By Myself and Then Some (59 page)

Mme Pandit, Ambassador to Great Britain, came to have tea with me, bringing along a list of places to go, things to see, food to eat, and a copy of
A Passage to India
. Her Sikh in his pink turban stood guard half a flight below. I felt very clever telling Kenny More and Lee Thompson, our director, how much more I knew about India than they did. We agreed to have Mme Pandit’s highly touted chicken tandoori (roasted in paprika) on our first night in New Delhi. (When we got there and ordered the long-awaited chickens, they appeared – three red skeletons on a platter. Must have been an off night for chickens. We laughed and laughed.)

On arrival in Bombay, our first stop, I felt the impact of a totally different world. There is no way to imagine it – veiled women in saris, red dots in the center of their foreheads; colored turbans on men dressed in white; cows – sacred, of course – walking in the street. The streets teeming with humanity. In India, awareness grows of how many people are alive on this earth. We get so caught up in our own worlds, we forget. And some of us never know.

Jaipur, where we were to spend most of our time, is ravishing – known as the Pink City, all buildings being painted a desert pink. We lived in a hotel that had been the summer palace of the Maharajah – that was my first exposure to ceiling fans, and to peacocks strutting on the lawn outside my balcony. Strolling down the main street of Jaipur’s bazaar in my loud-printed Pucci pants and shirt, camera slung over my shoulder, arms covered with plastic bracelets, I was stared at by the inhabitants. This crazy woman! They’d never seen one in trousers, moving with such freedom – when they saw me coming (which was often, loving bazaars as I do), they would stare and laugh. I didn’t care. I was in a place far from anything I’d known, my attitude was open, abandoned; it was high adventure and I loved it. Everything fascinated me. In a conversation one day, my driver said, ‘You know, we are a very poor country.’ ‘Why, then,’ I said, ‘do you have so many children?’ Whereupon he just shrugged his shoulders and with a smile said, ‘It is
God’s will.’ No basis for discussion there. I was so full of curiosity – so anxious to see all I could see – that I was even impervious to the heat. I went to see a woman in Delhi who told my fortune – she was so convincing I almost believed I might really be a blade of grass or a butterfly next time around. And I met a wise old man who sat guru-like on a raised platform in his house, greeting people who had been sent to him or whom he had known in another world. At the end of the location Kenny More and I had a few free days and went to the Taj Mahal. I had been told to see it by dawn, dusk, moonlight. The automobile ride to Agra showed farmers winnowing wheat – a camel walking around a well bringing up water – everything primitive. We stopped for a jam session with a dancing bear, and the vultures sat and talked among themselves intermittently all along the way. There is always the fear that a wonder of the world can’t live up to expectations. Not so. The Taj Mahal was breathtakingly beautiful – if anything, better even than I’d been told. Beauty like that is too dazzling to be imagined.

I left India, with the assurance from another fortune teller that I would return, and headed for Rome. Two days there, then London to see my children before the Spanish location – they were well, thank God, and Mother was coming over to spend some time with them.

In Spain, Slim Hayward suggested we drive to Málaga, where Ernest Hemingway and his wife were staying with the Bill Davises. Oh, I’d love to meet him at last. Slim and Leland were having problems. He was due in Madrid soon, but something was going on, she wasn’t sure what; they’d had problems before, mostly due to her having to take so much responsibility for his children’s extreme crises. She was never one to shun responsibility of any kind, but she felt his failure to pay attention was out of order. They were his children, but he had a curious habit of going to sleep when problems arose.

We got to Málaga. She called the Davises, spoke to Papa H., who immediately invited us to dinner, saying he and A. E. Hotchner would come to collect us. I was eager to meet this larger-than-life character. He really turned on the charm – calling me Miss Betty, saying he’d heard about me from Slim, and he’d admired Bogie, and my behavior during Bogie’s illness made me okay in his book. Naturally I hung on his every word, and naturally Mary Hemingway, knowing him, was not too pleased. They were talking about hunting. She asked me if I was a
good shot – leaned over, saying, ‘Maybe you’d like to come with us sometime,’ placing a bullet on my plate. I didn’t blame her – obviously he’d given her a bad time in the past; just as obviously, his ego required feeding. A woman alone can’t win with wives. It’s a problem I’ve had all of my single life, and there’s no way to fight it. But I’ve never had conscious designs on married men, and I’m certainly less of a threat than most women, if only because I don’t really know how to go about such things casually. Only relationships that are total are possible for me.

Slim left for Madrid, and I went on to Granada. A few days later Leland called me to ask if I would read a new play by George Axelrod that he was going to produce in the fall. A great part for me. His enthusiasm was infectious, so I said of course I would love to. He would send it down immediately and call me from New York, where he was heading. I couldn’t figure that one out – he’d just arrived.

I read the play,
Goodbye Charlie
, as soon as it arrived and thought it was very funny. I’d been pondering my next move after my six months in London. I couldn’t move Steve and Leslie every six months from school to school, country to country; I’d have to settle somewhere. The stage had been my first love, an unfulfilled dream. I’d be terrified, but I was a chance-taker – I wanted to find out if I could do it. And it was the best reason I knew for a move back to New York. So when Leland called, I said yes. He told me he’d plan a long tour out of town and not too close to New York so we’d be spared the early opinions of the press – he wanted me to have time to feel secure on stage. The idea of the play was of two close men friends who spend a lot of their time screwing other men’s wives, but who’d rather be with each other than with any woman. One of them, Charlie, is shot escaping through a porthole. His punishment is to be returned to earth as a woman – and thereby hung the play. It
was
funny, and I was high on the entire plan.

I called Slim in Madrid to find her in a shattered state. Leland wanted a divorce. I felt so bad. I loved Slim and had never seen her like that before. There’d been rumblings that the new lady in Leland’s life was Pamela Churchill, ex-wife of Randolph Churchill, but neither of us could believe it. I went back to London to finish my film and be with my children, mother, and friends, make arrangements for the summer, and start thinking about the fall.

George Axelrod and Leland rang from New York – they’d thought
of Sydney Chaplin, who was living in Paris, for the leading man in
Goodbye Charlie
. George wanted to see Sydney and me together; they’d both come to London.

I felt good to know definitely what the future would be. A new chapter. And I was ready.

I said goodbye to Cadogan Place, all the local shopkeepers I’d become attached to, to my friends – and to London. I wished I had a proper reason to stay there – once you’ve lived in that city, it’s a hard place to leave. But there was suddenly a great deal to look forward to and I was full of hope. I was only sad to leave my friend Slim, who for the first time in the years I had known her was disjointed, purposeless, and except for her daughter Kitty, whom she adored, without a center to her life. We shared vulnerability, Slim and I, and I understood her fragility only too well. It brought home to me even more clearly how lacking in focus a life can be without work. It would be queer to embark on this unknown venture without her support and presence – she had been so much a part of my career, from its first shaky step. We said a teary goodbye at the airport, and me and mine boarded the plane.

W
e were met in New
York by Mother and Lee, George and Leland, and acres of press, who seemed to care that I was settling in New York and returning – if you could call it that – to the theatre.

After settling into the apartment which Joan Axelrod had found for me, I started to prepare for the stage. Daily voice lessons with Alfred Dixon, who’d coached everyone from Mary Martin to Katharine Hepburn – making peculiar sounds, trills, learning to speak from the diaphragm … I felt like an idiot at first, very self-conscious, but I knew I’d better damn well learn as much as I could before we started rehearsals or I’d be in big trouble. Leland had booked an eight-week tour, and, as promised, we started in Pittsburgh, where no one from New York would go. Then on to Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, gradually moving closer to New York. (We played the Nixon Theatre in Pittsburgh and the Ford Theatre in Baltimore – an indication of things to come.) We’d spend our last two weeks in Philadelphia, where New Yorkers
would
go, and open in New York in December. Mainbocher, who had quite a bit of theatre experience, would do the clothes, and George would direct the play – a first for him. Leland, a
very persuasive man, had convinced me that we could have no one better than George. ‘Look at John van Druten, who directed his own plays so marvelously.’ Leland was so sure, and I trusted him. And George was my friend. They both knew a hell of a lot more about the theatre than I did, both had nothing but consecutive hits, so who was I to question? I had my instinct and my taste, would say what I thought in the area of acting; but for a woman of strong opinions, supposedly outspoken and in control, it’s odd that I was quite prepared to do things almost entirely their way; to more or less turn myself over to them. Was it my basic desire to trust, be guided, be helped – as with Hawks? That may have had something to do with it. And of course I was a novice in the theatre, whereas George’s favorite line was ‘I’m in the hit business, baby.’

They did take care of me. Leland instructed me to use his office as much as I needed, and provided a secretary to oversee my life while in rehearsal and on the road. I weekended in the country with Joan and George. She sent me lists of everything and anything I might possibly need in the city – where to go, whom to call; found me a nurse for the children. I felt warm and welcome.

Rehearsals began. As we moved along, Sydney and I found some things that didn’t work as well as they might. Sydney was very articulate about them and convinced me of some I wasn’t sure about. We worked well together, liked each other. One night after a late rehearsal we went out for a drink and mulled over the problem of the play. Sydney had it all figured out, and had an idea how to fix it. My feeling was that we couldn’t go to George without a constructive suggestion – no good just to spot a weakness. We called him around eleven o’clock, asked if we could come over to talk. Of course, he said. Over we went and told him our reservations. He listened politely and carefully – ideas were exchanged – but it was his play. He felt we had to play it the way he wrote it, get before an audience, before changes were made, but he would certainly consider our criticisms.

Rehearsal time in a play is unique. Your life becomes the play, the character – all else is secondary. Actually, all else gets in the way. Anyone not connected with the play is hopelessly outside. You rehearse eight hours a day – study lines at night – dream of it. The last week you go on a twelve-hour rehearsal schedule – meals go by the boards, everything does except the play. Actors and directors become closer
than husbands and wives, everyone is working toward the same end. It’s not a self-serving period at all, it’s the most creative time for an actor, the most exciting and rewarding. For the first time in my adult life I began to call on all my resources as an actress. To really use myself.

I had no qualms about leaving the children home, because Mother was there and May was there, and they were at school, every day. Nothing else mattered, no other worries to distract me.

Our first stop – Pittsburgh. Finding our way around on the set for the first time. No matter what is explained beforehand, how many models are shown, you never really know where you are until standing on the stage, on the set.

I remember Leland’s voice from every nook and cranny of every theatre saying, ‘Louder, I can’t hear you.’ He’d warned me he was going to do that – stop me at every word if necessary, so I would never forget to speak out.

The day of the opening George and Leland told us not to worry about the notices. Pittsburgh audiences were unused to theatre, particularly new theatre. This was a time for us alone, to see what worked and what didn’t. Easy to say, but I was one nervous actress. I got through the play shaking all the way. The sound of an audience was strange – laughs came for the first time – no laughter where we expected it – but the performance finally ended. They applauded and I felt very high. From that night on I was to be forever hooked on the theatre. Back in my dressing room, as I started to sit, my elderly and rather vague dresser pulled the chair out from under me, and when George and Leland and Pamela Churchill (who’d just arrived on the scene) entered my room, they found their star flat on the cement floor, unable to move. They helped me up (my tailbone really hurt), said the play went terrifically, I was terrific – like a thousand-watt bulb, said Leland. The local critics were not mad for the play, but were for us actors. I was X-rayed, found I’d cracked my coccyx, and was confined to a special corset for three weeks. Better to happen at the beginning. The only good thing about Pittsburgh was that I got a new dresser.

The next eight weeks were consumed with rehearsing all day, with constant changes, with performing. George would type up the changes at night, deliver them for the morning rehearsal. We’d work, pages in hand. On nights when changes were to go in, we’d sit in our hotel
rooms – me with Sydney’s understudy, he with mine, going over and over the new words. Nothing is more difficult than trying to unlearn a scene or a speech. Sometimes onstage you get half the old and half the new lines. Sydney had a hellish time with the new lines – warned me he was a slow study, and if he went up mid-scene I couldn’t look to him to maneuver us out of trouble; his only hope was to try to remember. One night he did go up – just looked at me, started to stutter, started making it up as he went along. Only actors know what actors go through – one is so naked, so vulnerable, onstage. It was the start of my awareness of the danger in acting – the constant risks – of putting yourself out there on the line and maybe getting shot down.