My First Hundred Years in Show Business: A Memoir (25 page)

Somewhere in here, Mark and I went together to see a woman therapist he knew. Whatever took place in there, the anger dissolved itself into a dew. This was the first time I realized how different his goals were from mine. I wanted to reestablish my acting chops and also to create a little gem of a play. He wanted a commercial hit. He once remarked that I thought “hit” was a dirty word. Nothing wrong with wanting a big success, why else would he devote so much effort if it wasn’t to aim for fame and money? At least in the end the play established his credentials as a writer.

U
P TO THIS POINT, WE HAD FOUGHT THE NOTION OF A BIOGRAPHICAL
play. As we demonstrated in the Bay Street production, neither of us was interested in a happy, or any kind of conventional ending. Ironically, we kept finding out that for the play to work, in order to create belief in the character, we needed as many details of conventional life as we could pack in.

The truth of what had happened to Mrs. Vreeland after she was fired seemed almost too perfect, too much like a fairy-tale ending. I was told the Metropolitan Museum had reluctantly hired her. Friends in high places like Bill Blass and Jackie Kennedy persuaded them to do so. They wanted her to at least have a sinecure, her name on a door. Nobody predicted what was actually going to happen. I couldn’t imagine how I could relay this information without resorting to lengthy tracts of exposition. I disliked the idea of the audience needing to have prior knowledge to appreciate it.

I started with the idea of Vreeland trying to avoid a phone call from a curator at the Met: he wants to talk to her about a job there. She mutters, “Why is everybody trying to put me in a museum?” I thought of the times I had been out of work and dying for a job when an offer would come—a lead role in a play, it would be a six-month run in Alaska. I was walking along a stretch of road upstate I had been walking for the past five years, addressing the trees in Vreelandese, when the words flew into my head: “I don’t care if they’ve got the Shroud of Turin in there! I am not interested.” I didn’t have the faintest notion what the Shroud of Turin was; I must have been channeling Vreeland, but it struck me as the perfect expression of her repugnance for the job. Finally we had a satisfying ending: the lights going down on her vigorously refusing the job on the phone, while describing at length what she would do if she took it.

The day I walked into the Westside Theater and saw the set, I nearly wept. The house was a perfect size, 250 seats and at last we had a proscenium. The designer, Jim Noone, had created a perfect replica of the Garden in Hell. Real flowers couldn’t have competed with the gorgeous silk peonies, parrot tulips, Madonna lilies, and quince branches I was given.

A
S
V
REELAND
, I
WANTED TO PUT HER HANDS ON SOMETHING
; there’s something fascinating to me about the way people in the fashion world handle fabrics so authoritatively. So we wrote into the script a chair with a slipcover that’s not quite to her liking. Once or twice she goes over to it and gives it a tug. Then at some point she picks up the
Post
to read the rest of the article that Mark wrote:

She puts the
Post
down, looks the chair, goes over to it and rips the slipcover off and throws it on the floor. Later in the play, she picks the slipcover up and, while talking, gathers it up and places it in the chair like a pillow.

The slipcover that Michael Sharp made in Sag Harbor was a lightweight flowered chintz that flew off with one tug, and when gathered into a ball it transformed itself into a pillow with a flower magically placed dead center.

I could not seem to get Nicky to recognize the chair’s importance. At the Westside, the cover was a bulky upholstery fabric that wouldn’t slide off or bundle up easily, and the chair itself was placed like a lonely relative in an upstage corner, well out of my line of vision. I couldn’t risk arguing the point with him, I was afraid he would blow up. I had already experienced this in San Diego the day he arrived a half-hour late for rehearsal and found that I had gone ahead and started with the stage manager. He must have seen it as a threat to his authority. The slightest objection could turn his charm into vitriolic screaming.

A
SIDE FROM THE CHAIR, WE FINALLY HAD WHAT
M
ARK AND
I wanted: preshow music, Mabel Mercer singing “From This Moment On” with no joy-killing interruptions, and an intermission. For Françoise, the maid on the intercom, we had the beautiful voice and impeccable accent of Jacqueline Chambord, the head of the Alliance Française. My costume—simple black trousers, black cashmere sweater, and low-heeled black pumps custom-made but nonetheless agonizing—was put together by Michael Krass. I already had the jewelry: the tusk necklace and a pair of heavy bone bracelets I had found in a Turkish shop in the Village. David Segal was responsible for the lighting; and I had Ira Mont, the prince of stage managers, thoroughly professional, a meticulous bell ringer and door buzzer. I could have been lonely backstage, but I managed to persuade Bettie O. to be my aide-de-camp in the dressing room. Along with the box-office guys and the house manager, we were one happy little family.

It occurred to me that the last time I did something like this was the
Arsenic and Old Lace
performance for my school’s PTA. It was okay for me to be the star when I was the only one onstage. It was the only possible way. Although, at one point in this journey, I remember Mark complaining that I was “playing Vreeland like a supporting player.” Old habits die hard.

We opened on a Tuesday. I had made it a rule a long time ago to never read reviews after an opening but this time I was told to take a peek at the
Times
the following Sunday and there was a half-page photograph of me as Vreeland with a lovely review below it. There may have been some caveats—I heard that the
Times
’ Ben Brantley’s review of the Manhattan Theater Club show had not been great, so the producers wouldn’t let him come back to rereview it—but it just didn’t matter. The houses were packed. It was a hit, a palpable hit.

Suddenly there were publicity events, fashion-show appearances, book signings—
D.V.
was republished with an introduction written by me. I was suddenly an authority on acting, asked to give drama-school graduation addresses. I didn’t enjoy these occasions. What could I tell them? “Don’t do it”?

The dressing room at the Westside was a narrow space and people who wanted to see me after the show were asked to wait in the house. Every night, I came out to meet the most surprising array of notables: Esther Williams (“I’m a bathing-suit designer now!”), Debbie Reynolds, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bulgari of Bulgari Jewelry, Princess Marella Agnelli, Grace Mirabella (who replaced Vreeland at
Vogue
), as well as theater people like Eileen Atkins, Elaine Stritch, Ben Gazzara, Lauren Bacall (“I knew her, you know.”). I was quite abashed to see Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim waiting to see me. And then there were the people who had worked with Vreeland and loved her, talking to me about her with tears in their eyes. The only person who insisted on coming backstage was Bea Arthur, who crashed into the dressing room bellowing, “Mary Lou-EEESE!” and knocked Bettie O. into the coat hangers on the wall.

One night when I mentioned Edwina d’Erlanger, a society name from a former era, a gaunt old couple in ancient finery sitting in the second row murmured reverently, “Oh! Edwina!” Another night as I made my entrance, I heard Carol Channing growl, “Di-anna!”

And then there was the Vreeland family. I was very glad they were pleased with the play. Freckie and his wife came from Morocco, and took me to the 21 Club after the show. Mrs. Vreeland’s older son, Tim, sent me a long, loving, handwritten letter from California. Alexander reappeared, apparently satisfied this time. He brought his tow-headed children to the show, who scrambled onto the set afterwards, exclaiming over the familiar objects of their great grandmother’s living room. Finally there was Nicky, Diana’s other beloved grandson who had become a monk. He arrived in his saffron robes with a scarf for me from the Dalai Lama. He looked at me with tears in his eyes: “Did you love my grandmother?” I said I did, I did. I still do.

We ran for eleven months. It took a year for my feet to recover. Having worked for such a long time on Mrs. Vreeland’s stories, her voice and mannerisms, she was deeply embedded in me, and there were times onstage when I had the sensation of being out of my body, floating above the lines; I felt the audience breathing with me. Actors rarely get the chance to inhabit a role this long, which is too bad. I feel extremely lucky to have had it.

I couldn’t have done this play until most of my family was dead. I could not have withstood their lack of encouragement. Taffy was still alive, but after confronting her, the articles about actors in mental institutions finally stopped coming; she sent flowers instead.

My family believed in cremation. After the deaths of my mother, father, and brother, stones bearing their names and dates were placed in the family plot in the cemetery in Sherman, Connecticut. When we laid the stone for my brother, I took the opportunity as the last of the line to lay one for myself. The stone is carved with my name, date of birth, and the words: “She’s the best thing in it.”

T
HINGS DEFINITELY CHANGED
. T
HE ROLES GOT A LOT BETTER
. I was cast as the blind, cancer-ridden mother in John Guare’s
Bosoms and Neglect
at New York’s Signature Theater. It was one of the best roles I’ve ever had, right up my alley. The second act of the play is one long battle between me in my hospital bed and my son. I was lying in the bed in the rehearsal hall one day when Guare came up to me and said, “You know, you’re not really in bed.” This mysterious remark was the best direction I could have gotten: she may have been dying, but she had the force of a blast furnace.

I got the part of Fräulein Schneider in the Roundabout Theater’s 1998 revival of
Cabaret
. I wanted it—it was the perfect follow-up to
Full Gallop
. But it turned out to be a bitch of a role to play. Originally written for Lotte Lenya, the queen of Weimar Germany, both of her songs “So What?” and “What Would You Do?” were humorless dirges. The German accent was another bugaboo. To sing, “So vat? Hoo cahrs,” and “Vat vud yoo doo?” over and over wasn’t easy, let me tell you. On the other hand, this was the first time I played a woman who is kissed by a man.

I thought the director, Sam Mendes, was terrific. I liked him and I think he liked me, but he made my life hell. Instead of giving encouragement, he kept reinforcing my doubts about my ability. He made me sit face-to-face with him and sing my song while he interrupted with comments like, “No self pity!” and “Don’t be maudlin!” Of course the last thing I wanted was to be maudlin, but this is no way to get a performance out of an actor.

Another time the composer, John Kander, whom I had known since
Flora the Red Menace,
took me into a room to coach me. John is a very dear man, a friend, but his special coaching only made me more certain I was not coming up to the mark. I simply needed time to develop the material.

An actor can bulge to huge proportions and then in less time than it takes to cough they can shrivel to a speck of dust. We’re like fever dreams. After our first run-through in the rehearsal hall, Sam gave notes, and in front of everybody he said to me, “I didn’t see anything going on in your eyes.” I asked him afterwards if could he please take me aside to give notes. He quickly apologized; he knew he shouldn’t have done it, but I think in some strange way he enjoyed embarrassing me.

The great thing about Sam was that he knew exactly what he wanted. Our entrances and exits were precisely timed. The show moved like a smooth machine. He spent a great deal of time on the sound, getting it right. The interior of the Henry Miller Theater on West 43rd was gutted and fitted out with tables and chairs. Sam had a tussle with
Playbill
magazine over not wanting them given out at the start because this interfered with the audience’s illusion of being in an actual cabaret.

During tech rehearsals the curtain bows were practiced. I noticed that each lead was given a single bow except for Ron Rifkin who played Herr Schultz and myself; we came out together. During a break I went up to Sam and asked why we couldn’t have separate bows. He said Ron was afraid that if he came out after me the applause might drop. I was stunned. I didn’t usually give a crap about bows, but this wasn’t right. “Then why doesn’t he come out before me?” Oh no, oh no, the bigger the billing, the later the bowing. That’s the rule. Though I believe our billing was of equal size. I grumbled some more and Sam said, “Oh, Mary Louise, don’t be so petty! Bows don’t mean anything.” I looked him in the eye: “You know as well as I do, it’s all about perception.” He sighed. I stared at him. Finally he said he would speak to him. But he didn’t, and I couldn’t bring myself to make a stink.

It’s interesting to note that the
Times
gave
Cabaret
a lukewarm review, because from the first preview on it was a huge success. Celebrities swarmed to it. Every night after the show when I opened my dressing room door, all of them seemed to be standing there: Billy Crystal, Kirk Douglas, Tom Waits, Emma Thompson, blah blah blah.