Meanwhile, The Guiding Light fired their new music producer, so there went Mark’s job. In June he moved back to Austin, sleeping on friends’ sofas while looking for a house.
I told him, “Turn a glass of water upside down and light a candle.”
Hey, no stone left unturned. Or as a book on theatre critics says, “No turn left unstoned.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Leap, and the net will appear.”
—ZEN SAYING
As of this writing, The Golden Girls is playing on television somewhere in the world at any given moment of any given day. It was a smash hit in sixty countries and remains popular throughout the world. DVDs fly off the shelf (and I get almost two cents for each sale, by God!). Internet fan sites abound. It’s been almost fifteen years since I delivered my last line as Blanche Devereaux, yet she has made me one of the most recognizable women in the world, recently voted in one poll as the Fifth Most Beloved Celebrity Over Fifty-Five—after Mohammed Ali, Walter Cronkite, and I’m not sure who else. Mother Teresa and Shirley Temple, I would assume.
Ah, Fame! Celebrity! To be adored by throngs!
But wait a minute…who is really adored by throngs? Rue McClanahan or Blanche Devereaux? The throngs don’t know Rue McClanahan. They only think they do, because if someone appears to you nightly in the privacy of your bedroom, you must be intimately acquainted with her, n’est-ce pas? But Rue McClanahan has also played witches and bitches, killers and drunks. It’s the Fame of Blanche Devereaux, week after week for decades, that has laminated her to Rue until, to the public, the two seem inseparable.
My friends who knew me before Blanche love me for myself. And I love them. Most are “unknowns,” and the few who are famous I still love for themselves, warts and all.
Not all important people are famous, and not all famous people are important.
Let’s agree on that. Okay, little loves?
Late for my hair appointment one morning, I stopped at the bakery next door to get a fast bran muffin, then rushed outside and almost bumped into a guy who approached me, extending his hand. Thinking he was a panhandler, I pushed the bakery bag at him and said, “Here—it’s a bran muffin!”
Whereupon he said, “Oh, no, Miss McClanahan, I wanted an autograph.”
So a guy on the street thinks my name on a piece of paper is preferable to a bran muffin. If that’s what fame is, then—hot cinders! I’ve arrived! But I’m still on the same mission I was on when I was Little Miss Nobody. I want to do good work and be rewarded for my effort. Back then, I was thrilled if acting paid enough to cover the rent and an occasional beer. I’ve since added a few amenities to my list of simple needs, but the work is still what matters.
One May morning in Hidden Hills, Barbara Lawrence, my manager, sent me the script for Millions of Miles, a play about an over-the-hill prostitute and a shy widower living in Queens, to be presented in a small theatre north of Manhattan. It wasn’t very good, but I was interested in the role of the prostitute and wanted to work on her. I talked it over with Barbara.
“You wanna go disappear for a couple of months?” she asked.
“Heck,” I said. “Sure!” And we accepted it.
The frugal producers rented quarters for me in a funny old theatrical apartment hotel in the West Forties. I checked in, saw a couple of plays, and reported for rehearsals on May 19, where I met the director, Barry Nelson, and his wife, Nancy, the husband-and-wife producers, the stage manager, Joel Vig, the leading man, Milo O’Shea, the playwright, and two younger actors who rounded out the cast. Nobody else, no assistants. The stage manager was also the costume department. A minuscule budget, to say the most.
On the third day of rehearsals, I was returning from getting coffee when I saw a tall, slender man in a blue blazer talking to the director and producers, and kids, that was one good-looking dude. Thick, wavy brown hair. Big hazel eyes. Full lips, quick to smile.
“Rue, meet Morrow Wilson,” said Barry.
And Morrow Wilson shook my hand and said, in a low, mellifluous voice, “I saw you play Caitlin in Dylan, and you’ve never disappointed me since.”
How refreshing! Caitlin in Dylan in 1972. One of my favorite roles. And not one word about The Golden Girls.
Mr. Wilson stayed for the full day of rehearsals, but I was never told why he was there. Next day, he returned, watched rehearsals, and had several little private conversations with Barry and Joel. Was he a possible investor? A play doctor? Just an interested friend? It turned out he was there to give any assistance he could, gratis, as a favor to his friends, Barry and Nancy.
At the close of rehearsal the second day, I announced to the room in general, “Oh, gosh, I’ll never get all these lines learned without some help. Is there anyone here who could cue me for about an hour before rehearsals?”
After a moment, Morrow Wilson said, “I could do that.”
Method in my madness, folks.
The next morning, Morrow arrived at my apartment at 9:30 sharp, as dapperly dressed as he’d been at rehearsals, and I knew I was going to like him right away when he candidly asked, “So. How did you get stuck to this tar baby?”
I laughed and said, “Oh, I thought the role had possibilities. How ’bout you?”
“Well, Barry and Nancy asked me to produce this piece of poultry a while ago with the idea that Barry would make a career change from hotshot Broadway comedy actor to hotshot Broadway comedy director, but I could see five good reasons this play was going to go over the falls, and I made the mistake of leaving a message on their answering machine listing those reasons. So I didn’t hear from them for two years. Then Nancy called last week and said, ‘Remember that play you said was the worst play ever written?’ And I said, ‘I couldn’t have said it was the worst play ever written; I wrote the worst play ever written.’ She said, ‘Well, we’re taking it to Broadway starring Rue McClanahan and Milo O’Shea!’ And I said, ‘Wonderful! Rue McClanahan is the best comedienne in the English-speaking world, and a surefire box office draw. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’ Nancy said, ‘What are you doing Thursday?’ See, in show business, the only promises kept are the ones you make. So here I am.”
God, I loved the zingy way he talked, the silver-tongued devil! And it was heartening to meet someone who felt the way I do about keeping one’s promises. Yes, we eventually got around to running lines, but over the next several days, sitting with Morrow every morning, I was a lot more interested in the character on the sofa beside me than I was in the characters in the play. He was funny—no, witty. He had a gargantuan vocabulary, with which he spun interesting stories and raised thought-provoking questions. He had integrity and was decent in the rarest sense of that word. He could argue anyone into the ground and enjoyed verbal confrontations, but he never swore, never used four-letter words. He had more information in his head than any cranium should have been able to hold. He remembered every joke, every song, every piece of pertinent information he’d ever passed his eyes over, able to quote someone famous on any subject, but when I said something about his impressive intellect, he pointedly told me, “I am not an intellectual.”
Well, I thought, that’s how much you know.
Born in Manhattan, a direct descendant of one of the six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, Morrow had grown up in Vermont and Arkansas (in itself a bizarre mix), the eldest son of a professional writer and Southern mother. He’d gone off to Putney, an offbeat, prestigious school in Vermont, then to Columbia to major in English, and then straight to work at twenty-one as the first associate producer for David Susskind’s talk show. He’d spent his career in theatre, broadcasting, and advertising, always writing, always stirring things up. He’d been married to his first wife for sixteen years and to his second for seventeen years, and had now been divorced for almost seven months.
Good heavens, I wondered, how old is this man?
He didn’t look a day over forty-five, but
when he mentioned he’d lived in Manhattan during World War II, I figured he had to be at least fifty-two. He was actually fifty-seven. I was sixty-three. Okay, I could buy that. Even if he did look like a kid of forty-five.
Morrow and I continued to meet every morning, and at rehearsals he became overtly flirtatious. Shocking! Believe it or not, I’d never been pursued by such a blatant flirt. But then I noticed he also flirted with the younger actress in the cast, so I wasn’t sure if he was making a play for me or just doing what came naturally. However, the more time we spent together, just the two of us, the more I saw a difference between the public and private playfulness.
Something I found sweetly odd about Morrow when we were alone together: He was shy. I found that terribly charming. I found him terribly charming. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be so fully engaged in conversation, to laugh like that, and think like that, and feel that deep-down frisson of Hmm, now where might this be leading? I liked the feeling of his lanky, six-foot frame striding down Broadway beside me. Those hazel eyes that didn’t break away from mine when I was talking, because he was genuinely listening to me. And those Jimmy Stewart lips—you know those lips!
Begging to be kissed.
I found The Lump while I was getting a massage one night. Those of you—and there are far too many—who have felt The Lump know exactly what I’m talking about.
The fingertips stray across it: Tra-la-la.
Then return: I beg your pardon?
Then palpate: What the hell…
Then grope: Oh, my God!
The Lump, meanwhile, just sits there. Like a Lump.
“It’s under my right arm, and…I didn’t know who else to call, Morrow,” I said. “I don’t have a regular doctor here. Can you suggest someone?”
He said, “I do know someone. Dr. Steven Field. I’ll make an appointment right away.”
The next day, I had rehearsals upstate where the play was due to open in a week, so he made the appointment the following day, Friday, June 6, at 9:00 A.M. When I arrived, Morrow was waiting on the sidewalk outside Dr. Field’s office. He opened the taxi door for me and gave me a firm, reassuring hug, but his expression was so solemn, his eyes so penetrating, I felt a twinge of anxiety.
The examination was brief.
“It’s breast cancer,” said Dr. Field without a shred of doubt.
The room—his voice in my head—that split second on the clock—everything seemed to slip off track, the whole world suddenly toppling.
“Breast cancer?” I echoed. “But…I’m a vegetarian. I exercise every day. I get regular mammograms. And in my family…no one in my family…”
Clearly, he couldn’t be right, because cancer is something that happens to other people—right up until the moment it happens to you.
“How long have you been on hormone replacement?” he asked, consulting my chart.
“Seventeen years.”
“Well. There you go,” he said. And there I went. “The cancer is well into Stage Two. It’s already metastasized to the lymph nodes. You’ll need surgery right away.”
I struggled to assimilate the information he was giving me, grateful to know that a deeply concerned but comfortingly practical Morrow was waiting for me in the reception area. The person you need with you at an event like this is a producer, not a director. Someone who will take action instead of telling you how to feel. When I told Morrow the news, he took it in, showing no surprise or fear.
“I suspected as much.” He nodded, taking my hand. “Rue, you’ve had so much work to do on this play, I wasn’t going to say anything until after you’d opened, but now I want you to know that I love you. Whatever happens, I want to be with you over the long haul.”
The difference between the blackness of the examination room and the unfiltered sunlight of those words was almost too much. The thing I wanted to hear and the thing I most dreaded hearing had both landed in my lap in the space of fifteen minutes. For the first time in my life, someone was there for me with exactly what I needed, at the exact moment I needed it. I looked at Morrow and said, “I love you, too.”
He took me outside, into the air, into the oxygen, and right away was working on what to do. We called the producers and told them I had to drop out of the play to deal with this emergency and spent the next days seeing surgeons and oncologists. Through the batteries of tests and procedures and decisions that immediately hit like a blizzard, Morrow helped me gather facts, weigh options, and weed out priorities. Dr. Larry Norton at Sloan-Kettering was the only one who didn’t want to do a single or double mastectomy right off the bat.
“I think we have a shot at a lumpectomy,” he said, “and if the borders are clean, we’ll start on a stiff regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. The cancer’s moving quickly,” he added. “So we have to move quickly, too.”
During chemotherapy, New York City, 1997. Hey, a good lookin’ woman looks good in anything—or without anything!
I said, “All right. Let’s get started.”
As plans for my treatment moved rapidly forward, the producers called early every morning, telling me how much they loved me—and how much they urged me to do the play first and then get the surgery.
All heart, those two.
One evening the following week, Morrow took me to see a revival of Chicago. Sitting there beside him in the dark theatre, I discovered I wasn’t in the mood for the ol’ razzle-dazzle. At intermission, I said, “Let’s leave.”
“Let’s go to Sardi’s,” he said, “and have a glass of wine.”
We sat across the table from each other, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
“You know, I bought the sheet music for ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’” said Morrow. “If you’d gone back to L.A. before I worked up the nerve to tell you I love you, I was going to FedEx it so it would get there before you did.”
“Good grief, Morrow. I would’ve had to turn around and fly right back to New York.”
“Well…that was the general idea.”
I couldn’t help hearing the song in my head when he told me that. The most heart-meltingly poignant song ever written, so full of longing and tenderness.
Over my second glass of red wine, I said to Morrow, “I’d like to marry you.”
Such an expression on his face! His eyes grew wide.
“Will you marry me?” he said.
“Yes.”
After a moment, he said, “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!”
I guess he believed me, because he didn’t ask a third time. We’d known each other two weeks and five days, and while that might sound like the old BA-RUMPH! BA-RUMPH! to some, it was actually more like that time back in 1949 when I emerged from the subway on Forty-second Street, inhaled my first breath of New York City, and immediately realized: I’m home.
Christmas Day, 1997, Morrow and I were married at the Waldorf Astoria between my sixth and seventh chemo treatments. I was bald as a billiard ball. Morrow had bronchitis and a 102-degree fever. The wedding was ridiculous and the honeymoon was worse, but I’ve been Mrs. Morrow Wilson a lot longer than I was ever Mrs. Anybody Else. And without a shiver of panic.
With Morrow at Sardi’s, June, 1997. “I’d like to marry you.”
I can only surmise that someone somewhere must have sneaked out in the dark of the moon and buried a new potato on my behalf. Ain’t that Saint Dymphna a hoot and a holler?
The sun is streaming down on Manhattan’s East Side, and across my back fence a children’s tennis class is presently in progress. Every morning, we find chartreuse balls hiding in the foliage like Easter eggs. We figure they’re ours, since they say “Wilson” on them. The exuberant voices of the instructor and kids come sailing past the fence into our lovely garden, along with the balls bouncing off the walls of the high-rise buildings around us. I used to say I wanted to die onstage after the curtain goes down on a play that I’m in. Now I think I’d be just as pleased to check out right here in the garden, listening to
those kids’ voices across the fence.
A writer friend of mine says there’s no such thing as happy endings, only happy intervals and inevitable conclusions, and that an author must choose whether to follow a story to its inevitable conclusion or draw the curtain at a happy interval. And so, my dears, I’ll draw the curtain here. On days like today, there is no ending. Perhaps there never is. All I know is that at this moment, I am happy. I love my life as it now is. I hate the madness going on in the world, but in my personal life, the beauty stays ahead of the ugliness, and in my professional life, good work hasn’t stopped coming my way, bringing joys and challenges.
In my vast collection of memories and mementos, one of my proudest possessions is a letter quoting Tennessee Williams’s reaction to my performance in Dylan.
“Your work has that rare combination of earthiness and lapidary polish,” said Mr. Williams, “that quality of being utterly common and utterly noble. Frippery combined with fierceness…”
Oh, Lord, I wish I’d gotten to meet him! I had no idea he even knew who I was, but he certainly had me pegged.
Frippery combined with fierceness.
Even as a child I had the strong feeling that life was good. I had a passion for work, an openness to love, and a penchant for joy. In a word, I had hope.
I still have it.
One more thing…
“Thanks for noticing.”
—EEYORE
Several years ago, I did an event at Chippendale’s, the popular male strip club in New York. Not my cup of tea, but I did it to help PETA, which was a new group at the time. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals accomplishes courageous and compassionate acts on behalf of our animal friends who can’t speak for themselves, and I’m proud to lend whatever support I can. I testified on PETA’s behalf when they were sued by a trainer who’d been caught on film beating orangutans he used in his Vegas act. Initially, the bastard won, but PETA pushed the case to State Supreme Court and got the trainer and his act barred from ever appearing in Nevada again. Ingrid Newkirk, director of PETA for more than twenty years, is a true heroine. Dan Matthews and the rest of PETA’s staff and volunteers bravely fight cruelty, work for the prosecution of those who cause suffering, and close down facilities not operating within the law. From time to time, I appear at events in order to encourage more people to attend, and it delights and amazes me that the bubble of celebrity actually has this powerful inside. To learn more about PETA and discover what you can do to help, visit their Web site at www.peta.org.
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