In Pieces

by Sally Field

  Not knowing what else to do, I bought a stack of spiral notebooks, sharpened a handful of pencils, and with the best of half-hearted intentions, signed up for a few classes at San Fernando Valley State College—which at the time didn’t even have a theater arts department. And who knows what I might have discovered there had it not been for that one morning in early May when the phone rang just as I was leaving for classes. The voice on the other end of the line said, “Pack your bags, Sally, ABC picked up the show and they want you in New York by the end of the week.” All at once, I took both feet out of my childhood and stepped onto that new path.

  Five days later, I was sitting in the first-class section of a TWA Boeing 707 heading for New York City, the Plaza hotel, and the ABC Upfronts. I’d never been on an airplane before, never traveled outside of California (not really), and it was such a major moment in my life that I remember exactly what I was wearing: a little white hat with blue cloth forget-me-nots pinned to one side and a new baby-blue suit, purchased with the money I’d saved from the pilot. It had large white buttons down the front of the cropped jacket, worn over a matching, slightly A-line skirt, a skirt that Baa had shortened the night before. She was now buckled up in the aisle seat beside me, and as the plane began to lift off, away from the life I had always known, I took my mother’s hand. Radiating with the same excitement that I was feeling, she said, “Here we go, Sal,” and I knew she meant more than just the trip to New York.

  No one bothered to tell me what the Upfronts were and I didn’t ask. I didn’t know I’d have one day of rehearsal before finding myself onstage at Radio City Music Hall in front of hundreds of station owners from across the country, all affiliated with the network—the affiliates. Advertising representatives from companies like Procter & Gamble, Westinghouse, and the Ford Motor Company were also sprinkled through the crowd, giving them the opportunity to purchase airtime on the season’s new shows up front—thus the name. I went from a suspended daze to performing skits with Barbara Parkins from Peyton Place, David Janssen of The Fugitive, and the cast of The Big Valley, including the brilliant Barbara Stanwyck—whom I must have met, though that part hasn’t stayed in my head. I’m sure I was respectful but vague. Ms. Stanwyck was an actress I greatly admired, and despite the fact that I’d grown up in a show business family, I’d met very few actors in my life and never anyone I admired—except Beulah Bondi, whom I was thrilled to find sitting alone in the living room of the Libbit house one day when I was about eleven, though what she was doing there, I still don’t know. But now I was eighteen, in New York City, the star of a new television series, and about to walk onto the enormous stage at Radio City Music Hall. Awe was something I couldn’t allow myself to feel, not in the slightest. My carefully learned survival system was securely in place so I wasn’t fragile or unsure, wasn’t quaking in my boots—which would have been completely understandable. I saw what I needed to see, did what I needed to do, and blocked from my brain anything that felt overwhelming, which unfortunately included Barbara Stanwyck.

  Onstage with lovely Barbara Parkins.

  Approximately eight weeks and a handful of surfing lessons later, production began and I walked through the looking glass. On one side was my life, my real life as it existed, and on the other side was a greatly altered world. And my God, how I loved the girl on that side of the glass, loved her ease around people, her trust in them. She was pure and untarnished. My twin sister, who looked very much like me, was a part of me, and yet was not me. For thirty-two episodes—and many more weeks than that—her house, her friends, her family, and her perfect pink-and-yellow bedroom were mine.

  What Gidget did during the day, I did during the day; her life was my life and the pages of that life would come to me in advance so I could read where my life was going. I knew next week I would have a crush on a handsome schoolteacher, or be thrust into auto shop at school, showing a group of adorable boys that I was as good as they were, while being appealingly inept. Or I’d be caught in a misunderstanding with my family—her family, not mine.

  The truth is, Gidget’s “other side of the glass” world was a one-dimensional illusion with laugh tracks, dealing only superficially with the life of a teenage girl and her widowed father—a world where his wife, Gidget’s mother, remained curiously unmentioned. But it didn’t matter to me. It was like feeding a three-course meal to a starving person, and the main course of that meal was Frances (aka Gidget) Lawrence’s father, Russell. A father who was safe and caring, a father whom she felt so completely comfortable being near she could actually ignore, whereas he never ignored her—very different from either of the fathers on my side of the glass. Whenever I stepped through, there he was: Gidget’s father, played by Don Porter.

  From the first moment we met, Don put his protective arm around me, while at the same time always treating me with respect as if I were a weathered professional, which he was and I wasn’t. He never seemed upset that I, a rank newcomer, had most of the page count in every episode, and if he had a problem with the lack of interesting story lines for his character, I never felt his dissatisfaction. He just quietly watched out for me. And in return, I never tuned out, never had a foggy moment. Well, not many. Occasionally we’d have a table read for the next episode to be shot, which meant that all the actors—plus the writers, producers, and director—would sit around a long table and read out loud that “hot off the presses” screenplay. It was the only time the fog rolled in, making my mind a total blank. I’d look at words I used every day, simple words, and not be able to remember what they were. How Don did it, I don’t know—maybe I was easier to read than the script—but he always made sure we sat together so that he could whisper the word to me before I fumbled or stumbled or mispronounced it so badly that everyone roared with laughter. The laughs that came out of the show were great, Gidget’s laughs, but this laughter felt as though it came from the other side of the looking glass, aimed directly at little Doodle. Don was my safety net, a constant and quiet friend. And in this new territory I could barely react. I never thanked him, not really. I wish I had.

  Most of the day I was so joyously buoyant that I couldn’t sit down, and whether she was rummaging through the kitchen or running up the stairs or pacing around while talking on her pink princess phone, Gidget never sat still either. Occasionally she’d flop down on her bed, sticking her feet in the air, but other than that, she and I were constantly on the move. As I look back on it now, I see my eighteen-year-old self soaking in the information that everyone had to give: the other actors, the director, and the ubiquitous crew, who for me have always been an important part of acting in front of a camera—something I was just learning at the time. I was enveloped in the feeling of not being alone, of being surrounded by people all working toward the same goal, which really was as simple as getting through the day’s work with enough skill to be asked back the following day. We were all on the same team.

  From the barely dawn morning, when I’d drive onto the Columbia lot, until long after the sun had set, I lived in Gidget’s world. Then I’d climb back into my newly purchased yellow MGB, carefully work the frighteningly unfamiliar stick shift, and drive back through the looking glass into Sally’s world—where my feet hurt so bad I thought of putting them in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts, the way Aunt Gladys always did. Unlike Gidget’s bright, cheery home with a welcoming father, I lived in a dank, unfamiliar house with a family who didn’t look like themselves anymore. My sister towered over me, giving the impression of a soon-to-be-gorgeous sixteen-year-old, rather than the bewildered twelve-year-old she really was. Jocko seemed less physically changed, other than his hair thinning on top and graying on the sides, although if he was not off doing a personal appearance at a fair or rodeo or God knows what, then he moved through the house like he weighed four hundred pounds, as opposed to his lithe two-hundred-something. But when I flip through the photos of that time, it’s the changes in my mother that are hard to look at, that hurt to see, even now. The combina
tion of vodka and swallowed emotions had thickened her body and bloated her delicate face, making her look like a biscuit rising in the hot oven. I always wondered if unconsciously she didn’t want to be beautiful anymore and had just closed up shop.

  When I was thirteen I read T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” while lying on the floor next to the bookshelves in the Libbit house and one line, “rats’ feet over broken glass” has gone round and round in my head ever since. That was the feeling hovering throughout this house, as if there were something horrific hidden in the basement, perhaps a dead body; except we had no basement. And it was to this “rats’ feet over broken glass” house—long before the show went on the air—that fan magazine photographers started showing up on prearranged Saturdays with assignment editors in tow. Screen Gems needed publicity for the unknown actor starring in their new ABC series, and whether for Screenland or Photoplay or Teen Talk, the task was to create a cute two-or three-page story, loosely based on the interview I was required to do during the week. Still wearing the wardrobe, I’d drive from the studio to Scandia or the Brown Derby for lunch and in Gidget’s lime-green pedal pushers I’d proceed to have an overly animated conversation with the weary, uninterested writer who’d been given the assignment. But no matter how I had answered their questions, always careful to paint an appropriate home life, what was ultimately printed barely resembled anything I’d said, resulting in stories entitled “Gidget at the Crossroads,” or “The Night Sally Field Proved She Was a Woman,” or “Do It If You Must but He’ll Hate You in the Morning.”

  As I look at the faded, brownish pictures of my family scattered through these magazines it makes me almost physically ill. We’re all walking toward the camera with our arms around each other and Jocko is in the middle, smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, or we’re leaning on a fence and he’s looking down at me while I hold his hand as though it were my idea. In all of them my sweet sister floats around the edges, just wanting to be included, and if Baa is in the picture, then she looks uninvolved and blank-eyed. In one awkward shot, Jocko is lying on the floor with his knees bent, but instead of demanding that I stand in his hands so he can lift me over his head, he wants me to stand on his knees, though for what reason, I don’t know. Princess, trying to be helpful, is standing next to me, bracing my unsteady attempt, and we’re all laughing—or what looks like laughing. They’re the same kind of stiffly posed photos that were taken of our “happy little group” when I was six, except Ricky’s not present and—as hard as he may try—Jocko’s not the focus anymore. I am.

  A happy family, fan magazine style.

  Then early Monday morning, off to the other side of the looking glass I’d go.

  If you were an actor working on the Columbia lot in 1965, whether in a feature film or on a new or returning television series, you went upstairs to the makeup and hair department located on the second floor of a three-story building directly across from most of the soundstages. Instead of every show having its own separate expandable makeup trailer—like it is today—at that time, all the actors with morning calls, from all the different shows, went “through the works” together. Every morning as the sun was inching out of night, I entered the department, where it was brightly lit, buzzing with activity, and smelling like bacon and eggs from the local coffee shop. Scurrying around were eager young people with the lowly title of second second assistant director who patiently took the orders, then delivered the food.

  Since Gidget needed very little time in the chair, other actors were always there before me. Barbara Eden—who was working on I Dream of Jeannie—seemed to live there, because every time I stepped in, there she was, in exactly the same chair, singing most of the time, and I never saw her anywhere else. Wonderful Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched was usually there, sitting quietly in the corner, not singing. But then Elizabeth didn’t need to do anything, not sing or even talk. To me, she was perfect without doing one single thing and remained that way. (Later the cast of The Partridge Family and The Monkees would be moving in and out of the big barbershop-type chairs, but I was on a different show by then and don’t want to get ahead of myself.) Everyone would eventually depart to their separate soundstages, which were lined up in a row opposite the building. Only Gidget’s set was located away from the others on one of the two stages across from the drive-on gate, next to the parking lot. And that’s where we spent most of the day, Gidget and I. Except for the day or two each week when we’d shoot on location.

  The majority of the days off the lot were spent working at the Columbia Ranch, a huge parcel of land sitting in the heart of Burbank and filled with various faux neighborhoods and city streets. It also had a dreadful fake beach called the Berm, consisting of a man-made lake filled with dark, stagnant water and surrounded by tons of coarse brown sand—not like the sand on a real Malibu beach, more like the stuff they use to make cement. As we’d sit in the dirt with the cameras rolling, acting as though it were another happy day at the beach, it felt slightly ridiculous to be looking out at the flat, lifeless sludge and yelling “Surf’s up,” then grabbing our boards and running off camera where everyone would pile up out of view of the lens, desperately trying to keep from stepping into the water, which seriously did not smell right.

  The reverse shots, the ones revealing where we were running—toward the ocean—were filmed during the few days when we actually went to one of the beaches in Santa Monica or Malibu where I’d spent so much of my life. On those days—as few as they might have been—I’d vibrate with the same excitement I felt when I was a kid, knowing we were going to spend the day frolicking in the ocean. But the ocean I’d always known in the Augusts of my childhood was very different from the one I met that November day when we first filmed on the beach. It was freezing, both the water and the air. Everyone was wearing gloves, ski hats, and heavy down jackets. Everyone except for me, that is, and of course the handful of surfers—real surfers—who clustered around totally unfazed by the weather, the cold water, or the waves. While I clung to the large terry-cloth robe that had been placed over my shoulders, most of the true surfers were so eager to jump in the water that they’d barely registered theirs, abandoning them immediately. White terry-cloth piles ended up scattered around the sand.

  I can’t say the swell was especially big—three to five feet—but to me the waves looked huge. Adding insult to injury, this was not a “point break” like the easy rolling waves of Mondos Beach above Oxnard, where I’d been taken many times by Darryl, the surfing coach. This was a “beach break,” and Zuma, for God’s sake. Notoriously difficult to ride. While I stood there shivering, hoping they’d decide to shoot something else, the assistant director held up his bullhorn and screeched, “EVERYONE IN THE WATER.” And since all the other surfers were either paddling out or standing knee-deep already, he basically meant me. Let’s be honest: Even though I’d become a strong, confident swimmer and was one hell of a boogie boarder, surfing was never going to be my sport, with or without Darryl’s instructions. I didn’t even have a car before I began to work, and the huge board, which weighed more than I did, was the same size as my new MGB, so how would I have gotten the thing to the beach?

  Just in case someone on earth had missed his last message, the assistant director blasted another “IN THE WATER!” So off went the robe and into the icy water went the girl. Since it was supposed to look like a sunny summer day, no one wore wet suits of any kind, and the water was so cold the lower half of my body instantly went numb. There I was in the water, sitting on a board the size of the PT-109, trying to power a stiff blue body that barely knew how to maneuver this craft under the best of circumstances. I mean, really, what the hell were they thinking? Were they just testing to see if I was serious about this whole acting thing? Then again, was this acting or a study in humiliation? Or is acting always walking on the edge, always flirting with the possibility of falling flat on your face, or of wiping out and losing the top of your bathing suit? I know that the latter op
tion was going through my mind when I heard the faint but unmistakable bullhorn voice shriek, “TAKE THE NEXT WAVE!” and before I could even look to see if there was indeed a wave to take, I heard the heart-stopping word: “ROLLING!”

  Even now, as I remember this moment in the cold Pacific so long ago, it’s not the sound of the waves I hear, or the screeching bullhorn; it’s the sound of Jocko’s mocking laugh when I’d fail to dive into the water or flip over the pole as he demanded. I hear his repeated shouts, “Do it! Arms straight, toes pointed. Don’t think! GO!” And I’d stand there, with my toes gripping the pine platform, frozen, feeling worthless and afraid. Though frozen for sure, I was no longer on that high dive, my toes gripping nothing but the edge of yesterday.

  Without hesitation, I put my forehead on the board and began paddling furiously, pumping my legs up and down at the same time, trying to inch my big board forward, now aware of the wave forming behind me. Just when I thought I’d failed, had missed the wave and the shot would continue on without me, Mickey Dora, the champion surfer who was by my side, pushed my gigantic board in front of the wave, exactly where I needed to be. When I tentatively started to stand, Mickey grabbed my hand as he expertly maneuvered his board beside me. Small though it might have been, we rode the entire wave until finally we slid gently to the shore and the flabbergasted crew began to cheer. I don’t know how many more waves I caught, or Mickey tossed me into—it didn’t matter. I’d found something new. I was terrified, yes, but instead of letting some other part of myself perform the task while the rest of me floated away, I had held the reins and fearlessly, without thinking, told myself to just go.