by Susan Lucci
As an aspiring actress, I would use the emotions I felt and witnessed others feeling during these types of tragedies and global events. I found inspiration in everything, the joyous as well as the sad. During my high school years, I was lucky enough to have a most enthusiastic and outstanding drama teacher as my first acting teacher. Inez Norman Spiers was legendary at Garden City High School. Mrs. Spiers gave our school the greatest gift by creating a drama department and theater group called Masquers that was one of the finest programs a public school could offer. Despite the fact that our school tended to focus more on academics and sports than the arts, the drama program was second to none. Mrs. Spiers had curly red Lucille Ball–style hair that was cut short and cropped close to her head. She wore green nail polish and was quite a colorful character in her presentation. As a teacher, she gave me such an incredible head start. I was thirteen years old when I took my first class with Mrs. Spiers and I continued to study with her until I graduated high school in 1964. She always had her students rehearse plays the way they do on Broadway and the way the protracted process works on television with a table read and blocking. She taught us to dissect scenes from beginning to end so we could understand not only the work but the meaning as well. Mrs. Spiers thought it was crucial to understand all areas of theater, so she taught us to apply theatrical makeup and to engage in role-playing, movement exercises, and character work. She also encouraged us to learn as much about the behind-the-scenes work of set design and construction as we could. Mrs. Spiers took no prisoners. She was tough and expected her students to comply with the high standards she set for us. She was a strict teacher who placed many demands on her students, but all of them were in line with what we would need to do as professional actors someday. I was very lucky that Mrs. Spiers took to me right away. She believed in me and encouraged me to pursue acting from the very start. I was always cast in the various productions, playing a variety of leading roles throughout high school, which was wonderful. Mrs. Spiers had us performing everything from The King and I to Noël Coward. The woman was incredible to offer that type of diversity in high school.
Doing all of those shows gave me the experience of being onstage and of working at an advanced level at such an early age. It was Mrs. Spiers who taught me never to upstage the other actors and to learn how to improvise when something goes wrong. She helped us discover how to turn every mishap into an opportunity. I remember hearing a story she told about an early Masquers production when a backdrop painting fell in the middle of a performance. Without missing a beat, the actor onstage said, “My, how the natives are restless tonight.” My only dilemma was that while I was involved in the drama department, I was also involved in cheerleading. Because I cheered throughout the school year, I’d often have practice or games between play rehearsals. The only way I could rehearse and make it in time to a football or basketball game was to wear my cheerleading uniform to both. Mrs. Spiers hated that and wasn’t shy about telling me how she felt. She explained that I didn’t move the same way in a cheerleading outfit as I did in my costume—and she was right. So, sometimes, I would throw a dress rehearsal skirt over my cheerleading skirt, which made my hips look really wide, but at least I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Spiers, but I made commitments to both activities and I wanted to do both. Mrs. Spiers also didn’t like the idea that I would finish rehearsals and then run off to the football field. Understandably, she wanted my undivided attention. I was told the year after I graduated that Mrs. Spiers officially banned rehearsing in anything but your proper attire. I am sure her heart was in the right place. It’s not as if she didn’t like sports because she was always trying to enlist the football players to be in her plays. But that Glee mentality hadn’t quite sunk in at our school yet—at least not while I was there. Many years after I graduated, the school commemorated Mrs. Spiers by naming the auditorium after her. She deserved that honor and so much more.
My mother started taking me to New York City to see Broadway shows when I was a teenager. We mostly went when I was off from school or during summer vacations. Although New York City was only an hour’s drive from our home, we hardly ever made the trip. My father thought New York was a very tough place, especially for women to go to on their own. Still, my mother and I loved the excitement of planning a special day together where we could have some important mother-daughter time and enjoy the experience of taking in the latest show and then dining at Sardi’s, a place we had read about in the newspapers that was the most famous eatery in the theater district. It is a well-known hangout for the theater crowd, both actors and patrons.
We spent wonderful days together seeing everyone from Richard Burton in Hamlet to Sammy Davis Jr. and Lola Falana in Golden Boy. I hadn’t yet been exposed to Shakespeare in school, so as a teenager, Hamlet was not easy to watch. Still, it was beautiful and spellbinding. I have never forgotten Richard Burton’s massive presence on the stage. This was the first time I ever looked at an older man and thought he was sexy. Eileen Herlie, who I would end up working with years later on All My Children, played his mother, Gertrude. This particular production of Hamlet was done in all modern dress. I was speechless when Eileen crossed the stage in a full-length mink coat. She was an inspiration and so glamorous and elegant. On the way out of the theater, I somehow got swept away in the sea of people leaving the show. I was thrust up against a waiting limousine outside the stage door. My mother was trying to rescue me but was unable to reach my hand through the crowd. I turned to look into the window of the waiting car and there was Richard Burton sitting in the backseat with his arm around two young girls. I don’t know why, but I thought one of them might have been Elizabeth Taylor’s daughter Liza Todd. Mr. Burton looked so protective of those girls. He saw me peering through the window. We gazed at each other for mere seconds, but I was absolutely mesmerized by his very blue eyes. Although I wasn’t so happy about being thrown up against his car, I was absolutely thrilled to have shared that moment with someone who was larger than life.
When my mother took me to see Golden Boy on Broadway, I begged her to let me wait outside the stage door so I could catch a glimpse of Sammy Davis Jr. Even as a teenager, I recognized Sammy Davis as one of the greatest performers of all time. I wanted to wait so I could ask for his autograph. We stood outside that door for hours, but he never came out. As I turned to my mother to say that we could finally leave, Miss Lola Falana was standing right in front of me. I remember watching her dance on The Ed Sullivan Show, and now there she was! It was thrilling. I don’t know why I always remember what people were wearing, but she had on jeans, an oversize crisp white man’s shirt, and sneakers. She was absolutely gorgeous.
“You’re Lola Falana!” I said. “I’ve seen you on TV!” I was a giddy schoolgirl.
She just looked at me, like, “Yeah, so?” And then grabbed my Playbill to sign it. She wasn’t rude, just quick. It was in that moment and exchange that I said to myself, When I grow up and become a famous actress, I am definitely going to sign autographs! I would never forget what it was like to be the wide-eyed girl full of hopes and dreams.
Our days of taking in shows on Broadway and spending time together in the city became a tradition that continued throughout high school and into my college years. My mother and I loved to see matinees and have lunch at Sardi’s. The very first time we went there, Vincent Sardi, the owner himself, met us at the door. He was extremely pleasant to us, especially since he was used to more sophisticated patrons than we were. He personally escorted us to our table, which I thought was quite extraordinary—that is, until I saw where he was seating us. He stopped at the front table underneath a row of the very famous caricatures drawn of the celebrities who had eaten there. I didn’t realize that this particular table in the front and center of the restaurant was a very sought-after place to be seated. At the time, I thought he didn’t want his other guests to see the two of us. My mother and I were all too happy to be there, even if we thought Mr. Sardi was not.
We had a very nice lunch. As we ate our meal, Mr. Sardi approached us and pointed to a table of well-dressed gentlemen who looked like Hollywood producers.
“I am sorry for the interruption. The gentlemen at that table would like to know who you are.” He was talking to me. I was very flattered, although I had no idea why they thought I was anyone notable in this restaurant of notables. I was a mere “nobody” enjoying lunch in the big city with my mother. I wanted to be an actress. I was studying to be one, but at that time I was still a total unknown.
My mother and I continued to frequent Sardi’s in the summers that followed. Every time we went there, we were greeted like old friends. Vincent Sardi was always so very nice to us. And, every time, people wanted to know who we were. One day, we were introduced to Marian Probst, who said she was one of the editors of something called the Celebrity Register, a chronicle of who’s who in the world of entertainment made famous by Earl “Mr.” Blackwell. Marian said she would like to include me in their next edition, which was amazing since I hadn’t been professionally cast in anything yet.
I cannot explain what the draw was, but throughout my early life, it seemed that people had an instinctive sense that I was going to be famous. I can’t say this with any authority other than my own experience, but from the time I was a young child, I always knew that performing was all I really wanted to do. I suppose there is some merit to the correlation between the image one projects out to the world and what the world sees. If you’re lucky—very lucky—and you work hard, that portrayal can and often does turn into the stuff that dreams are made of.
CHAPTER 2
Marymount College
I graduated from Garden City High School in 1964, having had a great time for those four years. I was very excited that I had been accepted to Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York. As a way to earn some extra money before starting school, I got a summer job waitressing at the Garden City Hotel. This historic landmark was close to my parents’ home and has been a favorite of the rich and famous for many years. It has housed the Vanderbilts, Astors, Kennedys, and Clintons. Charles Lindbergh stayed at the Garden City Hotel on the night before he embarked on his first transatlantic flight. Every summer, the hotel brought in twenty or so college kids to work as waiters, waitresses, busboys, and hostesses. The hotel got very busy during those few months, as there was outside dining in addition to the more formal dining room inside the hotel. They always needed more staff at that time of year. It was a wonderful place to work.
The executive chef was a tall, handsome Austrian named Helmut Huber. I was told by longtime staffers that he was once asked to be the chef at the White House, but turned it down because they didn’t pay enough money and because he wanted to get out of the kitchen and into administration. The prestige was nice, but he wanted to move on in his career. The Knott Hotel Corporation that owned the Garden City Hotel at the time had promised Helmut that if he did two years there, they would promote him to become in charge of all the food and beverage operations for their chain, which included food services for the Pentagon and the United Nations among several other properties around the country. My first summer working as a waitress at the Garden City Hotel was Helmut’s last as the executive chef.
One night, I went into the kitchen to place an order when I heard a bellowing voice with a thick Austrian accent say, “Young lady. Your skirt is too short. You are not a teenybopper. You’re a young lady. It is too short! And you don’t know how to hold a tray.” When he finished scolding me, he wiggled his ears. I thought that was so funny and a little odd. Of course, he wasn’t the first person to ever shake their finger at me. I had endured four years of Mrs. Spiers’s drama club. If I could take it from her, I could certainly handle Helmut Huber.
I turned to one of the girls I worked with and asked, “Who is that man?”
“He’s your boss!” she said.
I truly had no idea it was Helmut, the executive chef, standing in front of me even though he was wearing his tall white chef’s hat and a double-breasted linen jacket with his name and title embroidered across the chest. When she told me his name was Helmut Huber, I asked her if that was one name or two. She said it so fast it sounded like “Helmuthuber.”
At the time I was dating one of the boys who had been hired for the summer, too. RG was visiting from Colorado. He was the nephew of a family that lived in Garden City. I was crazy about him. At the time it never crossed my mind to think of Helmut as anything other than my boss. I eventually learned how to carry a tray, but I purposely kept my skirt short. That was the style of the time, and besides, I was about to start college and was working for tips!
By the end of the summer, I was very excited to start my freshman year at Marymount. The college had been established as an independent girls’ boarding school in 1907 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Mother Marie Joseph Butler founded the institution to “create a place of learning where women could grow and where they could receive an education that would prepare them for positions of leadership and influence in the world.” Marymount College at Tarrytown was the first of several colleges founded by the RSHM. Several of these still exist, including Marymount Manhattan, Marymount University, and Loyola Marymount. The school offered a great quality education for women, and had spectacular teachers. Their primary method is to teach you how to think and not what to think. My Catholic schooling as a young girl was all about indoctrination, whereas college became more about learning about all religions and the making of informed, thoughtful choices in every area of our lives. During theology and philosophy, we were required to read a variety of books so we could come to our own conclusions, examine controversial concepts, and not cop out. I learned to analyze things by breaking down information and figuring out what worked and what didn’t. I didn’t love that very painstaking and methodical aspect of discovery, but I am glad I had to do it because it became very helpful later in life. The Jesuits make you analyze everything. It’s very painful but ultimately very good for you.
I met some wonderful women my first year at Marymount who remain my closest friends to this day. When I got to my dormitory on the first day of school, I was surprised to learn that I hadn’t been assigned a roommate. There was another girl on my floor named Patty Depuy, who also had a single room. Patty lived directly across the hall from me. Although neither of us requested to have our own rooms, it was a very nice luxury. Our dorm was filled with all sorts of interesting women. Mary Anne Dolan lived in one of the corner rooms. She later became the first female editor for the Los Angeles Times. Mollie Beattie lived on our hall, too. She later became the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Joyce Brown also lived on our floor. She went on to become the president of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. These are just a few of the quality women who started Marymount College the same year I did.
I spent the first few weeks of school getting to know as many of these girls as I could. There was a tearoom in one of the buildings on campus where we gathered to talk and watch old movies. I grew up watching a lot of television. I always sat in front of the TV while my mother or grandmother prepared dinner. Even as a young girl, I was someone who read the opening and closing credits because I wanted to know who everybody involved in the making of the movie or show was. I learned as much about movies as I could, from the mainstream to the obscure. One night, at the beginning of my freshman year, I was watching a movie in the tearoom with the other girls when all of the sudden I heard someone from the back of the room shout out, “Oh, that’s Oscar Homolka!” Now, for those of you who don’t know Oscar Homolka, he was an old-time Austrian film and theater actor from the 1930s. He wasn’t exactly a household name, so when I heard someone else in the room recognize him, I thought to myself, Someone else knows Oscar Homolka? I must meet this person.
When the lights came on, I looked around and it turned out that the girl who shouted Oscar’s name was Patty Depuy, the girl who lived across the hall from me. We were kindred spiri
ts from the very start. I figured that anyone who knew Oscar Homolka had to be a great girl. Patty told me she was from Milford, Pennsylvania, which was the “big” city near the small town where my grandmother was from in the Pocono Mountains. Although Milford is quite well known today for its summer theater community, back then it was just another small Pennsylvania town. Patty was the first person I had ever met outside my family who even knew of it.
Patty was an art major, so although we didn’t have any classes together, we quickly became the best of friends. We ended up becoming roommates our sophomore year and remained roommates for the rest of college. When Patty and I were getting ready to decorate our dorm room together, unbeknownst to each other, she arriving from Pennsylvania and I arriving from New York, we had each picked out the identical bedspread, dust ruffle, and pillow sham. We could hardly believe the coincidence. That’s when we knew for sure that our friendship would last a lifetime. Our schedules were very compatible. I was often out until all hours of the night building sets for a show or rehearsing and she would be in her studio painting. Patty was and still is a wonderful artist and is also one of the lucky ones who have been able to make a living doing something she genuinely loves.
As a performer, I always thought of Patty as the ideal audience member because she is the most enthusiastic observer I have ever met. I discovered this the first time Patty’s mother took us to New York City to see Fiddler on the Roof starring the great Zero Mostel. Throughout the show, Patty laughed the loudest, clapped with great passion, and cried with tremendous emotion. She was on the edge of her seat for the whole time. I remember watching her that day and thinking everyone should have a Patty in their life—or at the very least, in their audience. Lucky for me, I did and still do have her in my life. Today Patty runs her own interior design company called Patricia Johnson Interiors.
