The Unwilling Actress
by Bella Dietrich
DBB-115
(Dansk Blue Books DBB 115) Paperback 1971
Brandon House (1971)
INTRODUCTION
In William Shakespeare's immortal As You Like It, he noted, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..."
The Unwilling Actress places the spotlight on a stage where the players reveal the many roles in life they aspire to. It is a setting that finds a young ingenue who comes to realize that the world of greasepaint, scenery, and make-believe is more to her liking than reality.
Beautiful, talented, and misunderstood by those nearest to her, Celia lives only to play the dramatic parts on stage that will free her from the drab and dull life in the real world. The other inhabitants of this fantasy land share her enthusiasm for this means of escape.
The theatre, as some form of dramatic expression, can be found in every historical period and in every part of the world. In nearly all cultures, what happens on the stage reflects what has or is happening in the society of the area or era represented. The ancient Greek plays described the communal life of that time. During the Puritan influence on history, theatres were officially closed. Ibsen, Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw and others used the stage to deal with the social problems of their times via their works.
And now, Bella Dietrich, with her unusual penetrating perception of the motives behind the facade and inner workings of today's men and women, has written a scathing in-depth story dealing with role-playing in the Twentieth Century. The author, a lifetime student of the interpersonal relations between those who love and those who hate each other, leads the reader into the intricate patterns of human emotion.
As the curtain is raised on this drama, the foibles of the characters come into focus-the small town hard-working accountant who is trying to save his money in order to start his own business, the little rich girl whose only talent is identifiable by a dollar sign, the political performer fighting for power with his only negotiable asset, the disillusioned Vietnam veteran, and the dedicated thespian.
In this richly tapestried setting filled with contemporary theatrical fledglings, The Unwilling Actress tells the real story of those who strive for a life in the theatre and of those who fail to understand the drives and needs that motivate these gifted and fragile human beings.
Celia lives only when she has donned the mask of the theatre-whether it be the tragedian or the comedienne. How many of us do this in our daily lives without the trappings of the theatre? And how many of us wish that we could don the disguise of another person to achieve our goals in life?
These questions can only be answered by our readers.
This marks the third Dietrich novel to be published by Dansk Blue Books. We believe it also marks the first time that the drama of today- the frustration, search, and quest for identity that is sweeping the world-has been so forcefully told via the ageless vehicle of the theatre.
-The Publishers
Chapter One
The warm spring air fanned the leaves of the old elms, and they swayed above the intricate roofs of the two Victorian houses set wide apart to form a small park between. The park needed little transformation to become an outdoor theatre for the annual Shakespearean production of The Peabody School of Dramatic Arts.
The folding audience chairs had been set up in a wide crescent around the playing area which backed up to the path leading to the former servants' quarters that now served as dressing rooms. Celia Brown carefully powdered her throat and expanse of snowy bosom displayed by the low square-cut neckline of her costume. Her hand was shaking a little.
It was more than just the usual tenseness before a performance. That was a tenseness she welcomed, for it was an occupational hazard that once lived through usually presaged a good performance. This was a nervous excitement that bordered on the edge of hysteria, and it was caused by Webster McCullough.
The way he'd looked at her a while ago when he'd come to the dressing room door... as though he could devour her on the spot. His piercing blue eyes behind his glasses had missed nothing... Celia's polished pecan-brown hair that swung around her heart-shaped face like a bell, her wide almond eyes that tilted up at the corners, her delicate little nose and curved mouth that quirked up in faint mockery. His eyes had assessed and caressed her luminous white skin from her wide brow down to her slender throat to the mounds of her breasts, barely covered and pushed up by the boning of the costume till they were lifted and pressed upward as if in invitation. Even where she was covered she felt naked under his eyes, as though he could see her narrow waist and curved hips and long thighs under the heavy rose brocade.
Celia had seen a decisiveness suddenly tighten his good-looking face. A muscle twitched in his firm jaw. He reached out one arm and circled her corseted waist and pulled her to him fiercely, his lips against her ear. "I'll be parked around the corner. Come to me as soon as you can. I can't wait much longer, baby."
"Web... please. There are people all over the place."
"Hurry and get through this damn dress rehearsal. I want to get you alone... away from everybody." His lips had burned a quick brand just under her jaw and he was gone.
She'd watched him stride down the path, dodging actors and props and bushes. Her real nervousness had started then, for he looked and acted like a man who meant what he said. The quiet easy charm that he usually wore like a jaunty feather had turned to armor plate in that brief moment. He looked like a man about to do battle who had no doubts about his ability to win.
Until now Webster McCullough had looked like what he was... a serious young businessman, a C.P.A. who was on his way up. He was a shade above middle height, with thick wavy blond hair and blue eyes that varied in temperature from hot to cold in a flash sometimes, but were usually controlled to a moderate setting. The long hours of sitting he offset with arduous gym hours that had built powerful muscles on his shoulders and chest. His glasses only added to his seriousness and made him look older than his thirty-one years... but his easy disarming grin counterbalanced them.
But now he looked different to Celia... so different she was a little frightened. But the fright was threaded with shivering strands of excitement that raced through her veins. She knew that a change was coming in their relationship, and most probably tonight!
She shaped her lips again with the lip brush dipped in rosy rouge. These last three months had been the best time of her whole nineteen years, and she didn't want things to change. Not yet. It was too perfect. She wanted to keep it that way.
It was still a miracle to her that she was here in Dallas... living alone and away from her parents in Waxahachie. The thought of their dreary little hardware store and equally dreary neat white frame house with the starched priscilla curtains could still give her the shakes. Their life was as circumscribed as the ledgers her father pored over and as inevitable as the false friendliness her mother exuded on customers. Work, gossip, church, lodge, family reunions, gardening, TV, and sleep. Their early to bed and early to rise existence Celia dreaded more than loneliness or death.
She'd hated it so fiercely from her early childhood that she'd thought for years that she must be adopted or else just a born freak. Her only defense had been the slow shyness and bookishness her teachers had liked.
First books and then movies had shouted out other worlds to her... worlds she could never reasonably expect to inhabit. And then it had happened. She'd been in a school play! Her own world and her identity in that world as George and Opal Brown's daughter had disappeared and she could at least briefly enter other worlds in other bodies, with other feelings. She could be somebody else!
From th
at moment on she had lost herself in plays and in acting. In high school, she'd been so good at pretending that she stood out in almost frightening intensity. Even Mrs. Goodman had been a little in awe of her uncanny natural ability.
After high school, two years of college had not satisfied her or given her what she wanted. A small teacher's college had not taught her anything about acting she didn't already know. All the other classes were so boring she couldn't even bear to listen to them.
Finally, in desperation, she'd gotten Mrs. Goodman to persuade her parents to let her come here. She knew the Peabody School was not the ultimate. It was an impoverished, slightly talented, old maid's hold on culture and art. Esther Peabody was never much of an actress herself, but she could choose and direct the people who were genuine actors. Many of her students had gone on to better things. One was even a movie star of some fame.
And so the best three months of her life had begun. Celia had found a job in Highland Park across from S.M.U. She was a clerk of all work in a college dress shop during the day, and at night she rehearsed and read and went to classes at Peabody on a scholarship.
Even now she knew that her father would never have permitted it had Miss Peabody not been so obviously genteel and refined. Celia roomed with two other girl students on the top floor of one of the old Victorian houses in a large airy flat that had its own living room, kitchen, bath, and three bedrooms. It was perfect for Hilda and Rosemary and herself.
"They're all whores... those damn movie stars. Pick up any paper... you'll see!" Her father was fond of shouting, but Esther Peabody was so completely a lady and so quiet and modest that he'd reluctantly let himself be persuaded. Celia knew, however, that one slip, one suspicion that she had conducted herself in any way other than circumspectly, and she'd be dragged home to wither and die in Waxahachie, Texas.
She bent forward to the mirror to lengthen the dark lines at the corners of her eyes. Her full rounded globular breasts almost tumbled out of the top of the costume. If her father could see her now, for instance, he'd get so angry he'd threaten to kill her.
If he knew about Webster McCullough, he wouldn't just threaten... he would! Her father's idea of a date was to sit in the parlor and drink lemonade! She'd had so few of even those dates through high school and college that she couldn't even handle them very well.
But then, men had not really interested her that much before Web. Men! She'd never really known any men. They'd been pimply boys! Web was too old for her, she supposed. But he didn't seem old. He just seemed like a man. A real man.
There was Bullock Brand and Patrick Flanner, and they were men too, but they didn't seem that way to her because she worked with them in plays all the time. They were students, involved in her work, and lived right downstairs. They'd come barging up to borrow the peanut butter or put a light bulb in for you. Well, they seemed more like family. That was the way theatrical people were. They lived together whether they did, in fact, or not.
Satisfied at last with her makeup, she stepped back to get a full-length view of herself. She turned and dipped, pleased again to be another creature. Shakespeare's Helena this time. She could hear the murmur of the small crowd. An invitational audience Esther invited in hopes they'd contribute to the school... Very few of them ever did.
Celia looked critically at her creamy breasts pushed high and round above her tiny corseted waist that rose like a stem from her voluminous skirt that swept the floor. She blushed thinking of Web's eyes so hot on her. What if... if she couldn't handle him tonight when she met him later. A shiver of goose bumps broke out on her bare elbows.
His good-night kisses had gotten more and more insistent, but he'd never been... well, awful about it or anything. He'd always been kind and sweet and considerate and fun. She really didn't want that to change, and yet...
The door banged open abruptly and Hilda Norman, one of her apartment mates, came galloping in with her skirts held up in one hand.
"Miss Pea says three minutes till curtain." She stopped then, a frown crossing her narrow colorless face. It wasn't fair that Celia could look so beautiful! "Well, well, I wonder what your old Daddy would say if he could see you now!" Hilda was all of a color, mousy hair, mousy eyes and skin, tall and slender. Her only distinguishing feature was a strident, stagy, sophisticated voice reminiscent of a Noel Coward drawing room comedy.
"He'd horsewhip me... that's what he'd do, as you very well know, honey chile." Celia laughed. She linked arms with the tall girl.
"Come on, Hilda... let's knock 'em dead."
* * *
Esther Peabody stretched out her hand in greeting to Justin Garrett. She was a pretty woman in her early forties, but her hairdo and clothes were so dated she could have been any age between thirty and sixty. Long, thick, honey-colored hair was pulled into a loose knot on the nape of her neck, and deep waves framed her ears. Her clothes were invariably four precise inches below her knees, and the printed chiffon she wore fluttered about her excellent calves that were camouflaged by the awkward length. Her nails were polished in pale pink with the moons left bare. Her only makeup was pale pink lipstick that the girl drama students were sure must be Tangee natural from the dime store. She was slender and tallish, but again her clothes fit so loosely that ii was almost impossible to say whether she had a good or bad figure. She always looked like a housewife in one of the magazine advertisements from the thirties... innocuous, pretty, motherly and utterly devoid of sex.
"Mr. Garrett! I'm so delighted you could come. It's almost curtain time, but I've saved you a seat without a tree trunk!" she laughed gaily.
"I'm delighted to be here, Miss Peabody. Any excuse to see you." He brushed the back of her hand with his lips elaborately.
"Now, Mr. Garrett. Save your compliments for all those starlets. By the way, as I told you, there's a young girl playing Helena tonight you may want to use in one of your Little Theatre productions. She s charming.
"Charm, I don't need. Talent I do." he grumbled. Justin Garrett was a bear of a man, great arms and shoulders and hands and neck, looking as though he'd been mistakenly stripped of his fur. But his face was that of an aging matinee idol who constantly showed his handsome profile. Dark hair swept straight back from his high forehead and silvered becomingly over the temples above brooding eyebrows and fiery dark eyes that he flashed effectively for emphasis.
Patrick Flanner spoke to Celia with the passion of his own conviction, not just that of the character he was playing. The lights blinded him to the audience, but he could see that beautiful creature clearly. One day, he thought... one day.
"... Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with it!" God, yes, away with it. He'd like to be the one who stormed Celia's little hymen.
Patrick was the epitome of what most people thought an Irishman should look like. Curling red hair and blue eyes that crinkled in wild laughter, pale faintly freckled skin and a silver tongue that minted words indefinitely and spent them lavishly. He knew he had the natural gift for gab attributed to his ancestors, and that's why he was at Peabody. He wanted to augment that gift by learning the timing and phrasing that only a drama school could teach him. He was going to need that training. Certainly he wasn't going to organize other people's little local political campaigns forever. He was going to run for political office himself and change the whole idiot world.
* * *
"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven..."
* * *
Patrick jerked himself back into character as he heard Celia pronounce the beginning of the famous speech of Helena.
* * *
"Bullock Brand... stop that!" Rosemary hissed in a stage whisper behind the myrtle trees and lilac bushes that served as the wings of the playing area.
"Mm-mmm-mmm," he mouthed against her bare throat, holding her back against him so his hands came from behind her
to cup her barely covered breasts in the costume. He was never going to get enough of women, not if he lived to be a hundred. And he'd been so afraid they wouldn't even look at him when he'd come home from Vietnam, with his prematurely balding head and gaunt face. But it wasn't what you looked like. It was how you treated them. And he knew how to treat them. Fuck 'em! He'd been working on this one for a month, and he thought tonight might be the night.
"Stop it... it's almost time for my cue, damn you!" she whispered desperately. She couldn't even think what her first line was with Bullock pawing her. If the truth were known she hadn't really done a lick of work on her thesis since he'd moved in downstairs. She didn't really know what was so disconcerting about this one. He was certainly nothing to look at. It was those damn sad eyes of his and that balding skull over his young-old face.
"Okay, baby... later." Reluctantly he let her go. She stood a little away from him and turned to throw him a quick smile when she saw his sad face. She was a pretty thing with soft dark hair curling around her shoulders and an earnest expression in her greenish eyes. If she'd been in the movies she'd always be given the girl-next-door parts. Sort of an Ali McGraw type, but prettier with better boobs and legs. Yeh. Maybe tonight.
The Unwilling Actress Page 1
