Agnes de Mille says she’s not one of “Those Lib Girls.”
But she champions career wives who have to put up with their husbands edicts and egos. Too much wifely competition and “he yells castration.”
WASHINGTON, June 8, 1973: “I’m scared to death to start with,” said Agnes de Mille as she took the microphone for the opening program last night of “Les Femmes et Les Arts,” this year’s summer Fine Arts Festival at the University of Maryland in College Park.
But as one might have expected, after years as a dancer, choreographer, author and lecturer, Miss de Mille’s uncharacteristic attack of stage fright passed in an instant.
Poised and nonchalant, she launched into a spirited, hour long talk, filled with ad libs and asides and perfectly timed pauses to allow for audience laughter.
Her subject was women and the problems they’ve had trying to be creative outside the family. “I can’t speak about women without speaking about men — they’ve been having their way in everything, those cocks-of-the-walk, dirty chauvinist pigs.”
As she outlined, chapter and verse, the oppression under which women have lived the last 2,000 years, you would have thought Miss de Mille was an ardent feminist. But no. Several times she made disparaging remarks about “those lib girls,” a few of who recently turned on her like “she-dogs” because she contended there had never been a single first-rate woman composer.
The women in the movement haven’t “convinced her.” “They’re speaking out of anger and rage. They’re extremely strident.”
And she suspects they don’t like men much.
Miss de Mille, on the contrary, is “queer for men,” she said, “for what they do well there is no substitute” (pause for laughter).
And in the next breath she says, “Men have been out of hand for thousands of years. They only want one thing — everything.”
The classic housewife pattern, she said, is still pretty much the same as it has always been. “The wife gives her whole life to her husband. She in turn is fed and housed.”
Few men allow their wives creativity outside marriage, she said. “You can work, but you can’t earn more than I do.” If the wife does have a career and especially if she earns more than the husband, “he yells castration — he is humbled, he is humiliated.”
Miss de Mille said she had had two chances to marry this kind of man. Both said to her (“not together — one first, and the other later on”) that she’d have to quit her job. “If you want me, you don’t work,” said one ardent suitor. “Well,” said Miss de Mille, “I didn’t want him.”
The man she did marry is second in command to theatrical producer Sol Hurok, and he doesn’t like hanging about backstage waiting for her. “If anyone calls him Mr. de Mille, he is very upset.”
They were married 30 years ago, a couple of weeks after “Oklahoma!” burst forth on Broadway, its choreography by Miss de Mille marking a new phase for Broadway musicals.
Since then, she’s choreographed other Broadway musical classics, “Carousel,” “Brigadoon” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” among them. She has written two autobiographical works, “Dance to the Piper” and just published “Speak to me, Dance to Me.”
She is still an active choreographer, producer and director.
Her latest project is Heritage Dance Theater, an original program depicting America’s past through dance.
It has been performed by students at the North Carolina School of the Arts and will tour this fall under the auspices of Sol Hurok.
Miss de Mille claims choreography, unlike most other artistic fields, was open to women because men weren’t very interested in it. There are only two other persons she considers top choreographers of musicals: Bob Fosse and Gower Champion.
Actually, she doesn’t think too much of today’s musicals — too much rock to suit her eardrums. “Deafening,” is her one-word summation.
She walked out on “Hair” because she was “deafened and bored.” Not because she was shocked or amused by the nakedness. “I have seen naked men before but under much more favorable circumstances,” she said.
Any woman who wants a career has to deal with her husband’s ego, Miss de Mille said. She related the tale of the man who married a violinist. “He told her she couldn’t play unless she was in touching distance of the stove. I told my husband and he said, ‘He’s quite right. She’s not a good violinist.’
“You’ll be glad to know she got rid of the (pause) husband. She also gave up the violin.” The woman turned out to be the distinguished biographer, Catherine Drinker Bowen, said Miss de Mille, savoring her punch-line.
[This article originally appeared in The Washington Star-News, June 8, 1973 as Agnes de Mille on Lib, #40 in a collection of more than 100 newspaper articles by Judy Flander from the second wave of the Women’s Movement reflecting the fervor and ingenuity of the women who rode the wave.]
