When I was in the seventh grade, Jack asked me if I'd like to audition for a television series. I was beside myself with excitement over the idea; it sounded like so much fun! NBC was doing a half-hour black-and-white television remake of the 1944 family classic movie National Velvet, which had made a huge star out of Elizabeth Taylor, and I was going to audition for the lead part of Velvet. Jack prevailed on Frank, our handy in-house actor, to help prepare me for my scene.
When it came to acting coaches, I couldn't have found one more gentle, encouraging, and patient than Frank. I owe him a debt of gratitude for a good part of what followed. For several days, Frank and I sat in the dining room, rehearsing the long monologue I was going to give. It was a very emotional speech and I'd had no acting experience, but I threw myself into this task with total abandon. More than nine hundred child actors tried out and I was one of four who made it to the screen test. Three other young girls and I were sent to the hair and makeup department, where they tinted our hair so we'd look just like Velvet did in the movie. The jet-black rinse was so cheap that it turned my hair brush gray and left a sooty shadow on my pillow. But I thought I looked sultry; I thought that with my blue eyes and newly darkened hair I looked terribly glamorous.
On the day we all showed up for our screen tests, I guess I did my scene as required but what I remember most was the great fun the four of us girls had as we ran around the NBC studio lot. We were a quartet of nearly identical black-haired girls hyped up on adrenaline and postaudition exhilaration, racing around the cavernous soundstages and shrieking in unison. It was such a thrill to be running around with other kids, being part of a happy girl pack instead of the quiet loner at Le Conte Junior High School.
After several days of anguished waiting, Jack called me into the living room and told me that I didn't get the part. Apparently, they didn't want me to star in their series because I didn't know how to comport myself. I'd played around the studio lot too much. I was unprofessional.
"Oh, all right," I said to Jack as coolly as I possibly could.
Then I went downstairs to my room and collapsed. I sobbed for hours. I was blindsided. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't get it. I'd blown it horribly. Jack said I was "irresponsible" and "unprofessional." I was wracked with humiliation. Rejected at twelve.
Only recently did I find out what might have really happened. The girl who landed the part was named Lori Martin and had been acting professionally since she was six. (Which was six more years of acting experience than I had.) I also read that after dying Lori's hair she was the mirror image of an adolescent Liz Taylor. In other words, the producers didn't necessarily reject me because I'd misbehaved. They probably went with the most seasoned young actress who also happened to be a ringer for a popular movie star.
How like Jack to leave me with the imprint of a self-inflicted loss. I might have fared better if I were a Communist.
Chapter 2
In Traverse City as a summer stock intern, age seventeen.
So my big break didn't happen. It was back to the seventh grade for me.
Meanwhile, Whitney's star continued to rise. For a while, it seemed like you couldn't turn on the TV without seeing her on popular shows like The Millionaire and 77 Sunset Strip. An entire Whitney montage could have been assembled of her waltzing around in period costumes on every high-rated western series--Rawhide, Cheyenne, Bronco, Maverick, Pony Express.
The show she really loved doing was M Squad, a moody, black-and-white cop show starring Lee Marvin, on which she guest-starred at least once a season. Marvin played Lt. Frank Ballinger, a scowling plainclothes tough guy from Chicago who wore a bent felt fedora. Whitney would play characters like a coldly glamorous girlfriend of a murdered mob lawyer, requiring her to be flirtatious, conniving, sneaky, vulnerable, and frightened and maybe even die, sadly, at the end. Those roles had real dramatic arcs; they involved real acting and they thrilled her.
The exciting guest spots ended, though, in 1961 when Jack got Whitney cast as a regular on Hazel, a new CBS sitcom starring Oscar-winner Shirley Booth as Hazel Burke, a problem-solving maid who runs roughshod over her employers. When Hazel debuted that September, it was an instant ratings winner. The only problem was that no one seemed interested in fleshing out a part for my mother. The energy of every episode came from Shirley Booth butting heads with her boss, corporate attorney George Baxter, played by Don DeFore. Meanwhile, Whitney's role--George's amiable wife, Dorothy Baxter, an interior designer whom Hazel called Missy B--stood on the fringes of every scene, relegated to silently smiling and nodding at Hazel and Mr. B's banter.
Whitney took her acting seriously enough that she never stopped trying to breathe some life into Dorothy, but from that first year, she hated everything about the series. She complained volubly and frequently that she hated being third banana on that show, hated the lack of variety, always arriving at the same set at the old Columbia/Gower Studios in Hollywood. She missed the excitement of appearing on different shows with new casts and going toe to toe with strong leading men like Clint Eastwood and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. She felt that Shirley Booth was always protecting her own territory, always making sure that my mother couldn't steal any of the spotlight. One perk for Whitney, though, was that initially her character was always fashionably dressed, wearing sexy, form-fitting suits.
During season two, Whitney began to feel as if even Missy B's chic wardrobe was being taken away from her. For the first year, the half-hour show was filmed in black and white, but when it returned the following September as a color program, Dorothy's costume color palette had a new range, from drab gray to mousy beige. My mother told me she believed that Shirley had issued a mandate that she never wanted her to wear anything pretty or that might be construed as flattering. I can remember Whitney sitting at the makeup table in her room, putting on false eyelashes and cursing the lighting man, who she thought was in cahoots with the star. Whitney was sure that Shirley was telling him how to light her so she looked jowly and unattractive.
Since Jack was her agent, Whitney blamed him for talking her into doing the series. She felt that he'd sold her out, that he'd imprisoned her in a multiyear contract with Screen Gems so that he could then use her regular stream of paychecks to buy into the Sid Gold-Jack Fields Agency, his boutique talent agency on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even after it went off the air after a five-year run, she always referred to Hazel as "the graveyard" of her career. The only upside that Hazel had to offer was that with its high ratings and Shirley Booth's two consecutive Emmys, it brought industry cachet and regular money. In the span of a few years, mealtime for our little family had gone from modest macaroni and cheese dinners in South Pasadena to more elaborate white-tablecloth and candle-lit affairs in our Hollywood Hills dining room. Whitney even had a large ceramic bell that she'd ring--this still makes me wince to think about it--to summon our dear Guatemalan housekeeper, Anna.
Whitney and Jack really loved to entertain at home for their friends in the business. Ed Asner was a regular, as well as the casting director Lynn Stalmaster and his wife, Lee, and film director Arthur Hiller and his wife, Gwen. Marlon Brando came once; he and my old National Velvet acting coach Frank Silvera became friends while making Mutiny on the Bounty.
Jack and Whitney seemed to prefer inviting people over when my brothers and I were out of the house, especially as the years passed and we got older. Having three teenagers contradicted the young, glamorous TV star image Whitney was still putting out there. In fact, there are no home photos of my brothers and me from this time. There were never any family photos taken at the Whitley Terrace house. There are no photos of us with our mother until we were adults. It was a preventive measure: Not having snapshots of us around meant that there was nothing for a reporter to dig up about Whitney Blake and print in a magazine.
I can count on one hand the times my brothers and I were present at their parties. I have a faint memory of being about ten years old and being instructed how to offer cocktails on a
tray to Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. I helpfully made sure I addressed Whitney by name in front of guests once in a while just to keep the "niece" possibility in the air. I never had to be reminded.
While filming Hazel, the only time my mother was around was on the weekends. Monday through Friday she'd leave for work at 5 a.m., before I woke up. She'd return home at night looking exhausted, retire to her bedroom, and I'd rarely see her. I was essentially being raised by housekeepers, trying to catch a glimpse of Whitney on the fly. Because I saw her so rarely, I didn't want to aggravate her by seeming to need her. Once, I really wanted her to sign a permission slip so I could see a movie they were showing to the girls in our grammar school class called The Story of Menstruation. I wasn't sure what it was about but since it was "for girls only," I didn't want Jack to sign the slip. I didn't know anything about "the mysteries of womanhood" at the time, so I probably thought the movie was about a girl named Menstruation. I was inordinately excited to see it.
I think Whitney knew how clueless I was and her goal must have been to prepare me. So she came into my bedroom that night, sat down at the end of my bed, and gave me a short speech about cows and little calves, then said good night and went upstairs. I guess I understood it was somehow about our changing bodies but was not much more enlightened than before we spoke. I did get a profound sense of Whitney's discomfort around the subject. I am grateful to the Los Angeles Unified School District for making that film available or I'd have been left totally confused about how I was to relate to the bovine population.
When I eventually got my first period, I was thirteen. I was with Whitney, Jack, and my brothers in Palm Springs for a few days, staying at a small rental house with a pool. I had just come in from swimming and saw the blood in my wet bathing suit. I had to go to Whitney with the news but I remember feeling shy; it was so personal a thing to tell her. I was not quite sure what I expected to happen but I begged her urgently to not tell Jack. Whitney said something about my needing pads and a belt and sent me off to get dressed. I went, asking again that she please not tell Jack.
"Oh, of course not," she said.
An hour later, I saw Jack driving away.
"Where's he going?" I asked.
"To get your Kotex."
What? Did she not care? Didn't it matter that I didn't want Jack to know? I just walked around and around in panicked circles, choking on feeling so betrayed.
Meanwhile, even before I hit puberty, I started getting very different signals from Jack. My stepfather was very appreciative of young, attractive women and would always comment on their appearance. From the time I was twelve, we'd play this game where I'd stand on the stair above him and I'd say, "Kiss me like the movie stars kiss," and we'd mash our tightly pursed mouths together and go "Mmmmmm ..." While it had been appealing to me when I was younger because it won me some attention, it was starting to get creepy as I got older. It wasn't until the time I could feel his tongue pushing forward against the inside of his lips that I didn't play the game anymore.
Then there was how I looked. I had these breasts. I went from almost flat-chested at thirteen to huge at fourteen. I felt it was because of them that I got so much undesired attention from men when I walked to junior high: whistles, guys yelling at me, some jacking off out their car window at me; I felt like a moving target and was always on the alert for who's going after me today. No wonder I have always leaned toward clothes that minimized my bust.
I had blossomed so unexpectedly that I didn't have a bra and wasn't sure how to go about getting one. Then I thought of the Lerner Shop on Hollywood Boulevard. I walked past it on my way to Le Conte. I stopped in one day after school and prowled around. God knows I wasn't going to ask for help. That would probably involve showing some saleswoman my breasts and, well, asking for help. I didn't want to do either, so I decided to figure it out myself. I grabbed a tape measure and leapt into a changing room, where I measured myself, over my clothes. Going around my back and across the fullest part of my breast, I measured 40 inches. So that's a size 40, I figured, amazed that anyone would consider using a salesperson when this was as obvious as pie. I snagged a very white, starched, torpedo-shaped size 40 from the rack and tried it on. It was pretty scratchy and a bit big so I hiked the straps up really high to get it to fit me tightly, which put the back way up high across my shoulders. I wasn't clear just what was accomplished but I thought it was fabulous! I took it off, plunked down my bucks at the register, and sauntered out of the store. A bra owner.
When I got home, I was surprised to see my mother standing in the kitchen as I zipped past and headed straight downstairs to my room. She must have seen my parcel because she called out, "What did you buy?" I just yelled back, "A scarf."
I frankly can't recall where my clothes would come from. I only remember one shopping trip with my mother, which ended in disaster, probably typical of many mother-daughter shopping trips. She wanted me to wear something I didn't like and I ended up in tears. The dress came home with us anyway and I never wore it. Typical.
When I was about fifteen, I couldn't find swimwear that fit me properly, basically because my breasts were so full, and it was Jack who offered a solution. He could have a bathing suit custom-made for me. I could pick any fabric I wanted. He needed me to give him one of my bras for the tailor to copy. Giving my bra to my stepfather felt desperately creepy; everything in me recoiled. But I was a self-centered teenager and I wanted a nice swimsuit.
He brought it home a few weeks later when they had guests over to swim.
"Try it on," he said. "Let's see how it fits."
Well, he did get me this suit as a favor, I thought. I guess he can ask to see it on. I reluctantly went into my room, changed, and returned to show him. Jack had a way of looking at me that made me look away. I guess Jack liked how the bathing suit fit. His friends Lynn Stalmaster and Arthur Hiller were out by the pool.
"Go show them," he told me. "I'm sure they'd love to see it on you."
"Jack!" I protested.
"Go on, go on, go on," he insisted.
So I did as Jack asked. I walked slowly around the pool in my new custom bathing suit while his friends checked me out. They made complimentary noises. I hated doing this. I died a thousand deaths before going back into the house. But I was getting the message that my looks, my breasts had some power; that no matter how much shame I felt, how self-conscious or insecure I might feel, how much I knew that the attention my breasts brought had nothing to do with me, they were my currency. That maybe they were all I had to have. And deep in my heart I craved the attention, no matter what.
Harvey was a client of Jack's, another houseguest who came to stay and lived with us for almost two years. In the late sixties, he'd make it big with his own TV series. But back then he was happy when Jack got him bit parts on shows. He had a beat-up James Dean quality and soulful, hooded eyes. He moved in when I was fourteen and he was an artistic, wonderfully funny and moody twenty-one-year-old. How could I not fall in love with him?
I flirted with Harvey. I tried to get his attention by wearing a pair of cutoff jeans and an oversize button-up shirt knotted high so my bare midriff was exposed. I had pictures of my mother in a publicity photo dressed similarly and it seemed to work for her. I felt more silly than sexy, but I kept trying.
I felt he had to know that I coveted the nights he'd sit with my brothers and me and play bluesy records in front of the fireplace. Harvey would tell stories and we'd play memory games. He must have had no other place to go; why else would he spend evenings with a bunch of teenagers? But then he gave me his sweater. To keep! A gray pullover with patched elbows. I loved it; it smelled of him and I wore it everywhere. Then he started dating this very delicate young woman. They'd frequently have dinner at our house with Whitney and Jack and I'd be so jealous. One night, I was going out and stopped in the dining room to say good-bye. As I walked out, I heard Harvey's date say, "Isn't she wearing the sweater I gave you?" I'd no idea it had been a gift from her
. I was so confused. She gave him the sweater but he gave it to me, so he must care about me, but he was spending lots of time with her. And then, they were married at our house about a year later. I was crushed.
It was probably around this time I started putting more energy into getting boys' attention. I was desperate for attention but my shyness retarded the process. When I was in ninth grade, I had started attending youth group activities at a local Presbyterian church, where I'm sure I met some girls, but they were really only vehicles to the boys. There were about twenty of us in the youth group and we would have dances and serve dinners to the elderly members at Wednesday-night church gatherings, then we'd pair up and go make out down in the church basement. I was out on a date one night with a guy from the group named John and we wound up necking heavily in his car behind a drive-in. If I recall, small articles of clothes had been removed when suddenly flashlights were blinding us through the windshield and we were ordered out of the car by Los Angeles's finest. They talked to us separately, I think to ascertain that I was there willingly, because John was older and although I was fourteen, I looked younger. They threatened to call my parents but didn't, thank God; we were let go and I went home pretty rattled and embarrassed.
Shortly after that, someone must have read my diary--I'm not sure if it was Whitney or my father--and thought that I devoted too many pages to the opposite sex, so, much to my dismay, it was decided that I would go live with my father about fifteen miles away in the San Fernando Valley. Right around this period my brother Brian fell in love with the theater department at Hollywood High and began sneaking out in the early evening to go down the hill to school to rehearse. I don't know what Jack's aversion was to this activity but somehow he found out and grounded Brian. So Brian ran away from home and never returned. At seventeen, he preferred to sleep wherever he could--with a schoolmate's family, in a friend's garage apartment--than live with the uber-controlling Jack. Brian was my emotional anchor at the Whitley Terrace house. Once he wasn't living there it was easier for me to leave.
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