Patti LuPone

by Patti Lupone

  But I let it go. What were the odds of either of us getting cast in this thing, let alone together? Better than you’d think, it turned out.

  I took a hiatus from Anything Goes and flew out to Los Angeles in April to shoot the pilot. During the filming I had three huge blowouts with Mr. Smitrovich, in a span of just three weeks. This is a fucking disaster, I thought. I actually called my agent and told him that this wasn’t going to work, so find a way to get me out.

  I phoned one of my dearest friends in the world, an actor I had worked with in Studs Terkel’s Working and another Mamet actor. “I want to make sure I’m not the asshole here,” I said. “What’s the rap on this guy Smitrovich? I want to know what I’m up against.” My friend checked with his friend who had done another series with him. Let’s put it this way, if there was an asshole in the cast, it wasn’t me this time. I faced a seven-year sentence with a thoroughly distasteful man. Noooooooo! Howard McGillin, save me!

  We finished shooting the pilot and I chose not to return to Anything Goes. In April 1989, I left the production after fifteen months onstage and waited for the fate of the pilot.

  While I was in L.A., however, I also met with Richard Zanuck and Lili Fini, the producers of Driving Miss Daisy. At first I had no idea why I was there. There was no audition, but right after I met Dick and Lili, I was told I would be playing Florine Werthen, Boolie’s wife, a part written specifically for the screen. Dan Aykroyd would play Boolie. You mean that’s it? I got the part?

  I couldn’t believe the role was handed to me like that, so I called my friend Alfred Uhry, who had written both the play and the screenplay for Miss Daisy. “Did you think of me for this role?” I asked him.

  The cast of Driving Miss Daisy (from left to right): Jessica Tandy, Dan Aykroyd, Morgan Freeman, Lili Fini, me, and Richard D. Zanuck.

  “Yes,” he responded, “because nobody wears costumes like you do.”

  My character Florine was based on a relative of Alfred’s. She was a clotheshorse, so in this context Alfred was paying me a compliment. What a great way to get a part. You look good in clothes.

  There I was, down in Georgia in a movie with Jessica Tandy, the original Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. Our director was Bruce Beresford, a gentleman, an artist, and a man incredibly respectful of his actors. We felt welcomed on the set, which was always quiet and prepared. Everyone was especially respectful of Jessica, because she was carrying half of the movie at eighty years old. Despite being frail, she was radiant, both on-screen and off. At the time, I was reading Blessings in Disguise, Alec Guinness’s autobiography, and there she was in the book. Wow. And there I was in the makeup room ogling her and intimidated beyond belief. She was elegant and generous. I was happy to be working with Dan Aykroyd again. He was so terrific in that movie. Shooting for me was brief. I was sad to leave this experience.

  I returned to Connecticut and the home that Matt and I had just built to learn that the pilot had been picked up and I would now be living in L.A. But I’d just moved into this brand-new house in the woods! I had to leave my new home, and in my first TV series, I would be working very closely with someone I couldn’t stand. God does not give with both hands, I’ll tell you that.

  So began my time as Libby Thacher, the mom on Life Goes On. The show premiered on September 12, 1989, and ran for four seasons. Matt and I relocated to Los Angeles for the duration.

  Life Goes On was an important show because it spoke specifically to the disabled community in America. It was the first time a Down syndrome actor was actually hired to play a Down syndrome character. Audiences loved it. I loved so many people involved in the show, including Kellie Martin, who played Becca; the original Paige, Monique Lanier; Chris Burke, who played Corky; as well as crew, directors, and writers. My biggest problem was that I had absolutely no chemistry with Bill Smitrovich. I found him to be a self-absorbed bully. If only he had been a talented or generous actor, his behavior might have been justified.

  The star of our show was Chris Burke, the Down syndrome actor. Even though Chris was high-functioning, he was still a young man with a disability. Rick Rosenthal, he of the five-hour network test, directed many of the episodes. Once we went into production, he shot endlessly. It was as if he didn’t want to go home and he was taking us with him on his descent into TV hell. He did take after take, shot after shot, piling up footage that never got used—over the shoulder, under the leg, the “I went to film school” crane shot. We were on the set for sixteen hours a day the first two years. The schedule was grueling on everyone and the long hours put a lot of pressure on Chris. He’d never done episodic television before, and sometimes the stress was too much for him to handle. Every so often he would have meltdowns, and when he melted down, we were sunk because our producers never prepared a “cover set”—another scene we could shoot without Chris in order to stay on schedule. The problem was no one knew exactly when Chris was going to melt down, but no one bothered to take his needs into consideration.

  Rick never dealt with Chris very well. In one episode, Chris had to say the word customer, but he just couldn’t get the plosive out, the k sound in customer. Rick made him do forty-two takes because he couldn’t say “customer” without stammering—forty-two takes in front of all of us, a ton of extras and the crew. That would have been a nightmare for any actor, let alone one with Chris’s challenges. Chris covered his distress well and just tried to please Rick. He did it, he finally did it, and we were all there to hug him and love him up a lot.

  Frank Burke, Chris’s father, is an ex-cop from the South Bronx. Frank has said that he could never leave the set when Rick Rosenthal was directing Chris. He and his wife, Marian, were always cool when we were at work, even though I know they were not happy with Rick’s treatment of their son. What made them put up with it, I guess, was that Life Goes On was a tremendous opportunity for Chris. His being on the show was also symbolic, in that he was representing a part of society that TV had pretty much ignored until then. Chris Burke is a champion, the sweetest heart, and an angel.

  Life Goes On was revolutionary because it pioneered the idea of showing a disabled child as a normal part of an American family. That said, the American family they created around Corky was anything but normal. It was a direct descendant of Ozzie and Harriet, or maybe Father Knows Best. For four years I played a docile mom in a patriarchal family. Libby Thacher was reduced to saying, “Yes dear, no dear, whatever you want, dear.” I begged the creator to let me go. He wouldn’t. Libby Thacher was unrealistic to me and the writers never could figure her out.

  Nevertheless, every year we kept getting picked up, to our bewilderment. Every year another writer became a producer. It’s common knowledge that Life Goes On was a problematic set at Warner Bros. Studios. We were the first ones back after hiatus and the last to leave before hiatus. Our executive producers would fire our best and most efficient directors, and the writers would then write, produce, and direct. If only they did one thing well and stuck to it. We did have two great producers—Phillips Wylly was one and Bob Goodwin was the other. There was hope when Bob joined our beleaguered set.

  There were bright spots as well. Every time I worked with Chris or Kellie or Monique, I couldn’t have been happier.

  Monique Lanier played my stepdaughter, Paige, but she was only with the show for a year. She left the cast when she got pregnant. To give her a proper send-off, the girls took her out to Gladstone’s in Malibu. She abstained from drinking. Not me—I was throwing back tequilas like crazy. But I should have stuck to water as well, since it wasn’t long before I realized that Matt and I were expecting a baby of our own. You have to wonder whether there wasn’t something in the water on the set of Life Goes On. There were forty pregnancies in the cast and crew during the four years we were on the air. Life went on and on and on over there.

  We did an episode in Hawaii when I was about five months along, but we may as well have stayed in Los Angeles. The producers gave us the gift of
sending us to Hawaii, then took it back by making us shoot sixteen hours a day with Rick Rosenthal. I had popped at five months and told them I was showing, but the men didn’t hear me. I was in misery with the heat and the long hours. It was a signal of things to come. The writers and producers took no notice of my condition until two weeks before I was due to deliver. Oh, they wrote it in the story line but paid no attention to the shooting schedule. Executive producer Michael Braverman came into my trailer one day and said, “Well, Patti, you leave in two weeks and we have a lot of work to do between now and then. You’ll be working every day all day from here on out.” I did work every day all day until just before I delivered. Thank God I’m strong like an Italian bull. Our son, Joshua Luke Johnston, was born November 21, 1990, at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. On Life Goes On, Libby didn’t give birth till the season finale in May 1991, which means that I was pregnant or playing pregnant for something like twenty months. Elephants don’t gestate that long.

  Our beloved son Joshua.

  I went back to work after a six-week maternity leave. I’ll never forget being in my trailer with my infant son when I was visited by the current episode’s director, Michael Lange, and makeup, hair, and wardrobe friends. It was good to be back. As they were goo-goo-ing over Josh in my arms, Michael said, “What do you think he’s going to be when he grows up?”

  Without missing a beat I said, “He’s going to stage his mother’s comeback!”

  I know exactly when I got pregnant. It was when Matt and I went to Washington, D.C., in February 1990 so that I could sing in a PBS Presidents’ Day special called In Performance at the White House. In April 1991, I was invited to sing at the White House once again, this time as part of Points of Light, A National Celebration of Community Service. After the performance, Matt, my mother, and I worked our way down the receiving line to shake hands with George and Barbara Bush. When President Bush told me that it was good to see me again, I blurted out, “The last time we were here, we got pregnant.”

  “Well,” he said with a big grin, “come back anytime.” And with that, Barbara Bush invited us to come upstairs and tour the living quarters. My mother and I raced for the elevator and were the first ones out of it, running down the second-floor hallway to see it all before they threw the theatricals out.

  Meanwhile, back in L.A., on the set of Life Goes On, my relationship with Bill Smitrovich continued to deteriorate. By the end of the fourth season we were no longer on speaking terms. Can you imagine? We played love scenes, we played parenting scenes, we kissed, we hugged, and when the director yelled “Cut” we never even looked at each other. That’s acting. (On my part. He just stunk.) Kellie and Bill were not on speaking terms, either. He tried to direct her in a scene they were both playing. At fifteen years old this child/woman shut him down simply by telling him not to direct her. Bill didn’t speak to Kellie for six weeks.

  In 1992, during shooting, I was offered a way to escape L.A. and the TV show. Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted me to perform in a workshop production of his new musical called Sunset Boulevard. Oy vey. Anything Goes and Life Goes On were the opening acts. The Main Event was about to begin.

  12

  Sunset Boulevard, Part 1

  SEPTEMBER 1992–JULY 1993

  Trevor Nunn and me after the Sydmonton performance.

  a lot of the jobs I’ve had throughout my career have started with a phone call—the phone rings, I pick it up, and someone says, “Are you interested?” I almost never get the part when I audition. Equally, I almost never turn down an offer. And the offers have come out of left field, believe me.

  When my phone rang in August 1992, I thought the offer of this role and experience would be one of the highlights of my career. Instead, it is still the worst experience I’ve ever had in the theatre.

  In the summer of 1992, I got the “Are you interested?” phone call from David Caddick, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical supervisor. Did I want to come to London to sing through a new musical that Andrew was writing with Christopher Hampton, a work in progress called Sunset Boulevard? The music would be performed in workshop at the Sydmonton Festival on Andrew’s estate in early September.

  “Hmm, let me think about it …” Are you kidding? I was in my fourth season as Libby Thacher on Life Goes On, and I was suffocating from boredom. I missed singing. I missed being onstage.

  With Kevin Anderson at Sydmonton.

  I knew the Billy Wilder film, which starred Gloria Swanson as faded movie star Norma Desmond and William Holden as Joe Gillis. How could I resist? If nothing else, I could get out of L.A. for a couple of weeks. Kevin Anderson would be playing Joe. He and I worked with David Caddick and pianist Steven Cahill for three weeks in L.A. before we left for England. I was so lucky to have Kevin as my leading man. We’d met in London when I was doing Les Miz and he was doing Orphans with Albert Finney. He is a wonderful actor, a wonderful singer, and a great guy. I adore him. I asked my producer Michael Braverman for permission and got excused from Life Goes On to perform at Sydmonton.

  There were a few rehearsals in London before we all trooped out to the country estate of Andrew Lloyd Webber. They told me I could hold the book onstage—that I didn’t have to memorize the role. I wasn’t about to hold the book. I wanted to act the part, and you can’t do that when you’re reading from the script. Although it was billed as a workshop, I knew I was being given the chance to prove I could play Norma Desmond in a full-fledged production.

  We rehearsed for about five days before giving just a single performance in Andrew’s “theatre,” a desanctified chapel on the grounds of the estate. Even though I knew that this, in effect, was an audition, I didn’t know what a three-ring circus it would turn out to be. What’s the matter with me? Hadn’t I gone through Evita? It wasn’t a workshop. It was a full-on event. We were costumed and propped and wigged and the performance was videotaped.

  On the night of our workshop performance, the chapel filled with Andrew’s invited guests, and there wasn’t a civilian in the house. Broadway producers and theatre insiders had flown in from America just to see it. Trevor Nunn was there. Bernie Jacobs and Gerry Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization were there. Meryl Streep arrived.

  The pressure that night was intense. I stood behind the makeshift curtain and watched the audience take their seats. I actually do that in every show I’m in. I like to see the audience before I perform for them. I saw Meryl and we waved to each other. I waved to everybody I knew. I tried to dispel the nerves by getting smiles from the colleagues I knew and respected.

  Me, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Meryl Streep, Don Gummer, and Robert Stigwood at Sydmonton.

  Several people in the audience that night said Meryl was crying at the end of the play. I didn’t see Meryl or anyone else for that matter, because when the lights came up onstage, they were blinding. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the set, although at the end I did hear sniffles from the audience. Okay, I thought. They’ve stuck with it to the end of the play. I didn’t bore them at least. Meryl found me after the performance and was gracious and complimentary. I appreciated it so much. These things, these “one-offs,” are more difficult than anyone can possibly imagine.

  Apparently my delivery of the role was good enough to get the offer that night at the lavish dinner laid on for all of the guests and the Sunset company. Andrew drew me aside and said, “Name your price.” We hugged.

  “Kevin Anderson,” I told him.

  What I didn’t say again was, “Call my agent.” Why do I keep forgetting those three simple words? Call … my … agent.

  The company and I stayed at the dinner for a while, then retreated to the local pub. Ah, the trip was finally worth it! Meryl showed up with Christopher Hampton, I think, or was it Andrew? Who can remember? We were drunk and having a blast releasing all the pent-up energy from this tornado of a “workshop” we’d just completed.

  I was on a flight back to Los Angeles to resume my life on TV as Libby Thacher, but with the expectat
ion of returning to the London stage in Sunset Boulevard. I had another meeting with my producer, Michael Braverman, and asked him to release me from my Life Goes On contract. He had refused in the past, but this time it was easier for him to say yes. The story line had shifted to such a degree that it was mostly about Kellie Martin’s and Chad Lowe’s characters. It’s the reason I could rehearse for three weeks before I went to London and why I could rehearse and perform a two-act concert at the Westwood Playhouse in L.A. I was working maybe four hours a week. Michael told me that he didn’t want to prevent me from playing “Nora” Desmond. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wouldn’t be on The Carol Burnett Show. I thanked my lucky stars and waited for the negotiations to begin.

  Despite Andrew Lloyd Webber’s assurances that the role was mine, as soon as I got back to L.A., the rumors started to fly. Who would play Norma Desmond—Meryl Streep or me? I was befuddled because nobody was claiming responsibility for releasing this information and Andrew’s company, Really Useful Group, was not denying it.

  There was a piece in the Daily News just ten days after the Sydmonton performance about the “battle royal” to play Norma, and how Meryl had told her agents at CAA to “get me Sunset.” In early November, Marilyn Beck’s column actually announced that Meryl would play Norma.

  My agent was just beginning my contract negotiations when all this appeared in the papers. It was a long and disturbing negotiation. I should have taken it as a sign. The same day that the Beck column appeared, I received a note from Trevor Nunn, who would be directing Sunset Boulevard, saying how thrilled he was that he would be working with me again. It was all very confusing, to say the least.

  Then the media got ugly: MERYL MAKES A SONG AND DANCE OF LOSING, the headlines said. STREEP THROAT WASHES OUT. According to the papers, Meryl was furious because Andrew had told her that her singing was not good enough for her to play Norma, and as a result she’d been held up to “public ridicule.”