Saturday's Child (15 page)

But I, apparently, was deplorably telegenic.

Featured on
Mama
for seven years—by the end of which I had played Dagmar for half my life—I also starred in teleplays on
Alcoa Theatre, Kraft Playhouse
, and
U.S. Steel Hour
, as well as on
Danger
and
Suspense
. I worked under Sid Lumet, George Roy Hill, Delbert Mann, Frank Schaffner, and of course Ralph Nelson. I did a fair amount of hack work, too, because there was also plenty of clunky tin being broadcast during the Golden Age, a reality nostalgiacs would prefer to forget. I did a run on the soap opera
Another World
, guest shots on pre-
Sesame Street
days kids' shows like
Howdy Doody
and
Mr. I. Magination
(where, in a bizarre prefeminist
augury, I got to play Annie Oakley, defend girls' rights, and belt out “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better”), and
Rod Brown, Rocket Ranger
(during which I developed an age-ten, massive crush on Cliff Robertson, whose talent was wasted playing Rod Brown).

At the classier end of the spectrum, I guest-starred on a well-written science-fiction series,
Tales of Tomorrow
, playing a genius child scientist. I remember that I enjoyed the challenge of learning and then rattling off page-long technical speeches on atomic theory, and I liked the integrity of the character, who refused to share her knowledge with the military, because she was bent on saving the world. According to the clippings, that show, titled “A Child Is Crying,” won a 1952 Peabody Award nomination, and I won the Science Fiction Galaxy Magazine Award for “outstanding television performance.” Rebroadcast live a year later by popular demand, “A Child Is Crying” still sometimes surfaces in a grainy kinescope
²
version on cable channels specializing in vintage video science-fiction. That role remains one of my two favorites, along with playing the lead in “The Tall Dark Man,” a teleplay on
Robert Montgomery Presents
in 1955. It was a tour de force for me, pushing psychological buttons of which I was only vaguely aware—a “wolf wolf” story about a young girl so disturbed by her father's disappearance and mother's remarriage that she takes to pathological lying. When she happens to witness a real murder and knows she's been seen by the killer, no one believes her. The murderer waits for her to leave school and, when she hides inside, enters the building after hours to track her down. She must survive by her wits, and in the process learn to overcome both her terror and her overactive imagination. The reviews were uniform raves, and more awards came tumbling in.

Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, I also did a number of “spectaculars,” so termed because they were each two or more hours long, and (gasp!) by that time actually in
color
—which in those days meant even more suffocatingly hot lights than usual, plus the added pressure of glitches from this new technology—broadcast live, of course. So I played the title role in the first television production of
Alice in Wonderland
, with a cast that included Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. In another
“spec,” I played the essential “teen,” Corliss Archer, in
Kiss and Tell
—receiving, at about age fourteen, my much-hyped first on-air kiss from Warren Berlinger.

Somewhere in all this, time had been found for me to do a screen test for Paramount Pictures, but I see from fragments of saved 1948 correspondence that my mother and aunt regretfully turned down a movie contract—possibly because I had by then entered into exclusivity with
Mama
. But in 1953 there was a Columbia Records deal and, at age twelve, I cut two successful children's albums: “Little Smokey the Runaway Train” and “A Magical Music Box” (still “talk-singing,” still—despite the efforts of three different singing teachers—cheerfully unable to carry a tune).

There was also work in “legit” theater. In 1952, Carol Irwin decided to capitalize on the popularity of the
Mama
show, and commissioned Frank Gabrielson to write a new play called
Here's Mama,
³
based on some of the best-loved episodes of the TV series. The company, again under Ralph's direction, took it out on the summer-stock road. We went off the air for longer than our usual two-week summer break, and were away from New York for two and a half months, rehearsing and then playing to sold-out houses at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine and the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts. Audiences who had never been to the theater flocked to see their favorite TV family in the flesh.

For me, that summer was genuinely enjoyable. Once rehearsals were finished and except for matinee days, there were hours of swimming and beach strolling as if on a real holiday; there were nights of excitement in front of the one-eyed, single-throated “beast in the darkness.” There was the challenge of absorbing stagecraft, learning to develop a sense of timing different from that in the studio, to pause for laughs, to project from
your diaphragm so the balcony's last row can hear you even when you whisper. There were perks: applause, curtain calls, backstage flowers. Richard Aldrich, owner of the Cape Playhouse, was married to Gertrude Lawrence, who flattered me on opening night by coming backstage and bowing to me with the same deep curtsey she'd just made famous in
The King and I
. There were practical jokes: theater veterans like Peggy Wood and Jud Laire played the requisite tricks on me, their neophyte: I was sent to track down the key to the curtain, and to find striped paint. So I trotted amicably from stage manager to prop man to stagehand, each of whom, after mulling it over, assured me that somebody else was in possession of what I was looking for. (I should've picked up on striped paint right away, but legitimate theater seemed so magical and mysterious, and the technical arrangements were so foreign to my experience with cameras and mikes, that I thought there must
be
a key to the mechanism that rang down the curtain.)

Five years later, around age fifteen, I would do another stock stint—as the young girl in Graham Greene's
The Potting Shed
at the Boston Summer Theatre—memorable to me primarily because it introduced me to Greene's writing, to which I promptly developed a lifelong addiction. A year or so after that, I would spend a summer on the boards in Canal-Fulton, Ohio, playing various parts in repertory, including a fey asylum inmate in
The Curious Savage
(with ZaSu Pitts, of all people, and James Coco, whose campy humor I adored).

I didn't work on Broadway, and to the end of her life my mother never forgave Carol Irwin those years of contract exclusivity that, according to Faith, made me unable to accept the title role in
The Diary of Anne Frank
, despite (so I was told) an offer of the part after my highly successful audition. Given my mother's capacity for verbal as well as needlework embroidery, I can't be sure this offer took place, and it may well be that the late Susan Strasberg was first choice all along. But I do remember Garson Kanin, the director, coming to the footlights in actual tears after my audition and embracing me, amazed that I'd completely memorized all three scenes I'd been given to familiarize myself with one day earlier. (Overachiever was apparently my middle name.)

Looking back, I can thank a benevolent fate that I was
not
signed to Paramount Pictures and did
not
play Anne Frank. The former would have
meant a move and resettlement to Hollywood hell. The latter, given the long run of that play, would have made my eventual attempts to get out of the business even more difficult than they were destined to become.

But not playing Broadway theater didn't mean I was safe from the proscenium stage. There were the accursed benefits, including radio marathons before live audiences and, later, telethons for cerebral palsy and polio research. There were fundraisers for the Red Cross, the Fresh Air Fund, the Lighthouse for the Blind, the National Cancer Fund, and many more. There were—judging from the scrapbook-collected thankyou notes—intolerable numbers of religious charities (Jewish, Protestant, Episcopal, and Roman Catholic). There were appearances at philanthropy breakfasts, charity teas, and fundraising luncheons, where my speeches were applauded by ladies wearing flowery hats with tiny veils. There were also visits to last-dying-wish children.
⁴
And there were publicity visits to schools, hospitals, orphanages, and summer camps for euphemistically “underprivileged” and “disadvantaged” children—all of which were detested, I'm sure, even more by the children I visited than by their visitor.

These appearances left me feeling bloated with guilt about my own advantaged existence. They also left a residue of patronizing, toxic pity for the recipients. Over time this heated, fermenting toward a rage that probably has had a considerable influence on my politics. I loathe the notion of “charity,” with all it implies: contempt, hypocrisy, condescension; token largesse bestowed by the elite upon those who've been deliberately
kept
from their own fair share
by
that same elite. Furthermore, when “charity” becomes an industry, the corrupt siphoning off of monies from those in genuine need is a scandal waiting to happen: the money goes to keeping the bureaucracy afloat and to paying generous corporate salaries for those running it—what my friend, the writer and activist Theresa Funiciello,
terms “the poverty industry.” Were there sane government priorities (more money for medical research than weapons research, for instance), and authentic social-justice programs empowering people as is due them by
right
, with dignity, there would be no need for the fraudulence of charity. But of course charity
is
useful—in inviting contributors to garner tax deductions while feeling good about them
selves
plus neatly preserving the status quo. I didn't understand any of this back when I was four, and seven, and ten, and fifteen—distributing donated toys, auctioning off my gold barrettes, shaking bandaged hands, cutting ribbons on newly donated wheelchairs, signing autographs, and smiling for the cameras. I went where I was taken, did as I was told, and couldn't comprehend why I would sometimes need to excuse myself, retiring to the nearest bathroom to vomit as quietly as possible.

My enforced Good Samaritanism apparently was contagious to my fans. According to a CBS Network press release, by the time I was thirteen, there were 3,500 members in Robin Morgan Fan Clubs across the United States—not only watching, following, and fantasizing about their idol but imitating her “charity work” as well: collecting used clothes and old toys for the Salvation Army and holding bake sales to raise money for the Community Chest. But by that age, I already had a growing distrust of the values for which I was being used as a conduit. I had simply seen too much of what goes on “backstage.” I knew it was really about people using my celebrity to publicize their cause, and about my PR agent using a cause to publicize her client. To this day, when I hear of some athlete or actor being lauded for “humanitarianism,” I gag.

I too was actually rewarded for these publicity and promotional gambits, which only made things worse. The hardest part about receiving honors was that my mother insisted I was deserving of them, while I knew there was a big difference between helping and hyping. The presentation events didn't feel flattering, merely irrelevant. I knew these honors had nothing to do with who
I
really was (whoever, I would think to myself,
that
might be). But little Robin Morgan was somebody else.

Among her other honorific identities, Robin was UNICEF mascot at age four, honorary Kentucky Colonel, Police Athletic League Mascot, Mascot of the Children's Aid Society and of the Sister Kenny Polio Foundation, honorary Boy Scout (don't ask; I don't know why), honorary Girl
Scout (never mind getting to be a real one: no time), Queen of the Boy Scout Explorers' Ball, and recipient of the President's (Eisenhower's) Prayer Award from the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (for promoting savings-bond sales).

Religion, patriotism, law and order, humanitarianism, family values, obedience, the sanctity of money. Drums and whistles. The works. The only surprise is that I didn't grow up to be a serial killer. Perhaps if I'd been a boy …

While my mother didn't expect me to believe I was really a Boy Scout, she did require the pretense of conviction—balanced by an appropriate show of humility—that I was worthy of what she called “our finest hour so far,” my being named at age twelve “the Ideal American Girl,” as designated by the eleven million members of the General Federation of Women's Clubs of America.

The ornately inscribed parchment scroll read:

THE RADIO AND TELEVISION DIVISION

OF THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS

PRESENTS THIS CITATION TO

YOU
,

ROBIN MORGAN
,

AS THE CHILD WHO HAS CONTRIBUTED MOST TO THE ADVANCEMENT

OF RADIO AND TELEVISION IN 1954
.

FOR YOUR GRACIOUS EXEMPLIFICATION OF THE IDEAL

AMERICAN GIRL, AND FOR YOUR ARTISTRY DISPLAYED IN THE

CBS TELEVISION AWARD-WINNING SERIES
“M
A
M
A
.”

ALSO FOR YOUR ENCHANTING INTERPRETATION OF ALICE

IN “ALICE IN WONDERLAND,” BELOVED BY

GENERATIONS OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD
.

I recall little about the ceremony, except that it was staged in the Convention Center in Denver, Colorado, before popping flashbulbs, and the stiff parchment scroll kept threatening to snap back up into its roll. A glossy photograph informs me that my Peter Pan collar was starched, my long blond hair pushed back by a silk ribbon headband, my smile fittingly grateful. I do remember thinking the designation weird, partly because I
knew I was
nobody's
ideal (I had just upped my secret daily masturbation rituals to three), and because I must have intuited with the common sense of a child that no such ideal could or should exist except perhaps as a joke.