Showered-and change, and then go back onto the boardwalk and do dancingĪnd stuff. We’d just stay at the beachĪll day long and then come back to shower-I don’t know where we But it was on the shore, and we’d get up in the morningĪnd go out to the beach, and there was a family tent where we couldĬhange and keep our sandwiches and things. This little-and there were five kids and friends, and there was one Ground on who they were, and that never really converged in an amicableĬOLLINGS So the family never got over it? HEEBNER Not so much, not so much. He was a musician! “Clara!” So the two of them stood their HEEBNER -was a widow, and then take you away to California, but It was terrible that he-ĬOLLINGS A widow. Grandmother, my Italian grandmother, was just-it was bad enough that he Oberstein and his wife, who were also in the business, and they went to COLLINGS I was going to say did she have resistance from her family? HEEBNER Oh, yeah. HEEBNER They actually eloped to California. That’s Walt Heebner! What do you mean?” He maybe heard that,Īnd he came in again and said, “You want to see it a second time?” AndĬOLLINGS Wow. The office, according to my mother, said, “Claire, you’ve got to be Me, Kate?” And she said, “I’ve already seen it.” And the other girls in He peeked in the office one day and said, “You want to go see Kiss And so my dad was newly widowed, and he was kind of a hotshot A and R,Īrtist and repertoire, recording producer in RCA. So, actually, my mom brought her to the attention of RCA.ĬOLLINGS Wow. Name is Keely Smith.” And this was before Keely Smith partnered up with Said, “You know, there’s this young singer, and she’s really got it. Had her go to clubs and listen for new talent. Mother really didn’t know anything, but it was an She did, parts of her job description was writing liner notes for-youĬalled it then race records, which was probably rhythm and blues. Of the house and being on her own as a working woman.
On weekends with her laundry, and that was how she navigated getting out So she lived at the Barbizon for Women, and she went home Worker, and so he wanted her to work at Rockefeller Center in New YorkĬity. But she was also very competent and an earnest Her boss, Jack Hallstrom, came out to the plant and saw that my mother
School.” So she did, and then got a job with her younger sister, Martha,Īt the RCA Victor plant in New Jersey. My mother begged her family, “Please let me at least go to business Only one boy, and he was allowed to go to college or whatever. My mother was fromĪ strict Italian Catholic family, and out of five children there was Predominantly they were excluded from before the war. Wartime, when a lot of women were working in industries that It was during a time in the late forties, So Doretta is my middle name, and Mary is my first nameĬOLLINGS Oh, that’s very interesting. Philadelphia, and that’s where they married and met.ĬOLLINGS So your grandparents are Italian immigrants? HEEBNER My grandparents on my mother’s side are Italian immigrants, and on myįather’s side are Pennsylvania Dutch. Her sisters and father and mother, and they settled in On his own, and I believe my grandmother, Mary, was with But as immigrants, new immigrants, I think my If they had stayed in Italy in their own villages, they They met literally on the pier atĪtlantic City. And then my mother’s family, herįather was from Abruzzi in Italy and her mother was fromįoggia, which is even farther south. HEEBNER And then they moved to Pennsylvania. Illuminated manuscripts and such that this group of the Pennsylvaniaĭutch had done, which I hadn’t known until maybe ten years ago.ĬOLLINGS No, I hadn’t known, either. The time that William Blake and that sort of mystical-there was a lot of We lost.” Īnd a lot of the Schwenkfelders immigrated via England, I think around That, Daddy?” And he goes, “Well, let’s put it this way.
Hard name to pronounce, let alone understand. Said he’s from the group called the Schwenkfelders. He wasįrom a Pennsylvania Dutch, Deutsch family, and the way he puts it, he My dad was in the music business and he worked at RCA and thenĪt Capitol Records, mainly in New York, and then transferred out to LosĪngeles and Hollywood, to Capitol Records in Hollywood.ĬOLLINGS So your father was sort of culturally based, rooted in New York? HEEBNER Well, in music, and he was from Philadelphia, as was my mother. Hollywood with a little bit of a break in my kindergarten andįirst-grade years, where we moved back to New York and Tenafly, New His daughter was seven, and he married my mother. Joseph’s Hospital, Burbank,Ĭalifornia, in 1951, and my parents lived in a home in North Hollywood. HEEBNER At the beginning, I was born at St. COLLINGS And why don’t we just start off with hearing about where and when you COLLINGS Today is July 30, 2013, Jane Collings interviewing Mary Heebner in her
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