atta girl: Tales from a Life in the Trenches of Show Business (18 page)

BOOK: atta girl: Tales from a Life in the Trenches of Show Business

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I got a call to be on Santa Barbara, the nighttime TV soap opera. I didn’t have to read for it, which was unusual; I was just told to show up. The director greeted me cordially as soon as I was ushered onto the set.

“Dody,” he said, “so glad you could join us.”

He thought I was Dody Goodman, which happened a lot at the time. She was very hot on the nighttime talk shows at that time. I knew she’d broken her leg the day before, and some inspired casting director had sent me instead at the last minute, hoping to get away with it.

When I broke the news to the director, he was disappointed. He couldn’t cover it up. It was not an encouraging moment for me, but I said I would do my best. The whole episode was soon overshadowed by the main event: Dame Judith Anderson, at the age of ninety-one, was to be on the show that day in a recurring part. We were told she would come in a limousine and go directly to makeup and wardrobe. When she was dressed and ready, no matter what they were shooting, everything would stop and they would do her scene. You don’t keep a dame waiting.

When she arrived in the makeup room, I was there. Still in awe from having seen her Medea, I bided my time until she was alone, settled in a chair and waiting patiently to be made up, before I went over and greeted her. She was very gracious. I said, “I saw you in Medea.” Suddenly, she looked frightened. I had done that terrible thing, the unforgivable—I had told her I had seen her, never thinking to follow it up with how fabulous she was. It was a cardinal sin. How many times have people just said to me, “I saw you in the play,” “I saw you on TV,” or “I saw you in Nine to Five.” Once a woman in an elevator said to me with a touch of annoyance, “I saw you on my TV again last night,” as if I had deliberately and personally taken over her living room and it was getting on her nerves. However they’re delivered, these remarks can invoke the impulse to reply, “Well, how was I?” You can’t help it. With Judith Anderson, I assumed she knew she was magnificent and that I really didn’t need to tell her so. Realizing my faux pas, I tried to recover. I gushed. I told her about having the catharsis I had never experienced in college. I carried on until it was embarrassing, but she looked relieved.

“Oh, good,” she said. “I was worried there for a minute that perhaps you hadn’t liked me.” She changed the subject immediately to Robinson Jeffers and how it was he, with his adaptation, who had been the center of the production. The thought went through my mind, Does it never end for an actor? Does one always wonder if one is good enough?

After she was dressed and ready, two escorts appeared with a vodka cocktail, which she sipped. Then they walked her to the set. All other action stopped as she made her way to her place. She did her scene, and when she came back, she was presented with the rest of the cocktail, which she downed immediately. She got into her street clothes and then into her waiting limo and was driven home to Montecito. She didn’t live in Hollywood.

For me, this was a piece of history. I was sorry Dody Goodman had had to miss it.

BACK HOME

There’s an actor’s story about how time expands as it’s contracting in LA. I think Hilda Haynes told it first. It goes like this: You get up in the morning, go out to the pool, have some breakfast, read the trades, go for a swim, come back inside, and find you are eighty-two years old.

After stretching my five-year “Improve My Career” plan in LA to fifteen years, I was about 107 and it was time to go back to New York. There, I was in eleventh heaven rehearsing Steve Martin’s play WASP, live at the Public Theater. Steve was there every day with his laptop, rewriting, telling us we were wonderful, taking us to dinner, sitting in cabs with us, carrying his guidebook Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus with him. It was great.

Then one day the flu hit me. I had forgotten all about the flu. My fever climbed to 104 degrees, and I was barely able to stand. I tore myself away from my new best friends, boarded a crowded subway, and prayed I’d make it home.

When I got off at Seventy-Second Street, I headed for a bench in the station, thinking I’d just sit down and rest for a minute before attempting the stairs. If I can just make it to the bench… I felt dizzy. People pushed by me, but I kept focused on that bench, so solid, so secure, offering me such solace. Three or four feet away from it, in slow motion, I reached out for the wooden armrest and sank to my knees like an invalid at Lourdes. Then I put my head down, laid my cheek on the platform, and thought, Oh, I’ll just take a little nap right here. I tried to raise my head and fainted.

When I came to, there was nobody around. Something was wrong. The Broadway and 72ndStreet subway station empty? Then I saw him about ten feet away, watching me. He was wearing baggy brown trousers, a beat-up corduroy jacket he might have slept in, a cap on his head, his hands in his pockets, a potbelly for a stomach.

“Oh. What happened?” I said.

“Ya passed out. Ha ha.” He looked like a guy who might hang out at the Off Track Betting Booth. He hitched up his trousers, shifting his “equipment” from left to right and back again. He made me nervous.

“How long have I been like this?” I asked.

“Four, five minutes,” he said.

“You clocked it?” I asked.

Was there no one else around? How was I going to get away from this crazy?

No part of my body was working. Was this how it was all going to end? Could I not even whimper?

He didn’t move either. He studied me like I was a chess game. He said, “Haven’t I seen you on TV?”

“Would you please help me up?” I said. “Help me up! Up!”

“Sure, sure,” he said. He came over and extended a hand, and then, like a little child asking if there really is a Santa Claus, he asked, “What’s Dolly Parton really like?”

A Recipe

Around the corner from where I live in New York is a Greek restaurant called Nick’s. It’s very good. It has Christmas lights up year-round and tables on the sidewalk. Greek music plays constantly. A slide show of the Greek Islands dances on the walls.

If you’ve been to Greece, Nick’s will bring up memories for you as it does for me: hiking up to the Parthenon to see the Vestal Virgins losing themselves in their Dionysian dance, wanting to join them; tracing Lord Byron’s signature on the front of the temple at Cape Sunion; spending the rest of the day gazing at the Aegean Sea, the sky so luminous a blue that I never wanted to leave; looking down from the top of Mykonos at a lone sailboat, lazily anchored in a tiny harbor; taking a small boat the next day to the deserted island of Apollo, the god of love, to see the giant stone penises dedicated to him; looking up at the shepherds’ mountain caves on Crete where the hippies lived after WWII; and wandering through the palace where Theseus slew the Minotaur. Ah, here’s the waiter. Time to order.

I’m looking at desserts. Here’s one, kataifi. It made me think of Dolly Parton: rich, light, sweet, served hot or cold. I had been wanting to ask her if she would give me a recipe for this book, just for fun, since Nine to Five, to many people, is who I am. I don’t need to bother her now. She could be writing a song. I got this recipe from Nick.

Kataifi

Walnuts, almonds, honey, shredded filo dough, and syrup

Served warm $6.95 A la mode $7.50

If you have a leftover drink, like Campari and orange juice, just add it in.

I had mine warm.

Good-Bye, Dolly

Dolly Parton was a glowing presence on the set. She was quiet and friendly. You could talk to her easily—though briefly. She would come through the door to the soundstage and pass the catering table where there was always a stagehand or two loitering, waiting to get a breath of her to go with his coffee. She would smile generously as she passed by. Maybe she’d say, “Mmmm, what have they got today? Ooh, donuts,” and never stop walking.

Each time her work on the set was done, she’d head back out to her dressing room/trailer by the same route, leaving stardust and lust in her wake. Between scenes, she wrote songs, planned Dollywood, and worked on her franchises, so she didn’t have time to schmooze.

I never had a full conversation with her. I had a moment, a line in the scene when she storms out of the boss’s office, where he’d been harassing her. She announces she’s going out to get a drink, at which point I say, “Atta girl!” to her. She was wonderful and never seemed to need direction or many takes. It was all business, like working in an office for real.

About six weeks after Nine to Five wrapped, I went to the theater and saw her across the auditorium. She saw me and screamed with delight, “Peggy!” She ran over to me on her high heels and gave me a huge hug. The heat coming out of her was so intense that it was like being embraced by the sun.

And I never saw her again. Showbiz.

A Crowded Elevator

Jammed up against me in a crowded elevator, a stranger, his lips barely moving, said quietly, “Over the years, you’ve made me laugh.” That was it. That was the best. I never saw him again, either.

A
FTERWORD

Ice

I’m retired now. I live on a lake and go skate-sailing in the winter, by the light of the moon. Out there I fly faster than I want, but I keep going. The crossbar of the sail rests on my shoulder, a plastic window allows me a blurred view. Blown by the fierce wind, I leave a trail of parallel white lines on the black ice. The cold pierces my bones, my blood, my soul; it’s a cold whirling in a wind that would freeze my eyeballs. But I’m wearing goggles.

Black ice, smooth as glass, frozen suddenly when there was no wind to ripple across it and turn it white. Solid cold, straight down to the bottom of the lake. I can see through the blackness suspended under my skates, a still life of branches, beer cans, plastic bags, a picnic basket, a rubber tire, a sled, a bicycle, a car hood, maybe twenty-five condoms and what looks like a toupee, some liposuction leftovers, and part of a hand, all the way down to the background of black mud.

In the distance, the ghost of my father, costumed as Tiresias, that grumpy old guy, that blind, scraggly prophet, hobbles by on his double runners with a sandwich board that says, “Greet Your Last Dog-Eat-Dog Day.” That’s all right. He’s come through before. Soon it will be spring and then summer, and then, God willing, we can all go swimming again.

Fin

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atta girl