I went to my friend Lillian Sidney and asked her to coach me. She’d been indispensable to Louis B. Mayer and worked with so many MGM greats, and I knew that she wouldn’t go easy on me. When she agreed, I finally felt that I’d be able to do it. After that, Lillian worked with me on most of my film roles.
Our producer-director was Mervyn LeRoy, who was a very famous and powerful man in Hollywood. He was on the Hollywood Museum board as well as many other show business committees and associations. He was similar to Mike Todd—rough around the edges of his strong personality. Mervyn was at the end of his directing career and spent a lot of time on the phone in his little office on the soundstage. We couldn’t get him to come out of that room to do a take. When he did, he’d interrupt shooting to go off to his little toilet—just like Marjorie Main on Mr. Imperium. I didn’t understand this behavior when I was young. Now that I’m eighty, I have more sympathy.
My part required me to smoke. Michael Rennie, the elegant British actor, plays a jaded movie star who shows up the day after the storm. He was kind enough to teach me, lighting my cigarettes with his gold lighter and coughing with me between setups. It took me many years after that to quit smoking. I didn’t start again until I was going through my second divorce.
Barbara Bel Geddes had been so good in the stage version. Her voice went up at the end of every sentence. You may notice that I do that trick in the movie. It was my tribute to her, although I doubt that she would have recognized it.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
(MGM, 1964)
I first saw The Unsinkable Molly Brown on Broadway with the original cast: Tammy Grimes as Molly and Harve Presnell as her husband, Johnny Brown. I knew immediately that I could play Molly and lobbied for the film role as soon as I could. When I contacted the producer, Larry Weingarten, he told me that the director, Chuck Walters, wanted Shirley MacLaine for Molly. That would have required Shirley to be released from her contract with producer Hal Wallis at Fox, whereas I was already under contract at MGM. I offered to test for the part. They refused. In desperation, I offered to work for free. They still refused.
Resigned, I created a nightclub act, to reinvent myself until good movie roles came along. In 1962 my friend and accompanist Rudy Render had been to a run-through of Mitzi Gaynor’s club act and was so impressed that he urged me to do my own. The Sands in Las Vegas had offered me an engagement, but I was always busy with the children or making movies. Harry knew the lawyer at the Riviera Hotel, Sidney Korshak. He got in touch with Sidney, and I was booked for my first Vegas gig.
In the beginning of 1963, I was pregnant again. After the painful episode the year before, I was excited to be having another child. The baby was due at the end of the summer. We set the Vegas opening for March, so I could take time off before the baby arrived.
My nightclub act was a huge success. When I returned to Los Angeles, I was surprised to receive a phone call from my agent, Al Melnick, telling me that Hal Wallis would not release Shirley from her Fox contract to do Molly Brown and MGM had offered me the part—although for a lot less than my usual fee, probably because I’d said I would do it for nothing.
Even so, I was thrilled. Shirley would have been great, but I knew that she would continue to get wonderful roles. She was much more respected as an actress than I was. I was still thought of by many people as “cute,” or “the kid,” which is hard to maintain after you hit thirty. Cute can be the kiss of death for a movie career.
My next hurdle came from Chuck Walters. We’d worked well together when he directed me in The Tender Trap, but he said he wanted to meet with me before we signed the Molly Brown contract. He came to see me at home, which made me wary. After some small talk, he asked me to turn down Molly Brown, saying that I was “too short” for the part. This absurd statement reminded me of a story I’d heard about Helen Hayes being flattered by producers, then told she was too short to play Queen Victoria in Victoria Regina. Hayes countered with the question, “How short is the part?” and was hired. Hayes was known as the First Lady of the Theater, and her Queen Victoria was one of her most famous roles. There was no way I wasn’t going to play Molly after all I had been through to get the part. I recounted the story to Chuck, who laughed and dropped the subject. I had waited years to use that line.
Filming was set to begin in October 1963, after the new baby’s due date. In late May, Harry and I decided to go on vacation. While we were in Europe, the same thing happened that had happened with my earlier pregnancy. We rushed home, and I was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. Once again my baby was pronounced dead, but this time I refused to carry it to term. Labor was induced by flooding my system with drugs to make my body reject the fetus. The pain was excruciating. The experience left me depleted and emotionally devastated.
I began to prepare for Molly Brown in earnest, rebuilding my health with hormone and vitamin shots, until I was finally able to join the production. Meanwhile, Lillian Sidney worked with me on every line and its underlying emotion.
We shot the first scenes in Colorado, of Molly as a young girl. Since I was still carrying some of my pregnancy weight, it gave my character the look of a sturdy youth. By the time Molly matured into a Denver society woman, I had lost the weight and looked more like the sophisticated lady Molly wanted to be.
Harve Presnell reprised his role as Johnny from the Broadway production. I wanted my friend Agnes Moorehead to play the part of the Grand Duchess, but Chuck insisted on casting the British actress Martita Hunt. Angela Lansbury’s mother, Moyna Macgill, was cast as one of the European aristocrats.
Martita Hunt was a stitch. Her high, mannered voice perfectly suits her part. Martita enjoyed her liquor straight, without any ice. As her drink was being poured, she would say, “Follow the finger,” and slide it up the side of the glass until she had a full tumbler of scotch or whatever hard liquor she was drinking.
One afternoon we were filming the staircase scene where Molly Brown introduces her noble European friends to Denver society. Each person is announced and comes down the stairs to join the receiving line at the bottom. Martita came back from lunch a bit overserved that day. On the first take, she wavered and fell down the stairs. She gamely got up, rearranged her tiara, and tried again—with similar results. The decision was made to put her in a harness that could be attached to wires and guided from above.
The stagehands put a leather belt around Martita’s waist, under her white satin gown, and cut a slit for the hook to which they would fasten the guide wire. Martita was then suspended at the top of the staircase like a fish on the end of a line, and lowered down the stairs to get the shot. This worked beautifully. As she neared the bottom, Harve Presnell ran over to take her hand and guided Martita the rest of the way.
In the dance number “He’s My Friend,” Martita puts her foot out to trip one of the guests. When the guest hits her foot, Martita almost spins off her chair. She was a great lady and lots of fun.
Another English actor, Hermione Baddeley, plays Buttercup. All the British actors would come to the parties at her house on Mulholland Drive and have a grand old time. They really knew how to coochie-coo.
But it wasn’t all fun and games on this shoot. By the time we returned from Colorado, Chuck Walters could see in the dailies that I wasn’t “too short for the part” and actually began to help me with my performance, which I greatly appreciated. MGM was putting all its resources into Doctor Zhivago at the same time we were filming Molly Brown. They’d cut at least $1 million from our budget, and we were running out of money to complete the picture.
Chuck suggested that we cut “He’s My Friend,” a bear of a dance number that would take days to film. The cast had been rehearsing it while I was doing other scenes. To save the number, we decided that we would use more than one camera, to reduce the shooting time. I went into an intense few days of rehearsal to catch up with the cast, who were weeks ahead of me.
Somehow we managed to pull off the entire scene in one
day. At the end of the number, we all do somersaults, ending in standing position in front of the Grand Duchess’s chair. If you watch closely, you can see me wobble. I don’t know where I got the strength to even pull myself up, but I knew we didn’t have the time or money to reshoot the scene. When we were done, two of the dancers collapsed in exhaustion. It was worth it, though. It’s a great number. Peter Gennaro’s choreography really captures the essence of the film.
On November 22, my musical director, Rudy Render, called the set while we were filming, to tell me that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. We stopped everything and listened to the radio, to find out that the worst had happened. The president had been killed. Everyone was devastated. It didn’t seem real. I was fortunate to have met John F. Kennedy. He was very supportive of my Hollywood museum project. His death was a great loss to the country.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown was released in June 1964 and did very good business. The film was nominated for many awards. In addition to a Golden Globe nomination, I was nominated for the Oscar as Best Actress. I’m very proud of this, even though I lost the award to Julie Andrews for her performance in Mary Poppins. My Fair Lady deservedly won most of the Oscars that year.
Dancing in the “He’s My Friend” number. MGM wanted us to cut it to save money. So we shot it in one day, which almost killed all of us. But we did it! Licensed by Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved
Molly Brown is my favorite of all the roles I’ve played. I love something about almost every part I’ve done, but I identified with Molly as soon as I met her. In the sometimes blurry line between art and real life, Molly is the woman I’ve become as the years have passed. I’m right there with her when she declares, “I ain’t down yet!” Molly Brown and I have spent a lot of time together. I’m very proud of this film and all the hard work that everyone did to make it a success.
Goodbye Charlie
(20TH CENTURY FOX, 1964)
Lillian Sidney didn’t want me to do this film about a playboy who is murdered by a jealous husband and comes back to life in the body of a woman—me—then gets murdered again and comes back as a Great Dane. She felt it was a one-joke story. Lillian was still my coach, and I respected her opinion. But after my hard work on location in Molly Brown, I was happy to do a lighter film at home. Also, my brother, Bill, needed another film to complete his seven-year apprenticeship as a makeup artist. Goodbye Charlie gave him the extra time on set he needed to get into the union.
Once again, I was able to choose my director, and I wanted to work with Vincente Minnelli. Vincente had done some of MGM’s most important films (including Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, Lust for Life, and Gigi, to name just a few). I was excited about the prospect of working with him. But Vincente was past his prime. In his early sixties, he was forgetful and repeated himself. He may have had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. One day he spent several hours arranging black bobby pins on a black couch. He had great difficulty helping us understand what he wanted in a scene.
Tony Curtis plays Charlie’s best friend. One scene takes place in the kitchen of Tony’s house, with me fixing breakfast for us, after I’ve convinced him that I’m Charlie. I’m more at home on a soundstage than in a kitchen, so Daddy built me a replica of the kitchen where I could rehearse with my props. This might not sound important, but when you’re doing a scene, handling the props needs to look natural and come across as the character’s second nature. I had a lot of practice with pots, pans, coffeemakers, and utensils, so I could look real with things most people use every day. The scene was very funny when it was finished. I’m always glad when I have time to prepare.
As the jealous husband who murders Charlie, Walter Matthau was a challenge to work with. He took the part where he wanted to go with it. I wouldn’t say that he was a method actor, but rather an actor with his own method. He stole every scene that he was in. You either ran to keep up or the camera was going to be on him, because he was terribly funny and very clever. He loved to do accents, probably because he excelled at them. Walter was such a powerful presence, and shameless about rewriting lines to suit his character. He went off script often, which made him hard to follow. I always try to stay on script, even though I love to improvise, because the writers deserve respect for the work they’ve done. Sometimes changes are necessary, but for the most part I always follow the screenwriter’s plan.
In one scene, Walter and I were doing comedic dialogue when he went totally off the script into a story that only he knew. All of a sudden he picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and twirled me around. The entire crew applauded, but not because of Walter’s routine. They saw my exposed buttocks covered only by panty hose—I wasn’t wearing panties because I didn’t want a panty line. Today I would laugh, but then I was so embarrassed that I turned red and ran for my dressing room, cursing Walter with every step. We didn’t reshoot the scene, and Walter’s improv isn’t in the finished film. But somewhere somebody has a copy of that footage.
Tony Curtis was good to work with again. He was always prepared, always knew his lines, and was especially good at comedy. At that time I didn’t realize that Tony had been telling people around town that my marriage to Eddie Fisher broke up because I was a lesbian and a lousy lay. I’m not a lesbian. I may have been a lousy lay, but Eddie was my first love. It would have been nice if he had taken the time to show me what to do to make him happy. Obviously, Eddie felt the need to blame our failed marriage on me. But of all the things he could have said about me, I was surprised to hear this rumor. When I finally learned about it, I confronted Tony.
“That’s what Eddie told me,” he said.
“You’re going to believe Eddie,” I said, “who divorced me and left me for Elizabeth?”
Tony said something like “Well, I’m sorry if it upsets you, but that’s what Eddie said to me. And Eddie’s my friend.”
In other words, I wasn’t.
I guess everyone chooses sides in a divorce, and Tony had chosen Eddie’s.
There was such a backlash from most people against Eddie when he left me and our children for Elizabeth that he spent the rest of his life being the bad guy. But Eddie had earned that title, and I was sorry that Tony spread his lies.
The Singing Nun
(MGM, 1966)
After the huge success of Molly Brown, I was offered a lot of films. I accepted The Singing Nun because it gave me the opportunity to stay in Los Angeles with the children. I also got to work with Greer Garson, my dear friend Agnes Moorehead, and Ricardo Montalban. A lot of big stars dressed in habits for this movie.
I play the title character, Sister Ann. The story is loosely based on the life of a French nun named Soeur Sourire, or Sister Smile, who had a worldwide hit record with her song “Dominique.”
Greer Garson plays the mother superior of the convent. It wasn’t a big role, but she wanted to do it. Greer had won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 1942 movie Mrs. Miniver. (She was famous for giving the longest acceptance speech in Oscar history.) But television was taking over the entertainment business, and movie parts were becoming scarce for aging actors, even for Academy Award winners.
Greer was British, with a fabulous voice. Everyone catered to her on the set. We served tea every day. We didn’t have big trailers, so we redecorated a small trailer in her favorite color, blue. The furniture was reupholstered, and there were always fresh flowers in her room.
I’d been in awe of Greer when I was a new contract player at MGM and she was one of the biggest stars. Her English background was obvious when you went to her Bel Air home for afternoon tea. She had a very grand manner but didn’t act like she was above everyone. She taught me how to be gracious. To the end of her life, she was charming and always adorable to me. I loved working with her.
Hayes Goetz, a coproducer, was kind enough to schedule my scenes so I had Wednesday afternoons off to go to Girl Scout meetings with Carrie. I felt that I was giving my daughter some stability and
good values by involving her in the Scouts. I thought I was doing the right thing. Now Carrie says she hated it. Our Scout troop was a group of girls who came from very privileged homes. We sometimes went camping with troops from poorer neighborhoods in Los Angeles. We’d go on Harold Lloyd’s estate, where he let us use acres of green grass for our activities. One Christmas Mrs. Lloyd invited all of us into the house for cookies and lemonade. There were Christmas decorations everywhere and a tree that had to be thirty feet high. The girls from both troops thought they were in a museum.
The Singing Nun was moderately successful at the box office. Soeur Sourire insisted that the movie was fiction. Unfortunately, her real life was much more difficult than what we portrayed in our version.
Divorce American Style
(COLUMBIA, 1967)
When Norman Lear called me early in 1966 to tell me about a movie he’d written about a divorce, my own marriage to Harry Karl was having problems. We were less intimate. It took me several interviews to get this role. Every time I went in to talk with Norman, who was also directing the film, he lowered his offer. Finally we agreed on a price that was much lower than my usual rate. Norman was very serious, which isn’t uncommon for some comics. He put his wife, Frances, in charge of the wardrobe. I don’t know where she spent the money because we all look like we’re in off-the-rack clothes from J. C. Penney. Bob Mackie was her assistant. As I recall, she wasn’t very nice to him, and no one is nicer or more talented than Bob.
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