“Rue, you’re one of the two or three best actresses in the business,” he told me, and I said, “Thank you!” but I was wondering, Who are the two he considers better? Maybe Kim Stanley and Geraldine Page, to whom I admittedly took a backseat—but not too far back.
“I’m directing an Off Broadway musical in October, and I want you to audition for the producers and conductor in September,” he said. “New York’s the place for you, Rue. You’re New York material.”
Well, hell, Mervyn, tell me something I don’t know.
“Do you think you could be happy in New York?” I asked Mark the next day. “With no yard to play in?”
“Sure, Mother, I’ll play inside,” he said with his heart-melting, matter-of-fact sweetness.
It didn’t take any more hippos to fall on me. The last week of July 1964, I gave Upjohn a week’s notice and gave Hollywood the finger.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You will see things and say ‘why’: but I dream things that never were and say ‘why not’?”
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
I left everything in Los Angeles. My grandmother McClanahan’s quilts, my diaries, most of my clothes, my old car, and a whole lotta baggage, if you know what I mean. I dropped Mark off with my parents at the Dallas airport—almost more than I could bear—and met Melinda’s new baby, Mimi, who was even then a special sort of critter. My family, Lord bless them, didn’t raise an eyebrow over my move to New York. I guess they had gotten used to my behavior.
So New York City, hyar ah come!
With two hundred dollars saved from my job at Upjohn, plus two hundred my parents gave me, I had enough to make ends meet for six weeks. (That was 1964, remember. These days, you can hardly buy lunch for that kind of dough.) Mervyn offered me an army cot in the tiny office of his Manhattan apartment for a few weeks. No closet, so I lived out of my suitcases, sharing the apartment with Mervyn’s various male friends, who came and went at all hours, and a French Canadian traveling salesman, who occasionally bunked on the sofa. He asked me out, but Mas, non! I didn’t lay a hand on him. But sacré bleu! Was I lonesome. With a Capital Lone.
I knew only one or two people in New York, so I called the delightful Marian Hailey, who’d starred in that TV show I did while I was at Upjohn. She was busy, busy, busy with offers and agents and opportunities to which I had no access, subletting a gorgeous Central Park West apartment that belonged to the brilliant, aging movie actress Gladys Cooper.
“I’ll let you know if one of the other actresses staying here leaves,” Marian promised.
Meanwhile, I was stuck on the Army cot without even a Canadian to keep me warm.
And where was Mervyn? At the Paper Mill Playhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, doing the delicious Bus Stop, starring Johnny Ray, pop music’s heartthrob du jour, as Bo. Johnny Ray’s huge hit “Cry” was all the rage, so it was a big deal when Mervyn arranged for me to audition for the role of Cherie—a role I’d played, loved, and was dead right for—in Johnny Ray’s enormous living room. (Don’t conjure any visions of the so-called casting couch. Mervyn was present.) It was a fabulous apartment, with an electric movie screen that rolled down across the windows in the huge living room. I was wide-eyed and intimidated—until I read a few scenes with Mr. Ray. I knew Cherie inside and out and played her to the hilt, but dear Johnny didn’t cast me in the role. Mervyn later said it was probably because Johnny thought I would steal the show. (That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.)
When Bus Stop opened, I went to see it. Johnny Ray was bone skinny, wore a hearing aid, and had a speech impediment. To compensate, he spoke very loud and threw himself about the stage like a windmill. The actress playing Cherie was lost in the melee. Heck, the furniture was in peril! So while it had seemed at first like a grand opportunity, that job would’ve been a dead end. Not to mention hazardous. One of those major disappointments that faded into quiet little islands of “Oh, well…”
After all, nobody’s perfect for every role.
Except me, dammit! I want to play every role!
All right, not every role. Not the woman in Misery. Or Medea. And not Lady Macbeth. I don’t want to play miserable, rotten—well, now, wait. I loved doing the rotten Miss Hannigan in Annie and miserable Madame Morrible in Wicked. So I guess I do want almost every role.
But I like the funny oddball characters best. Sort of like in life.
A room became available in the apartment with Marian Hailey. A bed! A closet! For a week. Then Marian got a job out of town and gave up the sublet, so I and Marian’s roommate, Carol—a tall, buxom beauty of about twenty—had to look for our own digs. We sublet a place from another actress, Joan Darling, sharing the pull-out sofa in a tiny ground-floor studio. Enchanting! I was living in Greenwich Village! I walked down the sidewalk feeling like I owned the world. Carol and I peeked into Joan’s closet. She’d left behind chic winter outfits and boots she wouldn’t need in L.A. Oh, the temptation! She was a tiny thing, apparently, but one really chic black-and-white-checked ensemble fit me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I wore it out on the town a couple of times—with her black boots. Snazzy!
One brisk evening, Carol said, “I have a date tonight with a gorgeous stage manager, and we need a date for his friend. Would you be—”
“Yes!” No arm-twisting needed.
These two fellows showed up at our apartment, and wowzie-wowwow. The stage manager, Oz, brought his funny, handsome actor pal Robert Guillaume, who’d recently done the musical Kwamina on Broadway (and later starred in his own TV series, Benson). Bob and I hit it off at once. Both men were black and slightly uncomfortable being out in public with us, even then, but we all went merrily off and had a wonderful evening. I was delighted when Bob called me a few days later. Carol and I had been displaced yet again, and Carol was moving in with Oz.
“I’m going to be out of town for a month,” Bob said. “You can stay at my place. Come on over and I’ll show it to you.”
Perfect! His apartment was attractively put together. So was he. We listened to the album of Kwamina, and I developed an instant crush on his beautiful tenor. Playing “Goldilocks,” we tried out the kitchen chairs. They were too small. We tried out the living room chairs. They were too large. Then we tried out the bed, and it was juuust right. I’d give that bed an A.
Bob departed and I moved in, playing Kwamina every night, kvelling over his voice.
Oh, yeah. I had a crush.
My first job in New York was Mervyn’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I had to audition four times, singing, then dancing, then reading, for the writers, for the conductor, for the choreographer, for the producers, for the mice in the corner—and, of course, for Mervyn. At my first audition, I waited in the wings, listening to a gloriously soaring soprano on stage. Oh, Lord! I thought. I have to follow THAT? As the owner of the golden lungs came off, I told her, “Wow! You sounded absolutely marvelous!”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Loretta Rehnolds. Everybody calls me Lette.”
“I’m Rue McClanahan. Nice to meet you.”
“God, your hair is so thick,” she said. “I’ve got this mosquito fuzz, so I’m acutely aware of anyone with good hair.”
“Oh, yeah, my coarse Indian mane.” I shrugged self-consciously. “Like a horse’s tail.”
I hadn’t yet learned to take a compliment gracefully.
For my singing audition, I’d picked “Shy” from Once Upon a Mattress, the show that brought Carol Burnett fame, a song effective for loud if untrained voices. Lette and I made it through all four auditions, were cast in the show, and spent the next fifteen weeks rehearsing, then performing, sharing a dressing room with two other supporting actresses. Lette had been hired for the heavy singing chores and to play the ditzy role of Ruthie. I was playing the equally ditzy Hazel and understudying the starring role of Willa Da Wisp. I got the brainstorm to play Hazel with a lisp, announcing at my entrance, “Hi, my name ith Haythel.”
PHOTO INSERT 1
&
nbsp; Melinda and me in our blue corduroy frocks made by Grandma Fannie, with Mother. Melinda hates this picture of herself. I think she’s precious.
My dad, Bill, when he met Mother. Woof!
Thomas Lloyd Bish, twenty-three years old.
Tom and me at our wedding reception, February 2, 1958. Erie, Pennsylvania.
Norman L. Hartweg, twenty-two years old.
Mark with Norman and me in our backyard in Aurora, Colorado, 1959.
Lette and I performing “Two Little Pussycats” as Hathel and Ruthie, the night we brought the house down. New York City, October 1964.
My first official publicity shot, New York City, 1964.
Final dress rehearsal of MacBird! with Stacy Keach, 1966.
Dylan, 1972–a minor altercation with Will Hare.
“The Bunkers Meet the Swingers,” 1972, All in the Family. Carroll O’Connor, Jean Stapleton, and Vincent Gardenia.
Brad Davis as my son in Crystal and Fox, McAlpine Rooftop Theatre, New York City, 1973. (And Walt Gorney, playing Pedro.)
The Greek Wedding. The Greek, me, and Norman Lear in a circle dance on the patio. November 6, 1979.
It got a huge laugh, and Mervyn said, “Keep it.”
He called me on the Saturday before the Tuesday opening and said they’d decided to rewrite one of the stars’ duets and give it to Hazel and Ruthie! It was one of those “The star’s twisted her ankle and you two kids have to go on!” kind of opportunities.
“Do you think you can do it in three days?” asked Mervyn.
Did I ever!
“But you have to let me do the choreography,” I told him, knowing the somewhat abrupt choreographer would have given us moves that might be troublesome for Lette, who was not a trained dancer. Neither of us liked that butch choreographer. For one thing, she called me “Blondie” in rehearsals, which always gave Lette a laugh but annoyed me no end.
“Hey, Blondie—change places with this one down here.” Hmmph! Blondie.
Lette and I went into high gear, learning the new song with the conductor, Joe Stecko. It was a tricky piece called “Two Little Pussycats.” I put together some simple but snappy choreography, we rehearsed till we were blue in the face, and we steeled ourselves to pull it off on opening night. We were nervous but excited—two firecrackers ready to pop. And pop we did! We brought the house down, and all the reviews raved about us the next day.
“…just about steal the second act…”
“…the most successful tune in the show…”
“…stopped the show with ‘Two Little Pussycats.’ They do the number so smartly I wonder why Miss McClanahan had to overplay for the major portion of the show.”
Hey! Overplay? Moi? Well, all right. That last one was less than a rave for me. (But see how honest I am? I didn’t have to tell you that.)
This wonderful little musical ran only eleven weeks Off Broadway, but it’s still done in community theatres and colleges all over the country, where I’m told the actress doing Hazel always plays her with a lisp. We made a cast album that can be found in “rare record” stores, and the music is marvelous. Lette’s soprano can be heard soaring in the obbligati, clear as a buttonhook in the well water, as my father would say. If only the show had run long enough for us to make a real mark for ourselves! But big audiences didn’t come soon enough. We were all unknowns. Brilliantly talented unknowns, but unknowns nonetheless. Walter Mitty’s song “Confidence” was played before every football game for a few dozen years, however, so at least the composers made some moola, and I came away from the show with a new best pal—and an agent! I waited in line outside the post office in the pouring rain one afternoon and sent letters to seventy-some New York agents inviting them to come see me in Walter Mitty. Two actually came. One offered to represent me. And one is all it takes. I had taken a crucial step forward.
Lette and I became fast friends, and she was in on my adventure with The Italian from the get-go. In 1952, at the tender age of seventeen, he’d been cast in The Golden Apple—the youngest chorus dancer on Broadway. Now he was in the chorus of Walter Mitty, and Lette and I stood downstage of him during Act Two, our backs to the audience, while he did his specialty dance number.
“Look at those pecs!” Lette would mutter under her breath. “Look at that basket!”
During the first week of rehearsals—when the cast and crew romances almost always flourish—Lette started dating Joe, the conductor, and I started feeling some powerful chemistry with The Italian. As he and I were walking back from lunch one day, he said, “I’m waiting to hear if I got cast in Galileo at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. I’ll take it if they offer it to me. If not, I’ll stay in Walter Mitty.”
“Well. Good luck,” I said, but I was thinking, Oh, dear God, please let him get Galileo. If he stays in our show, I’m sunk.
The Italian didn’t get Galileo. He got me.
The first night we spent together, I discovered something lovely: He smelled wonderful. A delicious, natural fragrance. No deodorant! I thought, Nobody who smells this sweet can be all bad. And I was right. He wasn’t all bad. Early in our relationship, I had my first orgasm ever, and they continued from then on. He was damned good in bed: slow, patient, and sweet. Not at all the way he turned out to be while vertical. For FQ, he gets an A. (Husband Quotient would later turn out to be a Z—for zero.) In November, he asked me to move in with him in Little Italy, and like a little idiot, I did—with the understanding that options were still open.
John Hayes wrote that he’d been hired by a Long Island company to make industrial films and was flying his Cessna to New York. It was audacious of him, a rather inexperienced pilot flying cross-country, and I worried until he arrived safe and sound after a week aloft.
“I haven’t stopped caring about you, Rue,” he told me. “Let’s try it again.”
I said, “I’m seeing someone, John. I can go out with you during the week, but I have to reserve weekends for him.”
It had always been my policy never to be sexually involved with two men at the same time, but that policy went out the window. As I compared them, each had qualities I did and didn’t cotton to. I was leaning toward gentle Irish John, but he hated New York, which tipped the scales toward the volatile Italian, who once angrily threw an ashtray at me across the kitchen, which tipped the balance back toward John, who took me for a walk one afternoon and said he’d now decided he could happily live in New York, since I was there. The most important factor was my firm resolve to bring Mark back to live with me. John hadn’t been a friend to Mark or a good father to his own daughters. What would The Italian be like with Mark? Would John drift away from me again? He’d drifted before, and The Italian was the type to stick like wet cement. I needed time to explore both possibilities, but I was given an ultimatum by The Italian as I was leaving to meet John for dinner.
“You’re behaving like a harlot! You should be ashamed!” he bellowed, blocking the door. “You’re not leaving this apartment until you promise to break it off. Tonight.”
Backed against the wall, I felt guilty and scared, like a scarlet woman. I tried to get past him. “Promise! Promise!”
“I…I promise,” I said meekly. “I’ll tell John I can’t see him anymore.”
Remember, on The Golden Girls, how Sophia always said, “Picture this!” and then launched off into some bizarre tale? Well…picture this:
A restaurant. A cold rainy night. John and I at a table for two. John tells me he didn’t have a job offer at all. He flew to New York to propose marriage to me. The man had flown for a week cross-country to propose to me.
Well. Would someone please help me off the floor? You’ll need a shovel.
I had waited four years to hear those words! He wanted to marry me! And he wanted to help raise Mark! I stared at him in horror. One hour before, I had sworn to break it off with him. I had promised. And I had been brought up never to break a promise. I remember repeating, “I promised, John. I promised.”
“You’re
making a terrible mistake, Rue. You’re settling for second best.”
I stammered, “But my word is my bond!” Or some such horseshit.
I actually felt honor-bound to uphold my promise; it was not just an excuse for all those other doubts. I was miserable because I knew John was right. The Italian was not the best man for me. And yet I kept thinking how standoffish John was with his two little girls and the whole rein-loosening thing and that double-cross last time…good God. What should I have said? Come on, now. You knew there would be a quiz on this. What are those all important words?
Let me think it over!
But did I say that? Are you kidding?
“I can’t see you anymore,” I told John miserably. Boggles the mind, no?
I’ll never forget that vision of him. All six-four of him, standing under a yellow streetlight in the rain, tears streaming down his face—big six-foot-four tears—as I left him for a relationship I later wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Oh, dumb, dumb, dumb. Dammit!
Shortly thereafter, I got a letter from Melinda saying she and Sheridan were going to start adoption proceedings unless I got Mark away from Mother, who was spoiling him rotten. She thought he’d be better off with her family. And I actually thought they could do it! Melinda told me later that she’d written that fateful letter merely to startle me into bringing Mark to New York. There in her little Texas house with her husband and children, she had no idea how hard I was struggling to get a foothold, how achingly I missed Mark, and how unprepared I was to support him. But at the time, that terrible letter threw me into a three-alarm swivet. I thought I had to bring Mark to New York. Now. Come hell or high water.
My First Five Husbands Page 12