We met in New York. At first I was reluctant. But he explained it was going to be a “little film,” a “New York film,” in black-and-white, with unknown actresses. Was I interested? Maybe life without a B.A. wouldn’t be so bleak after all. Of course I was interested. It was only for the summer; it wasn’t a commercial film; I could go back to photography later, I rationalized. I called my parents to tell them.
They were surprised but pleased. “What kind of part is it?” my mother asked. “The part of Lakey,” I explained. “A small but pivotal part. She’s described in the book as ’mysterious—the Mona Lisa of the Smoking Room.’ She leaves early in the film and returns at the end as a lesbian.”
A pause. My parents, in unison: “A lesbian? Candy, you’re just nineteen and the first part you want to play in a film is a lesbian? Why can’t you start by playing an ingenue? What’s wrong with that?”
“This is an art film” I explained patronizingly, “not a Ross Hunter production—”
“What’s wrong with Ross Hunter? He’s very successful. You used to love Sandra Dee.”
“The reason I want to do this film,” I sighed, “is because it isn’t a commercial Hollywood production but a movie by New York filmmakers who are serious about their art.”
If I was following in my father’s footsteps, I was certainly going to rebel a little along the way.
Under the Rainbow
7
A NEW nineteen and on my own—my own decisions, my own rules, my own apartment, my own income, my own agent, my own bills, my own Blue Cross. The gate to the childhood garden of innocence forever shut behind me, I entered a new and unknown world filled with dark and unseen dangers—a world where “in case of accident or disability,” I would be “covered.”
My first milestone was in a brownstone, a tiny apartment in the East Sixties which my mother not only found for me but helped me to furnish as well. The decor was all in white and varying shades of green—like Oz, the Emerald City—and almost elegantly appointed, with Macy’s French reproductions. Embellished with my own girlish accents, it looked like a dorm room in Versailles. My mother was responsible for its more tasteful aspects. The giant poster proclaiming “The Great Karmi—See Him Shoot a Cracker Off a Man’s Head,” which showed a man in a turban aiming a shotgun at a trembling, half-clad native with a saltine on his head; the electric train set; the large antique carousel horse; the life-sized, glass-eyed, motheaten, sausage-shaped stuffed lion were mine. In my closets, between pea coats and jeans, hung the wrong clothes with the right labels—often worn all at once: Gucci, Pucci, Hermès, Dior. And so I lived in seedy splendor, proudly supporting myself in a style somewhere between Holly Golightly and Princess Grace.
Between modeling at the top daily rate—then over a thousand dollars—and a tidy beginner’s salary for The Group, I eagerly paid all my expenses. And it was no small point of pride that from the age of nineteen on I never again asked my father for money.
Money had assumed murky and mysterious powers in our house, shrouded in secrecy. My father, reputed to be a man of some wealth and business sense, shrewd in his investments, trusted no one with money and had lawyers crosschecking lawyers’ accounts of accountants waiting to prey on the “artistic temperament.” Yet, without saying as much, and in spite of a lifestyle quite to the contrary, he had me convinced we were poor.
Money was handily made, intelligently managed, conservatively spent, but never mentioned. Except in the abstract. Somberly. With the respect accorded a wrathful god. It was a divine currency that carried high favor, the serene stamp of approval, unqualified love.
My lunging at the leash was in part a great impatience to be let loose in life. But an equal part of it was an instinctive hunch that it would please my father—a self-made man who revered achievement, had a healthy respect for money and firmly believed in earning one’s own way. Early self-sufficiency was surely a flashy step in the father-daughter love dance, the eternal pas de deux of paternal approval.
Like a tango, it took two. My father was proud but uneasy over my early independence, and joked about no longer being able to threaten me with disinheritance. If from that point on I never asked him for money, he in turn never offered me any. And over the years, the duet became a duel—a monetary mano a mano where there was no winning and no giving in.
No matter how much money I made, he charged me—often rightly—with fiscal malpractice. When I turned twenty-one, he explained, in a lecture on the value of money, that because of my financial irresponsibility he had moved the age of my inheritance to twenty-five—at which point, on the same grounds, it was moved to thirty. The possibility that I might hook up with a fortune hunter or someone even more economically inept than I worried him some; but it was above all my persistent lack of interest in my financial affairs that drove him to distraction.
In principle I agreed with him completely. I had never assumed that his money was by rights mine, and I had no trouble earning money on my own. Clearly, I was not in need. Yet I sensed that if I were, a request for assistance would be resented, and that the possibility of my asking was one he dreaded.
That he withheld funds pending proof of maturity was, on his part, a wise and sensible decision. But some less lucid part in me perceived his actions differently: What it felt like was being turned down for a life loan because of inadequate assets, insufficient worth. The long-promised but constantly postponed windfall easily became confused with the approval I so craved from my father, which he seemed to dangle, like a great and gleaming carrot, always just out of reach.
If I had hoped to sneak in through destiny’s back door by taking a small part in an “art film,” my cover was blown from the beginning: before production had even started, The Group began to attract wide attention. There was great curiosity about this slightly scandalous book being brought to the screen, and controversy over who would play its many characters. As the public’s interest increased so did the studio’s, and the budget and scope of the film expanded. It was now to be shot in color and its unknown cast to be given a massive publicity launch.
“The Group”—Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Mary-Robin Redd, Joanna Pettet, Jessica Walters, Kathleen Widdoes and me—was photographed individually and collectively for Life, Look, Vogue, and Mademoiselle. Presented at a press conference in the penthouse suite of the New York Hilton, we were spaced along a spiral staircase winding down to hundreds of waiting men below—a montage suggesting that we would be auctioned off, one by one, to the highest bidders. At the foot of the staircase, the impatient pack of photographers expecting cheesecake got, instead, seven serious New York actresses and one daughter of a celebrity, all tense and tight-lipped in somber high-necked dresses. It was no tabloid tableau, and they snapped disgustedly, “Come on, girls, for Christ’s sake.” “Let’s have a smile, sweetheart, please.” “Jesus, what deadheads.” “You girls look like you’re at a wake!” “Someone give the girls some lilies!”
When it came time for us to descend the stairs and take our seats in the salon for the press conference, we passed, red-faced and on the verge of tears, through the pack of disappointed males who cracked, “Look at ’em, they’re terrified,” and “Not an ass or tits in the group.”
Having been weaned in a movie town that was like a movie, I didn’t think making a film would be unfamiliar to me. I didn’t know anything about acting but—like many red-blooded American girls—I knew I could act. Besides, having been successfully miscast in two college plays, I felt confident I knew the ropes.
My real education was about to begin.
In their work, the other girls shone, were altogether secure. They were all hard-working perfectionists, solid professionals with two Oscar nominations and countless theater awards among them. Though ranging in age from their early to late twenties, most of them were highly trained, experienced actresses respected for their work in television, theater and films. They were not movie stars. Acting was their love, their life, and t
heir days were devoted to learning and plying its many and mysterious skills.
Rehearsals began. I was too naive to be nervous until an actress who had a minor role came up to me and said, “I hear you’re playing the lesbian. Good part. You have a great chance to make a statement there. Can’t generalize your emotions, but a good chance to make a statement.” Maybe there was more to this than I thought.
We read through the script and Sidney sent us home to select specific “sense memories” relevant to our class and political period in the story and to start building our “character arc.” It was a language I had never heard before; I had no idea what he was talking about and was too ashamed to ask. What is a “sense memory”? How do you build an arc? Was I going to get a failing grade in film, too? Would I be called before Louis B. Mayer, who would wag a cigar in my face and ask me what I would be in ten years without my character arc?
Growing up in Hollywood where film was the major industry and export, we were conditioned differently. Stars were born and movies made and “sense memories” never mentioned. People were cast not for “character arcs,” but for something called “star quality,” which was locked under contract and carefully cosseted.
We grew up believing that those stars were on that screen because they were people we liked watching, who had something the rest of us wanted. They didn’t act that way—they were that way, and when they got together, the last thing they talked about was “acting.” What you saw was them, not a technique or a craft. Some were just better at being themselves than others.
In old Hollywood, what movie stars made was magic (and money); in New York, what actors made was Art. As a kid from the show biz side of the tracks, way out West in Sodom and Gomorrah, I had a lot to learn about Art in the East—though it seemed, at times, that New York was inhabited by no one but actors all too eager to explain the difference. Sure, I had met some of these types before—intense young actors who enrolled in classes, “learned their craft,” “developed their instruments.” But they seemed driven, desperate, obsessed with nothing but themselves and acting. As for acting school: Who needed the humiliation of being a strip of bacon, exploring a day in the life of a tree? I was playing enough parts in real life: this seemed absurd, assaultive, terrifying. If that kind of singular focus was the price of professionalism, I was not willing to pay it.
Shooting began with The Group’s graduation—Vassar, Class of ’33—in which Sidney had the cast and three hundred extras solemnly sing “Three Blind Mice” until a school song could be composed and dubbed in later. The interior scenes were shot at a studio in Manhattan where we spent most of the first two weeks eating old baked Alaska at a wedding breakfast for one of The Group.
“The Group”: Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Joanna Pettet, Mary-Robin Redd, Jessica Walters, Kathleen Widdoes
Settling into our dingy dressing rooms at the studio—girls darting to and fro, borrowing books, brewing tea, clothes strewn right and left, signs and sayings tacked on doors—the bustling corridor seemed like a slightly squalid version of Vassar’s South Tower rather than dressing rooms above a sound stage—to all appearances, a normal college dorm.
And I—exhilarated to be out on my own, terrified to find myself in such serious company—I settled into the normal routine of a college girl having a summer fling. I stayed out all night dancing, coming home at dawn in time to get my wake-up call and catch a cab across town to the studio. Since I got no sleep at home, I caught up on the set: I slept in the makeup chair while they slapped a base on me; I slept on my dressing-room floor; I curled up in dark corners of the sets—on couches, in bedrooms. As cast and crew tried to shake me into consciousness to kindly appear in a shot, they came to believe that I had some severe form of narcolepsy.
It was fine, fast company I found myself in with this film. Everywhere on the set, actresses were huddled, trancelike, in corners, furiously chewing gum, quickly putting up a hand to ward off intruders before an emotional scene, explaining tersely, “I’m preparing.” Even if I’d had a scene that required preparation, I wasn’t sure how to go about it. What did they think about there in those corners, eyes squeezed shut, “Do Not Disturb” on their faces, before taking their places on the set and bursting into tears on cue? I was amazed: How do they do that? Is that what actors do?
Naturally, some of the girls resented me; certainly, in their shoes, I would have done the same. Pauline Kael, who wrote about the filming of the movie in an angry article for Life called “A Goddess Upstages the Girls,” summed it up. Calling me a “golden lioness of a girl… perfectly pleasant to talk to, a nice big girl,” she went on to identify problems that irked the rest of The Group. “Here she is, an intelligent young girl, beginning—despite her disclaimers—a career in the movies, and she doesn’t appear interested enough even to stay awake and observe. It is as if she hasn’t yet discovered what acting is all about, not even enough to pay attention to the other girls when they are doing it. And they are good, most of these girls; they are something to watch. Here is the odd thing about movies. These seven are all lovely girls, used to playing the beautiful young ingenue, used to being the center of attention. But Bergen is a natural goddess. And the movies, like religious myths, dote on goddesses… . The camera feasts on natural beauty. It seems unfair of course, but there it is—nature is unfair.”
At the film’s finish, ten years after the wedding, the girls reunite for the funeral of one of The Group who plunged out of a window at the Waldorf. Sidney made two master shots, then came in for close-ups on each of us; I watched as each girl deftly took her turn. Mine was last. Sidney suggested I, too, might show some emotion here; even for Lakey, a tear would not be out of line. After all, she had been in love with the lissome deceased, according to the accusations of the distraught husband, played by Larry Hagman.
Now it was my turn to prepare. Nervously heading for a dark corner as I had seen the others do, perching on an apple box in my veiled bowler and black satin riding habit (elegantly mannish even in mourning), I tried to remember what I’d absorbed from watching the others: find an experience or emotion in my “life file” comparable to that required for the scene, mentally reconstruct it, and reproduce it, slipping the dredged-up feelings under the dialogue, giving life to the lines. My eyes squeezed shut, I groped in my memory, searching for tragedy. The problem there, of course, was that my past was short and perfect, unblemished even by bad luck.
In the event that you’re unable to locate an appropriate experience, the wisdom went, substitute actual people in your life for those in the script. Panicked now as time ran out, I piled people in pale, tufted caskets—my family, my friends, my doorman, my dog. It was no use. The more I tried, the less I felt.
Sidney came over; he’d set up the shot and was ready. “Come on, babe, work on this now.”
“But Sidney, I am” I insisted. A makeup man stood by with menthol crystals that could be blown in the eyes and cause tearing in case I couldn’t; there was some dishonor attached to this method, and the others never used it.
As soon as I gave up trying to cry, having now failed in Feeling, Sidney began speaking to me softly, catching my concentration, focusing my fractured attention on the scene. “You can’t believe it… best friend … dead… . Fight the antagonism with Libby, can’t believe it, best friend, best friend, best… . Roll ’em. Action.”
As Lakey, ’The Mona Lisa of the Smoking Room’
My throat tightened, my eyes burned; I fought back the tears and played the scene.
“Cut!” Sidney patted me on the shoulder and said it was nice work. If it was nice work, it was his.
Making a movie failed to discourage completely my fantasies of becoming a journalist, and I managed to combine the two, enthusiastically accepting a commission from Esquire magazine to record my experiences on the film. This I was more than thrilled to do—photographing the girls between setups and doggedly taking notes in my dressing room—the crafty cub repor
ter.
Crafty, perhaps; diplomatic, hardly. Young and self-absorbed, I scarcely suffered from an excess of sensitivity. When it became known (I told anyone who would listen) that I was keeping a journal on the film for Esquire, it naturally touched off tempers among a few of The Group. One or two of them were especially incensed by the idea and they steadily grew suspicious. When one day my notes mysteriously disappeared from my dressing room, one of the girls came up to me and said sweetly, “So, Can’, sweetheart, how’s your article coming?”
“Just peachy, thanks.”
“You know, you really ought to be careful with it; people will never trust you again.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“Sure. Wait till your next picture; by then you’ll be a better writer anyway. I’m only thinking of you, baby, you know.”
“Uh huh.”
“Besides, honey, you know I love you like a mother but I want to tell you—if you ever, ever say anything bad about me, I’ll smear you. I swear to God, I’ll call the columns and have them kill you.”
“I’ve heard they can do that.”
“The second that article’s out, you’re dead. Got it?”
The article came out—a parody of a school essay called “What I Did Last Summer.” It was a fast-paced, flippant piece, a shade self-pitying in tone, describing the girls, the days on the set, and my loss of innocence during that slow, steamy summer. It caused a stir and was well received; it did not bring instant death.
Though mine was the smallest part in The Group, it was fairly flashy, and, as Edgar’s pretty daughter’s debut made for catchy copy, I became a natural publicity angle for the film. A cover article in Look with the lead line, “The Making of The Group—with Candy Bergen,” summarized it neatly: “Snap success in New York as a model and making her first film only puzzle her; like a child with awkward birthday gifts, she seems not to know what to do with her shiny new prospects.”
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