But Enough About Me: A Memoir

by Burt Reynolds

  I didn’t know anyone in town except Joanne Woodward, whom I’d met at Hyde Park Playhouse doing Tea and Sympathy. She played the teacher and was wonderful. I played Al, an athlete who shows the young gay man how to walk like a jock. I was positive that Joanne had a crush on me, and I thought, This is great, we’ll have a drink after work and we’ll talk about the theater and one thing will lead to another . . .

  “I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Paul Newman,” she said.

  “I can’t wait,” I said.

  I was disappointed but not discouraged. I thought, I’ll blow this guy right out of the tub.

  The next weekend he came up to see her and she introduced us, and I don’t know which one was prettier. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. And he was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met.

  Monday morning she said, “What did you think of Paul?”

  “I think I’m in love,” I said.

  In Manhattan a couple of months later, Joanne invited me to a party at Gore Vidal’s. (Paul was off working somewhere.) I wanted to meet the great writer, of course, but I also looked forward to seeing Joanne because I was still under her spell.

  It was Gore, his companion Howard Austen, Joanne, and me. The dinner started out fine, but as the evening wore on, Gore got drunker and bitchier. For some reason he didn’t like me, and he really sliced me up. I’d always thought I was semi-clever, but I couldn’t handle him. He was saying things like “What do you plan to do, drive a truck or what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well,” he said, “you’re not an actor. Paul’s an actor, but you’re not.”

  I was wounded and angry and almost speechless. All I could manage was to call him an asshole. Brilliant! And I remember thinking, This man is smart. What if he’s right?

  Looking back, I realize that Paul was Gore’s friend, and Gore was annoyed because I was obviously chasing Joanne. He was trying to provoke me into behaving like an idiot in front of her, and he did a wonderful job.

  I got up and went to the kitchen to gather myself. I was standing at the sink running the water when all of a sudden Howard’s arms were around me. I knew it was Howard by the fringed cowboy jacket he was wearing. I’d complimented him on it earlier.

  “I think I love you,” he said.

  “Are you nuts?” I said.

  “You can have the jacket!” he said.

  I picked him up and threw him into the living room. He landed at Gore’s feet. I told Joanne I was leaving and she offered to drive me home.

  In the car, after a long silence, I started to apologize, but she wouldn’t let me.

  “Gore’s a brilliant man,” she said, “but he was very drunk and I think he was testing you.”

  “Well, I flunked,” I said.

  “Oh, you passed,” she said. “Just in a different way.”

  —

  I ATE MOST of my meals at the Horn & Hardart Automat on 42nd Street. One whole wall was basically a big chrome vending machine, with a bunch of little windows, each with an item of prepared food and a coin slot. You’d get change from a woman in a hairnet with rubber tips on her fingers. It was a great place to eat if you were on a budget: It was self-service, so you didn’t have to leave a tip, and nobody tried to hustle you out. A cup of coffee was a dime, and if you were really broke, you could make yourself “tomato soup” out of hot water and ketchup or “lemonade” with the free lemons and ice water.

  To survive in New York, I had the usual actor jobs: washing dishes, waiting tables, making deliveries. I got a job as a bartender, but they fired me on the second night because I poured too heavy. I worked on the docks unloading cargo ships. It was a great job because it kept me in shape. And I liked the guys down there. They were all men’s men, but they never put me down for wanting to be an actor.

  It was an exciting time, and New York was full of surprises for me, some of them pleasant. Elvis Presley came to town for the premiere of his first movie, Love Me Tender (1956). Over the marquee of the Paramount Theatre in Times Square there was a cutout of him that must have been fifty feet tall. People lined up around the block to see the picture and there were barricades to hold back the girls who’d been waiting since early morning to catch a glimpse of the King. I didn’t know Elvis, but we had a mutual friend, so I ended up playing poker with Elvis the day before the opening.

  At one point he asked one of his gofers, “When’s the new Chrysler coming out?”

  “I think today.”

  Elvis handed him a wad of cash and said, “Go get one.”

  “Any special color?”

  “Nah,” Elvis said. “I don’t care.”

  —

  IN 1957, I was in a Broadway revival of Mister Roberts. William Inge, who’d written Picnic and Bus Stop and other plays that I only dreamed of being in, came backstage one night after the show.

  “I’m giving a party later. Why don’t you come by?” he said.

  It was one of those buildings on Riverside Drive where the elevator doors open and you’re in the apartment. I arrived early and there were only two people there: Mr. Inge and this absolutely stunning lady. He introduced us, but I didn’t pay attention to her name. She looked familiar, though I couldn’t remember where I’d seen her.

  She was a mature woman and very beautiful. She had a low, kind of whiskey voice, but she didn’t look old and had this youthful energy about her. And she was funny. By that I mean she not only laughed at my jokes but made me laugh, too. She seemed terribly interested in everything I had to say. I was bowled over by her.

  Other guests arrived, but I didn’t know any of them. They all tried to engage with her, but she wasn’t interested. Whenever I moved away to allow her to talk to someone else, she followed me. At one point I was mixing a cocktail and asked if she’d like one.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “What would you like?”

  “Anything you fix.”

  She was wearing a bright yellow silk blouse with nothing underneath. It would be interesting now, but this was 1957, and it was frightening. I couldn’t stop staring at her beautiful breasts, and she caught me.

  She smiled and said, “My eyes are up here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I was twenty-one and about as sophisticated as, oh, I don’t know . . . Mel Tillis’s cow.

  After the others left, Mr. Inge, the lady, and I sat down on the couch.

  “Why don’t you tell us your life story,” she said.

  I began blabbering. I heard myself talking total nonsense and knew I was boring them to death. It was like I was outside my body, watching this idiot make a complete mess of things. I jumped up and said, “I’m gonna go home now, Mr. Inge. It was nice to see you, and nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  I started for the door and she touched my arm and said, “Why don’t you come home with me?”

  I started to giggle! And then I blurted out, “I’m just down the street at the hotel and I’ll just go on home by myself, but thank you, though.”

  Ten years later I was walking down the street at MGM and there came Mr. Inge and the actor Ralph Meeker.

  Mr. Inge said, “Ralph, you should have been there the night Burt said no to Greta Garbo.”

  Ralph’s eyes widened.

  “Yeah, it’s true,” I said. “I didn’t realize until the next day that it was Garbo!” And Mr. Inge said, “That’s because you never looked at her face.”

  —

  IN THOSE DAYS the Actors Studio was just emerging as a mecca for aspiring actors, but it was so hard to get in, I didn’t have the guts to try. But I started frequenting places where Actors Studio people hung out. Some of them used to go to Childs Restaurant on Broadway. A kind of white-tiled McDonald’s of the day, with actual waitresses and pancake griddles in the window, Childs was a step up from the Automat. A small step.

  I n
ever had the courage to talk to any of the actors, I just watched them. I don’t know what I expected to see. I guess I hoped something would rub off on me.

  There was another guy who always ate alone, and for some reason I felt comfortable approaching him.

  “Hi,” I said, “I’m Buddy Reynolds.”

  He introduced himself as Rip Torn. He asked, “Why do you give a shit about these assholes in black turtlenecks?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I want to be an actor and thought I might learn something.”

  “Buddy, you ain’t gon’ learn nothin’ from these silly motherfuckers.”

  Rip had already been in Hollywood and done film work. He told me that the only reason he became an actor in the first place was to earn enough money to buy a ranch. After studying animal husbandry and drama at the University of Texas, he went to Hollywood in the belief that he’d be an instant star. After kicking around town without much success, he forgot about the ranch and moved to New York to learn his craft.

  Before long, Rip and I were roommates in a cold-water flat in a building on 44th Street we called “Gorpy Towers.” We both enrolled in a voice class to get rid of our Southern accents. We’d take the subway up to 128th Street to see a teacher who gave us diction exercises.

  We’d repeat: “Oh-too-lah-me-da-meeni, oh-too-lah-me-da-meeni, oh-too-lah-me-da-meeni.” Except in Rip’s drawl it came out, “Oh-too-lah-may-dah-may-nay, oh-too-lah-may-dah-may-nay, oh-too-lah-may-dah-may-nay.”

  Well, it sounds a little Texas, I thought, but I’m not gonna say anything. On the subway back downtown, Rip would still be going, “Oh-too-lah-may-dah-may-nay,” and people would be staring. I’d move to the other end of the car and pretend not to know him.

  “Goddamn it,” he’d say, “you ain’t never gon’ be an actor if you’re embarrassed! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  I didn’t answer him, I just moved to another car.

  New York opened up a whole new world. I discovered The Catcher in the Rye and thought it was the greatest book ever written. At first I couldn’t get Rip interested in it—he was kind of lazy about reading. So I started reading it to him, and pretty soon he was reading it to me. That book affected me in so many ways. It told me I wasn’t alone in thinking how screwed up the world was, it gave me the courage to be myself, and it inspired me to write. I wanted to be able to do what J. D. Salinger did. I knew I couldn’t, but I was having a ball. I still have some very badly written pages tucked away somewhere. Over the years I’ve given the book to a lot of people. If they like it, I like them.

  Rip and I spent hours talking about what we hoped to do in the theater. I thought he was the best actor in New York and kept telling him to audition for the Actors Studio. For a long time he didn’t want to hear about it, but I wore him down and he finally said, “If I go, will you go with me?”

  Rip got up to do a scene for Elia Kazan, Lee Strasberg, and three or four top-of-the-line actors, and he was electrifying. But right in the middle of the speech he yelled, “Motherfucker!” and ran out the door.

  Strasberg and Kazan jumped out of their chairs and said, “Get him! We want him!”

  I caught up with him two blocks away. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” I said. “They like you!”

  “They do?”

  “Yes! And they want me to bring you back.”

  “Well, fuck ’em if they don’t want you too.”

  “Fuck me,” I said, and persuaded him to go back.

  Rip finished the scene and they said, “Okay, you’re in.”

  “What about Buddy?” Rip said.

  “Buddy who?” they said.

  “Buddy Reynolds, goddamn it! I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him, you elitist prick assholes.”

  I took him aside and said, “Rip, don’t push your luck. It’s okay. I’ll get in eventually.”

  But Rip was stubborn. He held out, and they finally took me, but only to get him. And I didn’t last long.

  There’s a famous story about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman making Marathon Man (1976). Dustin stayed up all night to be physically and emotionally exhausted for the scene where Olivier tortures him with a dental drill. The classically trained Brit couldn’t believe how much trouble the young American took to make it look real, and after the third take, he said, “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?”

  I’m with Lord Olivier: Just act!

  Frank Capra said something about acting that makes sense to me: “Drama isn’t when the actor cries, it’s when the audience cries.” Amen. I can’t stand to watch actors painfully staring at the rug. And I don’t go in for jargon. One of the things I didn’t get about the Actors Studio was the lingo. Whenever I heard terms like “justification” and “affective memory,” I thought, I wonder how many more classes I’ll have to go to before I can talk like that.

  But I don’t reject that stuff completely. I find myself somewhere in the middle between Method actors and the great movie actors I admire, people like Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, and Gary Cooper. They seemed to be playing not for the back row, but just nice and easy. And fun. And most of all, truthful. That’s what impressed me, and that’s the path I’ve tried to follow. Sure, the Method is there, if the Method is where you reach back and call upon something in your own life, but you shouldn’t abuse it. Hal Needham will always be in my heart, and I’ll use that to reach a certain emotion, but I use it respectfully. Otherwise you’re dishonoring a love.

  After I dropped out of the Actors Studio, I went to see the acting teacher Sanford Meisner. He was gruff with me and I didn’t like it. But he had an assistant named Wynn Handman who was a gentleman. Wynn had directed me at Hyde Park, so I went to him and said, “If you ever go off on your own, I’m going with you.” Before long he had his own students, and I was one of them.

  We practiced all kinds of exercises in Wynn’s class. One day he asked me to go outside and come back in on cue. “You’re coming home from Korea and they surprise you,” he said. I went downstairs and waited a long time before he called me back. When I came in, Wynn was sitting in the dark, smoking his pipe. I didn’t see anybody else. Then the whole class jumped out and yelled, “SURPRISE!” They were laughing and patting me on the back, saying how glad they were to see me, and I got angry. I felt they were not respecting what I’d been through in the war. I went so over the top that I chased everybody out, including Wynn! I had no control over it.

  In another class Wynn complimented me on my laugh, saying it was “organic” and that it came from my heart rather than my head. The other students wanted to know how I turn it on. I told them that I don’t know how to turn it off!

  “But where does it come from?” they persisted.

  I told them that it comes from someplace deep down, and that there were times in my life when I shouldn’t have been laughing—at a funeral or some such—and I had to push it down and tell myself, You can’t laugh now. So when it came out, it really came out.

  To this day, whenever a student of mine goes to New York, I tell them to go see Wynn, who’s in his nineties and still teaching. They take classes with him and come back singing his praises.

  —

  BEFORE LONG, Rip was the hottest young actor in New York. Everybody was talking about him. Whenever anyone told him how wonderful he was, he’d say, “Now don’ bullshit me, man!”

  He made his Broadway debut as Tom Junior in the original cast of Sweet Bird of Youth, directed by Kazan, with Paul Newman and Rip’s then future wife, Geraldine Page. I’d sit in the back row at rehearsals and Rip was amazing. When he took the stage, he took the stage.

  At that time there were probably a dozen dramas running on Broadway and the acting was dazzling. I was lucky that older, established actors let me hang around with them, people like Jack Lemmon and Mildred Dunnock. Sometimes they even let me eavesdrop on their conversation
s about acting. I watched them work and observed how they handled themselves in public.

  It was magical. You could go into a rehearsal of any play on Broadway and see great things. Having been a jock, I’d learned to keep my mouth shut and watch, but at the same time I was a pretty good mimic. One day I’d be Jack Lemmon and the next day I’d be somebody else. I tried to take the best from the actors I saw. I would constantly ask myself, “Why is this person so damned good?” I finally realized it was because they worked so damned hard.

  Tennessee Williams was around the theater in those days and was always friendly. He once asked me what I was doing and why I wasn’t in Sweet Bird of Youth.

  “Well,” I said, “my roommate’s in the play.”

  “Who’s your roommate?”

  “Rip Torn.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Rip went on to do interesting work on the stage, in films, and on television, but I don’t think he fulfilled his early promise. He never got the one part that would have made everybody go, “My God, look at this guy!” For that I am truly sorry, because Rip is a loyal friend who believed in me when nobody else did. He kept saying, “You gon’ be great, Buddy, you gon’ be just great.”

  I’d be so happy to see him if he walked through the door right now.

  —

  IN 1961, I auditioned for Look, We’ve Come Through by Hugh Wheeler, produced by Saint-Subber and directed by José Quintero. I walked onstage and began reading. Quintero was in the back row, saying, “Read it again.” I read it again and heard him say, “Read it again.” I did it three more times and then walked down to the front of the stage and yelled into the darkness, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?”

  “THAT!” he said. “You’ve got the part!”

  The cast was full of good young actors. I hadn’t met any of them before, but I’d seen Zohra Lampert in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and thought she was terrific. Collin Wilcox went on to play the girl who falsely claims she was raped in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).