Broadway, The A-Bomb, and Selma: She Saw It All and Knew Everyone
Broadway, The A-Bomb, and Selma: She Saw It All and Knew Everyone
Tina Dupuy held a variety of positions, including stand-up comedian, political journalist, host of a podcast about cults, and director of communications for a congressman on Capitol Hill.
However, she was simply another New Yorker who had locked herself out of her Upper West Side building one afternoon in 2013. She pressed the buzzer of the elderly neighbour who lived next door; she had just lately moved in.
She was welcomed inside by the neighbour, who offered to let her stay until Ms. Dupuy’s husband got home. They were seated in her neat, small studio, which featured an old daybed and an embroidered pillow with the words “Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful.”
Sheila Sullivan was 75 years old, trim, endearing, and vivacious, but she was also more than that. Buoyant? She had been living here by herself for 30 years, which was nearly as long as Ms. Dupuy had lived overall. By the time the husband with the key arrived, she had made them both laugh with her anecdotes.
They both agreed that was good. See you later. It’s funny to reflect back on how everything started ten years later.
After that first meeting, Ms. Dupuy would occasionally hear Ms. Sullivan singing— show tunes?— through the apartment’s walls. This woman had a welcoming strangeness that was kind of wonderful peculiar.
She had some great stories, too.
She once accepted an invitation from a pilot with a crew cut to watch an atomic bomb being detonated in the desert while she was performing as a singer and dancer at the Tropicana in Las Vegas in the 1950s. She will always remember that smoke and that explosion.
Or the time she shared a stage with Sammy Davis Jr. in the Broadway production of “Golden Boy.” She was an understudy who was finally given the call one afternoon when the lead actress became ill and she had to step in. It was a terrifying moment for her. Sammy was a wonderful, humorous person.
She had been married to actor Robert Culp,
who was fresh off the hit 1960s television series “I Spy,” which at the time gained notoriety for casting a Black actor as Bill Cosby, as his co-star.
Was any of this even true, thought Ms. Dupuy, a journalist at heart, as she listened. Before the next major revelation, which is the daybed you’re sitting on, there was barely time for inquiries. You won’t believe it, but Charlie Chaplin once had it.
Next door, Ms. Dupuy’s own life was unfolding with all of its surreal twists. When a few women accused Minnesota senator and liberal former comic Al Franken of molesting them in 2017, many people ignored their claims. Ms. Dupuy, though, claimed to have had a similar encounter with him in 2009, at a political gathering prior to President Obama‘s inauguration, and she felt forced to back up the allegations.
Senator Franken resigned the day after her essay,
“I Believe Franken’s Accusers Because He Groped Me, Too,” appeared in The Atlantic. Looking back, this article may have been the turning point.
Ms. Dupuy was accustomed to being in the spotlight when she worked as a travelling comic in the early 2000s, but only in towns like Scobey, Mont., and Price, Utah. She now felt like the face of a large movement.
For brief bursts of Ms. Sullivan’s vigour, she visited her. Ms. Sullivan understood Ms. Dupuy’s situation and felt for her. Frank Sinatra had approached her one evening at the Tropicana and remarked, “You’re a good-looking broad.” Because she had been told her hips were too wide, Ms. Sullivan, who had been refused her dream job as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines, assumed Mr. Sinatra was making fun of her. She spun and walked away. She shut a door in his face when his buddy followed her to apologise since she didn’t know the man was Joe DiMaggio: “I don’t follow baseball,” she said Ms. Dupuy.
The neighbours were actually growing close. Then, Covid showed up in 2020. Everyone moved out of their apartment block. Even Ms. Dupuy’s husband was absent; he was under quarantine in California with his family. There were only Ms. Dupuy and Ms. Sullivan left.
The city was eerily silent. She had ceased singing, and Ms. Dupuy realised that her neighbour was doing the same. Ms. Sullivan would cheer up when the younger woman came to visit with flowers, brunch, fun junk food, or a beer. They met outside in the small garden and spoke for hours.
Ms. Sullivan once displayed a 1965 photo to Ms. Dupuy.
She was following a group of men that included Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis Jr., two imposingly tall men with stony features. Ms. Sullivan cited the Selma march and the civil rights movement as the causes. Celebrities had travelled to Alabama in order to surround the marchers in a human shield so that Harry Belafonte wouldn’t be shot.
