Marlene Oolo takes a break from her busy volunteer schedule outside the Old Church Theatre in Courtenay.
Photo by Boomer Jerritt
Vancouver! Stop smiling!” demanded Celia Franca, legendary founder of Canada’s National Ballet. She was pointing at 17-year-old Marlene York, who seemed unable to express the serious demeanor expected of a ballerina.
As one of only two British Columbians chosen to join the fledging Toronto-based company in 1954, Marlene tried her best to please the strict ballet mistress. But stop smiling? You might as well tell the sun to stop shining.
That smile—warm, welcoming and contagious—is familiar to many in the Comox Valley who have come to know Marlene York Oolo over the past 11 years. They see her in Co-Val productions or painting children’s faces at the Filberg Festival, serving coffee in the Evergreen Seniors’ kitchen and selecting groceries for Thrifty’s Sendial program, on the board of the Community Arts Council and either in the audience or behind the scenes at almost every theatrical production around town. No wonder she was named Volunteer of the Year in 2002.
Yet few know the scope of this woman’s artistic experience. Oolo’s (pronounced oh-low) overwhelming talent and ambition became evident early in her South Burnaby childhood when, given money by her mother to pay for piano lessons, she spent it instead on dancing lessons. Ethnic dance came first, befitting her Polish-Ukrainian heritage, then Scottish dance. Soon, having won all the awards in BC, Oolo was off to compete in Aberdeen, Scotland. Back in Vancouver and concentrating on ballet under Kay Armstrong’s expert tutelage, she qualified for a career with the National Ballet.
But chance intervened. In Toronto, Oolo found room and board with the family of CBC orchestra conductor Howard Cable, whose teenage daughter also danced. One night the two girls sneaked out to a jazz dance class—and Marlene discovered a whole new world.
“It was wonderful,” she remembers. “I could turn cartwheels, kick high, laugh and smile as much as I wanted. I decided I was going to go on stage!” Goodbye to the corps de ballet and hello to the chorus line.
Now a freelance artist, Oolo began a busy round of auditions and quickly won a part in the musical Finian’s Rainbow. However, like any freelancer she suffered through lean times, so when “resting” Oolo scrubbed her landlady’s floor, cleaned houses, worked as a manicurist or cashier at Loblaw’s and, with valuable sewing skills learned from her mother, altered and mended costumes. Her parents wanted her to come home but Oolo persevered. “I may have been starving but I was dancing,” she says with a laugh.
If really hard up, she could always drop into the club Le Coq d’Or to share a sandwich with Gordon Lightfoot, or count on Ronnie Hawkins to buy her hot chocolate and cinnamon toast.
But the expanding entertainment scene offered new opportunities. Besides Hockey Night in Canada, the recently formed CBC television network found that variety shows with exuberant comedy, singing and dancing topped the charts. Oolo was soon working with Alan Lund and Norman Campbell on favorites like Juliette, Country Hoedown, CBC Folio, Cross-Canada Hit Parade, the Tommy Hunter Show, and the Jack Duffy Show. So many Canadian performers got their start then: Don Harron, Robert Goulet, Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, Moe Kaufman, and later Anne Murray and Ian and Sylvia.
Attractive reliable dancers were much in demand. “There were four of us girls, all about the same height, all blonde, and of course everyone’s slim and beautiful at that age!”
Together they formed a line that worked as many as four shows—first they did the Wayne and Shuster comedy hour, then dashed to another studio for “our pet” Juliette, crossed the street to a third studio for Wally Coster and Hit Parade, then raced on to Country Hoedown with Gordie Tapp and the Hames Sisters.
“I look back now and wonder how I managed it. Where did I get that energy?” she says.
Live TV was frantic and often unintentionally hilarious. When Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass appeared, their set was designed to resemble a Mexican village, complete with rustic shanty and a real donkey. All looked fine until someone decided that real chickens would make things more authentic.
“It was a disaster!” remembers Oolo. “Those silly chickens did what chickens naturally do… so there we were, dodging hens and trying to dance while attempting to avoid the guano on the floor and staying on camera. We were terrified we’d slip. What a mess!”
Her ballet training proved valuable when Oolo danced for eight years with the Canadian Opera Company, pleased to be working again with choreographers Alan Lund and Joyce Gray, and thrilled to be close to famous dance pioneer Hanya Holm. She performed the pas de deux in Rigoletto, and danced in The Magic Flute, Aida, Carmen and The Barber of Seville.
Performances at the small Royal Alex Theatre gave way to the larger O’Keefe Centre in 1960 when it opened with an extravaganza headlined by Marlene Dietrich. As one of the troupe backing the aging star, Oolo relates how Dietrich arrived with her own security guards, decreed that only she would be allowed to smoke, and only she could be blonde. So Oolo dyed her hair and watched, fascinated, as Dietrich prepared to go on stage by firmly wrapping her arms, legs, and neck with flesh-colored bands, braiding her hair so tight that it created an instant face life, then covering her head with a gorgeous blonde wig. “With top hat and cane, black tuxedo and leotards, she truly was magnificent.”
As the winter season ended, Oolo moved on to summer stock, traveling with the Melody Fair Company presenting musical comedy in Canada and the US. “That was hard work,” she says. “We’d rehearse Annie Get Your Gun during the day, and then put on The King and I at night. When the King ended, we’d switch to Annie at night and start rehearsing Brigadoon… and so on and so on.”
In late summer, she joined the Canadettes, the Canadian National Exhibition’s answer to the Rockettes. Even though the showgirls had to deal with rehearsals in the horse barns and the exhausting August humidity, their arrival on stage in elaborate costumes, hair, and makeup made them appear the ultimate in glamour.
Big names featured in CNE Grandstand shows, like Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, George Burns, Harry Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Cash, Victor Borge, and others. While most delivered their own routines other starred in musicals, Oolo remembers a marvelous production of Oklahoma with Gordon MacRae, but her most important memory is of Teresa Stratus playing The Merry Widow, for it was there, waltzing to the Vilja Song, that she met her future husband.
She married Armin Oolo, a stage manager and design coordinator, in the 1960s, and later had a son, Allan. By this time Oolo was working behind the scenes as well as in front, choreographing CBC-TVs Wayne and Shuster specials and the Toronto Police Games, as well as the Miss Canada Pageant. She crossed the country with General Motors Motorama, and modeled furs for Queen Elizabeth during her Canadian tour.
Remembering Armin’s loving support, Oolo says, “It’s wonderful to have someone who understands the business, the hours, and the pressures. We were well suited. It was a good partnership.”
Her longest engagement was with the phenomenally successful CTV variety show, The Pig & Whistle. For 15 years, from beginning to end, lead dancer Oolo joined Tessie O’Shea and the Carlton Show Band in performing hornpipes, jigs, and reels in an oak-beamed British pub. Loyal audiences showed their appreciation of the high spirits and good fun.
“They thought of us as celebrities, but friendly celebrities who came into their living rooms every single week. We got bags of mail and gifts. I remember someone thought I would appreciate having tomato seeds from BC.”
In 2004, she reunited with fellow performers and staff at a Pig & Whistle reunion, which conveniently coincided with CBC-TVs 50th anniversary celebrations in Toronto. “Luckily we all wore name tags, otherwise…” Her voice trails off and she laughs. “But it was wonderful—and sad at the same time. So many had passed on.”
In 1997, with their son grown and working as a chiropractor in California, the Oolo’s chose to retire to the Comox Valley. Tragically, their idyllic dream of boating, tennis, and travel soon ended with Armin’s sudden death. Almost paralyzed by grief and loneliness, Oolo remembers that terrible time. “I had no idea what to do. Should I stay here? Return to Toronto? Move to California?”
She credits three women with rescuing her, helping to lift her out of despair and returning her to the healing powers of the arts: Beryl Regier of Co-Val, Lori Mazey of Rainbow Youth Theatre and Deborah Renz of the Sid Williams Theatre.
“I owe them an enormous debt of gratitude,” she says. “Beryl convinced me I was needed in the Co-Val productions, Lori persuaded me to take on the role of Jennyanydots in Cats, Deb insisted I could contribute by joining the SWT Board of Directors. They encouraged me, told me I could do it and make a good life here. I decided to give it a try.”
Fortunately these women spotted what is essential in Oolo —that she is a vibrant, outgoing, and generous person who needs to be active, who needs to be involved with people and projects to feel fully alive. They saw how she draws her abundant energy from giving—whether her time, her skills, or simply herself. Friends may warn that the years are catching up and advise her to slow down and take it easy, but to no avail. “There are only two ages,” she says. “Alive and dead.” Oolo is very much alive.
Celia Franca may have lost a ballerina all those years ago, but Oolo has not lost her smile. Today it brightens StoryTime at Berwick House, beams on special needs students learning to sew at the Lewis Centre, and cheers the casts of Oliver! and The Producers when she applies her makeup artistry.
“I feel how lucky I am to have all these little pockets of family,” she says.