By Myself and Then Some (8 page)

A few days later I went to the Brown office to sign my contract. By this time I had added another
l
to my last name. There was too much irregularity of pronunciation – ‘Backle’ some would say, ‘Bacahl’ others – with the added l, that last syllable was clearly to be pronounced one way and one way only –
call
(cawl). It was a standard Equity contract – standard for walk-ons, that is. The entry fee for Equity was $50. Rehearsals were to start in a week. I was to provide my own clothes and when we were into rehearsals a bit I’d know what I needed. So one day in February 1942 I went to the stage door of the Longacre Theatre to start my professional acting career. I walked to the wings, where the stage manager was waiting to check us all in. There were so many people – apart from the leads, there were about ten small parts and another ten walk-ons. The whole experience was magical. Chairs were placed onstage – a few tables
an upright piano. I knew no one, but I was still in seventh heaven.

Rehearsals began – those of us who had no parts sat in the back of the theatre. Those of the cast who had musical numbers had already rehearsed them and went through them roughly that first day. I thought it was a marvelous play, I loved everything about it – I had no judgment. Johnny, played by Jack Arthur, owned a speakeasy – Monica Lewis sang there. Barry Sullivan was the hero, Evelyn Wyckoff the heroine. Harry Bellaver had a large part – Jack Lambert was the heavy – there were bodyguards, B-girls, guests (I was one of the latter). In the first act I was onstage with a group of others sitting at a table. As rehearsals progressed I was given more to do. In the second act I made an entrance down the stairs center stage chatting with two men – no audible dialogue, need I say? – and sat at a table downstage with a couple of the B-girls. One of them was a girl named Carolyn Cromwell, who became my friend at once and has remained so all of my life. In the third act I was to be doing the jitterbug as the curtain rose, and when the music ended, my partner and I were to sit at a table stage right. I felt I had been singled out. I wasn’t merely a walk-on, I had something special to do in each act – I was an ‘outstanding’ walk-on (my name for it – no one else’s).

The show was full of music, laughter, melodrama – the smoke of a speakeasy – the Yacht Club Boys singing songs onstage and moving through the audience – love – shooting. It had everything. We opened on March 16, 1942. I was as nervous as though I had had a large part – or even a small one. When the curtain went up on the third act my partner and I were dancing and I was shaking from head to toe. To see all those faces out front, what an extraordinary feeling. I was terrified and I didn’t even have to open my mouth. But still the incredible excitement backstage – in the dressing rooms – each actor, each walk-on making sure he had what he needed for the performance. The fact that one doesn’t speak doesn’t make it less of a performance – at least, in my eyes it didn’t. I was there for a purpose, I had a specific function to perform – it might not be noticed individually, but it was part of the whole. In my inexperience and fright, I felt that all eyes were on me when I was onstage, but it wasn’t ego or conceit, it was anxiety, nerves, and built-in self-consciousness and insecurity. My mother, Charlie, and Rosalie came to the opening night; the rest of my relatives staggered their visits, Jack and Vera bringing Grandma to watch her favorite
granddaughter’s debut. On opening night I remember standing in the wings watching Barry Sullivan and Evelyn Wyckoff waiting to go on, and I knew at that moment that I was right, that being an actress was the best possible choice in life.

Of course after the reviews appeared, everyone was aware that the play wouldn’t run. It was my first theatrical heartbreak – but not my last. One night during the run I stayed overnight with Carolyn Cromwell at the Barbizon, and we stayed up most of the night talking, me again about my hopes and dreams. We sent out to Hamburger Heaven for hamburgers – it made me feel like a character in
Stage Door
. After eight weeks we closed. Arrangements were being made to play the subway circuit – Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens – so called because one got there by subway. That meant another three weeks’ work, one week in each borough.

I immediately resumed pavement pounding, even before the subway circuit began. I auditioned for
My Sister Eileen
, read once for the part of Eileen, then was asked to see the play that night and come back and read again the following day. Hopes rose – I saw the play, loved the part (I would have loved
any
part), read again, and didn’t get the job. John Golden was looking for an actress to play
Claudia
on tour. Dorothy McGuire had made an enormous hit playing in New York. I trapped John Golden outside Sardi’s to ask if I could read for it. He said yes I could and would I come to his office the next morning. Hopes rose again. I went to his office. He asked me if I’d seen the play – of course I hadn’t, I couldn’t afford it. He made arrangements for me to go to a matinee and read afterward. There was a man working for him named Fred Spooner, a warm, friendly man who had been around the theatre for years. He would be in the theatre during that performance and take me backstage for my audition. It was the beginning of another friendship. I made Fred laugh – and my innocence and wild, blind dedication must have appealed to him. For no other reason than that, he helped me – not practically, but emotionally. Claudia was a young married woman who in the course of the play – with her husband, and in dealing with her mother’s terminal illness – grew up. A marvelous part. God, I wanted it! I auditioned for it after the matinee in my old friendly theatre, the St James – on the stage this time. They liked me enough to ask me to see another performance and read again. I rushed to tell
Paul Lukas. He thought it was great news and gave me a bit of advice – not to get my hopes up too high, to think carefully of the scenes I was asked to read, to be simple. Fred Spooner gave me confidence, telling me other actresses were being considered, but that the management was obviously interested in me, not just being polite. I remember standing in the back of the theatre watching that play, living every moment of it. Inch by inch I was feeling a part of the theatre, less an outsider, with each audition I had, each office I became more familiar with, each producer who came to recognize me. It was a good, warm feeling.

After the performance Fred and I walked up 44th Street and stood outside the theatre looking at the darkened marquee as I verbalized my dream of seeing my name in lights up there. The next day – another audition. The Golden office gave me a script, told me to look at two specific scenes. I did, and read again that afternoon. There was hushed talk in the orchestra and I was thanked and told they would call me. ‘Oh, not again,’ I thought, ‘I’ll never hear another word from them, nothing will ever happen to me.’ I went home depressed. My mother told me not to worry, something would happen, don’t give up too easily. ‘They asked you back three times, they must have liked you.’ Of course she was right, I thought, trying to convince myself – they must have liked me or they wouldn’t have had me read so many times. But lurking in the back of my mind were visions of the unknown actress who had also auditioned – who had more experience than I – who was better. Even then, with all my bravado, and though I did believe in my ability to be good and succeed, I never really thought I was better than anyone else. I’m still not sure. But I would never give up. My ten-year plan still had nine years to go.

A few days later the Golden office called and asked me to come down again. Having prepared myself for the worst, I got on a bus headed for 44th Street. Mr Golden told me he and the others, stage managers, had liked my readings. The part of Claudia was cast for the tour – I trembled a little at that – but the job of understudy was open and they were offering that to me. It would mean being on the road for a year and playing the part if the leading lady was ever sick. I came to life with that offer, thanked him profusely, told him I would have to talk it over with my mother – I was still only seventeen – and would let him know by Monday. That would give me a few days’ grace and I’d have
a chance to ask Paul Lukas’ advice – he knew the theatre better than anyone else I knew, and was clearly the one to talk to.

I had no alternatives to
Claudia
at this point, though I had signed a contract with the Walter Thornton model agency. His was the least of the big three – Powers, Conover – but I was in no position to choose. I had done a small amount of photographic modeling for Montgomery Ward catalogues – nothing exciting, and my future in the modeling area looked far from brilliant. When I went to see Paul Lukas to tell him what had happened, I really was in a quandary. I didn’t know what going on tour entailed. Paul told me, ‘Look, if you accept this job it will mean (a) that you’ll be out of New York for a year, and (b) that the chances of your ever playing the part are slim. During that year you might have an opportunity to act in a new play here. If you’re away for a year, that is a year out of your life without being able to really practice your craft and learn. I would say: don’t take it.’ What he said made sense. If I accepted Golden’s offer, I would lose touch with all the people on Broadway who had come to know me a little – at least enough to speak to me or allow me to speak to them about new plays. And touring for a year, while an adventure if you’ve never done it, would be frustrating if I never got to play the part. I was dejected, but I knew that Paul was right, so I went to Mr Golden’s office and told him of my decision. It wasn’t easy. But he couldn’t have been more agreeable or understanding, this important producer who people said was gruff and unapproachable. He wished me luck and said that he hoped my break would come – perhaps even with him. So that was that! But, having made the decision, what was I going to do next? Please God, let it not be a mistake!

I
went to the Stage
Door Canteen on Monday nights all through
Johnny 2 × 4
, and after the show closed, being there made me feel I was still an active member of the theatre. Identification with it was all-important. Everyone could understand the high of being in a show and the low of the closing and being thrust onto the pavements again.

I don’t know how it happened, but on May 29, 1942, I was crowned Miss Greenwich Village. It clearly had something to do with my being a Walter Thornton model, as it was he who officiated. I don’t think anyone else was seriously competing for that dubious title created to
promote Greenwich Village. The contest was free to all entrants and the winner was to be sent to Atlantic City to compete in the Miss America competition, all expenses paid. There were no bathing suits, thank God – that would have been pathetic. I do remember walking onto a raised platform, smiling nervously in my high-heeled shoes and my pretty chintz dress. The newspaper reported three other girls as runners-up, but I was too nervous to notice anyone else. The ‘crowning’ got my picture into a few very obscure newspapers. I lied about my age, as we had to be eighteen and I wasn’t yet. On another occasion I sold kisses for the Smoke Screen Fund – whatever that was (it was sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club). Another promotion signifying nothing, another picture in a newspaper no one ever saw. Needless to say, I never went to Atlantic City, and no advantage was gained by my title or by any modeling I did for the Walter Thornton agency.

Every year George Jean Nathan wrote a page in
Esquire
appraising the past theatre season and listing merits and demerits. On the merit side in the July 1942 issue was the following: ‘The prettiest theatre usher – the tall slender blonde in the St James Theatre, right aisle, during the Gilbert & Sullivan engagement – by general rapt agreement among the critics, but the bums are too dignified to admit it.’ I really enjoyed that one. Being noticed by someone renowned in theatrical circles – anyone – was
something
. It wouldn’t get me a part, but it couldn’t hurt and it was better than just disappearing.

I
n August I actually met
the critic George Jean Nathan at a USO drive. Young actresses were stationed at various nightclubs around the city to sit at tables and try prettily to collect money. I was assigned to Café Society Downtown, where a new young entertainer had just exploded on the scene. His name: Zero Mostel. One night Nathan came in with William Saroyan and a lovely blonde girl and a lovely dark girl. The blonde was Saroyan’s soon-to-be wife, Carol, and the dark-haired girl was Oona O’Neill. Nathan invited me to sit with them for a while. Another thrill and another first for me – sitting with a famous, highly thought-of playwright like Saroyan. Nathan asked me if I’d like to have lunch with him the next day at a place called the ‘21’ Club on West 52nd Street. I had never heard of it, but said yes,
thinking perhaps I’d see or meet someone in the theatre. I dressed up in my best dress. I had never been in such a grand restaurant. It was 1:30 – late for lunch, and the crowd was beginning to thin out. I looked around the room at the well-dressed men and women, all clearly used to being there, totally at ease. A world I knew nothing about. George asked what was happening with my career – I told him everything, including the
Claudia
offer and my decision. He said I probably had done the right thing. He never made the slightest suggestion of a pass – the men I had met in the theatre who had lecherous reputations had never displayed them to me – I guess my inexperience and youth stuck out all over, as opposed to my chest. I looked across the room and saw the familiar face of Burgess Meredith staring at me. He was considered one of the finest actors in the theatre, having starred in
Winterset
and
High Tor
. He was very attractive – had a devilish, witty face. At the end of the lunch I went to the ladies’ room and returned to find Meredith talking to George. We were introduced, then he went back to his table. With a wink Nathan said, ‘He’s a devil with the ladies – look out.’ I knew nothing except that he was appealing – a beautiful actor – and I wanted to go out with him. He sent me a note asking for my phone number. I wrote back, ‘I’m in the book under my mother’s name, Natalie Bacal.’ And that was all. We left and I couldn’t know if I would hear from him. I went home starry-eyed, praying the phone would ring – acted out many scenes in my head, all ending with Buzz Meredith being the Prince and me Cinderella. What a child! Several nights later the phone did ring – it was Mr Meredith. He said, ‘Hello – there’s a big evening at Madison Square Garden Sunday night. A Night of Stars. Would you like to go with me?’ I was so unsubtle – didn’t have a clue how to play the game. ‘Oh, I’d love to,’ I said. I was walking on air. My mother was a little horrified. ‘You don’t even know the man,’ she said. ‘You practically let him pick you up – he’ll have no respect for you.’ I laughed it off, saying it was the Night of Stars – every name I’d ever heard of would be there. What would I wear? I had no long dress. Next day we rushed to Loehmann’s, where we found a long-sleeved navy-blue chiffon dress with a lace jabot. Very pretty – not very daring – and I was to wear it to any and every event for years to come. The big night came and of course my mother had lectured me to be home by midnight – be careful – who knew what kind of man Burgess Meredith might be (she was unimpressed by his stardom) – I was under
age and she’d be waiting up for me. I was headstrong, thought I knew what I was doing and had no intention of coming home until I was ready. Buzz picked me up and off I went on my first evening among the stars with a star. What, oh, what would happen that night? As it turned out, nothing. Buzz was adorable to me. Paulette Goddard was there looking ravishing and exciting. I had known something was going on between them, but I didn’t know they were in love and had broken up temporarily for some reason or other. I was hardly a threat.