She was 18, new to New York, a tenderfoot in an industry said to eat its young.
But Beverly Johnson was not short on brass.
She had been quick in the early 1970s to sign with the formidable model agent Eileen Ford — and just as swift, at 19, to inform her, “I want to be on the cover of American Vogue.” When Ms. Ford asked her curtly, “Who do you think you are, Cleopatra?” Ms. Johnson was as curt with a comeback, murmuring, audibly enough, “That’s exactly who I think I am.”Ms. Johnson revisits that moment in “In Vogue,” her one-woman show set to open in Manhattan on Sunday.
The play, largely derived from her 2015 memoir, “Beverly Johnson: The Face That Changed It All,” and written with the playwright Josh Ravetch, is by turns an upbeat and cautionary account of Ms. Johnson’s adventures — and hairy misadventures — in the mannequin trade.
Onstage she tells of defying expectations and defecting to a competing modeling agency, despite the warnings of peers that such a move would amount to professional ruin.
Persons:
Beverly Johnson, Eileen Ford —, “, Ford, ” Ms, Johnson, curt, Ms, ”, “ Beverly Johnson, Josh Ravetch
Organizations:
American Vogue
Locations:
New York, American, Manhattan