After hearing my request, there was a long pause on the phone line.
“Rue,” he finally said, “I never let anyone out of a show to do another job! I let you out for Rimers, I let you out for Family—now you’re asking for a third out?”
“Mr. Papp, if you’ll do this, I’ll let my understudy continue to play Harriet. When I get back, I’ll understudy her.”
“You want it that bad?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Rue. But don’t ask for any more outs!”
I didn’t have to. The play closed a month later, leaving a trail of fudge behind it.
No one but Bea Arthur could have played the title character in the groundbreaking series Maude, the first (and only) sitcom to successfully portray the emerging feminist sensibilities of the “Women’s Lib” movement in a way people were willing to embrace. (Well, some people, anyway.) Like All in the Family, it presented prickly issues to the mass audience with whip-crack comedy writing and a super-talented cast.
Catapulted into my first episode, I found Bea wonderful to work with—and watch. She was powerful, smart, statuesque, with surgically precise comedic timing, and she wore her star quality like a cherry on top. The moment I walked onto the Maude set, she came striding over to welcome me and immediately launched into catching me up on the scenes between Maude and Vivian, since I was a day behind.
Bea and I clicked from the start. She appreciated my talent, and I learned from her daring choices. I was never intimidated, but Bea threw the fear of God into a lot of other people. She abode by a strict work ethic and brooked no fools, but she genuinely appreciated the talents of her coworkers, particularly her director and writers. She had a sharp wit, which did definitely slice and dice someone every once in a while, so not everyone saw the Bea Arthur I came to know over the years. Bea could be dissolved to tears by a careless remark, but she was nevertheless prone to harsh comments of her own—usually muttered sotto voce, under her breath, more for her own benefit than to intentionally hurt anyone. Something as innocuous as a backward baseball cap brought down a swift indictment in that famously deep voice: “Scum.” Anything she disagreed with elicited an abrupt “Oh, hump!”
When I got back to New York, everyone said, “Ooooh! You worked with Bea Arthur! Weren’t you scared?”
Scared? I had a ball! She was a kick in the pants! In fact, all the actors were great fun to work with, as was Hal Cooper, our cheerful director. The writers were still figuring out the Vivian character. She was Maude’s best friend, two weeks older. That’s all we knew. So I just played her off the top of my head. That first segment I did is the only one with that particular Vivian, levelheaded and low-voiced with gray hair. By Vivian’s second segment, months later, she’d been rewritten giddier and younger, and by the time she became a regular weekly character, Vivian emerged as the ditsy, sexy air-brain I came to love.
I couldn’t have had a better introduction to prime-time television. Two happy Norman Lear sets, two fabulous scripts, two great characters—I should have sent Saint Dymphna a dozen roses!
Back in the Italian lady’s apartment—and now understudying my understudy—I was brushing up my tap skills, taking lessons nearby. One day after class, I encountered a dirty, exhausted dog in the parking lot—a brindle about the size of a German shepherd, tits down to the ground, obviously homeless, thin from hunger, but with an eager, intelligent face. She’d had a litter and been abandoned, I surmised, and was waiting patiently for her owners to return.
Could I turn my back on that? Ignore a lost animal? Not quite hardly.
“You want to go home with me?” I asked, opening the car door for her. “Come on, Gretl. They’re not coming back. Let’s go home. It’s the best offer you’re going to get.”
She hesitated, hopped up with a small yelp, and trotted over to climb into the backseat like a smart, well-adjusted pooch. We had sized each other up very well. Fortunately, an acquaintance, Trish Tucker, the new house manager at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was looking for a dog. She came to see Gretl and said, “Oh! She’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback! See that tuft of hair on her back? I’ve always wanted a Rhodesian Ridgeback!”
They immediately liked each other. I hated to let Gretl go, but I was still in an apartment with a landlady who didn’t want dogs, and I knew Trish would give her a good home.
A week or so later, a Times ad caught my eye: Mini-estate on one acre in Closter, New Jersey. Three-story house with four bedrooms, two baths, and artist studio. $60,000. I drove out to see it, and—zowie! Proudly surrounded with trees and greenery, it stretched from Closter Dock Road to the city woods. I bought it, intending to move in before Mark returned from Ardmore for the school year.
Oh, I know what you’re thinking.
“Hey, didn’t Rue just buy land up by Brent and Murph a few pages ago?”
Well, yes. I did. Some people follow baseball, some play the horses or the stock market, some engage in esoteric hobbies they share with weirdos of the same persuasion, some join cults, some become politicians. Me? I like acres. Lots of acres. And finally, I had a steady income, so I was in a position to do more than dream.
Of course, I had no furniture, but Trish, who’d had a monumental fight with her roommate and wanted to move, had a lot of furniture. We decided to pool our resources, and she and her stuff—and Gretl!—moved into the Closter house. Mark returned from Oklahoma with Sandy and our cat Panther, and—voilà!—we were a family. After about a week, Trish brought in another cat, a dear old gray-and-white tabby with big round eyes and a very gentle nature who’d been bullied in his former home. I named him Grover, and we all gave him a lot of love, which he slowly learned to accept. (Later on, Lette coined the term “Grovering,” which applied to anyone needing a little extra love.)
Mark and Trish soon had seven large fish tanks lining the dining room—six for freshwater fish and one that held Mark’s saltwater beauties. Held them until they jumped out onto the carpet, that is. Mother came up and bought him a forty-dollar triggerfish that committed hari-kari within hours, somehow finding a small opening near the filter system to leap through. The tanks looked beautiful against the big dining room windows looking out on the front yard. Gurgling and burbling, they provided an ongoing show. Mark was quite knowledgeable about all the varieties: which ones were compatible, which ones weren’t, their peculiar qualities.
Beyond the dining room windows was his large new trampoline. Yes, finally I could afford one! He learned a lot of daring trampoline stunts, and I shot videos of him and Phillip flying through the air. I could do a few leaps, but I never tried anything too Flying Wallenda. I’m athletic but no damn fool. For his fourteenth birthday, I bought him a spiffy new Honda SL minicycle like the one he had in Oklahoma, and we took it up to Murph and Brent’s, where there was room to ride it.
Michael Cacoyannis, considered a top-rate director, was casting a production of Lysistrata to star his friend, Melina Mercouri, a Greek movie star famous in the States for the film Never on Sunday. He granted me an audition for the role of Kalonike, Lysistrata’s best friend, and for four blessed hours, I sat at his kitchen table, reading for him, discussing the play, and generally wooing him into casting me. When I left, I had a whale of a headache, but by gollyannis, I had the part.
Rehearsals began in early October. Sticks and Bones was posted to close September 30. A convenient segue. This production was to be a hip new American version of the play by Aristophanes, in which war-weary Lysistrata calls the women together, convincing them to withhold all sex from their husbands—drive them crazy, no matter how long it takes, no matter how horny the women get—until the men stop this war foofaraw and there is peace and tranquillity. The Cacoyannis rewrite had original music, written and performed by the leader of the pop group The Lovin’ Spoonful. Some of New York’s funniest actors were cast, and everyone began rehearsals with high hopes.
First day of rehearsal, we started at the top of the play. It’s dawn. Lysistrata appears center stage, l
ooking out, wondering aloud where her lazy girlfriends are. Kalonike—that was me—enters from the back of the house and runs down the aisle toward the stage, calling, “Lysistrata! Lysistrata! Why have you summoned me?”
Cacoyannis called from the audience: “No! No! Eet’s ‘LEE-seestrata! LEE-seestrata! WHY ’ave you summoned me?’ Go back! Take eet again!”
Returning to the back of the house, I ran in again, doing it exactly the way he did.
“LEEseestrata! LEEseestrata! WHY ’ave you summoned me?”
“No! No! No! Eet’s ‘Why ’ave you summoned ME?’ Try eet again.”
Back to the starting point, run in.
“LEEseestrata! LEEseestrata! Why—”
“No! No! Don’t use an accent! Do eet like I do eet! No accent! Again!”
Like he does it…but no accent. Hmmm.
Me, with American accent: “LEEsistrata! LEEsistrata! Why have you summoned ME?”
“Oh, no! Not ‘summoned ME!’ ‘SUMMONED me’! We don’t ’ave time, just move on!”
Every sentence I uttered after that, he stopped me and corrected the syllables he wanted stressed, changing it every time. He gave me no time to get acquainted with the character. Do eet like he does eet! But no accent! And I wasn’t the only one. He gave syllable readings to everyone but Mercouri, with whom he conversed in Greek. The morning was interminable. That afternoon, we were turned over to the musician to learn some of the songs, which were confusing and disorganized. How does the music fit into the story? Who’s supposed to sing what? And when are they supposed to sing it?
Next morning, we started at the top again, and again there was no way to do it “right.” Two of the actors quit. The third day, the oldest character actor, a man of some reputation, quit. That day, an actor who had one of the larger roles invited me to have lunch with him and his friend, Peter O’Toole, who was somewhere between filming Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Under Milkwood. When I related the week’s goings-on, the stunning Mr. O’Toole said, “Oh, darling, just do what we British do. Tell the director to sit there like a good boy and keep quiet, then jolly well do it your way.”
That made me laugh, but there was no way Cacoyannis was going to keep quiet. And a good director shouldn’t! He is supposed to help the actors find their way. But that was clearly not going to happen here. The fourth day, I gave the stage manager notice that I was quitting.
“Oh, no you’re not!” he told me. “You signed a run-of-the-play contract.”
“What?” I was horrified. “No! I never signed for run of the play!”
I called my agent, who confirmed that I was right. But when I ran over to the Equity office, they showed me that my contract was indeed filed under “Run of the Play.” My heart sank. I was trapped. Held prisoner by that control freak! I cried all the way home to Closter.
Friday morning, I reported for work and the assistant stage manager handed me a pink slip.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“You’re fired.”
“Wait a minute! I couldn’t quit, but they can fire me?”
“You actually did sign a regular contract. Equity filed it under ‘Run of the Play’ by mistake. What’s the problem? You wanted out, didn’t you?”
Well, yes…but I felt oddly demeaned. I’d never been fired before. Still, bottom line, I was out of that turkey. Free at last! Then I realized I was out of both Broadway jobs. It had been a long time since I’d been unemployed, and I immediately began to worry I’d never work again. So, for the first and only time since beginning to earn my way strictly as an actress, I took on a job that popped up out of nowhere. Well, out of Trish’s mouth, actually. She wanted to have new outfits made for the Brooklyn Academy of Music ushers. Forty-two peacock blue polyester Cossack shirts.
“Forty-two peacock blue polyester Cossack shirts?”
“Forty-two peacock blue polyester Cossack shirts.”
(Say it aloud. Has a nice ring to it.)
“And I need them in four weeks. Can you do it?” asked Trish.
“I can do it.”
We settled on a price, and I drove all over New Jersey looking for enough peacock blue polyester material to make forty-two Cossack shirts in an array of sizes. Surprising how much blue polyester I found that wasn’t precisely the peacock blue Trish had in mind. Finally, I found the right weight, the right number of bolts, the right price, and Lord help us, the precisely right shade of peacock blue. With only three weeks left, I farmed out a third of the shirts to a seamstress at the Metropolitan Opera and a third to a friend, and we worked feverishly, using a pattern I’d bought. I set up shop in my dining room. The fish watched, their tanks burbling and gurgling, as I cut and sewed day and night, swimming in peacock blue polyester.
About halfway through the task—hallelujah!—I got an acting job. Another appearance on Maude. But it didn’t start until January, so the Cossack shirts got delivered on time.
And I bet you four Cossacks and a peacock I never make another one.
Lysistrata opened in November, with Murph, Brent, and me perched expectantly in the balcony. I’m not a drama critic, so let’s just say that show should have been arrested. Those talented, funny actors were not funny, and their talent was lost in the mishmash. Even the stunning Melina Mercouri couldn’t inflate that lead balloon. It closed after eight performances.
There’s a story about a New York play starring an actor named Guido Natso. Some clever drama critic is said to have remarked, “Guido Natso was notso guido.” I can’t come up with anything that clever. But from that day to this, I have referred to the director as Michael Kakapoopoo. Maybe I just had an unusually bad time with him. But I don’t THEENK so.
That October was lovely. Mark and I spent another wonderful Halloween with Murph and Brent, wandering our spectacular Berkshire acreage, scaring the willies out of Mark’s friend Danny with the old ghost hunt, sipping cocoa, devouring gooey s’mores and Louisa’s apple pie, parting with hugs and promises to see one another soon.
On December 15, Murph and Brent were driving from the upstate house back to New York, Brent at the wheel, the highway slick with sleet. When they hit the black ice, Murph was thrown out onto the right shoulder of the highway, grievously injured but alive. Brent was thrown into traffic, where he was run over and killed instantly.
Oh, my God. Brent. Mark and I were in shock—and heartsick for Murph.
Brent’s parents came up from Texas and tried to take all his possessions—things he and Murph had shared for years—as well as half the house, which was in Murph’s name. Murph, still on crutches and desolate at the loss of his partner, had to battle them with his lawyer, who managed to beat them back to Texas with only the belongings of Brent’s that Murph was willing to part with. Murph sold the house and eventually moved to Florida, where I’m happy to say he found love and friendship with another good man.
As for the house, I rejoice that the new owners made it into a getaway that guests adore. I think our love must linger there, in the walls, in the air, in the yard, and certainly across the creek and in the sky, where Brent runs invisibly under a great ghostly white parachute every Halloween.
Poor Mark was miserable at the Closter school and reached a low point in January. For a week, he didn’t get out of bed, incommunicado.
“I can’t go back to that school,” he finally told me. “I do want to be with you, Mother, but I think I need to go to Ardmore.”
Not knowing what else to do, I called Bill and Mother.
“Send that boy down here,” said Bill. “I’ll put him to work and make a man out of him.”
I agreed but first took him with me to L.A. when I did my second appearance on Maude. Mark’s motorcycle idol, Evel Knievel, was doing his daredevil thing, and although the show was sold out, we hung around outside the gate, watching from afar. When we returned to New York, Evel was appearing at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, and I did get tickets. (Oh, joy—Evel Knievel twice in two weeks!) But Mark still wanted to move to Ardmore,
so I sent him. I thought a man’s influence might be good for him, and there certainly wasn’t another one in sight. Mark finished ninth grade at the same school I had attended and even had the same world history teacher, Mr. Todd, who ended every class by saying, “And that’s all they are to it!” And that summer, Bill did put him to work, along with Melinda’s son, Brendan.
Living alone—well, alone with Trish, Sandy, Panther, Grover, and seven tanks of suicidal fish—I invited an actor friend over for dinner one night. He stayed late, and we thought it best he spend the night in Mark’s room and have breakfast with me and Trish, after which I would drive him to the city. On our way over the George Washington Bridge next morning, he asked, “Why are you living with a lesbian?”
Taken aback, I said, “Huh?”
“You can’t tell me you don’t know.” He made a face. “My God, Rue, it’s obvious.”
Hmm. Trish did play poker one night a week “with the guys.” And she had switched jobs to become a bartender. But a lesbian? It had never even occurred to me. Then, on my birthday, Trish invited me to the bar where she worked. Wall-to-wall women. I felt like such a dumb bunny. But around me, she was always a perfect gentleman!
The ides of March rolled around and found me playing Will Hare’s wife in Brian Friel’s play Crystal and Fox. In the role of my son was a spectacular young actor named Brad Davis, who was twenty-three playing a seventeen-year-old IRA escapee being sought by the police. Crystal and Fox, itinerant Irish gypsies, harbor the runaway son in their wagon. Opening night, I found a bouquet of flowers on my dressing table and a note from Brad, giving me the clear impression that the young lad had a crush on me. Although I was flattered, I was not about to open that can of peas. But Brad was equipped with a very effective can opener.
The play closed a couple weeks later, and Brad got a job with Handy Andy, a yard service. By June, my large yard was begging for pruning and clearing, and he needed work, so I hired him to come out a few times a week. He worked like a Trojan (oh, dear, those puns), doing a bang-up job (yikes, there’s another one!) on the yard. I found him very funny and terribly sweet—but still off-limits.
My First Five Husbands Page 18