My Lucky Stars

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by Shirley Maclaine


  Tony and I stood looking into each other’s eyes. I was completely happy being with him in the bustling midst of that party. I didn’t want those moments to be over. I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want either one of us to move on to other guests.

  With a connection that moved us both, we embraced, pulled apart, then embraced again. This was the man I had found so impossible. What an ironic laugh on me.

  “I surrendered,” he said. “I know now that my life is not up to me anymore. It’s up to the God in me.”

  I gazed at him. I had never heard an actor talk like that, much less an English actor. They are usually so intellectually oriented, so ready to scoff at anything spiritual. But this man was different. Because he had been difficult, he had come to a new understanding. Because he had felt the depth of despair, he could embrace its opposite.

  We stood there together for a magical half hour. We had not only resolved our differences but had come to the understanding that all alone, we each had been looking for the same thing. I had perhaps not been as difficult, but I wasn’t going as deep either. Out of his “difficultness” he had found the answer.

  Before we parted that night, I asked him how he had found working with Debra Winger in Shadowlands.

  He reared back and laughed again. “Oh yes,” he said. “Her. Well, of course, we English won’t put up with behavior that is not about the work.”

  “So?” I asked. “How did you handle her?”

  “I laughed,” he said. “I just laughed whenever she was impossible. And I guess I liked her. Perhaps because I understood. She was okay really. Yes, I liked her.”

  So Tony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter, repressed butler, guarded Welsh intellectual) gave me my most important lesson in creativity. It all comes from God, regardless of how ragged its expression.

  I WAS IN PARIS SHOOTING WOMAN TIMES SEVEN WITH VITTORIO de Sica directing and male costars who were legendary: Vittorio Gassman, Michael Caine, Philippe Noiret, Lex Barker, Alan Arkin, Rossano Brazzi, and Patrick Wymark.

  We were shooting at night, on the street, when Danny Kaye walked right into the shot, I had never worked with him. But I remembered him as the standoffish, funny genius on the Paramount lot when I worked there with Dean and Jerry and Shirley Booth.

  In the way that show-business people have of ignoring social decorum when we see each other in public places, Danny walked right by the other actors, made his way toward me, and proceeded to gather me up in his arms and emit a stream of French double talk that completely disrupted the shooting, enchanted De Sica and the crew, and alleviated my anxiety about a scene I wasn’t too fond of anyway.

  He was wearing a combat jacket, his famous custom-made space shoes, and a funny hat. His blue eyes sparkled with wit and mischief, and I was captivated.

  After the night work he took me to his favorite cheese-and-wine shop and I returned to my hotel at dawn. We had talked for four hours.

  He showed me parts of Paris I never knew were there, and as he was leaving to return to New York, he asked me if I would be his copilot across the Atlantic! I said I had to work the next night. He told me he wanted to cook me a Chinese dinner in his favorite restaurant in lower Manhattan and he’d have me back in Paris in time for my night call the next day.

  I did it and I told no one. Danny and I flew across the Atlantic in his Learjet. He let me take the controls. I was in heaven, literally. Flying so high with some guy in the sky was enough to write a song about. It was romantic, professionally mischievous—we were not allowed to fly because of insurance concerns—and my idea of liberation.

  We landed in New York, where a car met us and took us to Chinatown. When Danny arrived, it was like the return of Sun Yat-sen or something. All the cooks left the kitchen and he took over.

  The dinner was incredible, terminating with fortune cookies that said, Woman who fly upside down when making picture have crack-up. We ate for hours, visited some nightspots, and without sleeping, he flew me back to Paris. It was a globe-hopping spontaneous romantic dream. Everything Danny did was bigger than life and more expertly expressed than most mere mortals could ever hope to achieve.

  Yet he had been born David Daniel Kaminski in Brooklyn. He showed me the house he grew up in. It was a mundane beige-yellow box squeezed in between others like it.

  From this he had invented himself, the phenomenon that was Danny Kaye.

  That was when I began to understand on a deep level how necessary the golden threads of fame and identity could be.

  To suggest that Danny Kaye would ever do anything to jeopardize the monument that his wife, Sylvia, and he had carved for themselves in the halls of human history would be ridiculous. I was beginning to see what prison ers of fame and self-invention we could become. It was even more than that. When you become a Danny Kaye, you are profoundly attached to the component parts that have helped create your identity, Your wife, your material, your coworkers, your support systems are necessary to sustain your success. Your charismatic identity is so firmly fixed in the firmament that change of any kind would threaten a swift descent.

  I could see why Danny Kaye needed to sustain the support systems that guaranteed the continuance of his gifts. I began to understand why these megas tar talents always put themselves first and foremost in the mix of human intercourse. I could really understand why a Danny or a Frank Sinatra took for granted that they were star suns around whom everyone else should orbit. It was their moment in the universe to shine brighter than the others, and I felt they should be protected so they could live up to their destinies. They were not John Q. Public. This time around they were meant to be special.

  I could even see that it would be sacrilege if any one of these star suns denied his or her luminosity for the sake of marriage, or children, or a relationship. Frankly, I don’t think such sacrifices would last long anyway, Star suns are meant to shine and provide light for others. They are not like others. Something in their souls is willing and indeed determined to live out such a destiny regardless of the personal price, a price the rest of us are not willing to pay. Husbands and wives and children must adjust to their needs and self-centeredness. Perhaps, in some other time and place, these stars would receive luminosity from those who do not shine now.

  Many people felt Danny Kaye was aloof—cold, tyrannical, and insensitive. I did not experience that. On the contrary. Perhaps he was personally unfulfilled, whatever that means. But aren’t we all? I think Danny and I saw that in each other. Most other women he knew had obligations and responsibilities that fulfilled their need for security and a contract for the future. I was free and unencumbered, willing to go anywhere and do anything for a lark. Barbecued ribs in Texas or a cheese fondue in Switzerland was a reason to build a trip around. I felt I had my own Ali Baba magic carpet and Danny was the captain of space travel.

  But more than anything, Danny loved conducting a symphony orchestra. “It is a feeling of complete and total power,” he’d say. “They do what I want because of a flick of my wrist or a nod of my curly head…. Power.”

  Perhaps that was the feeling he was reaching for … the feeling of power that would protect him from helplessness.

  Contrary to most opinion, I felt that Danny allowed his insecurities to be seen, at least to me he did. Because of those insecurities, he was aware of the sensibilities of others, and because of that he sometimes acted like an autocrat. He was forever counseling others who were in trouble either physically or mentally, but he insisted that they obey his suggestions completely. Because of his medical expertise (he was known to have actually performed surgical operations because of his extensive knowledge of the human body and his dexterous fingers) many people did exactly what he recommended regardless of how autocratic his behavior was.

  Danny Kaye knew he was a slave-driving perfectionist, compelled to isolate himself in the cocoon of his own genius as he drove those around him to be as brilliant as he. His wife, Sylvia, who wrote all his material and oversaw his life, was the landlady
of his territory. She knew about our love affair, I’m sure, and lovingly included me in their lives. She understood that Danny was a master manipulator and that part of his fundamental brilliance was his towering talent to tell tall tales! He told me he had learned all he knew about sex in China—a concubine had educated him, he said. I have to assume she taught him how to cook too, because his Chinese dinners, chopped, cut, prepared, tossed, and served by Danny in his Chinese kitchen at home, were prized invitations in Hollywood. I used to love to go there when Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Gene Kelly, and Judy Garland would gather around the piano and sing new material. If the rest of us liked it, it stayed in whatever show or movie they were making. If not—not.

  Yes, Danny was dazzling, but to me he was a flawed and often lonely friend who longed for understanding, awareness, and ever-widening avenues to express himself. He invented complicated new dishes at my house until my own cook refused to allow him in “her” kitchen anymore. One dish in particular was my favorite, chicken baked with peaches. It was succulent and sweet. I remember watching his fingers as he concocted something adventurous. They were sensitive, graceful tentacles searching for the perfection he longed to mold, sculpt, and paint.

  While Danny “overincluded” me in the circle of friends in his home, which often made me uncomfortable around Sylvia, it was my problem, not hers. It was also true that he wished us to spend a great deal of time with Laurence Olivier, who was inferred to be one of his lovers. I know nothing of that. I only know that we spent many happy times together. When we decided to part, we wept.

  “I am desolate at saying good-bye to anything or anyone I have ever loved,” he said.

  I understood then that whoever and whatever had helped him achieve his radiance in the world would be a permanent fixture in his heart. He might never acknowledge them directly. His way of thanking them would be to go on in much the same way he always had until his light in the sky dimmed from above, not from within.

  12

  STARRING IN

  REEL LOVE

  There is a moment just before starting a film that is more electrically charged than any other. It is not the first take on the first day or the last take on the last day. It is the moment when the male star meets the female star. It drips with voyeuristic interest. The director, producer, wardrobe and makeup people, and writer observe, as though invisible, the chemistry that may or may not explode between the two.

  In real life, when two attractive people meet the moment is not so charged with titillating expectation. They just meet, and the moment passes—usually.

  But people in films carry another aura around with them. A $35-million film can depend on the chemistry between two people who will be spending every waking hour together for at least three or four months.

  The meeting usually happens in the producer’s office, or sometimes in a rehearsal room, or if you’re lucky, at dinner, where you can be alone and talk about the survival wars and the personal prices that have added up. There is an admiration for your partner because you know something of what he has been through too. At ground zero level you know that both of you live to be loved or you wouldn’t be stars. You are simultaneously adult survivors and needy children. Civilians don’t live with such striking contradictions. That’s why they are different.

  We actors are acutely aware that the professional people in Hollywood who have seen it all in movies are basically still civilians. They sit behind the camera and scrutinize us “beautiful people” who are commissioned to play out their romantic dreams. But we don’t feel beautiful. On the contrary. We are anxious beyond words and terrified that we won’t live up to the expectations of not only the producer and company, but of the person we will be playing with as well. We know we possess something that other people feel is charismatic, a kind of indefinable chemical secret. But we don’t know what that secret is. When the producer and director and others watch us meet, we know that they feel they will never be like us, never feel what we feel, never be adored as we are. But we also know that they are secure that they will never tremble at the hazards of laying themselves open to critical and public ridicule. So we understand the trade-off is that they are there to protect those of us who do lay ourselves bare. They are there to appreciate and sometimes envy us. But they are also there because we are doing “it” for them.

  And so the “god and goddess” of the screen meet.

  Immediately there is some kind of interaction. It is never a neutral meeting because stars wouldn’t be stars unless there was an intense, irresistible energy flowing. Immediately there is an unspoken dance of territorial imperative, a kind of subtle power stakeout. You evaluate experience both professional and personal. You admire, you estimate, you appraise, and you assess your partner against predetermined judgments. You try to be objective. You have seen most of his work, so you discreetly compare what you’ve seen with what you see in front of you. And while all of this is going on you know you are a woman and he is a man. You are human, with unconscious and involuntary yearnings. You are not yet really involved with the script, but your belief in the love story lurks at every moment beneath the surface of this first meeting.

  Sometimes you find you are playing opposite a man you cannot bear to be around, but that is rare—very rare. Hollywood’s legendary conflicts such as Jeanette MacDonald—Nelson Eddy and Tony Curtis—Marilyn Monroe do occur, but the contrary is usually the case. The leading lady and leading man often find themselves swept up in a centripetal force too strong to deny and too sweet to give up. Everything surrounding them conspires to bring them together.

  First there is the script. You believe what you have read or you wouldn’t be in the film. Second, when acting is superb, it is real. You have to mean it when you say I love you. You know that simplicity is the key to any scene, any dialogue, any interaction.

  That might be when it actually begins. I don’t know. For me it was usually when my partner had acknowledged me in the love scene. I was never attracted to actors who fell prey to the seduction of the fantasy, seeing me as the character in the scene. To me that was adolescent and it left the real me out. I liked a partner who used the story as a catalyst to know himself better and as a result was able to see me.

  There is much to be learned from the characters we play. They inspire us to know nooks and crannies of ourselves and discover how to face the unexplored. They act as mirrors, teaching us why we were drawn to them in the first place. There are, I have found, almost always aspects of ourselves that are yearning to be acknowledged and dealt with.

  So to have a love affair on the screen requires an abstract courage that quite often becomes specific in real life. To deal with its power and turbulence can be professionally unsettling. There’s the sleep problem. The energy required to get through the schedule of making a film is debilitating enough. But to “fall in love” and lose sleep over it is a manic experience. It’s not just the lost hours of peaceful rest. It’s the fragmentation of focus. It’s the feeling of psychological dislocation. It is paramount to keep your center when working. Being “in love” is a bi-locational “frame of heart.” You find yourself compelled to act your love impulses as you feel them rather than as the character feels them. This is not professional, nor is it good for the authenticity of the picture.

  When you are in love with your costar, your deeper human honesty, the real you, sparkles and twinkles regardless of how dissimilar those qualities may be to the character’s qualities. This is not good. If you’re a first-time actress, it doesn’t matter so much, but if it’s incumbent upon you as an experienced actress to be “in” your character, you can’t be besotted with your costar. It can be deeply discombobulating! To be in character does not mean being yourself.

  Comparing notes with other actresses, I have found the most troubling aspects of a movie love affair to be not only disturbance of badly needed sleep, but the inevitable question of equal turf. A completely objective professional working relationship allows the personal requ
irements for equal time and space to be voiced ipso facto—no problems.

  But when we as actresses go spiraling off into the love swirl with our partners, we tend to abdicate our hard-won female rights as costars. We tend to refrain from putting our feet down on a point of principle or artistic disagreement. We find ourselves so busy being attractive and decidedly “un-actressy, un-bossy, and un-smart” that as professionals we are not pleased with ourselves. We know the reputation we actresses have—overbearing, aggressive, competitive, unyielding, and focused on self. Therefore, when we are “in the love swirl,” we revert to what our mothers or men in our lives have taught us about sustaining appeal. We become cute, shy, subservient. We make no demands. This is professionally stupid.

  Actors are not above using this well-known response to their advantage, deliberately seducing actresses. It happens the other way around too. The idea is … make your costar fall in love with you and you end up with things your way.

  To me this has always been obvious, and consequently a giant turnoff.

  But when my costar finds me genuinely lovable and peers deep into the recesses of my soul in order to know more about me, I am a sucker for the love swirl.

  We surrender vulnerability on so many levels when we act in a movie. We surrender our feelings, our barriers, and our self-protection. So do our partners. This is precisely why the potential for soul connection emerges. Perhaps we play roles less in the process of making a film than we do in real life, In movies, our emotional territory is always new and the role-playing is transient.

  The difference between our work and other kinds of work is that we allow the manipulation of our emotions and feelings as a means to an artistic end. We throw up our hands in unconditional surrender and say, “Here I am. Use me, sculpt me, orchestrate me, but please love me.”

 

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