Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life

by Cindy Williams

  Who in their right mind would put me in charge of such a task? I’ll tell you who—the very nice, and very handsome bank manager who hired me. The employment agency must have done some fancy footwork. Maybe they told him about the job I’d had at the law firm and that convinced him I was bank teller material. He had no way of knowing about the “dead files” in the bottom drawer! And here’s the kicker. I was solely in charge of this task and “the people in the boxes.” I alone had to determine the limit on the card according to the calculated score. I was in charge of the applications and could check off whatever limit I deemed appropriate, up to one thousand dollars.

  I spent my precious breaks sampling the vending machine fare while mulling this over, absentmindedly eating candy, chips, cookies and more candy and drinking coffee. I started empathizing with these people and began toying around with the idea of issuing most of them the thousand dollar limit even if they didn’t meet the criteria. I thought of the elderly people in those boxes in the same way I thought of my grandmother: honest, hardworking, always paying her debts, and perhaps needing a break more than others. But then, what if they defaulted? All of them? Oh, and were sent to prison! And somehow I was linked to it, then arrested, tried, convicted, and put in the same prison where my elderly people had now formed a gang and tormented me on a daily basis? I was consuming way too much candy!

  One day while sitting in my “office” in another caffeine-sugar daze, the door swung open. The handsome bank manager asked me to come with him for a moment. I was hoping at this point that he was going to fire me. But no such luck. He led me to the bank vault. A guard and a female teller were waiting.

  “We want to train you to assist with the safety deposit boxes. Don’t worry, you’ll go back to credit, but we want you to learn this first.”

  I thought he was kidding, but he wasn’t. He was smiling at me with an expression that seemed to exude his total confidence, as if to say, I believe in you, Cindy. They were all so nice as they ran me through the drill and handed me a key that was tethered to an official-looking chain. I would be responsible for this key. When customers wished to gain access to their safety deposit box, I would walk with them into the vault. They would insert and turn their key; I would insert and turn the bank’s key, simple as that. First time up to bat, I escorted the customer into the vault to his safety deposit box. He inserted his key and turned it. I inserted the bank’s key and turned it. It immediately jammed and twisted in the lock. I tried pulling it out. No luck! It wouldn’t budge. I had the chain around my neck! It was a little too short for me to take off. The nice bank manager called some sort of security locksmith who would not, as it happened, be available for two hours! I apologized to the customer and the bank manager. I stood there guarding the twisted key, thinking about all my people waiting under the fluorescent lights for me to approve their credit. I saw my banking career fading away. And it did. Completely!

  I was kindly let go. I thought about trying to get my job back at IHOP. I was not going to show my face around the employment agency anymore. Edna still had her job in Hollywood and was doing okay until one Thursday morning when she found out her boyfriend, Kenny, was coming down from San Francisco to see her on Friday. She needed Friday and the weekend off and asked me to call in to work for her and tell them she was ill.

  “Ill with what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Something that keeps me out of work till Monday.”

  “Like what?”

  She thought for a moment, and then came up with, “Appendicitis.”

  “Really? Can’t that be serious?” I asked. She thought again.

  “Tell them I have to go to the hospital.”

  I called her boss and told her that Edna was suffering from appendicitis and had to go to the hospital. Her boss, a lovely lady, was sympathetic and asked where the office should send flowers. I was stymied. I looked at Edna. She was standing there but could not hear the other end of the conversation. She gave me a look as if to ask, What? What’s going on?

  I told the boss that flowers wouldn’t be necessary. The boss finished by telling me that everyone in the office just loved Edna and they would be thinking of her and praying for a quick recovery. I had a baaad feeling! Edna enjoyed a great weekend, and returned to work Monday morning where she was swiftly fired. To this day, any time this story is recalled, Edna and I wince and laugh at our stupidity.

  Soon after this, Edna’s luck turned around. She was offered a scholarship in a government-sponsored filmmaking workshop called New Communicators. She would be writing and directing her very own film. How exciting! I, on the other hand, caught the flu, which turned into bronchitis and had to return to my parents’ house in the Valley so my mother could take care of me.

  My mother was so happy to have me home. She could hardly wait to nurse me back to health. She was now working at the juice bar at Jack LaLanne’s European Health Spa in Reseda. She loved her job. People enjoyed her effervescent personality and her knowledge of health and preventative medicine.

  During the time I was back at home in Reseda, my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. My mother had tried for some time to get him to see a doctor, secretly diagnosing him herself. This was no real surprise; my father had smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes every day for as long as I could remember. My mother finally convinced my father to see a doctor. He came home with the awful news. He had a mass on his left lung. He called a Baptist minister who came to the house to council and pray with him. After this he never drank again.

  Around the same time Edna called and asked me if I wanted to interview for New Communicators, the filmmaking workshop she was involved with. I jumped at the chance and said “Yes!” She said, “Good!” and took it upon herself to schedule the interview. I wasn’t sure if I had the right credentials for the workshop. I was an actress, not a writer or filmmaker, but maybe I could become one and maybe I could write and act in my own film.

  I was nervous walking into the interview, but more than that my feet were killing me from the same cheap shoes I had been wearing since I worked at the Whisky. My nerves subsided when I entered the room. The two program directors couldn’t have been nicer. They immediately put me at ease. But after interviewing me, they had to turn me down for two reasons. I didn’t fit the criteria for the program because I was an actress, not a filmmaker. The other reason was the program provided artistic opportunities for low-income minorities. (Edna is an African American writer.) Affirmative action had just been put into place, and they rightly were trying to balance the scales that had been so unfair to people of color for so long. I argued that I was a minority myself; I was half Sicilian, and my family was economically challenged.

  I was told, “Cindy, you’re an actress, that’s what you studied to be. We know two young producers who are starting a management company for young talent. We’d love to call them and set up an interview for you. Their names are Garry Marshall and Fred Roos.”

  A week later I found myself sitting in front of the mirror at my mother’s vanity. I was wearing my Whisky wraparound skirt, my ill-fitting white blouse, and those same cheap, crappy black patent leather pumps. I was looking into her magnifying mirror contemplating my eyebrows, which were too thick and too unruly. I was also covering up the chronic dark circles under my eyes, desperate to appear pretty and professional for this important interview.

  I glanced out my mother’s bedroom door and down the short hallway that separated her bedroom from my father’s. I could see him sitting in his chair. He was watching television. I was sad for him. We all were. The cancer had trumped the bad feelings that all of us had held toward him. That afternoon my mother was taking him to the VA to check in for his surgery that was scheduled for the next morning. The surgeons were attempting to remove the mass from his lung and hopefully save him.

  He called to me, “Cindy, honey, come here.” I got up from the vanity and walked toward his room.
“Look at this guy, you’re gonna like him.” I stepped inside his room, and turned toward the TV. Bob Dylan was singing “Tambourine Man.”

  I said, “That’s Bob Dylan, Daddy. And you’re right, I do like him!”

  “He’s real good, I like him a lot. I like the way he sings,” he said.

  “Me too,” I said. I kissed my father and told him I loved him.

  As I turned to go, he said, “I love you, too, honey, and good luck with your interview.”

  I replied, “Good luck to you, too, Daddy.”

  Someone once said that change is the only constant in life. And both my father’s life and my own were about to do just that.

  Although my mind was filled with concern for my father, the meeting with Garry Marshall and Fred Roos seemed to be going well. They asked me a little bit about myself. I summed up my entire acting career to that point; which consisted of the plays I had been in at Birmingham High School, and Los Angeles City College. And for good measure I threw in writing, directing, and acting in “The Ice Cream Social Talent Show” for the First Methodist Church of Reseda. If they weren’t impressed, they were at least amused, and they seemed to like me. Garry Marshall asked me to get up and turn around. I did. His comment to Fred Roos was, “I like her. She’s like a pudgy Barbara Harris.” I was thrilled to be compared to this Tony-winning Broadway comic legend. I didn’t even mind the “pudgy” part.

  I liked both of them, and had to contain my joy when they told me they wanted to represent me in their newly formed company, Compass Management. I left their office in a state of euphoria.

  The next morning we learned the surgeons could not remove the mass from my father’s lung. The mass had fused both lungs together. It was inoperable. Three days later they sent him home. We didn’t have the money to pay for professional help leaving my mother, my sister Carol, and me to tend to him day and night. It was brutal. He had a scar down his chest that went under his rib cage and up his back. My mother dressed his wounds. He was too weak to eat or drink. I would ask him if he wanted me to find a good TV show to watch. He’d say, “No.” None of this would matter; he had a high fever and by the time a week had passed the cancer had spread to his brain. He began hallucinating. One morning he yelled for me to pull the fishing hooks out of his legs. The cancer had compromised his entire being. We took him back to the VA, this time for the awful hospice care they offered. I despised the hospital’s putrid smell, its colors were drab and sickly. My poor father would die in this horrible place. You would think that for those who fought for America excellent health care would be a given. Instead he suffered an agonizing death on dingy, yellowed sheets. In the end he was released from his demons, as were my mother, my sister, and I.

  Years later, I contemplated my father’s death, and thought how different I could have cared for him had it come during my success. I would have gotten him the best of care in a beautiful place with nurses tending to him around the clock.

  After my father died, my career started to take off. Compass Management arranged an interview for me with the Paul Kohner Agency. They liked me enough in the initial meeting to ask me to come in and perform a three-minute dramatic scene and a three-minute comedy scene. I found a scene partner and we performed in the office at the Kohner Agency with Paul Kohner, Carl Forrest, and the rest of the agents seated around us. The next day they called and wanted to sign me. I was ecstatic! The first audition my new agent got me was for a then-popular TV show: Room 222.

  I got the job!

  Four

  High Hopes

  Room 222 was one of the first shows featuring black actors in lead roles. The show was about teachers, students, and tolerance at Walt Whitman High School in Los Angeles. It was very popular and starred Lloyd Haynes, Denise Nicholas, Michael Constantine, and Karen Valentine.

  I got this job on Room 222 on November 22, having just turned twenty-two on August 22 of that year (cue eerie music). The brilliant James L. Brooks created the show and I read for him. He gave me the part of Rhoda Zagor right there in his office. I was so excited I jumped up on the coffee table. He didn’t seem to mind. I would be called back to play this character two more times. In the first episode, my character, Rhoda, only had one line. When the teacher assigns a composition for the class to write, Rhoda raises her hand and asks, “You mean a ‘you tell us what the topic is and we write a composition on it?’”

  I remember this line vividly to this day, because I rehearsed it in front of the mirror for what seemed to be a thousand times, trying to make it funny. I said it fast. I said it slow. I put emphasis on different words. I made my voice go up. I made my voice go down. In the end I realized it was just a line with a lot of one-syllable words. It was as funny as it was going to get. Just say it!

  I was looking forward to having my hair and makeup professionally done. It was something I had dreamed about. The production called me the day before I was scheduled to work and asked me to come in with my hair already done, which I did. Now it was just the professional makeup experience I was looking forward to. When I sat in the chair I waited for what seemed like hours to have my makeup applied and when the makeup artist was finished I looked in the mirror for the first time. I couldn’t believe it. I was orange! I ran to the ladies’ room and looked in the mirror. Yep! I was definitely orange! In fact, because of the shape of my face I very much resembled a small pumpkin. I stopped myself from crying. I pulled myself together and applied my own lipstick because I thought it would make a difference, but it didn’t. I went back to the makeup man who was a tall, older gentleman that people on the set were referring to as “Shotgun.” I told him I thought I looked orange.

  He said, “Get in the chair, we’ll powder you down!”

  Powder me down? How on earth would that help? He gently started powdering my face. I heard crinkling and felt plastic. The powder puff was still in the wrapper.

  “There we go!” he said.

  “All done!”

  I just didn’t get it! I couldn’t understand what was happening. And then I started hearing laughter. People were watching my reaction, and evidently this was some sort of an initiation for actors on their very first job. Once again, I’d been punked! This time by a guy named Shotgun! I tried to be a good sport about it and laughed along with everybody, but I was still concerned about my makeup. Was Shotgun just joking? Was he going to redo my makeup to help me appear more human and less fruitlike? Well that didn’t happen! So much for the glamour of show business!

  If memory serves me correctly, the next two times I played Rhoda on the show the story line involved me consoling my best friend during her breakup with her boyfriend. I had lines that were expository and helped move the story along. I was very proud that I had been asked back to play the character again. And I’m happy to tell you that on those next two shows my skin tone on camera was no longer orange. It was more along the lines of grammar school paste.

  Carol had also been working on Room 222 as an extra. We attended the cast party together. She introduced me to Ed Begley Jr. He was wearing a trick tie that he controlled from his pocket with a switch, making it flip around. I loved him immediately. The first thing he said to me was, “Hi, will you marry me?”

  Honestly, I thought about it for a minute.

  After the cast party that evening, Carol and I went with Ed to his house where he served us tea from an heirloom China tea set. And he also showed us his collection of Betty Boop cartoons. He once took me on a date in his Taylor-Dunn electric car, which in those days was one step above the horse and buggy! Even back then he was an environmentalist and a man with lightning-quick wit and charm.

  One day I was driving in my neighborhood in Hollywood and saw that a crew of workers was in the middle of cutting down a beautiful old tree to (like Joni Mitchell lamented in her song) make way for a parking lot. The tree was 150 years old. I had driven past it many times and always slowed down to dote
on its beauty. It was majestic. And now it was vulnerable. I slowed down and lowered my window. Just as I was about to shout out my protest I heard a voice shouting from the other lane. I looked over—it was Ed in his electric car giving them a piece of his mind. Other cars slowed and did the same. Traffic was backed up in both directions. Of course the bank was victorious and cut the beautiful tree down. Now you can draw money from a lovely ATM that sits where the tree used to live.

  My career continued to chug along. I started getting small parts in television shows like Barefoot in the Park, Nanny and the Professor, and then in Beware the Blob, a low-budget movie directed by Larry Hagman in which my character is eaten by the blob in a drainpipe in Glendale. One of my favorite memories was being cast for a part in Drive, He Said, which was beautifully directed by Jack Nicholson. He cast Lynne as one of the cheerleaders and me as the girlfriend of the basketball team’s manager. Lynne and I drove to Eugene, Oregon, to shoot the movie. Mine was a nonspeaking role. All I had to do was watch a basketball go through a hoop. As a director, Jack is every actor’s dream; enthusiastic, encouraging, complimentary and with you every step of the way. As an actor, he embodies the true definition of “Movie Star”; fascinating, intelligent, and relatable.

  The very first movie I ever worked on was for Roger Corman who was already a legend in the film business. He was the king of low-budget filmmaking, especially the horror genre. Name an actor in Hollywood and he or she most likely worked for him.

  In 1970, Roger Corman cast me in a film that he was producing and directing. It was titled Gas-s-s-s! Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It. It was sandwiched in between two of the three other films he did that year, Scream of the Demon Lover and Angels Die Hard. I was very excited. It was going to be shot on location in Socorro, New Mexico, and Roger was directing it himself. How could I get so lucky?