But during all of this, there was another man who was my real object of desire. We were friends, and the time we’d spend together was both satisfying and frustrating: he liked someone else “that way.” Unrequited love is a joie de vivre killer because your heart is stuck on someone who doesn’t feel the same way about you. Every time you’re with that person, you’re walking on air, your hopes soaring with the slightest glance or casual touch. But then, as soon as you’re apart, you’re faced with the reality of your situation, that this person is really unavailable to you. I get questions from people caught in such situations, and my advice to them is to keep yourself as far from this person as possible. That might mean switching schools, jobs, or even cities. To feel joie de vivre to its fullest, you can’t have this glass ceiling above you that keeps you from soaring.
I lost my virginity on the kibbutz. I won’t say with whom because I am still friendly with him and he is married to someone else—and she and I are friends too—but it was in a hayloft, which provided not only privacy but a softer environment than our hard beds, and it was wonderful. We visited that hayloft again and again (and that I didn’t wind up pregnant was a minor miracle, because we weren’t using any form of birth control).
One phrase that the French use for an orgasm is la petite mort, “the little death.” It’s meant to describe not so much the orgasm itself as that feeling you get right afterward, a slight blackout one might feel, as the life forces you exerted leave your body for a while. And, in fact, if an orgasm is strong enough, you might feel like you’re going to burst open and die. In that sense, one could almost say that an orgasm goes beyond joie de vivre—you experience death in some small way, rather than life. But that’s not true, because actually joie de vivre encompasses many more emotions than only joy.
To fully live life, there’s an entire range of emotions that you need to feel, and that even includes sadness. If you experience only happy times, you’re going to appreciate them less than if you can compare them to sad times. So a feeling such as nostalgia isn’t exactly joyful, but it’s an emotional experience that makes you more alive. Joie de vivre isn’t only about experiencing joy, but being open to all your feelings.
Let me illustrate with a personal example, one of motherly love. My daughter Miriam went to Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Of course, I missed my daughter because she wasn’t nearby. And I worried about her because being in the army, even if there is no war, is inherently dangerous, as there are firearms and training exercises. But I was also very proud of her for showing the same devotion to Israel that I had. As an American, she didn’t have to go to join the army. But it was something that as a Jew she felt was important. And then when she moved back to New York, the elation I felt at having her back was indescribable! While she was away, my heart hurt, but I would call her as often as possible, visit when I could, and pray that she would come home safely. I didn’t let her being over there kill my joie de vivre, because having a child leave home is part of life. But boy, was I excited at having her back!
I could have gone around with a long face the entire time Miriam was in Israel. But working yourself up over something that you can’t change is a mistake. It’s OK to spend a few minutes every day being sad or worrying, but then you have to put those negative emotions aside, because life is too precious to waste even one day of it.
I met my first husband through the surgeon who had tended to my legs after the bomb blast in 1948. David was a soldier in the Israeli army, and as I’ve told you, I seem to favor men in uniforms. He was also from a comparatively wealthy family in Tel Aviv and planned on being a doctor. I was surprised that he fell in love with me because I still thought of myself as unattractive and short, though luckily David was short as well, so that gave me an advantage over all the taller girls.
If I was surprised at David’s proposal of marriage, his father was disappointed. He thought we were too young, and that David could have done better than a refugee. But we got married anyway and moved to Paris. David was out of the army by then, and since there was no medical school in Israel, we set off to the City of Lights.
I’ve been throwing a variety of French phrases at you, and it was in Paris where I learned them all. But living in Paris meant that I learned not only their meaning as you would in a dictionary, but I learned what they meant as I lived in this magical city. If you’ve spent a few days in Paris seeing all the famous sites surrounded by tourists, then you’ve missed the real city and its magic. When David and I were there, we were really poor. Our apartment was an unheated, furnished room on the third floor of a walk-up with cold water and no bathroom. The toilet—if you want to call a stand-up “Turkish” variety a toilet—was two floors down. And yet I loved every second in Paris.
Most of my friends were fellow Israeli students living on next to no money. (And our financial situations actually worsened while we were there; Israel imposed currency limitations, and David’s parents couldn’t send us the funds they’d been directing to David’s expenses. I was teaching in a Jewish kindergarten but was paid very little.) When we went to a café, we’d share one cup of coffee. We could window-shop, faire du lèche-carreau (literally, “lick the shop windows”) but not buy anything. But it was still possible, with student discounts, to eat decently, see the occasional movie, and go to La Comédie-Française to watch a show. And even if you were far down the rungs of the economic ladder, living in Paris meant that you were still part of it all, a Parisian. That thought still makes my heart jump a little.
David and I both learned as much French as we could because the French are very proud of their language, and if you wanted to fit in and make French friends, you had to speak their language. We were able to enjoy so much more of what Paris had to offer, even if we couldn’t afford the luxury items which surrounded us.
After having spent so many years being very poor, I certainly appreciate the importance of money. But while money can be of assistance in enjoying life, especially when it comes to making sure you have the necessities, you can most certainly generate joie de vivre in many ways that don’t cost a penny. As I’ve mentioned, during the holidays I head to Fifth Avenue to look at the window displays, and I go to parades and look out my window to watch the sunset. What’s vital is to have the right attitude. Any one of these experiences can create a glow that lasts for hours. A walk, be it on city streets looking at the people around you or in a park absorbing Mother Nature, can be very uplifting, but you have to force yourself to get out and take that walk with the idea that you’re going to absorb joie de vivre with every step.
This recollection of Paris reminds me of one of my later trips there. It was 1985, my television show on Lifetime was doing great, I’d been on the covers of People and TV Guide, I was giving lectures all over the country, writing books—to say my plate was full was no exaggeration. And in the middle of all this comes an invitation to be in a movie that was being shot in France. Given how busy I was, that I agreed to do it wasn’t so much taking a risk as it was an act of insanity. But while I loved the years I’d spent in France, I’d been poor as a church mouse, huddling in cafes for hours over one cup of coffee. And so the chance for me, who had spent so many evenings in the last row of the balcony at La Comédie-Française, to go back to be a French movie star was just too tempting to pass up.
The director was Daniel Vigne, best known for his award-winning film The Return of Martin Guerre. He’d had Linda Hunt in mind for the role of Mrs. Heffner, as being short was a critical aspect, but she hadn’t agreed to it yet, so he flew to New York to interview me. We met at a Midtown hotel. I went mostly out of curiosity, but before I met Daniel, someone downstairs in the lobby told me that he’d already chosen Linda Hunt. That got my competitive spirit going. Since I was still going to read for the role, I decided to give it my best shot. Daniel is a real charmer, and since you know my second husband was French, you can understand that I have a thing for handsome Frenchmen. But whatever it was that afternoon (
and in all probability, whoever said that Linda Hunt had been chosen didn’t know what they were talking about), I gave it my all, and Daniel said to me, “You’re hired.”
The film was a romantic comedy with one of those convoluted plots the French are known for and if you can believe it, it involved the six-foot-tall Sigourney Weaver being mistaken for the four-foot-seven me. But if the plot was convoluted, it was no more so than my life had become. Now I had to somehow integrate flying to Paris for five or six days at a time into a schedule that already left me no time to breathe. I had Pierre cancel some lectures (so not only did this role not pay me very much, but it cost me some money), but I still had a TV show to do. And the live shows couldn’t be taped, so I had to be there, and alive, or at least awake. No one knew except my producer, John Lollos, my cohost, Larry Angelo, and some of the crew; but on one of these late nights when I’d just returned from Paris, I actually nodded off at the end of the show. John spotted it and told the stage manager to signal to Larry; they kept the camera on him while the stage manager came over and tapped me on the shoulder. Luckily I’m used to taking catnaps. I was able to quickly pick up the reins, and even such a short breather gave me an energy boost.
In the movie, actor Gérard Depardieu plays an anthropologist who goes to the airport a day early to meet a philanthropist (me) and instead winds up picking up Sigourney. On one day of filming, I was outside the apartment building in which we were to shoot a scene, waiting for them to tell me to go upstairs. I walked over to the building next door and tried the door, but it was locked. I stood there looking up at the building when Michel Aumont, another terrific actor in the film, came over to me.
“Docteur Ruth, we are filming in that building, not this one.”
“Michel,” I answered, “I know, but I wanted to see if I could get a glimpse inside of this one.”
“Mais pourquoi?” (Because I lived in France for five years, my French is pretty good, and this conversation actually was in French.)
“When I first came to France, this is where I lived. On the top floor,” I said, pointing up. “Every day I had to walk up and down all those stairs. And with my short legs, that wasn’t easy. There was no heat in the building. Or hot water. And the toilet was two stories below.”
“And now here you are, starring in a French movie, being filmed right next door. I can understand why you look so contemplative.”
“When I lived here, my goal in life was to be a kindergarten teacher. I didn’t have stars in my eyes but was very down-to-earth. To be right back here in this very same spot, so many years later, making a movie, it’s all very hard to process.”
“You still see yourself as that young woman.”
“Of course, and if I could go back in time and describe what is happening here today to the me of back then, she would have had a good laugh and told me to be on my way. It’s almost as if there are two of me here. The young me, struggling to get by, and the Dr. Ruth me, acting in a movie one building over.”
A production assistant came up and asked us to follow him inside the building where we were filming, but I didn’t move right away. I was still lost in thought. How could that Ruth have become this Ruth? How could that Ruth have wound up making a movie with one of France’s greatest actors, being directed by one of France’s best directors, alongside one of America’s most famous actresses? It was such an amazing experience that I had to walk away because if I’d let myself dwell on it any longer, I would never have been able to say my lines.
On the next trip over to France, we did a scene in the Salle Richelieu in the Sorbonne. I had flunked an exam in physiology in the very same room! Again as I looked around I couldn’t help but psychologically pinch myself because this journey I’d made was so unbelievable. Then a big smile came to my face as I thought, “If only my classmates and teacher from back then could see me now!”
And that’s why to come back to Paris to star in a film was so moving. Had that movie been made anywhere else in the world, I might not have agreed to disrupt my life to be in it. In fact, I have turned down other movie roles, though mostly because the producers didn’t want me to play a part but just be Dr. Ruth (a famous movie critic once told me never to do that, and I listened). But this film was to be shot in Paris, where I had once felt so poor; to live the life of a movie star, even for only a few weeks, was an offer that was just too tempting.
And that scene in the Sorbonne? It ended in a food fight! How much fun was that!
In the movie, Gérard Depardieu falls for the imposter, so my character doesn’t give him any money. But in real life he was a generous man who threw a party for the cast in a wine cellar alongside the Seine. Everybody had a wonderful time drinking a lot of wine, especially Gérard. Even though I didn’t have more than a sip, I couldn’t have been flying any higher.
And while I’m on Paris experiences, here’s one more—a chance that I took that has a French beret sort of ending. I was approached to do a book on art. I’m always going to museums, but it’s not that all those visits have made me an art expert. However, the publisher, Abbeville, paired me with a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gary Tinterow (now the director of Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts), and the deal was that he would supply the expertise in his field and I’d do the same in mine. The book, still in print, is titled The Art of Arousal, and I’m very proud of it. I think it’s a good book for couples to share because while the art has plenty of erotic content, it’s far from pornographic—it’s a book that a husband and wife can share without anyone getting offended, and perhaps both partners will become just a little bit aroused.
As satisfied as I was with that book, when it came out in French, I was even more delighted, especially because the French edition was in a fancy boxed cover. And then Gary and I were invited to do a signing at the Louvre! I’d spent hours and hours in the Louvre when I lived in Paris, and to have a book that I’d written sold there pleased me to no end. French movies are one art form, but the movie I was in wasn’t of the serious type, so to have my book sold in the Louvre meant a lot to me. Maybe I wouldn’t be hanging next to the Mona Lisa, but at least I was sharing the same building with her!
At one point while Gary and I were walking in Paris, I spotted a coat in the window of a fancy dress shop. It was red with a black velvet collar. I normally don’t lust after clothes, but I fell in love with that coat right away, le coup de foudre, as the French would say. I dragged Gary inside but sadly they didn’t have one in my size. However they said they were willing to make one and while the price was très cher, I said yes. Gary was going back to Paris in a month, and he volunteered to pick it up for me. I wore that coat for years and was really sad when it became too threadbare to keep.
What especially distinguished the extravagance of this coat when compared to my usual spending budget is that when I travel, my norm is to pick up a lot of trinkets to give as presents. Some I keep for myself, but most of them I give when I need to thank someone. When in Paris, one place I always stop is a gift shop on the Rue de Rivoli, the covered street opposite the Tuileries. At this shop where you have to go down a few steps to enter, I always stock up on little Limoges items, especially the little plates. I know they’re kitschy, but I like them. (I have a friend for whom I’m always picking up golf balls when I travel. The last time he went to Paris he got me a Limoges golf ball!)
When I was just turning ten, I never would have imagined that our family was soon to be broken up. On my twentieth birthday, I never thought that I’d be caught in a bomb blast. And when I was studying in Paris, in my wildest dreams I would never have come back to star in a movie. You know every day I read my horoscope in the New York Post because it’s entertaining, but if there’s anyone who recognizes that you can’t predict the future, it’s me. These are surprises on a grand scale, but every day you will find yourself caught off guard by something. Some will be good and some might not be so good but surprises are part of life. Trying to protect yourself from shocks or c
hanges is similar to trying to tamp down emotions such as sadness; you may end up more dead than alive. Instead you must learn to embrace surprises. Obviously if you or a loved one are given a terrible medical diagnosis, that’s not something you can feel good about, but it’s also an experience you can’t prevent either. So make sure that when a good surprise comes along, you enjoy it fully so that when the bad one inevitably hits, at least it won’t have ruined all the good ones. Imagine a man never having sex with a partner because he was afraid that one time he might not be able to have an erection. People follow such lines of logic and wind up living poorer lives because of it. Don’t fall prey to such behavior.
Ah, but back to my story and to my initial years in France. My first husband, David, was in medical school, and just about every one of our friends was a student. I was teaching kindergarten but without even a high school diploma, and any chance to get a college degree that would further my original goal of being a doctor—of some sort, anyway—was out of the question. But then the French government, realizing that the war had played havoc with the educational path of so many young people, created a way of entering the Sorbonne. They offered a one-year course, and anyone who could pass it could then enroll into the main student body. I signed up and a year later was able to enter the Institute of Psychology at the Sorbonne, working toward a license, which was somewhere between a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. It was going to be quite a difficult undertaking given my skills in French, but talk about joie de vivre! I was walking on air.
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