My First Five Husbands (20 page)

T
he Golden Fleece
got great reviews, but the second play didn’t fare so well, and we closed after a few weeks. I was called to audition for
Who’s Happy Now?,
a new play by Oliver Hailey. They wanted me for the role of the wife, Mary, but when I read the play, I knew I was made to play the marvelous mistress, Faye Precious. Through my agent, I wangled an audition for both roles. As Mary, I wore a proper little dress and modest hairdo. Then I dashed to the ladies’ room, got into an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse, dangly earrings, and blond floozy wig, and came out to read for Faye. Perplexed, Oliver Hailey and the director, Stanley Prager, now wanted me for both roles. After a few anxious days…cue The Phone Call.

“They got Teresa Wright for Mary,” said my agent. “They want you for Faye Precious.”

Bells and whistles! Blow them horns! Bang them drums!

The play is set in the godforsaken town of Sunray, Texas, where a boisterous, irascible butcher, Horse, is carrying on an affair with Faye, a dumb but good-hearted waitress. Mary puts up with this because, besides being in love with him, she is raising their son. It’s poignant and hilarious, with raucous action and cornball country songs. The son was beautifully played by Ken Kercheval (who later gained fame on the soapy blockbuster
Dallas
). Our Horse was Robert Darnell, and the local bartender, Pop, was Stewart Germain. All three were wonderful. Stanley Prager gave insightful, meticulous notes after every rehearsal and performance. For my money, that Stanley Prager knew his onions. What a director!

We opened on November 17 at the Village South Theatre. The audience adored the play, on their feet for the curtain calls. Reviews? Well…“mixed.” Many papers gave us high praise, but the God-Almighty
New York Times
review was lukewarm—the kiss of death for an Off Broadway play with limited publicity funds. We had a running budget for only four weeks. Oliver funded a fifth week out of his own pocket, though he knew it was futile, and we closed a few days before Christmas. Damned show business. I love the “show,” but the “business”—
feh!

But several good things did result from the play. I became fast friends with both Oliver Hailey and screen star Teresa Wright. And I was one of six actors featured in “Faces Made for the Stage,” a large page in—cue the drumroll, please—the Sunday
New York Times
! The critic had been especially impressed with me in
Who’s Happy Now?

How d’ya like that?

T
he Italian and I decided to try the marriage again.

I know what you’re thinking.
Just jump in quicksand next time, Rue. It’s faster!

Yes, he was a horse’s ass, but he could also be—what?—sexy? Masculine? Or was it that old “gotta have a man” panic? Oh, hell. Why am I even trying to rationalize it? Trying to put some kind of logic to it now just leaves me feeling angry at that damn dumb dame with her head up her wazoo, sitting there in 1969, watching the first moon landing and thinking, “See what miraculous things mankind can do? Maybe he’ll change.”

Change?
He was more likely to fly to the moon. Sans spaceship.

Nevertheless, Mr. Funsies and I—with Mark in tow—moved to a two-story frame house in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Feeling the urge to nest, I made slipcovers and matching curtains, painted the dining room bright red, found a dozen prints of old masters for a dollar each, and hung them all over the house. We acquired a 1967 VW Beetle for $1,200. I put $600 down, and we agreed to take turns paying it off each month. His Majesty coveted a decrepit old silver Porsche at the same used-car lot and paid $300 for it.

“What names shall I put on the titles?” asked the salesman.

“Both cars in my name,” answered His Lordship.

I was stunned but remained tightly silent. The Porsche ran one week, died forever, and sat parked beside the garage for the next three years. The VW ran like the 1967 model it was.

“That was VW’s best year,” everyone told me.

We went to an animal shelter and adopted a little half-grown tanand-white puppy who barked, “Take me! Take me!” Mark named her Sandy and spent many happy hours pedaling his new bike all over our quiet neighborhood with Sandy running merrily along. Mother had a trampoline in her backyard in Ardmore, but I couldn’t swing that expense quite yet, so my innovative son and his buddies jumped from the garage roof onto mattresses piled on top of the defunct Porsche, turning somersaults as they landed. Mark enjoyed sixth grade in his new school and made a good friend, Danny Driscoll, who came over often to play.

The Italian drove into New York most every day—in
his
VW, of course. There was no discord while he was away. We were happy. But when he was home, Mark and I had a lot of rules to follow. We weren’t allowed to go barefoot or touch his turntable or enter his sacrosanct den and so on and so forth. We couldn’t relax and
live normally
. We began to feel battered and dejected. And eventually, the battering became physical.

I
n February of 1970, The Italian and I were cast as husband and wife in an Off Broadway production of
Dark of the Moon,
a play about North Carolina forest witches and their effect on ignorant, superstitious villagers. I played the mother of Barbara Allen, a young virgin who falls in love with Witch Boy one moonlit night. At a village prayer meeting scene in Act Two, everyone becomes religiously obsessed, the mother working herself into a zealous fit. A very meaty role. The play ran eighty-six performances, partly because the beautiful Barbara Allen, gaspingly handsome Witch Boy, and equally gorgeous White and Dark Witches played the forest scenes stark-staring naked, climbing up and down tree trunks in not one blessed stitch.

At first, Barbara was movingly played by Margaret Howell, a graceful, sensitive actress with the body of a sylph. An unfortunately flat-chested sylph. The producers, in their infinite wisdom, fired her after four weeks, breaking her heart (and mine!), and hired the Playmate of the Year, who’d never been onstage in her life—not nowhere, not nohow—but was built like…well, what do you think the Playmate of the Year was built like? She twarn’t no sylph.
Pa-lump, pa-lump!
She was stacked. Those were some boobs (or “Hermans,” as my friend Lette used to call them), but the girl couldn’t act her way out of a damp Kleenex.

Margaret had instinctively given a hundred percent to every scene. Miss Playmate had the theatrical timing of a jellyfish. Astonishingly nerveless. Not one flicker of stage presence. There were rumors she’d been Sinatra’s sweetie. Currently, she was hot and heavy with a Hollywood producer on the rise (no pun intended) who hung around our theatre every night like a moonstruck calf. The producers mounted (again no pun intended) an advertising blitz to jack up ticket sales. Lip-smacking newspaper ads and skin-rich posters of her boosted the box office for a week, then leveled off, then petered out (go ahead and take the pun this time). What a travesty.

At the same time, I was also doing a very small film with a
very
small budget, directed by my pal Mervyn Nelson and produced by Marty Richards. This was Marty’s first time producing, but years later, after his marriage to Johnson & Johnson heiress Mary Lee Johnson, he created his own production company, skyrocketing to win dozens of awards for his films and Broadway musicals, including
La Cage aux Folles
. This little film,
Some of My Best Friends Are…
, was about the habitués of a Manhattan gay bar. In the cast were fabled singer Mabel Mercer, new comedienne Fanny Flagg, and about thirty other well-known New York actors. Everyone, cast and crew alike, worked on “deferred” salaries, which means you’ll probably never see a penny—and I certainly never have. But it was great fun. I played Lita, a sarcastic, highfalutin “fag hag” who sweeps into the bar in a low-cut evening gown, dragging her long mink. Imagine Tallulah Bankhead at her most flamboyant. Lita makes Blanche Devereaux look like Donna Reed.

My few scenes were all in the bar, requiring only a week’s work. Driving home to Fort Lee to make dinner, then back to the Mercer Theatre for
Dark of the Moon,
took well over two hours, so I asked The Italian to make dinner for Mark and himself one day when we were running late on set. This simple request resulted in a contentious exchange that had me weeping on the basement stairs the third day. Andy Greenhut, the set and costume designer, found me there and juggled scenes and logistics so I could go home and take care of Mark. I’m happy to say Andy is still my fast friend thirty-five years later, which is more than I can say for The Italian.

I
n May, I was selected by the Village Voice OBIE Awards to receive a Best Actress Obie for my performance in
The Golden Fleece
.

Wow!
The Obie is a coveted honor for actors, and I was thrilled to the gills.

Right about then, Jenny Egan of the Four Winds Theatre in New York offered me a play to be done in England; rehearsals in New York were to begin immediately, followed by a couple of days in London, then sightseeing in the English countryside on our long drive up to Cheshire for our first appearance. The script for
The Raree Show,
a musical documentary on the American Revolution, was inspired by letters, diaries, and other papers of soldiers, wives, and mothers on both sides. We four actors would be playing about sixty roles. I told Jenny, “I’ll do it!”

The Obie Awards show took place in a Greenwich Village club during the brief (all too brief!) rehearsal period for
The Raree Show
. The Italian and I drove into town together, and by the time we left the awards presentation for the celebration party afterward, Mr. Fun and Games was in a state of—I don’t know what. Jealous fury? Frustration? Biliousness? I don’t remember if we went to the party. I don’t remember a party. I just remember weeping in the VW while he ripped into me about his lousy role in
Dark of the Moon,
the idiots who give out Obies, my impending job in England. But thank God for that England trip. I needed to get away for a while.

Mark flew to Oklahoma for the summer, and I left for London with
The Raree Show
cast and crew. We landed at Heathrow just in time for a proper English tea right there in the airport. The next day, we lunched at Boodle’s, Winston Churchill’s club, eating Boodle’s Orange Fool, Sir Winston’s favorite, for dessert. We had orchestra seats for
The Merchant of Venice,
starring Sir Laurence Olivier, as brilliant a Shylock as ever trod the boards. In his final electrifying scene, he demands the pound of flesh he’s won from Antonio, and Antonio bares his chest for carving. But “Tarry a little!” says Portia, acting as his barrister. And she points out that the agreement said nothing of Antonio’s giving Shylock any blood. Shylock leaves the court, defeated and destitute. The stage direction simply says: “Exit Shylock.” It’s up to the actor to fill in the rest. Olivier chose to slink off stage right, broken and silent, like most Shylocks.

Ah, but then!

From offstage there came a great bellowing howl of fury and misery, sending shivers through the audience. An unforgettable moment.