Not Young, Still Restless (4 page)

They asked for a show of hands of everyone who’d be interested. Not one hand went up. Give up our prestigious futures in the theater and in motion pictures for what would so obviously turn out to be nothing more than a short-lived, ridiculous fad? Yeah, that’ll happen. As a proud, hardworking, theater-trained student of the esteemed Pasadena Playhouse, there was one thing of which I was “absolutely certain”: my future did not lie in some mythical box in people’s living rooms.

But on that day years later, on that picnic on the back lot of Universal Studios, I decided I didn’t want to be a New York stage actress after all. I wanted to stay right here in Hollywood, not to be a film actor but to take David Janssen’s advice and get in on the ground floor of television. Almost sixty years later I’m proud and grateful to still be working in this extraordinary medium.

I
t’s my educated guess that no matter what business you’re in and how proficient you are at it, there’s always something or someone around to make sure you’re humbled from time to time. Being a busy contract actress at Universal Studios was no exception.

In 1952 Ann Blyth, Gregory Peck, and Anthony Quinn made a film for Universal called
The World in His Arms
. When the film was released, six of us actresses were sent off to Alaska with Ann Blyth and some other contract players to promote the movie and to entertain the troops who were stationed there during the Korean War. We were honored and excited, until we found out what was really going on.

It seems that while we were gone, Universal, in constant search of new faces whether they had a shred of talent or not, quickly brought several gorgeous Miss Universe contestants to the studio, put them under contract, and cast them in any roles for which they might be even remotely appropriate—roles that would have been given to us contract actresses if we hadn’t been so conveniently out of town. So we returned from a long, exciting, exhausting trip to discover that not only had we been duped, but we’d also been temporarily and unceremoniously replaced by a group of international beauties who had no training and no acting experience whatsoever. It wasn’t the fault of the Miss Universe contestants, needless to say. We had no one else to thank but the studio executives who “adored” us but were only too happy to shove us aside at their convenience.

It shouldn’t have surprised us. Sophie Rosenstein had warned us from the very beginning that, in the end, “this is a business.” But even she seemed a little sheepish at the insult she had to add to our injuries. She called us into her office one day to inform us that we’d each been assigned our very own contestant to treat as a kind of “little sister,” to take under our wings and befriend—in other words, we were to be helpful, darling tour guides, chauffeurs, and confidantes to our potential replacements. Klass with a capital
K
or what? A contract is a contract, though, and Universal had one with my signature on it, so I wasn’t about to shoot myself in the foot by being uncooperative.

My new BFF was the very beautiful and oddly unhappy Miss Germany. I would have asked what she was so unhappy about, but it wouldn’t have been enlightening, since she didn’t speak a word of English and Universal provided interpreters only at publicity events. I promise you, I more than fulfilled my obligation. I showed her around the studio. I took her shopping. I took her to lunches and dinners with my friends. I posed with her for countless photos. And not once, no matter how much she seemed to be enjoying herself at any given time, did her undercurrent of unhappiness disappear.

I learned the sad, simple reason for it one day when I offered to drive her somewhere. I don’t remember where I thought we were going; I just knew that I was relying on her for directions. There was a lot of pointing and gesturing on the long drive to wherever, and only when we were almost there did I realize that she was directing me right toward the entrance of Los Angeles International Airport. I gave her a shocked “What are you doing?” look, to which she responded in the few words of English she’d managed to pick up: “I want to go home.”

Believe me, I sympathized, but in the end, I’m a survivor. I had no interest in finding out what fate awaited me if Sophie Rosenstein asked me if I happened to know where Miss Germany might be and I replied, “I put her on a plane back to Munich.” Ignoring the wails and racking sobs of my passenger, I did an immediate U-turn, drove straight to Universal, personally escorted one very unhappy fräulein into Sophie’s office, and hugged her good-bye. From what I was told, she was released from her contract and flown home the following day. For someone I barely knew, whose name I don’t even remember, I’ve thought of her often and imagined what it must have been like for her to be thrust into a town and a business that are overwhelming enough when they’ve been part of your dreams. Against your will, they could be a living nightmare. I hope she went on to have a wonderful life.

One of the Miss Universe contestants who was put under contract by Universal Studios and decided to stay was a stunning blond Miss Sweden named Anita Ekberg. She and I didn’t know each other well, but we were certainly friendly acquaintances, and we ran into each other on the lot several times a week. She took me by surprise one day when she pulled me aside in the commissary and asked for my help in her very thick Swedish accent that I won’t even try to re-create on paper.

“I’m doing a film with Tyrone Power,” she whispered, “and I think he’s so beautiful, but I can’t seem to get his attention. We’re shooting a big dance scene this afternoon, and I’ll be dancing in the background of a scene with him and Julie. What can I do? How can I get him to notice me?”

The film, it turned out, was
The Mississippi Gambler
, with Tyrone Power and Julie Adams. Anita was playing the uncredited role of the maid of honor. I had no idea what to tell her, so I just offered the only advice that came to mind.

“I don’t know, Anita, maybe just have your partner dance you right into Tyrone a few times. Sooner or later he’s bound to notice you, even if it’s just to ask you and your partner to knock it off.”

She actually seemed to think this might work and went skipping off to her wardrobe and makeup call. And I admit it, my curiosity got the best of me—I couldn’t resist strolling over to the set of
The Mississippi Gambler
that afternoon to watch Anita in action. Sure enough, there were Tyrone and Julie, both of them gorgeous, dancing away in front of the cameras on a crowded dance floor, surrounded by twenty or thirty couples dancing away in the background, Anita and her partner among them.

I would have advocated more subtlety than this, but before long Anita initiated a series of minor collisions with Tyrone and Julie that kind of escalated in intensity until finally Anita Ekberg virtually slammed into Tyrone Power and a romance was born. They became the darlings of the tabloids, with the help of the Universal publicity department, and there’s no doubt about it, they looked breathtaking together. It made me smile.

It was about five years later, I think, that I ran into Anita at a party with an escort who was most decidedly not Tyrone Power. In the brief private conversation between us, I found a gentle way to ask her if she and Tyrone were still together.

“Oh, no,” she said emphatically. “I’m not with him anymore, and I almost wish I’d never met him.”

It was the last thing I expected to hear after her almost frantic desperation to get his attention. “Why would you say that, Anita?” I asked her.

She began shaking her head with some mixture of regret and disbelief. “Terrible, Jeanne. Terrible in bed. You would not believe it, just terrible.”

Definitely
the last thing I expected to hear and almost too much information. But for those of you who’ve always wondered, there you have it, from a woman who seemed to know what she was talking about.

Not long after Miss Germany presumably landed in Munich and Anita Ekberg had collided her way into Tyrone Powers’s heart, it was time for Universal and me to negotiate a new contract. My agent and I were convinced that I deserved a raise. Universal was convinced I didn’t, and that $250 a week was really very generous of them. Both sides refused to give an inch, and in the end I left, excited to freelance and find out if I might have a future in television. For about a minute and a half I was offended that Universal didn’t appreciate me enough to give me the reasonable raise I demanded. But I quickly got a grip on two things I knew beyond a doubt: first, and yet again, that Sophie Rosenstein was exactly right, they don’t call it show
business
for nothing, and second, that I’d never let anyone define my worth, and I wasn’t about to start with Universal Studios.

I’ve always considered myself lucky, and it may be part of my longevity, that I grew up with my own sense of self and my own identity, rather than relying on other people’s opinions of me to form the foundation on which I’ve built my life. I’ve had my share of awards and great reviews. I’ve also had my share of comments similar to producer Hal Wallis’s assessment of me: “Jeanne Cooper just doesn’t do anything for me.” At the end of the day, no one is more of an authority on my strengths and my weaknesses than I am, or more responsible for the choices I’ve made, both good and bad.

M
y first guest-starring role on a television series,
The Adventures of Kit Carson
in 1953, changed my life in so many ways. Not only did I instantly realize that television was where I belonged, but I also met a woman who was to become a lifelong friend. Barbara Hale was an actress whose star was on the rise, and she also happened to be the wife of “Kit Carson” himself, the handsome and very talented Bill Williams. Barbara and Bill met while they were both under contract at RKO Radio Pictures in the 1940s, and when they married in 1946 they became the darlings of the RKO studio, both of them wonderful, great-looking people with whom audiences were beginning to fall in love.

Barbara and I clicked immediately. We liked each other, we had our careers in common, and we both loved a good game of poker and nothing more than a long, loud, convulsive laugh at any given opportunity. And one of those opportunities came along one night when Barbara was visiting the set.

We worked six days a week back then, and each of those days lasted as long as it took to complete that day’s schedule. So there we all were one dark midnight shooting a “night for day” outdoor scene—i.e., with the help of a whole lot of very bright lights, scenes shot during the night look as if they were taking place during the day. There was nothing unusual about shooting night for day. We’d all done it a million times.

But what set this particular night apart was that, just as the director yelled, “Action!” a hard, steady rain began to fall. Without backlighting, the rain was invisible. So was the black tarp that was quickly secured above our heads to keep us dry, high enough that it was off-camera . . . and, unfortunately, high enough that it couldn’t possibly accomplish its purpose. We gamely launched into a lengthy, rather emotional scene, professional enough that we acted as if there were no rain falling at all. My hair, though, didn’t care about professionalism and behaved exactly as hair behaves in the rain, getting wetter and flatter with every line of dialogue. We all did our best to ignore it, but the more I watched my scene mates trying desperately to keep a straight face as they looked at me, the more impossible it was for me not to fall apart, so that take after take after take was destroyed as we actors were reduced to a group of giggling, howling kindergartners. And no one laughed harder than I did, with the possible exception of our star’s wife, Barbara Hale.

Parenthetically, it’s worth mentioning that I rank the ability to laugh, and a sense of humor in general, as one of life’s greatest survival skills. If I couldn’t sit down from time to time and laugh myself senseless at things that could just as easily enrage me or destroy me, I’m sure I would have gone stark raving mad by the age of two. (Okay, occasionally laughter isn’t my first reaction to a situation, but I do get there sooner or later.)

Another great source of hilarity on
The Adventures of Kit Carson
was my trial-by-fire introduction to the brand-new world of series television. I didn’t think a thing about it because I simply assumed this was the way it was done. Looking back, I have no idea how we survived it.

My three episodes of
Kit Carson
were shot simultaneously, and I played three different characters. We were all slaves to maximum location efficiency, particularly when it came to outdoor scenes on the main street—we shot every one of them for all three episodes before moving on to another location. This left me galloping out of town on a pinto as, let’s say, Sally, the kindhearted saloon girl, and, with a change of wardrobe and hairstyle, riding back into town on a stagecoach as Janet, the hardware store owner’s wife. At some point Janet would take the stagecoach out of town again, only to return on a palomino with yet another wardrobe and hairstyle change appropriate to Amanda, the shy librarian. It was exactly as frenetic, confusing, and hilarious as it sounds, but it certainly made the rest of my television work seem like a walk in the park. One episode at a time? Seriously? After
The Adventures of Kit Carson
, I could handle that with my eyes closed.

I
n addition to living just blocks away from each other, and sharing the challenges of balancing our personal lives and our careers, my dear new friend Barbara Hale and I had the luxury of working together many times, starting with a film called
The Houston Story
, which was almost more dramatic behind the scenes than it was on-screen. It originally starred the magnificent Lee J. Cobb, fresh from his unforgettable performance in
On the Waterfront
, but unfortunately, much of it was shot on location in the oil fields of Texas. In August. Enough said? One day during the rehearsal of an especially physical scene, the director, William Castle, noticed that Lee was looking like a man in serious physical trouble—gray skin, shortness of breath, dizziness, barely able to stand. A few hours later, Lee was in the hospital, suffering from a near-fatal heart attack. He was replaced by the suave, dark-haired Gene Barry, who looked about as much like Lee J. Cobb as I did, and somehow the film was completed without any actual casualties.