I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir (28 page)

She was going with an Italian boy, Greg Antonacci, while
I Ought to Be in Pictures
was trying out in L.A., prior to moving to New York. They were in love, but Greg set one condition for marriage: that she give up acting in general and the Neil Simon play in particular. Joey and I liked Greg. When Dinah told us she was thinking of leaving the play, in which she had the lead, in which she was the “I” of
I Ought to Be in Pictures
, we were both stunned. Joey and I talked to her for hours. “You can’t back out of this, only once in a lifetime do you get this opportunity”—something I knew only too well. Hadn’t I left her father when he’d given me the same ultimatum, “If you take this play we’re through”?

Greg had a strong hold on her. Joey and I set up a meeting with Dinah and Greg. Greg was easy and charming, laid-back. He agreed with everything we said, but he was unmovable on the question. If Dinah opened the play in New York, they were through. “Call me chauvinistic, call me backward, call me anything you want. That’s my condition.”

“Greg, do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Then—?”

“Sorry, that’s it,” he said, leaning back with his arms over the
chair, totally relaxed. Dinah, sitting back, listening to her life being squeezed into one young man’s concept of how she should live as a wife, as a woman, got it. It freed her. Greg, not long after, married a nice girl and had a family.

Dinah opened the play in New York. I was in the audience, openmouthed. It was an out-of-body experience. I had never seen an actor so relaxed, so comfortable onstage. It was her home, her living room. No nerves, not like me. On opening night she gave a delicious performance, lovable and quirky and original. She won a Tony. Her first time onstage. Isn’t that something? Her date for the Tonys was Bruce Willis—you know, the then-bartender of a popular joint, Café Central, on Columbus Avenue.

•   •   •

W
e’d lived in the Red House for eight years. Oh my God, the discussions, the people, the soul, the fun—we were the center of the world.

The view was gorgeous at the Red House, because it sat high on a ridge, facing the Pacific Ocean, with green grass all around. The sunset happened over the water, shifting from crayon-yellow to orange to pink to purple to ink panoramically.

The work I was doing at the time was beautiful, the talent I was moderating at the Actors Studio, my own wonderful, endless challenges as an actor and then as a director. We were greedy, sexy, happy, stoned on ourselves and on one another. Gobbling everything and one another up.

Warren, Jack, Brenda, Michael, Goldie, Julie, Waldo, Ron and Iva Rifkin, Lee Strasberg, John Schlesinger, Hal, Oscar Levant, our kids, their Malibu friends, their moms and dads, Easter egg hunts organized by Peter Yarrow, Halloweens, July Fourth sunsets on the beach. Heaven.

I
’d been nominated for an Oscar three times, I’d finally won one, and the next picture I was offered was
Airport ’77,
a formula disaster movie. Who was in it? Jack Lemmon, for one, and Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten and Jimmy Stewart. We all knew the score. One for the money, two for the show. This one was definitely for the money. A big, scary, special-effects airplane movie. I had it written into my contract that when the ocean breaks through the fuselage and pours torrents into the plane, a stunt double would take my place. When it comes to drowning, as Lee Strasberg would say as he stared at the ocean, his feet planted in the sand, “Eh. I don’t want to get involved.”

My dialogue was so stilted that I hired my good, funny friend Harvey Miller to rewrite my lines, and do it in such a way that it wouldn’t interfere with the lines of the other actors. The producer, an old hand with great Greta Garbo stories to tell, said, “Sure, anything you want!”

My character was a brittle rich woman married to Christopher Lee (of
Dracula
fame); she is not someone you want around in an emergency. Olivia de Havilland is traveling with a black female companion
(whom she later saves, of course). My old friend George Furth was there, too, playing a cranky person.

I forget if our plane is hit by lightning or what brings it down over the ocean. But the plane slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor, intact, and stays there, the air miraculously still circulating in the cabin.

Everybody’s a good sport about it but my character. I’m a real pain in the ass. Nobody can stand me, not even my husband, Christopher Lee. And then I really cross the line. I become hysterical, lose it, and charge the doors that are keeping the ocean from flooding in on us.

The stewardess was none other than Brenda Vaccaro, my great friend in real life. Brenda decks me. I fall to the floor of the plane, out of commission. She’s saved the day.

Brenda and I took longer to do our fight scene than any of our other scenes, because we fell down laughing for three takes. The wonderful absurdity of my turning the heavy wheel to open the plane door, her hand on my shoulder, turning me to look at her cute face, then doing our rehearsed one, two, three punches and shoves, just broke us up. My legs were jelly, I was wheezing with laughter—it was the closest I’d gotten to being in a school play. Sympathy for our nervous young director pulled us together just enough to get through it.

The big climax of
Airport ’77
, what the audience is squirming in their seats for, is when this plane at the bottom of the ocean is inundated by water. The filming took place on a huge soundstage, with the plane suspended in a big tank of water. Two giant barrels of water were set above the plane. When it was time to be flooded, a stuntman was placed in one of the plane seats, the barrels were pulled over by stagehands, tons of water poured out, and the stunt person was deluged, swimming upward in what had become a foaming ocean of water eight feet high.

I watched from an overhead grid, safe and dry, thinking how clever I was to avoid drowning contractually. I wondered who else had been as wise as I. “All right. Who wants to be first?” said the producer using a bullhorn, taking over from the director. Silence, then, “Oh, me, me!” came a voice from the rafters. Olivia spent her days climbing the rafters, watching the action below, schmoozing with the stagehands high above. “Me! I want to do it!” My jaw dropped as I watched Olivia, a seventyish daredevil heroine, perched eagerly on her seat in the plane while tons of water arched and fell on her, then shake her little head as she bobbed up to the surface, smiling.

I let a few more actors drown before I went down to the plane and took my seat.

“Lee,” the producer yelled, “we have your stunt double ready.”

“What stunt double? No, I don’t need a stunt double. I’m fine.”

He: “You sure? She’s right here!”

Me: “No. I want to do this, really. Really.”

The DP set up an eye light—an inky, it’s called—floating on the water after I drowned so my dead face was lit properly. Even dead I needed to be beautiful. If ever a character deserved to die, it was me. But in the end, at least I died almost as bravely as Olivia de Havilland.

O
ne day the owners of the Red House called and said they wanted to double our rent. Of course they did. We were paying something like $750 a month, but the request gave Joey the idea of buying land and building a house. I couldn’t understand why. We’d been so happy renting, first the Pool House, then this one. I’d always rented. My parents rented at 706 Riverside Drive.

“It’s against my principles to own,” I said. “It’s an alien idea.” I’d never owned anything but Uncle, our ancient Bentley.

When my money manager sided with Joey, I bought a large piece of land that Joey found on Zumeriz Drive, on the ocean side of the Pacific Coast Highway. We rented an interim house while the new house was built, which we called the White House, in the Colony again, on the ocean.

But the true enchantment was gone. The love affair between the Red House and Dinah and Belinda, between the Red House and Joey and me, lost its magic.

Our new house was Joey’s baby. Joey found the lot, planted silly tiny sticks to grow into trees, and acted as foreman. I wanted the house from
Meet Me in St. Louis
, a big turn-of-the-century house for a
family for all time. I wanted to float a house from San Francisco down the coast to Malibu. The new house would be built on a hill overlooking the ocean. There was an orchard attached. I’d been wrapped up in Strindberg, and I was broke.

While we were in the White House I developed a script from another Strindberg play. I was beginning to shift my thinking to directing, giving myself a new rock to step up to over the rushing waters. Someone, a man, came up with enough money to film it. Most of the action took place at a summer home on the beach. Max Schell, Anjelica Huston, Carol Kane, and Richard Jordan were set. Anything was possible. Didn’t I film
The Stronger
over a weekend at the AFI? We were rehearsing when the phone rang. The backer was sorry, but he was putting his money into a road movie. I’ll never forget Max Schell’s wise eyes as I reluctantly faced my cast, who had given their time, worked for free. “That’s all right, Lee,” Max said. “It rarely works out, the money. We did good work.” Bless Max.

Airport ’77
,
The Swarm
,
Damien: Omen II
, and my mother built my beautiful Green House with the big white porch. Saying yes to everything is in an actor’s DNA. “I’m working” is the optimal phrase. To keep making a living, you have to say yes to second-rate films but try your best to do first-rate work, and it’s possible. Second-rate films I’ve acted in were filled with famous employable actors, whose money advisors told them, “Take the money and run.”

My parents came for a visit when Joey and the architect were starting to build the new house. My directing project had just fallen through, and I had grabbed
The Swarm
for the money. The story is about killer bees from Africa heading straight for a small town in America. My part is a valiant newswoman who sights them, runs into the town square and warns, “The bees are coming! The bees are coming!” Big names in this movie, too. It was one of Michael Caine’s first American films. He played an Army major. When I, the reporter,
tried to convince him of the dangers, Michael Caine the actor fell asleep standing up. Just as David Janssen had years before. Our director, Irwin Allen, had me yell, “The BEES are coming! The BEES are COMING!” endlessly. “THE BEES ARE COMING!”

The nursery school on Long Island was doing well, and I asked my father for a loan. When he heard it was for building a new house, he refused. “Folly!” he said. My father loathed Joey. He would not give money to anything Joey was connected with.

For my father, respect was everything. He asked me to contact Mike Wallace; he wanted me to get him on
60 Minutes
. I told him I didn’t think I had that kind of power. He insisted.

I lied. “They’re booked solid, Dad.”

“The values in this country are disintegrating. I think it’s important they hear what I have to say.”

I could feel his need for a platform. Didn’t I want one myself? I hired a camera crew. They filmed him on the big porch of the White House. He itemized the Boy Scout oath. I think there are ten tenets—close to the Ten Commandments. He was passionate and urgent and simplistic. Maybe he thought the Boy Scout ethos would connect with an audience.

In the background, on a white bench in front of the window, sat my mother. Her straight, shiny hair was now white, a self-conscious smile frozen on her face. He exhorted for an hour. She demurred when I asked her to go on camera, sweet.

“Dear, have you heard back from Mike Wallace yet?”

I continued to come up with all the legitimate reasons both Mike and
60 Minutes
were booked up, until months later, when I had to tell my dad they were not open to personal statements.

He was hurt and baffled. He wanted to leave a mark on the world. Longed to leave one.

After they returned to New York, my mother secretly emptied her hidden account and sent me the money. The loan would be paid back to her monthly, in installments. I paid faithfully, knowing how difficult it must have been for her to hide the “mad money” she had hoarded over many years. It was a real sacrifice on her part.

Joey had given up the commercial business to build the new house. He and the great DP Billy Fraker had been partners. Business was good, humming in fact, but it wasn’t
Mad Men
; it just paid the bills. But Joey hated the clients. Joey understands money. I never have. With me turning from acting to directing, he felt we needed something to fall back on and that only property would do it: A valuable house on valuable land in Malibu equaled a valuable asset.

Joey turned foreman. He was at the site every morning at six. He oversaw every stick of wood, every stone put into place. Shortly after the house was framed, a series of storms hit Malibu. The ocean rose higher and higher until it swept through the houses on the ocean side of the Colony. We all worked to sandbag the beach in front of us. Students from Pepperdine joined in. Bruce Dern’s house was flooded. Nobody could collect insurance for damages because ocean invasion was expected.

Then, out of nowhere, a tornado whipped through Malibu Canyon, aimed right for our property, and picked up the house we were building. Picked the frame of the house right up and blew it sixty feet.

Well, we had tornado insurance! Some obscure paragraph in the policy covered tornadoes, which paid for reframing the house and gave us enough extra to build a porch that encircled the whole house. Just like
Meet Me in St. Louis
.

While I was making
Damien: Omen II
in snowy Wisconsin, I saw the color green I wanted the house painted. Larry Hauben mixed the paint in a mixing ceremony. Joey and I went to Chicago to find old
stained glass recovered from turn-of-the-century houses. One huge panel went in the top of the window in the living room. The other was for the front door.

No one made a more beautiful house than Joey did. He had landscaped the grounds. The little tree sticks he planted grew into thirty-foot-high eucalyptus trees that hid the house from our neighbors. The rose garden, filled with lavender roses, was always in bloom. Green grass covered the hill that sloped gently down to the odd little wooden bridge leading to the house. White stairs led up to the wraparound porch. On the ocean side, a big terrace covered in flagstone, with little shoots of grass outlining each one, was bordered by a low stone wall to protect the shrubs and our occasional marijuana plant, a favorite target of the neighborhood teenagers.

I have a black-and-white photo of my gray-haired parents sitting close together on the porch, looking out at the ocean. I remember how I felt when I took the picture and felt a sudden lurch in my heart, realizing for the first time that there was an end to life. To their lives.

•   •   •

I
had flown from L.A. to New York to do the television version of Thomas Wolfe’s great novel
You Can’t Go Home Again
. I was playing Aline Bernstein, the New York woman that Wolfe was having an affair with. She was rich and older than he was. Chris Sarandon was playing Wolfe. Ralph Nelson was directing. On the plane I remembered Aline Bernstein coming to the Neighborhood Playhouse years before to lecture on the theater. I was seventeen. As she walked down 52nd Street toward Fifth Avenue, a fellow student and I deviled her. “Mrs. Bernstein, Mrs. Bernstein, talk about Tom Wolfe.” She took her hearing aids out so she couldn’t hear us and walked serenely toward Fifth Avenue. Now I was playing her.

Did I tell you that Gladys died? My beautiful spunky girl was
eaten up with cancer. She’d married Waldo by then. I took a cab straight from the plane to Gladys’s apartment. “I’ve gone from forgetting names to forgetting my lines,” I cried. “My head is like Swiss cheese. I’m painting myself into a corner.”

Gladys was pale. “I have a pain in my stomach.”

“You always have a pain in your stomach,” I snapped. “I’m in a panic, what am I going to do?”—ignoring her complaint, annoyed, in fact.

My darling Gladys, lying white in a white hospital bed, trying to be practical about losing her black curly hair, her long eyelashes. “I know where to get great wigs,” I told her. Waldo was massaging her small white feet, warming them. “Here,” she said, handing me a pot of yellow crocus. “These will bloom next year. If they bloom next year, so will I.” I took the little pot. We looked long and hard at each other.

Waldo died six or seven years later in another hospital room. His daughter Jennifer Salt was with him, all the time. Waldo was never without a joint. I have a huge black-and-white drawing Gladys did of Waldo’s hand holding a joint. For years his breath rattled when he talked. His lungs were shot. He wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop.

•   •   •

A
s the Green House was nearing completion, Joey started arguing for adding a stone wall and a gate to the property. If we had to sell the house, he felt, it would guarantee the sale. This meant I had to take a movie in Canada,
Visiting Hours
, which I’d already turned down. It was a B-minus movie, and I was the lead. Michael Ironside, Bill Shatner, and Linda Purl were set to costar.
The Swarm
and
Airport ’77
were awful films, but they had huge casts and budgets. There was safety in numbers and anonymity, and everybody paid their bills. This one was a damsel in distress movie. I’m a TV reporter attacked by a crazed man
(Ironside) who chases me through the corridors and cellars of the hospital I’ve been taken to. My wardrobe was a hospital gown.

I did the movie in Quebec, where everything was French and charming, except I heard on the radio one day that they still had signs in the countryside that said
NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED
.

I went to the film’s opening at the big Loews on Sunset Boulevard. What I realized in that dark Loews theater was that I could no longer get away with looking young and beautiful. The train was coming. I was on the tracks. My age was showing.
Shampoo
was over,
The Swarm
was here, and
Visiting Hours
. If I’d been given any gift from the blacklist, it was a strong sense of reality. My glory days in wonderland were numbered.

And what about my earning days? I knew nothing about money, except that I had to make it to pay for everything. And I made it by acting. But I had to be asked. I had to be wanted. Wanted. Wanted.

I’d been given everything this town, Hollywood, had to offer.

After the AFI, I could see another rock in the rapids I could jump to. Not only could, but wanted to. Needed to. A director was born.

The actor in me had committed some kind of suicide. An actor who cannot retain the writers’ lines is unemployable. As unemployable as I was when I was blacklisted.

I took myself out of the picture. I put other actors in the picture, on the screen. Onstage. With the relief that I had a new talent and was safe.

I didn’t know how old I was anymore. I’d blocked it out. I didn’t want to know. I knew, generally, and didn’t like what I knew. I was owed twelve years. On the big screen I was looking my real age. I either had to move to older character parts or concentrate on a new career.