My First Five Husbands (12 page)

Ah, that next day is forever etched in my memory. In Nettie’s old beige chenille bathrobe, I climbed the steps onto the stage and slipped off my sandals. I dropped the robe nonchalantly off my shoulders, strode center stage, naked as a jaybird, and struck a pose. The students bent intently over their sketch pads. Attempting to relax, I breathed lightly, not moving a muscle, and tried not to wonder if they were all noticing how small my breasts were.

“Okay, everyone cool it a few,” said Randy, walking through the standing artists, pointing out this and that. I didn’t know whether to put my robe on or not. Everyone ignored me. I might as well have been a bowl of fruit. After two more twenty-minute sessions, Randy called an end to the class and I went over to put on my robe.

“You’re good, honey,” Randy told me. “Come back Wednesday at three.”

And he gave me two crisp, lovely one-dollar bills.

I’d been searching the paper for real jobs and saw that the Harlequin Supper Club in Azusa was looking for “singing and dancing waitresses to present musical material.” Fifteen miles east of Pasadena. A bit of a shlep. But I could dance, I could sing passably, I was a choreographer, and although I was never a waitress (at least, not yet), the owner felt I could swing it. All the meals were to be served from a rolling cart, after which we three servers—me, another girl, and George Kelley, who happened to be the current Mr. Pasadena—would perform floor shows at eight, nine, and ten, each night featuring food, songs, and dances from a different country. Monday was England, Tuesday France, Wednesday Spain, Saturday Hawaii—you get the idea. Pay? One dollar an hour, plus tips. We had to come up with costumes, but the owner (who was also the chef) would foot the bill, provided it was modest. We were paid twenty bucks a week for the rehearsals, and it worked out that we’d end the daytime rehearsals and open the restaurant the very night before the Pasadena Playhouse was to begin
its
daytime rehearsals. Unbelievably good timing! I’d have seven weeks of employment. I was desperate to get Mark out to California, and I still wanted keenly to go to New York, but that would take a lot more moola than I was earning now—with or without clothing.

After posing the following Wednesday, I told Randy I’d found a steady job and wouldn’t be available anymore. It had been stressful for me standing there nude, even if they did see me as a bowl of fruit.

“I’m sorry to lose you,” he said. “Will you at least share a farewell glass of wine with me this evening? The lobby won’t be available. Come to my room in the basement of the hotel.”

“Your room?” says I.

“Third cubicle on the left,” says he.

Hmm,
farewell glass of wine, huh? He’d always behaved professionally, so…oh, who am I kidding? This had all the earmarks of a real Beatnik experience. A one-time, far-out, unheard-of piece of audacity: strictly sex. But dare I?
Dare I?
Did I
dare
?

Oh, I daresay, I did.

That evening, I descended those basement stairs, trembling like a leaf, wondering who exactly I thought I was and what exactly I thought I was doing. On the floor of the third cubicle on the left was a mattress surrounded by candles. Randy appeared, drained his last swallow of wine, said “Hi!,” and jumped me. Was this Beatnik foreplay? I’d never been jumped before. And never had sex like that before. It was athletic. Like,
wild,
man. And I liked it. I didn’t feel guilty. In fact, I felt liberated. I was getting a fast course in a brand-new area. Pure sex!

One night about two months later, there came a knocking at my chamber door and there stood a haggard Randy, flanked by two skeezy pals.

“Can I borrow three dollars?” he asked.

Well, hell,
I thought, embarrassed.
You only paid me four total!

I gave him the three bucks and never saw him again (more’s the blessing!), but I figured the education had been worth it. I’d not only learned to hurtle myself enthusiastically into boisterous sex but had found the courage to pose nude. And I was still one dollar to the good.

So what the heck. I’d still give Randy a solid A.

E
nglish Night at the Harlequin meant donning green leotards for “Robin Hood.” America was “Steam Heat,” a Bob Fosse number in white shirts and black derbies. For Spain, we did a mean flamenco—implementing the castanet technique I’d learned at Jacob’s Pillow. France was a cancan. Italy was “Finiculi, Finicula.” Hawaii was our blockbuster. We two gals did a hula, then George burst forth in a short feathered skirt and huge headdress, his Mr. Pasadena muscles bulging, and did a thrilling frenzy number. And
oh, my,
could he frenzy! Attendance was sparse, but we performed as if we had a full house, six nights a week. We closed at eleven, but George and I always spent an hour or more talking and laughing in the parking lot. Then I left for Venice in my station wagon and he took off on his Harley. He was fun, but too rich for my blood. Older, experienced, and way too good-looking.

Early every morning, I drove from Venice to Pasadena and rehearsed
Present Laughter
from ten to five. Exhilarating! I was acting! Then I was off to Azusa to be a singing-dancing waitress for four hours, then back to Venice for a few hours’ sleep. I had no idea where I would go after the closing of the play. I yearned for New York, but how could I do it with Mark? I ached for him every minute of every day. The Harlequin fed us dinner with enough leftovers to take to the Playhouse for lunch, I was living rent-free at Nettie’s, so I’d saved enough to pay the Playhouse summer tuition and get by a few months. Just before the play opened, I gave notice at the Harlequin and trained my replacement, who—bless her heart!—learned the routines in jig time so I could begin evening dress rehearsals on the play just before opening night.

Present Laughter
was a hit. Toward the end of its short run, the Playhouse folks asked if I’d sit in the audience of a television show called
It Could Be You!
, saying they wanted some students in the balcony to publicize our new season. Then Mother called and said she was bringing Mark out for a visit! I was overjoyed. She arrived with a rawboned, redheaded country girl named Ruthie Mae Henry, who’d been babysitting Mark. Ruthie Mae had never been out of Oklahoma, and Mother said this trip was a bonus for the good care she’d given my baby. Nettie and Larry welcomed the whole crew into their home, immediately enchanted with Mark—as was everyone. I showed Mother and Ruthie Mae around Venice Beach, which they found as far out and groovy as I had. That afternoon, the sophisticated Larry Lipton sat chatting with my little Oklahoma mama, and I listened in amazement as Mother not only held her own with him but had him in stitches. Where did she get such
savoir-faire
? Heavenly days!

The next morning, at the studio in Hollywood,
It Could Be You!
started with two surprised recipients being called to the stage for prizes. Then they broke for a commercial.

“Our final prize,” the MC announced when the show resumed, “will be awarded by a star of screen and stage, Mr. Lee J. Cobb!”

Mr. Cobb, who’d played opposite Marlon Brando in
On the Water-front,
took center stage.

“I’m here to give a full third-year scholarship, the first of its kind, to a performer at the Pasadena Playhouse,” he said. And then he boomed, “It Could Be You…Rue McClanahan!”

Mother beamed from ear to ear as ushers squired my stunned self onto the stage and Mr. Cobb read some very complimentary remarks about my acting and handed me a framed award.

Plus,
the MC added, “this handsome set of Samsonite luggage!” And someone brought out two white suitcases and an overnight case. What next? A year’s supply of Ivory soap? But hey—I didn’t care if it was cornball, I used that luggage for the next fourteen years!

It had been a conspiracy. The Playhouse and Mother and Nettie and Larry had been planning it for a while. The scholarship would cover my tuition for nine months, and Mother would pay Ruthie Mae to stay with Mark while I rehearsed and performed. I was duly appreciative. But I wanted to be doing real theatre—the kind where
they
paid
me,
instead of the other way around. I wanted to be in New York! But in New York, I’d have no money, no prospects, and most important—no way to keep Mark.

So. New York would have to wait.

CHAPTER EIGHT

O
n Mark’s first birthday, I baked a white cake with white icing. He was walking—well, sort of lurching. I put the cake outside on the grass and made snapshots of him proudly toddling toward his cake…and then stepping in it. We both thought that was hilarious, but it turned out to be a parable of sorts for much of what lay ahead. Just when everything seemed to be coming up sugar frosting roses—ker-
plop
. I’m an optimist by nature, though. I tend to laugh off most missteps, even when things get a little messy.

Ruthie Mae, Mark, and I moved into a tiny two-bedroom apartment six blocks from the Pasadena Playhouse. Ruthie Mae slept in one bedroom on a real bed. Mark and I were in the other bedroom, he in his port-o-crib, I on a mattress on the floor. Since the scholarship didn’t cover any living expenses, I’d started looking for a day job, when out of the blue, Norman wrote that the Army was going to send me a monthly spousal check for a little over two hundred dollars! This would make his personal paycheck less, but dear, generous Norm wanted me to have this stipend, which made it possible for me to be with Mark when I wasn’t performing or in class.

I also got a letter from Darren, saying he’d been medically discharged with a nervous breakdown, would be back in the States in a week or two, and wanted to see me.

Oh, dear.

I dreaded telling him I couldn’t continue a romantic relationship with him, especially in his state of mind, but when I spoke with him, he seemed more disturbed from his experience in Korea than from my news. He went home to Ojai, saying he hoped to see me again someday. He never did. Many years later, I heard he had become a Buddhist monk in France, and I like to think of him there, happily writing his poems and stories. Perhaps in French.

I signed up for only two classes at the Playhouse, because I didn’t want to be away from Mark more than a few hours a day. In dialect class we learned the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as Scottish, Irish, upper-crust British, Cockney, New Yorkese, and a limited but useful roster of other accents. Dance class was more like gym class. I was the lone female in third year. It was hard to find plays for five men and one little egg in search of a beater, so second-year girls sometimes rounded out our casts. The first show ran with good reviews. In the second play, I was cast as a raucous, drunken troublemaker. An exciting challenge! I was happy. Mark was happy. At last, life was working out.

Oh…
really
?

“I’m just too homesick to stay,” Ruthie Mae announced in October.

She wanted to leave the following week, but I persuaded her to hang on for a week beyond that while I searched desperately for a nanny who could be trusted to care for Mark for a price I could afford. After ten days of fruitless interviews, I called Mother, who came and got Ruthie Mae and Mark. To say my heart sank is an understatement. Parting with my baby again! The last thing I wanted. But that’s what happened. After Mother and that damn Ruthie Mae left for Oklahoma with my precious boy, I moved into a cheap one-bedroom apartment by myself.

S
exy, scrappy Troy Sanders was one of two particularly talented third-year actors.

“Come up to my place after rehearsal tonight,” he said. “We’ll have wine and run lines.”

But of course, he had something else in mind.

I found him attractive but said, “No, Troy, I don’t think so.”

“It’s perfectly safe. I’m medically unable to sire children,” he assured me, and under his persistent blandishments, the wine and I succumbed. Rating: B. (Twelve years later, while I was doing
Maude,
a former Pasadena Playhouse pal looked me up and, in the course of conversation, mentioned that Troy was married and living in the Valley with his wife—and three children. Hmm. Must have found a miraculous cure. I felt such a fool. But
oooh
, such a lucky fool!)

Bill McKinney, a blond hunk from Arkansas, was the other gifted third-year actor. He was Troy’s buddy, so I felt a little strange when Bill started coming on to me, but he was loaded with personality and very funny, despite his reputation for getting into bar fights. He was built like a bull with a lot of pent-up steam to blow off. After rehearsals, I always went home, but Bill and Troy often went out. Troy, who was only about five feet six, would pick a fight with some big guy in a bar, inviting the furious fellow to “step outside,” forcing Bill to come to his rescue. Troy was a lover not a fighter, and Bill was both, so together, they were like Mickey Rooney on steroids.

One night during our brief but very active affair, Bill and I were in bed at my apartment when a loud fracas began outside.

“McKinney!” someone was yelling. “Get out here!”

“That’s Troy!” Bill cried, leaping out of bed stark naked. He threw on a shirt and stomped outside to beat up whomever Troy had in tow, and I decided these two were just too much for me. No more shenanigans with either of them. Bill went on to a successful movie career—usually typecast as a threatening, dangerous redneck, with his thick Arkansas accent. He used to say to me, “That’s
RAT!
” Meaning “right.” He played the southern bully who tied Ned Beatty to a tree and ravaged him in
Deliverance,
and I don’t know about you, but that scene scared
me
! In fact,
Maxim
recently did a “50 Greatest Movie Villains” issue, and the #1 scariest guy of all time was—
that’s rat!
—Bill McKinney. I see him occasionally on late-night television reruns. Usually in fight scenes. That man was a brawler.

Matthew, on the other hand, was a charming first-year actor from New Jersey. Tall, brunet, handsome as all get-out. He said he was twenty-four, so I told him I was twenty-four, too (I was actually twenty-five). He was a real gentleman. And may I say, terrific in bed—a solid A.

That Thanksgiving, I made turkey and fixin’s for a bunch of friends. I was just serving everyone, wondering where Matthew was, when a knock came at my front door. There he stood, very agitated. He thrust a folded letter into my hand, made me promise I wouldn’t open it until he was out of sight, then took off running across the vacant lot next door.

Dear Rue
, the letter read,
I cannot go on with this deception. I lied. I am not twenty-four. I am eighteen, and it’s tearing me apart. I can’t see you anymore. Good luck. Love, Matthew.

I stood there, thinking,
Good grief! I’ve been shtupping a teenager!

He was awfully sweet, though. I’ve often wished to look him up, but I can’t remember his last name, and I can’t very well advertise: “Seeking Matthew: a solid A!”

I went home for Christmas, a whole week with Mark, who had grown so much! He called me “Little Mama” and Mother “Big Mama.” Mother was spoiling him, and he missed me, which broke my heart. I determined then and there—in the final days of 1959—that I would get into a union show in 1960. Enough racing my engine and getting nowhere! By God and little green apples, I was going to become a bona fide Working Actress! And I would get Mark back!

S
ure enough, just after New Year’s, I got a call to read for
Malibu Run,
a popular TV series starring Ron Ely. I went in to read on January 6, 1960, and—can you believe it?—was hired to play a waitress. (I had some experience at that by then.) Only one day’s shoot, but one of my two small scenes was with the guest star, Peter Falk.
Wow!
Now I could join Screen Actors Guild, which opened the door to jobs I couldn’t get before. My salary barely covered the cost of joining SAG. But having broken that union barrier over the next few years, I got cast as a waitress in a cowboy bar in a popular Western, as a waitress in a few other series, and as an actress in
The People’s Court
. These little jobs were few and far between, however, so I had to keep waiting tables in real life to make ends meet. I began to wonder if I was an actress playing waitresses, or a waitress sometimes playing an actress.

Also in January, we started rehearsals on
Roadside
by Lynn Riggs. I was cast in the marvelous role of Hannie, a bigger-than-life country gal. Our terrific director, Barney Brown, taught me a valuable piece of technique: “You have to be brave enough to go further than you feel safe. Let it all hang out. Go beyond your limits.”

Good advice in art and life.

Sir Laurence Olivier once said: “The first rehearsal, think of jumping into an ice-cold pool of water.” I rehearsed Hannie with all the gusto and guts I had in me. What a role! But one bleak morning, six days before
Roadside
was to open, Barney announced that Lynn Riggs’s estate had put a stop on any performance of
Roadside
. Stunned and dismayed, we had to come up with another play, rehearse it, and open in less than a week! Barney found a science-fiction one-act for the men, and for me he selected
Before Breakfast,
a bitter little one-act pill by Eugene O’Neill, in which a woman shuffles around a kitchen in a shapeless blouse and skirt, haranguing her unseen husband. For twenty-five merciless minutes. He never replies. Finally, she exits to the bedroom, lets out a bloodcurdling scream, staggers back on, and slumps onto the table. Curtain.

A real laugh riot.

“Can you learn it in five days?” asked the director who’d been brought in.

“Sure,” I said. “If I can find someone to drill me on lines for a few hours every day.”

I called George Kelley, who said he’d be glad to cue me. With his help, I learned the lines. With the director’s help, I created the character. With God’s help, we opened on time. The men’s play was a little shaky, but mine went flawlessly. George drove me home after the show, and I said, “George, I owe you a lot for the evening’s success. I wish I knew a way to repay you.”

He said he had a way. I liked him a lot, and he was gorgeous, but still…

I said, “Is that really what you want in return?”

He said, “It’s the only thing I want.”

So I gave it to him. Great sex, but I kept wishing he wanted me because he found me irresistible, instead of payment for a favor. I never saw George again, but that was some spectacular swan song. He deserved the title of Mr. Pasadena, ooh my, yes. A, A, A!