My First Five Husbands (21 page)

Years down the pike, Sir Laurence and I had the same agent at ICM, and the agent offered to arrange for me to meet my idol, who was actually a fan of
The Golden Girls
. I had to decline. I knew I would burst into tears. I couldn’t bear the idea. The sheer magnitude! I know he would have been friendly and charming, but how does one make small talk with a God?

“Hiya, Larry, what’s shakin’?”

We set off for Cheshire with all our costumes and sets, sightseeing all the way up. Charming villages with names like Chipping Norton and Stow-on-the-Wold. Breathtaking Stonehenge, where I hugged a monolith. Ancient stone walls, herds of sheep. I was in heaven. We arrived at the manor house with the private hundred-seat theatre, and before our second performance, the Queen of Holland’s Rolls Royce could be seen approaching from a distance, followed by her entourage. We had a day to rehearse, and that night we were feted in the family’s private dining room. The table was resplendent with crystal, silver, and china. But no napkins. I checked both sides of my plate. No linen heirlooms, not even dinky paper. I sneaked looks at my tablemates to see where they wiped their fingers, but nobody seemed to be doing so. I didn’t see any finger bowls, either.

Do they use the end of the tablecloth?
I wondered.

All the men were in the House of Lords, ribbons blazing across their chests. I sat between two robust personages with huge walrus mustaches, who chatted cheerily with me all during dinner, but not a word could I decipher.

“S’tellmeh, hev y’sinquin Meri’s Tauyit?”

I said, “I beg your pardon?”

“Ahnau, I reck’n y’ve beeeen t’bizeh, eh?” followed by hearty laughter and great harrumphing mustache-twitchings. “Hev y’gontuh th’Leks?”

“Well…it’s certainly beautiful country you have up here,” I ventured, feeling around for the bottom of the tablecloth.

“Y’sh’d hie y’s’f dontuh th’Leks!” He leaned around me to his companion. “Behtie! Iw’s sehing she mahst ge’dontuh th’Leks! Eh?”

“Oh, yisyisyisyis, yisindeed!” agreed Behtie, who then confided to me, “Wi’mohs tek y’theah!” And there was more hearty laughter and harrumphing.

“That sounds lovely,” I replied, hoping my mouth wasn’t shiny with chicken fat.

After playing at Capesthorne Hall, we played two shows at the American Museum in Bath, then drove back to London.

What a glorious month!

I was thirtysomething. It was June. I was in England, all expenses paid, with enough cash saved up at the end to pay a modest hotel bill for a week in London, where I saw nine plays in six days, sitting so high up I had to crawl up the stairs on my hands and feet, then go down the stairs backward, holding on to the seats, after the performances.

Life is a lot different in the rafters.

I came home feeling like I’d gotten some much-needed perspective, especially when I realized that the entire time, while I missed Mark and longed to share all this with him, I had not given one thought to The Italian.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
had a Yugoslavian lover once (and once was quite enough) who insisted it was nonsense to put thought into planning a party. His method back in Belgrade was to invite twenty people over and upon their arrival start looking for something to feed them. Whatever was at hand—canned beans, hunks of bread, apples. He said everyone always had a terrific time. Maybe so. I never got drunk enough to try that. It sounded too much like soldiers at the front.

Now I have my parties catered, so I’m fresh as a daisy, sampling hors d’oeuvres, mixing and mingling, a firefly flitting from table to table, secure in the knowledge that my caterer knows what she’s doing and, if she doesn’t, she’d better not ask me. I get overly concerned about my guests’ comfort and pleasure. My attention to detail tends to be exhausting. That’s why I give so few parties. And look so young.

Back when I had no money, it was easier. Pigs in the blanket, chips, and BYOB. My favorite dessert from the seventies—that spectacular trifle from Boodle’s—was a fattening but surefire success at every party I threw in New York—and in Los Angeles, until that day in the eighties when I could no longer look whipped cream in the face without blushing. The chef said it had been Churchill’s favorite, and looking at Churchill’s ample girth, I believe it. The chef graciously gave me the recipe. Of course, I still have it. And now, so have you. Gird your loins for:

BOODLE’S ORANGE FOOL FOR FORTY FOLKS

Pile four large sponge cakes into a great big punch bowl. Saturate them with the juice of sixteen oranges and eight lemons. Whip five pints of thick cream, adding nine grated orange rinds and four grated lemon rinds. Spread this mixture over the drenched sponge cakes. Sift sixteen tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar over all and sprinkle a bit more orange rind for show.

Then stand back to avoid the stampede.

The first time I made Boodle’s Orange Fool, my irreverent, outrageous, courageous, and hilarious best friend, Lette Rehnolds—she of “Two Little Pussycats” fame—helped me. It was New Year’s Eve in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a few months after I returned from England. The Italian was out of town. He did a pretty good Bogart impersonation, so he was regularly cast as Bogie in Woody Allen’s
Play It Again, Sam,
playing theatres hither and yon for weeks at a time. It was the only time Mark and I could relax and be happy. So I decided to throw a New Year’s Eve party and asked Lette to come early and help, since she was not only an excellent cook but a big kick in the butt. We made dinner and the Boodle’s, thirty-odd (some
very
odd) people arrived from Manhattan, and we had a blast. Mark couldn’t sleep that night for the noise, so he got up and sat on the stairs, watching the show. Snapshots show everyone in awful seventies garb and haircuts, looking very happy, consuming Boodle’s Orange Fool, and drinking like fish.

This is how Mark and I lived those last few years with The Italian. When Husband was home, we tiptoed around and did our best to not incur his wrath. When he was not home, life resumed. It was party time! We laughed, played, and pretended life was normal. Rather than think about it too much, I immersed myself in work.

A
ll my professional life, I’d wanted to be a member of the Actors’ Studio, an exclusive workshop for actors. Membership is by audition only, so I worked with a partner on a scene from Tennessee Williams’s
Twenty-seven Wagonloads of Cotton
(the play that became the film
Baby Doll
). I played Baby Doll. The actor who played Vacarro, the overseer who taunts and stalks Baby Doll, was talented but neurotic. We worked up the scene and presented it at The Studio on the allotted night. Everything started as rehearsed, but this nutty guy suddenly started pelting me with raw green peas that stung like sharp little rocks, and then, out of nowhere, he slapped my face—
hard!
—which threw our audition into a cocked hat, and neither of us was accepted. We were told to work up new scenes with different partners and come back the following spring. Poop! That unprofessional twerp was worse than the Three Little Kittens.

In a dry spell workwise, I did some presentations for backers of an Irish play about Sinn Fein. Playing a seductress, I straddled a young man seated in a chair, wrapped my legs tightly around him, kissed him passionately, and bit off his tongue. I dreaded every performance, but it was $40 a pop. In cash. And not nude. Another challenge was a two-character one-act done in a church basement. I played a housewife, innocently dusting the living room.
Ding dong.
The doorbell rings. It’s a blind piano tuner with dark glasses and cane. As he tunes, she gets excited and begins removing her clothes, until she’s down to bra and panties, in a frenzy on the carpet, having one heck of an orgasm. The upshot is that it’s her husband in disguise. I don’t know what it meant, but it took all my courage to do it realistically. I’m glad it was a play, not a film, because I wouldn’t want anyone—including myself—to see it now.

I got cast in three films (fully clothed in all of them!), including
The People Next Door,
in which I played the tough secretary—and mistress—of Eli Wallach’s character. In our major scene, he abruptly announces he’s breaking off the affair and the mistress/secretary barks furiously, “Don’t think you can just throw me away like an old Kleenex!”

With Eli Wallach in
The People Next Door.
(“Don’t think you can just throw me away like an old Kleenex!”)

Some line, huh? What dramatic power! What content!

It hurt my toenails.
Like an old Kleenex?
Yep. And say it like you mean it, honey.

I also did the wonderful movie
They Might Be Giants,
playing Daisy Playfair, the innocent, wide-eyed sister-in-law of George C. Scott, who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. His psychiatrist, played by Joanne Woodward, begins to believe her patient actually
is
Sherlock Holmes and joins his crusade to hunt down the villainous Dr. Moriarty, along with a gaggle of eccentric street people and Daisy in her heels and mink coat. We shot during the winter in snow-covered Manhattan, we actors standing on big sheets of cardboard, our feet frozen into ice sculptures. In my fur coat, I was luckier than the others in their cotton and wool.

I worked six weeks and had several good little scenes, some of which were filmed on location in the Victorian dining room of the Players Club in Gramercy Park. I became a member of the Players in 1997 and had attended many fetes in that room before I learned, at a 2004 screening of
They Might Be Giants
honoring Anthony Harvey and me, that this very room was Holmes’s laboratory! Things like that amaze me. The circles and intersections.

Life just loves to fiddle around with us.

I
n February of 1971, Oliver Hailey offered me the job of standby for the two thirtysomething leading ladies—Marian Seldes and Brenda Vaccaro—in his new play,
Father’s Day
. Oliver sent me the script, and I called him immediately after reading it.

“I have a real handle on the role to be done by Vaccaro,” I told him.

He said, “I’m sure you do, Rue. But we want a
name
in every role.”

And I was definitely not a “name.” I couldn’t argue that.

They went into rehearsal, and I learned both roles in the unlikely case I’d get to play one. It was excruciating, because Miss Vaccaro wasn’t comfortable in the role. Lines were changed to try to help her, but she just never clicked into the character. The play opened March 16, 1971, and closed March 16, 1971. It was like driving through one of those tiny towns in North Texas. Blink and you’ll miss it. But even with only one performance, Marian Seldes was nominated for a Best Actress Tony. (Now,
that’s
an actress!) But Oliver was once again denied a hit show in New York, and I felt terrible for him. The next day, Ken Kercheval, who was also in the cast, arrived at the theatre, as did I, to clean out our dressing rooms. He had brought liquor and proceeded, as did I, to get sloshed. We tried to console each other but were too smashed for romance. He fell asleep, and I went home and poured myself into bed.

That spring, I made another try for the Actors’ Studio. A few months earlier, I’d workshopped some scenes from
Dylan,
in which I played Dylan Thomas’s volatile wife, Caitlin, opposite the wonderful Will Hare—who was a pro, a gentleman, and a member of the Actors’ Studio. We presented the opening scene from
Dylan,
and I was accepted as a lifetime member of the Actors’ Studio. One of the sweetest accomplishments of my career. (So much for you, Mr. Slap-happy Pea-shooter.)

I began the summer at the Hampton Playhouse, but just a few days into rehearsals was called to return to New York to appear in the soap opera
Another World
. I’d all but forgotten the audition I’d done for producers at NBC a couple months earlier. The Playhouse brought in Katherine Helmond to replace me (gotta love Katherine as the dizzy wife in
Soap
and the sexy mom on
Who’s the Boss?
), and I began a new phase in my career—soap opera actress. The best thing about it: Mother and her customers at the beauty parlor tuned in religiously. Finally, she figured her little girl had really made it! I never heard another word about a dance school in Ardmore.

My
Another World
character was Caroline Johnson, cook and nanny to Pat and John’s infant twins. The best nanny in all Christendom, and one hell of a great cook, to boot. The infants love her, Pat and John love her, the audience loved her. The character was so popular, the producers upped my appearances from three shows a week to five a week at $150 per show! Going to the mailbox and taking out those blessed paychecks was like Christmas every week.

Caroline’s one teeny flaw: She was crazier than a bedbug. Many episodes ended with her sprinkling a mysterious white powder in Pat’s soup, which resulted in dramatic hospital scenes for Pat and cleared the way for Caroline to be alone with John. She fancied him, you see, and her nefarious plot was to slowly poison Pat, marry John, and live happily ever after with “their” children. This went on for over a year’s shooting time, during which the newborn twins turned two years old. Even worse, in a previous story line, before she became pregnant with twins, Pat had had a hysterectomy. Ah, the magical world of soap opera!