Dance While You Can

by Shirley Maclaine

  Rather than truly share, more than anything else, we attempted to change the individual we were attracted to. We really wanted shadow versions of ourselves, because we would then be familiar with the responses without being threatened. The contrasting differences that had been attractive in the first place slowly eroded away.

  In show business, the stronger, more definitive personalities usually prevailed in any one-on-one relationship. The gentler partner was required to conform with the needs of the stronger, carried all the emotional baggage, believed in the self-image the more powerful person held of himself, or herself, and supported that vision. That was when the real trouble started.

  When another person became a shadow of someone else, there was no balance to the relationship. Gone were the stimulating differences, the fuel for the fires of passion. The differences that were so attractive in the beginning inspired discussion, colorful passions, and feelings. After well-schooled velvet manipulation had removed any disagreements, there was only a replica of self left.

  How many times had I, and so many of my friends, been through this process? It seemed to be human show business nature: actress meets man, actress attempts to change man to reflect self, actress is then unhappy at disintegration of differences. It was all around me. Everywhere I looked people were doing this to themselves and each other.

  I had finally given up the male-female contest, at least for a few years, and was happy with the liberation from passionate conflict. But I could see, for myself, and for so many others, that it would be more fulfilling to simply respect the individuality of another we loved than to perceive it as a threat, as something to be altered. Agree to disagree. Agree to respect the disagreement.

  After all, wasn’t real love the ability to respect another for what and whom he is without judgment? In my heart, I knew the differences were interesting, a path to objectivity that offered the scope of broader perspective, an enlarged or enlightened view. We should be secure enough to see differences not as barriers, but more as stimulating catalysts for growth. Why couldn’t we just relax and accept?

  Being alone for a while had made it more clear to me that the probable reason for the ennui in my life was the lack of those close combustible differences in another—someone who could challenge my intolerance, test my evolution in non-judgment, and provide me with the opportunity to see just how far I’d be able to go in my capacity to accept another person for what he was without destructive criticism. I needed to allow, no, welcome, constructive differences.

  I knew I’d lose by trying to change someone. I also knew it was going to be difficult to grow by being alone for much longer. I knew there were games to play and joys to share, but there was still a part of me that wondered if I could really live up to the evolved expectations I knew I should fulfill in myself, particularly at my age with my experience and so-called wisdom.

  When I was younger, I didn’t know any better. Now I was aware. I had been through some deeply profound relationships, endured many a power struggle, loved and given in, hated and demanded. I had been around the track more than a few times and finally given up the contest for a while. And, I had to admit, I was still enjoying the liberation from the competition and the power games of the Relationship Olympics!

  Perhaps soon I would try the adventure of putting a relationship first, rather than myself. I had a sneaky feeling that if I was willing to do that, it would precipitate change and growth in everyone involved simply because of the commitment to accept and not judge. If I accepted another human being totally, he would probably reciprocate. Maybe I should try putting a relationship first, because by doing so I would ultimately “allow” the real me to emerge. That, however, had not been what I saw when I observed most of the marriages around me. Each partner seemed to have settled, somehow, into a life of compromised alliance. In the case of my own parents (where my view of marriage originated) the alliance was so compromised that frustration reigned.

  The marriage of my parents was a manifest example of two people who loved each other but were not free to develop individually. Each sacrificed his and her creativity for the marriage. Mother was an extremely talented painter and actress. She longed to develop those talents but opted for marriage and children instead. Dad was a talented musician (violin) and a philosophic thinker (philosophy and psychology) but opted to fulfill his duties as teacher and school principal and as a husband and father. The school business carried what he called “peanut politics,” which prevented him from enjoying it. But it was the only living he knew how to make.

  Hence neither was really happy. Dad felt obligations as a father and husband above his own needs. And Mother made herself subservient to her marriage, her husband, and her children. Yet even within her subserviency, she managed to rule the family with matriarchal emotional power. Hers was the tyranny of the passive, the power of the deprived and repressed. Through her frustrated, suppressed creativity, Warren and I experienced enough fallout to last us a lifetime. What we did with that fallout was up to each of us individually. For me, I think I subliminally vowed that I would never allow myself to be colonized by customs, traditions, society, husbands, children, or marriage; and the same might certainly be said of Warren.

  The haunted longing in Mother’s face whenever I’d leave home for a new job—the choked tears that she might not see me again for ages—left me with a gnawing understanding that she didn’t have a life. She never had. Not one of her own. She had given her life to me, to Warren, and to her husband.

  She reveled in our successes and was always there for us, listening to our problems, our conflicts, our fears, and our triumphs. But underneath there seemed to be a resonant sigh of loneliness for herself. She seemed to be more in touch with what she couldn’t do in her life than what she could do. On the other hand, she always said that her primary desire was to have a family and raise children. Yes, that was what she said. What she felt, I suspected, was another story.

  One of Mother’s unconscious conflicts was her fundamental sexism. It was a source of deep tension between us. She honestly believed men were more capable than women. She had bought the propaganda of the age of her traditional upbringing and carried it with her every step of the way. Perhaps it was sexism designed to justify her acquiescent position in the home. (“This is the work women are supposed to do.”) Rather than summoning the courage to become more than a homemaker, Mother settled for the traditional definition of a woman’s role in life (marriage, husband, and children).

  So I always felt a subtle, but grating, resentment from her that I had broken out of the mold of female repression and dared to pole-vault over it. This was probably reinforced by the subliminal threat that a daughter always represents to a mother. She was dealing with my success, and yet, in an inverse way, so was I. I was somehow always holding myself back just a touch so that I wouldn’t preposterously outsucceed mother. I became more reflective about my talent and potential instead of daring and outrageous. There are those who would say I was the personification of outrageous daring; but knowing my full potential for such things, I hadn’t lived up to half of it.

  Perhaps mothers and daughters have different reactions to success than fathers and sons do. The female evaluation of accomplishment is fraught with centuries of untried, unexplored yearnings. There were no real guideposts until recently. Women weren’t expected to do much, and certainly it was recommended that they not rock the boat. But then a really talented mother comes along (my mother) who produces a really talented daughter (me) and, through her own frustration, acts as a catalyst for her daughter’s expression—a negative role model you might say.

  At least it was clear to me what I didn’t want. Mother then was faced with what was clearly the unrealized potential of her own life. Of course, her children were the monuments to her life, but we belonged to our own lives now. What did that leave her?

  Chastising me for my success was not something Mother would ever do. Not only was she happy for me, but I know she correctly
saw herself as greatly responsible. No, her feelings about success had more to do with her own view of herself as a woman than they did with me. To her, Warren’s success was inevitable and expected; men were supposed to make big accomplishments. But me? I think that was complicated for her, as it is for every mother and every daughter because they see themselves differently. The whole, complicated push-and-pull was encapsulated in a scene that happened when Mother was in the hospital after a bladder operation.

  I flew to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to be with her. Warren was coming later. Others came to “see Mother” too, but most of her visitors had heard that Warren and I would be there.

  Mother told me about it. She was proud. One man in particular had longed to meet Warren. With a perfectly open and calm attitude, Mother sat in bed and said, “I told the man Warren wasn’t coming until next week, that he’d just have to be satisfied with meeting second best—you.”

  I felt the breath go out of me. I couldn’t speak. I knew she believed what she was saying. When she realized what she had said, her hand flew to her mouth as if to smother the words. But it was too late. She had involuntarily articulated what had always been true to her.

  “Oh, Shirl,” she said, mortified at herself. “That was a terrible thing to say, wasn’t it?”

  My reaction then was probably the most hypocritical of all. “It’s not horrible if you mean it, Mother,” I said. “At least you’re speaking the truth as you see it. Besides, I’ve always known it. I’ve understood how you felt.”

  Then I did something I never should have done. I would not allow her to see how much she had hurt my feelings. I wanted her to want and expect the same wonders from me that she did from Warren. But I couldn’t let her see that. I wanted to scream at her, “Why do you expect less from me because I’m a girl? Why have you never expected anything from yourself because you’re a woman?”

  But I didn’t. I sat upright in my chair beside her bed. I could feel my mouth quiver into a smile. Tears forced their way through my eyes anyway. I looked down, rummaged in my purse, and put on glasses until my feelings were smothered.

  Our lives as women had merged in that moment. The truth was that Mother never did and probably never would believe that any woman could or should measure up to a man. Men were authoritative by nature and should be obeyed and respected as such. To have done otherwise with her own father, her brother, and her husband would have been heresy in the first degree.

  For me to identify myself as a functioning, whole person without a man to prop me up was to her a false, unrealized identity. As she had said to me many times, “What do you really know about life and love and compromise? You live alone.”

  Now, heading into my later fifties, I could hear her words again, but with different ears than she had intended, and for entirely different reasons.

  Perhaps I should consider a permanent marriage now. Not because I need anyone, but because it could hold the dynamics for a more interesting future. Within each relationship I had enjoyed, there seemed always to be two sides—positive and negative. If I could now perceive those opposites as creating a productive whole, I could perhaps come to the understanding that two people functioning together was a happier arrangement than one free soul alone. The question was, Was I ready for it? Or were there other things I needed to do on my own first?

  Again my mother had been the stimulus for another octave of growth for me.

  PART TWO

  FATHER STAGE

  CHAPTER 7

  Back to the Stage

  Acting in movies is an art that requires patience, tolerance, reverence for detail, and emotional faith. It is, in essence, what I would call the female expression. To preserve your sanity you need to be laid-back and accepting of wasted time, misperceived instructions, and authority figures who run the studios without understanding the films.

  Performing on stage, on the other hand, is quite different. It requires a more assertive, aggressive thrust, an awareness that is left-brained, swiftly analytical, and above all a feeling of comfort in asserting power and control over an audience. It is, in essence, the male expression.

  Movies are a more intimate adventure. Stage is outgoing. You stand in front of an audience and demand that they not only pay attention but succumb to all your tricks and timing. You must have everything your way, otherwise you lose control and it won’t work. The light focuses only on you. The audience is dark; you are light. An entire symphony orchestra of some forty musicians must be subservient to your rhythm, your phrasing, your transitions, your emotional beat, your heart’s will. You are, in fact, in immediate control of the manipulation of the audience’s feelings. And it must be so in order for you to be good at it. You need to be very secure that you are comfortable with such power and, in fact, enjoy wielding it at your pleasure.

  When you are in command, the audience feels safe. When you lose command, they become insecure. There is no democracy when you are the solo performer on the stage. It is a professional, artful dictatorship. The teamwork offstage is solely serving the one who is out there. And if the personal rhythm of those who serve your time in the spotlight is not in sync with yours, they must go. A backstage family exists, but the stage performer is not the child (as in movies). She or he is the father operating with all the masculine reflexes, talent, and instincts that are necessary to patriarchal requirements.

  After Postcards was finished, I decided to go back to the stage. It had been six years. I missed the live performance side of myself. It was part of my personal resolution program I think, inspired of course by being in my fifties, to balance the female and male aspects of myself. I missed the love of live audiences for sure. But I also missed being in charge. Playing to a cinema machine for a few minutes at a time left me with a fragmented, disjointed frustration as to what I had really accomplished. I needed to know immediately. The moment was becoming more and more important to me.

  It was usually a year before a film was edited, scored, and released. I needed to know now. Film was a medium belonging to almost everybody but the performer. A terrific scene, a powerful performance, could be chopped in half, a large part of it left curled on the cutting room floor. By the same token, a bad scene—slow, out of sync—could be rescued. An entire story could be rewritten in the editing room, to say nothing of how a film’s perception could be altered through advertising and marketing.

  Doing my live show, no one but me was in charge. I was responsible for everything. It succeeded or failed on my merits, my taste, and my ideas. The mistakes were also mine. I needed to be in charge of my own destiny. And as my subsequent experience was to prove, I needed to be in charge of my own destiny more profoundly than I ever had before. This meant grappling with experiences on a much deeper level. It meant looking at my motivations in a much more emotionally courageous way. And, as it turned out, I came to grips with parts of my life and background that had nothing to do with show business but everything to do with, mainly, my father.

  I’m not sure I would have made the decision to return to my performing roots had I known what physical, emotional, and spiritual pain it would put me through. However, the salvation of all of us, I guess, is that we mainly go forth in our lives unaware that such a step could be a life-altering, learning experience relating to those who conditioned us. That is what happened to me. Because of my return to dancing, I was able to give up the ties that bound me—ties I wasn’t even aware of—ties that I unknotted and broke free from once and for all. The free-fall was frightening at times, but that’s the nature of liberation.

  Obviously, all people who put themselves through the rigors and rewards of the theater are answering a deep-seated call, probably a deep-seated plea, for loving, collective, instant approval—the electricity of being a human battery charged by the appreciation of the audience. You can’t continue to get up there night after night, with the stomach clutched and the mouth dry, without the reward being direly necessary; and the reward must supersede the fear so as to
be worth it. And for me, now, not only that. My body and physical condition had deteriorated. I knew it. I needed to lose weight and retrain muscles I hadn’t used or even been aware of in six years. But still, I told myself, retraining the body at my age was not as much about the physical as it was about the consciousness. I had already begun to suspect that the “no pain no gain” theory was an incorrect way to work. Was it possible to get up every morning with hope and a chosen attitude that I was not going to experience pain? I wanted to see if that was true.

  A dance trainer came to my apartment in Malibu every day for eight weeks with her gypsy bag dangling from her shoulder and her straight blond hair hanging behind her pierced ears. Mary Hite was rail-thin, taut, and strong—stronger than any dancer I had ever worked with, and very, very nice.

  There was a subtle self-sustaining anger in her—an anger that kept her going from an accident she had sustained years earlier. She had been hit by a car, which shattered most of her body. The doctors said she would never walk again. She chose to overcome their diagnosis by studying every tendon and muscle in the body and, armed with that knowledge, going to work on herself. She accomplished a physical miracle through sheer discipline and hard work.

  I wondered if she had come to terms with what happened to her. How did she feel about the driver of the car that hit her? She was still “workin’ on it” she said, but it was clear that her anger had played a part in her recovery by somehow motivating her willpower. I thought a lot about Mary. If I were incapacitated like that, how would I deal with it? I was attempting to eliminate angry negative emotions in my life. Would that mean a difficulty in overcoming adversity? Did one need anger in order to survive?