Still Me (26 page)

We were at first apprehensive but then delighted by the response from our audiences. They were mesmerized by the story, laughed in all the right places, and hung on every word. At one school in the Bronx, I received the greatest ovation of my entire career, although it came at an unexpected moment. The action called for me to leap up on a bench, raise my sword, and make some romantic declaration. I leapt on the bench, drew my sword with a flourish, and demolished most of a row of lights just above me. Glass flew everywhere, the lights went out, and the students roared their approval at this reckless destruction of school property. There was no way to get them back under control, so we were forced to retreat into our station wagon and head back to Juilliard.

I finished the year and then returned to the Loeb in Cambridge to play Macheath in
The Threepenny Opera.
This time Elliot Norton was less impressed. He wrote that an otherwise “masterful” performance was ruined by the fact that I had no singing voice.

I had planned to return to Juilliard, but Tris was having a hard time financially. He was responsible for eight children, and I learned from my mother that it would have been a hardship for him to continue to put me through school.

Before the summer I had auditioned for a soap opera called
Love of Life.
In those days I'd try out for everything just for the practice. I was offered the part of Ben Harper, a charismatic “bad boy.” I spoke to Houseman over the summer, trying to work out an arrangement that would allow me to do the soap opera and finish my second year at Juilliard at the same time.

The producers of the soap opera had originally promised that I would perform only a couple of days a week, and that I would always be finished by one o'clock. Houseman reluctantly agreed to this arrangement because he understood it was a financial necessity. I started working at CBS in late July 1974. By mid-August my character had become very popular. Soon the ratings began to go up, and the brass attributed it to Ben Harper.

Ben was the tennis pro at the local country club, but this was only a cover. He arranged kickbacks for the mayor's office, had a scheme to extort a half million dollars from his mother, and was married to two women at the same time. One wife was Betsy, the wholesome girl next door; the other was a low-rent pickup named Arlene, whom Ben had married on an impulse in Las Vegas. Most of my scenes involved hopping from one bed to the other and trying to keep Arlene hidden away. She, of course, wanted to cause as much trouble as possible and to drag me away from my cozy, affluent hometown.

Ben with his two wives in
Love of Life
.

The role of Ben Harper marked the end of my anonymity, because soap opera stars have huge followings. Guys on the bus would always say, “Man, that Arlene, she's hot. You go for her. Don't you be going with that Betsy; she's square. But that Arlene, whew, she's hot. You make it with her, man, you got it.” But the women I met would usually say, “It's really a shame what you're doing.” And I wanted to say, “Hey, I don't write this stuff.”

But people get very involved in these soaps. In late August I was driving down Route 93 in New Hampshire and pulled into a service station to have an ice cream cone. I was sitting on the hood of my car when suddenly a woman came over, took a vicious swipe at me with her handbag, and screamed, “How dare you treat your mother that way!” There was no opening line, no “I've seen your show,” just
whap!
I decided to take it as a compliment.

As the ratings went up the producers began to write more scenes for Ben and his wives. I reminded them of our initial understanding, but they pointed out that there was nothing in writing about limiting my appearances. I felt they had reneged on a promise but had to admit I was having fun. I was making a living and becoming well known.

Another benefit of the soap opera was that I was learning to act in front of a camera. I was fairly comfortable when the director pulled the camera back for a wide shot, but whenever he moved it in for a close-up, I became very self-conscious. Sometimes the lens was only a few feet away, and I found it almost impossible to concentrate. Close-ups are essential because they let the audience know what the character is thinking and feeling; unfortunately, they also reveal any tension or uncertainty in the actor. Although I still had a lot to learn, and much of my work was barely acceptable, after a few weeks I began to relax and enjoy it. Many of my fellow actors see a soap opera as the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned touring companies: the material isn't great, so you've got to make something of it, and you've got to work very quickly.

A lot of talented people were alumni of
Love of Life:
Warren Beatty, Jocelyn Brando (Marlon's sister), and Bonnie Bedelia, among others. If it was good enough for them, it was certainly good enough for me. And the $250 a day was unbelievable.

Finally the soap opera schedule forced me to drop out of Juilliard. This gave me enough time to try out for plays around town—Off and Off-Off Broadway. I took acting classes at the HB Studios, performed at the Theater for the New City, and starred in a limited run of
Berkeley Square
, a romantic piece from the twenties that became a surprise hit.

It took a lot of energy, but then I had a lot of energy. I was only twenty-one; I lived alone in a fourth-floor walk-up on West Eighty-third Street near the park, and was now making almost a thousand dollars a week. Some of this went into the bank, but I spent the rest on enjoying the city and getting my pilot's license.

Love of Life
was “live on tape,” which meant we didn't stop unless somebody really screwed up. Gradually I became less self-conscious and developed my technique in front of the camera. If I simply concentrated on the other actor and the action of the scene and didn't care whether it was being filmed, the result was the ease and naturalness I always hoped to achieve.

On a typical day we had to learn nearly twenty-five pages of dialogue. Before long I discovered that if I wasn't absolutely certain of the lines, my performance was more spontaneous and less “presentational.” The actors I admire most make you feel that anything could happen. I found that unpredictability draws the audience in. I didn't mean to be subversive; I was always careful to give the other actors the right cues. But as I experimented with an improvisational approach, my work improved. Soon I started to learn my lines on the bus on the way to the studio in the morning. I found I was able to absorb twenty-five pages of the script in about half an hour. By eleven o'clock I was ready for the taping, but I tried not to “freeze” my performance, so that there would be room for new and unexpected moments as we filmed.

I never lost touch with the theater. At the Theater for the New City, we did a very interesting play by Jacques Levy called
Berchtesgaden
, about the goings-on at Hitler's summer retreat. I played a young officer in the Elite Guard at the compound.

If this young man had grown up in Iowa, he might have been a 4-H Club-er or a varsity swimmer; but he grew up in Nuremberg in the 1930s. In several monologues he talks about Hitler's vision for the country—that he will turn the economy around, pull Germany out of the Depression, and restore national pride and unity.

The play was superbly directed by Elia Kazan's wife, Barbara Loden. She asked me to play the character calmly and rationally. She said, “You look like a Nazi. So when you come out and talk about opportunity and pride and speak warmly and simply to the audience, it will be all the more chilling.”

Her advice has helped me in many parts over the years. Remembering what she told me, I underplayed Superman. I was six feet four, strong, and physically imposing; so I played against that, making him as casual as possible, letting the audience sense an implied power. Contradictions are always more interesting than playing the part “on the nose.”

The proud young Nazi in
Berchtesgaden
.

Barbara was a mentor to me. She was really my first coach, and she helped me steer around clichés. When she died of cancer at a young age, I was devastated.

In the fall of 1975 I had the opportunity to audition for
A Matter of Gravity
, a new play by Enid Bagnold starring Katharine Hepburn. The second lead was the part of her grandson. Every white male actor between twenty-five and thirty-five wanted to try out for it. Much to her credit, Miss Hepburn read nearly two hundred of them. The auditions were held at the Edison Theater on Forty-seventh Street. I walked out onstage to find the producer Robert Whitehead, his casting director, and Miss Hepburn herself sitting somewhere out in the dark. I had to read with the stage manager, who couldn't have been more pleasant but was not one of the greatest actors I've ever come across. I was extremely nervous. This would be a highly visible Broadway production, because Hepburn onstage after a twenty-year absence was big news.

Once again I knew I needed to gain control of the situation. I was going to face Katharine Hepburn in the dark, which is an intimidating experience. (Katharine Hepburn in the light is also intimidating.) So before I began, I called out into the darkness, “Miss Hepburn, I would like to bring you greetings from my grandmother Beatrice Lamb; I believe you were classmates at Bryn Mawr.” There was a long pause. Then out of the darkness came the reply, “Oh, Bea. I never could stand her.”

Now I had two choices: disappear or go to work. I fought to regain control after the Bryn Mawr setback. I started to direct the stage manager and to move furniture around. He was stunned. He'd been sitting in a chair all day feeding lines to potential grandsons, and now I was asking him to be a proper scene partner. My aggressiveness forced him out of his complacency, and my nervousness dissipated. I knew the words, felt comfortable in the space, and managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. As I was walking out, that famous voice called to me from the dark: “Rehearsals begin September seventeenth.”

Stark was blown away. This was unheard of. I felt relieved that doing the soap opera and leaving Juilliard had not “ruined” me, as some of my teachers had predicted.

But now I faced a huge logistical problem. I was cast in
A Matter of Gravity
in September 1975, but my contract with
Love of Life
ran until July 1976. I had already had to give up my final year at Juilliard because of the soap opera contract. How would I be able to rehearse and play in the Hepburn production in tryout cities from Toronto to Washington and still hop from bedroom to bedroom as Ben Harper?

By begging. I went first to our producers and then all the way up the line to Darryl Hickman (brother of Dwayne Hickman, aka Dobie Gillis), the head of daytime drama at CBS. The
Love of Life
cast—especially my two wives—was very supportive. Any one of them would have fought tooth and nail if given a similar opportunity. The CBS brass, however, were unmoved. What was a Broadway play compared with a hit show on their network? I explained my problem to Miss Hepburn, who immediately called Darryl Hickman and shredded him into small pieces. By the end of the day I had two jobs and soon was racing back and forth between the
Love of Life
studio and rehearsals for the play at a Broadway theater.