by Sally Field
I was stuck. I desperately did not want to be the joke of the Golden Globes but I was unable to pull the pin and toss out a big fat no. So I finally said, “Okay, I’ll do it… but I won’t wear the habit.” By God, if I had to fly across the Cocoanut Grove, it would be as Sally Field, not the Flying Nun. Which basically made no sense at all.
With my hair in Shirley Temple ringlets and Steve holding my hand, I went to the ceremony wearing a dress that Baa had made for me at the last minute. Then in the midst of the show, and without any rehearsal, I was connected to the damn wires by a man who assured me that he’d flown Mary Martin in Peter Pan billions of times, and without warning, he nonchalantly hoisted me up like a flag on the Fourth of July. And off I went.
Suddenly I was sailing across the historic grove wearing a pink taffeta culottes outfit and heading toward the stage doing what felt like forty-five miles an hour. Directly in front of me, the man onstage widened his stance, bracing for the catch, and at that moment, I realized I was about to make physical contact with John Wayne, one of the most legendary actors who has ever lived. As I got closer to the Duke, I began nodding a polite hello, like we were entering an elevator together. Holy Mother of God, let this night be over. After the catch was accomplished with a thud, he held me in midair while I opened the envelope to read that the best newcomer of the year was Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate. Big applause. Dustin comes to the stage to give his speech of appreciation, as Mr. Wayne steps awkwardly to the side with an armful of smiling me. The happy winner leaves the stage to return to his seat, at which time Mr. Wayne proceeds to put me on the ground (or what would have been the ground if my feet could have touched it, which they could not). Thinking our work together is done, he turns to leave while I begin to dog-paddle my feet. Foolishly, I then look out at the forest of faces, the entire industry, and quickly grab the back of his tuxedo jacket to hitch a ride, pleading, “Oh, Mr. Wayne, Mr. Wayne.” If I’d had a gun I would’ve shot myself, but with the way things were going, it would’ve bounced off the harness and hit some innocent bystander.
And waiting for me at our table in the back sat Steve, smiling sweetly through it all, looking like a young Steve McQueen to my insane Baby Jane.
Right after The Flying Nun pilot was picked up, I’d moved from my first apartment in Encino to one in Malibu, just down from the Colony. It was in a twelve-unit complex standing on tall wooden stilts, like telephone poles, allowing the waves to roll under the building at high tide, vibrating the floor and tingling your feet. When production started in June of ’67 my MGB started racking up mileage as I drove to and from work every day—PCH before the sun came up and PCH long after it went down.
I remember dragging myself home one night, relieved to be out of the scratchy wool for a few hours, and when I opened the door to my apartment there on the sofa sat Steve, happily sifting a large brick of grass through the sieve I used to drain spaghetti. Like most of our generation, he had found marijuana, and on the coffee table before him was a small mountain of freshly cleaned weed, waiting to eventually be dumped into the two-foot-tall Brach’s candy jar standing empty on the floor. He’d push and plead and criticize, but I rarely participated in either the cleaning or the smoking of it. I told myself it was because I had so little time and that frolicking through the night, eating Hostess Ding Dongs with abandon, was something I didn’t need. That I had a job. Which was all true but in reality, I didn’t know how to frolic and Steve did.
During the day while I was at work, Steve would often rescue Princess from her life in the Valley, bringing her to the Malibu apartment to get her away from our incoherent mother, who was in the process of falling apart, and her father, with his freak show of false posturing. Jocko’s career was down to an occasional low-paying personal appearance, and soon he disappeared, abruptly departing with one of the many women in his life, leaving me to pay the rent on a small apartment in the Valley for my broken mother and little sister.
Now fourteen, and almost six feet tall, Princess ran wild like an escaped puppy frantically sniffing and peeing everywhere with no one to grab her collar. One moment she seemed like my comrade, and the next she felt like a responsibility I didn’t know how to accept. But unless I took her to work with me—which I did frequently—I wouldn’t see her. Too often I’d drag myself into the apartment late in the evening, and everywhere I looked would be the remnants of the fun-filled day that Steve and my sister had enjoyed. Sand still on their feet, they’d sit on the balcony smoking a joint, and no matter what I said—or didn’t say—my “adult supervisor” tone always gave me away. I began to feel like the boring grumpy ant to their happy-go-lucky grasshoppers.
Steve really needed to have a life of his own, separate from mine, with his own identity. But how do two people grow up together, build strength in their own legs, when they’re always leaning on each other? How could he find his place in the world when my life kept sucking him in, making it hard for him to take those first wobbly steps to begin a craft or career? Maybe that’s part of the reason why he’d lose interest in everything after his initial burst of enthusiasm. He’d won a track scholarship and though he had real talent, he was impatient with the coaches, aggravated by their rules and the mindless, repetitive tasks he was forced to do, so he stopped going to practice.
As I look back right now, I realize that it was all of those mindless, repetitive tasks I was forced to endure day after day, the getting up and doing every scene the best I could, over and over, that gave me a kind of “miles in the saddle.” They strengthened muscles not located in my body but in my heart—muscles not easy to access and certainly not fun. But easy is overrated and fun is extremely relative.
As that year crawled away, month after month, summer somehow becoming fall, I began to change for reasons I couldn’t name, other than the fact that I was working all day then coming home and instantly turning into Ebenezer Scrooge. And when, in a moment of anger, Steve told me with a dismissive air that this “acting stuff” was nothing, that anyone could do it, that he could do it too if he wanted, the self-righteous out I needed presented itself. Midway through that first year of the Nun, I found myself alone. I was without Steve and my brother and my mother. I didn’t drink, as Baa did, so I ate. And for the first time in my life I wanted food, over all else.
I would drive to work early in the morning, work all day, drive home at night, eat, and go to sleep. Next day, I would wake up before it was light, drive to work, work all day, drive home, eat, sleep. And on Saturdays, I would go into the recording studio or do a photo layout, then fill the rest of the day cooking and eating, trying to drown my loneliness in a vat of spaghetti with gobs of meat sauce and a whole chocolate cake, unable to stop eating even when I was in physical pain. And always I was alone, hiding in a closet of food.
I’d stick my fingers down my throat, longing for the relief of puking, but get nothing except a hacking, impotent gag. Maybe that belongs under the category of “God works in mysterious ways.” I’d never heard of an eating disorder—no one talked about such things in the late sixties. But if I’d found the ability to regurgitate all the self-loathing I’d shoveled into myself, perhaps I would have continued down that destructive highway. Luckily, I didn’t.
Instead, I suffered for days after each binge, the following morning being the worst. After sleeping ten or eleven hours, I would wake in agony, my entire body swollen and inflamed, actually sore to the touch. On Mondays, I’d go on a starvation diet of grapefruit and eggs or would eat nothing but cucumbers for a week. And when that wasn’t enough, I started visiting the famous Louise Long as well. I’m not sure what Ms. Long’s technique was called, but massage it wasn’t. In the wee hours, before my 6:30 or 7 a.m. call, I’d drive to her place in the Valley, which was always overflowing with actresses (some famous, most not) all looking to get the crap pulverized out of them before heading off to work. In the overly heated little house, Louise or one of her trained associates would move from one sheet-covered table to anoth
er and violently pound on the naked bodies of all the women who had come looking for instant slenderizing or atonement—or both. For months, my black-and-blue anatomy looked like it had been in an automobile accident, so I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t wearing Gidget’s bathing suits anymore. But it didn’t matter how much I got smacked around, or how many days I lived on hard-boiled eggs. My weekend benders were winning, and soon the press started reporting on my “baby fat,” visible to every columnist I plopped down next to during lunch. My face was so round that my bangs looked shorter.
Finally, I called the one doctor I knew, Dr. Duke, who gave me a prescription for the only solution he had to offer—diet pills. Straight Dexedrine. Now, that was a horse of a different color. I was told to take one every morning, accompanied by a maximum-strength diuretic, wait thirty minutes, and lo and behold—a jubilant, cotton-mouthed, babbling idiot who had to pee every two seconds. Hot damn… summer in the city! Nirvana. I’d found true happiness. It didn’t matter that by the end of the day I was so exhausted I could barely drive home, or that the happiness was by then nowhere in sight. Every morning I’d jump out of bed, still fuzzy from a night when my eyes never closed, and dutifully take the mud-green capsule waiting on my night table. Then I’d wait to feel the rockets fire. Five minutes and counting, four, three, two, one, and liftoff. On to the set, ready to film the day’s work.
One day, when I was doing a scene with all the other nuns, my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely think. All my focus was on the fact that I couldn’t lift the teacup from its saucer, take a sip, then put the cup back down without noticeably fumbling around. I found myself having to use both hands to lift the saucer and cup together as a unit, which made everyone look at me as though I’d lost my mind (and at that moment I had lost my mind). I couldn’t concentrate on the work, on anything except my hands. I had most definitely lost weight, because with the chemical jet fuel coursing through me all day I ate nothing, not even cucumbers. Nevertheless, I knew I had to stop. Acting wouldn’t let me travel down that road. It reached in and grabbed me, steering me away from cliffs I couldn’t see. I was an actor and that had always given me more than these chemicals ever could. It had given me a language with myself, which unfortunately at this time I was not speaking.
The Monkees television show was being shot on the same lot as The Flying Nun—on Gidget’s old stage, actually. I didn’t watch the show, but I knew who they were and the enormous appetite the country seemed to have for them. Many times, I’d spot a couple of them wandering onto my set, or I’d look up to see two of their faces grinning down as they sat on the wooden catwalk high above, legs swinging off the edge. They never seemed to be befriending me or even flirting. They treated me like I was a private joke between them, as if they knew something I didn’t, like perhaps I had a Kick Me sign pinned to my back. But I wanted them to like me, wanted to be comrades, maybe more. I wanted to feel as I did when Elizabeth Montgomery would visit, stepping through the padded vault-like door that separated our two stages, pulling up a chair and watching for a while. Or the way I did the few times I ventured into her Bewitched world, her beautiful face lighting up when she saw me coming.
One day, three of the Monkees suddenly crammed into my tiny, round-domed camper of a dressing room, located on the stage only steps from the set. Their unexpected visit must have made the two-wheeler look like a clown car, loaded to the brim with a bunch of colorfully dressed guys and a nun. They sat there staring at me, making jokes among themselves, egging each other on. Then, with his British twang, Davy said, “I’ll bet you give good head.” Uproarious laughter shook the tin room, while I sat on my hands, a stupid grin glued to my face.
Somewhere inside I had an inkling that these guys were trying to fit into the cocky suit of clothes handed to them when The Monkees went on the air, but I couldn’t see who they might be underneath. Instead I felt red in the face and began to sweat, not because of what Davy had said, but because I had no idea what it meant. I knew what a blowjob was, but I’d never heard it called “giving head.” I simply didn’t know what they were talking about. I did know I was being humiliated—or that seemed to be the desired effect, and that vocabulary I understood.
This very moment, I believe, is why I began to talk like the proverbial truck driver, slowly learning how to out-potty-mouth anyone who tried to embarrass me with sexual words or innuendos. Eventually I was able to take vulgar to a whole new level, thus winning the game of “let’s corner the girl.” But at twenty, sitting with these guys, I went blank. Couldn’t have found a witty reply if my life depended on it. So, I laughingly tried to fake it by saying, “Yes, sir. You bet,” sounding like my version of Marjorie Main. Where was the easy, funny, capable part of me? The girl I was on the set all day. I despised this stuttering, anxious person now sinking into the shabby love seat, loathed her sadness and fumbling inability, which made me sick to my stomach. It never occurred to me then that it might be their behavior that made me want to retch, not my own.
Luckily, there was a sharp bang on the door, followed by a muffled voice saying, “Hey, guys, we need you,” and off they went, asking me to visit their set, conspiratorially adding that they wanted to show me something. “You bet,” I repeated, the only two words I could get out.
During a break the following day, I boldly told the assistant director that I was going visiting, ignoring the immediate rise of his eyebrows. I wanted to take my cornette off, to let my hair down and just be the girl I was, but I knew that if I did, the hairdresser would have to twist it up again while the company waited to continue the day’s work, so I walked across the lot looking very much like the Flying Nun.
Stage 6 had been transformed from the conservative upper-middle-class home of the midsixties—Gidget ’s set—to the multicolored, pseudo-psychedelic world of the late sixties—the Monkees’. And as I stood awkwardly in the back, half-hidden in the clouds of “bee’s smoke” being puffed out by several machines, I recognized former members of the Gidget crew, until one by one, heads began to turn in my direction, greeting me with a smile or a “long time no see” expression. When Davy, who was standing on the set, noticed the minor hubbub, he moved to me, took my hand, and led me through the side door to the parking lot outside, telling the assistant director to get him when the shot was ready.
Butted up against the stage, taking up four or five parking spots, was a windowless concrete-block vault with a meat-locker door, and as Davy pulled the handle it snapped open with a pop, releasing a blast of cold air, bright pink lights, and a fog of pot smoke. Choosing not to walk through the entrance sideways, I took hold of the edges of my hat, pulled them down under my chin, and stepped into the bunker to find a smiling Peter Tork leaning back on several of the brightly colored pillows that were piled on the ground everywhere. I wanted to look nonchalant, like this was no big deal, so I plopped down on the extra-large pillow in the middle of the square room, and after a beat, Peter (I think) asked if I wanted a hit off the joint being passed around. When I declined, they came back, almost in unison, “Ah, come on. You’re the Flying Nun, aren’t you?” Uproarious laughter again. My God, they certainly enjoyed one another’s company.
While the two boys seemed to be talking in code to each other, I sat there, frozen, unable to speak. Were they sending me signals that I was just too stupid to read? Was I expected to do something, say something funny or smart or biting? If I could, maybe then they’d like me. Maybe they already liked me and this was how you were supposed to show it. Was this how people flirted with each other? Perched on my big pillow, I looked around, smiling but in agony, desperately wanting out of this concrete cell, unable to make my mouth move. Finally, the vault door was yanked open and Jon, The Monkees’ AD (who’d also been Gidget’s) stepped inside. He took one look at me perched on my big pillow and immediately burst out laughing, then moved in for a hug—hard to do with my hat always in the way. After taking a long pull off the joint, he held the smoke in his lungs while letting me
know that I was needed back at the convent, ASAP. Glory hallelujah.
Since the Nun was considered a bona fide hit, which Gidget had not been, the amount of focus—not to mention energy—the studio directed toward me had significantly increased. They pushed me to do more publicity and for the first time to appear on talk shows, which I tried to do, but when I did them I was visibly terrified and sounded like a blithering idiot. Afterward, the studio was quick to let me know that they thought I’d been dreadful—something I already knew. They began to casually suggest I stop wearing “mod” short skirts and bright colors when out in public, even though I, like every other twenty-year-old female, wanted to look like Twiggy—which was never going to happen, no matter what I wore.
Not long after my visit to the Monkees’ bong shelter, I received word on the set that Jackie Cooper—vice president of program development for Screen Gems—wanted to see me in his office, a five-minute walk from my stage. The moment his secretary announced my arrival into the intercom, the adjacent door flew open and Mr. Cooper—who was now in his late forties but still looked like the nine-year-old boy starring opposite Wallace Beery in The Champ—came striding through with his hand extended. I didn’t know it at the time, but Jackie had been instrumental in the studio’s decision to hire me as Gidget, ultimately launching my career. Yet I’d never met him, nor had I ever been asked to dash over to the executive building between shots. In my heart, I worried that this meeting was a reaction to my being seen hanging out with the Monkees and, while it was okay for the guys to inspire some bad-boy gossip, it was not okay for me, the Flying Nun.