When The Nanny Met Dustin Hoffman

My first day as a New York nanny in mid-June 1971 was the beginning of my return to Iowa, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash

I had fallen in love with New York when I was eight years old. My dad and mom got married there at the end of WWII and wanted to share it with us. My dad told me we’d see pickpockets, prostitutes, panhandlers and street preachers. I didn’t know what those words meant, but I was ready for anything different from our small town where we all seemed the same. That first trip I saw all those people my dad promised and more: women in heels with satin hotpants and fishnet stockings in Times Square; a gray-haired woman waving a Bible and preaching damnation near the Algonquin Hotel; Sputnik from the top of the RCA building; the Rockettes with my dad at Rockefeller Center; and The Music Man starring Burt Parks on Broadway with my 12 year-old brother.

The question was not whether I loved New York. I did. I do. It’s my second favorite place after Iowa. The question was, did I want to live there, work there, raise children there? That summer I would find out.

The Weiss family had a maid, Cynthia, who came several days a week to cook and clean. She and her husband worked hard to save money so they could return home to Jamaica and buy a home. She showed me how to get to Central Park with the boys, five-year-old John and three-year-old Graham riding their Hot Wheels motorcycles. The Weiss family lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the 8^th floor of a white brick apartment building on the corner of East 66^th Street and 3^rd Avenue, where Love Story was filmed starring Allie McGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I slept on the couch hide-a-bed in the family room.

MEETING DUSTY HOFFMAN

Before we left for the park, Mrs. Weiss reminded Cynthia to pick up Karina Hoffman on the way. To me she said, “You’ll probably meet Dusty while you’re there.” That did not register with me, but I assumed he was Karina’s dad. The Hoffmans lived in a brownstone in the lower 60’s and on the way, I realized Dusty might very well be Dustin Hoffman whose oversized image looked down at me from many theater marquees in Midtown Manhattan advertising his newest movie, Straw Dogs. Indeed, Dustin Hoffman met us at the door. In his stockinged feet he wasn’t much taller than I –maybe 5’6. He invited us in and introduced us to their black dog, Subway. We were soon on our way with Karina who was four years old. “There’s my daddy! There’s my daddy!” she’d shout when she saw his image peering at her from billboards or the sides of buses.

That was the only time we saw her that summer, because their family left for France the next week for the filming of Papillon which came out a year later. The next time I saw Karina was years later while watching the Academy Awards on TV in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa when her dad won an Oscar for Rain Man in 1988. He was my first movie star, and I have always admired his work. That day set the stage for a memorable summer in New York. I’ve returned to New York almost every year for many reasons, but I chose not to live there.

To get to Central Park from the corner of East 66^th Street and 3^rd Avenue, we had to cross Lexington, Madison, Park and Fifth. On 65th you enter the zoo and get on the path to the carousel and a few small play areas. This trip across three of NYC’s busiest streets became my routine. I knew all the doormen. They recognized me and the boys on their plastic motorcycles. Sometimes we rode the carousel or visited the zoo. Some days we watched people sail model sail boats with remote controls at Conservatory Water. We visited the statue of Alice in Wonderland for public library story times and bought Italian ices from vendors’ ice cream carts. Sometimes we attended performances with live actors or puppet shows. I enjoyed the variety as much as the boys.

Photo by Carl Newton on Unsplash

The Weiss’s gave me a sense of what it was like to be certain kind of family in New York. I had days off to explore job possibilities at publishing houses. I visited museums and window-shopped on Fifth Avenue. When Tom came to visit, they got us tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar, The Fantasticks in the Village, and made reservations at a restaurant with strolling violins. Later they rented a car and took me and the boys sailing. They invited me back the following January to care for the boys in New York while they vacationed on St. Thomas.

NEW YORK HAS STAR POWER, BUT NO STARS

There was lots of star power in New York, but no stars. On the way home from sailing the boys lay on the seat of the car trying to get a glimpse of the stars. They had never seen lightening bugs. They didn’t have family dinners, because Mr. Weiss didn’t get home from his job on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange until 8:00 pm just before bedtime. There was no sweet corn on the 4^th of July or homemade ice cream shared with cousins. When I heard the ambulance sirens at night, I realized I’d never find out who was going to the hospital and why?

I thought about growing up in small town Iowa where kids ride bikes on their own all over town, play sandlot baseball without adult interference, and build treehouses with stray pieces of lumber gathered from neighborhood garages. I thought about lying in the grass watching the clouds, going with my friends to the public pool or running through the sprinkler in our backyards. I thought about picking cherries from our trees for pies or feeding leaves to the rough-tongued Holstien cows seeking the shade of the Hackberry tree in the State Hospital pasture behind our house.

Before I left New York I splurged on a green velvet jacket I’d been coveting at Bloomingdales. It cost $55, a whole week’s salary. I wore it for my college senior photo and for years to come. During my senior year I continued to get the credentials I needed to work in a publishing house, but I also got a secondary teaching certificate.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, WE CHOSE IOWA

Tom and I chose Iowa when we were 25 years old. Fifty years ago, this week we arrived in Mt. Pleasant for our next chapter in our yellow VW Bug. We’ve never regretted it. (Well, there have been days…) We raised our kids in a small town and took them to New York on vacation to the Statue of Liberty, the Hard Rock Café, the UN and the Mets. I showed them where my parents got married and where I worked as a nanny. We watched Michael J. Fox film a movie in Times Square. The girls in their fishnet stocking were gone. The panhandlers were still there.

This year, 50 years after coming to Iowa, we will celebrate significant birthdays. For fun, we are watching one movie for each year of our lives. We take turns choosing. It’s only been a week, but so far, Tom is leaning toward Steve McQueen and James Bond (The Great Escape, Bullitt, Octopussy) and I am partial to Dustin Hoffman (Papillon and Rain Main), Meg Ryan, Robert Redford and movies shot in New York. (When Harry Met Sally and Three Days of the Condor).

FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

Some we’ve seen before, some for the first time. Not only are we having fun, but each movie gives us a chance to reflect on what was happening in our lives that year and what was happening around the country and the world. What made us laugh and what were we afraid of? What were the trends in clothing, music, food, books and film? What did these movies say about what it means to be Americans and who we consider our heroes?

Because we’re the same age, we both remember looking forward to the yearly airing of The Wizard of Oz on TV, which was a new technology in the 50’s. And now we stream Wicked with our grandchildren. Yesterday I found a foam-rubber yellow brick displayed on a shelf in my office. Tucked into one of the holes was a note from my friend Steve Person. He had just visited Judy Garland’s birthplace in Michigan and, for a dollar, had purchased this brick. He included a quote from the movie.

Glinda the Good Witch said to Dorothy just before she clicked her ruby slippers, “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her before?” asks the Scarecrow.

“Because she wouldn’t have believed me,” said Glinda. “She had to learn it for herself. “