And then it was over. He had won the California primary. When a journalist friend called me in New York at 2:30 A.M., woke me up, and gave me the news that Bobby had been shot, I couldn’t believe it. Another Kennedy? What was going on? Where could I or anyone else who desired change put our trust, our efforts, our hopes for the future? Was there an international conspiracy? Had we really become the Wild West?
The assassination of both Kennedys and Martin Luther King pierced the liberal patriotic vision that I had grown up with. Who was there now? Whom could I believe in?
After Bobby was assassinated, George McGovern called me. I remembered Bobby telling me that George McGovern was not just a decent man in the Senate; he was the only decent man there.
George said someone had to pick up the mantle of the Kennedy legacy and take it even further. He said he was going to be the one. He would lead the Kennedy delegation to the convention.
That was 1968 in Chicago. My introduction to the politics of American fascism rolled into gear. Joe McCarthy was nothing compared with this.
A journalist friend of mine arrived in Chicago earlier than the rest of us. He called me in alarm.
“It’s a police state here,” he said. “Armed guards everywhere, snipers on the roofs. It’s like Mayor Daley is spoiling for a fight.”
I took what he said with a grain of salt and proceeded to continue my education about convention rules, etc.
Then I arrived in Chicago myself. The mood was like I imagined a militaristic banana republic to be. My friend was right. There were surly cops everywhere, trying to provoke arguments. Cops looked down from every rooftop with their rifles aimed at civilians below. Why?
I sat next to Rosie and Rafer in my delegation. They were there to keep Bobby’s legacy alive. I had a small, portable TV set in my purse which Rosie and Rafer perched on a platform close to us so that everyone could see.
Because of that TV set, we saw what was happening in downtown Chicago, and the cop goons on the convention floor did not like that one bit. They knew the TV belonged to me, so they took to standing in front of me as I sat on my chair. They literally shoved their crotches in my face until Rosie and Rafer stood up, towered over them, and glared into their faces. Then they’d attempt to remove my set from its perch. Again Rosie and Rafer rose in intimidation.
The history of the ’68 convention is well documented, but from my point of view it was a time that marked the distinction between the humane practice of democracy and its opposite. Violence within our borders was institutionalized. I remembered what Khrushchev had said when he visited the Can-Can set. He said he and the Russians wouldn’t need to lift a finger, because America would bury itself.
Many of my friends in the anti-Vietnam movement still bear the physical wounds inflicted by the Chicago police. The police riot became a new form of blunting protest; the media would duly theatricalize it in order to ensure ratings. Politics and show business became inextricably intertwined. Hubert Humphrey won the nomination and George McGovern retreated to run another day.
AFTER THE CONVENTION, I MOVED TO NEW YORK. MY interests and pursuits centered around the investigation of Richard Nixon’s duplicitous policy in Southeast Asia as well as at home. Nixon personally made me sick. I hated the way he smiled when he was reporting carnage. He seemed afraid of democracy and had the furtive look of a person who thinks of himself as a victim. I didn’t like his family either. I felt Pat Nixon had been molded by her husband. She seemed like a waxen figure who might melt under a really bright light. The daughters scared me because I hated the spectacle of female fascists. One expected this from men, some of them anyway, but young women? Oh my.
When Nixon got on the air and talked about how he was handling Vietnam—“Peace is at hand” and all that—I couldn’t bear his duplicity, his lies. I couldn’t understand how Charlton Heston and other people I respected could support him.
Then came the antiwar march on Washington. The shattering of the public’s confidence in government policies had inspired a bold skepticism on the part of everyone who thought beyond pursuit of their daily bread. People from all strata of society were willing to come to Washington and openly question not only our govern merit’s policies, but also its truthfulness. Nixon was so distrusted, there were open calls for his impeachment. I had grown up respecting authority, but I was rapidly learning that the authorities didn’t command my respect or anyone else’s any longer.
When I saw our attorney general, John Mitchell, jail some three thousand people just for peacefully addressing their grievances, I knew I had to do something.
I had such distrust of Nixon and other politicians that I and others like me began to court more prominence in public. There was growing anger and anxiety within the artistic community. The press saw it. That gave them an opportunity for scintillating copy, so they began to elicit our opinions more and more. We, flattered that our thoughts and feelings were solicited at all, began to pontificate. Sometimes we made sense. Sometimes we were outrageously uninformed. The phenomenon of celebrity pundits was driven by press demands. We supplied that demand.
Opposition to the Vietnam War drew many Hollywood stars out into the open. Stars who had never been outspoken before. The politicians saw our willingness to be heard and solicited our help. Our political visibility increased.
When George McGovern decided to run for president in 1972 against Richard Nixon, there was no decision for me to make.… I dropped all my movie projects and went to work for him. A gentle preacher type was better than a crook. I invited him to my home in Encino, California, to meet liberals who would probably be considered a privileged elite, but were nevertheless effective. They were interested in helping with women’s issues, civil rights, antiwar activities, and environmental change. McGovern was appealing to them because he was from a small-state background. He exuded integrity and high moral values.
He was not given much of a chance at the outset of his campaign, so he hoped stars who believed in him would attract the press. He believed we gave him a certain credibility, and we believed that helping to initiate a grass-roots campaign gave us credibility. We wanted to be respected for involving our hearts and minds in affairs other than artistic and moneymaking ones, and McGovern wanted to be respected for being a candidate who could attract us because of his moral fiber.
My first year campaigning with McGovern put me in touch for the first time with the soul and sweat of some real American people I would never otherwise have met. I visited living rooms, spoke at union rallies and fundraisers, joked and tried to be charming at ladies’ lunches, and commiserated with the disillusioned on college campuses. Seven days a week and almost twenty-four hours a day, I talked for and about McGovern. Sometimes I couldn’t remember what city I was in. But I loved it. I learned about Americans. I learned about presenting political views to small-town TV stations and I learned that there was a way for a celebrity to communicate without seeming to be out of touch with real life. The faces of the people I was communicating with were so open. I could see all my films in their eyes when they first gathered around me. I was a celebrity in their midst. But it didn’t take long for me to rediscover the person I had been before Hollywood. I went back to my roots as an American who cared just like them. I too was a person just trying to love her country and make sense out of life. These wonderful people with whom I communicated were helping me simply to be myself again.
I was very lonely at times because I lived in strange hotels, never seeing much daylight. I was up at six A.M. to do TV all day, and with the living-room meetings at night, I rarely went to bed before two A.M. I found myself talking about military spending, the tax system, problem cities, the necessity of having quality people on the Supreme Court, the intricacies of the abortion issue, and, of course, all aspects of the Vietnam War. I had come a long way from Sacramento and Marlon Brando. I learned by the questions people asked me. I would make late-night phone calls to experts so that I could answer questions with more facts and
deeper knowledge, and for me, the campaigning was about one man—McGovern. Nixon should not be reelected. McGovern should.
I saw what a responsibility I had toward the man I was campaigning for as well as toward the public. Because I was a celebrity, people listened to me. I was a dream merchant. I was what they often longed to be. To them I had risen from their ranks to taste the nectar of success and fame and money. They were interested in what I knew and what Í’d seen, and now I wanted to give something back to the people who had helped make me what I was. I wanted to help them see an alternative to corrupt government. I wanted to feel my chest burst with pride over being an American again just like I had as a teenager.
During this period, Harry Reasoner did a sarcastic piece on 60 Minutes debasing artists’ involvement in the political arena. I tried to call him, but he wasn’t available. So I wrote a piece for the op-ed page of The New York Times, it said in part:
Large numbers of Americans seem to understand now that it is the responsibility of everyone, including artists, to search for humane solutions of society’s problems. Somehow they sense that artists can be both champions and prophets of social change because they are so inextricably involved with the full range of human life. Politics that are void of the insight of art, its compassion, humor and laughter—are doomed to sterility and abstractions.
The show-business community is among the most generous and giving of any in this country. Millions of dollars were raised by artists giving concerts and doing fundraisers, Even Richard Nixon’s dirty tricksters couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm. They systematically cut my telephone wires and threw garbage at the front door of my New York City apartment, out of which I was running the Women’s Advisory Committee and organizing concerts at Madison Square Garden. Nixon and his crowd were political gangsters. They didn’t believe in or even understand democracy. They mocked and ridiculed those who not only desired change, but were idealistic enough to believe it was possible.
While people were dying in Vietnam and racial tensions festered here at home, while the sexual revolution took root and experimentation with drugs infected our young, Nixon and company seemed to operate with total unawareness of the demoralization and cynicism that were building. To me it was especially frightening to think of Nixon appointing more Supreme Court justices. McGovern, at least, had a soul. And he was a moral leader. The leadership he provided would be truthful, at least.
At one point near the end of the campaign, McGovern turned to me and said, “If Nixon gets reelected, I would not want to live in this country.” I was glad no one else heard him.
If George McGovern had gotten elected in 1972, I would have given up performing, fame, Hollywood, and the good life to work for his administration. I would probably have asked to be a part of something to do with the issue of overpopulation in the world. I would have had hope and women would have had more equal roles in the decision making processes of our government much sooner. Our leaders, who were overgrown boys playing war games, would have had to come up with solutions for problems and conflicts. If McGovern had won, all of us would have lived in greater harmony and health and the world would now be a more humane place.
But with the humiliating defeat of McGovern and the reelection of Nixon, I found myself disillusioned, no longer wanting to be part of the political activism on the home front. Instead I found myself interested in foreign policy and foreign leaders. How did they feel about themselves and us? How did they see human rights and democracy? What did they think of the future of communism and much more?
I took a woman’s delegation to China soon after Kissinger had been there. I put together a group of twelve women, including a camera crew. We were from all different sociopolitical points of view and shared the desire to see the world’s newest revolution.
China made us reevaluate everything. We filmed ourselves going through culture shock, aware for the first time that there were other ways to live, other political structures, other viewpoints on love, sex, death, and money—even animals. I was never so homesick for animals as I was when I was in China. The Chinese way of relating to animals, particularly to dogs, was cold and detached. A dog was as liable to end up on your plate as it was to tag along wagging its tail. We filmed people peering into our faces, fascinated by our round eyes and various colors of skin.
We filmed a woman having a cesarean birth who was awake and talking to us. She had one acupuncture needle in each ankle and experienced no pain.
Most of the delegation got sick with a Chinese strain of pneumonia. The hospital care was excellent, sensitive and kind. Each person learned something individual during this experience. Overall they realized that some of the ancient Chinese techniques of healing were far more advanced than our Western drug treatment.
What we saw in ourselves as American women was the paramount value of our trip. We couldn’t possibly assess the objective truth about the new Chinese human experiment in three or four weeks. But we could assess what it did to us and how it helped to clarify our individual attitudes to our own lives.
We were impressed by China, but we had the feeling all the time we were there that the Chinese people were tolerated by their leaders, like unknowing children. That Mao was the patriarch and was to be obeyed out of a benevolent respect for one’s elders; that the state knew best for its people, who were still suffering from their “bitter past.”
The past was bitter, no doubt about that. Everywhere we went someone gave a heartfelt speech about the pain of it. And I also felt that what they had today, regardless of its limitations and the lack of freedom, was comparatively better. The people seemed reasonably content and fairly well fed. The medical system was more than adequate, the educational system oppressive with its indoctrination, yet they were learning to read and write. Women enjoyed a status of greater equality; at least wife beating was outlawed and infanticide of girl babies was a crime. Possession of dope was a capital offense punishable by death; divorce, a matter for local courts to decide; self-criticism a part of the fabric of collective life. The communes were extremely harsh, but those who were forced to labor there reported that they learned a great deal from it. Husbands and wives were separated for years at a time in order to contribute their talent and energy to the cause of the New China, the New Revolution. Everyone was involved in the spirit of a new dawn, and when foreigners like those in our delegation came to visit, the people we encountered were anxious to share what they were doing with their new energy of meaning.
All of us on the delegation learned more about ourselves, as well as about this strange and restricted new world. We began to look at our attitudes toward materialism and possessions and money a little differently. Uni ta Blackwell, a black activist from Mississippi, told me one day that she was reevaluating what she wanted, as a repressed person, for herself and her people. She said she used to want a bigger share of the white man’s pie. Now she was suspicious that the pie itself had made the white man sick.
While we were in China our own government had begun to crumble. Every now and then we’d run into an American journalist who’d keep us informed about Nixon and Watergate and the unfolding American political drama.
The Chinese were not surprised at Nixon’s corruption. They said they always knew who they were dealing with. In fact, from their point of view there was very little difference between Nixon and McGovern! But they were concerned that they had cast their lot with Nixon in opening their borders. They knew he was “a son of a dog,” but he was their “son of a dog” and they were not happy at the impeachment talk.
I ruminated over the year and a half I had spent with McGovern. I remembered what he’d said about not wanting to live in a country where Nixon was president. Did our nation need to go through this trauma of shameful revelations in order to understand what the calamity of Nixon’s political landslide meant? I felt morally vindicated for all my high-toned preaching. I tried to get a Massachusetts license plate that said, “We voted for McGovern.” No longer did I feel li
ke a naive idealist, a Hollywood dilettante.
For Nixon to put me and many other artists on his famous enemies list, claiming we were anti-American and dangerous, made me laugh. It also made me madly enthusiastic. Of course it was an acute violation of our human and civil rights, but it proved once and for all that many of us actors, actresses, and performers were important, authentic and influential enough to be afraid of. I wrote to Harry Reasoner asking his opinion, but he never acknowledged my letter.
After Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford came and went, the politics of hope reentered our lives with Jimmy Carter.
I had met Carter on the McGovern campaign. (I also met and worked with a young Democrat named Bill Clinton during those days.) Carter carried his own bag when he campaigned as a political outsider who could bring real change to Washington. Even though he had been governor of Georgia, his personality was not that of an established politician.
He was unassuming, witty, very friendly and affable, and had the gleam of the spiritual missionary in his eyes. His wife, Rosalynn, was smart, kind, and hospitable, with a keen overview of almost every situation. She was a real partner to Jimmy, proud of how much she and her husband had done for the equality of black and white in Georgia.
During the campaign and after Carter’s election, I was afforded their southern hospitality at the White House. I was amused by brother Billy, by faith-healer Ruth, and most of all by Miss Lillian, the president’s mother. I also got to know some of the servants who had been there for years. They showed me around when I asked questions about Richard Nixon’s occupancy. A butler ushered me into one of the historical sitting rooms and pointed to some round burn marks on the antique carpet.
My Lucky Stars Page 20