As I look outside my window on Central Park West in the afternoon sun, I see trees, all sizes, full and green (I never realized how many shades of green there are) being backed up by tall buildings – too tall – cement shutting out light. And I think how lucky I am to live where I do so that just by looking out the window I can almost feel I am in the country and how lucky to live where I live instead of being completely closed in by cement.
In the United States the focus has always been on success, on making it, which of course is followed by making money which in turn will buy you the biggest house on the block – the most expensive car – entrance to the corporate America club – the good old boys’ club – the golf dates – the private planes and on and on. Unhappily quality does not count as number one, because with the accent on things, tables, chairs, tangibles – creativity, imagination and standards fall to the bottom of the ladder or off it. I really hate to see that this country – that once was about ideals, about people, about the land, about enriching the spirit, about accomplishment because you love what you do – has more and more become about corporate America – money, buying power, greed. It’s all so cold, so humorless, so dead.
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, money bought me my apartment, but it was money that came from years of work, hard work – doing what I love to do, not to acquire. I like money as much as most people – more because it gives me independence and as long as I keep working enables me to live here and go where I wish to go. I loved the America of Franklin Roosevelt, of John and Robert Kennedy – I grew up on that, had pride in it – but I do not love the administration of now. Now is not about people or ideals, ideas – it’s about C.E.O.s – Bush buddies – Texas – oil secrecy – gun lobbying – anti-immigration corporations – all wrapped up in the American flag making this a pure Aryan (sound familiar?) country – a Christian country. Why don’t people realize this country was built by immigrants? One of the great basics and selling points of the United States was that anyone from anywhere in the world could come here, make a life and prosper in freedom. We’re all immigrants. I am an immigrant – my mother was born in Rumania. The glory has gone and, most devastatingly, the humor – the laughter has gone.
While I’m on the subject of non-functioning situations, here’s one more example. While I was actually writing this passage – with a low bow to Joe Heller, Something Happened. The lights went out. At first I thought it was a fuse – until I discovered that all the lights in my apartment were out, then that all lights everywhere were out. I picked up the phone to see if it was something in my building that had gone awry. My phone was dead. I tried to reach my children on my cell phone – could not get through to anyone. All of New York City was doing the same thing. It was the total blackout. It was eerie to look out across Central Park and see only black buildings of different heights with nary a light in sight. On Central Park West there was not a streetlight, traffic light, even flashlight to be seen. Once in a while a police car showed up with headlights on full blast and the red and blue lights atop the cars twirling around. There were only people, stranded for the most part, hoping a bus would appear. One finally did in the wee small hours with all lights shining inside and out – a stark picture against the pitch darkness. Luckily, I had flashlights and many candles, this time not for the romantic setting candles usually convey.
What I found to be the most distressing factor was the complete inability to communicate with anyone, in my case my children, mostly, and friends. I couldn’t get through to any city or state. I thought what would happen if someone had a health emergency under these conditions– just too bad! The radio station, which I was finally able to get on CBS and ABC, kept saying call 911 if you really need help. But the phones were dead, stupid! What were they thinking? There was the mayor giving advice – ‘stay home’ – not quite possible if you were stuck on a subway. The mindless radio voices reported that it was not a terrorist act – did anyone really think it was? – that people were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge – that the lights were out in Times Square – all theatres dark. They continued to repeat the same information over and over again. And then the President, from either Crawford, Texas, or California fund raising, gave a stilted speech about the safety of the country, how he was going to get to the bottom of the grid problem, etc. etc. Not exactly soothing and not a grain of humor or humanity to be heard. I repeat, where has all the humor gone?
When riding in a car, I’ll note the endless traffic – almost bumper to bumper. Somewhere in the distance a siren sounds. As it gets louder, more persistent, I see that it is an ambulance. I also see that with the traffic the ambulance is now unable to move. So what’s to be done? And if you happen to be the unlucky one needing an ambulance – forget it – you’ll just have to die. That’s life in the big city, as my son Sam says.
Forgive me if I’m sounding too grim. Maybe it’s just one of those days. I hold the thought until I hit the street. It’s a beautiful fall day – foliage still on the trees – no sign of Isabel (very feminine hurricane) as yet, though ‘they’ (the media) say she’s on her way. It’s nature that keeps us aware and awake – wet or dry. And it’s nature finally that makes it possible to deal with the rest of it, the bad stuff. I hate to knock the city of most of my life but being exposed to it day in and day out makes the negatives hard to ignore. If I could wish it back to the way it was, I would in a minute. Garbage on the streets cannot possibly connote progress. The occasional quiet times – early morning – dusk – are still appreciated and relished. I think for me, in addition to the obvious work reasons, friend reasons, it’s memories that keep me here. Not that I’m one to dwell on the past – I’m not – or wallow in the negatives – I don’t – but pictures of my growing up years crop up and my mother is always with me – on a certain street that I pass or is mentioned by someone. I either know that street, used to live on that street or wish I had. So it seems that I will stay where I am.
I still love traveling in Europe. Although, with the combination of airport security and the intense dislike of Americans, travel has become more difficult. Whereas for most of my life an American passport was more desirable worldwide than even the most desirable Tiffany diamond, now it is the Euro that has taken over and moved to number one on the popularity charts. So it is more than distressing to find the tables turned on the country of my birth. Here we are near the end of 2004 with the world in a mess, in my view due in large part to the Bush administration. Americans have become the most hated people on earth, we have run out of countries to visit. How we could declare war on Iraq – on any country – which did not attack us, I will never understand. As I write, November and the elections are looming. So there is hope that the present administration will disappear. (Please, God.) A new one will give a sense of openness, honesty and, at least, a fresh approach to the rest of the world. Experts have said that America has never been at such a low ebb. With our bombs destroying half of Iraq and its men, women and children, and our young men and women losing their lives as shown on every news program every day and night, there seems to be nothing but killing. And to what end? It is too horrible and not the same country I or my children grew up in. Having been brought up to be aware of my government and its elected officials and public figures, it’s a shock to have to now explain or apologize for the existing powers. Before, I always took such pride in our leaders – even if I disagreed with and fiercely disliked several over the years, there always was that small ray of hope one could find and hang onto. Now there is futility – I don’t know how it happened so fast – but happen it has. So I continue to cling to the great leaders of the past, hoping to instill in myself the pride of yore that was so much a part of me for so many years.
In my growing up years my idol was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He represented to me everything that was good – care for those in need, intelligence, quality, great wit, courage. Even as a child I remember being in awe of him, recognizing his courage in spite of his paralysis. Listening to
his fireside chats he was the grandfather I never knew, the father who was never there, the friend, the teacher – he was warmth and comfort even when I was age eight, nine, ten and upwards – granted, I was needy and I romanticized every aspect of the man. He was worth it. He was a great man and he was a great leader. To this day I still feel the same about him. And his wife, Eleanor, who I was lucky to meet on several occasions in my twenties and thirties – she was the first woman in public life who made me aware or at least opened my eyes to the tremendous influence a woman could have, the contributions a woman could make and ultimately the power a woman could have in making her world and the world – then the man’s world – a better place. There are no seconds – only one Roosevelt, one Truman, one John Kennedy and one Robert Kennedy – one Adlai Stevenson. It is that level that I personally yearn for. I’ll keep searching for a glimmer of any one of those men and that woman.
So much in life seems to be compromise. Why can’t we have the best? Why can’t we be better than we are? Why can’t we enrich our lives with appreciation of the arts, with books? Why can’t that all be at least as important as making money, having a bigger house, a newer car? Why do we have to be submerged in commercialism? Why is tearing down a sign of progress instead of preserving? And there are many more whys. The big why to me in America is why don’t we take the time to see what is around us – the earth, the sea, the sky? Are people so busy chasing the hours, hurrying them along so they can get to that first martini? I myself have been guilty of losing time – wasting it. However, the last few years I have become too aware of the passing of time – the losing of it.
As I sit here writing about the most vivid and affecting events and happenings of the last twenty-five years, I think of the lives I have led. The remarkable number of remarkable people I have known. The varied locations when memorable and lasting friendships have been formed – where work opportunities have allowed me to spread my wings in new directions. I can hardly believe that from the age of eighteen – riding on the Super Chief, alone, heading for the unknown in California – that from that moment on my life would change forever. New sights and sounds, new faces and experiences that even in my fantasy I never envisioned would happen at once and so quickly. Leaving the protective arms of my mother, my grandmother, my Uncle Charlie and the rest of my New York family, I was then on my own.
From my first meeting with Howard Hawks, who would own me, and Charlie Feldman, who would represent and also own me, the new world began to unfold. From the first movie came my first and most electrifying love. The wheels of publicity from Warner Bros. and Hawks turned me from an unknown to a completely new identity and spun me around so quickly I hardly had time to know what was happening … then to be married, to live in a house for the first time – with a swimming pool, a cook, a butler – to drive a car – to own a car – to have dogs and flowers and trees – to meet Robert Benchley, Nunnally Johnson, John Huston, Richard Brooks, Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, John O’Hara, Cole Porter, David Niven, Clifton Webb, Cary Grant, Oscar Levant and more and more. To absorb it all is dizzy-making to me now. And to have a child – at twenty-four. All this in less than five years! Mind-boggling. I do not really understand how I was able to accept it all so readily. It’s hard to believe I was a theatre usher living in Greenwich Village and sharing a bed with my mother in the entry hall of our small apartment at the time I was offered the screen test by Howard Hawks that would send me to California and the opening chapter of my fairy tale life.
The pictures I have in my head from those early years are very clear to me: running down Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, arms held wide, green three-quarters coat flying, toward Bogie waiting for me on the corner with James Gleason at four in the morning; Bogie walking up Highway 101 in espadrilles, huge sunflower in jacket lapel at six in the morning as I found him in my 1940 Plymouth – the headiest romance imaginable. The varied photos taken on the set of To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep on the Warner Bros. lot – I know it’s me – so young – but I can hardly believe it. The twenty-five-year difference between us is never visible. We just looked right together – always. Maybe I looked older and he looked younger. Whatever it was, it was most definitely the match made in heaven.
The chapters in my life unfolded with the birth of Steve first and, two and a half years later, Leslie – moving into new houses with each child. High times on a first trip to Europe and Africa – Academy Awards – the great friends – the beginning of my relationship with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy – the sailing life so foreign to me, so necessary for Bogie – my mother’s wedding to the loveliest of men, Lee Goldberg, who was her prince on the white horse from the day she laid eyes on him a few years before – a bachelor until then, whisking her away to the life she always wanted.
I think of the steadiness of friendships that grew stronger with each year, even as the studio life changed and television became a serious factor in all our lives, and some friends had to move to Europe for work and this forced distance between us. My movie career had a few highs – quite a few lows – all saved by a happy house, the children, dogs and travel to Bogie’s locations. Noel Coward, an old friend of Bogie’s, entered our lives when he came to California and cast me in Blithe Spirit for live TV. Of course, Noel had invited Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and every star in town to sit on the sound stage in full view of us, the nerve-racked actors. That experience was a great high for me and Noel continued to be a factor in my life until his death. A most extraordinary man of extraordinary talents – those of a Renaissance man. And there appeared, whenever we were in the same city or country, the likes of Robert Sherwood – a brilliant, funny, marvelous man and writer who had been major in Bogie’s theatre days with Petrified Forest – a turning point for Bogie’s career. And there was the arrival in Los Angeles of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who immediately became our best friends while there and after. Because we spent time in London before and after The African Queen location, our British friends became very important to us – and to me later on when those in the theatre world of England made my life richer and might I say happier at a time that I needed it. Once those special people were friends, they were friends for life. So it was that David Niven, Larry and Vivien, Noel, John Gielgud, Richard and Sybil Burton, Jack and Doreen Hawkins remained a permanent part of our, and finally my, life.
The days and nights at Ira Gershwin’s home – the music, the assortment of composers, actors, writers jump out at me often – our musical years. Frank Sinatra, Jimmy van Heusen, Roger Eden, Judy Garland were constants – often daily visitors in Mapleton Drive, the location of our final home together. Those memories, the figure of our fantastic cook, and even more a fantastic woman, May Smith, carrying breakfast trays upstairs with her special style – a red rose over her right ear and an open, loving smile on her lovely face – did I actually live that way – did I actually know and hug all of those people – did I become part of their lives and they part of mine? It is so hard to believe.
All this was interspersed with the highlights of our trips to New York where our theatre friends became our focus. The theatre itself became a nightly event and Moss and Kitty Hart, George Kaufman, Leland and Slim Hayward, George and Joan Axelrod, Comden and Green and Leonard and Felicia Bernstein filled each visit with laughter and song. I can never forget how I loved sitting next to Lenny as he played his early, middle and latest songs – always aware that I should have lived in the speakeasy days when I could have sat on the piano and sung show tunes. I knew every lyric of most of Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Hart, Jule Styne, Van Heusen, Kern. Little did I ever even dream then that this was preparing me – paving my way – to star in a musical on Broadway.
This may all be nostalgia to you. I do not usually dwell on the past, but every now and then these moments – and more than moments – that have had an impact on me pop up. They resonate with me clearly and loudly. All of the events bi
g and small – all of the people close or not so – have shaped me. Every time I attended a play in New York it had a lasting effect on me – Streetcar Named Desire, my first sight of Marlon Brando – The Glass Menagerie starring the great Laurette Taylor – Long Day’s Journey Into Night where Jason Robards showed how great an actor he was – so great it gave you chills. Yet who, on our first meeting backstage – a handshake, a how-do-you-do – ever thought for a second that I might meet him again, much less marry him. Each of those performances became a permanent part of my being: Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth, Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach in Rose Tattoo, Margot Fonteyn in Ondine, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle – everything. I never missed a performance of hers, starting in London where we met often at Larry and Vivien’s, John Gielgud’s and others, before Nureyev. Every experience – Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof, Ethel Merman in Gypsy and every other show she was in during my time in the Big Apple, South Pacific with Pinza, My Fair Lady – Rex Harrison’s perfect performance – Richard Burton and Julie Andrews in Camelot. Every one thrilled me, taught me something, and confirmed again and again why I wanted to be an actress from childhood on. But would I ever be as good as any of them – could I be?
Then, too, there was my political awakening with the appearance of Adlai Stevenson and my devotion to him. Since Roosevelt I had not heard anyone in public life speak like that. Though I was a staunch admirer of Harry Truman and brought up in a Democratic family, I was never so active as I was with Adlai Stevenson, during which time my friendship with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr and Alistair Cooke began and flourished. Stevenson opened sections of my brain that I had been unaware I had, with his straightforward honesty, brilliance of mind and, my favorite trait, unending wit even in bad times. I think he made me more of an activist since then than I might have been.
By Myself and Then Some Page 65