I Blame Dennis Hopper

by Illeana Douglas

Where is the sign? Is that what you’re asking? Well … I was pretty angry about not being asked back. I was convinced that they were wrong, and that Lee Marvin and I were right. So, I decided to prove it. I applied to another acting school called The Neighborhood Playhouse. It was there that I found the teachers—Sanford Meisner, Richard Pinter, and Phil Gushie—who were right for me. At the end of that first year, I was once again required to do my “final” scenes. There was no Lee Marvin in sight this time. But right before I went onstage, my teacher Richard Pinter said he wanted to talk to me. “Remember everything you used to do before you got here? Everything you learned doing musical and dinner theater?” he asked. “Do it now.” I smiled. I knew exactly what he meant. I was a serious actor now, and I hadn’t thought about the Camelot Dinner Theatre or musicals in a while—and even though I hadn’t actually ever been on its stage, when Richard Pinter told me to remember the Camelot, I knew that he understood me. That was the sign I needed.

  But back to Peter Sellers and riding unicycles—and how that became another influential sign in my life. I had just about forgotten his words of wisdom, when, twenty-five years later, Peter Sellers himself reminded me of our exchange. But I’ll get to that.

  My grandfather invited me to watch him at work—on the set of Being There. It was the first time I had seen my grandfather on the set of a movie. I knew he was important. I knew he made movies. But most of the time he was just Grandpa, and I was his only granddaughter. He had been amused when I told him “I’m going to be an actress. Like Ruby Keeler.” She was the adorable tap-dancing star of many Busby Berkeley musicals. I was almost fourteen now and wanted to be a real actress, not just Ruby Keeler, so inviting me to the set of Being There was his way of acknowledging that he knew I wanted to follow in his footsteps. We shared a special bond, and the bond was simple. He took an interest in me when no one else did. I think he knew it, and for that I will be forever grateful. Being There permanently shifted my view of movies from outsider to insider. Before, I had been on the outside looking in at a movie. Now I was going behind the curtain, inside the movie looking out. I would never be the same.

  When I was growing up, my grandparents’ rambling apartment, at 77th Street and Riverside Drive in New York City, with its servants and maids, was a stark contrast to life at The Studio with its goats and hippies. The guest room had a double bed and a view of Frank Sinatra’s yacht on the Hudson River. There was also a friendly doorman to hail you a cab or help you with your groceries. Your fingers never even came close to a door of any kind. It was always opened for you. We dressed for dinner. My grandfather would ring a bell and food would be served. Ring another bell and it would be taken away. I couldn’t believe people lived this way … and that I didn’t!

  Staying with my grandfather, I learned the concept of ordering food for delivery. I would watch in amazement as he would call a place named Zabar’s—which sounded magical—and tell them what he wanted: eggs, bread, coffee, etc., and then a man would deliver it! Sometimes my grandfather would give me a piece of paper with just his signature on it, and I would walk around the corner to Zabar’s, show someone there the piece of paper, and a nice man would help me get whatever I’d asked for.

  “What else for you?”

  “Um … Häagen-Dazs?”

  “What else?”

  I loved this guy! He’d pinch my cheek, and there would be no bill. They’d just put it on the account: Melvyn Douglas. When I was a starving actress I would wander into Zabar’s for a bagel and a coffee, and let me tell you, I did not get the same treatment. I remember overhearing my grandfather on the phone after one of my shopping trips, ordering from Zabar’s.

  “Yes, and also some Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream … for my granddaughter, yes.” And he would wink at me, because he had become addicted to it, too, thanks to my having sneaked it into the basket. I especially loved going to Zabar’s when we’d go together. My grandfather and I would walk down the aisles while folks nudged each other and whispered, “That’s Melvyn Douglas.” Everyone was so friendly. So helpful! The same thing happened at the candy store. Always free samples of chocolate-covered cherries for Melvyn Douglas and his granddaughter. He would take me to a Broadway show and afterward we would eat at a showbiz restaurant called Sardi’s. Everyone was so friendly. So helpful! Actors stopped by the table to say hello. Waiters were constantly making sure everything was all right, bringing more and more food that was “on the house.” I could never finish anything, because the portions were huge. Years later, the first time I had some money in my pocket, I invited someone to go to Sardi’s, promising them huge portions. The meal came and everything was regular size, and I was so disappointed. I wanted “Melvyn Douglas size.”

  As I got older, my grandfather started telling me more about the movies he was going to be shooting. He would act out the entire story, playing all the parts. I remember him acting out the movie The Tenant, and the way he told it was actually scarier than the film. He described something that happened on the set that was equally chilling. He was shooting a climactic scene with Roman Polanski—the tenant—after Polanski tries to commit suicide by jumping out a window. It required Polanski to be covered in stage blood. After each take, Polanski would ask for more blood. After numerous takes Polanski and the set were covered in blood, but he was still dissatisfied, and kept insisting they needed more. My grandfather described an eerie feeling that descended upon the set, as Polanski, drenched in blood, kept insisting there still wasn’t enough. He said, “You see, in poor Roman’s mind there would probably never be ‘enough blood’ to match the horror of what he had once witnessed.” Which was, of course, the bloody scene of his wife Sharon Tate’s murder. And the way my grandfather told me that story, with such helpless empathy, has stayed with me all these years.

  We were in the apartment on Riverside Drive when he handed me a paperback book and said that it was going to be his next movie. The book was Being There, by Jerzy Kosiński. He said, “And if it’s done right, it could be something quite interesting.” He told me that Peter Sellers was going to play Chance the Gardener. My eyes lit up. Peter Sellers? From The Pink Panther? By this time, my room at home was a collage of movie posters, magazine covers, and pictures of my favorite actors and actresses. Peter Sellers was one of those smiling faces who watched over me. My poster from The Return of the Pink Panther was next to a pink People magazine cover on which he appeared. This was next to Peter Sellers on a cover of Fate Magazine: True Stories of the Strange and Unknown, which had an article discussing his interest in ESP and psychics.

  I was excited to see my grandfather work, but I was over the moon to meet Peter Sellers. He was a movie star! Inspector Clouseau! I loved watching movies—I wanted to be in the movies—but as I’ve said, I was still on the outside, watching movies as an audience member. I still didn’t understand that there was a director, and a crew, and a whole lot of folks behind the scenes who actually made a movie. For me, it was still all pictures and posters on my wall, movie stars such as Peter Sellers, and the characters they played, such as Inspector Clouseau. Now my grandfather was going to make me an insider, and that, I realized, was even more fun.

  Some of the scenes in Being There were shot at a mansion called Biltmore House, in Asheville, North Carolina. My grandfather was staying at a hotel nearby, aptly called the Grand Bohemian. People always ask me, Did your grandfather ever give you advice? And the answer is Yes, he did. Here’s the most important thing he taught me. We were at the Grand Bohemian and once again he was ordering food for delivery.

  He said, “Illeana, you want to be an actress, I want you to remember one fact. Wherever you are, whatever country you are in, if you don’t know what to order from room service, always get the club sandwich. It will always be good.”

  I can’t tell you how many times I have arrived at a hotel late at night—whether it’s in Toronto or Madrid or Shreveport, Louisiana—skimmed through the menu, and thought, Grandpa’s right. Order the club sandwich! Best ad
vice I’ve ever got, and I’m passing it on to you, courtesy of Melvyn Douglas.

  We got up at dawn, and someone drove us to what looked to my young eyes like the grandest, most magical castle I had ever seen. Once again, everyone was so friendly! So helpful! My grandfather had said, “Films result from the collective efforts of many human beings.” I was beginning to understand what he meant. My grandfather had a bit of a cold, so someone immediately brought him some tea. A man with long white hair and a crazy beard smiled at me and said to a woman holding a large notebook, “Mel’s granddaughter is on set; can we please find a place for her to sit?” This man with the long white hair and crazy beard seemed to be in charge, because when he spoke things happened very quickly. Immediately a director’s chair was found for me and then placed next to the woman with the large notebook. She smiled at me and asked, “You’re Mel’s granddaughter?”

  I nodded, feeling shy all of a sudden.

  “Have you ever been on a movie set before?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s a lot of people.”

  “It is a lot of people,” said the man with the long white hair and the crazy beard.

  Of course, years later I would realize that the man with the long white hair and the crazy beard was the director Hal Ashby. All I was interested in was seeing Inspector Clouseau. I never would have dreamed that years later Hal Ashby—with his movies such as Shampoo, Coming Home, and Harold and Maude—would become one of my all-time-favorite directors.

  The woman with the notebook spoke to some other women who came over and began fussing over me.

  “This is Mel’s granddaughter!”

  “Oh, isn’t that nice!”

  “Everyone loves your grandfather!”

  “Are you going to be an actress?”

  The man with the long white hair and a crazy beard called for quiet, and all the hustle and bustle suddenly stopped. “Peter’s here,” I heard him say.

  Inspector Clouseau! I could barely look up.

  At first I didn’t even recognize that it was Peter Sellers. Without his Clouseau mustache he looked completely different, not at all like the pictures on my bedroom wall. He was much older, with grayish white hair, and almost bald. They started to rehearse the scene where Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener is introduced by my grandfather to the president, played by Jack Warden. I couldn’t really hear anything, but I watched as Hal Ashby demonstrated to Peter Sellers how he wanted him to shake Jack Warden’s hand. There seemed to be some banter about the handshake, and then I saw Peter Sellers bent over laughing, and then the actors, including my grandfather, all started to laugh, too. I couldn’t even hear anything, and I truly thought, This is the most exciting thing I have ever seen.

  While they rehearsed, a tall man with glasses walked all around them. He looked very serious. He was squinting a lot and adjusting the lights. He would stare at the actors and then stare at the lights. What I remember is how even though it was a rainy day, he was able to create these beautiful columns of light that looked like they were coming through the window. He didn’t talk to anyone, and he kept to himself. I would later learn that this was the director of photography, Caleb Deschanel. I had the privilege of working with him years later on the movie Message in a Bottle. During that filming, he brought his daughter Zooey on set and said to me, “Can you please talk her out of being an actress?”

  “No way,” I said.

  As they prepared to shoot the Being There scene, more and more crew came out of the shadows and gathered around the actors. The women who were talking to me were hair-and-makeup ladies. They hovered over Peter Sellers. He had a hairpiece that had to be adjusted so that the camera wouldn’t pick it up. One woman held up a small mirror for him to inspect. Another woman powdered and patted my grandfather’s and Jack Warden’s faces. Another man inspected their clothes, brushing off lint and adjusting their ties until they looked perfect. Another man was hiding microphones under the table. I was riveted by the number of people it all required. I loved the sense that everyone had a job to do; yet they were all focused on doing it together. As my grandfather had said: the collective efforts of human beings. To me, it felt like this was a secret place away from the world, where everybody was happy in his or her work.

  “Mel, Peter, Jack. Can we put one in the can?” asked Hal Ashby. Then he called, “Action.” My heart skipped a beat. I was on a movie set watching my grandfather film a scene from a movie. The cameras moved in on their dollies, and the crew focused toward the light as the actors brought the scene to life. Every moment was orchestrated by a “Yes. Yes. Perfect. Brilliant. Oh, that’s not good” from Hal Ashby. When the scene was over, he called “Cut” and everyone applauded or started to laugh. He jumped out of his chair to go talk to the actors, and then they did the whole thing again. What I remember was that each time they filmed, he would watch the scene completely enthralled, smiling or nodding his head like a proud parent. My grandfather was very happy with his work in the film. “He’s a good director,” he said to me on the car ride home. At the time, I didn’t understand what that meant. Now I do.

  My grandfather could be quite the raconteur, and between scenes he and Jack Warden and Peter Sellers—they had all been in the service—began swapping war stories. I later learned that my grandfather and Peter Sellers had actually met years before when they were both stationed in Burma during World War II. That may have been the main reason my grandfather got the part. Peter Sellers had purchased the rights to the book Being There and was trying to get it made. In the 1970s he was walking on the beach in the Malibu Colony and met Hal Ashby. The director had someone else in mind for my grandfather’s part, but Peter Sellers was a man who believed in signs and omens. He insisted that having been in the service with my grandfather would add depth to their relationship on-screen. The role of Benjamin Rand had to be played by Melvyn Douglas. Their connection is reflected in the movie.

  On the set of Message in a Bottle, Caleb Deschanel told me that they were filming a scene in Being There in which Sellers and my grandfather walked down a long marble hallway. As they walked side by side, almost touching, their steps became the same until they were walking as one. He pointed out to Ashby that their reflections could be seen on the black marble floor.

  Ashby said, “Peter Sellers and Melvyn Douglas are achieving such clarity, such simplicity, it looks like they are walking on water.” He paused and said, “In fact, Gardener will walk on water.”

  That walk gave him the idea for changing the ending of the film. Instead of Chance walking into the woods—which was the original ending—it would end with Chance walking on water.

  By the end of the day I was over my shyness, and I only had one thing on my mind. “Grandpa,” I said, “can I meet Peter Sellers?”

  “Oh, Peter,” my grandfather said to him, clearing his throat. “I think you have a fan here. My granddaughter loves,” and he took a pause … “Inspector Clouseau.” He said it with a French accent.

  This prompted Peter Sellers, and he immediately went into character as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. I was in heaven. He began to interrogate me as the suspect of a mass baguette-stealing crime. Everyone was laughing, but then he got sort of serious and asked me, “Can you ride a unicycle?”

  And I laughed and said, “No…”

  And he said, “Oh, you must. You must learn to ride a unicycle, because it’s hard and not everyone can do it.”

  The set of Being There was a sacred experience. Making a movie—like riding a unicycle—is hard, and not everyone can do it. Whenever I step on a set I try to remember the temple of art that Hal Ashby, Peter Sellers, Jack Warden, and many others, including my grandfather, created for me that day. It made me want to be in those dancing columns of light, where all those eyes were focused, away from the shadows.

  When Being There was over, my grandfather was given a wrap gift of a Sony television set that had been used in the film and something else. My grandfather showed me this thing, called a Sony Walkman, an
d said, “This is going to change everything. You can listen to music on it.”

  When he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance he wanted me to attend with him, but my grandmother was sick, and he didn’t want to leave her.

  I screamed when they called out his name as the winner.

  “You won! Grandpa!”

  “Yes, I beat out a child and a horse.” He was referring to Justin Henry in Kramer vs. Kramer and Mickey Rooney in The Black Stallion.

  I spent even more time with him on the set of Ghost Story. I gathered things were not going well on the set. Although my grandfather never complained, I could see how he winced when yellow pages—meaning new lines to be learned—would arrive late at night at our suite at the Gideon Putnam Hotel, in Saratoga Springs, New York.

  My grandmother had passed away, and he was talking about my moving in with him to pursue my acting career.

  “I think it’s a good idea,” he said. “I don’t want to live alone, and I’ll be able to protect you from men such as myself in show business.” Of course, he had a twinkle in his eye.

  My grandfather died within a year of filming Ghost Story. He had caught pneumonia filming numerous scenes in the snow. At his memorial service they played clips from his movies on the same television set that had been his wrap gift from the set of Being There. Then they played the actual movie Being There. I couldn’t look at it. I could not watch my grandfather die again.

  It was years before I could see the movie Being There. It held such a special place in my heart. But the movie began to follow me in strange, almost mystical ways. It started when my grandfather bequeathed me the Academy Award he had won for playing Benjamin Rand. His Oscar has traveled with me from cheap apartment, to cheap apartment, to a nicer apartment, to a house, to another house, across country, and back again. At the time he won this Oscar—his second; the first was for Hud, in 1963—he was seventy-nine years old. Makes me think I have something to look forward to.