Wendy and the Lost Boys

by Julie Salamon

  Lola and Morris stood and clapped for their daughter, but Lola was not altogether happy. She was proud of seeing Wendy’s name in the newspaper, but she wasn’t thrilled to sit next to her granddaughters watching a frank discussion of diaphragms and sex. Shortly afterward Lola said to Tajlei, “Ah, sweetheart, the girls in the dance class were talking about Wendy’s play.” Her tone indicated that she liked the attention but was embarrassed to have a daughter who used dirty words in public.

  Pride prevailed. It wasn’t unusual to find Lola standing outside the Phoenix accosting people as they left the theater. “So did you like the show?” she asked. “The playwright’s my daughter, you know.”

  Just as Uncommon Women and Others had revealed hidden truths and suppositions about Wendy’s friends, the play exposed aspects of Wendy she tried to conceal. Beneath the giggles and lowered head lay a questioning, rebellious soul. In addition to the empathy, sincerity, and uncertainty she radiated, Wendy Wasserstein was filled with angry frustration at society’s expectations and life’s vagaries. She wanted to be heard.

  And she was.

  “Dramatic Wit and Wisdom Unite in ‘Uncommon Women and Others’ ” was the headline on Richard Eder’s review in the Times.

  Eder, who had become the paper’s chief critic just a few months earlier, praised the “inventive direction” and “splendid acting,” elaborating with specific instances of memorable portrayals, offering special plaudits for Jill Eikenberry, Swoosie Kurtz, and Alma Cuervo. He admired the peek into a woman’s world but was also somewhat offended by the vulgarity. He ended the review on a note of disapproval, wagging an editorial finger at the unladylike language and offering a veiled warning to the playwright, as though telling her not to get an overinflated sense of her own importance, to be careful with her talents.

  “Uncommon Women” contains enough specific sex talk to cover the walls of every women’s lavatory in the World Trade Center. It is believable, sometimes funny and sometimes touching, but it becomes excessive. One has only to imagine this to be a play about men to realize just how excessive.

  Three weeks after her twenty-seventh birthday, Wendy Wasserstein became a public entity. Less than a year had passed since she wrote to Ruth Karl in frustration, speculating on whether she should make yet another attempt at applying to law school. Now her play was the subject of lively and largely favorable discussion in the New York Times—and the Daily News and the New York Post. Soon followed more positive notices in New York magazine (where the notoriously tough, even cruel, John Simon offered high praise) and the New Yorker (from Edith Oliver, already a fan of Wendy’s from the O’Neill).

  There was criticism focused on the play’s lack of structure, questions of substance, vagueness of time and space. But the general tenor, even the objections, conveyed the sense that this was a playwright to be reckoned with.

  Uncommon Women and Others was getting attention everywhere that mattered, but the praise didn’t translate into making a living. The run at the Phoenix couldn’t be extended past December 4, no matter that the reviews attracted sellout audiences. The theater was already committed to the next new playwright’s work. Not-for-profit theater was just that: no money. Wendy had been paid fifteen hundred dollars for her weeks of work, same as Steve Robman. This was Off-Broadway; it was possible to be a one-play wonder.

  Still, despite all that, there was no denying the thrill of this moment in the sun.

  Within weeks, Thirteen/WNET in New York picked up the play for its series Great Performances: Theater in America, which meant national exposure on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The producers approached the Mount Holyoke administration about providing some props and then helping to publicize the broadcast:

  January 12, 1978

  Memorandum

  Subject: Production of “Uncommon Women and Others” on Public Television in June

  To: David B. Truman (president, Mount Holyoke College)

  From: Irma L. Rabbino (director, public relations, MHC)

  I have just had a conversation with Phyllis Geller, producer at WNET in New York, who will be producing the play by Wendy Wasserstein ’71, on the public television network in June. The play, “Uncommon Women and Others” will be produced by Theatre in America. . . .

  As you know, I saw the play in New York, and although my reaction may have been intensified by the seating arrangements—I sat between my mother and father—I did find that some of the explicit sexual references, descriptions, gestures and language, left me with some deep concerns about what the play did for Mount Holyoke.

  Mount Holyoke is very clearly the college . . . we are caricatured e.g. napkin folding was an important skill to be learned in the late ’60s. We are stereotyped. . . . But this kind of thing has been done before to all of “the seven” and we have seen it less skillfully portrayed on our stage in many a Junior Show.

  Phyllis Geller tells me that they have taken out the four letter words and “overt obscenity” and any “gratuitiously pornographic discussions” but have left in most of the “graphic sexual things.” “We’re not discussing anything that isn’t frequently discussed on talk shows,” she said, “and if Dinah Shore can say it, why can’t a dramatist?”

  I told her about the problems that I had with some of the language, and that I was concerned about the potential embarrassment to one of our faculty members. She will discuss this with Wendy Wasserstein.

  Jim Cavanaugh has seen the play and thinks it’s terrific, as did the group of Wendy’s contemporaries with whom he saw it.

  The play certainly helps to dispel our image as “a small Catholic college somewhere” or as “a convent,” and although it seems to hit most other sexual concerns and activities, it does not mention the lesbian issue.

  We have also gotten miles of coverage in publications we do not normally appear in, e.g., the New Yorker, Time magazine, New York magazine, the Associated Press wire service, Ms., etc.

  The questions that arise relate to our “endorsement” of the play.

  My feeling is that we should not supply our mailing list (although the directory is available for $3.00) and, whether we agree to lend a few pieces of furniture or not, insist that we receive no credit line on the screen. . . .

  As the Mount Holyoke pooh-bahs contemplated how to capitalize on the PBS broadcast without alienating too many alumnae, the theater people confronted the realities of television. A codirector with video experience, Merrily Mossman, was brought in by PBS to work with Steve Robman, a novice at staging scenes in front of cameras. The producers ordered the playwright to cut all curse words—“fucking amazing” wouldn’t fly on television—and to remove certain sight gags, considered too daring for the mainstream viewer, like Holly pouring piles of spermicidal cream into a diaphragm. Wendy saved the message she found on her answering machine, from a PBS executive: “We’ve okayed the script, everything’s fine except for clitoral orgasms.”

  There was also a last-minute cast change. Glenn Close couldn’t play Leilah; she was in Buffalo playing the female lead in The Crucifer of Blood, a Sherlock Holmes story that was headed for Broadway. Both Steve Robman and Wendy knew Meryl Streep from Yale and decided to ask her to fill in. Wendy made the call.

  Streep hadn’t spent much time with Wendy at the drama school, except a brief time they’d shared on crew sewing costumes—not getting much done because Wendy kept making jokes with Chris Durang and Albert Innaurato. The hyperintuitive actress enjoyed being around Wendy but couldn’t get a grip on her. “To me she always seemed lonely, and the gayer her spirits and the more eager her smile, the lonelier she seemed,” Streep said.

  Streep had already made an impression in the New York theater world; she had appeared onstage at Lincoln Center in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and in Measure for Measure at Joe Papp’s Shakespeare Festival. She had received a Tony nomination for her work in Tennessee Williams’s 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. Her movie career was just taking hold; the previous year she appeared briefly in
Julia, which starred Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, and had filmed The Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino’s epic Vietnam movie, scheduled for release later in 1978.

  Personally, it was a difficult period for Streep. Her fiancé, the actor John Cazale, best known for his role as the doomed Fredo Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather series, was dying of bone cancer. (Cazale’s final film was The Deer Hunter, released nine months after his death on March 12, 1978.) But the PBS film would take just a few days, and though Leilah’s role was small, the character was opaque enough to be interesting. She agreed to take the part.

  Streep’s participation became a significant component of the marketing of Uncommon Women and Others. In April, a month before the play was shown on PBS, the actress appeared in a leading role on national television, in the NBC miniseries Holocaust. (It received huge ratings and she won an Emmy. When the video of PBS’s Uncommon Women was released a year later, Streep’s picture appeared on the box.)

  Even with all the cuts and changes, the PBS taping went smoothly. “Wendy seemed very happy during that shoot. She seemed to get a big kick out of the whole thing,” said Jennifer von Mayrhauser, the costume designer. When Wendy was alone, however, the old demons returned. Despite the huge wave of acclaim, she hadn’t yet convinced herself that she was Wendy Wasserstein, Promising Playwright. There was the dismissive review in Time magazine, which called her play “stereotypical” and suggested that the “well skilled” actresses “might be better employed.” The check she received from Avon Books for the book version of Uncommon Women and Others was equally deflating: For the U.S. and worldwide rights, she was paid $750.

  Not long after the PBS taping but before the play was shown on television, she described how she was feeling in a letter to Ruth Karl, her Mount Holyoke friend:

  My dearest Ruthie,

  What a strange year this has been. I feel as if I’ve aged around 8 years and had no intention of doing that. It’s as if the girl who wrote Uncommon Women is different than the sort of average looking woman who is writing this letter. Well, some things are the same. As I sit here near Zaro’s Bread Basket (new bakery in Grand Central), chocolate chip cookies are dancing a tango with a Barton’s white chocolate rabbit possessing my anxiety and imagination with desire and guilt.

  God I love to eat and smoke and I know it’s all about avoiding relationships and oneself and all this energy should be chanelled [sic] into something creative, useful, not to mention monetarily gainful but when I think of a chocolate Godiva egg it only brings a smile or a tinge of pleasure to me. Oh well.

  I thought I would devote this year to becoming a “woman” whatever that is. You know a lovely person who writes, is understanding, lives in a house with flowers and a man who she respects and can make her laugh and they will have children and do good work and someone else will fill out the tax forms while she remains interesting and he stays kind and loving.

  Well, these images have led me on a road to isolation and I suppose feeling as lost as I’ve ever been. . . .

  Their friendship had been strained by Uncommon Women. Wendy had invited Ruth and her boyfriend to see the play, but when Ruth tried to get in touch to nail down details, Wendy became elusive. Ruth had the feeling Wendy didn’t want her to see the play.

  Finally Wendy called Ruth and told her she’d arranged tickets for the Saturday matinee, the play’s final weekend. Ruth drove from the Berkshires with her boyfriend (who became her husband the following year). It was a difficult trip. They had just moved into a house together and had stopped to visit his parents in Connecticut on the way to New York. This was Ruth’s first visit to their house; everyone was apprehensive. On the way to New York, still feeling the tension, her boyfriend drove sloppily, and they almost had an accident.

  By the time Ruth settled into her seat at the Phoenix, she was already frazzled. Like Mary Jane Patrone, she didn’t know what the play was about. Wendy hadn’t told her anything, and, living in Massachusetts, in those pre-Internet days, Ruth hadn’t seen the New York reviews.

  Like Mary Jane, Ruth didn’t take long to feel recognition, then shock, then betrayal. Ruth wasn’t flamboyant or outrageous like the character Rita, but Rita’s confusion and insecurity were recognizably Ruth’s. She felt naked as she listened to Swoosie Kurtz say words Ruth had said in private to Wendy, never imagining that those conversations would become public. They’d told each other deep, dark things they didn’t tell other people—or hadn’t until now.

  She would retain “a vivid and visceral memory of sitting in the darkened theater, feeling it was not nearly dark enough, and wanting to disappear altogether.”

  After the play was over, Wendy introduced Ruth to Swoosie Kurtz, who thanked her for providing the life that had led to this huge break for the actress. Ruth appreciated her kindness but was overwhelmed by emotion and needed to get away from the suffocating mob scene in the theater. She left quickly, not knowing how this play was going to affect the friendship that had been so central to her for many years. She and Wendy didn’t see each other often, but their letters and telephone calls had had the intimate, dissecting quality of therapy sessions. Clearly, though, the same rules of confidentiality hadn’t applied.

  Ruth knew that Wendy preferred to avoid conflicts, hoping they would go away. A couple of months before the play opened, they’d had a conversation about Doug Altabef. A month after she’d refused to live with him in Brooklyn, Wendy told Ruth, “I think I am breaking up with him.”

  Wendy allowed Douglas to slip away, but she called Ruth to reconcile. “You have to look at this character, and she is written with much love,” Wendy said. She told Ruth she had received letters from young women who were inspired by the character of Rita, knowing that this would be important to Ruth.

  Eventually Ruth came to a realization about her friend. “Wendy was a very driven person, and yet she was a very warm person,” she said. “Sometimes those things came into conflict.”

  The correspondence between Ruth and Wendy dwindled over the next two years, and their phone calls became more infrequent. Ruth was married by then, renovating her house, gardening, baking, feeling depressed and bored. She wrote to Wendy:

  Waiting in line in a dirty place with the paint chipping off the walls makes me feel like a junkie. Then they send me to a state job service where a nice old man told me I was a Mount Holyoke graduate and he didn’t have any jobs for me and never would have.

  I have really been caught up in housewifery. Don’t get married! It’s not the housework, it’s the role that comes with the ring. . . .

  Ruth tried to reach Wendy by telephone—unsuccessfully—for a long stretch of time. When they finally connected, Wendy spoke to her briefly and said she couldn’t talk, that she was meeting Meryl Streep for lunch. Ruth was wounded. She knew then that their friendship had run its course.

  When she told another friend the story, the friend had only one thing to say:

  “Wendy knows Meryl Streep! What’s she like?”

  Within the small world of Mount Holyoke, Wendy vaulted from obscurity to notoriety. The Spring 1978 edition of the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly contained a friendly article about the alumna playwright, pegged to the PBS airing of her play. By the time the Summer 1978 edition appeared, Uncommon Women and Others had become available to Mount Holyoke graduates throughout the United States, via their television sets. The letters to the editor, which occupied almost a full page, gave the impression that not one of those who had watched Wendy’s play on PBS was happy with her portrayal of Mount Holyoke.

  From Mary P. Smith Dillingham, ’16, of Bridgeport Connecticut: I sat through 90 minutes of disbelief that any graduate should so sully the name of her alma mater. I was shocked and angry. Does the author realize that she has antagonized other alumnae, probably not of her generation, but of the graduates who for so many years have raised money for the college, worked to inspire young women to select Mount Holyoke who in great numbers have gone on to make important contributions
to society and the educational world? And I don’t mean by writing revolting plays.

  From Helen Duff Conklin, ’22, of Washington, D.C.:

  Is it possible that these self- and sex-obsessed, nasty talking and thinking characters are representatives of the new breed of uncommon women being educated at Mount Holyoke?

  From Muriel W. Riker, ’29, Rockville Centre, New York:

  She writes like an adolescent who has just discovered sex and wants the world to see how knowledgeable, experienced and sophisticated she and her friends were.

  From Sylvia Smith Hawkins, ’33, West Redding, Connecticut:

  It is my fervent hope that the uncommon women whom I saw on Theatre in America are so uncommon that there are no more of them—at least at Mount Holyoke.

  From Susan Breitzke Dunn, ’60, Atlanta, Georgia:

  We alumnae in Atlanta, who are making a special effort to recruit candidates for admission to Mount Holyoke, now really have our work cut out for us.

  Et cetera.

  The Quarterly responded with a carefully worded defense:

  Editor’s Note: The television production of Uncommon Women and Others was filmed in the PBS studios in Hartford. The exterior scenes were taken on the campus of Trinity College. Mount Holyoke, which has no control over the use of its name in literary forms, did not sponsor or endorse the play. While it was distasteful to many viewers, including many connected with the College, there are many others who regard it as an excellently-written play, touching concerns with which young people today are dealing. Among those who admire the play are those who deplore the language. The editors feel that Wendy Wasserstein’s success as a young playwright is worthy of coverage in the magazine. Her play was selected for production from among 800 plays submitted to the Eugene O’Neill National Playwriters [sic] Conference and has had, with only reservations here and there, excellent reviews in MS, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time and New York magazines.