When Herman Shumlin took over from the stage manager and directed us, we had to be on our toes. I remember wanting to ingratiate myself with other cast members, until Shumlin ordered me to “stop yammering—you don’t need to be liked, you need to do the work.” In the few times I worked with him, he directed me with many specifics about my character. “You love this man,” he said to me. “You’d fight to the death for him.”
I never did go on for Frances Helm, who had replaced Bethel, but I lived in fear and trembling that I would have to, so I recited my entire part every day—later learning that Paul Muni recited his part every day too, even though he’d been playing the part of Drummond for months. It became a habit of mine whenever I did a show. It helped.
Appearing in Inherit the Wind was never boring because I was onstage with Muni and able to watch him. The audience was hushed whenever he delivered one of his soliloquies. It was a testimony to the transformative powers of this actor that he could be convincing not only onstage as the rumpled angry lawyer but also in films as the evil gangster in Scarface, as the gentle peasant farmer in The Good Earth, and as the dapper novelist Émile Zola. Muni’s work was honed in the Yiddish theatre, where being versatile was much more important than being a star personality.
He always gave an impassioned performance, but then one night something quite unexpected happened and he handled it with aplomb. Although there were fifty-five actors in the cast, director Shumlin decided the stage should be littered with even more people, so two dozen extras had been hired to play spectators. Most of them weren’t in the union; they were paid only twenty dollars a performance and were herded onstage to sit in the courtroom just before the scene commenced. They had been coached to react as we did—applaud at one point, murmur at another—but mostly we sat in silence as Muni cross-examined Ed Begley and tested him on his knowledge of the Bible.
Then one night a disheveled, wild-eyed extra pushed his way to the front row of courtroom spectators and confronted Muni center stage as he was about to give his summation to the jury.
“I can do that speech better than you!” the extra bawled.
Muni stepped back a few paces. “Oh? You think so?” he demanded
The extra was thrown; he hadn’t expected such a confrontational response.
“Yes! Yes!” he bleated. “I can play your part better than you ever dreamed!”
Muni didn’t answer. We realized he was trying to figure out what to do, and within seconds he had, putting his arm around the extra’s shoulders and beginning to move him offstage.
“You should leave the courtroom for a while—relax—prepare yourself. Then come back.”
Muni’s voice was soothing as he guided him into the wings, where the two stage managers grabbed the unfortunate soul and took him away.
Then Muni returned to stage center and began his penultimate speech, letter-perfect, his voice rising to an emotional crescendo.
When the curtain came down, we all crowded around him; his face was ashen. “Never, never in all my years in theatre did I have such an experience,” he told us excitedly. “But I don’t think the audience caught on.”
The stage managers started to apologize, but he cut them off. “Tell Herman he has to pay for genuine actors to fill up those seats in the courtroom or I quit.”
With that he shuffled off to his dressing room, calling for a cup of tea.
THE SUMMER OF 1956 was sweltering. I bought a small air conditioner for my apartment. I wasn’t going out much, except on Sundays, my day off. If the weather cooled off, I would take my folding bike and pedal around Central Park. Biking reminded me of my brother—biking into Santa Cruz, biking through the woods at Aptos. I would bike for hours and then stop and lie down on the grass and look up at the sky. That reminded me of Bart too—the sky, the clouds. I wondered if his spirit was happy and rested.
“Are you okay?” I would ask in our private language, and I would imagine him answering back, “What a silly question.”
In the middle of the summer, Mel Arrighi sent me a postcard inviting me to the opening of Joe Papp’s first production of free Shakespeare in the Park, Taming of the Shrew. I was surprised and pleased. The play was held in the East River Amphitheatre on the Lower East Side. I could hear the sound of tugboats and the rumble of cars going over a nearby bridge. Above me there was the crack of heat lightning, and all around me was an excited, volatile audience. Everyone was roaring with laughter at the antics of J. D. Cannon as Petruchio, Colleen Dewhurst as Kate, and Mel as Lucentio.
When the act ended, there were ominous cracks of thunder and bolts of lightning and then it started to pour. Joe Papp came out to announce that the show had to stop and there were cries of “No, no”—many of the disappointed shouts came from children.
I searched for Mel among the makeshift dressing rooms, a long row of tents behind the stage. Then I saw him poking his head out of one of the tents, a towel around his shoulders.
“Hello,” I called out.
Mel squinted in the gloom and then adjusted his glasses; he hadn’t recognized me right away.
“Oh, hey . . . You’re getting so wet.” He pulled me into his tent and tried to dry me off.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” I assured him, laughing.
“D-Did you like the show?”
“Very much.”
“Come see it again when the weather is better.” He was speaking very slowly so as to control his stutter.
We listened to the storm thundering outside.
“It’s really coming down. I’d better go.” I turned to leave, but he held my arm.
“I have an umbrella; you don’t. I’ll take you home.”
“Okay.” I watched as he zipped up his windbreaker. He looked so serious in his horn-rimmed glasses. I noticed he had long, sensitive fingers.
The next thing I knew we were splashing through the rain to the subway as lightning crackled above us. It was late and very dark; shadowy tenement buildings rose up on either side of us. I thought I saw a rat crawling into a garbage can. I guess my body tensed, because Mel immediately assured me, “I’m here, and I like the dark. It doesn’t scare me.”
He reminded me of my brother, who had often told me he felt more alive in the dark. Right now Mel was behaving in the same gentle courtly manner as Bart had whenever we’d walked in the rain together, holding the umbrella above my head with one hand, his other hand gently holding mine.
Our parents had never known how much Bart and I had explored the city at night during our first year in New York. They usually stayed out late at parties and dinners and our servants covered for us. “They are both sleeping like little angels,” the butler would often respond when they returned home. Daddy was very tipsy and sometimes Mama was too; she was always more concerned about him than about us.
On weekends Bart and I would get bored and we’d sneak out of the Fifty-First Street brownstone and wander all over Beekman Place, ending up peering into the windows of Irving Berlin’s townhouse hoping to catch a glimpse of him. When we grew bolder we’d sometimes hop a subway at night at Lexington and Fifty-First. The station was deep, empty, odoriferous—“like the pits of hell,” Bart would say. The trains would pound in and out of the tunnels, headlights shining like gigantic eyes. We’d hop on and go down to Chinatown or the Battery. We’d count the “weirdos,” as Bart called them, on the train. Once we saw a hunchback, another time a teenage boy who exposed himself to us. Then we’d take the subway home; we were gone only two hours, but it was exciting and risky and we loved it.
The station was almost empty. Mel and I didn’t speak. We were in our own worlds, but I felt comfortable. He did not let go of my hand.
We both noticed a man in a tattered raincoat. He was mumbling to himself and pacing back and forth on the platform before he jumped onto the tracks. Everything happened very fast. A subway clerk tried to persuade the man to climb back onto the platform, but the man refused. We heard the recorded announcement that a train was on th
e way. The clerk managed to find a power shutoff in the tunnel and he threw the switch. Police and firefighters rushed to the scene and took the man to the hospital.
Mel pulled me out of the station and hailed a cab. It was still raining. We didn’t say anything on the way uptown. He knew I was thinking about my brother, and I knew he knew.
I was grateful for Mel’s silence. He simply dropped me off at my apartment and squeezed my hand in his; it was large and callused but warm.
“I’m glad you came to see the show. Thank you.” And he disappeared into the night.
Later I sat on my bed in the dark. “I think I like Mel Arrighi. Am I fickle?” I was talking to Bart.
Is the Pope Catholic? my brother answered. You barely know the guy. Although that hasn’t stopped you before.
“He didn’t say anything about getting together again.”
Give him time.
“That near accident on the subway . . .”
What about it?
“Made me think of you.”
But I didn’t fail in my attempt.
“Are you telling me you planned to kill yourself?”
For the longest time.
Part Three
Making Choices
Chapter Sixteen
I KEPT THINKING ABOUT Mel, but I didn’t see him, although we were in touch periodically via the telephone and a few postcards. He was on the road again with the Lunts.
I was still very much alone, but I’d begun to adjust to the loss of my brother, so I didn’t feel quite as numb. When I wasn’t at the theatre I’d hole up in my apartment and write. I was trying so hard to write, because as Gore said, it’s only when you see the words on paper that you know what you’re thinking. Sometimes I’d be scribbling away and I’d feel I had a passionate alter ego inside me that would be relieved only when it came alive on paper. Would it ever be possible then for me to find another self? A better self? A more fully formed, loving self?
When I couldn’t write anymore, I’d visit Daddy at Silver Hill. He’d been in and out of that rehab center for the last year. It was an insidious cycle. He’d say he was making progress kicking the alcohol and pills, and then friends would sneak him some booze or a handful of Seconal and he’d be flying; then he’d say he was “definitely stopping” and I’d pretend to believe him, although I knew he was lying. But I didn’t confront him. That was Mama’s job. She was the “bad cop,” exhorting him to stop or she would leave him. I was the “good cop,” who entertained him and made him laugh.
Then one night he showed up backstage after a performance of Inherit the Wind to “see how my baby is” and I realized he was high. We wandered around Times Square and then we had coffee at Sardi’s; I finally ordered a Carey Cadillac and took him back to the rehab myself.
We sped along the Hutchison River Parkway, close together in the backseat. Daddy smoked and coughed and coughed and smoked until I took the cigarettes away from him and he fell asleep. In repose his face appeared twisted and miserable.
I decided he had a powerful need to destroy himself. Was it over Bart? Did he ever feel remorse or shame or guilt about his son’s suicide? I was sure he must be in agony, but we never spoke of it—the subject seemed off-limits—and there were no longer any pictures of Bart at home. Was this Mama’s choice? I didn’t ask. We remained a family full of terrible silences.
By the time we reached Silver Hill, Daddy woke up with a start. He seemed refreshed. “It was great seeing you, baby!” he exclaimed. “You are looking beautiful!” He patted my knee. “I’m getting some clients while I’m in here, y’know. Everybody needs a lawyer, especially when they’re in a loony bin.”
He hopped out of the limo, then poked his head back in. “I’m gonna quit, baby, I promise. You watch. I’m gonna be fine.” And then he disappeared.
I knew he wasn’t serious about quitting. He would never quit.
Returning to New York, I stared out the window and saw nothing. The black night enveloped me. I had never felt so wide-awake or despairing.
SO IT WAS a complicated autumn. Daddy would be at Silver Hill until mid-November, suffering from violent mood swings and two more escapes from rehab before he settled down. I would visit him as often as I could, commuting up to New Canaan in the morning; I’d keep him company, usually in the cafeteria, where he ate Jell-O and watched TV. It seemed enough that I was with him. He didn’t talk much—he’d been given Valium. Around four-thirty I’d hop a train in order to make “half hour” (the actors’ call time for the show) and go onstage in Inherit the Wind.
Then by chance I met the actor Joseph Schildkraut, otherwise known as Pepi, at a reading I was in at the White Barn Theatre. He was fifty-six, the exact age as my father—a fact I couldn’t ignore.
In the movies Pepi usually played villains, like the sneering Don Francisco opposite Bob Hope’s Monsieur Beaucaire. But he’d won two Oscars, the first for his sympathetic portrayal of the persecuted Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Émile Zola, the second for his memorable performance as a tortured murderer in The Tell-Tale Heart. Now Pepi was starring on Broadway in The Diary of Anne Frank. I’d watched the show many times from the wings, and his portrayal of the stoic Otto Frank was as heart-wrenching as Susie’s Anne.
Pepi came into my life at the perfect time. I was exhausted from babysitting my father. And although I was in a hit Broadway show, it didn’t seem to be leading anywhere. I wasn’t getting many auditions—and I had no hopes of ever falling in love—and then this imperious older man who walked into rooms like an emperor, this celebrity, was sweeping me off my feet with flowers and notes left backstage ordering, “Come see me at once!” It was flattering. He proved to be a diversion for a while.
At our first dinner Pepi announced, “Great actors are not necessarily great human beings.” When he’d won his first Oscar, he’d played a decent sympathetic character. “But I am not a nice person.” This was true. He was self-absorbed, petty, easily bored, often cruel. He threw tantrums, fired underlings, and was generally disagreeable, “unless I am with you, darling girl.”
He could be very tender and loving. When we were together, he’d make me forget the loss of my brother and my father’s torment. We’d attend midnight screenings of new movies; we’d eat supper at the Russian Tea Room with Garson Kanin, the natty little director of Diary. His tiny, supersmart wife Ruth Gordon was always with him.
However, I was nervous being with Pepi in public since he was a married man. I was afraid Lenny Lyons, who prowled the Tea Room for items, might write about me in his column, but Pepi thought I was silly. His wife, Marie, was back in Beverly Hills; they were rarely together. “She doesn’t care what I do as long as I pay the bills,” he insisted.
I felt more relaxed when we were by ourselves in his suite at the Hotel Meurice. We talked and talked, or rather I talked and he listened. Then I’d get tired of talking and put my head in his lap, and he’d stroke my hair or tickle my ears. We never had sex; I assumed he was impotent. But we’d lie together in the luxurious king-size bed he’d had shipped from California, and then we’d kiss and cuddle. He’d trace his finger slowly up and down my bare arm. His smooth hands were calming; his caresses made me sleepy, and somehow his touch made me feel as if he understood me.
PEPI AND I began seeing each other a couple of times a week. Otherwise, we led pretty separate lives. In those months I was mainly concentrating on getting Daddy well—keeping his spirits up, making him believe he still had a lot to live for. I reasoned that it was difficult for him to accept that until he got sober, so I was in and out of Silver Hill. I knew the Mass times at the local Catholic church Daddy liked to go to and I memorized the New Canaan train schedule. Grand Central Station became my second home.
Every so often I’d wonder what Pepi was doing when we weren’t together. I didn’t have a clue as to what he did away from me. Nor did he ask about my business, although he suspected I saw other men. I did see someone else, a folk singer called Paddie; he’d come over to my
apartment and we’d pop corn in the fireplace and drink a bottle of wine, and then he’d make fierce love to me. Once I left Paddie and returned to Pepi’s big bed, he scolded me for wasting time with a mediocrity.
I said, “How do you know he’s a mediocrity?”
Pepi replied, “Because he is not me!”
Then he wondered if I’d ever been in love. “I don’t believe another man has ever reached you to the core of your being,” he remarked melodramatically. My father had said the same thing.
ALTHOUGH I RADIATED shyness and insecurity, inside, I was very ambitious—a trait I’d inherited from both my parents, who I knew were also ambitious for me. I was sick with fear I was disappointing them, so I admitted to Pepi that I needed a better agent. He got me one and I was immediately sent out on more auditions. Pepi coached me for a couple and I got called back. I was so overjoyed, I showered him with kisses. I was ashamed I’d been so calculating; I even told him as much and he scoffed, “Darling girl, we all use each other to get ahead. Join the club.” I supposed that was true.
But I’d feel guilty anyway. Sometimes I’d wake up with him in bed and cling to him as if I were drowning. Yes, of course he was a father figure, a substitute parent while Daddy languished in rehab. Pepi gave me love, attention, and advice—I will never forget him for that.
Or for introducing me to Chekhov. He’d lecture me on The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters, but we concentrated on The Seagull. Pepi had always wanted to play Trigorin, the overworked disappointed writer. I was Nina, the passionate innocent who thinks Trigorin is glamorous and falls in love with him. He leaves her; she loses his baby but becomes an actress. Pepi applauded the way I interpreted Nina—“like a survivor,” he said. As time went on, we read the play more and more; we even memorized the lines and performed for each other in the hotel suite.
The Men in My Life Page 20