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CATHY 2/8/2014 9:57:30 AM
Alvin J. Nassar was the Big Boss back in those early days of Carpetmax, and in 1989 he stole me from Jeff Resnick and Associates ad agency, where I was low man on the totem pole, anyway — referred to as an account executive — and made me General Manager of the Southeast. Sure, I was still nothing more than an account executive (an ad salesman), but you will have to admit that General Manger of the Southeast looked better on company letterhead beneath my sig.
Nassar was married at the time, had a couple of kids; but the office scuttlebutt was that he was a lady’s man. I, for one, did not believe a word of it (my daughter and I had run into Mrs. Nassar and the kids at an IHOP one evening and they were super!).
Cathy Rigby (the lady in question) had become a favorite with TV viewers when she was the highest scoring female participant in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City; she was the first woman to win a medal (silver) in the 1972 World Gymnastics Competition for balance beam expertise. (She had developed a somersault routine that might have given her gold had she used it; she did not, however, because of an injury.)
On October 16, 1968, black sprinters Tommie Smith (of Atlanta) and John Carlos, the gold and bronze winners in the 200-meter race, took their places on the podium for the medal ceremony. They were wearing black socks without shoes and civil rights badges pinned to their shirts; they lowered their heads and each defiantly raised a black-gloved fist as the Star Spangled Banner was played. Both of them were members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights. They were stripped of their medals by Avery Brundage and prohibited from ever appearing yet again as Olympians.
Rigby retired after her 1968 and 1972 efforts and never again was professionally a gymnast, not that Smith and Carlos had a thing to do with her decision.
In the mid-70’s she went on to do a TV advertisement for StayFree Maxi-pads, a commercial venture that made her a household name for women’s sanitary products, which led to an 18-year career as a sports commentator for ABC-TV. That led to a host of made-for-TV movies, including a guest starring role as a Russian gymnast in THE MILLION DOLLAR MAN. The rest is history. The acting-bug hah bitten her.
Cathy recreated the role made famous by Judy Garland — that of Dorothy, on the stage, in THE WIZARD OF OZ — and from there she received more touring roles in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS.
It was in the 80s, after her second marriage (not, I am happy to report, to Nassar) that she was hospitalized with bulimia, an eating disorder, which she had contracted previously during the Summer Olympics in 1968.
She had frequently been offered a recurring role (on Broadway) as a permanent replacement for Mary Martin in PETER PAN, but she turned it down (originally). Eventually, she went on a very successful tour with the role until April 2013, when at age 60, she will retire. No, she will not appear at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, which began on Thursday, and which I have refused to attend, (pronounced Seẃ-chee) and it means, in Russian, mafia influence.
It was, I think, back in 2001 that I first met Cathy Rigby. We were all at a National Carpetmax Convention at Disneyland in Orlando, and I was given the task of binding up our 36” X 36” rug samples with shrink wrap for transport back to Atlanta the next day.
Completely exhausted, I had fallen asleep on the showroom floor, on top of and next to a pile of samples still needing my attention.
I woke up aware that someone was lying next to me, on one elbow, staring down at me. It was Cathy Rigby, who had attended the Convention as a special guest and motivational speaker.
Are you the writer, she asked, that I have heard so much about?
I did not know what to reply, so I merely nodded in the affirmative.
Were you just recently published? she went on. Was it a novel called THE BETTER ANGELS?
I nodded my head again, this time to clear out the remaining cobwebs.
She nodded too, and our faces came very close. Our mouths and our lips were perilously close to each other. Her breath was a velvet bouquet.
What are you going to do with it? Ms Rigby wanted to know. Was it a World War Two story about a couple of teenage boys who become embroiled in the war and who buy a Navy surplus jeep and have to steal gasoline to run it? Then they meet President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, General Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery, at the Biltmore Castle in North Caroline and save them from assassination by the Nazis?
Her breath on my cheek was a red rose.
Do with it? I do not know, I told her, with what little strength I could muster. . . What I will do with it? Sell it to the movies, I guess, with the proviso I adapt it myself, direct it, and have total casting rights.
Who will play the leads? she asked.
Anna Theresa Tortoretti — the Italian woman who is not Italian — will be played by you, of course, I told her abruptly. . . Greg Landry will play Shadow Cranston, and Dale Burke, made up to look seventeen, will be Martin Eden. Martin, eighteen years her junior, will fall hopelessly in love with Anna Theresa. I will adapt and direct and the four of us will win Academy Awards, but CHICAGO will run off with Best Picture. . . I have already started a sequel called CIRCLES, about Castro and Cuba and Eden and friends.
Okay, she said, and got up, not in the least interested in sequels. . . Will you send me a copy of your book?
Sure, of course, I told her.
She took one of my business cards — one that said General Manager of the Southeast — and wrote her address in Los Angeles on the back: Mrs. Cathy Rigby McCoy, 110 E. Wilshire, Fullerton Ca 92832.
When I returned to Atlanta the next day, I took a copy from the publisher’s box of comps and mailed it to her. After a few weeks of silence, I sent her a letter, reminding her of our original tryst.
Again, no response.
A few years later I happened to be in L.A., so I took a taxi to the address she had written on the back of my biz card. Cathy, of course, had moved long ago, but I found the box I had sent my book in — unopened and stuck in a closet in what I assumed was a room she had used as an office. I also found my two letters there, sealed and unopened. Ce la vie.
Robert A. Mills, Feb 8, 2014 Copyright 2014, all rights reserved. This piece may not be re-written, published or broadcast without permission of the author.
