I Blame Dennis Hopper

by Illeana Douglas

  I didn’t look back at my parents. I thought, All I have to do is to keep walking. Do not turn around. They will be gone by the time you get inside.

  I signed in, and it was pretty intimidating. There were hundreds of kids—mainly black and Hispanic—warming up, stretching, vocalizing, sounding and looking pretty experienced. My first instinct was to run away, but I knew my mother was already on her way to my father’s girlfriend’s house, so that was no longer an option. I tried to find my inner strength, but the trip had worn me down, and I felt exhausted and defeated before I had even begun.

  I got my number and waited. First up was dancing. If you didn’t pass the dancing, you wouldn’t even get to the singing. For the first round, we were given some choreography, and I was completely lost. One dancer, a tall slim black kid, was a standout, clearly the best in the group. He was a ballet dancer and had already been in some professional productions. In an act of mercy I appreciate to this day, he pulled me aside and taught me all the steps until I had the dance down cold. With his help I made all the dancing cuts and was part of the remaining fifty kids. His name was Michael, further proof that he was an angel. My name was called for the next round, which was singing, and I smiled at my new friend.

  I entered the room, and there was a long table with a lot of folks sitting behind it. The director introduced himself. He asked me a few questions about my training, and I mentioned the Camelot, hoping that he had heard of it. He hadn’t.

  “What will you be singing?” he asked.

  Secret weapon. I grandly handed my music to the piano player and then stepped to the center of the room and said, “Maybe This Time.”

  There was some very pleasant smiling and nodding at my choice, and then everyone sat back to listen.

  Now, the application had stated that we were supposed to bring our sheet music for the accompanist to play, but no one had actually ever played the sheet music of “Maybe This Time” for me. I had assumed that the sheet music was the same as the record. The piano player started to play, and he was about an octave higher than the record from which I had learned the song. I’m singing, and he’s playing something much higher than what I’m singing. I gave him a sideways look of panic, and he started banging out the higher notes louder as if I was signaling to him that what was wrong was that I couldn’t hear him. I tried to follow him, going up and down the scale of “Maybe This Time” searching for the right notes. It was pitiful. He stopped abruptly and said very pointedly, “You are singing in the wrong key.”

  And I turned right around and stared defiantly at him and said, “I’m singing in the right key. I’m singing in the key of Liza, and you’re in the wrong key!”

  My first—and thankfully huge—showbiz laugh brought the house down. But I have to say, I wasn’t joking. I hadn’t known that there was any other way to sing that song than in the key of Liza.

  The director sat up straight in his chair—clearly I had his attention—and started exchanging looks with everyone behind the table as if to say, “The kid’s got moxie, but now what?” The music director hopped up and said, “I have an idea.” He walked across the room and asked the piano player to get up and exchanged places with him. Then he asked me to sing the first line of the song, which I did.

  He smiled at me and said, “You’re in C, by the way.”

  I was terrified but I didn’t show it. I just nodded, like, Yeah, key of Liza, like I told you!

  Then he said, “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just sing, and I will follow you.”

  That sounded good to me!

  I can’t explain what that music director saw in me, probably blind terror, but his faith in me gave me confidence. I had been given a second chance, and I wasn’t going to blow it. I started to sing, and I could feel everyone in the room pulling for me to succeed. Suddenly, all the pent-up emotion from the drive with my parents, the feelings of how much I really needed to get into this company, how much I couldn’t fail, started to kick in. Fueled by all this, the song built, and my emotions built with it, and I sang “Maybe This Time” to within an inch of its life.

  Well, at least as good as I had learned it on the record. I’m not sure if they were applauding for me, or for Liza Minnelli, but by the end of the song I had the entire group behind that table clapping and cheering for me. Just as I had fantasized back in my black-and-white-and-silver room.

  I came out of the rehearsal hall, and my new friend Michael was waiting for me, asking me, “How did you do? You were in there forever!” I was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Pretty good,” I said humbly. “I did pretty good.” He just started laughing. “You were so worried,” he said. Three weeks later we would be rehearsing the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona together. I had made it into the company and was living with my pretend inner-city family, the Murrays.

  Beautiful, tall, and slim Michael was the best dancer in the company, and we remained friends until I moved to New York a few years later. Sadly, he was fired during the third summer of the program for arriving ten minutes late for rehearsal. It was a very tough lesson, but I learned a lot about discipline from that moment.

  I was quiet on the ride home from the audition, trying not to worry about what would have happened if I hadn’t got through “Maybe This Time” but also thinking, I am an actor. For real now, not just in my black-and-white-and-silver room. I knew, in that strange way you just know, that I was becoming a professional performer.

  I’ve always stumbled toward success. I’m like a marathon runner who trips on the finishing line but manages to skid across in spite of herself. I called my grandfather to tell him I had my first professional gig. He couldn’t have been happier for me.

  I was in the Hartford Stage Youth Theatre for three summers, starring in Two Gentlemen of Verona and two other musicals, On the Town and The Boys from Syracuse. It was a racially integrated company, way ahead of its time. Arts funding at its best. It was there that I learned everything about the theater. The first thing being, of course, what sheet music was! But I also learned the joy, the discipline, the hard work of performing. It was also my first taste of how a brand—in this case, an insurance company—could support the arts, as we were completely subsidized. I used this positive experience when I pitched a branded entertainment series to IKEA called Easy to Assemble many years later.

  In 2012, I was working with Turner Classic Movies at its annual TCM Classic Film Festival. The opening-night film was Cabaret. It was, of course, amazing to see it on the big screen and to have all the stars, including Liza Minnelli, in attendance. At the after-party one of the TCM hosts, my good friend Ben Mankiewicz, came up to me and said, “Liza Minnelli would like to meet you.”

  I thought he was teasing me.

  But he assured me that no, he wasn’t. “She asked to meet you,” he said.

  She was of course so very gracious and kind. I mean she’s Liza! We spoke about Cabaret and some of her other films that I had admired. While we were talking, someone came up and snapped our picture. It was only later, after looking at the photograph of us together, that I realized the impact that she had had on my life. Without Liza Minnelli, I would have never made it through that audition, and that’s a fact. We look up to movie stars. We believe in them, because they are larger than life, and it makes us believe in ourselves when no one else does. At least that’s how I felt, all alone in my room singing “Maybe This Time.” Who knows what would have happened if I had sung it in the “right” key? What’s the “right” key, anyway? Without mistakes you never learn anything, and this was a happy mistake. Always be yourself and always sing in the key of Liza!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chance Encounters

  From Easy Rider to easy living! An Oscar winner’s version of food stamps.

  “Always ride a unicycle. Because it’s hard, and not everyone can do it.”

  That’s what Peter Sellers had said to me on the set of Being There. What did it mean? Or have I always known what it meant but w
as afraid to face it?

  I have always looked for signs in my career. When you have no money, you live on dreams and magic signs that foretell where you’re going, signs that promise you something to eat when you get there. When those dreams and magical signs actually come true, it keeps you going through the rough spots. Here’s a prime example.

  The first movie I remember seeing with my Italian grandmother (my mom’s mom) was Paint Your Wagon. My grandmother was not in show business, but she should have been. The closest Annie got was being a stand-in for the silent film star Theda Bara at Astoria Studios in Queens, New York City, which is where she grew up, one of ten children whose parents had come to America through Ellis Island. My grandmother and I shared a passion for going to the movies, something that began that magical night she took me to her favorite movie palace, Radio City. She had been a tap dancer, and her dream was to become one of the Radio City Rockettes—a dream cut short when she got pregnant at sixteen and got married. Annie was a pistol. She would say things such as “Fix your hair, so we can get free beer” or “Your father isn’t so bad. He has his good faults.” All of my comedic timing comes from her. The infamous reference to Miami I made to Lorraine Bracco in the movie Goodfellas—“It’s like I died and woke up in Jew Heaven”—was her line, a reference to her brief stay in a retirement village in Florida. Annie visited me on many sets, asking Jennifer Aniston on Picture Perfect, “Are you the hair-and-makeup girl?” She danced until 3 A.M. at the after-party for the premier of Stir of Echoes, and made many lasagnas for Martin Scorsese. She even fulfilled her dream of being on TV with Regis Philbin when she appeared on Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee. “Now I can die,” she said. Luckily for me, she lived for many more years after that.

  All that I remember about seeing Paint Your Wagon with my grandmother is Lee Marvin’s face, fifty feet high, singing “Wand’rin’ Star.” Still, in that moment, I fell instantly and hopelessly in love. I could actually feel my heart ache when Jean Seberg chose Clint Eastwood over him. It was the first time that I remember feeling an emotion, and that emotion was love. Now, maybe a psychiatrist could explain why I chose Lee Marvin as the object of my desire, and not young and handsome Clint Eastwood. But those first movie images of Lee Marvin became implanted in my brain and were interwoven with romantic notions I carried for years to come.

  We had a four o’clock movie on TV in those days, and it seemed to play Cat Ballou or The Dirty Dozen in constant rotation just for me. I would sit in front of the TV and imagine kissing my precious Lee Marvin. The Dirty Dozen is a war movie, but I’ve seen it so many times I could be called upon to be an expert on the film—from a purely romantic point of view. The Big Red One, directed by Sam Fuller, was another film that starred Lee Marvin, which I made my grandmother take me to again and again. Years later, I met Sam Fuller, and he was so impressed that I could speak so eloquently about the effect this WWII film had on me. (Secret weapon, Sam: it starred Lee Marvin.)

  Cut to early one morning in New York, in 1982. I was walking up Madison Avenue on my way to acting school. When my grandfather was alive, he had hoped that I would be living with him and going to Juilliard. Yeah, me too. But he passed away in 1981. I certainly didn’t have the funds to go to Juilliard, but I desperately wanted to move to New York, so I regrouped and found an affordable acting school I could attend. I will kindly just say that this acting school … was no Juilliard. But it did take me to New York City, give me lifelong friends and memories, and, thankfully, it eventually led me to another acting school.

  It was the end of a school year that had been memorable for all the wrong reasons. I was—contrary to my own opinion of myself—not considered to have much of a future as a thespian. This made no sense to me, since back in Connecticut, post–Hartford Stage Youth Theatre, I had been getting paid to act in various amateur productions, in the chorus of such classics as Gypsy. And, well, Gypsy! (It was a popular show at the time in amateur theater.) I had also worked at the Camelot Dinner Theatre personally assisting Rudy Vallée! Still, the teachers at my acting school were not impressed.

  One teacher said to me, “Some people are sexy, but it’s like you’re Lucille Ball trying to be sexy.”

  I actually landed in a “remedial” acting class taught by the tough headmistress of the school. When I first auditioned for the school, after hearing my monologue, she had said, “And … have you thought about what you will do if you don’t make it into the school?” In remedial class, we were supposed to go around the room and validate why we thought we had ended up there. I thought it was meant to break our spirits, so when she got to me I said indignantly, “I have no idea why I’m here!” She insisted that I had a bad attitude toward learning The Method, which was Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio technique. It emphasized sense memory and place more than meaning of the text. She went on to mock a scene I had done as Lady Macbeth, saying, “Illeana, after you walked through the imaginary wall of your castle, I didn’t believe a word you said.”

  The Method seemed contrary to everything I had learned working at the Camelot. There was never any time at the Camelot to think, Why are you doing Godspell? You were there to entertain an audience who had paid $19.95 for dinner and a show! In my opinion, I had learned more per week watching bus-and-truck tours break down and put up a show at the Camelot than I ever would by practicing The Method. I learned more about acting watching Rudy Vallée perform in his eighties, sweat dripping down his face for a crowd of strangers and still getting solid laughs with pretty creaky material. When he sang “For I’m just a vagabond lover / In search of a sweetheart it seems / And I know that someday I’ll discover her /The girl of my vagabond dreams,” he had that audience in the palm of his hand. Nothing in my memory was as solitary and beautiful as that. It was the essence of everything I wanted to be able to do. Still want to do. In a word: pathos. But that was long ago and not much help when dealing with imaginary walls or pantomimed steaming-hot coffee cups.

  But back to that morning in 1982. After a rocky year, I was going to be performing what they called “final scenes” for the faculty. Their reaction would determine whether or not I would be “asked back” for another year. I was pretty nervous, and I asked the universe for some sign that I would have a chance.

  I was walking up Madison Avenue toward my destiny when suddenly, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, taking a morning stroll, without a single person aware of who he was, was my lanky, silver-haired movie star from Paint Your Wagon. There was my childhood sweetheart. My first love. There was Lee Marvin! This wasn’t a sign; it was a billboard!

  I know what you’re thinking. Poor Lee Marvin. Minding his own business, in town to promote his film Death Hunt, taking a nice little early morning walk, probably hungover, and now all of my hopes and dreams rested on his shoulders. Broad shoulders. (Sigh.) I could barely breathe as I stepped into his path. “Mr. Marvin,” I said. “I’m sorry to interrupt you…”

  The next part came out in an emotional jumble, but the odds of ever seeing Lee Marvin again were scarce, so I wanted to get everything in. “You were in the first movie I ever saw with my grandmother, Paint Your Wagon at Radio City Music Hall…” Then I went on to list his credits—you know, in case he forgot—all the movies I had seen him in, the number of times I’d seen him in them, how much they had meant to me. The Dirty Dozen, The Big Red One, Pocket Money, which I had seen on TV. Pocket Money was a very obscure reference; was he possibly impressed?

  In the same breath, I continued, “And I’m an actor, and I’m on my way to do my final scene, and I asked the universe for a sign, and here you are, and it’s meant to be, and I am going to be an actress, and is there any advice…” I was about to keep going when Lee Marvin—bless his heart—gently held up his hand to stop me. He smiled his wry Lee Marvin smile, and in that velvety, gravelly voice, he said, “Young lady, if you have half as much energy on the stage as you do off—you ought to do very well.”

  Then he asked me my name. Lee Marvin had come off th
e movie screen and appeared to me, and he was now asking me my name. “Illeana,” I said.

  He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck, Illeana.” All those years I had practiced kissing him into my pillow, and now he was finally kissing me back.

  And then he continued walking. I watched his back disappear up Madison Avenue. No one recognized him. No one turned to look. Just me. I touched my cheek. You know how people say “I will never wash that cheek again?” That’s how it felt. Lee Marvin had kissed my cheek, and I was sure he had passed his movie magic onto me. Some of that magic faded when half of my classmates reacted by saying “So what, who cares” or “Who’s Lee Marvin?” But I was on cloud nine. I did my final scenes assured that Lee Marvin’s “Good Luck, Illeana” was not only a sign; it was an omen. I was bouncing off the walls. Final scenes indeed! I was a shoe-in to be asked back.

  After the performance the headmistress came up to me and shook my hand. Clearly she was impressed, I thought. Her opinion of me had changed. I waited for her compliments. “Goodbye, Illeana,” she said. What? That didn’t sound good. Where was Lee Marvin when I needed him? He could have punched her out. Or at least explained to her about my marvelous offstage energy! Two weeks later I got a letter informing me I was not being “asked back.”