by Joel Grey
Difference celebrated, contradictions used as creative fodder: The theater was a collective endeavor in which everybody had his or her part to play. The company was made up of so many types—so many ages, body types, personalities, and talents. Some had children; others didn’t. Some were married and some single. There were even men who loved men.
At twelve years old I already understood that Viktor and Bryan, two members of the Play House, were different. It was nothing I talked about with anybody, but still, I got it. They would leave the theater together and they owned a dog, a dachshund named Liesl. The snippets of conversation I overheard between them sounded just the way other couples talked. (“I took Liesl for a walk” or “Don’t forget to pick up milk for the house.”)
I didn’t know exactly how or why, but I felt the stirrings of kinship in the unspoken intimacies of these two gentleman. I was captivated by the notion of our similarity. It’s exciting when you recognize in others something in yourself that you didn’t even know was a part of you. And it wasn’t just about the kind of sexual connection I had experienced with Jerry, the bellboy. Viktor and Bryan were two men somehow sharing a life, a foreign but comforting concept. At the same time, the discovery that I identified with them frightened me. Everything I had heard up until now was that men who loved men were fairies, homos, limp-wristed perverts, sissies, and fags.
But Viktor was a very masculine leading man whom women swooned over. The discrepancy was confusing. None of those ugly words would make any sense in a sentence about Viktor. No way. Nor did they apply to Walter, another actor at the theater.
My relationship with Walter began when the two of us were cast in the same play. The theater is a very sexy place. It always has been and always will be. To inhabit another character, another presence, and another way of thinking, it is necessary to forget who you are. You strip yourself bare to give room to imagination. So you put whatever thoughts you have about yourself aside to become a killer, a philanderer, a genius—anything. The space to act out your dreams is arousing. That’s why a lot of people have affairs with other cast members. With the line between pretend and real blurred, permission is freely given.
Walter and I had both been cast in a production of, funnily enough, Kiss and Tell. In the family comedy by the popular playwright F. Hugh Herbert I was Raymond, the bratty younger brother, and Mr. Lowe was my father. (How nice was that?) Walter played Dexter, the boyfriend of my onstage sister. Because of our ages—I was twelve and he was sixteen—we bonded immediately.
Walter came from the poorer West Side, where my cousin Burton also lived. His family of Croatian immigrants, who spoke no English, spent night and day making ends meet at their butcher shop, where their sons were also expected to work. Often Walter arrived at rehearsal with his hair smelling of garlic from having stuffed sausages all night. On breaks, we played cards, raced each other to the corner deli, teased each other—little, quick Joel ducking around tall and gangly Walter. Our camaraderie didn’t arouse any suspicion because we were just the youngsters of the play. Why wouldn’t we hang out together? Why wouldn’t we be pals?
So when I asked my parents if I could sleep over at Walter’s house, they weren’t the least bit suspicious. By then, my family had moved to a house in University Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. Although it meant leaving the Sovereign, and Jerry, whom I never saw again, it was yet another upwardly mobile step for our family. It was also kind of far for me to travel home after dinner at Walter’s house, which was the perfect reason for a sleepover. Not that I really needed an excuse with my folks. They trusted me to be on my own. (“You don’t need to worry about Joel. He knows how to take care of himself.”) If Walter asked me to sleep over, and his parents said it was OK, it was OK.
In the small apartment above his parents’ butcher shop, our friendship went from playful and boyish to serious and grown-up. He locked the door to his room, and after that I didn’t remember any words—just being quiet. We had to be very, very quiet. We were both mature for our age and responsible enough to be trusted with challenging roles in serious, adult theater productions. That’s the only way this could happen. This was not being fooled around with by the bellhop or cuddling with my cousin but rather a full sexual expression of real feelings. With Walter, an intelligent, thoughtful, fellow actor, I learned that sex could be connected to love.
My friendship with Walter, which deepened over the course of the show and beyond, was of pure trust and affection; I loved him, and I knew he loved me. But I also knew that to others our love would be a disgrace.
The contradiction between those two realities didn’t make sense, but it was my life, so I made it make sense by keeping my love for Walter a secret isolated in his bedroom and other private places. When I left to go home, the experience disappeared (or at least receded) so I could freely return to being Mother’s pet, performing for friends who had come over to the house for mah-jongg. In this way I kept my life neatly compartmentalized. At school, I adopted the persona of the class clown to stay in the bullies’ good graces. At the Play House, however, I was as serious as any grown-up professional theater actor. I tailored my behavior to each group, so I could give the people what they wanted. It was exhausting. It takes a lot of work to keep everything separate, but just like any other skill, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
Me as an actor in the high school production of Good News.
CHAPTER THREE
Mother, all dressed up in a stylish suit and cloche—with faux grapes—that she had made the night before, was surrounded by a mountain of luggage and the Families Katz and Epstein. It was a brutal 10 degrees on that day in 1945 on the Union Terminal platform where she, Ronnie, and I (also all dressed up) waited to board a gigantic streamliner, but she was happy and excited. Like Rose from Gypsy who sang that she would “get my kids out,” Grace was getting out of Cleveland.
Mother’s expectation of a better, more glamorous life was finally coming true. My father had been hired to play with Spike Jones and His City Slickers; we were moving to Los Angeles. Hollywood, the land of her beloved movie stars!
This was Dad’s really big break, Mother explained to The Sisters, who were not only freezing but also dying of envy. Mickey Katz had first come to the attention of Spike, the popular bandleader and major recording star, because of his musical expertise and unique gift of the “glug”—a percussive sound made by swallowing air. It was something impossible to teach; you either had it or you didn’t. Spike was known for his satirical versions of famous pop and classical music using funny sounds such as horns, gunshots, and soon Dad’s glug. One of his biggest hits, “Cocktails for Two,” featured a chorus of hiccups and glugs. When Spike’s orchestra toured, Dad was given clarinet solos and comedy bits to do, so that by the time he went out to California ahead of us to find an apartment, he was no longer just a Cleveland musician but one getting a national reputation.
As we boarded the train, I was shut down and sad. I didn’t care about leaving school, friends, relatives, anything, or anyone in Cleveland—other than the Play House and Walter. I wondered if I would ever find another place where I seemed to belong as much. And as to the excitement, tenderness, and trust I shared with Walter, well, the thought of saying goodbye to that made me absolutely miserable. So I didn’t really say goodbye to Walter; instead I told him I’d be back, even though I didn’t know if I would.
I mourned privately as we pulled out of the station and Cleveland quickly receded into the distance. The novelty of the train trip—which included a dining car where anything you wanted was brought in silver service to tables covered in starched white tablecloths by elegant and smiling black gentlemen in full uniform—provided some distraction. Traveling more than 2,000 miles through Kansas and the Southwest, I watched America go by. Yet, no matter how deep the canyons or lovely the plains, I couldn’t shake the feeling that a big and very important part of my nearly fourteen years was receding into the distance, too.
Los Angeles was a
balmy 75 degrees, as if by movie magic. From the moment we stepped onto the platform at LA’s fabled Union Station, where my teary, smiling father was waiting for us in a summer-weight suit, it was as if we had arrived in a foreign country. Together, the four of us click-clacked our way across the slippery terra-cotta-tiled floor, under a ceiling that seemed to reach the sky. We moved on past fountains, courtyards, and lush, enclosed garden patios. Things were growing everywhere, palms in the shape of giant fans, plants that looked like something out of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and flowers that were as red as Aunt Fritzi’s lipstick.
In the twilight, Dad drove west on Wilshire Boulevard. Ronnie and I craned our heads out the windows to look at the palm trees that lined the streets en route to our new apartment. My father proudly announced “6148½ Orange Street!” as if it were the Taj Mahal. But by that time, it was totally dark. The Spanish Colonial architecture that had just an hour earlier appeared magical and inviting now seemed shadowy and strange. I never liked arriving in new destinations at night. (I still don’t; the dark on top of unfamiliar rooms and furniture is doubly disorienting.) But after we had our Jell-O and milk, Ronnie and I went to our new room and fell asleep in our new twin beds.
I awoke at dawn to the most amazing, powerful, and sweet smell filling the entire room. Looking out the window, and through the filtered early-morning sunlight, I saw a real, live orange tree. The fruit dangled from a branch no more than a foot from my bed, so close that I couldn’t believe what I saw. I put my hand right through the open window and pulled one off before loudly whispering, “Ronnie! Wake up. Look at this!” I stuck my amazing find right under his nose. “You can’t do this in Cleveland!” I said as I tore the peel from the fruit and shared the prize with my baby brother.
We were all completely seduced by California: the sun, the flowers, the food. The food! The legendary Farmers Market, a bazaar of delicious and unusual things to eat at the corner of Third and Fairfax, was only six blocks north of us. The market was big enough for us to get lost in and brimming with produce. Mother picked, plucked, and prodded; since she was Grandpa Epstein’s favorite daughter, fresh fruits and vegetables were nothing new. The real adventure was the stalls along the whole perimeter of the market, which served every kind of exotic cuisine.
Seated at outdoor picnic tables, we tasted so many new things. Mother, being the daring cook that she was, always encouraged Ronnie and me to try food that other kids wouldn’t go near. We discovered cellophane noodles and sheer dumplings filled with juicy shrimp and pork; house-made hams and salamis piled atop buttered dark brown bread from the Danish stall; and Mexican tacos of pork butt that was both tender and crispy inside warm white flour tortillas, topped with a mixture of cilantro, onions, and lime. Nobody had ever heard of tacos in Cleveland, let alone tasted them.
The most electrifying aspect to our new life, however, was the fact that in LA the movies were it. They were the local pastime and industry. After seeing Till the Clouds Roll By, a big musical with June Allyson, Judy Garland, and Lena Horne, I became a huge fan of MGM’s musicals and wanted to know all things Metro Goldwyn Mayer. I would always noodge my mom to take me to its Culver City lot. There, after telling her she had to park out of sight and stay in the car, I would stand by the big drive-in gate waiting with my autograph book for any stars exiting the lot. When we eventually moved into a house of our own, I covered the walls of my bedroom with photographs cut out from Photoplay of the biggest movie stars of the day—Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, Esther Williams, and Judy Garland.
Even school, with lunch eaten outdoors, had an air of glamour. When we arrived in LA, in the middle of the semester, it was more than a little intimidating, all that sizing-you-up stuff, and having my baby brother in tow did little to help my confidence. I was short and didn’t play sports—and I now no longer had the Play House as a second home. Trying to figure out who I was in this new place, I remained quiet and careful until I better understood the lay of the land.
As I entered ninth grade at Alexander Hamilton High, confusion over my sexual identity only grew. I always liked girls a lot—and high school was no different. In many ways, I was more comfortable in their company than I was with boys. Girls were cute and fun—and they weren’t competitive. Plus, they really liked me back. When I was little they liked me because I was good at jump rope. When I got older it was because I was a pretty good dancer. I had always danced with Mother (“You know your mother loves to dance”) at home, to the radio, or whenever we went to see my father play. Whether I wanted to or not, I was her partner. I could do all the dances of the day, the rumba, the fox-trot, and the waltz, but the jitterbug, specifically swing dancing, was my favorite. Over the next two years, more and more of the girls of Hami High wanted to be around me because I could dance. It was what they had in mind besides dancing that I wasn’t prepared for.
Things with girls always seemed to be started by them, even as far back as age seven when little Mary Ann from next door suggested I touch her somewhere I knew I shouldn’t, and then put her hand in my pants (afterward, she told her mother, who called my mother, who gave me a boarding-school-level beating). Whether I was trying to prove something or simply be friendly, I always felt obligated to respond to advances made by girls I liked. That was definitely the case with Francine, the first girl I ever had sex with.
The feelings I had for Francine were that of compassion bordering on pity. I felt bad for her because her parents couldn’t take care of her so she lived in a facility in Culver City run by Jewish services. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she had a big crush on me and never stopped calling my house.
As if it were an inevitability, Francine and I went out on a date. I picked her up in my father’s new Hudson, drove along the coast—the grown-up thing to do—and parked in an abandoned lot by the beach, where we moved to the backseat. Without a word, she took all her clothes off; I didn’t. When we began necking, perhaps the most powerful sensation I experienced was the smell of her acne medicine.
We had sex a couple of times back then, but it always felt dutiful. All of my experiences with girls lacked the passion, pleasure, and reciprocity I had had with Jerry and Walter. I was being a good sport and doing what was expected of me when her advances made the situation clear. Boys were supposed to want to have sex with girls. Everybody knew that. I had to prove that I was normal. To whom? I don’t know. I guess myself.
All of my high school sexual experiences had a similar air of compliance even when the girl was a real knockout, such as Janet. She was a cheerleader all the jocks were crazy to date, but I was the one with whom she went out on a few dates. One day I stopped by her house to see if she wanted to go to Tom Crumplar’s in Westwood Village for a malt, but she wasn’t home. Still, her mother asked me if I wanted to come in. She looked more like her gorgeous older sister than like her mom. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Lemonade, a Coke. Or a beer?”
A beer. Wow.
“Sure, I’ll take a beer,” I said coolly.
She smelled really good as she sat down next to me on the couch. We chatted for a couple of minutes while I sipped the beer. She moved her hand on my leg. Inwardly, I was alarmed. This was Janet’s mom and I wasn’t even an upperclassman! But the people-pleaser in me wasn’t going to embarrass her by removing her hand. And the performer, the one who responded to almost any dare, took the situation a step further, moving in for a kiss.
I have always had an attraction to danger—furtive fumblings in the elevator, a secret rendezvous above the butcher shop—that translates easily into sexual provocation. Janet’s mom clearly picked up on this vibe. Having a beer and sex with a beautiful and experienced older woman, who also happened to be my girlfriend’s mother, was thrilling. What I did with Janet’s mom, however, wasn’t as intense as anything I did with Walter.
My self-doubt became acute. The notion that some people might be attracted to both boys and girls was totally outside the bounds of anything I h
ad ever heard. The ambiguity I felt didn’t seem like a choice. I definitely didn’t want to face the idea that what really made me feel connected and truly sexually alive was sleeping with men, which was definitely not OK. And so I felt forced to hide in the uncertainty of it all. I knew that absolutely no one would understand.
I had found a comfortable place for myself in the scene at Hami High, which from the outside looked like the perfect brick high school in an MGM musical, even though it was in an iffy neighborhood. Ironically enough, my best friends were the jocks. These handsome, popular, athletic lettermen turned me into their mascot. They kept an eye out for me against bullies (because of my small size and the conspicuous clothes Mother always made sure I wore, I was an easy target). The jocks liked having me around, because I knew how to entertain. The performing instinct—the one that brought me attention from Mr. Lowe at the Play House or walking down the aisle of my aunt’s wedding—served me well in high school. I understood that people had expectations of me, and not only did I comply, I amplified it.
I made the lettermen laugh with my impressions of teachers and other students just like my dad amusing his bandmates back at the Palace. I was voted vice president of my class and became a member of the debate team. But I was no angel. When the occasion required it, I had no trouble being provocative. I pushed the limits, sometimes dangerously.
When Mrs. Mabel Montague, my drama teacher, who thought I had something, gave me carte blanche to direct a play of my own choice, I picked The Lady of Larkspur Lotion. This gritty one-act play centers on a woman who, having fallen on hard times, is living in a squalid boardinghouse, where she is reduced to prostitution as a way of avoiding eviction. The play, however well written and performed, was out-there and, as such, it stirred up a fair bit of controversy, shocking those who saw it—especially the school principal. My artistic efforts earned me a trip to his office, where he angrily asked, “Mr. Katz, what is this?”