An Improvised Life

by Alan Arkin

  He came back after the show and all of us sat with him for a couple of hours in the empty club, mostly listening to his stories in joyous rapt attention. In spite of the botched Khrushchev-Kennedy debate we seemed to have pleased Groucho, and completely out of keeping for us we actually delighted in the fact that he’d turned the show into a shambles. It was an evening none of us will ever forget, and I’m proud to say that after that night Groucho became a friend. He’d often come to see me when I was in a show in L.A., and invite me to his house for dinner, or out to a nearby restaurant. His presence was an endless source of delight to anyone who approached him. He joked with waiters, busboys, maître d’s, everyone in the restaurant who came over to say hello. And more than almost anyone I’ve met in this business, he was inquisitive about everyone and everything. He never stopped asking questions. Once I tried to tell him of the joy he’d given me over the years and how greatly I admired him. He waved me off. “I was nothing without my brothers,” he said. “Without them I wouldn’t have amounted to anything.”

  The club in Greenwich Village stayed successful for a long time. The group, most of whom had been native Chicagoans, slowly adjusted to living in New York, and, predictably, offers for work on Broadway and in film and TV started coming in. We had considered ourselves iconoclasts and rebels, and we were a pretty tight, if dysfunctional, family. But as offers came in, things began to change. The new possibilities that were offered to some of us represented too many unspoken hopes and dreams, dreams of financial security, of greater personal recognition, of less pressured work, and the group started changing. People started leaving, new blood came in, and Second City started its long climb into becoming an institution and a success machine.

  Forty years later there was a celebration and reunion in Chicago, and those of us, the early members who were still alive, climbed haltingly onstage to receive standing ovations from the crowd. We were treated like pioneers. Pathfinders. We looked at each other with our mouths open in disbelief. We had started out in Second City, all of us, because there was nowhere else to go. We were mavericks, misfits, almost unemployable. Most of the original members of the group had come out of the University of Chicago, where the dean had said publicly, “Get a general education. Don’t specialize. You’re all smart people; you’ll end up on your feet.” They took him at his word and as a result the University of Chicago produced a generation of brilliant people who wandered and floundered without finding specific work to do, all of them prospective Second City cast members. I fit right in. If anyone had told us that we were founding a dynasty, that three-quarters of the comic talent in the country for the next five decades would come from our ranks, we would have laughed in their faces. Now people join the cast in order to “make it.” We did it to survive.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After being with Second City in New York for a year, I was offered a part in a Broadway play. It was called Enter Laughing, from a book written by Carl Reiner. It was my first Broadway play, I had the lead, and I was never offstage. We opened in the middle of a newspaper strike, but in spite of the blackout and a complete lack of newsprint publicity, we got enough raves via television and word of mouth to turn the show into a smash hit.

  The night before the reviews came out, my name was in small letters at the bottom of the ads. The next day I was over the title. As glamorous as that sounds, and as much of a dream as I thought it would be, it backfired. For the first time in my career there was no avoiding the fact that I was present onstage. And because the reviews singled me out, much of the audience was coming to see my work. Like it or not, I was now a celebrity, and in a couple of ways this put me under new pressures, onstage as well as off.

  For the most part I had become an actor so as to hide, to find my identity through pretending to be other people. Now there was no getting around the fact that it was me up there in front of an audience. When I made my first entrance the audience applauded, but they were applauding the actor playing the role, stopping the show with this generous acknowledgment, a tradition in the theater but confusing and uncomfortable for me, and from that moment on I could not help feeling caught between myself and the character; I couldn’t find any balance, or my way back.

  In addition, I was an improvisatory actor, and not only because of the two years I’d just completed at Second City; improvisation seemed to be central to my nature. Anything else felt boring and rigid. Where was the creativity in doing a part exactly the same way every night? I know it makes sense for the playwright to have a performance set in stone; it gives the writer a feeling of security. It also makes sense and is good business for the producer—this coming Tuesday people will see the same performance they saw a year ago last September. I could see the logic in it, but I didn’t want to do it.

  In Enter Laughing, as the months went by, and as my anxieties about being present mounted, I also felt inhibited by the rigidity of the form. I found myself getting stale in certain parts of the play. I’d try to change the blocking just a bit, to get my juices flowing, and found that other actors onstage would actually look for me at the spot I had been the night before, where I was “supposed to be”! Then afterward there would be the inevitable notes from the stage manager, admonishing me for not sticking to the blocking.

  This is a terrible confession to make; I’m aware of it. Actors are supposed to know that the play happens over and over again until the audience stops showing up. That’s a given. But I can’t help but ask, “Why?” Some actors are fed by the reactions of the audience, by the tiny nuances that they can add to a show over the years, by the hope of catching fire once in a while and disappearing completely into the role, by the passion generated by another actor’s catching fire, by the hope that someone important will be in the house that night. Others are made secure by having someplace tangible and safe to go to instead of facing the anxieties of a random and fragmented day. None of this worked for me. Well, some of it did, for a while, in Second City, where we knew that in three months’ time we’d be doing a whole new show. And yet as happy as I was at Second City, working at the top of my abilities, I was driven to explore outside that arena in the supposed magic of “Broadway.” I wanted a bigger success. The irony is that I found it, and all it did was make me unhappy.

  Offstage, this new identity as a known actor took some adjusting. And I didn’t have much time. It began immediately after the opening-night performance of Enter Laughing.

  After the show, since there were no newspaper reviews to wait for at Sardi’s, a group of us—friends, family, and a few cast members—went across the street to a bar and had a couple of drinks while waiting for the television reviews. The bartender flipped channels for us, and a split second after the reviews were broadcast, nearly all of them embarrassingly glowing, about eight people in the bar came rushing over with programs of the play for me to sign. Since they had programs, they had obviously been part of the audience, but they were waiting to see if I was someone whose signature was going to have any value!

  It was my first view of the strange world of fandom, and with it came a moment of crystal-clear understanding. I realized that this sudden attention bestowed on me had little to do with affection for me or my work. Rather it had everything to do with people being connected to “someone of note,” and for the moment I was that person. It seemed to give them a sense of stature to be associated with a “celebrity,” someone who they perceived as having “done something.” And they weren’t even acting on their own perception. It was my acceptance by the media, a couple of three-minute reviews, that gave me stature, and their tenuous connection to me, by way of an autograph, now gave them some stature as well. It was a lesson I immediately understood, and it has stayed with me for all these years.

  Although this idea of a “fan base” is part of the movie business, I really don’t get it. I don’t get the idea that actors think they can only do certain kinds of roles because they can’t disappoint their fans. I don’t get it when people say to me, about s
tudio heads or producers, “They love you!” I recently asked one of my representatives not to tell me how much a casting director loved me. It’s fine to tell me they like my work, but that has little to do with love. There’s a dangerous illusion, I think, in the perception that the fans love us. Love is a precious thing, and I want to save discussions about it for people I’ve at least met.

  Over the years I’ve done some writing, mostly children’s books, but a couple of pieces for adults as well, and on occasion I’ve received letters from people who have read my work. Invariably they are notes of thanks and gratitude for my having given them something. But the world of show business is different. For some reason people who make movies are seen as public property. The impression is that in exchange for our celebrity we owe the fans something. They want our signature on 3-by-5 cards, and often not just one card but several. They want signatures on photographs, which they will sometimes provide, but often not, as if part of our job is to supply endless images of ourselves. There are requests for messages to loved ones on birthdays or anniversaries. There are endless questionnaires, both personal and professional. Over the past forty years I have had perhaps fifteen or twenty letters of thanks from people who feel that my work has in some way been a gift, and for these I am truly grateful. But those letters, although treasured, are few and far between. It’s as if what we do on screen or in the theater isn’t work at all but rather some fairytale imagined existence, and part of our job is to impart our secret and magical life to anyone who can get close enough to ask. No one seems to pay attention to how difficult a life it can be, and how many broken, fragmented lives are connected to it, a sad fact that seems endemic to the world of show business. Add to this the fact that for a great many of us our work is a serious addiction, with all of the liabilities that accompany any dangerous addiction. Yet in our culture it can seem, to those looking on, that we are “only playing.” Only fooling around.

  I’ve often felt that there could be a fun coffee-table book of exchanges between fans and celebrities. A few, which I’ve heard about from colleagues over the years, have been priceless. One of my favorite stories was one Eli Wallach told me years ago. He was in a Broadway show at the time, and one Sunday morning he was leaving Zabar’s loaded down with a couple of shopping bags filled with the usual New York Sunday-morning fare, when a lady grabbed him by the arm, stopping him cold and whipping him around. Holding him was a middle-aged woman staring at him intently, a big smile on her face. “I know you!” she said, wagging a finger. “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me,” she said, holding him captive in a vice-like grip. Eli loves attention, and is very good with people, so he waited patiently while she consulted the rolodex in her head of people he could have been. “Telly Savalas!” she finally blurted out. Eli said no. “Martin Balsam!” She yelled out the name as if she’d just won at bingo. Eli said no. “Peter Falk!” No, said Eli. “Efrem Zimbalist Jr.!” No. “Ben Gazzara!” No. Finally the woman gave up. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I’m Eli Wallach.” The woman clutched her heart; a beatific smile came over her face. “My favorite!” she said and walked away.

  Tony Perkins told me about a time when he was sitting in the back of a cab—it was during a lull in his career—and saw the driver scrutinizing him in the rear-view mirror. After a while the cabbie, unable to contain himself, said, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be Tony Perkins?”

  My favorite anecdote involving me took place years ago when I was on location, making a film. We’d stopped to shoot in Nashville for a couple of days, and one night a group of us went to dinner at what we heard was a good Italian restaurant. In the middle of the meal the maître d’ came over to me and said in a thick Italian accent, “I saw you in the movies last night.” “I don’t think you did,” I answered. I hadn’t done anything in a while, and nothing of mine was in theaters anywhere. “Yes I did,” he said again. “Last night I saw you in the movies.” “I don’t think so,” I said, wanting to get back to my dinner. “Nothing of mine is playing in town,” I told him and turned away. Not taking the hint, the maître d’ said, “I never forget a face. I saw you last night in Diary of a Mad Housewife.” “I wasn’t in Diary of a Mad Housewife,” I said, starting to get annoyed. “Yes you were,” insisted the maître d’. “Look,” I said, now a bit steamed. “I know what I was in and what I wasn’t in, and I wasn’t in Diary of a Mad Housewife.” “Yes you were,” the maître d’ repeated. “No I wasn’t!” I said, churning. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll tell you where.” “Okay,” I said, giving in, and he went on: “I saw you sitting on the steps of the theater before the movie started. You were talking to a boy who was about twelve years old.” And he had me. I had gone to see the movie the night before with my son Adam, and we had sat on the steps of the theater to talk for a few minutes before the film began. “You got me,” I said. “So what are you doing in town?” the maître d’ asked me, now that we were pals. “I’m a traveling salesman,” I said, “just passing through.”

  It’s a strange life. But I’m in a good place in it. I’m a character actor. I don’t get mobbed; I can go anywhere and not feel as if my privacy is going to be intruded on. When I am approached in public these days it’s most often by people who have liked something I’ve done, and the exchanges tend to be fun and respectful. And once in a while I’m given a better seat on an airplane.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  During the year at Second City in New York, and then throughout my run in Enter Laughing, even though everything was going exceedingly well professionally I had no life outside the theater. For all the good I did anyone I could have been hung up in a closet somewhere. In one memorable week three different people suggested that I should go into analysis. It was a wake-up call and I listened.

  I had no idea what to expect from analysis. I didn’t know anyone who’d ever experienced it. During the first month I told the doctor a dream I had.

  “It was terrible,” I said. “My brother Bob fell into a bear pit and the bars around the cage were too high for me to get in and save him. My poor brother. He was killed by the bears.”

  “Who threw him in the bear pit?” the doctor said.

  “Not me,” I answered.

  “No?” the doctor asked. “Who had the dream?”

  It was as if I’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four. I had the dream. There was someone inside. There was something going on within me that caused things to happen, things that I generated, in my personal life as well as my professional life. I had an identity. For my first thirty years I had marveled at my own acts as if they were created by some external power, as if I were a bystander to my own behavior. In spite of all the analysis I had done on characters I’d been playing, I had never given a thought to my own internal life, or whether I even had one. Like many people I saw myself as a force of nature that I had almost no control over, as an innocent bystander to my own life. With this one comment from my doctor, and my ability to recognize its implications, self-discovery became a second obsession.

  There was a lot of work to do, plenty of bad behavior to get over. Having called myself an “artist” since I was five, I had a lot of examples to re-examine. “Well,” I’d say to myself, “Beethoven was a boor, but look what he gave to the world.” Or, “Mozart was irresponsible and childish, so what? Who would have him any other way? He was charming! He was mysterious! He made generations of people happy!” Excuse after excuse to be antisocial or selfish. The history books might forgive me, I thought at the time, while I was fantasizing my obituary, but I could no longer forgive myself for my inadequacies. They began to eat at me. And it started to become clear to me that I was alive in the present moment, and only then. Not in reviews, not in photographs, not in my interviews or my imagined biographies, but right there in the moments that I drew breath and my heart was beating. The rest was ephemeral nonsense.

  I stayed in Enter Laughing for a year. After my contract ended I went back to Second City for two months and then back on Broadway aga
in to be in Murray Schisgal’s wonderful three-character play Luv, along with Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. It too was a hit, and I remained in it for a year.

  At the end of my commitment to Luv, I had my first screen test. It was for the part of a submarine officer in The Russians Are Coming. I told Norman Jewison, the director, that I’d do a screen test, but only if I could improvise it. He said okay, and I did the screen test, improvising several scenes, working off Norman who stayed behind the camera. I got the part and we did the film.

  One of the things that attracted me to the project was its strong social statement. We were smack in the middle of the cold war at the time, and the film had the audacious message that Russians were human beings, pretty much like us. It sounds inane now, but at that moment in our history the Soviet Union was so demonized that making a movie that challenged that view was actually a pretty courageous thing to do. I think most of us in the cast were in accord with that mission, and it helped us bond as a group.