My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir (19 page)

We rented
Sid and Nancy,
a film about the Sex Pistol’s Sid Vicious, so we could get a look at punk. The film blew our socks off, it was so good, and it gave us a new ending: Vreeland sits on the floor, searching through a spread of fashion photographs as the lights fade, and the house fills with the coke-addled roar of Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious singing “My Way.” We loved it, Daniel, Mark and I. They hated it, Sybil and her gang.

T
HERE IS THIS PHENOMENON CALLED
“
PILOT SEASON
,”
SOMETHING
like the salmon run. For a couple of weeks, casting agents put actors on tape for dozens of new television pilots.

Being put on tape means it doesn’t matter so much what you wear from the waist down, but eyeglasses are a problem. I’m blind without mine. I try to memorize the lines, but I’m not a quick study, and if I lose them I can’t see the script, all of which makes for a stuttering mess. The actor usually reads with the casting assistant, a perky young woman who is standing in for Sean Penn or Johnny Depp. “Read it again, and this time don’t act so much,” says the young person. I think how easy it would be to be good if you were actually reading with Sean or Johnny. The fact is, I have auditioned on tape eight thousand times over the years, and I have rarely, if ever, been hired as a result.

A big problem for me is the generic role. “Janice, the boss’s secretary, smart, wears two-toned shoes, takes no prisoners.” “Millie, a good egg, older than she looks, but doesn’t like to admit it.” I couldn’t get a handle on them. It didn’t enter my mind when I started out in this business that I would have to impersonate ordinary people.

T
HE ACCEPTED GOAL OF A
N
EW
Y
ORK STAGE ACTOR IS TO LAND A
running part on a television series. In the seventies and eighties at least, it meant leaving cold, filthy New York City to live in sunny Los Angeles and make a lot of money. Here’s the deal: They put you on tape in New York, the tape went out to the suits in L.A., and if they liked what they saw, they flew you out there for the second audition.

Here’s the scenario I went through on a weekly basis for most of the seventies: It’s six in the evening, I’m on my second vodka gimlet, and the phone rings; it’s the agent, Richard, who just got off the phone with the Coast, where it’s only three in the afternoon. The pilot people I went on tape for yesterday want me to fly out at six tomorrow morning for a second audition. While I’m trying to get a grip on this bit of information, he launches into the deal: “A seven-year contract, guaranteed ten out of thirteen episodes, four thousand per episode the first year, going to four-five the second year, five the third, five-five the fourth, six the fifth, and seven the seventh—”

“Waitwaitwait! SEVEN YEARS? I’m only auditioning for Christ’s sake!”

“Yes, but if they like you on the Coast, you’re hired, so the deal is made now.”

“Don’t I have to sign something?”

“No. If they want you, it’s a done deal.”

“But what if the part is no good? Can’t I see the script first?”

No. Seven years. Move to the Coast tomorrow for seven years to be on a show on which you don’t even know what the part is. But this was what actors dream of. Who cares what the show is? It’s L.A.! Beaches! Sunshine! Money!

E
VEN BEFORE THE PLANE LANDED, MY HAIR DIED
. P
ERFECTLY
healthy, bouncy hair lay down flat on my skull. Once on the tarmac, my eyes swelled up. I looked like a prizefighter.

A car would be waiting; I would be driven past oil wells pumping, pumping, pumping, then bungalow, bungalow, bungalow, rugateria, bungalow, bungalow. I was dropped at an office somewhere. I was dying in my woolens. A smiling blonde offered me a bowl of sprouts. Finally I was taken in to read for the suits. Lines like, “Gee, honey, you look pooped!” and “You want some coffee?” I was back on the red-eye to New York that afternoon.

I performed this ritual two or three times a year over a period of ten years. Every now and then I made the grade and filmed a pilot, which, fortunately, was not picked up. The roles I got cast in were generally wives or mothers who said things like, “Mamma mia!” and in the next breath, “So have a little chicken soup, already!” I asked the suits, what was she? Italian or Jewish?” I got blank looks. It eventually dawned on me that they wanted an all-purpose ethnic. Television doesn’t deal in specifics. They want to reach the broadest demographic. They’re selling soap. That’s why soap operas were called that: “Oxydol presents,
Young Doctor Malone
!”

When I bumped into New York actors who had moved out there, they shouted at me, “Isn’t this great? No more snow! No more graffiti, no muggers! Look at all this green! I play golf every day! Yatata-TA!” It’s true that in the seventies, at least, you could still get somewhere on the freeways, and there were Japanese workers tending lawns with noiseless bamboo rakes and making spectacular arrangements of delicious fruits and vegetables in the giant supermarkets that we didn’t yet have on the East Coast. In other words, it was the suburbs. I was terrified of suburbs. I ran from them to the city, to tall dark buildings and crowds and dirt and noise

I could not forgive the blandness of L.A., the boring buildings and rubbery shrubbery, even the birdsong was monotonous. You didn’t see people of color on the streets. You didn’t see
people
. Nobody walked. You could get arrested. There were hardly any sidewalks anyway. Everyone was in a car behind sunglasses. They could have been naked for all anyone could tell, and yet having just flown in from the East wearing all black, I felt impelled to head immediately to Rodeo Drive and spend a fortune on something in pastel tie-dye.

Once in a while a studio would incarcerate me in a fancy hotel for a few days. There would be a big fruit basket in the room, but the windows were sealed and there was no way to walk outside. I didn’t realize how essential to my well-being was the freedom to roam. Daily life in New York was nomadic: I walked everywhere in all kinds of weather, passing all kinds of people, window gazing, stopping for a coffee, shopping for a piece of fish. I needed to escape this prison. I rented a car. But because I was driving I couldn’t observe anything, and I didn’t have anyplace to drive to.

I
HAVE ALWAYS HAD A QUARREL WITH SHOW BUSINESS; ALWAYS WANTING
to run from it, but needing it, needing to be wanted somewhere. My first response to any job offer is invariably “no.” I feel like somebody’s trying to throw a net over me.

Actors can’t afford to offend casting agents by not reading for parts they’re suggested for. Only in a dream world would I ever hear my agent say to a casting agent, “Are you kidding? I refuse to let my client read for that! She’s way too good for it!” They can’t afford to do that any more than I can. But it’s always about the role. If it’s lousy, I don’t want to play it.

When a part is offered outright and I think it’s lousy, I can’t just say “no thank you.” Producers feel they are paying an actor an enormous compliment. Their incredulity is understandable. “She’s not married, she has no family, on what possible grounds is she saying no?”

I was always lousy at the business end; I resented having to be interviewed and having to keep up with photos and résumés. I stopped getting new photographs taken of myself after 1989. At least once a year the agent would ask me to send them a hundred new photos, and I wondered what the hell they were doing with them, throwing them out the window? I never seemed to have any on hand myself. When I looked in my file drawer I could never find any and I would think, Who the hell took them? I actually thought somebody must have removed them, it couldn’t have been me.

S
O NOW IT WAS
1993,
WE HAD BEEN PLUGGING AWAY FOR THREE
years, and making very little progress. We were writing and rewriting, shuffling the running order of stories around. We studied it to find what I kept calling the “MacGuffin.” I thought I might be making the word up, but it turned out to be real enough. A MacGuffin is the plot development on which the story turns, or the crucial moment for the protagonist.

In the
Rolling Stone
article, when asked if being fired from
Vogue
upset her, Vreeland said, “Oh yeah, but it didn’t last very long. How could it? I mean after all it wasn’t a tragedy. It wasn’t the end of anything.” This was all she said about it publicly, as far as we knew, but we finally realized the play needed a description of the way it happened. Condé Nast was famous for brutal evictions. The description of her last day was the only piece of writing I needed to do that didn’t come from her own lips, and it was the toughest.

Then in March of 1994, Murphy Davis, Bay Street Theater’s general manager, helped us arrange a backers’ audition at McGraw’s, a nightclub on West 72nd Street owned by a friend of Mark; we sent out a load of invitations.

This bar had a narrow upstairs room with a tiny stage mostly taken up by a grand piano. We needed something for me to sit on. While Mark and I were struggling to carry a settee up the narrow winding staircase, I completely lost my
joie de vivre
; this was the last straw, lugging my own sofa to perform in a bar. At my age. No more after this, I swore to myself, no more. This was the end of the line.

I needed help with the wig; I called Bettie O. Rogers, who had wigged me in Hartford when I did
False Admissions
there a month earlier, and bless her, she came down to wig me. The room was packed. I glimpsed my friend Carmine, the one who taught me Vreeland’s walk, sitting ringside.

The show opened with a recording of Maria Callas singing “Vissi d’arte.” A spotlight picked me out, listening to Callas. The music was supposed to fade after the first notes. The music didn’t fade. It went on and on and on as I sat there like a goddamned statue. It seemed to me we heard the entire aria. But it didn’t matter in the long run, because the reaction in the room was over the top. The next day I got a call from Nicky Martin.

I
HAD KNOWN
N
ICKY SINCE THE FIFTIES, WHEN HE WAS
J
OEL
L
EVINSON
. He was an actor then, charming and hilarious, quipping lines from Shakespeare to comic effect. I wanted to be his best friend. Twice over the years we were cast in the same shows, one an ill-fated Chicago production of
Blithe Spirit,
directed by and starring Ellis Rabb, in which Nicky played Edith, the maid, and I played Ruth, the boring wife. The second was Eva Le Gallienne’s ill-fated Broadway production of
Alice in Wonderland
. I was the Red Queen and Nicky played the Duck, the Dormouse, and the Train Guard. He had been teaching at Bennington College in Vermont for a few years when he decided he wanted to be a director. His friend Jack O’Brien had just called him. At the time, Jack headed the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. He knew that Nicky was trying to establish himself and asked if he had anything he’d like to direct in the smaller theater space out there the following season. Nicky had seen the show the night before and suggested it. It looked like we might have our first legitimate gig at the Old Globe.

I
N
A
PRIL
, M
ARK AND
I
WERE INVITED TO BREAKFAST WITH
J
ACK
O’Brien. Jack is an ebullient man, very funny and sharp. Nothing was definite, but we were hopeful. Jack called me the next day to ask if I wanted to play Lady Wishfor’t in his production of
The Way of the World,
starting in July. Did I ever! What a role!

Oh, the language! And instead of the lady’s maid, I was finally going to play the lady.

I
WAS THRILLED WHEN
N
ORMAN
L
EAR OFFERED ME A RUNNING PART
on the series
One Day at a Time
. I hadn’t seen the show, I was still in
The Royal Family,
but I immediately said yes because Lear was responsible for
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Maude, All in the Family,
and
The Jeffersons,
all great television comedies featuring stage actors. Lear loved stage actors. I didn’t have to audition for the role, he had seen me in
Gypsy
and he just offered it.

I gave my notice at
Royal Family,
and as soon as I was out, I sat down to watch an episode of
One Day at a Time
. Actually, Denny and I sat down, smoked a joint, and watched. Our jaws dropped, slowly. Even on pot, there was not a laugh in a carload. The series was about a single mother raising two daughters. It was one of the first shows on this subject and a big hit. Lear’s series were distinctive for mixing moral issues in with the comedy, issues like sexism, racism, pregnancy out of wedlock, and rape. Sometimes the fit was uncomfortable. The audience would be howling at Archie Bunker, when suddenly they heard Edith warbling that she’d almost been raped. The audience, pulled up by the shorthairs, muttered a confused, chastised,
“Ooooohhhh.”

In the case of
One Day at a Time,
the moral issues seemed to me to far outweigh the comedy. The show had Schneider, the apartment super, played by Pat Harrington Jr., wearing a cigarette pack in his rolled up T-shirt sleeve and a toilet seat over his head, but I didn’t think he was a bit funny. Oddly, offscreen he was hilarious. Real funniness in a person is something situation-comedy writers don’t seem to recognize. I’ve seen inherently funny actors like Alice Ghostley and Leonard Frey flattened out in sitcoms. There’s no room for their uniqueness. Anyway, it would be hard for Groucho Marx to be funny facing the glassy stare of the lead, Bonnie Franklin. Bonnie Franklin as mother of two teenage girls took her role as arbiter over moral issues very seriously.