Authors: Shirley MacLaine
But I must confess, I’ve always been attracted to my male co-stars. I found male actors very intriguing, particularly when it came to vanity. The vanity of male actors is an impossible wall to scale. They know it, too. Robert Mitchum was a lesson in contradiction for me. He often seemed to be embarrassed by the makeup man or the camera director placing his chiseled face in a more favorable light. He would make self-deprecating jokes about his face, but when he walked away it would most assuredly be done in the Mitchum stride and strut—the “don’t mess with me, I’m a tough guy who rode the rails with the hobos” body language. His voice, which he boomed as a throwaway over his shoulder, had a well-practiced lower register. Yes, he was a man’s man in his own mind, but I saw something different. He used to say, “I’ll do this piece-of-shit script just so someone else won’t have to.
Better me than them.” He was an extremely intelligent man with total recall who didn’t need to spend much time memorizing lines or on character analysis. But his lumbering body language seemed to cover what he didn’t want exposed. He didn’t like to fight. Didn’t like to argue (he chose to pontificate instead), and where his ability to make important choices was concerned, I’d have to say he was an emotional coward. All of his physical body art, his voice, his point of view, while demonstrating his version of himself, actually served to cover his deepest secret—he couldn’t decide anything. He was essentially passive. Life
happened
to him. I
happened
to him. He rarely
made
anything happen.
He had been a pinup favorite of mine when I was a teenager. I loved his huge body and his way of moving on screen; it looked as though he were striding under water. His angular face and protective arms made me swoon. So when he was cast as Jerry opposite me in
Two for the Seesaw,
I was granted the pleasure of getting to know my teenage dream, assessing him from a grown-up point of view. I fell for him deeply. One of the wonderful things about making movies is that you get to either burst the bubble of your own fantasies or keep them intact. With him I had a little of each, until I realized he was fascinating but not the right man for me. It’s probably a sign of maturity to go ahead and burst those bubbles—but it’s more fun to keep your fantasies intact if you can!
A movie set is the most openhearted of environments in which to get to know someone and also, sometimes, to fall in
love. First of all, the expression of human emotion is what a movie is about. So to that end each person cast understands that he or she needs to get to the bottom not only of the character but of him- or herself. Second, there is a lot of time in between setups to explore the feelings, conflicts, and insecurities of whomever you’re working with. Third, everyone on the set knows that whatever happens there stays there. The crew knows it, the actors know it, and so does the front office. Once you leave the set and do whatever you do in the real world, there is no such protection.
So you have an environment where emotions are discussed and experimented with openly; there is a lot of time to indulge in exploring who you are, who you aren’t, and who you want to become; and you are protected from gossip because these are the rules of the game. And a game it is—like life—a game about the game of life. That’s why everyone on the outside wants to know about what happens on a set.
When filming a love scene, if an aggressive actor takes off all of his clothes and jumps on top of the leading lady, who may or may not peel off hers in turn—the crew will go right on lighting and moving equipment, the director will wave his hand to keep filming and say, “Okay, this is good for the characters,” the publicist will roll his eyes and wonder how to deal with TMZ, the front office will immediately hear about it and start to gossip—and if the two underclad actors actually do like each other—who knows? Life is a movie anyway. (By the way, the above story really happened . . . and it’s happened
among many co-stars . . . sometimes including me . . . but that’s another story.)
What happens when some of the most beautiful people on earth are physically and emotionally close is the topic that fills most of the tabloids every single week. It’s a rare and mature relationship that survives
after
the romance of the fantasy world of movie makeup is gone. I know. It happened to me quite often. Most husbands and wives of actors and actresses know it’s just a waiting game—if they can keep their jealousies under control and make patience the rule of the day.
I think I loved studying the actors I was involved with because I had such a complicated father. I was attracted to men who were equally complicated. Trying to understand them gave me plenty to do. I was a one-woman search party looking for a glimpse of who the man I loved at the time really was. They certainly didn’t know any more about themselves than I did. They avoided their own search by becoming other men on the screen. I, in turn, avoided mine by searching for them in lieu of myself. Therefore, I never really took acting all that seriously. I acted when the director yelled “Action.” In those early days of my career, I never thought much about the script or the part I was playing. I just did it when I did it. But the search for who someone else
really
was became a never-ending pleasure and pursuit for me. In a way, acting was a means for me to explore other people.
Later, when I worked with Yves Montand, I became fascinated with the intellectual art of singing and acting. He had
just come off a love affair with Marilyn Monroe. That fascinated me too, because I had heard so much about what went on with her when making Billy Wilder’s films. I was also a great admirer of Simone Signoret. To be close to Yves meant learning more about Simone. We did
My Geisha
together. We shot it entirely in Japan, which was a culture none of us was familiar with. So we were each splashed up against a foreign environment, forcing us to cling together on the all-Japanese set in order to understand what was going on.
As I look back on all my romantic movie-world relationships, which seem to always be so intriguing to the civilian world, sex was basically a non-issue. To me and the man involved, it was more about exploring identity and communicating emotionally. On that basis, so much can be learned that is valuable and growth-producing. The bugaboo of sex can interfere with real communication because it is so complicated and fraught with guilt and power plays and acting, no matter how physically satisfying it can be.
As a person whose hobby
and
vocation has been the study of character and human nature for seventy-six years, I feel qualified to expostulate on the subject of leading men—and I don’t just mean actors. I ultimately had more relationships with journalists and political leaders than with fellow actors. I think I was slumming in power. I wanted to know what it felt like to be able to help entire societies (as political leaders can do) or to blow the whistle on those same politicians to keep them honest (as journalists can do). I will never get over any of them.
I
sit gazing up at the photographs that speak of the cast of characters in my life and times. They are so varied—from pictures of my childhood to pictures taken just a few months ago.
There are my parents, my parents’ parents, my early dancing school teachers, my teenage years of cheerleading, me with the high school football captain, and school performances. My early years in New York as a dance student and then as a chorus dancer in
Oklahoma
(subway circuit at age
16
!) and
Me and Juliet
.
Sometimes I look at these pictures, peer into the past, and feel that it’s all happening now. I even have the picture of myself and other chorus dancers from
Pajama Game
as we walked the rocky shores of Jones Beach. It was taken the afternoon before the night I had to go on for Carol Haney without a rehearsal of any kind.
I was half an hour late at the theater, and stretched across the stage door entrance were Jerry Robbins, Bob Fosse, Hal
Prince, and George Abbott (that’s a picture I don’t have but can see in my mind as clear as anything). They were frantic because Haney had twisted her ankle and couldn’t walk, much less perform. I didn’t know the lines, the song lyrics, or the dances. All I could think was: “I’m going to drop the hat in ‘
Steam Heat.
’”
Thoughts became reality. I dropped the hat and said “Shit,” right out loud. The front row gasped.
With the help of all the cast members I got through the show and received a standing ovation at the curtain call. Strangely, I never felt so lonely. I was on my own with no idea what I was doing. Somehow, though, I felt I had my own angel on my shoulder who would be there for the rest of my life.
There are the greats from Hollywood splashed across my walls with stories and events written all over their faces as they gaze down at me.
Alfred Hitchcock, bless his soul (which is something I think he was lacking, by the way) was the master of cynical comedy. His first words to me on the set were, “Genuine chopper, old girl, genuine chopper.”
The Trouble with Harry
was my first film and I didn’t know what he meant. When I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hitchcock?” he just looked at me and said it again. John Forsythe (my co-star) came to my aid. “It’s Cockney slang,” he explained. “Try and put together the meaning of the individual words.”
I thought of a synonym for “genuine” and came up with
“real.” I didn’t know what to do with chopper. John made a sign like a hatchet movement. The hatchet move suggested “axe.” Put together, the words said “real-axe.” Relax. Oh my God, I thought. Is this how he directs actors?
The shoot commenced. Hitch was famous for thinking actors were irrelevant. “The only important things,” he said, “are the script and the first preview.” Right.
He lived up to that way of thinking, though he did give me one other piece of direction. “Before you say that line,” he told me one day, “dog’s feet.”
Oh dear, what were dog’s feet?
Of course. Dog’s feet were paws. “Before you say that line, pause.” That was it.
My relationship with Hitch was not about acting. It was about food. I remember he told me about a kitchen he had designed. He had paced out the smallest kitchen needed to make a good meal, then he had the kitchen designed to fit the same number of steps he had walked . . . the fewer the better. He knew how many steps from the fridge to the stove to the table.
He had such a dark sense of humor that I’m not sure even now that he’s really dead. What would an actor know anyway? To him we were cattle. The first day of a picture with him, the actress Carole Lombard greeted him from the center of a corral she’d had the crew knock together for her. He thought it was funny. And true.
Hitch taught me how to eat well, and to think of something
funny when I was scared. Maybe that’s the best piece of direction I’ve ever gotten, given the state of the world today.
Dean and Jerry were a lesson in how
not
to break up. I did their second-to-last picture with them. By that time, they couldn’t stand each other. Dean was really the spontaneous funny one, and Jerry was more of a scientist of comedy who wanted to be a director. I was caught in the middle, as were the rest of the cast and crew. Many times the producer Hal Wallis (who was worse than anyone) had to come to the set and insist that time was money and the two of them should get on with it.
Dean’s soft-spoken personality made it hard to tell when he was really upset. I never saw him angry or anything like that. He was just trying to get through each day. Jerry basically took over, and when the next picture in their contract came around, Dean simply walked. I had the same agent as both of them, so I heard the details of the breakup. There was a script meeting with the two of them and the writer to sketch out a comedy scene involving some sort of police chase. Jerry controlled the meeting and said he wanted to flip it and have them chase the police. Apparently Dean said, “Oh no, that would never happen. In my experience, the only time I’ve ever seen the police is in my rearview mirror.” Jerry said, “Your character wouldn’t act that way,” and Dean said, “Well, then
get somebody who will,” and walked out. They didn’t speak for twenty years until a charity event occurred and the same agent put them together again. Seeing them together again that evening was wonderful.
I worked with Dean alone after that in
All in a Night’s Work
.
I developed a crush on him but—thank goodness—his wife was always around. I was over the crush by the time we did
Some Came Running
together. By then I was more interested in who the mobsters were who always seemed to be on the lam around us. Sam Giancana taught me how to play gin rummy. He won by reading my cards in my glasses. I pulled a toy gun on him once because he took my cannoli. He went for his .
45
, pointed it at me, and Dean and Frank walked into the room. They fell down laughing. I didn’t. That’s when I realized who he was.
Dean and Frank were made for each other, and many, many women. I was not one of them, but I miss them both more than I want to think about. Hollywood will never see the likes of them again. They were the real deal. By the way, it was Dean who really knew the mob guys and told them to go away. Frank was what they called a “wannabe.” I was a mascot they protected. I was never quite sure from whom!