The Men in My Life

by Patricia Bosworth

  In the end Arthur asked me to read one speech from the play, Janet’s monologue when she discovers she’s pregnant. I’d had plenty of experience talking to myself in my bedroom to my fantasy husband. I read the monologue imagining I’d just come from the gynecologist’s office. I actually felt slightly sickened and empty inside. I knew when I finished that I had sounded pretty good.

  Arthur nodded. “Not bad . . . Think you can do it?”

  “Absolutely!” I exclaimed, although I had no idea whether I could do it or not. Arthur told me he’d be arranging for me to audition for the playwright and the producers and handed me the script.

  As soon as I returned to Fortieth Street I shut myself up in my bedroom and festooned the script with notes. I composed a character sketch of Janet, trying to imagine what it felt like to be pregnant. I researched morning sickness. I remembered a classmate at Sarah Lawrence, a Chinese girl on scholarship, who had gone to some nameless abortionist in New Jersey. Her boyfriend drove her there in a rainstorm. Their car broke down. The abortion itself was botched. My classmate suffered terribly. She came back to Sarah Lawrence white-faced and bleeding. She had a miscarriage in her bathroom and was rushed to the infirmary. Weeks later she told everybody her ugly story. “I have never felt such pain,” she said.

  I AUDITIONED FOR Blue Denim at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. As I entered the shadowy backstage area, I counted six other actresses waiting in the wings to read. They were all recognizable to me, experienced “ingenues” with many shows to their credit. They looked at me curiously as I took my place at the end of the line of wooden chairs. Sitting there, I pretended I was waiting to see an abortionist, hoping that would put me in the mood.

  When my name was called I felt my knees buckling, but I managed to walk out on stage in a straight line. Ahead of me, beyond the footlights, loomed the theatre itself, which seemed big as a football field, with rows and rows of empty seats. The house lights were half lit, so I could see Arthur Penn in his uniform of white shirt and khakis, deep in conversation with two people I didn’t recognize. They were introduced as playwright James Leo Herlihy, a tall shambling man with a handsome ruined face, and producer Lyn Austin, dark-haired with a thin mouth.

  When I finished reading with the stage manager, who spoke his lines in a meaningless monotone and looked at me as if I was the worst actress he’d ever encountered, they said, “Thank you!” and then called, “Next?”

  I was called back to audition three more times. Each time I read more of the script with Burt Brinckerhoff, who had already been cast as Arthur the boyfriend. Burt was very polite with me and superserious, in blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  At the final audition I gave the penultimate speech—discovering I was pregnant. I’d been up half the night working. I gave it my all. When it was over, Herlihy ran up to the footlights to shake my hand and say I’d read the scene exactly as it should be read.

  I ended up winning the role of Janet and felt briefly elated.

  The rest of the cast was excellent: Katherine Squire played my mother (she would play my mother in three other shows). A member of the Actors Studio, she had a stern, prim quality. She seemed perfect for the part, as did Burt and Mark Rydell, who had soft blue eyes and a tough-guy manner. (He would go on to direct movies like the Oscar-winning On Golden Pond.) Back then he seemed to inhabit the role of Ernie, the friend who insists he knows the perfect abortionist but who in the end, we find out, is lying.

  THE CAST SPENT the first day of rehearsals for Blue Denim listening to Arthur lecture us about how we were living in an era of conformity; he seemed to be talking too much, maybe because he had never directed a play before. He was as nervous as I was. We went on to have a couple of table readings and then we did some improvisations.

  Once we were on our feet, Arthur would hover around Burt and me as we were playing a scene, cupping his hands and zeroing in on our faces as if with a camera. I could feel his breath on my cheek as he murmured, “Where are you going with this character, Patti? I don’t think you know where the fuck you are going.”

  He was right. I didn’t know what I was doing. For a while I existed on sheer nerve as rehearsals continued, with Arthur hammering at me that I wasn’t revealing anything. He couldn’t hear me, he said; I had no emotion. I’d return home at night in a panic and close myself off in my room. I’d sit on a chair, rocking back and forth. I believed I had talent, but I had to come to terms with the fact that I had no craft, no technique yet. Face it, I told myself grimly, I’ve never acted on a professional stage before. But other young actresses had faced this challenge. I willed myself to get better, to concentrate more.

  Arthur kept badgering me and I remained terrified that I’d be fired, but I wasn’t. However, he didn’t let up on his criticisms even after we’d arrived at Westport for the last days of rehearsal before we opened. He singled me out the afternoon Lawrence Langner watched a run-through. The distinguished, white-haired Langner was head of the Theatre Guild and ran the Westport Playhouse.

  From the first day of rehearsal, I’d been kidded by the cast about the way I reacted to their constant use of the word “fuck.”

  “Fucking good weather,” Mark would say, and then Burt would add, “We have fucking good bagels here but fucking bad coffee.” They’d watch my disapproving expression and start chanting “fuck fuck fuck” and then the rest of the cast would howl with laughter (except for Katherine Squire—she didn’t like to hear the word “fuck” either).

  I’d explain I’d grown up in a family that never used dirty words. I’d say things like “Please, I hate those words” or “It’s unnecessary,” which made them say “fuck” all the more.

  The afternoon of the dress rehearsal I was in the midst of a very emotional scene with Burt when Arthur stopped us.

  “You aren’t going to play Janet that way opening night, are you, Patti?” he asked in scathing tones.

  “Well, I thought I was on the right track,” I answered in a tiny voice.

  “Right track?” Arthur chuckled mockingly. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Oh, Arthur,” I blurted. “I wish you wouldn’t use that word.”

  “What word?”’

  “You know . . .”

  “You mean fuck?” he bellowed. “You mean F-U-C-K?”

  I nodded, wondering how much longer this was going to go on. Meanwhile the rest of the cast had gathered in the wings to watch as Arthur marched over and took me in his arms as he would a lover.

  “I feel so sorry for you,” he crooned. “You will never be another Kim Stanley. I am so sorry.” And he did seem genuinely sorry as he battered me with his criticisms.

  Then he released me and we stood facing each other. “Now then,” he said ominously, “I am going to give you a little test. I am going to lock you in this closet.” And with that he dragged me, protesting, into the prop closet right offstage. “You will stay in this closet until you scream ‘fuck fuck fuck’ and then I will let you out and you will do this scene with Burt with all the emotion you’ve built up inside you. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I let my body go limp and allowed myself to be crammed into the closet, along with a ladder, a pail, and a broom. The lock clicked.

  It was pitch-black and smelly; the broom prickled against my legs. I have claustrophobia, so of course I screamed and cried and pounded on the door. A couple of minutes later Arthur unlocked the door and I burst onto the stage screaming, “FUUCCCCKKKK!”

  The closet experience became the abortionist’s office, and shaking and sobbing, I imagined the terror of having my womb scraped. Burt and I played the scene to a fare-thee-well and we repeated it on opening night.

  How had I done it? I’m not quite sure, except I’ve always had an unshakable faith in make-believe. My imagination was going a mile a minute. I made believe I was Janet: being examined by the abortionist, my legs splayed apart on those hideous stirrups, rubbery fingers up my vagina and rectum, the whole ghast
ly experience. Looking back on it, I’d been so involved with my personal misery that it had threatened to take over my present. Maybe I’d needed Arthur’s brutal treatment to shake me awake. Now I felt strangely confident and I could concentrate on the work. I received terrific reviews for my performance as Janet, and for the entire run I was able to build and build on what I’d created for the character.

  It was an exciting time. Every night my dressing room would be filled with friends. I basked in the compliments I was getting. Arthur, however, never praised my work and chose to ignore me.

  Mama was in Europe, but Daddy sat through the show three times, maintaining, “You just get better and better.”

  The entire cast had been living in a rustic old house right on Compo Beach. At the closing night party we roasted hot dogs over a fire near the bay. Mark Rydell and I sat on a blanket and drank bottle after bottle of cold beer while he assured me I’d developed during rehearsal and by opening night “you’d created a genuine character and it came out of yourself and what you went through with Arthur. Arthur Penn is a sadist. He’s like Kazan—but Kazan is more subtle and not as mean. But both directors will do anything short of murder to get actors to do what they want with a part.”

  “Yes!” I cried. “Arthur is a fucking bastard.”

  We both burst out laughing. From then on, my conversations were peppered with expletives.

  I WENT ON with my career. Arthur and I did not speak to each other again until 1966, when I happened to attend one of the first screenings of his landmark film Bonnie and Clyde. Everything critics say about the movie is true. Arthur’s revolutionary treatment of sex and violence transformed the film industry. The story was loosely based on two minor gangsters of the 1930s, played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In Arthur’s hands it became something dangerous and innovative; I remember distinctly how the audience at our screening gasped when a comic bank robbery climaxed with Clyde shooting the bank teller in the face. There was stunned silence at the end of the movie when the outlaw couple died in a torrent of bullets, their bodies twitching in slow motion, blood spattering everywhere.

  People left the screening in silence. Arthur was standing off in a corner by himself.

  “Hello, Arthur,” I said cheerily. “Fucking great movie.” He stared at me.

  I was older now; I wore glasses; my hair was cropped short. Did he recognize me?

  He looked at me oddly. “I beg your pardon?”

  My voice grew a touch louder. “I said great fucking movie, Arthur.”

  He gave a step back. “Oh.” He nodded, smiling slightly. “Oh yeah . . . Patti . . . Thanks.”

  AFTER MY SUCCESS in Blue Denim I expected to be working again immediately, since my agent could now get me into most producers’ offices. I auditioned for every upcoming Broadway show, but to my great disappointment, I wasn’t cast in any of them. I longed to be given a chance to play high-strung, defiant young women. Instead I would appear on The Philco Television Playhouse as a flirty teenager in a two-piece bathing suit mouthing inanities.

  I fell into a depression. When I wasn’t working I began to sleep all day. I’d wake up in the late afternoon and stagger down to the back deck of my parents’ duplex. Daddy was often there by himself drinking. He could see I was blue. I couldn’t tell him I thought I was failing as an actress. When I’d complain I was getting nowhere, he’d say I was being ridiculous. He had such confidence in me. He wouldn’t allow me to be negative. And then he’d change the subject by saying silly things like “Can you make love with a straight face?” Then we’d barbecue a steak and polish off an entire bottle of red wine.

  We spent a lot of time on that deck, Daddy and I. It became our favorite place. It was full of cool green shadows from overhanging trees and it had a big awning. Daddy was in a better mood. His career was on the upswing. Rita Hayworth was keeping him busy; he was now advising her on movie roles. He thought she should play the dancer Isadora Duncan.

  The main change in his life, though, was that the political climate was quite different from what it had been when he was defending the Hollywood Ten. The FBI was no longer pressuring him; he was sure our phones were no longer being tapped. There was a lessening of public interest in the hunting down of communists. The Korean War had ended, and in 1954 the Senate had voted to condemn the tactics of Senator Joe McCarthy. By 1955, HUAC was in a weakened condition, although committee members were planning four days of scrutinizing the entertainment industry in New York and there were plans to subpoena Arthur Miller.

  ALL THAT SUMMER Mama was away. She spent the next three months traveling in Europe. After making the disruptive move from the Sixty-Eighth Street brownstone to the Fortieth Street double duplex, she disappeared and spent the next three months traveling. We’d read her letters out loud—long enthusiastic, bubbly, funny letters about the people she was meeting, the recipes she was collecting, the sights she was seeing. She would try and phone us, but the connections were always very bad.

  Daddy seemed genuinely pleased she was having a good time. “She needed to get away,” he said.

  By August, Gene and Marcia were married. We gave them a champagne reception at the apartment. Now we were totally alone. We’d wander around the two duplexes feeling lost.

  “Which living room shall we use tonight?” my father would ask. His eyes would brighten; his cheerful smile never let up, even as some secret anxiety etched new lines around his mouth. He wanted me to believe everything was within my reach. “So you are having a quiet time for the moment. Why don’t you enjoy yourself with your various men?” I would nod, although the suggestion irritated me. I didn’t like him monitoring my comings and goings.

  Whenever I came home with a date he’d be up offering us drinks and we’d have to sit and talk with him. I didn’t like living at home. I wanted my own place, but I didn’t have enough money. I was determined to move. I asked my father to lend me $1,000. He refused.

  “Mama and I need you!” he’d exclaim, so I stayed for a while longer.

  He thought it was wonderful that I was going out with so many eligible bachelors, like the genial ad executive Rib Smith. But I introduced my father to only a few of the men that I was seeing. Secretly I was going through a strange phase of sex without intimacy.

  My phone rang nonstop, because I was divorced and considered a “hot property.” Supposedly I knew what I was doing in the sack; that’s what a Wall Street broker mumbled as he crawled on top of me. Except I didn’t know what I was doing, or more to the point I didn’t know what I wanted sexually, nor did I know the questions to ask. Jason’s “me Tarzan, you Jane” approach had left little to the imagination. I lay there and took a lot of pounding. It turned me on, but not for long. It took me a while to find pleasure and harmony with a man.

  Today it’s said that women own their sexuality and can have sex on their own terms. I don’t know if that’s true, but back in the late 1950s, just before the sexual revolution and the advent of the Pill, women bargained with sex for love and money, or they were too repressed and ignorant beyond belief—especially about their bodies. I for one was totally disconnected from my emotions. So many sad lost nights reaching out to so many sad lost men. The estates attorney who was so boring I had to stop seeing him, even though he gave me great orgasms. The musician who chewed speed gum and was constantly tripping out. He brought me to the only orgy I’ve ever gone to. It was held in an apartment on Central Park West with many bedrooms. I refused to participate. As I was leaving, I ran into a man dressed in priest’s robes. I was told he was George Plimpton.

  Eventually I confessed some of my escapades to Marcia. She was appalled. “Haven’t you any self-respect? What are you trying to prove?”

  I reminded her that we’d both read Mary McCarthy’s The Company She Keeps our last year in college. It was a book all our friends were reading—our mothers too. Mama had given it to me and festooned the most notorious story, “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit,” with paper clips. In that story
Margaret Sargeant (aka McCarthy) gets drunk on a train and proceeds to have rough sex with an overweight stranger. It was shocking; it was daring. A feminist before feminism, McCarthy seemed out to prove you could have a casual relationship with a man, a one-night stand where love didn’t enter the equation. Casual sex could be energizing, couldn’t it? Liberating even? And you were not supposed to feel guilty.

  “But as a Catholic I bet you feel guilty as hell,” Marcia exclaimed.

  I had to admit I did. I still felt tied up in emotional knots.

  “As well you should, and let’s hope you don’t get crabs or gonorrhea.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Well, you didn’t know any of these men, did you? Weren’t most of them virtual strangers?”

  I admitted most of them were.

  “Grow up, for God’s sake! How old are you now—almost twenty-three? You should settle down and get married.”

  “I’ve already been married.”

  “Okay, okay, but why don’t you go back to that Rib Smith, the ad guy? Gene really likes him and Rib liked you. You just brushed him off.”

  “He was sort of boring.”

  “You don’t know him enough to say he is boring. He is decent and hardworking—”

  “And boring.”

  Marcia rolled her eyes. “You will never be satisfied with an ordinary man; he has to be weird and strange.”

  I was getting tired of our conversation. “I’ll give Rib a call. I can take him to a cocktail party I’ve been invited to.”

  So I did, and I had a better time than I’d expected.

  RIB WAS A tall, good-natured account executive from Young & Rubicam. Typical Mad Men type—chain-smoking, martinis for lunch, very popular with the models and actresses he was hiring for commercials. Then he started to date me and he stopped playing around. We’d have long drunken dinners at P. J. Clarke’s, where he’d try to persuade me to give up my career and live with him. He’d start fulminating about “the inner-directed man and the outer-directed man” (popular phrase of the time), and he kept urging me to read David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd. I had no interest. I was too busy finishing Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.