By Myself and Then Some

by Lauren Bacall

  After I hung up, I said to Ron, ‘Let’s go to the bar and say hello to Mr Champion.’ Ron paled. We were all fragile people just then. Just before entering the bar, I put my arm through his – Len was on the other side – and in we walked. Big smile to Kippy and Gower. When Gower said, ‘Great show,’ I patted Ron on the shoulder and said, ‘It’s all because of him – I don’t know what I’d do without him.’ I did everything but flutter my eyelashes. And that was the end of that.

  Replacing Ron would really have done the company and the show in. With his second wind, renewed faith, Ron plunged ahead. More changes, more meetings with Comden and Green, Strouse and Adams. The changes were concentrated in large numbers like the party scene, involving the whole company. As much as possible, scenes that Eve was not in. There was so much to do, it didn’t matter, except that we were unable to work in sequence. At last I got the word – Penny Fuller was to replace Diane. The day she arrived, Ron called me into his room to meet her. We got along immediately. She knew what a tough situation it was, what ambivalent feelings are involved in firing and hiring. Penny was great to work with. So skillful. Our scenes had another dimension, no question. It was very exciting. Funny how imperfection can be thrilling. It’s the possibilities of what may come, what might be, that make you tingle.

  After Baltimore, Len and I drove back to New York. It was very late, but before heading for our respective homes we just had to drive by the Palace Theatre. There was my name up there, and the enormous logo above the marquee – bigger than I’d ever dreamed it could be. I felt like a kid again looking at that theatre – that theatre which had housed some of the greatest variety artists in show business. I might become part of its history. Unbelievable.

  After a hectic happy day with my children I headed for Detroit. My mind was only on the show – I’d never thought I would look forward to Detroit with such enthusiasm.

  We opened on February 19 and Ron read me the reviews. After the opening we’d had a cast party fraught with drink, manic gaiety, and some strain. Margo Channing was beginning to get to me. I had been too keyed up, so naturally now felt too let down. The insecurity of Margo was becoming mine and, added to my own, it laid me very low. The reviews were excellent, though not quite so glowing as I would have liked. I became full of doubts. ‘Maybe it isn’t there – maybe it’ll come later. Maybe, maybe …’ Ridiculous to have to be assured by a stranger that you’re good, but I wanted all those adjectives. Is it pleading for affection as in childhood? Or simply wanting approval, also as in childhood? I felt quite alone. Totally vulnerable.

  At the end of four weeks we had made many changes in the show, rehearsing daily and playing at night. One night my voice went. I was terrified. It was clearly because of too much work and too little rest. I was taken to a throat doctor for treatment. When the star takes ill, everyone becomes very nervous – including the star. I didn’t rehearse for a day or two, but I didn’t miss a show and was back to normal by week’s end.

  My spirits started to climb. With all the changes – a line, a speech, part of a song, a move – dressing room, quick-change room plastered with yellow paper delineating each change, act by act, scene by scene – how one head can retain it is a mystery. Except that somehow it becomes possible. You have to do it, so you do. There were six versions of the party scene. Len was given a new ballad ten days before we closed in Baltimore. A new version of a group number. And my final song went in with a new tag scene five days before our closing in Detroit. But at last the show was frozen.

  Press interviews were interspersed – some good for New York, some not so good. One jerk wrote a piece having a conversation with me as though Bogie were present and commenting. I had refused to answer questions about Bogie. I made it clear before agreeing to an interview that it was to deal with Applause and me, nothing else. It was time. If they didn’t want to talk to me about me, the hell with it. I wanted my own life, my own place. Bogie had been dead for thirteen years, I’d had another marriage and a divorce, I had embarked on a new road. I had to stop looking over my shoulder all the time, and I didn’t want anyone looking over it for me!

  By our last week in Detroit I felt there wasn’t a bad moment in the show. I’d never felt so good in a part, nor worked so hard, nor functioned so well. And emotionally I became Margo Channing more and more. The reality of New York – children, my own home, Len’s life there – was just around the corner, but fantasy was where I was living, and I wanted to stay in it as long as I could. The theatre is insidious. All my professional life I’d been warned not to confuse a part I was playing with myself. I was able to avoid it in films, less in the theatre, and out of the question in Applause. I was having a marvelous time, so why not? And when in hell had I ever heeded warnings? I was the only one who would be hurt – though I didn’t really believe it at the time. Lives take on a pattern in spite of your conscious effort to break it. Before Bogie my emotional life hadn’t worked – and after, God knows, it certainly hadn’t. Yet the hope remained – the ability to enjoy, to trust, to give. I refused and still refuse to believe that my first love – my happy marriage of eleven and a half years to Bogie – was the beginning and end of that experience. I demanded and still demand the possibility of another good relationship before my time is up. Having tasted the fruit, I flatly refuse never to taste it again.

  At this point in my life, just before the opening of Applause, I would say I was at my peak, mentally and physically sharper than ever before. Using every bit of me. Determined to be the best I could be. New York was approaching – final rehearsals, technical rehearsals, readying ourselves for the first of four previews before the opening. All so exciting and frightening. And then opening night – Sunday, March 30. I’ve never seen so many flowers, so many telegrams – an avalanche. On one dressing-room wall Larry Kasha had framed Life – I was on the cover, my second time. A surprise. Friends from everywhere thought of me. Only one person would I not hear from, and she lived in the back of my mind, never leaving it. This one was for her.

  Voice lesson, body warm-up, more vocalizing. Concentrate on the part. You cannot shake – it’s going to work, try to enjoy it. It’s time to walk out on stage and deliver. As I made up, I went over all the changes to make sure I forgot nothing. Liz had the usual tea and honey at hand. The call ‘Half-hour’ on the speakers. Ron came in with a beautiful necklace of small gold hearts. It was the biggest night either of us had ever had, the culmination of so much work and love. A new beginning. ‘Fifteen minutes.’ Charles Strouse and Lee Adams dashed in to wish me luck, Betty and Adolph too. Leslie, Sam, and Lee were out front along with many friends. ‘Five minutes.’ Masarone gave the hair a final lift. Oh God. Len came into my room to take me upstairs, a routine that had become regular for us. He knew how nervous I was. ‘Places, please.’ Take many deep breaths – remember what Keith told you. Stand in the wings. The overture – that’s what a musical has that is so incredible, that gives such a lift, that hits you in the pit of your stomach. The rustle of the audience, the theatre packed …

  The show began. My entrance was coming up – ‘Margo Channing.’ I walked onto the stage – huge applause – the show moved forward from scene to scene, Len and I working together like a charm, Penny – the whole company terrific. Yes, I was frightened, but I loved it. And this one was for my mother.

  At the interval Ron came back happy. It was going well, better than ever. Second act the same – everything worked, even the sets, nothing stuck, all ran smoothly. Then the finale. Ron had staged exciting curtain calls, like a musical number. The whole company took theirs, and when they parted I was standing upstage, back to the audience. On cue I swirled around, arms in the air, and walked downstage for my bow. A thrill to do, and an added high for the audience. We took many calls – opening-night enthusiasm, but the show was good, we all knew it. Then photographers backstage, dressing room full of people, changing for the traditional trip to Sardi’s – I wasn’t about to miss that – and then Kippy and Kasha were
giving an opening-night party at Tavern on the Green.

  Sardi’s and the Tavern were an extension of the Palace – excitement upon excitement. Then the first reviews. Clive Barnes singing my praises. A hit. Leslie and Lee there to share it – all my New York friends. Ron read the reviews aloud – we might have written them ourselves, they were so good. Dancing in the streets – hooray! Then suddenly, sitting at my table, I was on the verge of tears. Too much tension – geared too high – nowhere to go but down? Who knows? Mother, more than likely. I’d gotten what I’d always wanted, I was an enormous hit, the show was an enormous hit, but the hole was there, that cavern that would never be filled. I could forget it most of the time, but that night I had been totally vulnerable on the stage and went on being so off it.

  Yet this was definitely my time. There were no qualified reviews, at last I had the adjectives I’d been waiting for. Walter Kerr was so flattering I blushed on reading his words. He said what I’d worked so hard to have said – that I was not just a movie star dabbling in the theatre. I was a full-fledged star of the stage. Thank you. The compliments were wildly extravagant and I reveled in them. It was almost like being discovered for the first time. I had a new career, a musical career. And the audiences were fantastic.

  Len and I were still involved with each other, although real life changed our habits considerably. Of course I, being a romantic and unrealistic, wanted it to continue. It couldn’t. There were times we were together, and that was always terrific fun. He loved all my friends and many aspects of my life. And eight times a week we were those other people – Margo and Bill. As long as that remained, our involvement would go on too. He was many years younger than I – as with our characters in the play. It all fell neatly into place. Yet he was a curious combination of social inexperience and a very mature, settled man. He had planned his life, figured out what he wanted, how he wanted to live, and would fight against anything threatening his plans. Meeting me had thrown him a little off balance and he didn’t like that. I remember showing him a line in Chapter 13 of John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman – ‘A planned world … is a dead world.’ He wasn’t crazy about that. I never could figure out how such a young man could be so closed to personal change when here was I, having lived many lives, always open to new people and things, possibilities, adventure. I still cried into my pillow over relationships. I don’t believe he did. Every other week I’d give myself a good talking to – ‘Forget him except at the theatre. Part-time lovers are not your bag. Never have been, never will be. He’ll go his own way – he has to – enjoy your time together, don’t fret about the rest.’ Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Mostly not. But it had to, for the sake of the show. And he never lied to me. He was not careless with me – just careful of himself. He’d been straighter, more honest, than most men I’d known, which is why I could never stop liking and respecting him. That’s why we are still happy at the sight of each other. It’s a good feeling to be glad to see someone you were once mad about. I haven’t had it about many.

  During our first month the Tony nominations were announced – the show, Ron, Len, and myself nominated, plus one of our supporting actors, Brandon Maggart. I was so excited! I couldn’t believe it. At last, my very first nomination for anything, anywhere. Katie was nominated too, for Coco. Of course I wanted to win, but Katie – my friend, one of the women I admired above all others, set apart, and such a truly wonderful actress. I adored Katie so – it was ridiculous, actors in competition for a prize. But what a prize! It shouldn’t mean so much, but – admit it – it does. As long as awards are being given, it’s better to get them. Katie and I joked about it. She wouldn’t go to the award presentation, she’d never gone to any function like that. Laughingly she said, ‘If I win, you’ll accept it for me, won’t you?’ And how I would! I was sure she would get it. Why couldn’t we both get it, damn it?

  Jason had married again. I wasn’t on the greatest terms with him, felt he’d been very careless about Sam. I prevailed on him to tell Sam about the marriage himself. Certainly Sam had been hoping from the beginning we’d get together again. That was his own hope – he hadn’t been led into it by either one of us. Now he accepted the new marriage, sort of. Well, he had to. I had made it clear to Jason that when he saw Sam I wanted him to see him alone, not yet with his new wife, not with his other children. Sam worshipped his father, and needed time alone with him. With Steve away, Jason was the only man in his life. I was sometimes at home when Jason would come to take him for the afternoon, but I wouldn’t stay – it had to be a special time for the two of them, alone. Sam continued to astound me. I recall his coming into my dressing room after a matinee, having seen the show from the wings, saying to me, ‘Who is your new playmate, Mommy?’ He’d only met Len once or twice.

  The Tony Award show was some night. My dressing room in the Palace was afloat with friends coming in for a drink. Then to my seat in the audience for the early awards. God, I was nervous. Cecil Beaton won the costume award for Coco. We didn’t win anything until Ron’s name was announced – first for choreography, then for direction. I screamed – we all did – my voice was totally shot. And I still had my number to do.

  Then Walter Matthau – another irony – announcing best performance by an actress in a musical. The names of the nominees – my heart thumping, then stopping altogether. Opening of the envelope. And I heard it – ‘Lauren Bacall for Applause.’ I screamed again, jumped out of my seat toward the stage. My friends in the audience were on their feet stamping. I could only make foghorn noises of shock. I’d never won anything before – some actresses did, not this one. I finally gathered myself together enough to thank Ron and the company of Applause and the authors for the biggest, best love-in of my life. By the time I was to wind up the show with ‘Welcome to the Theatre’ (from Applause, of course) I had almost no voice. It was an unforgettable night for me. Totally rewarding. It left me exhausted – and happy.

  From the age of nineteen I had been made aware of the pitfalls of awards. And, as my career moved on its zigzag course, I never contemplated winning one. I still don’t think actors, directors – any creative artists – should be pitted against one another. There is the high in winning, the low in losing – and the human frailty of resentment that the loser feels toward the winner. That uses up energy where it should not be used, energy that is needed. For the real stakes in the theatre are high – they are life stakes. That’s what I love about it. You gamble with your life, and that’s a gamble worth taking.

  Still thinking back to that Tony night: I was a winner, but I was alone, and that was a glaring fact of life to me. Crazy to look at it that way? Of course I’m crazy – but alone is definitely alone. Work is essential to me – really using myself, really functioning, body and mind at their best – but it only heightens my emotional needs, it doesn’t lessen them.

  The night after the Tonys, the show went fantastically. The audience knew I had won, and the opening scene itself was all about the Tony Awards, so the applause on my entrance had two meanings. That communication between actor and audience is incredible fun – the lift it gives is indescribable – but again, it basically deals with emotions, with people. And there’s nothing like it. It’s love. But it ends when the curtain comes down. I remember that after Johnny Negulesco saw the show he said, ‘You can never have a high like this anywhere else – you don’t need a man, there isn’t a man alive who could ever make you feel the way that audience makes you feel.’

  Wrong!

  There is a man alive, I’m sure, who might make me feel that way. The only question is whether or not I will find him.

  Nonetheless, from a work point of view, Applause continued to be the most rewarding experience of my life. I just wanted to have everything.

  There came the devastating night of Friday, July 31. At the beginning of the disco number, as I raised my right leg for a high kick, my left leg buckled – a rip-like thunder to me. The kids thought I had slipped, then realized it
was something else and caught me before I hit the stage. I knew something terrible had happened, but kept on going in the show, God knows how. I was filled with terror. The leg buckled another couple of times, without warning. The doctor was waiting for me in my dressing room at the interval. My knee started to puff. I started to cry. All I could think was that my brief moment of glory was over – I might be incapacitated for weeks. Len came into the room, helped put make-up on the white tape that was holding the hated Ace bandage in place. One of the young doctors told me to call Dr James Nicholas’ office on Monday so that he could examine my knee and prescribe my future course of action. That was to be the beginning of one of my luckiest medical associations.

  I missed no performances, but we eliminated the disco scene until we could hear Dr Nicholas’ diagnosis – which was that I had torn the other cartilage in that knee. Treatment was prescribed. The doctor impressed on me the necessity of keeping the muscles around the knee strong – only possible by working with weights. The disco would have to be dropped from the show for three weeks, and I’d have to wear the bandage until the swelling went away. Later I discovered that Dr Nicholas was Joe Namath’s doctor, as well as doctor for dozens of other athletes who had a knee, elbow, or foot problem. And they were followed by Nureyev, Baryshnikov…. Dr Nicholas kept me from surgery and from missing a performance, and I could never be grateful enough. I’ve been lucky so far – got through almost five years of Applause and a few after without a major mishap. No more taking my body – or luck! – for granted.