I, of course, was crying to him about something, possibly my love life. The more I fretted about my life, my work, my future, the more Stuart started to laugh.
“Are you laughing at me?!” I asked.
“No, no . . . I’m laughing with you,” he said, chuckling.
I loved his laugh, so warm and sweet. When the phone rang the very next morning, I heard the voice of my darling Luana.
“Stuart’s dead,” she said.
At first I couldn’t process what she had said. It was so blunt, so matter of fact. I didn’t believe it, didn’t know how to make sense of what I was hearing. I refused to believe what Luana, my closest friend, had told me.
When I got off the phone with Luana, I called over to Stuart’s house, to the office—everywhere I could think of—to confirm what I had just heard. What I kept saying sounds so cliché: But I was just talking to him . . . But I just saw him and he was fine. . . .
When the truth finally sunk in, I went into my room, crawled into my narrow walk-in closet, and sat on the floor. I wanted to hide, to get away from light and sun and anything that would remind me of life and joy and the world outside that had now changed forever. I sat huddled in my closet for hours. The loss of Stuart was unbearably gut wrenching.
Our relationship wasn’t just about business. We had traveled together, which was so much fun. He would tell me never to worry about Claire, that he would always be there for the two of us. I had confided in him about everything from my family to my love life as well as my career. Stuart, what do I do? Stuart, what should I say? Stuart, what do you think? Stuart was like my father in many ways, but with a manner that was capable of softening every blow, of taking the sting out of everything. I can still hear him saying, “You shouldn’t worry, Sally. It’ll all work out.” And you know what? It does.
To think that life—especially such a precious life, one that touched so many others—could be over in two minutes. It was more than my mind could process.
“If only she knew she could have everything,” Stuart had once said about me. He wanted me to have as much faith in myself as he did. He stuck by me, never giving up on me, even when I was difficult, scattered, calling yet again for a shoulder to cry on. Forgetting his last birthday.
Stuart is still with me in so many ways. I still think of him whenever I see a powder-blue Volkswagen convertible with a black top, his old car.
I cherish a letter he wrote me:
My darling Sally . . . I just wanted to put into words how proud I am of you. What a real delight you have become both in life and on the stage . . . Your love means so much to me. You constantly amaze me with both your personal and professional growth. You have inspired me as a friend.
My imagination is really going to be limitless and boundless in your behalf because of who you are as a talent and a person.
I love you,
Stuart
PS: Remember your love for all will take you over the hurdles.
Well, Stuart, my love, this hurdle felt insurmountable.
CHAPTER 12
Chasing Garbo
IN THE AFTERMATH OF STUART’S DEATH I BEGAN TO LOOK AT my own life with fresh eyes. One thing I had to examine was my relationship with Chuck. I loved Chuck and had a wonderful time with him, and he had been so incredibly supportive of my relationship with Claire. But deep down I knew that something was not quite right. We split up.
But career-wise, I didn’t exactly start things off with a bang. My first picture without Stuart was The Big Bus, a disaster-film parody about a nuclear-powered bus. I had said no to the real disaster film, The Poseidon Adventure, but jumped on board the nuke bus. Go figure.
Anyway, during The Big Bus shoot, I would be off someplace by myself crying, hoping no one would notice. One day Ruth Gordon walked by and heard my sobs. Now, Ruth was someone whom I not only admired professionally—five Oscar nominations with one win just a few years earlier for her role as the creepy yet kind upstairs neighbor and satanic cult matriarch in Rosemary’s Baby—but I also admired her personally. She and Bud Cort had made the wonderful Harold and Maude together, and Bud had introduced me to her. I have never forgotten her Academy Award acceptance speech when she won the Oscar at the age of seventy-two, a good fifty years after her first film. “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is,” she told the Academy. Brilliant. I think of that line to this day. It still inspires me as I continue to rack up the years.
So when Ruth, who at the time was almost eighty, heard me crying, she stuck her head in the trailer.
“You know the difference between you and Garbo?” she asked.
“No.” I answered.
“Confidence,” she said, and kept right on walking.
Next up, I walked out on a film in which I was to star opposite Lee Marvin. I was getting a very nice six-figure salary (millions were not the norm for starring roles back then). Not the best career move for sure, but I was still feeling bereft without Stuart and needed to be with people I loved, whom I knew loved me.
So I flew to Canada to be with Bob and Kathryn Altman. Bob was working on a film there called Quintet, starring Paul Newman. As we talked, Bob asked me if I wanted a part in his then-protégé Alan Rudolph’s upcoming film, Welcome to LA.
“I’m producing,” he said. “There’s a part for you. It pays fifteen thousand.”
I immediately called Jack Gilardi at ICM, my agent at the time. I told him I wasn’t doing the Lee Marvin picture. He pointed out not only that had I already agreed to do the film and was reneging on my contractual obligation but also the more obvious fact that I would be taking a huge cut in pay.
I didn’t care. “I’m not doing the movie,” I said flatly. It didn’t matter how many people I hung up. I wanted what I wanted, but looking back at that behavior now sure doesn’t feel good, even if I was in pain. I was determined to be with Bob and Kathryn, and that was that. Gilardi never mentioned the switch again, he is a great agent and a mensch, and even though it’s 30 years later, I still owe him a deep apology.
Luckily, in those days lawsuits for breach of contract didn’t go that far. In Hollywood today, well, it is a much different story. When Kim Basinger stepped away from Boxing Helena—violating what was called an informal commitment—she got slapped with about $9 million in damages, and she ended up losing her little town in Georgia. I guess my bad behavior got in just under the wire.
But then, of course, I’ve never had a town. I was lucky I still had my house.
Altman and Rudolph were shooting Welcome to LA in Los Angeles, and in it I played a real estate agent. I was excited about the character and had a great idea for my look, inspired by an outfit I’d seen on one of my neighbors: I would wear a bright red suit and put a big shock of white in the middle of my blond hair. But when I arrived on the set, wardrobe pulled out some nondescript suit and a pale pink blouse with a big, droopy bow. But I didn’t want to be a prima donna. Because I didn’t want Bob to think I was going to make trouble, I vowed not to complain about anything. “Just perfect!” I said. “That’ll be great!”
Thus, my character turned out just like the blouse: droopy.
On the set of Welcome to LA, I had the joy of meeting the oh-so-lovely and adorable Sissy Spacek. Sissy played my topless housekeeper and was a sheer delight. Memories of her Texas drawl still bring a smile to my face.
“Hey kid,” she’d say to me. “You should git some painter’s pants jist like mine.”
I absolutely adored her. Sissy has a unique talent. I always love seeing her in films like The Help and thinking back on all the interesting choices she’s made throughout her career, from Carrie to Coal Miner’s Daughter. And she’s been married for decades to an incredibly talented art director, Jack Fisk.
The film turned out great and was praised by Jack Kroll of Newsweek as an “extraordinary debut” for Alan Rudolph, hailing the rest of us for our “sharp, distilled performances.”
SO LET’S RECAP MY BEHAVIOR SINCE ANNOUNCING TO
STUART I was going to make amends in Hollywood: I appeared in some films but walked out on others. I’d left Chuck, who was available, only to fall for someone who was married. Maybe I needed a breather. A trip to Iran seemed to offer, if nothing else, a change of scenery and distance.
In April 1977 I was invited to the Tehran Film Festival. The idea was that afterward I would go visit my sister Diana and her partner, Gloria, who were still living in a small medieval village in the south of France. I hadn’t seen Diana in years, not since she’d left Claire behind with Ian.
Tehran was full of half-finished cement buildings, bazaars, and enough traffic and smog to give LA a run for its money. The film commission had invited stars from all over the world in order to show off how Iran had stepped into the modern age and to celebrate its film history. Brenda Vaccaro (a wonderful actress and a good friend) and Kenny Solms, another friend, were on my flight. Kenny was a kick—a writer for the Carol Burnett Show and a producer of the Smothers Brothers, among a million other credits. All the invited actors, directors, and media people stayed in the same hotel.
Brenda, Kenny, and I spent a lot of time together looking for adventure, usually unsuccessfully. I saw the crown jewels in Tehran’s museum, but the closest I got to the “real” Iran was the bazaar. We were warned not to drink the water or to eat raw fruits and vegetables. But on the upside, Iran’s caviar is world class. One night Brenda, Kenny, and I went to a hookah bar. I don’t know what we were smoking, but I didn’t get high and ended up coughing up green gunk for the next three months. These were my adventures. Oh—and I bought a tiny rug.
The festival itself was held in the Roudaki Hall, Tehran’s opera house. It was stunning. The local papers called me Sally Keller, which I thought was pretty funny. The afternoon of the event Brenda and I got our hair done, slipped into our evening gowns, and headed off to the bus, only to wind up standing in our high-heeled shoes and holding on to the strap for the two hour-long, half-mile trip to the Hall. I ended up squeezed in next to Paul Mazursky. Years earlier I had turned Paul down when he offered me a part in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Now I was mad at him because he didn’t hire me for his upcoming movie An Unmarried Woman. So Paul was cold, and I was peevish. One of us was justified in behaving that way, and it wasn’t Sally Keller. But boy, was that a long bus ride.
Shortly after the festival ended, my pals Brenda and Kenny joined the exodus of movie people leaving Tehran. But I was stuck. Somehow my schedule had gotten turned around, leaving four days before my sister was returning to her home in France. So I wandered down to the hotel lobby, looking for people I knew. There I saw Otto Preminger, a famous director who had made many well-known films.
I had met Otto in 1967. He was a notorious hothead, and my first interaction with him confirmed that. My agents at the time at William Morris had thought it would be a good idea to test with him for Hurry Sundown, even though Faye Dunaway had already been cast. Otto was still casting for one of the male roles, so he had me read with three men.
When the first guy stumbled over a line, Otto jumped on to his feet.
“You don’t know your lines?! Bullshit! I go to my office!”
He stomped out and did not return.
The next day Otto let the poor guy try again, only this time he made him audition in front of the other two actors. Brutal.
I don’t think I’d seen him since, and now here he was, exploding as only Otto could, this time at the restaurant management.
“What do you mean you’re not open?!” he bellowed. “I am Otto Preminger! I take my shirt off!”
Dear God, he was just as arrogant and awful as before. And as luck would have it, he remembered me. So I could hardly avoid joining him at his table in the restaurant, which had now decided to stay open.
Next to enter was John Simon, a reviewer for the New York Times, whom I knew to be particularly cruel to any actress who didn’t look like a Barbie doll. My friends had all left, and I was lonely. I had days to kill before my sister got back to her home in France, and I was sitting at dinner with two of the most miserable men on the planet, Otto Preminger and John Simon. Perfect.
I shared my lodging predicament with the two of them, and Otto, oddly enough, had a solution.
“You will come to my house in the south of France. You will stay there until you can go to your sister.”
Maybe I misjudged him, I thought. I felt so desperate. As much as I loathed Otto, I did not want to stay alone in Tehran. So I made all my arrangements—called the airline, booked a flight to the airport closest to Otto’s home, and reserved a car. When the day of our departure arrived, I found Otto in the lobby.
“Oh no, you can’t come!” he said. “My wife would be too jealous.”
In your dreams.
“Don’t worry about it” was all I could say.
But I was worried about it. I went back to my room, called the front desk, and begged them to extend my stay. I had a good cry and then decided to make the best of it. The only person I knew for sure who was still in the hotel was John Simon. So I quickly signed up for a tour, feeling that would at least get me away from the city and the cranky critic.
Of course, the moment I boarded the tour bus, who was the first person I saw? John Simon. Then, like a mirage, I spotted Arthur Hiller, the director I had worked with back in the 1960s on the television show I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster. I plopped down right next to Arthur, and John Simon never said a word to me again. Soon Dick Guttman, a publicist friend from LA, boarded the bus along with his daughter, who wound up being my roommate on the short trip. We visited Shiraz, Isfahan, and Persepolis, where we saw beautiful mosques, and Arthur and I ate more caviar together than we would ever see again for the rest of our lives. In the end it was a wonderful trip. Then it was off to France.
This was the first time I’d seen my sister since she had left Claire for her new life. She looked older, kind of weatherworn, and I remember her hands being very rough. Still, she looked so happy, like she’d lived through a very hard time but come out the other side happier, more complete. As hard as it was for Claire, it wasn’t easy for Diana, either, deciding to leave. But she was convinced that Claire’s life would be easier, considering the times and the intolerance, if she herself were out of Claire’s life. I didn’t stay long, but man, I had some delicious meals. I love my sister, and it was so good, so important to have that time with her. And to get to know her partner Gloria.
When I got home, I decided that I wanted to take Claire on a trip somewhere. As luck would have it, I was offered a part in a film shooting on some island and thought that would be perfect. We packed, we got Claire a passport—I made sure not to forget mine this time—and we were both getting excited about the trip. Then, one afternoon, we came home from some pretrip errands to a ringing phone. The picture had been canceled. We were crushed.
Then, like an angel out of the blue, Sissy “my formerly bare-breasted housekeeper” Spacek called to ask if I would like to play her best friend, a 1940s B-picture ballad singer, in a PBS special titled Verna: USO Girl. It was part of PBS’s Great Performances series.
Would I want to play a singer? Would I ever! There was only one drawback: I couldn’t bring Claire. It was a low-budget film, and the money wasn’t there. I would miss Claire badly, and I hoped I could make up for our canceled trip.
We shot in Idar-Oberstein, a tiny town in Germany known for its jewelry industry. I loved being with Sissy again and also enjoyed working with William Hurt. It was one of Bill’s earliest jobs. Just a few years later he would be wowing us all in Body Heat. And I got the chance to sing, which of course always thrills me.
When you’re working with a small budget, out of necessity things move quickly. As the clock ticks, the dollars fly. So almost as soon as we stepped off the plane we had to shoot a scene—Sissy’s death—though I didn’t yet have a sense of our respective roles and had had no rehearsal with her. But Ron Maxwell, the director, was so easy to work with and so spontaneous that we work
ed it out. We shot on Hitler’s training grounds, where US servicemen were living and drilling. Half the time we were so close to the firing range that we felt like we were dodging real bullets. Ron took full advantage of our military setting and the access to so many “extras.”
At one point Ron came running over to our trailers, yelling, “There’s a parachute drop!!” Piling into a Jeep, we raced over. Nothing in the script had anything to do with a parachute drop, but Ron figured that kind of drama was just too good to pass up. So he made up a scene on the way over. That’s the beauty of a lower budget; it’s freeing in so many ways. If you have the right kind of director—Ron was one, and Bob Altman, certainly, was another—the creativity that kicks in can make up for a lot of the bells and whistles that come with a bigger budget. I see that kind of creativity in many of the up-and-coming filmmakers of today, the ones working with limited funds. So here we are again, in Hollywood’s new Wild West.
In Verna I got to sing songs like Billie Holliday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” and work with Donald Smith, a fantastic Broadway choreographer. The costumes were all originals, refashioned from vintage 1940s outfits. Ron shot me performing my “USO act” in a variety of different venues—the action was taking place during the war, after all. On one amazing night, when the rain was really coming down, I sang in front of nearly a thousand actual servicemen—Sissy, the amateur tap-dancer, and me, the ballad singer. I prerecorded my vocals at a nearby Marine base, just me and a Marine and a pair of headphones—no director, no choreographer.
Because I was always dieting, when Sissy, Bill, and other members of the cast and crew would go to dinner, I would head off to the hallenbad and swim laps with a bunch of sweet German women. Then I’d go back to my room and eat a candy bar alone before bed. But I loved my fellow cast members as well as the project itself. I am forever grateful to Sissy for bringing me on board.
Read My Lips Page 18