My First Five Husbands (8 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

“D
reary Erie, the Mistake on the Lake.”

This unfortunate appellation was due to the weather in Erie from September to April: rain, sleet, snow, or ice. Or heavy overcast
threatening
rain, sleet, snow, or ice. The sun took a bow at the autumn solstice and made his next appearance around the Ides of April. This didn’t bother me a bit. I was happy to be in a winter stock company, performing six nights a week, rehearsing six days a week, and enjoying a steady paycheck of $55 a week—$42 after deductions.
Cha-ching!
I even put $20 a week in savings. I ended up sharing a one-room apartment with a pull-out sofa with another actress. One of many one-room apartments, at least three of which had pull-out sofas, that I shared with roommates over the next seven years.

Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthington.

The company consisted of a core of three women and six men, with other actors coming in occasionally for a role or two. Jean Tarrant, the temperamental but talented wife of Newell Tarrant, the managing director, was on hand to play leads and character roles. I was a little scared of her. A tall, taciturn character actress named Nora handled supporting roles, and here came Rue McClanahan for the ingénues and younger leads. The adolescent roles were played by Robin, a talented little bundle of energy with an irrepressible personality and colorful expressions like “Oh, for crying out tears!” She always made me laugh.

Years later, Robin came to see me at a theatre in New Jersey. In her midtwenties now, all married and settled down, she was still adorable.

“You got me through some pretty rough patches there in the Erie dressing room,” I told her. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

And she said, “Oh, Rue…for crying out tears!”

In October, a beautiful, voluptuous blonde came in from New York to play the role that made Jayne Mansfield in
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Since her name eludes me, I’ll call her Va-voom. She was jaded, well acquainted with the hard facts of life, but Va-voom loved to tell ghost stories in the dressing room, and curiously, they always made her cry. Looking like a
Playboy
centerfold, she’d relate some spooky tale, tears running down her cheeks, always apologizing, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I can’t help it.” I found it unique. Endearing, if a bit odd.

Of the six male actors in the company, I immediately developed a crush on not one, but two—both out of the question. Jack Shapira, a fine actor from New York, was solid, loving, and good-tempered, but married, and I liked his wife fully as much as I liked him. Southerner Jason Crane was hilarious and talented, but seemed possibly gay. (In hindsight, it was only my Okie naiveté that allowed any “possibly” about it.) He’d been around the block. There was a mean streak in his humor, but oh, my, he could make me laugh. A very good actor named Bob took on the “older” parts (as in
over thirty
). Joey Phelps, from Montreal, was very blond and very gay. (No doubt even in this little Oklahoman’s head.) He was the first Canadian I’d ever known, so I found him terribly exotic. Tall, dark, and handsome Corbin Willis built the sets and played bit parts, and a few years later, he and Jason Crane formed a business (and more) partnership, building sets in Hawaii. Who’da thunk? My naiveté always dismays me. Bea Arthur always thought I was faking, but I wasn’t. I was sheltered as a child. What can I say? Maybe
duh
.

Rounding out our merry troupe was Thomas Lloyd Bish, a handsome musician who’d moved to Erie from Jamestown, New York, after being discharged from the Army. He was an apprentice, hired at half-salary because his experience was not in acting. He’d played trombone and sung in an army band and was charming enough, courteous, up to the task of his first small role. But he didn’t grab my fancy. In
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
however, he played a reporter coming to interview the blond bombshell, and every night he invented a new name to introduce himself. And every night he got funnier.

“Hello, I’m Ferd Raffleholder.”

“Hello, I’m Jerkin M. Smurt.”

I suspect he was doing it more for Va-voom than for me, but one night during the usual dressing room gossip, Va-voom said, “I don’t like that Tom Bish.”

“Why?” I asked, but she just smiled ruefully and shook her head.

It bothered me, because that sense of humor, that bit of improvisational derring-do had piqued my interest. Suddenly, I noticed the smoldering good looks and army-built body I’d somehow overlooked, and…hey, this guy was
yummy
.

I
played Rachel in
Inherit the Wind,
the sweetheart of the schoolteacher on trial for teaching Darwin. There was a scene with a chimpanzee, who was kept in a cage in the prop basement. One day, I went to the basement to put some props in order and the male chimp started banging and rattling his cage, creating quite a ruckus. His screams got louder, more insistent, and I started to get nervous. I fled upstairs, and Newel assigned one of the men to put props in order until the chimp left. Apparently, male chimps get excited when a female human comes around them during her monthly period.

Terrific. The chimp was the first male to show any interest in me since I got there.

In November, I learned that a pain I’d been feeling at the base of my spine was from a pilo nidal cyst.
A pilo nidal who?
Apparently, soldiers get pilo nidal cysts from bouncing around on unpadded jeep seats. The doctor asked if I’d ever landed hard on my coccyx, and yes, in sixth grade, I’d come down the slide at recess, missed my footing, and landed with a wham on my—what do they call that? The sits bone? The sitz bone? Well, where you
sits
. So now—gloriosky—I had this pilo nidal cyst that required surgery. We had no understudies; during an earlier production, I’d played several nights with the flu, delivering comedy lines with a fever of 102, so dizzy I couldn’t stand up straight. And now I had to have an operation. Well,
fudge
.

I told Newell Tarrant I’d need a week off, wrote to my parents, and on a cold, gray Sunday morning, packed to check into the hospital. I’d never been a patient in a hospital before and I was scared, but my new roommate, an actress who’d arrived from New York a few days before, sensed my terrified state and kicked into an extemporaneous comedy routine that had me howling. What a gift she was giving me! The gift of laughter.

“Okay, toots,” she said after twenty minutes of clowning, “get over to the hospital.”

I picked up my suitcase and set forth across town, feeling blessed. It would have been nice if someone had offered to take me, but it never occurred to me to ask. I’d never hired a cab in my life, or considered the possibility. I had driven myself since I was sixteen. Without a car, all I thought of was
walk
.

The operation was, shall we say, less than pleasant. A day or two later, I had my first visitor. There in the doorway stood Tom Bish with flowers, smiling sheepishly. I was astounded to see him. And touched. The Shapiras brought me the book
The Road to Miltown
by S. J. Perelman, and I still have it. It’s moved with me across the country, put up in innumerable bookshelves, for almost fifty years. It’s showing signs of wear. (Hell, so am I, but we’re both still good to take to bed.)

Mother came to Erie to be with her recuperating daughter and meet everyone, and she said, “If you take up with any of these actors, I hope it’s Tom Bish. He’s the most courteous.”

And he was. He opened doors for ladies and displayed a very well-brought-up demeanor. He had nice manners. But there was a hidden side—the side Va-voom had hinted at, a side I didn’t meet until after we were married—a selfish, terrified little boy, rattling to get away from anything that confined him.

Not unlike that unruly chimp.

T
om and I started going together to the pub where all us actors convened after the shows to drink beer and watch TV—
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
with Humphrey Bogart,
The African Queen
with Bogart and Katharine Hepburn—and then he’d walk me home. One night, as we stood on my door stoop, chatting, I remember thinking,
It’s getting time for me to get married
. Melinda was married. And pregnant. Women my age were
supposed
to be married, weren’t they? As a mature, sophisticated woman, shouldn’t I have a life partner by now?

He kissed me goodnight and I went in. And pretty soon, Tom went in with me.

We made love, and it was a sweeter, deeper, more thoughtful experience than any I’d ever had. It touched a different place in me, and moved by the moment, I said, “So this is what it’s like.” I was aware he might think I was implying he was my first. He was, by the numbers, my third, but it was the first time
like that,
and I wasn’t making a literal statement, I was just—oh, all right, I was fudging. What—you never did that? Not even
once
? Well, bully for you. It’s very dumb. A Crime of Omission. And it can get you into mighty hot water.

One night shortly afterward, Tom was drunk and got ugly about it.

“Did you think you were fooling me? You liar!” he belittled and baited me. “Who was the first? How many have there been?”

“It doesn’t make any difference in how I feel about you,” I said, squirming with guilt, but he demanded I tell him, chapter and verse. “It’s none of your business. Unless you want to tell me all about
your
sexual history!”

“I was thirteen the first time,” he said grudgingly.

“
Thirteen?
” I was amazed. “With whom?”

“A red-haired movie star.”

“Oh, my God, that’s…that’s absolutely
fabulous
.”

Dying to hear the whole fascinating story, I begged for details. It was in Florida. That’s all I got out of him, darn it. After that, every time I saw a 1940s movie star with flaming red locks, I wondered,
Was it her?
Of course, I have a prime suspect, and I wonder if I’ll ever meet her—and if I’ll be tipsy enough to ask her if she was in Florida in 1947.

This was the first—and least important—of the many things he never told me. As it turned out, Tom was a young man full of dark secrets.

During December, we dated, slept together a few more times, and even talked of getting married. We performed one play at night, rehearsed another during the day, did a kids’ show on Saturdays, and toured high schools with
The Miser
two afternoons a week, carting sets from school to school, getting into costumes in empty classrooms, trying to interest teenagers in Molière. There was a good bit of horseplay from Tom and others onstage, which grated on my serious Uta Hagen nerves. Rehearsals are the time for joking around. I didn’t (still don’t!) find it funny when people fall out of character, giggling like—well, like those three silly little kittens.