I got the part, my first paying job as an actor in New York! I would be paid twenty-five dollars a week and an additional five dollars for maintaining the costumes and props. I even got a nice mention in the Village Voice review.
Within a very short time of The Breaking Wall closing, I was cast as the landlady in The New Tenant, by Eugene Ionesco. The actor playing opposite me was a scene-stealer, a true glutton on the stage. One day I told Peter it was so bad, I was going to quit. He said, “No. Don’t leave until you learn how to be better at it than he is.” He wanted me to learn something from the experience, so I did.
Then, thanks to my old friend Ed Heffernan from the Actors Company in Boston, I got a job in the subscription office of the Phoenix Theatre, where Ed was now a member of the company. He also got me an audition for their educational touring company. We traveled around regional schools performing classics such as Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Chekhov’s The Boor, and others. The students were a great audience. They especially loved the “girls against the boys” battle in The Taming of the Shrew. I loved hearing the girls cheer for Kate and the boys for Petruchio. The most important thing of all, though, was that this was an Equity job. I got my union card and became a working actor. Now I could afford my own place with no roommate. I moved to a fifth-floor walk-up in Alphabet City on New York’s Lower East Side that I furnished with castoffs from the street. My bathtub was in the kitchen and I shared a hallway john with two drunken Ukrainians. My apartment was the site of an ongoing gin game with other actors from the building and the neighborhood. My rent was $27.50 a month. The only area of my life that was unsatisfactory was my love life. But that’s not to say that I didn’t have one.
The summer of 1960 I went to Saranac Lake to do summer stock and tumbled into a passionate affair with a handsome actor named H who was in the company. I was doing The Rose Tattoo and my old friend Jane Cronin, who was also in the company, noticed that night after night, H was in the audience or in the bar where we went after a performance. H wasn’t in this show and wasn’t supposed to be there until rehearsals for the next show began. “There he is again,” Jane would say to me. “Why don’t you go say hello.”
I knew he was married and had two children. I had seen other women friends get involved with married men and it was always a heartache. But my own curiosity got the better of me.
It was wonderful to be together. We had great fun and I was happy—happier than I’d been since N. I let myself exist only in the moment, with no thought of the reality that awaited us back in New York.
Back in the city, H went home to his family on Long Island. We continued to see each other, but the role of the “other woman” was making me physically and emotionally distraught. One day H showed up, almost wild with grief; he’d returned home after our last meeting to find his wife and their children in the car with the motor running and the garage door closed. I was horrified. There was no way to continue, so without any hesitation I told him he had to go back to his wife. We both knew we had to stop seeing each other. I spent the next couple of weeks feeling as though I was in limbo. I was withdrawn and distracted. Slowly, I came out of my cocoon. I forced myself to start “dating,” but I couldn’t bear the idea of another passionate affair that could end badly. For the first time, I was seeing more than one man at a time, playing the field.
I dated nearly two dozen men over the next six months, all of them for about a week, none of them for more than a month. The man, the duration of the involvement, what we engaged in; it was all on my terms. The only drawback to socializing so aggressively was that I was also drinking, part of the whole mating game then, as it is now. I found that even while I was claiming my body, my sexuality, and my independence, I was also becoming a little too fond of boilermakers, a lethal cocktail made by dropping a shot glass full of Scotch into a pint of beer. To complicate things, lately I had been enjoying a bit of marijuana with my drink.
Our watering hole was Blue and Gold on Seventh Street, between Second and First avenues (it’s still there!). It was a Ukrainian bar with a little dance floor and an accordion player. There was also a great jukebox. The owner’s wife served pierogis and potato pancakes at the bar, and the occasional hard-boiled egg as a nod to the Irish. On my thirtieth birthday, in June of 1961, we’d had a great party, dancing with a group of Ukrainian sailors who’d come into port. I went home alone.
When I woke up the next day my body felt beaten up. I gave myself a birthday present: “No more hard liquor,” I said. “From now on, wine only.”
About six months into my thirtieth year I took a job as a reader for The Opening of a Window, which was being produced by Jerry Giardino, an actor with whom I’d played in The Breaking Wall. Even though this wasn’t a formal audition, I knew Jerry would hear me read the part of the female lead with the actors auditioning for the male lead. After about a week, he saw how right I was for the part and hired me. One day, the most stunning man I’d ever seen came to audition. He was tall, about six feet three, with black curly hair and a trim black beard. His energy and spirit took over the room. The casting director introduced him: Louis Zorich. When Louie told me he was playing Hercules in a production across town, I thought, “Now there’s a piece of inspired casting.” When we read together I realized he was not only good-looking, he was also a fine actor. The only problem was that the character he read for was frail and sick and would die of consumption. There was no way this well-built and healthy Adonis could be convincing. But I had a very good time in the play and I got my first substantial review. In the New York Herald Tribune, Judith Crist wrote: “Olympia Dukakis manages to make the cliché come to life…in the flash of a smile, a naive gesture, a sudden slump of her shoulders. She has tenderness and warmth and fleeting revelations of inner fire; she rises above the role.” I permitted myself to feel I was on my way. And though Louis Zorich didn’t get the part, he would get the girl.
I started to immerse myself in the theater scene. I went to see other actresses I admired—Julie Harris, Maureen Stapleton, Kim Stanley, and Colleen Dewhurst. Geraldine Page, who I had seen in Sweet Bird of Youth, was my hero because she was so much her own woman. All of these actresses inspired me.
Over the next year, I’d see Louis Zorich around town, usually dressed to the nines and always with a different woman on his arm. When we finally connected, everything in my life changed. Everything truly began to open and flower. It was wonderful—and scary.
I was in a workshop production of Medea, directed by Tom Brennan, who I’d met in the summer of ’61 when I did a season at the Williamstown Summer Theatre (now known as the Williamstown Theatre Festival). The actor playing Medea’s husband, Jason, quit to move to Los Angeles. I suggested that Tom cast Louie Zorich and Tom took my word for it. Now I got to see Louie every day. I was involved with another man at the time, but I was so attracted to Louie that I’d purposely make love with my boyfriend just before I’d leave for rehearsal so that I wouldn’t be completely distracted by Louie. I remember him even kidding me one day because I showed up wearing my sweater inside out. There was no overt flirtation between us on the set, but one night, Tom offered us two tickets to a musical version of Twelfth Night starring Dom DeLuise. I wasn’t sure if he was offering us two pairs of tickets or if he was suggesting that we go together, so I simply held my breath and waited for Louie’s response. “Would you like to go?” he asked. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do. After the play, we went for drinks, and it became clear there was an attraction between us. We ended up back at his place. Louie lived in a brownstone on Horatio Street in the West Village that looked like it was plucked from the pages of a Henry James novel. It was a beautiful brownstone on one of those shaded, quiet streets you occasionally come across in the Village when you stop and wonder if you haven’t somehow traveled back in time to some European city. Louie’s building, in addition to being beautiful, had a charming courtyard planted with trees and rows of colorful flowers. Every other actor I knew li
ved in a tenement.
Inside was another story. His apartment had all the warmth and ambiance of a monk’s cell. The only furnishings were a cot, big enough for one, a dresser, a table, two wooden chairs, and a recliner. His kitchen contained an assortment of protein powders and vitamins in the cupboards and fruit, nuts, and grains in the refrigerator. Everything about the apartment said “No visitors allowed!”
The next morning, Louis got up, made some coffee for himself, and went out to buy the paper. I had been involved in enough one-night stands to know the drill: I’m sure he expected me to leave. Instead, like something out of a bad French movie, I stayed, lounging around in my black slip, smoking cigarettes. When he got back, he barely acknowledged me. He sat on one of the wooden chairs, drinking his coffee and reading the paper. Continuing to ignore me, he did his voice exercises and made himself a protein drink, and all the while he never said a word. This went on until the phone rang. “Sure, come on over,” I heard him say. The next thing I knew, a lovely young woman came to the door. “Come on in,” Louis told her. I was still there, still in my black slip. My behavior, I knew, was risky (and completely unplanned), but he never suggested I leave. He could have found a way to get rid of me, but he didn’t. I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I knew I had more to lose here than just the “next man” in my life, so I took it as a sign. Louis and his friend chatted uncomfortably for awhile, and finally—probably realizing that I was going to outlast her—she left. When the door closed behind her, Louis looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you?” I couldn’t talk, but I knew. I just nodded.
We were inseparable from then on. Louie, it turns out, was as fiercely committed to his own quest as I was. He approached his work with absolute dedication and professionalism, and he took good care of himself, body and soul. He was intensely curious and an avid reader. He also understood that honing your craft was essential. He treated himself with a kind of respect and seriousness that I aspired to. And he treated me with the same respect. We discovered we had a lot in common.
Louie, who is six years older than I am, is also a first-generation American. His family immigrated to Chicago from Yugoslavia. He had been responsible for caring for his four younger siblings. When the United States entered World War II, Louie struck off on his own, joining the army at age eighteen. He served in Normandy, working as a fireman during the Battle of the Bulge, and when he got home, he took advantage of the GI Bill to study opera. This led him to study theater. He joined the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, where he worked with people such as Mike Nichols, Ed Asner, and Luther Adler, with whom he traveled to Canada with a tour of A View from the Bridge. He stayed there for a few years, working in television and on the stage. But he felt New York was where it was at, so he came back to study with the acting coach Lee Strasberg. He got work right away—always as the heavy, a “tough guy.” When we met, he was well entrenched in what we came to jokingly refer to as “the long march,” his path to self-fulfillment. It was our shorthand for his own quest for the American Dream. One of the things we had in common was growing up with the same frame of reference as first-generation Americans. We both knew what it was like to live with parents who spoke a foreign language; we knew what ethnic bias felt like; and we both knew what trying to survive on the streets was all about. We knew it took discipline and work to carve out an identity for yourself. This shared experience made moving forward together all the more possible and exciting.
After dating for a month, Louie and I decided to move in together, an enormous step for both of us. The day I was due to move in, I arrived at Louie’s door with two huge suitcases. I had a key to the place but couldn’t make myself go in. I dragged my suitcases to the bar across the street and had a drink. I was on the verge of making a commitment to another person. This person’s feelings and opinions would now have to be a part of my life. I had my drink, gathered up my bags, and made my way across the street. My heart told me to do it.
Louie was also very good at giving people a lot of space, since it was something he wanted and needed himself. I had no idea that two people could live in such close proximity without ever feeling crowded or controlled. Once I got used to it, I decided there was nothing better.
Louie, on the other hand, was frequently confused and confounded by feelings he had never had before. He’d say to me, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” I would laugh—he was so sweet and honest and vulnerable in those moments, and his confusion made me more confident of my own feelings. I trusted what was happening.
One evening, Louie turned to me and started to…mumble. “Olympia, wou…yu…mar….” Just what was he trying to say? He kept repeating this blur of words: “Would…you…ma…?” Oh, I got it. I said, “Louie, that won’t do. You have to say it.” Then, very slowly, he said, “Will you marry me?” Without hesitation, I said yes. We made an important and private vow to each other; we promised to do whatever we could to help each other realize our dreams, even if we didn’t approve of them. This simple idea has sustained us, has bonded us together in love and respect, for more than forty years.
Now that we were living together, some things had to change. We needed a bigger bed—one that two people would fit in. Some mornings we woke up and the apartment was so cold that we could see our breath—Louie agreed to ask the landlord for more heat. I even convinced him to eat meat once in a while; he had been a vegetarian eating nuts and beans and green leafy things even though his apartment was in the middle of the meat district.
My mother came to visit a couple of months after we moved in together. She looked around, her face like stone. She didn’t like this “living together business.” Later she told my brother, “Your father and I will have to leave the country.”
It was a season of breakthroughs. I was hired as Dame Wendy Hiller’s understudy in The Aspern Papers. The play, based on a novella by Henry James, follows an American editor in Venice as he attempts to track down letters written by a famous Italian poet to his mistress. For my audition, I read for three parts—the French mistress, her English niece, and their Italian maid—three different accents and three different ages!
I’d been studying voice ever since I’d arrived in New York, and now my efforts were to pay off. In the middle of my audition the play’s producer, Michael Redgrave, came tearing down the aisle of the theater: “Who are you?” he asked me. “Where did you come from?” He conferred with the play’s director, Margaret Webster, and I got the job. As an understudy, my chances of ever getting on stage were nothing if not slim, but the play was slated to open on Broadway, and opening on Broadway was, for any aspiring actress, an enormous, almost incomprehensible milestone.
We rehearsed in Philadelphia. I rearranged the furniture in my hotel room to resemble the set so that I could run my lines, knowing I’d never set foot on stage during a performance. Dame Wendy owned the stage. A classically trained English actress, she’d debuted in the movies in 1937, winning acclaim for her role in Pygmalion. Twenty-one years later she won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in Separate Tables.
One afternoon, we learned that Dame Wendy had a painful eye infection and wouldn’t be able to appear. Suddenly my services were needed. It was all so sudden that I didn’t have time to be nervous.
Margaret Webster took me aside. “I know you can imitate Dame Wendy,” she told me. “I’ve heard you. But don’t do it that way. Do it your way.”
I started to work. I’d rehearsed in my hotel room so many times that I felt comfortable. But in the middle of my first scene, I sensed someone walking behind me. Then a hand on my back pushed me off the stage, as Dame Wendy finished the line I had started. Unable to rest at home, she’d come to the theater to take her place on stage.
After the play, as I bounded up the stairs to my dressing room, I heard Dame Wendy call to me as I passed her dressing room. “Miss Olympia,” she said, beckoning me to come in. I knew she enjoyed me; she thought I was a character. I thought about that small hand,
pushing me off the stage with all the might of a hammer.
“I bet if you broke your leg you’d drag the bloody stump to the stage before you’d let anyone else go on for you,” I said.
“That’s right. You’ll never play this part.” She smiled.
That summer, we got a call from Nikos Psacharopoulos, the artistic director of the Williamstown Summer Theatre in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He wanted us to come up for the summer to appear in Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night, directed by Tom Brennan, who had directed us in Medea in New York. Tom wanted Louie to play James Tyrone, and for me to play his wife, Mary. I didn’t think I was right for the part. Mary Tyrone is Irish, I was not. I couldn’t possibly be convincing! Olympia Dukakis playing Mary Tyrone, who would believe it? I told Louie to go without me. I even suggested to Tom other actresses who might be suited for the role. When I told the psychiatrist I was seeing, he called me on it. “Why would you want to give away the part?”
“I’m not,” I said, “I’m just not right for it.” He asked me to describe the character. “Well, she’s an addict,” and that statement stopped me. I could play Irish, it was the addiction I didn’t want to go near. I feared that inhabiting this character would evoke in me a need for drugs again. The therapist pointed out that I knew what this character was about and wasn’t that, after all, what an actor brings to a part? I decided to accept.
We had only two weeks to rehearse. Opening night was well received. The second night, on the way to the theater, I started to hyperventilate and fell to my knees on the grass, gasping for air.
“You have to get up, Olympia.” Louie was leaning over me, speaking gently, trying to reassure me. “You have to get up. There is no understudy.” I managed to get through the first two acts, but in the third act, where Mary is totally high, I suddenly “went up”—which means all of my lines flew out of my head. This is not an uncommon occurrence for actors, but it was the first time it ever happened to me. I turned to the prompter, but he wasn’t in his place. I started wandering around the stage, improvising half-formed sentences and touching the furniture. Finally I caught a full line and Mary’s dialogue seemed to float back into my consciousness. I had survived. I had withdrawn from the situation but had found my way back. I felt strengthened by this. I had come a long way from the coward who couldn’t stop crying in The Seagull.
Ask Me Again Tomorrow Page 12