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The next year a friend of mine said, 'Have I got a guy for you.' So, he set me up with a blind date and it was Gerald. Our date was at the old Pretzel Bell tavern, at Adelaide and Simcoe St., which was just torn down. Anyway, we realized that we met the year before, and all we did was laugh, so we've just been inseparable.
For the years that we've been together, Gerald has always, whatever show he's in, had people in the company asking him, 'Gerald can you show me how to do this?' People thought he could do everything because he's multi-talented. Then he began coaching people in the dressing room, and then he started bringing them to our apartment. I would always be in the background doing things to make them comfortable and thinking to myself, my God, look at this guy. From the beginning of the hour that they'd come through the door and start working with Gerald, I could hear this big difference in the person and their confidence would just shoot sky high.
So, I was forever saying to Gerald, 'You're really good at that. You should start charging people.' And they would say, 'Gerald, I've got to pay you,' and he'd always say, 'No, no, no, no.' So, once he started accepting their offers to pay, more and more people started coming to him.
I had always wanted to make one of the rooms in our house a studio for Gerald, and have his parent's piano, that he started singing with, in there. That never happened. But one day, we ran into Maureen, an old friend of ours, and she seemed really down. She told us about a small building she owned and how she was having problems with the renters and that she was just going to sell the building. She was in tears and Gerald was sympathizing with her. I said, 'Maureen, would you rent it to us? If we did a little bit of renovation, would you let us have it for a good price?'
| By then, we had inherited the piano but had nowhere to put it. It was all about that piano. Well, it all worked out. I went over to take the dimensions and started working on it and fixing it up. |
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For the first year an a half, it was pretty slow. We just did Saturday classes. We tried putting money into advertising but nobody ever materialized. It was just word-of-mouth that brought new students to us.
I do everything at the studio that no one else wants to do. I listen to the classes and if they're stuck on something, I run to the Shakespeare and look it up. Mostly what I do is support Gerald from the background. I have the business sense and make suggestions and give Gerald guidance.
Gerald's mum had always wished there had been a drama school in the Junction that kids could just walk to. She loved the Junction. |
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She moved there in 1942-43, when the Junction was like Bloor West Village. In the '40s, and before that, the Junction was the place to shop. It had the best shoes, clothing, furniture, everything. But she had to take Gerald all the way downtown for drama lessons.
She would have loved The Storefront Studio and she would have loved the fact that her piano has found a new home. She passed away before this all happened, but she would be in her glory. In fact, she would be there cheering on everybody. She was so positive. So positive." |
