My First Five Husbands

by Rue McClanahan

  He replied, “Oh, no way. I’m not moving. You and Mark can move.”

  “You should really be in New York. In the theatrical environment,” I pointed out quietly. “And you can rent a New York apartment for less than we’re paying for the house. Besides, you won’t need a car in Manhattan. I’ll buy the VW from you.”

  He thought that over, then said, “Okay. I’ll move to Manhattan. When I’m good and ready. Not before six weeks. And yeah, I guess I could sell you my Volkswagen.”

  His Volkswagen! Ooooh! Bite my tongue, bite my tongue…

  But who cares? He moved out. Forever! Forever! Forever! Oh, God, forever! Mark and I literally danced for joy. I started divorce proceedings the very next day. He said he’d pay half the legal fee but never did. And as for the VW—for which I had paid $900 and he had paid $300—well, he let me buy it from him for only $100.

  Quite the gentleman, n’est-ce pas?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Pull, and let go.”

  —THOMAS CRAPPER, INVENTOR OF THE FLUSH TOILET

  The blazingly beautiful acreage where Lette and I had rolled in the leaves the previous autumn was covered with snow when Murph and Brent took me there in January. I was still in love with it. It called to me in all its glory, even in winter. Oh, how I wanted it! A corner lot on two good country roads, it was heaven in all seasons, wild blueberries and apple trees between tall cedars, maples, and white spruce. Two creeks flowed down to a small waterfall, where you could lie on your stomach to drink the pure, cold water. Ancient stone fences traversed the hillsides. On a clear day, you could see Vermont.

  For thirty-two grand.

  Half down.

  I’d saved $11,000 while I was doing the soaps, and I asked the owner, “Will you mortgage the remaining twenty-one?”

  “Nah, I decided not to sell it.” His square, short body shifted onto one leg, and he lit another cigarette. “My kids like to snowmobile over there, and I go deer huntin’ on it.”

  He kills deer? I thought. On my property? But I kept my sweetest smile in place.

  “Well, that’s too bad. ’Cause I’d really like to buy it. And you could probably use some ready cash. And I could probably get a loan and come up with the full sixteen in a couple of weeks.”

  “I’ll give you till January thirty-first. Half down. In cash. Or no deal.”

  “January thirty-first is less than a week from now.” My smile may have strained a little. “At least make it a full week. February second.”

  “Okay, but you don’t get your deposit back if you’re late.”

  I gave him a thousand-dollar deposit and headed back to New York, gears turning. How to get the other five thou? Mother and Bill lent me two thousand each. Lette said she’d help me out, but couldn’t come up with the cash. Forty-eight hours from losing my deposit, I desperately racked my brains. Who in my acquaintance had that kind of dough on hand? Only one person came to mind: Mandrake Penobscot. Anyone in his profession must have money, I figured. My asking my former therapist might seem a little outside the box, but I’d come to know and trust him, and he seemed to care about me, even though I was no longer in his therapy group.

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to lend a patient money,” Manny said.

  “Well, I haven’t been your patient for a while,” I said. “So what about a friend?”

  “For a friend…I suppose I could invest a thousand. For one-thirty-second ownership.”

  I’d made it! That heartbreakingly beautiful forty-five acres was mine. Well, 31/32 was mine—with a fifteen-year mortgage. And four thousand to pay back to my folks. (Which I did.)

  Murph and Brent and Mark and Sandy and I tramped all over that land, taking dozens of photographs, daydreaming about where I’d build my house one day. I was deeply grateful to dear, generous Manny. Skilled, soft-spoken, intelligent Manny, who was not classically handsome but had soulful eyes and a compact body and knew all my deepest secrets.

  “Oh, no, Rue,” he said when I asked him if he’d be interested in seeing me socially. “I never date patients. Or former patients. You probably wouldn’t even like me outside the office. I behave very differently.”

  Did that little caveat deter this Choctaw? Please! One day, I saw him on the sidewalk and called out, “Hey, sailor, want a ride?” Amused, he got in my Beetle and I drove him home. No hanky-panky. But, lo and behold, a couple weeks later, he called and asked me out. Well, okaaaaay! Unfortunately, I didn’t have the good sense to ask Mark how he felt about it, and I realize now how insensitive that was. Mark was thirteen, we were freshly released from our seven-year stint in the Italian prison camp, and already I was starting an affair? In hindsight, it makes me cringe. At the time, however, I was, as usual, plunging full steam ahead.

  Mark and I rented a second-floor apartment from an Italian lady (c’mon, you can’t blame all of Tuscany for one bad apple) whose furniture and rugs downstairs were covered in plastic. Pictures of Jesus and the saints populated the walls. Every saint you can think of. Even my personal favorite, Saint Dymphna, patroness of mental and emotional illness. Our landlady didn’t allow pets, but I pleaded for Mark’s very quiet little dog and our extremely well-behaved cat, paid two months in advance, and promised not to have any parties. Apparently, the saints came marching in and spoke up for us, but they were dozing the day we moved in. Murph and Brent helped us haul our stuff, and on the way, we stopped at a gas station. Murph let Sandy out to pee while I checked my tires. A male dog trotted by, found her irresistible, and by the time the filling station attendant turned a water hose on them, we were expecting puppies.

  Ah, how those saints guffawed! And they fairly burst their frames in hysterics as they saw the Mandrake Penobscot circus play out. Saint Dymphna had to have a Klonopin.

  The day Manny warned me he “behaved differently” outside his office, he was not just whistling Dixie, darlings. We started spending a few nights a week together. He always brought a fifth of vodka, which he drank to the bottom. Oopsy-daisy.

  “I’m into threesomes,” he said.

  I said I was not.

  “My ex-wife and I were into threesomes,” he said.

  I said I was not.

  Sitting in the middle of the bed until three or four A.M., crying buckets, relating his woeful life story, he confessed, “I was in therapy for seven years and I won’t go back. I’m incurable.”

  I invited him to a play opening with my friends, and he behaved in a most peculiar way, running around like an undisciplined child, saying inappropriate, embarrassing things to people. “What on Earth?” my astonished friends asked, but I was more astounded than they were. I went to one cocktail party with him, even though he cautioned me, “All the other guests will be psychiatrists, psychologists, or social workers. You’ll be the only outsider.”

  “That should be interesting,” I said. Which turned out to be the understatement of the century.

  The party was full of well-dressed people, solemnly conversing but not laughing. No chuckles. Not a titter. I settled onto a sofa next to one of the psychiatrists and, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows, commented brightly, “Oh, look! It’s going to rain. I just love rainstorms.”

  This fellow turns to me with a small frown and says, “Oh, really. And why do you think that is?”

  “Oh…who knows? Maybe because I was born during a rainstorm.”

  “Hmm…interesting,” he said, and stroked his chin.

  Manny really was quite sweet. And he rated high on the FQ scale. Maybe an A. But he was nuttier than a Snickers bar! I started looking for a way to end it gracefully.

  One astounding night, he brought some pot to my house

  “I’ve only smoked pot twice before,” I told him. “A long time ago. And I didn’t like it.”

  “Oh, you’ll like this,” he assured me, and after some resistance, I took a drag or two.

  I don’t know if it was laced with something or what, but I turned into a snake, slithering down from the bed
and onto the floor headfirst, wriggling along the carpet on my back. I have no idea what happened after that. I just know that I broke it off with Manny.

  Gracefully, I hope.

  In April, I accepted the female lead in a somewhat interesting play about a gal who, having been deeply hurt, swears off men and decides she’s a lesbian, until a sweet young guy starts wooing her, prompting her to reexamine her true sexual orientation.

  Interesting, as my sofa pal would say.

  I enjoyed smoking a cigar and stomping around in my overalls, but the actor playing the love interest seemed a little…oh, how shall we say it? Saucy in the sneakers? Mincy in the moccasins? Fluffy in the Florsheims? This was the stud who was supposed to ignite my character’s libido and swing her interest back to men? But the young director didn’t agree that we needed an actor with a bit more testosterone. On opening night, my leading man was sporting heavy mascara. He hadn’t worn mascara in dress rehearsal, and now he had on more than I did! His long curly lashes were fairly gleaming. I was mesmerized.

  After the show, the director’s sister, who was producing the play, threw an opening-night party and, as it ran rather late, invited me to stay in her spare bedroom instead of driving home to New Jersey. How hospitable! I called Mark and told him I’d be home the next morning, but as I climbed into bed, there came a knock at my door. It was our producer—about three sheets to the wind—wanting to climb right in with me. Good grief, Gwendolyn! I explained that I’d only been playing a lesbian. Apparently, rather convincingly.

  A pretty darn eventful production, but I was glad when it closed after one week. At the last performance, a wonderful Broadway actor named Bill Macy came backstage to introduce himself and congratulate me. As we chatted, he told me, “I’ve been hired to play the husband in a new Norman Lear series. A spin-off of All in the Family called Maude.”

  “What a break!” I marveled. “And you deserve it, Bill. I’m envious, but happy for you!”

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Sandy had four puppies. Mark and I went through a few nervous weeks trying to keep them quiet, but the landlady dropped by and saw the menagerie crawling happily around, and even the saints couldn’t save us. Mark took Sandy to Oklahoma for the summer and I found homes for the puppies, taking the names and numbers of the adoptive parents. Then I focused on forging ahead with my career. (Remember that old thing?)

  I’d salivated to get into the Joseph Papp circle for years and finally got an audition with the legendary producer. At an outdoor café in SoHo, I read some scenes for Mr. Papp and he hired me to understudy the leading lady in Sticks and Bones, David Rabe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play on Broadway. After two weeks, Mr. Papp said, “I actually hired you to take over the role. The actress has already given notice. I want you to start playing it as soon as you’re ready.”

  Ready? Honey child, I was born ready!

  My character, Harriet, spent most of her time serving fudge and cookies to her mundane middle-American family—husband Ozzie and sons David and Ricky. (Subtle, huh?) I made twenty-eight different entrances from the kitchen during the show, uttering platitudes, carrying plates of goodies. I taped up a list in the wings, detailing when I entered and what I carried. I had nothing to latch on to except one good fight with Ozzie. The play was thick with murky symbolism. There was a Vietnamese girl living in David’s bedroom. Or was she a hallucination? If she was a hallucination, why did we all see her? The audience was equally puzzled. After every performance, audience members gathered outside the stage door, waiting to ask, “What does it mean?” But who knew?

  I guess it means if you write a play in which a disturbed young man slashes his wrists center stage, leaking his lifeblood into basins brought by his mother, who then sits down to knit while she and the rest of the family wait cheerfully for him to die (or does he almost die?) as the curtain goes down—well, you just might win yourself a Pulitzer, because surely that is some powerfully meaningful stuff!

  On the other hand…wait a minute.

  Now that I think about it without all the fudge…the play does have meaningful implications. And it certainly packed a wallop—great gouts of blood spurting like a fountain from that boy’s wrists, gushing into the basin. It never failed to get a big gasp from the house.

  But Saint Dymphna was up to her usual mischief. While I was still rehearsing Sticks and Bones, I got a call from Joyce Selznick in Hollywood.

  “Rue!” she said. “You remember me—I saw you in Dylan a couple years ago.”

  Sure, I remembered. She’d approached me after the performance and said she’d like to manage me. But I couldn’t afford a manager. I was already paying an agent, so I decided against signing with her.

  She said, “I put your picture in a casting directory with my name and number—”

  “You what?”

  “Rue! I have a job for you! Norman Lear wants you for All in the Family! He wants you to audition for the director, John Rich.”

  Okay. Well. That’s an audition, Joyce, not a job, but still—the heart goes bam! bam! An audition for All in the Family! Straight to the moon! Not even tempted to look this gorgeous gift horse in the mouth.

  Broadway plays are dark on Mondays, so I flew out Monday morning, knowing full well Joe Papp wouldn’t let me out of the play for a week—and that I’d have to be up front about that. Both Norman and John were tickled pink with my audition.

  “Don’t worry,” said Norman. “I’ll find another role just as good, as soon as you can get out of the play for a week.”

  After toting fudge for another couple of weeks, I was offered a juicy part in a PBS production of The Rimers of Eldritch: a lonely woman in a repressed town, in which everyone thinks she’s an ungodly tart. Yummy! Ungodly is my favorite flavor for tarts! But Mr. Papp laid down the law. “I never let anyone out of a play to do another job. It sets a bad precedent.”

  I cajoled. He relented. Those saints were back on my side. Almost. The night before I departed for the PBS job, during the fight scene between Ozzie and Harriett, I banged my wrist on the back of the sofa and the next morning it was swollen up like a boxing glove. I put ice on it, but it kept swelling. While Rimers was shooting, I took painkillers and devised ways to keep it covered. A dishtowel in one scene, a sweater in another. In the bed scene, I managed to hide it beneath the sheet while being smolderingly sultry. I ended the scene crying, which was easy, because my wrist throbbed like blue blazes.

  The Rimers of Eldritch is a beautiful play by Lanford Wilson, and PBS did an excellent job translating it to the small screen. A murder in a tiny town sets off the dangerously religion-soaked provincials, leading to the hysterical trial of the wrong person. I played the owner of the hilltop restaurant who befriends a young biker. Her only other friend is an addlepated old bum whom she allows to live in the shack behind the restaurant—a ragged fellow played touchingly by Will Hare. Also in the cast were Frances Sternhagen, K Callen, and Susan Sarandon, and the young biker was played by Ernest Thompson. This was long before he wrote On Golden Pond. Goodness, I think Ernest was all of twenty-two. We had some piping-hot scenes, culminating with the one in bed when he tells me he’s moving on, leaving me in anguished despair. (With a throbbing wrist, to boot.)

  This was the first film for respected stage director Davy Marlin Jones, who was hampered by the assistant director and others, who took advantage of his inexperience, constantly objecting, “You can’t do that, Davy. That’s not how it’s done, Davy.” But most of his fresh, exciting ideas did make it to the screen. He gave K Callen a marvelous piece of business during a scene where she’s working a jigsaw puzzle on a glass table. Davy shot from beneath the table, the camera on her face. The pieces fill the space, and in the last scene, she places the final piece in the center as she says her last line, obliterating her face. Neat, Davy!

  All the subplots were good. Sarandon played a frivolous high school senior who gets knocked up just before graduation and, to her teeth-clinching chagrin, is bullied by her parents to
marry the boy. In the final scene, she is successfully seducing the biker. Go, Susan! My swollen wrist was killing me, but it helped me play the role of a painfully unhappy woman. Actors have to use infirmities to advantage. Playing a bristly, short-tempered person, put a few sharp pebbles in your shoe—that sort of thing.

  Just as I was finishing the shoot in Maryland, Norman Lear called.

  “I’ve got a perfect role for you on All in the Family. Can you be here next week?”

  Damn! And hot damn! That darn Saint Dymphna was having a ball.

  I nervously called Papp and requested two more weeks. He was not a happy camper. But because my wrist was still hurt, he agreed, God bless him, and I flew to L.A. to start work on “The Bunkers Meet the Swingers”—a superb script in which Edith Bunker sees a personal ad in a throwaway paper and invites a couple over to dinner, thinking they want to be pen pals. What they want is to be bed pals. Appalled, Archie orders them out. In a moving final monologue, I apologized quietly for the misunderstanding, explaining that this wife-swapping experiment was saving my marriage. Vinnie Gardenia, always such a dear Uncle Earth to work with, played my husband with his customary ebullience.

  The cast and director were divine. I’d been warned that Carroll O’Connor could be of fierce temperament, known to tear up scripts and generally have conniption fits. Not the Carroll O’Connor I saw. From day one, he was happy, funny, and full of great ideas. Jean Stapleton was a warm hearth. Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers were professional and cooperative. Not a prima donna in the bunch. We had a beautiful rehearsal week, and the episode won an Emmy.

  Norman took me aside the third day of rehearsal and asked if I could stay a bit longer. His new show, Maude, was in rehearsals on the adjoining stage, and the actress playing Vivian, Maude’s best friend, wasn’t working out. I’d have to rehearse both shows simultaneously, running from stage to stage, tape Family Friday night and Maude the following Tuesday night. Just my meat! But holy cats. Mr. Papp was not going to be jumping with joy.