Another woman? Impossible. Our own relationship had been fairly chaste.
I flew to New York. I got on a bus that twisted and turned along rainy country roads and finally ended up at a muddy bus stop. Luckily for me, there was a taxi stand there, and I gave the cabbie David’s address.
When the cab reached the house, I looked down through its streaky taxi window. Sure enough, I saw a woman sitting in David’s living room knitting. Knitting. It was all too much for me.
As I got out of the car, David appeared.
“Kellerman, you are extravagant,” he said, impressed by my grand gesture.
By the way, the woman did cook dinner for us. That night, we all slept in separate beds, and the next morning David drove me back to the bus stop. As he put me on a bus back to New York, he told me that I was part of a very small group of people who he cared about. Oh boy, I thought. I’d dragged myself across country on a plane, a bus, and a muddy taxi to be in his “small group”?
David later told me that the knitter, the woman who cooked dinner for us, had taught him how to love. By then I was truly happy for him. I don’t think that, at that time, either one of us knew how. Not really.
I went back to LA with my tail between my legs, longing. I longed to break out of television and into films. I longed for David. I wondered if I’d ever achieve either: success in life or love. All around me people were moving on with their lives. Jack had married Sandra. I would occasionally hang out at their place or we’d go see Luana in a play.
My sister had taken a big step as well. Diana had left her husband, Ian, and was now living with a woman named Gloria. I knew that Diana was struggling with her sexuality, but learned Ian had had affairs as well, with other women. Gloria, a very talented clarinetist and conductor, had met Diana when she began teaching her recorder. My mother had rung me up to fill me in on the situation. I don’t know how much of a shock it was for her and my father. We didn’t really discuss it—that wasn’t my family’s style. But it certainly wasn’t a shock for me.
Diana soon brought Gloria out to my apartment to meet me. Diana seemed so free, so much herself. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for her to live a lie for so long. That didn’t mean her new life was easy. Quite the contrary.
Sometimes Diana would come over sobbing. What were they going to do about her daughter, Claire? Diana didn’t want Claire shuttling back and forth between Ian’s place in Santa Monica and Diana and Gloria’s place in Topanga Canyon. Diana thought that would be too confusing for Claire. Besides, it was hard enough for Diana and Gloria to deal with intolerance. Diana certainly didn’t want her daughter to have to grow up with it. She thought it would be best for Claire if only one of them—either Diana or Ian—kept Claire. The other parent would not see her until she turned eighteen. It was soon decided that that person would be Ian.
I didn’t fully understand that decision at the time, but I also recognized that I had never had to deal with the situation of being judged so harshly by society for who you were. It was their choice, and they had made it. I began to feel a much stronger pull toward my niece, though I didn’t know what to do about it beyond visit with her whenever I could and help Ian out in any way possible. I had no idea yet the amazing impact Claire would have on the rest of my life. But that’s how change usually is: it doesn’t announce itself; it doesn’t let you know when you’re witnessing a moment that’s going to affect you forever. You just have to pay attention. Things are changing all around you all the time.
Even my city was changing. I remember being on the Universal set of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The assistant director yelled, “Quiet on the set!” which means not a breath. Not a sound. I waited for action. But that’s not what I heard next. Instead it was: And on your right, you can see . . .
“CUT CUT!!!”
We all looked up. It was a bus. A Universal Studios tour bus. One of the first. But I didn’t think anything of it at the time, never imagined that the tour bus would be joined by an entire city, an outdoor mall, and amusement park rides.
Just beyond Universal lot was my Valley, my orange groves. Everything was changing. Everyone was moving on.
So why did I feel so stuck?
CHAPTER 6
Hit the Deck
OVER MY YEARS AS AN ACTRESS, EVEN A STRUGGLING ONE, I have gotten to experience a lot of things that I would otherwise have never had the chance to try. Robert Altman gave me the opportunity to do something I had never dreamed possible: be a cheerleader.
Unfortunately, before that could happen, I had to do something I had never wanted to do: get completely naked on film.
I was desperate to be in the movies. I had done small parts in a few films, but nothing of any real note. I had thought my big break was coming in 1965, when I did The Third Day with Roddy McDowell and George Peppard. In it I played a young mistress and wrote George Peppard dirty letters and got killed in a car accident. I danced around in front of a fireplace in a midriff top, thinking, for the first time ever, that I actually looked good. I really believed The Third Day was going to be my rocketship to stardom.
It wasn’t.
I was finally thin, and nobody cared.
Back to TV I went. I had a promising turn in a pilot, Higher and Higher, playing the title character Liz Higher with a supporting cast that included Robert Forster, Alan Alda, and Dustin Hoffman. The show wasn’t picked up as a series, but Robert became a lifelong friend. Then, a few years after Third Day, I landed a small part in the film The Boston Strangler with Tony Curtis. I like to think of myself as the romantic lead in that film, as I played the only one of the women who actually survived the strangler’s attack. But again, a rocketship to stardom it was not.
More TV. And voice-overs. From the 1960s on, voice-over work was a mainstay of my life. I still remember my very first commercial, for a feminine deodorant spray that used to be all the rage:
I’ve grown up . . .
I’m a woman . . .
And now that I am, I’m glad there’s FDS.
(Pause)
He’s home!
Oh, how clean we women have to be. Where, I wonder, are the ads saying, “Hey fellas, let’s get down there and really give your boys a good scrub.”
No matter how long you’ve done voice-overs, you have to audition for every job. It’s as if the producers of these things are thinking, “Well, sure, you may be able to say ‘Sears,’ but can you say ‘Maytag’? You might be able to say, ‘Revlon,’ but are you sure you can say ‘Clairol?’” Still, it’s a great gig.
Finally I got another film role, in The April Fools. Again, the part was small, but the film featured Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve, both of whom I admired. I even had one scene with Jack Lemmon. I was excited just to rehearse it with him. Then I found out it was his wife’s birthday. Would I mind terribly running the scene with the script supervisor? “Of course not,” I replied. What was there to say?
When I turned around, standing there in front of me was Boomy, my next-door neighbor on Sweetzer Avenue. So that’s who I shot my first “Jack Lemmon” scene with: Boomy the script supervisor.
Soon after April Fools my agent called me about an audition. I didn’t know anything about the director or who, if anyone, had already been cast. The only thing my agent said was that I was reading for the part of “Lt. Dish,” so I thought that I had better put on some red lipstick to look more “dish-y.”
The audition room was full of men, scattered about, none of whom I recognized. I didn’t even know which one was the director. I guess I did well because, all of a sudden, one of the men—he had the longest fingers I’ve ever seen, like birds about to take flight—said, “I’ll give you the best role in the picture: Hot Lips.”
The first thing that popped into my mind was Diana saying to me, when I sang as a kid, “Shut up, big lips, with your stupid voice!” I’d burst into tears every time. But the guy said he was giving me the best role in the picture.
“Really?” I said. I
was so excited. Finally! The best role in something. I thanked the long-fingered man, took the script, and rushed outside.
The man was director Robert Altman, who later loved to tell anyone who would listen that I was down on the floor, chewing on his pant leg, when I got the part.
Not true.
I didn’t even wait to get home before I cracked open the script to get a better look at this “best” role in the picture. Leaning against the building, I began thumbing through the pages looking for my part. And looking. And still looking. Nothing. On page forty, maybe I found a single line. Later I found a few more.
Fourteen years in Hollywood and my “best role” is the nine-line part of a soldier named Hot Lips? I staggered home, angry and bitter, and I called my agent, indignant.
“There’s nothing to this part!” I told him.
“This guy is supposed to be really talented,” he said, trying to calm me down. “I really think you should do it.” I later learned that fifteen directors had said no to this film before Altman had said yes.
So I read the script again and then agreed to take another meeting with Altman. It was just the two of us this time, and I arrived in a huff. I didn’t know him from Adam, but I hated him for thinking he could fool me. Hot Lips was a memory before the script was even halfway over. But as long as I had come this far, I was going to tell him what I thought.
“Why does she have to leave in the middle of the film?” I began.
I had spent years playing roles on TV. I was already thirty-one years old. I didn’t want a career playing hard-bitten drunks in Chanel suits who get slapped by their husbands. This movie was supposed to be a comedy. Hell, I’d done two episodes of Bonanza just to prove I could be funny. I was capable of so much more than a few lines. I was capable of a “best” role—and so was my character.
“I’m not just some WAC—I’m a woman!” I shouted at Altman. “So why can’t she do this? And why can’t she do that?”
I was ranting. When I finally came up for air, Bob just casually leaned back in his chair. He said, simply, “Why couldn’t she? You could end up with something or nothing. Why not take a chance?”
The minute he said that, something in me shifted. Here I was having a tantrum in his office, and there he was leaning back in his chair, smiling. Everything about him was so comfortable and relaxed. So sure.
Oh my God, I thought. I love this man.
So it was settled. The role of Hot Lips Houlihan was mine. The movie was M*A*S*H.
THE SHOOT BEGAN IN APRIL 1969. M*A*S*H WAS A MOVIE about an Army medical outpost during the Korean War—a thinly veiled commentary on Vietnam—and the doctors and nurses who lived and worked there. The storyline was unconventional, not the kind of predictable plot that audiences were accustomed to. Cinema was changing.
I hadn’t known Bob at all before I threw my tantrum in his office, but evidently he quickly got my number. On that first day of shooting I stood nervously in front of the mirror, looking at my bright red lips. Bob strolled by and said, “Sally, if you’re worrying about what you look like, you’re fired.”
Son of a bitch, he really did understand me.
So I had to get over the way I looked. Jo Ann Pflug, who was playing Lt. Dish, the part I had auditioned for, got to wear makeup and a scarf and get laid. I got to be uptight and buttoned up to my neck. On the set nobody looked at me twice.
Until the shower scene, when I was hoping they wouldn’t.
I spent half my life backing out of rooms. I always went to the beach with a towel wrapped around my legs. For someone like me, who had ridden the roller-coaster of pregnant women’s urine, dexamyl capsules, apple diets, and fruit fasts to always run back to cookies, brownies, and candy—the mainstays of my diet—getting naked was not at the top of any “to-do” list.
Now I was about to be stark naked on the big screen.
“Can I at least look pretty?” I asked Bob.
“Here’s what we can do,” he said. “Sure, we can have the entire crew of a hundred and twenty men light you for an hour, or as fast as you hit the deck, that’s what we’ll see.”
I took the second choice.
There wasn’t going to be anything sexual about it—that wasn’t the issue. Nudity in films was becoming more common, if not the norm. These were the early days of the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system (Rated G, PG, R, etc.), which had been in effect for not quite a year when we began shooting. Frankly, I wonder if it’s still in effect. Back then we had some nude scenes. Today we have munching on breasts, vaginas, making love, masturbation . . . Acting has certainly changed since I was a kid. I like to say I was lucky that all my nude scenes were done essentially alone—no munching.
Still, I was terrified. So I did what any woman in her right mind, who was anxious about her appearance, would do: I went to my shrink and dropped my pants.
This was shrink number two in my short line of therapists. (No one can ever accuse me of not trying to better myself.) This particular psychiatrist encouraged attending orgies as a means of overcoming virtually any kind of repression. It was the 1960s, after all. I ignored that suggestion, but I was pretty sure that nothing I did in his office would catch him off guard.
He had already been harping on me to stop dieting. “Get to the deeper problem,” he had told me, and I had agreed to give it a shot. But now I had to do this scene. I had to know what kind of shape I was really in. I stood up, turned my back, and dropped my pants.
Silence.
“So?” he finally said. “That’s it?”
As long as he didn’t recoil in horror, that was good enough for me.
In that famous scene in the film, the Army doctors Hawkeye, Duke, and Trapper have placed bets on whether or not my carpet matched my drapes, so to speak. So they have invited a crowd to watch as they raise the flaps of the women’s shower tent to expose me—and settle their bet.
On the first take I hit the deck so fast that Altman said I was on the ground before the tent flap was even raised.
I lay there, soaking and naked, on the ground, too embarrassed to stand. When I looked up, I saw Gary Burghoff, who played Corporal Radar in both the film and the TV series, standing directly in my sight line without a stitch on. Stark naked.
Take two.
I hit the deck again, this time making sure the tent hit the ground before I did. When I looked once more, I saw Tamara Wilcox-Smith (then Tamara Horrocks) who was playing one of the nurses, Captain “Knocko.” Tamara was a comedienne, one of several from a comedy troupe in San Francisco who were cast in the film. Tamara is, shall we say, amply endowed. And there she was, standing in my sight line, bare breasts in the sun. But I still had Gary’s anatomy burned on my brain, and so when I got a look at Tamara’s boobs, I thought for a split second that I was looking at some sort of hermaphrodite.
Take three.
I hit the deck once more and again looked up, wondering what new vision was in store for me. This time, Tamara had her clothes back on but was being dry-humped by actor Kenny Prymus.
That third take was the charm. Thanks to my castmates, who bravely stripped and humped to spur me on, I’d done it! Bob had probably put them up to it to relax me because he knew how scared I was. Who knows—he was such a rascal. No matter how those antics came about, to this day I attribute my Academy Award nomination to my reaction to seeing my colleagues off-camera during the shower scene.
However, it still wasn’t clear that I would have anything at all to do in the remainder of the movie. All I knew was that I had one more scene. After the shower incident I was supposed to storm into the tent of Colonel Henry Blake, played by Roger Bowen. How I got from the shower to the Colonel’s tent was up to me.
Years earlier Joe Stefano, the guardian angel who had changed my life by promoting my career during my first appearance on The Outer Limits, had given me a piece of advice I had never forgotten: Don’t run on film. Now, on the set of M*A*S*H, I hesitated for one second before saying to my
self, Sorry, Joe, here I go.
Other words flowed through my mind. Gig Young had once said to me when I worked with him on an episode of The Rogues: In comedy, you have to play for something.
That inspired me to take really huge, hideous strides. With soapsuds running down my face, arms flailing—all five-foot-ten of me—I strode and stomped my way to Colonel Blake’s tent. I’d worked myself into a rage until it hit me: Hot Lips was losing everything she cared about. So because Bob hadn’t said “cut,” I started whimpering, “My commission . . .my commission.”
All of a sudden, Bob ran around the tent and grabbed me. “I had no idea you were going to do it like that!” he said. “Now you’re vulnerable! Now you can stay in the movie.”
After that, Bob kept making up scenes to keep me in the movie. There were no big intellectual discussions about the part. Every now and then Bob would just throw out an idea or a thought that would convey the whole sense of the character. Hot Lips wasn’t in the script anymore, but she was still on screen. She was, for example, sneaking into the swamp to be with Tom Skerritt’s character, Duke Forrest. She was playing cards. She appeared at a football game, as something I had always dreamed of being but had never had the chance in high school: a cheerleader.
Cheerleading was maybe the most fun I have ever had in my life. I got to be goofy and silly: doing cartwheels, making up cheers, getting hit in the face by my whistle as I spastically jumped up and down. Bob was in his element, hovering over the football field in a crane and barking directions through his megaphone.
“Sally! When the gun goes off at the end of the first half, say, ‘My God, they’ve shot him!’”
“Hot Lips! You’re a blithering idiot,” Colonel Blake yelled, and I was. It was exhilarating.
Working on that set was like going to summer camp. The 4077th M*A*S*H was set up on 20th Century Fox’s Century Ranch in Malibu. For someone like me, it was heaven: I was out in the open air, working with a director I now knew to be brilliant.
One day Bob walked up to me and asked, “Sally, where are you from?”
Read My Lips Page 9