"Large, white, free-standing house, lots of light, long living-room/den, with fireplace, roomy master bedroom, spacious eat-in kitchen with appliances included, big yard on a corner lot, long driveway, separate rear buildings, no houses close by ... lots of privacy. $77 a month."
Wow! A dream come true, yes? In reality it was what was left of a phased-out, condemned chicken farm and not really fit for occupation. The floors sloped; nothing in the once white house was level. The appliances were filthy and antique, the linoleum was peeled and spotty. There was a swamp under the kitchen floor. True, the rooms were large, except for two smaller bedrooms, which could barely contain one twin bed each. The "lawn," front and back, was a stretch of dry, beige scrub, accented here and there with tumbleweeds and one wayward tree that offered little in shade or relief. But there was an unfenced acre of dirt and weeds in the back where Teddy could run and play, if supervised; just beyond, a sparkling new housing development could be seen, which stood in stark contrast to our ramshackle abode. We took it. Everyone called it the Chicken Ranch.
We were on Ethel Avenue, just north of Saticoy Street, along which ran several blocks of salvage yards. We were next door to an airplane seat factory and there was a crazy biker gang that lived across the street in a house as dismal as ours. The only thing that set us apart were the upside-down automobiles on their front lawn. Those separate buildings in the rear of our house were little chicken shacks, crappy little sheds that we actually rented out, as if they were darling guest cottages, to folks even less discerning than we were.
My second child, Eva Whitney Bush, was born on August 6, 1969. I loved her name, I thought it was musical. I'm sure I included Whitney as an oblique way of laying claim to my mother.
Eva was the prettiest baby. She had big big big blue eyes, eyes so big she could have been a Keane painting. Eva was fussier than Teddy. Thank goodness she had a winning smile and bubbly personality. But two children felt exponentially more difficult than one.
On the way to the hospital when I was in labor with Eva, Bob and I had stopped off and bought a Kawasaki motorcycle so that he could make the ten-mile drive to a job he loved--selling remainders and art books at Pickwick Bookstore in Hollywood where my brother Brian worked. One morning two weeks later, a couple of hours after he'd left for work, I got a phone call.
"This is Valley Doctor's Hospital. Could you please come in and identify your husband?"
Bob was on his way to work when the driver in front of him slammed on the brakes. He flew into the car, dislocating his shoulder and crushing his tibia and fibula between the bike and their bumper. Life as I knew it became trying in a different way. Poor Bob was in lots of pain and fully dependent on me, which must have been hideous for him, Eva was needing the attention any one-month-old requires, and Teddy, once doted on as an only child, was wondering why he couldn't get my attention anymore. I remember feeling so overwhelmed. So terribly tired. I had few reserves when it came to caring for Eva. She suffered from colic, crying much of the time, and seemed to defy comforting. I remember walking with her, rocking her, singing to her, petting her, then finally crying and shaking her in my frustration. I was horrified that I'd done that and it only made her cry harder. I experienced her continuous sobbing as a personal reprimand. What was wrong with me that I couldn't comfort her? I felt too ill equipped to handle it all.
After Bob was back on his feet and healing, Jack suggested that perhaps we could rent out the tiniest bedroom to one of his clients because he knew we were hurting for money. Grateful for any relief, we agreed and invited Susan to move into the back bedroom. Susan was a lovely young actress, pregnant, smart, and unattached. We all became good friends and learned to function pretty well as an expanded family. Even after her son Christopher was born, we worked okay together; the house just got noisier.
Life resumed and friends would come over for evenings of music and talk. Bob was wise and very funny and was quite an attraction to many young creative types. They'd come, sit, get high, and talk about a wide range of topics. I seem to remember they half-jokingly called him the Buddha. It was amusing to watch but I don't recall being part of much of it.
Slowly my thoughts turned to the world that existed beyond life on the Chicken Ranch. I was feeling the burden of tedium, the weight of responsibility, the sameness of my life. For a while, I toyed with the idea of trying out for the cast of Hair. Jack had taken us to see James Rado and Gerome Ragni's revolutionary American tribal love-rock musical when it was being performed in L.A. for the first time at the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood, and it was the most out-there, sexually stimulating thing I'd ever seen. Ben Vereen as the politically militant character, Hud, climbed out into the audience, bare-chested and in torn jeans, and walked on the backs of our seats bellowing out "Colored Spade." I went out immediately and bought the original cast recording and learned all the songs. I told Bob I wanted to audition when they were ready to recast at the Aquarius; he told me that he didn't want me to.
The fun was definitely over. I remember leaving the house at times and feeling jealous that Susan was there alone with Bob. I think I was making up a problem to distract from the depth of my own sadness. I was feeling so hopeless about what my life had become: taking care of two young children, living in this ramshackle house. It wasn't Bob's fault; he was a good guy. Things weren't horrible with him. But I was filled with discontent. I didn't see any future for us. I wanted my life to change. Maybe I could act?
I suppose if my parents had had a lumber store, I'd have started selling plywood. But my mother was an actress, my new stepfather was a screenwriter, and my ex-stepfather was a theatrical agent. Maybe Jack could get me a job. I never really wanted to be an actress. But what else was I going to do? I didn't have any better ideas.
Chapter 5
With Eva, three, and Ted, five.
You know the saying "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't"? When it came to entrees into show business, Jack was the devil I knew. I could have gone to my mother and asked her about acting--but I didn't know her well enough. It was Jack whom I called and asked, "Can you send me out on jobs? I need to make some money." He was able to set up several auditions for me, including one to play a prospective marriage partner for a lonely teenager in a dark comedy called Harold and Maude that was going to be directed by Hal Ashby. I didn't get it, but the film became wildly popular and over time developed a cult following. I had that nagging feeling of having missed a very important boat, like National Velvet, but there was nothing to be done.
Eventually I landed a small guest role on a CBS medical drama series called The Interns. You could call it the Grey's Anatomy of its day. On my episode of The Interns I was a wide-eyed candy striper, while thirty-year-old Martin Sheen played a politician. I was thrilled!
While I consider this my first real job, technically speaking I'd already had the tiniest bit of on-camera experience. When I was about seventeen, Jack pulled some strings and got me a onetime appearance on a semi-reality series called Day in Court. As I understood the way that show worked, a team of writers would find a real legal case, fictionalize it slightly, and convert the court transcripts into teleplay form; then it was taped and broadcast live. Real attorneys would argue their case in front of a real judge, but the witnesses and defendants were actors. I played an abducted teenage girl and the case that was being tried concerned whether I had been kidnapped or gone willingly across the state line.
My Day in Court turned out to be particularly memorable. In the middle of taping I was being cross-examined by one of the lawyers, per the script--again, not an actor but a working attorney--when he accidentally dropped his unstapled script, sending sheets of white paper flying everywhere. As he scrambled to pick up the pages, he kept throwing questions at me. Questions I'd never heard before. I'd love to say I suddenly adapted to acting in front of the cameras, tossing my memorized dialogue out the window, and just improvising some pithy responses. However, my character rapidly changed from simpl
y being a flustered stammering teenager into someone so nervous and terrified by the unexpected questions, she would happily have confessed to any number of crimes just to make it all stop! If those tapes had survived, I doubt I'd have a career today.
Doing The Interns, though, was one step closer to ending my marriage. I quickly initiated an affair with an actor I'd just met on the set. Confronting Bob about our problems and attempting to discuss them as an equal partner simply never occurred to me. I seem to have learned that when you wanted to get out of a relationship, you did something to make it impossible to be together anymore--like having an affair. It wasn't as if I was even attracted to the guy I took up with. As calculated as it sounds, I walked onto the set of The Interns and thought, "Who's it going to be?" I decided on a sweet, older guy. He never knew he was just part of a passive-aggressive plot to facilitate my freedom.
When we started filming, I'd tell my husband I had an earlier studio call than I really had and stop off at the actor's house on the way in to work. Or stop in on the way home. Although the affair lasted only a short time, the lies and deception required to maintain it immediately began to weigh heavily on me. I was confused and hating myself. I needed to get away even if it was just for a weekend. Since Jack had a luxury trailer out in Palm Springs, only a two-hour drive from Los Angeles, I gave him a call and asked if I could borrow it for a few nights.
First he said yes. Then, before I could pack an overnight bag, he called back and said he'd forgotten that he and a casting director friend were taking their girlfriends there for a double-date weekend.
"You're welcome to come! It's a very big trailer! There's a small little back room!" Jack said.
"Never mind," I told him, not wanting to even imagine what it would be like to be there with them and their women.
A little while later, Jack called again. "My girlfriend can't come. So I'm not going. Now it will just be the other two. You're still welcome to join them."
Now I was supposed to spend the weekend with a couple who were hoping to have the trailer to themselves? Why would I want to? "No thanks," I told him.
About a half hour later, the phone rang and it was Jack with yet another update.
"My friend's girl can't come. It will just be the two of you. I think you should go," he said.
Oh. So this was just a long drawn-out charade about him setting me up with the casting guy? That's right ... this is what Jack did. I'd heard that he often provided women for men in high places. I hadn't expected to be one of them.
"Jack. I don't want to do this."
"You aren't very ambitious, are you?" he replied. Then, referring to the rickety Dodge station wagon with push-button transmission that Jack had recently helped Bob and me buy, he added, "You need new tires on your car, don't you?"
"I don't need new tires that much," I said.
I wanted to tell him not to pimp for me, but I didn't have the courage. I replayed that line over and over in my head for many weeks afterward.
Maybe he thought he was being helpful, in his way. But he wasn't just my agent; he had raised me for ten years and this was very confusing. For all the things that went on between us--the peignoir, setting me up with the casting guy--I was never able to tell Jack how creepy it felt. I harbored a lingering ill will and deep lack of trust in him personally at the same time I handed him my so-called career. For many years, I walked that thin line of agent-father, never certain just who I was dealing with.
Once I had The Interns on my professional resume, Jack had something to build on when it came to my nascent career. I went from The Interns, to the set of The Young Lawyers, an ABC series set in Boston. Lee J. Cobb played the gruff but dedicated mentor with a group of earnest young law student proteges. I wasn't in any scenes with Cobb and never met him, but I do recall sitting in the makeup room my first day of work and seeing a wig form on the counter with Cobb's hairpiece pinned to it. The receding hairline, wavy forelock, and color were so distinctive; it was as if Lee J. Cobb's disembodied head were sitting on the counter.
When I finished my guest spot on that show, I was set to begin work on a pilot called Young Love, a spin-off of The Doris Day Show produced by Arwin Productions, Day's own company. In it, I played Doris's niece, April Toliver-Clark, one half of a cash-strapped newlywed couple trying to make their way in the world. Michael Burns was my graduate student husband, Peter.
This show was produced by Abner "Abby" Singer, a name that meant little to me at the time but has stayed in my mind because of a legendary habit he had: Abby was always reluctant to quit for the day. Whenever he was asked if he was satisfied with the final take, Abby would say "Yes, but let's do just one more." So, on many a show over the years, as filming wound down for the day, someone might call out, "Okay, this is 'the Abby Singer' "--or the penultimate shot. The ultimate was the martini shot.
So I was on a roll: in less than a month I'd gone from know-nothing guest star to the lead role in a possible series of my own.
As Jack told me at the time, in cheerleader agent mode, "They're in line for you!" I was on my way. I was getting offers. I was earning money. (I was having an affair. Aargh.) Was this typical Hollywood? It was a very heady experience. Of course, I'm thinking this is just what happens when someone decides to become an actor ... they actually get to start acting. (They don't necessarily start having an affair.) It took me years to really appreciate how much was a combination of luck, good agenting, and the calling in of favors by Jack X Fields.
Then, one day when I was at work, Bob found my diaphragm case in the bathroom and opened it. It was empty.
When I got home, he confronted me about it--"Are you having an affair?" he asked me point-blank--and I lied, because that's what I did. Now, on some level that I didn't want to acknowledge, all of my actions were designed to bring about this sad moment. At some point I must have told him the truth because I remember that we went to see a marriage counselor. Bob wanted us to stay together. I remember crying and feeling devastated at what I'd brought about, but the sad thing was that in my mind I'd already left; I was looking for another life for me, Ted, and Eva. And it was important for me to say I never left Bob for another man. I never left anyone for anyone else. I left for myself.
Our relationship staggered to an end, becoming increasingly painful and volatile. On the morning of February 9, 1971, Bob and I had been up much of the night arguing. We were still in bed when he got terribly angry and at one point started choking me. I wasn't really afraid; I couldn't believe he'd actually hurt me. Bob had never touched me violently before. But obviously my infidelity was so extraordinarily hurtful, I think he felt he had no other way to get my attention--he didn't want to lose his little family.
Bob put a pillow over my face and was muttering angrily about the Doris Day pilot I was then preparing to shoot. As he hissed, "They won't want a one-eyed April" (now he was going to blind me?), there was a strange rumbling sound. We instantly froze. Being natives of Los Angeles, we had no trouble recognizing powerful seismic activity. Later on, we'd find out that the Sylmar earthquake, as the media named it, after the section of the city where the epicenter was located, measured 6.6 on the Richter scale. And we were only eleven miles away from Sylmar.
The old farmhouse started shuddering in waves. It was made of wood and so old that the floorboards were rolling. The floor in front of the fireplace sagged and some bricks from the chimney crashed down. I jumped up and ran to Teddy and Eva's bedroom to make sure they were okay. We sat on Teddy's bed and looked into the kitchen. It was like something out of a horror movie. The cabinet doors were open and dishes, glasses, bottles, and cans of food were literally shooting out of the cupboards. That apocalyptic image of the flying food in my kitchen is the last thing I remember of Bob's and my life together. Within a week, I'd packed up the kids and moved to Whitney and Allan's new home in Trousdale Estates. We stayed there for two or three days. Then Whitney helped me find a small house in North Hollywood.
I couldn't have got
ten this little yellow two-bedroom tract house without her help. The rent was $400 a month, over five times the rent of the farmhouse, but then it was a real house in a real neighborhood, and I was walking tall when I finally took over paying the rent myself. It was a far cry from the Chicken Ranch. I recall curdling with shame when the owners would come there on rent day. Invariably we wouldn't have the $77 and I was desperate to avoid the landlady. She was in her seventies and heavyset with a wide, rolling gait. She'd prowl around through the weeds, peering into windows, and screeching, "Murdith! Murdith? You in there?" I'd be lying on the floor under the windows, in the kitchen, on linoleum so thin the plywood showed through, praying for the grace of a few extra days. They must have hated us.
For some, acting is about finding an outlet for their creative passions, making their fantasies come true. For me it was strictly about paying the bills. I was twenty-four and a newly single mom with two young kids. I knew that I had to keep the jobs coming. I was a total amateur, so the only thing I felt I had to offer was that I arrived on a set prepared and ready to learn. I kept my mouth shut, listened carefully to whatever direction I was given, and took mental notes on whatever anyone did around me.
In the case of Young Love, it wasn't just anyone. It was Doris Day, and what I learned from this beloved megastar was what it means to be a consummate professional. I had been a huge fan of hers when I was much younger, singing "Que Sera, Sera" in her style as best as I could and learning all the words to Pajama Game. I loved singing, "There once was a wo-man, who loved a maa-aan. She was the one he slew the dragon foo-oor." But I'd never seen her series. By the time I began working with her, The Doris Day Show was midway through its five-year run.
One rule of actorly etiquette I learned from her had to do with the reverse shot. Usually, after the master shot (in which everyone is on camera) of a two-person scene is filmed, singles are filmed with each actor delivering her part of the dialogue to the other actor, who stands just off-camera. That footage is then cut together to create a back-and-forth. But on The Young Lawyers, when any of my young scene partners finished shooting their portion of the dialogue, they'd just sort of disappear. I'd then play the scene with the script supervisor or dialogue coach standing beside the camera. I didn't know that not sticking around to say your lines off-camera for the benefit of your fellow actor was almost unheard of. I thought, Oh, this is acting. I do my single shot alone. You do your single shot alone. But Doris never left. And when she stayed and cooed her lines off-camera for me, it made all the difference in the world. I had someone there relating to what I was saying, not just reading lines. Such a better system.
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