atta girl: Tales from a Life in the Trenches of Show Business (8 page)

Falling for Mr. Roberts 

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At that point, Leigh Gutteridge got on the bus. It was six thirty in the morning, and we had been waiting for him. He had not been to bed, as far as I could see. Clothes askew, hair going every which way, tired, happy, handsome, and lovable, he pulled a woman’s sleeve out of his jacket pocket, a long sleeve from an evening dress. He looked at it, puzzled over it, and said, “Where the hell did I get this?” He climbed into the nearest seat and fell into a deep, satisfied, snoring sleep.

That was San Antonio, Texas, where the women went wild over the hunks that Josh Logan had cast for the national road company of Mr. Roberts. It was the story of thirty-five men doomed to sit out the Second World War in the South Pacific on a freighter, never to see action.

I had found an agent, Sara Enright, through my college professor. He gave me a note of recommendation to give her. That’s how Noel Coward got his start, so I was hopeful.

Sara, her fine white hair piled on top of her head but occasionally straying off in other directions as well, sat in her chair in a narrow, wood-paneled office talking on the phone all day. She never said hello or good-bye on the phone or in person. Waste of time. It was dial, dial, dial… “Here, write this down,” or “I’m sending so-and-so over to see you.” Her door was always open. She was a friend of Josh Logan’s from the old days when he, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart were first starting out and would call on her and sit around her office. She knew everybody and had seen everything. She said to me, “Just remember: There is no loyalty in the theater.” I didn’t know what to make of that, and I never asked her what she meant by it because I thought it would be prying.

It had been so easy. I’d read five lines for Logan, and he’d said, “Oh, she’s fine. Would you dye your hair blonde?”

“Yes,” I said, unaware that the experience I was to have would nearly destroy my nervous system.

I called my mother. “Mom, I got a job!”

“That’s wonderful. Congratulations! Tell me about it.”

“It’s in the road company of Mr. Roberts!”

“Don’t they send road companies out in the fall?”

“I’m going to replace the actress playing the nurse, the only woman in a cast of thirty-five men.”

“Why is she leaving?”

“She’s pregnant.”

I could hear my mom gasp over the phone “Oh, she’s married,” I said, “to the leading man, and she’s going home to have the baby. It’s all right.”

“It is?” It was a little hard to hear her.

So that was it. I would be making $112.50 a week, of which Sara Enright would get $11.25. With this job, I became a member of Actors’ Equity, the union that would protect me from ever being stranded on the road.

I got on a train that wended its way for two and a half days across this beautiful country I’d never seen. I was fascinated by the space of it. Looking out the window from my berth in the middle of the night, with the moon lighting up the prairies, the forests, the amber waves of grain, was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I was working!

When I got to the marble-and-Italian-tile station in LA, the stage manager was waiting for me. He was a stocky guy with curly, dark hair and swarthy, pockmarked skin. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that magnified his eyes and a buttoned-up yellow shirt that said “Harrah’s” above the pocket.

“That’s a nice shirt,” I said.

“Yeah, I got it in Reno,” he said.

“What are the hurrahs for?” I accented the second syllable. “Did you win something?”

“It’s a hotel with a casino. It’s called Harrah’s.” He accented the first syllable. He had bad teeth that separated in the middle of the top row. After a long look at me, he said in a nasal voice with a New York accent, “Well, Peggy Pope, I understand you’ve never done anything. But we’ll keep that between us. We won’t tell anybody, will we?”

It was a crusher. I didn’t like him immediately, and it turned out nobody else did either. His main focus during the tour was furnishing his apartment back home by sneaking hotel furniture onto the scenery trucks. He collected monogrammed towels and washcloths as well, which he asked the wardrobe mistress to sew together into a bathrobe for him.

As a stage manager, he was in charge of directing replacements. He told me where the laughs were in the scene and that I probably wouldn’t get them all at first. He also told me about what he remembered hearing during rehearsals in New York, which wasn’t much, and of course, the blocking, which, luckily, he had written down.

He was happy when we played musical houses because the union required musicians even if they weren’t used. He always ordered twelve bazooka players. A bazooka is a comical horn consisting of two gas pipes and a whiskey funnel that sounds like a kazoo. It didn’t matter where we were. We could be in the middle of Kansas, and the players would show up. Quiet and unassuming, they were very nice guys. They hung out in the alley and came into the theater only when it rained. Then they’d go in under the stage and play poker. I thought it would have been great if they’d played music before the show, during the intermission, or maybe around the explosion at the end of the first act. I never suggested it because even I knew the stage manager wouldn’t have cared for the extra cues he’d have to give.

Once, during a setup at a new theater, I saw a light fall from the flies (the area where the backdrops are raised up and stored), knocking the hat off a stagehand’s head.

“Where is the stage manager?” I asked.

“Out securing towels somewhere,” said one of the crew.

The leading lady prefaced her notes on how to play the nurse with: “You’ll never be able to do what I’m doing with the part, but here are a few tips.” She gave me a list of pauses, poses, and looks that I found intimidating and useless at the same time. I was sure I could do better. “I won’t be able to watch you rehearse,” she said. “You probably won’t be very good, but do my notes and you’ll catch on to it.”

Horace, the leading man, put her on the train and wept as he saw her off. I ran into him as I was crossing the platform to the train that was loading our company. He stopped in front of me and stared through me as if in a state of shock. Then he went on, and I didn’t see him again for the rest of the day. He kept to himself in a private drawing room.

My phone rang the next day.

“It’s Horace,” he said. “How about coming over, and we can discuss the scene we have together?”

“Aren’t we meeting with the stage manager later?”

“Oh, he’s not going to help you.”

“He isn’t?”

“No, but I will. I’m good at it.”

“Oh.”

“Come by at four,” he said. “We can have some lunch here while we talk about it.”

“Well, I don’t know—”

“Sure you do. We’ll run some lines. That’ll be a big help to you.”

“Oh, I see. Well, okay.”

It was broad daylight. What could happen? I’d certainly learn more from him than from the stage manager, and it was nice of him to want to help.

When Horace opened the door, he had an x-ray picture in his hand.

“Look at this. They finally sent it to me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an x-ray from when I had my appendix out. I think I’ll have it framed.” He showed me a white spot on the negative where his appendix used to be.

“Oh, my goodness, you had appendicitis?”

“No. I was going into rehearsal for my first Broadway show. I had the lead, and I thought it would be a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Just in case. I didn’t want it to burst when I was about to become a star.”

“Aha. Well… good.”

His room was a lot bigger than mine, with a view of the orange trees that perfumed the air everywhere. Years later, when I returned to California, I found that oil wells had replaced them and the air tasted metallic.

Horace wheeled in a luncheon table with a white linen cloth, steak, salad, and rolls on it. He pulled my chair out, and we sat down to eat.

“I like steak,” he said. “I have it every day… and a vegetable. Very important. Good for you. Protein. How’s yours? Okay?”

“Yes,” I said, “thank you.”

“So tell me about yourself.”

“Well, I’ve been studying at the Berghof School.”

“Bergdorf? Bergdorf Goodman has an acting school?”

“No. Herbert Berghof. He’s Austrian. He’s a wonderful actor, and he has this school—”

“I don’t believe in taking classes,” he interrupted. “Just get up there and do it. I never took a lesson in my life.”

“Really?”

“My first director taught me everything I needed to know. It comes naturally to me.”

“Really?” I’d never had filet mignon before, and the salad was full of raisins. It looked like a rabbit had run through it. I wasn’t eager to eat it.

“Eat your salad. You need greens,” he said.

“Okay.” And I did.

When the meal was over, Horace said, “Come over here and make yourself comfortable. I’ll run some lines with you.” He motioned to the bed.

He propped some pillows against the headboard. I pretended I hadn’t noticed. I sat at the foot of the bed and said my first line. Then we discussed how we should shake hands as we met. That led to palm reading.

“You have a very long life line. And an even longer heart line,” he said.

“I do?”

“Yes. You’re going to break a lot of hearts. I’m worried.”

“About what?”

“That you’ll break mine. C’mere.” He was still holding my hand as he put his other hand on the back of my neck and started to massage it.

“You’re very tense. I can fix that.”

“How?” I was tense. My shoulders had been aching since I first left home. I couldn’t do anything about it.

“I’ll show you,” he said. “Here. Lie down. I’ll give you a massage.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m fine.” And I thought, This can’t be right. You don’t even go swimming until an hour after you eat. I must have said it out loud.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I just want to help you relax. You’ll be amazed how good you’ll feel.”

“I feel fine.”

“And you know what else?”

“What?”

“You’d be a much better actress if you could relax. You’re very tense.”

“No, thanks. I’ll be okay.”

“All right. Fine,” he said. “Let’s kiss and make up.”

“We haven’t had a fight.”

“Is that so?” he said, jumping on me, becoming seriously threatening.

“No! Horace, stop it! Leave me alone! I just had dinner. I’ll get a stomach cramp.”

“Aw, come on,” he said.

“This is impossible! I’ve got to go now.” I jumped up and ran across the room. I was really surprised when he gave up and said, “Okay.” He looked at me blankly, as if nothing had happened. “See you at the theater.”

Later, I was in my room and heard a knock at the door. I didn’t answer. I knew it was Horace. He knocked for a while, and then there was a loud thump on the hall floor. Then there was silence. I waited a long time before I went to the door. On the floor was a package. It contained two bottles of perfume: one was called Danger, the other Surrender.

He was a good-looking, full-of-energy, okay actor. I found him exciting and forbidding. My adolescent hormones were startled to life at his attention. I would spend all day avoiding him. I was so overwhelmed by him that I would start shaking in the wings before my entrance. Then, during the walk across to where Horace/Mr. Roberts was standing with his chief officer, the shaking would stop. When I got up on the hatch with all the crew watching and had to talk to Horace/Mr. Roberts, looking into his eyes, I would start shaking again. My whole body would do it. I wouldn’t know where my next breath was going to come from. It was like being a collapsible paper Halloween skeleton just before the string breaks. Sometimes I would stammer—but maybe I didn’t, because nobody ever mentioned it. As I write this, I think his eyes had to remind me of my father’s. They were clear and blue and noncommittal. And they gave me a feeling of being loved and left out at the same time.

The scene goes like this: The ship’s crew has been studying, through binoculars, two nurses taking showers in their quarters on a nearby hospital ship. Ensign Pulver has invited one of them, me, onboard. I come on and am introduced to the captain. In the course of the small talk between us, the crew gathers, watching closely, until one of them, in a vigorous argument with his buddy, shouts, “I’m telling you, I know! That’s the one with the birthmark on her ass!” I look around, and he’s pointing at me. The laugh was clocked every night. Sometimes it went on for three minutes. Everyone contributed to it. The exact length of the laugh was recorded in the stage manager’s log and sent back to the New York office daily.

It was the most acting anyone in the crew got to do all night, and they seized the opportunity. Each actor had his own personal reaction—a double or triple take, mugging—practiced and kept fresh in front of the mirror during the day. One fellow downstage left managed to let a rolled-up red handkerchief unfurl slowly from his hand at the word ass. This is why directors call for brush-up rehearsals, to take out the improvements so the audience doesn’t lose track of what the play is about. I think I was shaking through the whole scene.