“Don’t we need to go south?” I asked meekly.
He didn’t reply. Simply couldn’t admit he was wrong. Stations whizzed past. After a while, we were up in the Bronx, heading for Canada. Finally, when he could no longer ignore it, he wordlessly stomped out the door and we crossed over to the southbound trains.
Getting on the wrong train is no big deal, but his response was insane—as if by force of will alone he could make the whole of New York State rotate like a lazy Susan to prove he hadn’t made a mistake. And I realized I was doing much the same thing. Penobscot had advised me to end the marriage. Did I? Hell, no! I was neurotically resisting that divorce, stuck on a damn train to the North Pole.
And folks, I really wasn’t interested in trying out an Eskimo.
My L.A. friend Jered Barclay, the star of The Crawling Arnold Review, came to New York to direct Tonight! In Living Color! at The Actors’ Playhouse, Off Broadway. It was an evening of two one-acts by the then-unknown A. R. Gurney, and Jered wanted me and the terrific Tim O’Connor to play Betty and Bill in The Golden Fleece. The second play, The David Show, featured a fabulous cast, including the gorgeous Holland Taylor and F. Murray Abraham, who had started out as a Fruit of the Loom underwear guy and ended up nominated for an Oscar. Not exactly chopped liver. I knew it was a great show, but I had no idea The Golden Fleece would prove to be a turning point in my life.
The play is set in a suburban meeting hall, where locals have been invited to hear Betty and Bill’s famous friends, Jason and Medea, tell the inside story of their turbulent marriage, which culminates (big surprise) with Medea slaying their children. A funny but powerful script, and Tim and I played the boots off it. At the opening-night party, I was seated across the table from our producer’s father-in-law.
A guy named Norman Lear.
“Your performance was amazing,” he said. “I hope I’ll be able to hire you someday.”
“Oh, thank you. What are you working on?” I asked, bedazzled.
“A movie called Cold Turkey. Then I’m going to Hollywood to get into TV production.”
Cold Turkey was hilarious, and two years later, in 1971, Lear’s All in the Family made its shatteringly successful debut and changed sitcoms forever with its edgy writing, daring subject matter, and fall-down-funny characters.
And bless his heart, Mr. Lear did not forget me.
The Golden Fleece got great reviews, but the second play didn’t fare so well, and we closed after a few weeks. I was called to audition for Who’s Happy Now?, a new play by Oliver Hailey. They wanted me for the role of the wife, Mary, but when I read the play, I knew I was made to play the marvelous mistress, Faye Precious. Through my agent, I wangled an audition for both roles. As Mary, I wore a proper little dress and modest hairdo. Then I dashed to the ladies’ room, got into an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, dangly earrings, and blond floozy wig, and came out to read for Faye. Perplexed, Oliver Hailey and the director, Stanley Prager, now wanted me for both roles. After a few anxious days…cue The Phone Call.
“They got Teresa Wright for Mary,” said my agent. “They want you for Faye Precious.”
Bells and whistles! Blow them horns! Bang them drums!
The play is set in the godforsaken town of Sunray, Texas, where a boisterous, irascible butcher, Horse, is carrying on an affair with Faye, a dumb but good-hearted waitress. Mary puts up with this because, besides being in love with him, she is raising their son. It’s poignant and hilarious, with raucous action and cornball country songs. The son was beautifully played by Ken Kercheval (who later gained fame on the soapy blockbuster Dallas). Our Horse was Robert Darnell, and the local bartender, Pop, was Stewart Germain. All three were wonderful. Stanley Prager gave insightful, meticulous notes after every rehearsal and performance. For my money, that Stanley Prager knew his onions. What a director!
We opened on November 17 at the Village South Theatre. The audience adored the play, on their feet for the curtain calls. Reviews? Well…“mixed.” Many papers gave us high praise, but the God-Almighty New York Times review was lukewarm—the kiss of death for an Off Broadway play with limited publicity funds. We had a running budget for only four weeks. Oliver funded a fifth week out of his own pocket, though he knew it was futile, and we closed a few days before Christmas. Damned show business. I love the “show,” but the “business”—feh!
But several good things did result from the play. I became fast friends with both Oliver Hailey and screen star Teresa Wright. And I was one of six actors featured in “Faces Made for the Stage,” a large page in—cue the drumroll, please—the Sunday New York Times! The critic had been especially impressed with me in Who’s Happy Now?
How d’ya like that?
The Italian and I decided to try the marriage again.
I know what you’re thinking. Just jump in quicksand next time, Rue. It’s faster!
Yes, he was a horse’s ass, but he could also be—what?—sexy? Masculine? Or was it that old “gotta have a man” panic? Oh, hell. Why am I even trying to rationalize it? Trying to put some kind of logic to it now just leaves me feeling angry at that damn dumb dame with her head up her wazoo, sitting there in 1969, watching the first moon landing and thinking, “See what miraculous things mankind can do? Maybe he’ll change.”
Change? He was more likely to fly to the moon. Sans spaceship.
Nevertheless, Mr. Funsies and I—with Mark in tow—moved to a two-story frame house in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Feeling the urge to nest, I made slipcovers and matching curtains, painted the dining room bright red, found a dozen prints of old masters for a dollar each, and hung them all over the house. We acquired a 1967 VW Beetle for $1,200. I put $600 down, and we agreed to take turns paying it off each month. His Majesty coveted a decrepit old silver Porsche at the same used-car lot and paid $300 for it.
“What names shall I put on the titles?” asked the salesman.
“Both cars in my name,” answered His Lordship.
I was stunned but remained tightly silent. The Porsche ran one week, died forever, and sat parked beside the garage for the next three years. The VW ran like the 1967 model it was.
“That was VW’s best year,” everyone told me.
We went to an animal shelter and adopted a little half-grown tanand-white puppy who barked, “Take me! Take me!” Mark named her Sandy and spent many happy hours pedaling his new bike all over our quiet neighborhood with Sandy running merrily along. Mother had a trampoline in her backyard in Ardmore, but I couldn’t swing that expense quite yet, so my innovative son and his buddies jumped from the garage roof onto mattresses piled on top of the defunct Porsche, turning somersaults as they landed. Mark enjoyed sixth grade in his new school and made a good friend, Danny Driscoll, who came over often to play.
The Italian drove into New York most every day—in his VW, of course. There was no discord while he was away. We were happy. But when he was home, Mark and I had a lot of rules to follow. We weren’t allowed to go barefoot or touch his turntable or enter his sacrosanct den and so on and so forth. We couldn’t relax and live normally. We began to feel battered and dejected. And eventually, the battering became physical.
In February of 1970, The Italian and I were cast as husband and wife in an Off Broadway production of Dark of the Moon, a play about North Carolina forest witches and their effect on ignorant, superstitious villagers. I played the mother of Barbara Allen, a young virgin who falls in love with Witch Boy one moonlit night. At a village prayer meeting scene in Act Two, everyone becomes religiously obsessed, the mother working herself into a zealous fit. A very meaty role. The play ran eighty-six performances, partly because the beautiful Barbara Allen, gaspingly handsome Witch Boy, and equally gorgeous White and Dark Witches played the forest scenes stark-staring naked, climbing up and down tree trunks in not one blessed stitch.
At first, Barbara was movingly played by Margaret Howell, a graceful, sensitive actress with the body of a sylph. An unfortunately flat-chested sylph. The producers, in t
heir infinite wisdom, fired her after four weeks, breaking her heart (and mine!), and hired the Playmate of the Year, who’d never been onstage in her life—not nowhere, not nohow—but was built like…well, what do you think the Playmate of the Year was built like? She twarn’t no sylph. Pa-lump, pa-lump! She was stacked. Those were some boobs (or “Hermans,” as my friend Lette used to call them), but the girl couldn’t act her way out of a damp Kleenex.
Margaret had instinctively given a hundred percent to every scene. Miss Playmate had the theatrical timing of a jellyfish. Astonishingly nerveless. Not one flicker of stage presence. There were rumors she’d been Sinatra’s sweetie. Currently, she was hot and heavy with a Hollywood producer on the rise (no pun intended) who hung around our theatre every night like a moonstruck calf. The producers mounted (again no pun intended) an advertising blitz to jack up ticket sales. Lip-smacking newspaper ads and skin-rich posters of her boosted the box office for a week, then leveled off, then petered out (go ahead and take the pun this time). What a travesty.
At the same time, I was also doing a very small film with a very small budget, directed by my pal Mervyn Nelson and produced by Marty Richards. This was Marty’s first time producing, but years later, after his marriage to Johnson & Johnson heiress Mary Lee Johnson, he created his own production company, skyrocketing to win dozens of awards for his films and Broadway musicals, including La Cage aux Folles. This little film, Some of My Best Friends Are…, was about the habitués of a Manhattan gay bar. In the cast were fabled singer Mabel Mercer, new comedienne Fanny Flagg, and about thirty other well-known New York actors. Everyone, cast and crew alike, worked on “deferred” salaries, which means you’ll probably never see a penny—and I certainly never have. But it was great fun. I played Lita, a sarcastic, highfalutin “fag hag” who sweeps into the bar in a low-cut evening gown, dragging her long mink. Imagine Tallulah Bankhead at her most flamboyant. Lita makes Blanche Devereaux look like Donna Reed.
My few scenes were all in the bar, requiring only a week’s work. Driving home to Fort Lee to make dinner, then back to the Mercer Theatre for Dark of the Moon, took well over two hours, so I asked The Italian to make dinner for Mark and himself one day when we were running late on set. This simple request resulted in a contentious exchange that had me weeping on the basement stairs the third day. Andy Greenhut, the set and costume designer, found me there and juggled scenes and logistics so I could go home and take care of Mark. I’m happy to say Andy is still my fast friend thirty-five years later, which is more than I can say for The Italian.
In May, I was selected by the Village Voice OBIE Awards to receive a Best Actress Obie for my performance in The Golden Fleece.
Wow! The Obie is a coveted honor for actors, and I was thrilled to the gills.
Right about then, Jenny Egan of the Four Winds Theatre in New York offered me a play to be done in England; rehearsals in New York were to begin immediately, followed by a couple of days in London, then sightseeing in the English countryside on our long drive up to Cheshire for our first appearance. The script for The Raree Show, a musical documentary on the American Revolution, was inspired by letters, diaries, and other papers of soldiers, wives, and mothers on both sides. We four actors would be playing about sixty roles. I told Jenny, “I’ll do it!”
The Obie Awards show took place in a Greenwich Village club during the brief (all too brief!) rehearsal period for The Raree Show. The Italian and I drove into town together, and by the time we left the awards presentation for the celebration party afterward, Mr. Fun and Games was in a state of—I don’t know what. Jealous fury? Frustration? Biliousness? I don’t remember if we went to the party. I don’t remember a party. I just remember weeping in the VW while he ripped into me about his lousy role in Dark of the Moon, the idiots who give out Obies, my impending job in England. But thank God for that England trip. I needed to get away for a while.
Mark flew to Oklahoma for the summer, and I left for London with The Raree Show cast and crew. We landed at Heathrow just in time for a proper English tea right there in the airport. The next day, we lunched at Boodle’s, Winston Churchill’s club, eating Boodle’s Orange Fool, Sir Winston’s favorite, for dessert. We had orchestra seats for The Merchant of Venice, starring Sir Laurence Olivier, as brilliant a Shylock as ever trod the boards. In his final electrifying scene, he demands the pound of flesh he’s won from Antonio, and Antonio bares his chest for carving. But “Tarry a little!” says Portia, acting as his barrister. And she points out that the agreement said nothing of Antonio’s giving Shylock any blood. Shylock leaves the court, defeated and destitute. The stage direction simply says: “Exit Shylock.” It’s up to the actor to fill in the rest. Olivier chose to slink off stage right, broken and silent, like most Shylocks.
Ah, but then!
From offstage there came a great bellowing howl of fury and misery, sending shivers through the audience. An unforgettable moment.
Years down the pike, Sir Laurence and I had the same agent at ICM, and the agent offered to arrange for me to meet my idol, who was actually a fan of The Golden Girls. I had to decline. I knew I would burst into tears. I couldn’t bear the idea. The sheer magnitude! I know he would have been friendly and charming, but how does one make small talk with a God?
“Hiya, Larry, what’s shakin’?”
We set off for Cheshire with all our costumes and sets, sightseeing all the way up. Charming villages with names like Chipping Norton and Stow-on-the-Wold. Breathtaking Stonehenge, where I hugged a monolith. Ancient stone walls, herds of sheep. I was in heaven. We arrived at the manor house with the private hundred-seat theatre, and before our second performance, the Queen of Holland’s Rolls Royce could be seen approaching from a distance, followed by her entourage. We had a day to rehearse, and that night we were feted in the family’s private dining room. The table was resplendent with crystal, silver, and china. But no napkins. I checked both sides of my plate. No linen heirlooms, not even dinky paper. I sneaked looks at my tablemates to see where they wiped their fingers, but nobody seemed to be doing so. I didn’t see any finger bowls, either.
Do they use the end of the tablecloth? I wondered.
All the men were in the House of Lords, ribbons blazing across their chests. I sat between two robust personages with huge walrus mustaches, who chatted cheerily with me all during dinner, but not a word could I decipher.
“S’tellmeh, hev y’sinquin Meri’s Tauyit?”
I said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Ahnau, I reck’n y’ve beeeen t’bizeh, eh?” followed by hearty laughter and great harrumphing mustache-twitchings. “Hev y’gontuh th’Leks?”
“Well…it’s certainly beautiful country you have up here,” I ventured, feeling around for the bottom of the tablecloth.
“Y’sh’d hie y’s’f dontuh th’Leks!” He leaned around me to his companion. “Behtie! Iw’s sehing she mahst ge’dontuh th’Leks! Eh?”
“Oh, yisyisyisyis, yisindeed!” agreed Behtie, who then confided to me, “Wi’mohs tek y’theah!” And there was more hearty laughter and harrumphing.
“That sounds lovely,” I replied, hoping my mouth wasn’t shiny with chicken fat.
After playing at Capesthorne Hall, we played two shows at the American Museum in Bath, then drove back to London.
What a glorious month!
I was thirtysomething. It was June. I was in England, all expenses paid, with enough cash saved up at the end to pay a modest hotel bill for a week in London, where I saw nine plays in six days, sitting so high up I had to crawl up the stairs on my hands and feet, then go down the stairs backward, holding on to the seats, after the performances.
Life is a lot different in the rafters.
I came home feeling like I’d gotten some much-needed perspective, especially when I realized that the entire time, while I missed Mark and longed to share all this with him, I had not given one thought to The Italian.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I have to hear that little
click in my head.”
—BRICK, ACT II, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
I had a Yugoslavian lover once (and once was quite enough) who insisted it was nonsense to put thought into planning a party. His method back in Belgrade was to invite twenty people over and upon their arrival start looking for something to feed them. Whatever was at hand—canned beans, hunks of bread, apples. He said everyone always had a terrific time. Maybe so. I never got drunk enough to try that. It sounded too much like soldiers at the front.
Now I have my parties catered, so I’m fresh as a daisy, sampling hors d’oeuvres, mixing and mingling, a firefly flitting from table to table, secure in the knowledge that my caterer knows what she’s doing and, if she doesn’t, she’d better not ask me. I get overly concerned about my guests’ comfort and pleasure. My attention to detail tends to be exhausting. That’s why I give so few parties. And look so young.
Back when I had no money, it was easier. Pigs in the blanket, chips, and BYOB. My favorite dessert from the seventies—that spectacular trifle from Boodle’s—was a fattening but surefire success at every party I threw in New York—and in Los Angeles, until that day in the eighties when I could no longer look whipped cream in the face without blushing. The chef said it had been Churchill’s favorite, and looking at Churchill’s ample girth, I believe it. The chef graciously gave me the recipe. Of course, I still have it. And now, so have you. Gird your loins for:
BOODLE’S ORANGE FOOL FOR FORTY FOLKS
Pile four large sponge cakes into a great big punch bowl. Saturate them with the juice of sixteen oranges and eight lemons. Whip five pints of thick cream, adding nine grated orange rinds and four grated lemon rinds. Spread this mixture over the drenched sponge cakes. Sift sixteen tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar over all and sprinkle a bit more orange rind for show.
My First Five Husbands Page 15