MICHAEL FEINGOLD—First literary manager of the Yale Repertory Theatre, for which he adapted Happy End. He began writing for the Village Voice in 1971 and was its chief theater critic from 1983 to 2013.
RICHARD FISCHOFF—Associate producer of Kramer vs. Kramer.
CONSTANCE GARNETT—British translator who lived from 1861 to 1946. She was one of the first English translators of Russian classics by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekhov.
ROBYN GOODMAN—Theater producer, former actress, and friend of John Cazale, through her late husband, Walter McGinn. She cofounded the theater company Second Stage in 1979.
JOE “GRIFO” GRIFASI—Yale acting student, class of 1975. He appeared with Streep onstage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Memory of Two Mondays, Secret Service, and Happy End and onscreen in The Deer Hunter, Still of the Night, and Ironweed.
DON GUMMER—Sculptor and husband of Meryl Streep.
HENRY WOLFE GUMMER—Son of Meryl Streep and Don Gummer, nicknamed “Gippy” as a baby. He is now an actor and musician.
MEL GUSSOW—Longtime theater critic and cultural reporter for the New York Times. He died in 2005.
TOM HAAS—Acting teacher at the Yale School of Drama. He later became the artistic director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre, and died in 1991.
J. ROY HELLAND—Streep’s longtime hair stylist and makeup artist. In 2012, he won an Academy Award for The Iron Lady.
LILLIAN HELLMAN—Playwright whose works include The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes, and Toys in the Attic. Her memoir Pentimento was the source for Julia. She died in 1984.
JUSTIN HENRY—Former child actor who played Billy Kramer in Kramer vs. Kramer.
ISRAEL HOROVITZ—Playwright and director. John Cazale starred in his plays The Indian Wants the Bronx and Line.
MARY BETH HURT—Streep’s costar in Trelawny of the “Wells,” Secret Service, and The Cherry Orchard. Also known for the films Interiors and The World According to Garp.
ALBERT INNAURATO—Playwriting student, class of 1974, at Yale, where he cowrote The Idiots Karamazov with Christopher Durang. His later plays include Gemini and Passione.
STANLEY R. JAFFE—Producer of Kramer vs. Kramer. His later credits include Fatal Attraction, The Accused, and School Ties.
WALT JONES—Yale directing student, class of 1975. He later wrote and directed the Broadway production The 1940’s Radio Hour.
RAÚL JULIÁ—Stage and screen actor who costarred with Streep in The Cherry Orchard and The Taming of the Shrew. Known to film audiences as Gomez in The Addams Family. He died in 1994.
PAULINE KAEL—Film critic for The New Yorker, who wrote for the magazine from 1968 to 1991. She died in 2001.
SHIRLEY KNIGHT—Actress best known for her Oscar-nominated roles in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth. Replaced by Streep in Happy End.
BOB LEVIN—Streep’s college boyfriend when she was a Vassar student and he was the fullback for the Yale football team.
CHARLES “CHUCK” LEVIN—Yale acting student, class of 1974. Brother of Bob Levin.
ROBERT “BOBBY” LEWIS—Cofounder of the Actors Studio and original member of the Group Theatre. Later served as head of the acting and directing departments at the Yale School of Drama. He died in 1997.
ESTELLE LIEBLING—Influential singing coach who taught the adolescent Streep. She died in 1970.
JOHN LITHGOW—Streep’s costar in Trelawny of the “Wells,” A Memory of Two Mondays, and Secret Service. He was later Oscar-nominated for his roles in The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment.
CHRISTOPHER LLOYD—Costarred with Streep in The Possessed and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Yale and in Happy End on Broadway. Best known for his roles in Taxi, Back to the Future, and The Addams Family.
WILLIAM IVEY LONG—Yale design student, class of 1975. As a Broadway costume designer, he won Tony Awards for Nine, The Producers, Hairspray, and others. In 2012, he was elected chair of the American Theatre Wing.
WALTER MCGINN—Actor and college friend of John Cazale. He was married to Robyn Goodman, and died in 1977.
KATE MCGREGOR-STEWART—Yale acting student, class of 1974.
ALLAN MILLER—Acting coach who directed Streep in Major Barbara at Yale.
MICHAEL MORIARTY—Stage and screen actor who costarred with Streep in The Playboy of Seville, Henry V, and Holocaust. Later known for his role as Benjamin Stone in Law & Order.
GAIL MERRIFIELD PAPP—Widow of Joseph Papp and former head of the play-development department at the Public Theater.
JOSEPH PAPP—Founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare in the Park, and the Public Theater, which was renamed the Joseph Papp Public Theater after his death, in 1991.
RALPH REDPATH—Yale acting student, class of 1975.
ALAN ROSENBERG—Yale acting student (dropped out). Later known for his roles on Civil Wars, L.A. Law, and Cybill. President of the Screen Actors Guild from 2005 to 2009.
JOHN SAVAGE—Screen actor who played Steven in The Deer Hunter. Also known for Hair, The Onion Field, and Salvador.
JERRY SCHATZBERG—Director of The Seduction of Joe Tynan. His other films include The Panic in Needle Park, Scarecrow, and Honeysuckle Rose.
ANDREI SERBAN—Romanian stage director who directed The Cherry Orchard and Agamemnon at Lincoln Center.
BARRY SPIKINGS—Film producer, formerly of British Lion and EMI Films, whose credits include The Deer Hunter and Convoy.
EVERT SPRINCHORN—Former head of Vassar College’s Drama Department, now Professor Emeritus of Drama.
MARVIN STARKMAN—Filmmaker and friend of John Cazale, whom he directed in the short film The American Way.
HARRY STREEP, JR.—Father of Meryl Streep. He died in 2003.
HARRY STREEP III—Younger brother of Meryl Streep, known as “Third.”
MARY WOLF WILKINSON STREEP—Mother of Meryl Streep. She died in 2001.
ELIZABETH SWADOS—Experimental theater composer whose musical Alice in Concert starred Streep in its various incarnations. Best known for Runaways, which ran on Broadway in 1978.
BRUCE THOMSON—Streep’s boyfriend her senior year of high school.
ROSEMARIE TICHLER—Head of casting at the Public Theater from 1975 to 1991 and then its artistic producer until 2001.
RIP TORN—Costarred with Streep in The Father and The Seduction of Joe Tynan. Best known for his roles in Payday, Cross Creek, and The Larry Sanders Show.
DERIC WASHBURN—Screenwriter of The Deer Hunter.
WENDY WASSERSTEIN—Yale playwriting student, class of 1976. Her plays include Uncommon Women and Others, The Sisters Rosensweig, and the Pulitzer Prize– and Tony Award–winning The Heidi Chronicles. She died in 2006.
SAM WATERSTON—Streep and Cazale’s costar in Measure for Measure. Later known for his roles in The Killing Fields and on Law & Order and The Newsroom.
SIGOURNEY WEAVER—Yale acting student, class of 1974, best known for her roles in Alien, Working Girl, Gorillas in the Mist, and Avatar. In 2013, she starred in Christopher Durang’s Tony Award–winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.
IRENE WORTH—Streep’s costar in The Cherry Orchard and the winner of three Tony Awards, for Tiny Alice, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Lost in Yonkers. She died in 2002.
FRED ZINNEMANN—Director of Julia; best known for High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and A Man for All Seasons. He died in 1997.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MY GRATITUDE, FIRST and foremost, belongs to my agent, David Kuhn, who all but commanded me to write this book, in that remarkable way he has of knowing what people have in them before they know it themselves. Thanks, as well, to Becky Sweren, for making sure I got it all done.
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Gail Winston, for her insight, her vision, and her endless class, and to everyone at HarperCollins, including Sofia Groopman, Beth Silfin, Martin Wilson, and Jonathan Burnham.
I would not have gotten anywhere without the generosity, of time and of spirit, of t
he many people I interviewed. Researching this book was a scavenger hunt that took me to all kinds of unexpected places, nudged along by a motley crew of spirit guides. I am indebted to everyone who rooted through a box in the garage, dusted off an old photograph, or called forth an old memory (or many), just to help me piece it all together.
Thank you to the librarians and archivists at the Paley Center for Media (especially the indefatigable Jane Klain), the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, Kent State University Libraries, the Bernardsville Public Library Local History Collection, the Cleveland Public Library, the New Haven Free Public Library, the Adriance Memorial Library in Poughkeepsie, the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County, the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, and, especially, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. I would move in there if I could.
For permission to use material, thank you to Christopher Durang, Albert Innaurato, Christopher Lippincott, William Baker, Michael Booth, William Ivey Long, Paul Davis, Israel Horovitz, Robert Marx, Ann Gussow, Robert Brustein, the European American Music Corporation, and the Liveright Publishing Corporation.
For their encouragement, their wisdom, and their friendship, my deepest thanks to Natalia Payne, Laura Millendorf, Ben Rimalower and everyone from Theaterists, Jesse Oxfeld, Rachel Shukert, Shira Milikowsky, Deb Margolin, and the ingenious Dan Fishback. For advice, pep talks, and commiseration: Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Christopher Heaney, Jason Zinoman, James Sanders, Michael Barbaro, and Sam Wasson, whose book Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M. I took around with me like a talisman. Thank you to my colleagues at The New Yorker, particularly Rhonda Sherman, Richard Brody, John Lahr, Rebecca Mead, Shauna Lyon, Paul Rudnick, Susan Morrison, and David Remnick. Thanks to Molly Mirhashem, for fact-checking, and Ed Cohen, for copy-editing. For various indispensable things, thanks to Frederik Ernst, Michael Feingold, Barbara De Dubovay, Richard Shepard, Candi Adams, Aimee Bell, and Leslee Dart.
Thank you, also, to Meryl Streep, for living a fascinating life, and for not throwing up any significant roadblocks.
Thank you to my endlessly supportive family: my father, Richard, my sister, Alissa, and my mother, Nancy, who also grew up in suburbia in the fifties, had long hair and loved folk music in the sixties, moved to dirty old New York City in the seventies, juggled motherhood and a career in the eighties (and to this day), and painted clouds in my bedroom.
And, above all, my love and gratitude to Jaime Donate, who endured countless evenings of Streepiana. Everything I value most in our lives, you’ve given me.
NOTES
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was made. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature on your e-book reader.
In researching the early life and career of Meryl Streep, I was helped tremendously not only by the eighty-odd people who were kind enough to give me interviews but by the work of the journalists who had the privilege of interviewing her as an up-and-comer. Especially useful were Mel Gussow’s notes and transcripts for his February 4, 1979, New York Times Magazine profile “The Rising Star of Meryl Streep,” which are available in the Mel Gussow Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin, Series II, Container 144, abbreviated in the notes below as “MG.”
I spent many happy afternoons at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which is not only an exalting place to work but a trove of theater and film ephemera. Anyone wishing to see Meryl Streep in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, A Memory of Two Mondays, or The Taming of the Shrew need only call up the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive and make an appointment. (Do it!) Particularly helpful were the New York Shakespeare Festival records in the Billy Rose Theatre Division, indicated below by “NYSF,” followed by a box number. Materials found at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University are abbreviated “HAAS.”
PROLOGUE
2“Do you agree”: Catherine Kallon, “Meryl Streep in Lanvin—2012 Oscars,” www.redcarpet-fashionawards.com, Feb. 27, 2012.
3“Stiff legged and slow moving”: A. O. Scott, “Polarizing Leader Fades into the Twilight,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 2011.
3“Do you ever get nervous”: Full dialogue from Hollyscoop at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p72eu8tKlbM.
4“Oh, I didn’t have anything prepared”: 60th Golden Globe Awards, Jan. 19, 2003.
4“There are some days”: 56th Primetime Emmy Awards, Sept. 19, 2004.
4“I think I’ve worked with everybody”: 64th Golden Globe Awards, Jan. 15, 2007.
5“I didn’t even buy a dress!”: 15th Screen Actors Guild Awards, Jan. 25, 2009.
5“Oh, my God. Oh, come on”: Onstage remarks from the 84th Academy Awards, Feb. 26, 2012.
6“Spare him, spare him!”: William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene ii.
8“It’s like church for me”: “Meryl Streep: Inside the Actors Studio,” Bravo TV, Nov. 22, 1998.
8“She has, as usual, put thought and effort”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Tootsie, Gandhi, and Sophie,” The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1982.
9“Women . . . are better at acting”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Barnard College, May 17, 2010.
9“I have come to the brink”: From the private collection of Michael Booth.
MARY
11On the first Saturday of November: “Miss Streep Is Crowned,” Bernardsville News, Nov. 10, 1966.
12“Streep has the clear-eyed blond handsomeness”: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: The God-Bless-America Symphony,” The New Yorker, Dec. 18, 1978.
13“I was six”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Barnard College, May 17, 2010.
13“I remember taking my mother’s eyebrow pencil”: Ibid.
14Her mother’s side was Quaker stock: Streep’s lineage and her recollections of her father and grandparents are detailed in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 34–50.
14“joie de vivre”: Good Morning America, ABC, Aug. 3, 2009.
16“special days”: “Meryl Streep: Inside the Actors Studio,” Bravo TV, Nov. 22, 1998.
16“shooting out sparks”: MG.
16“pretty ghastly”: Paul Gray, “A Mother Finds Herself,” Time, Dec. 3, 1979.
16“I didn’t have what you’d call a happy childhood”: Ibid.
17Her father had studied with Franz Liszt: Biographical information about Estelle Liebling from Charlotte Greenspan’s entry on Liebling in the Jewish Women’s Archive Encyclopedia, www.jwa.org.
17“There’s room in the back!”: “Meryl Streep: The Fresh Air Interview,” National Public Radio, Feb. 6, 2012.
18“Miss Liebling was very strict”: Beverly Sills, Beverly: An Autobiography (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1987), 41.
18“Cover! Cover! Cover!”: Gerald Moore, “Beverly Sills,” Opera Magazine, Dec., 2006.
18The Wings of the Dove: Gray, “A Mother Finds Herself.”
19“Empathy . . . is at the heart”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Barnard College, May 17, 2010.
19“tricky negotiation”: Ibid.
19“I worked harder on this characterization”: Ibid.
19“Seventeen magazine knockout”: Gray, “A Mother Finds Herself.”
20“We felt like we were in a little shell”: Debbie Bozack’s quotations are from an author interview, Apr. 30, 2014.
21“Just remember Biology”: Streep gave her signed 1965 Bernardian yearbook to Michael Booth, and it remains in his possession.
21Opinions, for now, took a backseat: “Meryl Streep: The Fresh Air Interview,” Feb. 6, 2012.
21she met Mike Booth: Booth’s high school recollections are from an author interview, July 10, 2014, and from his piece “Meryl & Me,” US, Aug. 25, 1986.
&nb
sp; 24“Songbird”: “An Interview with Meryl Streep,” The Charlie Rose Show, WNET, Nov. 5, 1999.
24“Almost every day for the past two months”: “. . . And the Music Lingers On,” The Crimson, Apr., 1966.
24“I thought about the singing part”: Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan, Actors at Work (New York: Faber and Faber, 2007), 290.
24“I thought that if I looked pretty”: Diane de Dubovay, “Meryl Streep,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1980.
25Barbra Streisand albums: “Meryl Streep: The Fresh Air Interview,” Feb. 6, 2012.
25“Often success in one area”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Barnard College, May 17, 2010.
27“I reached a point senior year”: Ibid.
27first plane ride: “Spotlight: Meryl Streep,” Seventeen, Feb., 1977.
28“Handsome quarterback of our football team”: Senior testimonials from The Bernardian, 1967.
28Bennington College admissions office: Susan Dworkin, “Meryl Streep to the Rescue!,” Ms., Feb., 1979.
29“a nice girl, pretty, athletic”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Vassar College, May 22, 1983.
JULIE
31“successful in preparing young women”: Elizabeth A. Daniels and Clyde Griffen, Full Steam Ahead in Poughkeepsie: The Story of Coeducation at Vassar, 1966–1974 (Poughkeepsie: Vassar College, 2000), 18.
32Though we have had our chances: Wendy Wasserstein, Uncommon Women and Others (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1978), 36.
32“I suppose this isn’t a very impressive sentiment”: Ibid., 21.
32“On entering Vassar”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Vassar College, May 22, 1983.
33The repertoire: This drawing, and Streep’s letters from her freshman year, are from the private collection of Michael Booth.
34“I made some very quick”: Commencement address delivered by Meryl Streep at Barnard College, May 17, 2010.
34Bob Levin, the fullback: Author interview with Bob Levin, Dec. 16, 2014. Kevin Rafferty’s 2008 documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29–29 tells the full story of the legendary 1968 football game.
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