The other woman is a character identified in the script as the “Beautiful Girl Who Lives Across the Hall” — one of my favorite character names. She was played by the truly beautiful Judith Roberts, whom I knew a bit as she had been married to Parnell Roberts, who played the older brother to Michael Landon’s Little Joe on Bonanza. After they divorced Judith had moved in with my Pasadena Playhouse buddy Josh Bryant in Studio City. As you can see in the film not only does Judith have sensational bone structure but she had the most beautiful skin. I learned her beauty secret too — every night she coated her face in Vaseline.
Unlike Mary X who is wretched and miserable, the Girl Across the Hall is alluring and mysterious. But of course poor Henry is stuck not only with Mary but with the least loveable mutant baby who ever graced the screen.
Mary at some point can’t take life with this horrific baby and tugs her suitcase out from under the bed and leaves in tears and wails. Now Henry is left to care for the baby himself. He tries to feed it, only to watch it sicken before his eyes, developing a skin disease that looks like that of Jack Fisk’s Man in the Planet character. He unwraps the swaddling around the thing only to discover that the cloth had been holding together the infant’s insides, which now ooze out in a mess of polenta-like goo and organs.
When the infant dies, Henry — as far as I can tell — transcends into the world of the radiator, where the Girl in the Radiator, with a puffy, diseased face and bright, shining eyes performs a weird dancehall song and dance number, stepping on spermlike creatures dropping to the stage floor (more umbilical cords).
The problem with describing the action of Eraserhead is that it diminishes the film. Eraserhead isn’t really about the plot. For me, looking at it now, it’s like a series of paintings. Every scene is beautifully and perfectly lit. Each moment is carefully structured and framed. People ask me all the time, “What does it mean?” To me that’s like asking what Monet’s water lilies mean. It’s best to experience it and let it wash over you, resonate within you, take you where it will.
Having said that, I completely understand having a sense of bewilderment when entering into the Eraserhead universe. In the early days of shooting, I thought a lot of what was going on around me on that set was utter nonsense, such as when we shot the scene with Jack, Mary, and Mary’s family around the dinner table. I was struck by how David would simply leave the camera running until the actors weren’t sure what to do and he’d capture moments of such awkwardness. At other times I just got pissed off by how unreasonably slowly and meticulously he worked, laboring over details that, I was sure, would never really show up on the screen. It took weeks to shoot the dinner scene, all of it at night.
Because most of us — including me — had day jobs we would get together in the evening, have a meal together, and David would talk us through what we’d be working on. Typically we’d start shooting around 10 or 11 p.m. and go all night through about 5 a.m. In a six-hour period we would get one shot. Maybe two. This excruciating pace was due to the fact that David was painstaking and he did nearly everything himself such as tinkering with lights, with props, with the positioning of actors, discussing with Jack the smallest movements, say, of a hand or an arm. A scene of Mary X just lying in bed would take two or three days, while David set and re-set lights, repainted the walls, positioned the sheets just so and found the right spot for the camera — always a tough thing because we were filming inside an actual structure rather than, say, a sound stage, where you can simply move a wall if it’s in the way. Since the Eraserhead set was built inside the servants’ quarters/stables if a wall was in the way too bad, David (often with Catherine’s assistance) had to get creative moving that large, heavy camera into a position that gave him the best possible framing. He didn’t believe in the idea of “don’t sweat the small stuff.” It was like a film directed by a watchmaker. I once heard David joke later that after two or three years “we finally found our groove.”
By the time I was in Eraserhead I had been working steadily in television and film since the early 1960s. I’d seen — I thought — every sort of director in a broad ranging variety of projects, comedy, drama, mysteries, etc. But in all that time, I’d never come across anyone like David. In the first two weeks of shooting I thought, “This guy is never going to make it as a director.” (So much for my career as a clairvoyant.)
No one would dream of keeping actors hanging around for half the night while you fiddled with, for example, the workings of a tiny mechanical roast chicken (which Jeanne or Catherine would operate from underneath the table).
In the scene in which Mary finally leaves Henry and the baby, Mary is about to walk out the door then realizes she wants to take something with her. There’s no indication of what it is. She reaches under the bed and begins to tug at something.
When David walked me through the scene he told me to keep tugging until he indicated (off camera) to pull the thing free.
So there I am kneeling down at the end of the bed, wailing, with my eyes on Henry, who is lying under the bed covers not believing that I’m really leaving. And I tug and tug and tug.
I tug 21 times before David gives me the sign and that’s when I pull a suitcase free.
While doing it, it made no sense to me.
Now I see it as a quintessential David Lynch moment. It’s both tragic and comic and as the director he steadfastly does not tell the audience how to feel. There are no music cues, there’s no dialogue to tip you off, no winking at the camera, none of the irony-alerts of other films. As the viewer you get to experience it in any way you like.
Over time, because of moments like this on film, moments when I as an actor had no clue where he was going, David more than won me over. It taught me that if you’re working with a great director, you simply do what they ask you to do and don’t expect them to sit down with you in the moment and give you a graduate level TED Talk on what it is they’re trying to achieve. So much of what David shot was gut feel — letting an idea germinate in the moment — he’d unlikely be able to elucidate exactly what it is he was going for. It would have been a waste of time to stop everything and have the “What’s my motivation” conversation. He was thinking not in words but in texture, grain, light, shadow, and darkness — mechanical vs. organic, wood and steel, disease and life.
Sometimes as an actor you just have to shut up and do your job.
Another reason I grew to trust him was because he helped form us into such a great, hard-working family. It was all for one and one for all. I agree with Catherine who compared working on Eraserhead with going to summer camp. There was a lot of freedom and camaraderie.
Part of that good feeling I suppose was that from the beginning David was very vocal that he wanted us all to get paid fairly and had developed a contract, which set up a regular (SAG minimum) wage. About year into the project as his funding ran out, he couldn’t pay us but Peggy, his wife at the time kept track of our hours. Loyalty is sometimes in short supply in Hollywood and even people with the best of intentions forget or lose track. I have learned that it seems to be incredibly easy not to pay people. Whatever the case would be, I wasn’t holding out hope for payment though I appreciated that David’s heart seemed to be in the right place.
That alone helped weld us into a close, tight-knit group, though I can’t say we necessarily got to know each other much outside of the set. While I worked with Jack Nance during the first two years of filming, playing his wife, I really didn’t get to know him personally all that well. I really only knew Henry, the character. The only times I saw Jack were on set and on set Jack was always Henry. When we weren’t filming he’d often sit in a chair, hands folded, not needing to speak with anyone, not requiring entertainment of any kind. He was kind of a curmudgeonly guy about 40 years older than his actual biological age. I don’t think he ever had much of a social life. He didn’t get out often, didn’t go to parties. His only friends were a few drinking buddies.
And in fairness, all Jack really s
aw of me was Mary X. During those long hours in between takes, I just hung around and tried to stay in character, adjusting my make-up, and re-pinning my odd, swirled hair.
What I could not know then was how long I would end up being friends with Jack and how intertwined our lives would be, parting and coming together more than once — for better or for worse, in sickness and in health — in a kind of spiritual marriage over the course of 25 years.
Likewise, none of us in the early 1970s could have known that unlike any other student film Eraserhead would take not a few days or a weeks or a month to shoot (as I had originally anticipated), but would turn into a project that stretched over years of filming and about another year in post-production. (In the 2000s David would repeat this feat with the five-year period it apparently took to shoot and cut together Inland Empire.)
For Jack the role of Henry meant a kind of dedication rarely seen in the history of cinema. As you probably know, the most iconic image from Eraserhead is Jack with that upright tower of hair. He maintained that look, like a male Bride of Frankenstein, for four years, his long-suffering wife Catherine keeping it snipped and clipped like topiary.
Chapter 8
Becoming Miss Beadle
For me, shooting Eraserhead was never a full time job. It was always a night here, a few nights there, so I was still involved in a lot of other things. While I was Mary X in the wee hours, by day I was appearing in commercials for Kool-Aid, Cheer laundry detergent, Jiff peanut butter, Dial soap, Clairol shampoo, Scope mouthwash, Three Musketeers candy bars, the postal service, Gravy Train dog food, etc., playing exuberant moms, cheerful pet-owners, and grateful deodorant wearers.
Eraserhead also overlapped with filming The Waltons pilot episode, which caused some problems. As I said, we filmed Eraserhead all night, and I drove to a friend’s nearby apartment, slept for an hour, then at 6:30 a.m. I had to be on-set at Paramount for The Waltons. By mid-afternoon of the third such day in a row we were filming one of those scenes in which every single person in the cast is crammed into the living room and I was so tired, I was practically cross-eyed. I blew a couple of lines and apologized to everyone. Be assured, no one in either cast or crew had any sympathy for my screw-ups because I’d spent the night slumming on a student film.
How did I manage then to also have a fling with Ralph Waite at the same time, you ask? It’s that farm girl work ethic.
In addition I was also still making and selling dresses at The Liquid Butterfly and because that still wasn’t enough, I had taken up a new occupation — I was a proud waitress. Jeanne Field had opened a café in Topanga Canyon called Everybody’s Mother, which featured large photos of the moms of everyone who worked there. My mom, the late and beloved Alice Stewart, was of course properly recognized and celebrated. Jeanne liked to call Everybody’s Mother “food as theater,” including the featured role played by Mickey Fox at the front counter. With her Venus of Wilendorf figure and larger than life personality, most patrons assumed Mickey was in fact “Everybody’s Mother.” During the gas crisis in 1974 people would get up early, line-up their cars at the gas station and walk across the street and have breakfast at the café. It was a Topanga thing.
Actually what I was doing at Everybody’s Mother was a swap with Jeanne. She was working at The Liquid Butterfly for nothing and so I was supporting her by serving up piping hot breakfasts for nothing. That’s what hippies used to do in the ‘70s. God, I miss that sometimes — sharing work, sharing homes, sharing weed, sharing boyfriends.
Not everything in my life was groovy though and I would open up to Jeanne and other friends about this. Even though Tim and I had separated in 1969 and our divorce finalized in early 1971, I still felt terrible about what had happened. No matter what else was going on in my life — how fun or adventurous things were — my role in the downfall of that relationship, how I had hurt him, stuck around inside me like a dark cloud.
Then I got a dinner invitation from Tim’s brother John — remember John who had been such an angel going with me to Mexico for that horrific abortion? He had a great heart. Anyway, John and his wife, Toby, invited me to their house in Pacific Palisades for dinner and I learned they had invited Tim. Knowing John, this was no accident.
We had a great time. It was fun, relaxing dinner and afterwards John and Toby just sort of disappeared and Tim and I went outside at sunset and took a walk there along the ocean, which was spread out gigantic and gold. I was able to pour out my heart to Tim and tell him that I knew I’d done so much to hurt him and how terribly sorry I was. By now Tim had gotten to a new place in his life. He was happy again and it seemed like he enjoyed being on his own, making new friends, and having fun again. Finally the rift between us closed and that miserable chapter ended. A new one began as friends.
Tim started coming to the Friday night poker games at my house in Topanga Canyon, becoming one of the regulars along with Kit Carson, an actor friend, Peter Butterfield, who lived with me, and others. Tim even spent the night a few times. And now I had an open invitation to the soccer games he organized on Sunday mornings at the UCLA fields with family and friends. No one famous, just people from all parts of his life of every size, age, and sports ability.
I’m so happy that Tim and I have remained good friends ever since. When he married Willie, his wife of many years now, they had a small family wedding followed by a larger reception, to which I was invited.
I’ve been a guest at their house many, many times and it usually ends up being Willie and me in the kitchen making food or cleaning up while Tim and his “car buddies” are outside checking out engines and kicking each other’s tires or whatever the hell car guys do.
In November of 1973, I spent four days shooting an episode of Gunsmoke called “The Schoolmarm,” in which I played the role of Sarah Merkle, a kindly teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in Dodge City in the 1880s. Sarah cleans black boards, she’s gentle with students, and she looks mighty fine in a prairie dress. Hmmm. Sound familiar? At the time I didn’t think much about the role and in fact when I see the episode today I can’t even remember filming it. But looking back I can’t help but wonder if that guest role, which aired on February 25, 1974 on CBS, put something out there in the ether, a vibe that resonated a couple of months later.
In early May of that year I got a call from my agent with an audition for a project being created by Michael Landon with Ed Friendly’s production company. It was called Little House on The Prairie set in the late 1870s in Minnesota.
Having never read the books, I knew little about the character, other than she was a teacher who worked in Walnut Grove’s one-room schoolhouse. With so little to go on it can be challenging to breathe life into the dialogue on the page but I’d learned to go with my gut and that it never hurt to display a little audacity, which nearly any character needs in one way or another.
I drove over to Ed Friendly’s office at the appointed time and found a waiting room filled with actresses in prairie dresses, bonnets, and other outfits of the period. I’m sure it sounds ridiculous outside of Hollywood but with so much talent to choose from a producer is often less concerned about acting ability — that’s taken as a given — but on a person’s look, their skin tone, eyes, hair color, facial structure. With so much riding on appearance it can make sense to “dress the part” for an audition to help the sometimes overworked, tired, high, bored or otherwise unfocused producers choose you over someone else.
On this occasion I hadn’t bothered to track down the right dress or any of that. I just showed up in one of my usual flowy, flowery, running-around-Santa-Monica outfits. I’d been playing roles on TV and film since the 1960s and had lost interest in the various tricks actors can employ. These guys had seen my work. Part of being a professional, in my opinion, is to let the work speak for itself.
At least that was what I told myself. The real reason I didn’t go to great lengths to get the part is that I thought it was just a “movie of the week” and if I didn’t get it, no big dea
l. But as I looked around the waiting area at all the other actresses decked out in period hats and dresses, I did begin to wonder if there was something they knew that I didn’t.
When it was my turn, I went into the office, said hi to Ed Friendly, the show’s producer, and to some of the assistant producers. But it’s a funny thing, with all those other people, my eyes went straight to Mike Landon. His presence owned the room. Some people just have that kind of enigmatic eyeball-drawing magnetism and he had it in a way only a few people do. I met both Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington years later and they had it too. What is that?
When given the chance to do my lines, I first asked Michael and Ed if I might re-arrange things in the room a little bit. Michael grinned and said, “Sure,” and wanted to know what I had in mind.
Well, what I had in mind was to be a teacher and take charge of the classroom. I scooted Michael and Ed out from behind the big desk and arranged everyone like they were my pupils. I scolded them for talking and laughing and making noise. I mandated that they all be quiet and mind their manners while I ran my lines. Michael was giggling and I figured if nothing else I’d broken up their afternoon with a little comic relief.
By the time I arrived home an hour later, my agent called and let me know I’d gotten the part — then came the real surprise. This Little House gig wasn’t so little. What I’d thought was just a quickie “Movie of the Week,” was instead slated to be a major television series and they wanted me to sign a four-year contract which guaranteed seven out of 13 episodes per season. I believe my jaw actually, physically dropped.
Little House in the Hollywood Hills Page 12