act and that was a job, but in New York my friends and I got together and we did a newspaper to send to our friends who were overseas to keep them abreast of what was going on and little things like that. So you just did whatever you could. The general feeling all over was we've got to all get behind this. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: The newspaper that you did, how many copies of that, how many people were you sending it to? HELEN ALEXANDER: Oh, not that many, like 50. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That still is pretty many. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's a pretty good circulation. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah, mimeograph in those days, no Xerox. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You are in Atlanta now. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How did you get to Atlanta from New York? HELEN ALEXANDER: Good question. My mother's from Atlanta so I came down on a business trip with her and I met my first husband, Arthur Harris. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: What was your mother's name? HELEN ALEXANDER: Josephine Lowenstein. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And then—so you met your first husband here? HELEN ALEXANDER: My mother's family had this Mars [?] Candy Company—that's before your time—so I grew up with a sweet tooth. I met him—and my aunt introduced me to every single man in town. And he said—Cecil loves to tell this story—he said, “I want you to marry me now.” I said, “I just met you.” And he said, well—so three or four weeks later we went to Florida and got married with our families there. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's fun. HELEN ALEXANDER: We got these four great kids. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: When did you, so how old were you or what year? HELEN ALEXANDER: I was 25. That was 1947. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: '47. And so, you've been in Atlanta ever since? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. And Atlanta was really—I have a story about that that has to do with the military. Arthur had employed this African American gentleman, James Williams, to work for him. And he had a daughter who was aphasic, you know, had to relearn how to speak and hear. And in those days there was no place this child could go to get training because the Speech School was segregated. So I went to a friend of mine, Phoebe Franklin, and I said, “Let's do something about this.” So we got some friends of ours to give money, and we found a wonderful lady, Irene Asbury, who was willing to go, be sent to Washington University in St. Louis to become a teacher of the deaf, and that's a two year program. We also trained speech teachers. To make a long story very short, Spellman and Atlanta University ultimately gave us a little house on each of their campuses each alternate year. And we had this school there that we trained maybe up to, I don't know, 30 people a year, or more. And it got to be too large for us, and the Junior League did come over and help us with their doctors. So we went to the public schools, and they said, “Okay, we'll take it over. It will be the first special education program in the city of Atlanta.” It was, and gave— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's a— HELEN ALEXANDER: It was really wonderful. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You should be proud of that. HELEN ALEXANDER: We were thrilled about that. And, of course, it gave jobs to all these teachers all throughout the state. There were many jobs that probably were still not filled—training they couldn't get here because they didn't offer it—and the Board of Regents gave us extra money to send a teacher away to St. Louis. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is there anything else about that time in Atlanta, ‘50s, ‘60s that you remember? HELEN ALEXANDER: I remember it well. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Have some Atlanta stories? HELEN ALEXANDER: Again, it was segregated, and you know, in New York working with actors, all, pink, green, blue, black, and I was just used to that. And I come down here and the drinking fountains have “colored” and “white,” and people were really frightened, I think, of going against the temper of the times. And until it became the law of the land they were scared of me in a way, because I'd speak my mind. But anyway it was interesting to see how it evolved. I think what we did was wonderful because we—it was a process where we took time to make changes. We didn't, you know, do what some other cities did. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: I'm glad you stayed in Atlanta. HELEN ALEXANDER: Thanks. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is there anything else that you can think of that you'd like to include in your story? HELEN ALEXANDER: My brother who was—just died. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And what was his name? HELEN ALEXANDER: Alexander Eastman, he was on a B24; he was a bombardier in Europe. I'm trying to think what else to share with you. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Earlier you mentioned Cecil likes to tell the story. That's Cecil Alexander? HELEN ALEXANDER: Yes. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Who is your husband? HELEN ALEXANDER: Right. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: How did you all meet? HELEN ALEXANDER: Cecil's wife, Hermie and I were good friends, and we were neighbors. And they were in a dreadful crash where she was killed and he was injured. And two years after that he and I got married and it's been wonderful, because our children knew each other, they all went to school together, some of them. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: You said you have four children. HELEN ALEXANDER: I have four and he has three and when we all get together there are 25 of us, 26 of us. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: That's wonderful. HELEN ALEXANDER: It is. It really is a blessing. I'm lucky. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Is there anything else that you want to add? HELEN ALEXANDER: Well, I'm still acting in commercials. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Tell us about your latest commercial. HELEN ALEXANDER: My latest one, I'm this elderly lady, you know, type casting, with a walker walking across the street. And they have a stunt driver driving in a car that's stopping just short of me and I get so angry at him I raise my fist. And I take my walker—the director said, “Now, Helen, do whatever you want to do”—so I shook the walker at him. And the one before that is the one that's best known. It's for the Georgia Lottery. I was in a bank. A teller in a bank, very formal, you know, hair in a bun and so on, corporate type, and this young, attractive man comes to the teller window with $220 million and I'm just absolutely floored. I say, “Excuse me a minute.” So I leave and I come back with my hair down, long eye lashes, pearls, long earrings— LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: And I remember a black sequined dress. HELEN ALEXANDER: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] HELEN ALEXANDER: And I said, “My name is Edna, but my friends call me Sparkles. I have a hot tub.” LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: It's a wonderful commercial. HELEN ALEXANDER: It is wonderful. And being married to Cecil is very exciting. He's always got these wonderful projects he's designing. He's been ask to design a memorial for Ivan Allen. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: I didn't know that. That's wonderful. HELEN ALEXANDER: They haven't decided on it yet, but that's still a possibility among other things. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: All right. Anything else? HELEN ALEXANDER: I think that's it. I've really enjoyed it, Lillian. Thank you so much. LILLIAN GANTSOUDES: Well, I want to thank you. I've enjoyed talking with you too this afternoon. Thank you. [END INTERVIEW]
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/380
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 33:20
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Contributing Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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