The downstairs area was deathly quiet—both front room and back, where the kitchen was. Couples stood in corners by the stove and near a watercooler; everybody was smoking or mumbling lines. They all glared at us as we came in the door.
“I feel like we’re about to go to the electric chair,” Rick tried to joke.
Our names were checked off on a list by a good-looking man with black hair curling long on his neck. “I’m Marty Fried,” he told us in a soft, hoarse voice. “I’ll help you set up—for Our Town—you need two chairs and a table, right?”
Rick nodded. We followed him up the steep stairs to the theatre entrance. “Wait here and then go in as soon as your names are called.” Within seconds two young actors burst out the door and pushed past us down the stairs, one of them moaning, “You forgot your first fucking line. How could you possibly forget your first fucking line?”
Then a disembodied voice called out, “Patricia Bosworth and Richard Morse. You’re next.”
Somehow we made our way into the theatre, a brick-walled room so dark we could hardly see. Marty appeared out of nowhere, setting up two chairs behind a table—our soda fountain—and then he disappeared to train a spotlight on us. Now we were blinded.
“What are you gonna do for us, kid?” a voice demanded brusquely.
“Our Town,” I managed to stutter.
“Good. Go ahead.”
We had five minutes to prove we were talented. I can remember only this: I was in the middle of my favorite speech, when Emily tells George she loves him: “I always thought about you as one of the chief people I thought about . . .” and the same brusque male voice called out, “Stop! Time’s up!”
Rick started to leave, but I remained in my chair and then began to sob helplessly.
“Stop crying,” the brusque voice continued impatiently.
But I couldn’t stop. I heard myself wailing, thinking back to the months of rehearsal, the pressure, the loss of sleep coupled with the fact that Rick had never kissed me and that I could never share any of this with my brother. I had worked so hard. I had struggled. Now the audition was over and I had failed.
I put my head down on the table and blubbered uncontrollably.
With that, a stocky, ruggedly built figure leapt out of the darkness and yanked me to my feet. I recognized the scowling face from news photographs. It was Elia Kazan.
“Stop crying, kid, for Christ’s sake!” He took me by the arm and literally dragged me out of the theatre. “Stop crying,” he repeated. And then he whispered in softer tones, “You passed,” and then loudly again, “Now get the hell out of here!”
I stumbled down the stairs. I was still crying, but now I was crying tears of joy. Rick was waiting outside of the Studio; he ran over and put his arms around me and I nestled against his chest.
“Oh God, Rick,” I sobbed. “Kazan told me I passed. I passed the audition.” I waited for him to react.
“What about me?” he asked very quietly. “Didn’t he say anything about me?”
I had to admit no.
We knew the auditions ended at eleven p.m.; the voting among the judges took place immediately. All the auditioners who passed would receive a phone call that night no matter how late the hour. I went home to tell my parents the news. My father hugged me and said I would never forget this night. I never did. Around two a.m. I received the news I already knew: I was now a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. I was one of six who’d been accepted out of the five hundred people to audition.
But Rick’s telephone didn’t ring. The Studio had not invited him to be a member, even though he was a far better, more accomplished actor than I was. It wasn’t fair. Rick was very philosophical about it. “I am not the Studio type,” he explained to me when we met for coffee later that same week. Was I?
Chapter Twelve
DUSK HAD FALLEN. The heavens were a deep dark blue, and as I trudged up from the subway, teetering a bit in my high heels, I could hear music streaming down West Twelfth Street. It was floating from the open windows of Broadway choreographer Valerie Bettis’s townhouse. She was hosting the Studio’s annual spring party, and as a new member, I’d been invited. I’d bought an expensive dress for the occasion, an off-white silk Jax shift.
I stood for a while watching the guests arrive by limo and cab and on foot. They would walk up the steps in twos and threes, laughing and talking, and when the door opened, light would bloom on their faces and I would recognize Shelley Winters or Mike Wallace or Jack Paar. I was nervous about going in but I had been invited, after all, so eventually I pushed my way up the stairs and into the edge of an enormous double living room just in time to see a barefoot Marilyn Monroe, in a skintight black dress, undulating across the floor opposite Paul Newman, lithe and sinewy in khakis and a T-shirt. They didn’t dance very long, maybe three minutes, but what a hot, pulsing three minutes it was. A small crowd gathered as they kept time to the jubilant tune of Harry Belafonte’s trademark “Banana Boat Song.” (His phrase “DAYOOOH, DAY-HAH-HAY-HOWWW” had taken the nation by storm.) When the two broke apart, there was a spatter of applause; Marilyn giggled and Newman bowed and then moved past me through the crowd to grab a beer from a bar.
The room was alive with people I recognized but didn’t know. Everybody I’d ever read about and admired was passing before my awestruck gaze: Norman Mailer (who I noticed had big ears), Henry Fonda (who I’d just seen in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial), Julie Andrews, Truman Capote, the great anguished clown Bert Lahr. I felt raw and unqualified to be with such shimmering, achieving creatures.
“Hello, Patti.” Leonard Lyons, a tiny natty man in a pinstriped suit, approached me. Lyons was the gossip columnist for the New York Post. I’d had lunch with him and Daddy a couple of times at 21. Lyons wrote about the arts in his column “The Lyons Den,” but he also wrote a lot about politics. He often referred to my father’s problems with the blacklist.
“You can help me count the celebrities,” Lyons said. We posted ourselves by the bar and I reeled off the names while Lyons jotted them down on a pad. “Comden and Green, Garson Kanin, Ruth Gordon, Jed Harris, Gwen Verdon, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Betsy von Furstenberg, Farley Granger.” Many of them strolled by with a few mumbled hellos to the gossip columnist. “Hi there, Lenny . . . say hello to Sylvia for me.” Sylvia was his wife, who rarely appeared in public with him.
“Why won’t anyone talk to me?” I asked Lyons finally.
“Stars prefer the company of stars.”
“Are stars starstruck?”
“We’re all starstruck.” He put his pad in his pocket and started to move on. “Gotta go.” I watched him disappear into the crowd. He would continue to make his rounds all over Manhattan, picking up tidbits of gossip. Before he was through (around four a.m.) he would have stopped at the Latin Quarter, the Stork Club, El Morocco, the Copa, Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, maybe ending up at Nick’s in the Village.
Meanwhile the party continued to churn around me. At midnight I did recognize somebody else I knew slightly: Marty Fried, the good-looking man with thick black hair who’d helped Rick and me set up our Studio audition.
“Hello!” I shouted through the din. My voice sounded unnaturally loud across the swarm of celebrities undulating around me. “Hello there!”
Marty turned. As I got closer, he gave a chuckle of recognition. “I thought you might be here,” he said in his soft, hoarse voice. Then he turned to the people with him. “This kid just passed her final audition at the Studio. Congratulations, Patricia Bosworth.”
Everybody laughed. Marty offered me a cigarette and lit it for me and I proceeded to inhale deeply and then blow a plume of smoke in the air. The tobacco burned my lungs and chest. I tried not to cough.
“Are you okay?” Marty asked. “You don’t have to smoke, you know.”
“I love to smoke,” I lied.
“Are you having a good time tonight?” Marty asked.
I could feel
his black eyes studying me. “I don’t know anybody,” I admitted.
“I’ll show you around,” he said, and he did for the next hour. He introduced me to Cheryl Crawford, a tall stately woman with a mannish haircut who was one of the founders of the Studio with Kazan as well as a successful Broadway producer (her latest hit was Brigadoon). I would soon discover she was one of the kindest, gentlest souls in the business. I met Julie Harris. Red-haired and freckle-faced, she was smoking a cigarette and staring dreamily into a tiny cup of espresso. All I could think of when I saw her was her performance as the unconventional tomboy Frankie in The Member of the Wedding. Oh, how she’d burrowed into that strange little character who dreams of having a thousand friends.
“I can’t breathe anymore,” she cries out. “I want to tear up the entire world!”
I had the impulse to repeat those lines to her; they had meant so much to me when I first heard them. But we barely exchanged a word because she was pulled out of her reverie by a lanky, sallow-skinned man named Jay Julian.
“He’s her ex-husband,” Marty whispered. “Big-time lawyer.”
After circling the room a couple of times, we ended up on a deserted couch. The party was starting to thin out. I could see the contours of the double living room, hung with gilt mirrors and lit by many candles. We walked to the open windows and looked down into a big garden. Chinese lanterns glowed and rocked back and forth in the trees.
We remained by the window talking. Marty told me he wanted to be an actor and that he was Lee Strasberg’s driver. In return for free acting lessons, he chauffeured Lee all over New York in his medallion cab.
Around two a.m. the party ended. Marty left me. “I’ll see you later,” he promised. I decided I’d better go home. As I was walking into the front hall I saw Lee Strasberg shrugging into a black overcoat. He’d been surrounded by a group of adoring young actors when we were briefly introduced and he had barely looked me in the eye, but now he said gruffly, “Darling, do you want a lift?”
And he gestured to a cab outside—presumably Marty’s—idling on the curb.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Strasberg.”
“Call me Lee, darling.”
“Lee.”
We walked without speaking again into the street. Lee got in front with Marty, who gave me a wink.
I slid into the backseat, where I found Marilyn Monroe huddled in a corner dreamily puffing on a cigarette. Her bleached blond hair was tousled; she seemed to be wearing no makeup. I noticed there was dirt under her fingernails, but I couldn’t stop looking at her. We were about to pull away from the curb when a voice cried out, “Hey Lee, goin’ my way?” and Harry Belafonte hopped in beside me. We drove uptown in silence.
I knew Marilyn was aware I was looking at her. She was used to being looked at, and she wasn’t self-conscious. She had a mysterious indefinable quality that made her a star and separated her from everyone else. At the moment she appeared to be floating in another world as she puffed delicately on her cigarette and blew the smoke softly out of her mouth. The newspapers were full of stories about her—how she’d left Hollywood and come to New York to be a “serious actress,” how Lee was coaching her at his apartment and letting her observe sessions at the Studio.
It was muggy in the cab. A spring rain was falling, pelting down; lightning flashed as Marty drove through puddles in the street. Still no one spoke. After a while Lee rolled down the window and moist cool air whooshed in. Marilyn gave a sigh and shrugged out of her coat. That’s when I noticed the pearls. She was wearing a necklace of what looked like vintage pearls; they were lustrous and creamy and matched her skin, which seemed almost iridescent. She positively glowed.
“Those are gorgeous pearls, Miss Monroe,” I said.
“Yeah.” Marilyn fingered the pearls absently. “The emperor gave them to me.”
“The emperor?” Harry Belafonte asked.
“Hirohito of Japan. When Joe and I were on our honeymoon in Tokyo, he gave them to me in a private ceremony.” Her voice trailed off as if she’d lost interest in the subject. She had, we knew, lost interest in Joe DiMaggio. They were about to be divorced after a marriage that had lasted only nine months. Lately she’d been telling her friend, the Hollywood gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, that she was going to marry Arthur Miller.
“Darling?” Lee murmured tenderly from the front seat.
“Yeah, Lee?”
He turned and stared at her with adoring eyes. “How wonderful, darling.” His voice was full of feeling. (Marty told me afterward that Lee so rarely responded to anyone in an overt way that it was thrilling to see him react.)
Silence once more. Then we reached our destination, the Strasberg apartment on Central Park West. Lee stepped out of the cab and waited for Marilyn to get out; then the two of them disappeared into the ornate lobby. She was spending the night, as she often did, with the Strasberg family; daughter Susan gave up her bedroom for her and slept on the couch. Marilyn was between apartments; she was lonely and had a hard time sleeping. The Strasberg apartment had become her refuge, a second home. Her psychiatrist, Marianne Kris, lived in the building too. Marilyn saw her five times a week, and afterward she would go back to Lee’s apartment for a coaching session.
We continued to drive over to West Seventy-Fourth and Riverside. Belafonte vaulted out of the cab.
“Night. Thanks, Marty.” And he was gone.
“Harry’s apartment is twenty-one rooms,” Marty told me—then added, “Come on, sit up front with me. I’ll drive you home.”
He chauffeured me over to East Fortieth Street and parked. Then we talked till dawn, mostly about his relationship to Lee.
“I’m like his surrogate son,” he said. “I was an orphan brought up in a foster home. Lee and his family sort of adopted me after I began driving them all over New York in my cab. We got along—I didn’t talk if Lee didn’t want to talk. After a while Lee started to depend on me, take me here, take me there.” He knew Marty longed to be an actor, “so he invited me into his classes for free. Now I’m on call for Lee twenty-four hours a day—which means I am on call for Marilyn too.”
“It sounds as if your life isn’t your own,” I kidded him.
“That’s not true. I have a life separate from them,” he insisted. “Lemme take you to dinner in Chinatown tomorrow night.” And then he kissed me. It was a very nice kiss.
“I like you,” I said.
“I like you too.” He grinned. “I’ll pick you up at here at seven.”
BUT IT WAS never to be. The following night he phoned apologetically and said he had to drive Marilyn to Roxbury to see Arthur Miller. From then on, Marty kept on making dates and breaking them.
Then I ran into him one morning at the Actors Studio. “What’s been going on?” I demanded. I’d liked him—he was funny, he was sexy, and we’d been attracted to each other.
He looked at me helplessly. “I’ve been teaching Marilyn how to drive,” he admitted. “It’s . . . taking longer than I thought it would. She’s nervous . . . she’s forgetful.”
“But she’s Marilyn Monroe,” I kidded him. “That’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. I like you.”
“I like you too. So let’s be friends.”
Marty guided me over the years as I struggled to gain a foothold in the toxic celebrity-laden world of the Actors Studio and the Broadway theatre as well. And he once did take me to dinner in Chinatown.
A FEW DAYS after the party, the director Arthur Penn phoned. He’d noticed me at the party, he said, and thought I’d be right for a part in a play he was directing at the Westport Country Playhouse, the most prestigious pre-Broadway tryout theatre in the country as well as one of the top theatres on the summer circuit. Arthur Penn was one of the most successful directors of live TV in New York; he’d done countless shows on The Philco Television Playhouse, The United States Steel Hour, Playhouse 90, etc. It was said he was an actor’s director like Mike Nichols; he loved to experiment and improvise, to share h
is discoveries.
We met at his basement apartment on West Eleventh Street. The one room was like a monk’s cell—a single cot, two chairs, and a desk; books and scripts were piled on the floor. When I arrived, Arthur was pacing about; he couldn’t seem to stand still. A short, compact man with curly hair, immaculately dressed in khakis, a white shirt, and tennis shoes, he peppered me with edgy questions: “Where were you born? How old are you? Where’d you go to college? Who’d you study with—Sandy Meisner or Stella Adler?”
I had to admit I’d never studied acting. I’d just gotten into the Studio. When he pressed me, I confessed I’d never acted professionally on a stage. “But I was on a live TV soap for a summer—Concerning Miss Marlowe on NBC.”
“Good experience, live TV.”
I agreed it was.
Then he told me about the play, Blue Denim. It was written by friends of his, James Leo Herlihy and William Noble. The play was about a fifteen-year-old girl named Janet who gets pregnant by her boyfriend. They are both thrown into a panic; she must get an abortion. She can’t tell her parents, so she relies on a mutual friend, another classmate who maintains he knows a doctor who can help.
“The subject of abortion is taboo in this country,” Arthur said. “It’s a crime, it’s a sin, so the play will be controversial.” (Indeed, when it was performed, the word “abortion” was used only once, and when Blue Denim was made into a film, it was excised from the script entirely.)
“It’s an emotional story,” Arthur went on. “A very contemporary story. These kids are alienated from their families. They go through something very traumatic together, but they can’t talk to their parents. I relate to that. I had a very traumatic adolescence.”
He did not elaborate. Then he asked, “What about your growing up? Was it peaches and cream?” His tone was sarcastic. I ignored the question.
The Men in My Life Page 14