Read My Lips
Read My Lips
Stories of a Hollywood Life
SALLY KELLERMAN
Copyright © 2013 by Sally Kellerman
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ISBN: 978-1-6028-6201-2
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First edition
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To my fascinating, uber-mensch of a husband and my precious children, who lovingly dragged me kicking and screaming into adulthood. I love you all madly.
Contents
Preface
Prologue: Just a Small Town Girl
CHAPTER 1: The Day I Ruined My Life
CHAPTER 2: Make Believe
CHAPTER 3: Check, Please
CHAPTER 4: Loss and Longing
CHAPTER 5: Pushing the Limits
CHAPTER 6: Hit the Deck
CHAPTER 7: Never the Same Again
CHAPTER 8: The Wheel of Fortune
CHAPTER 9: Flirting with Politics
CHAPTER 10: Advice Given and Ignored
CHAPTER 11: Reaching Down, Reaching Out
CHAPTER 12: Chasing Garbo
CHAPTER 13: Love and Therapy
CHAPTER 14: God Laughs While We Make Plans
CHAPTER 15: Two, No Three, Little Surprises
CHAPTER 16: Lost and Found
CHAPTER 17: The Next Chapter
Acknowledgments
Index
Preface
TO MY READERS . . .
This is my memoir. In my case, that means anything I can remember.
It is a collection of experiences that made me laugh or cry—stories of people I’ve loved, of lessons I’ve learned and have yet to learn. There is some X-rated language and the odd X-rated visual description.
My mom—a darling, five-foot-two Arkansan, New Orleans, piano-playing, warm, a-tad-judgmental, spiritual, generous, thoughtful, kind mom—wanted a lady. My dad—a funny, handsome, sentimental, good man who said what was on his mind, was a tad controlling, and worried about how I’d turn out—wanted a lady too.
Instead they got an actress, a singer, an entertainer.
“Please don’t be like Carole Lombard,” my mom said to me when I was little. She once overheard Lombard say “shit” in Bullock’s Department Store. “And please don’t be like Aunt Moatsie. She wore slippers to the market . . .”
I wasn’t enough like Carole Lombard when I tested for her life story, but I did wear slippers to the market.
PROLOGUE
Just a Small Town Girl
IT WAS HALLOWEEN. I CAME ONSTAGE WITH MY BACK TO THE audience, dressed in black from head to toe. I had some of my favorite guys backing me that night: Lyman Medeiros on bass, my wonderful musical director Ed Martel on keyboards, and Dick Weller on drums. The band was playing spooky music from Phantom of the Opera, and the lighting was eerie green. The room, I’m so happy to say, was packed.
These days Vitello’s is my club of choice when I’m in town, somewhere to develop my show, try out new material, and keep on singing. Over the years I’ve worked many different clubs in LA, my hometown, where I’ve had all my successes and made all my mistakes.
Vitello’s is a little Italian spot on Tujunga Avenue in Studio City, an upscale Mediterranean restaurant serving the kind of food that I could eat every night—and do. Spaghetti marinara, thin-crust pizza, delicious salads—you get the idea—served on white tablecloths, with lit candles, by waiters so good you don’t know they’re there. The club has about a hundred seats, and guests can eat a little dinner, sip a little wine, and enjoy music from all kinds of top-notch performers, like the great arranger-songwriter Johnny Mandel who wrote “The Shadow of Your Smile.”
Since it was Halloween, I opened with an eerie version of “I Put a Spell on You,” then moved on to songs like “Spooky” and “Love Potion Number Nine.” At one point in the show, I went into the audience, as I always do (I love to see all the faces and sing to them up close), greeting every table. That night I passed out candy wrapped as eyeballs. “I’ve got a crush on you . . .” I’d croon. “Would you care for an eyeball?” I talked a little, joked with the band, and sang a lot. It was an especially silly night, but for me, singing is freedom. I was in heaven. Before I knew it, it was time to take a bow, hug some friends, and pack up to go home.
Don Heckman, a well-known music journalist who now heads up the International Review of Music, came to see me perform. He loved the show and reviewed it the next day. “Even when she’s not doing a mini-Halloween celebration,” he wrote, “Sally’s performances are all utterly mesmerizing, overflowing with humor, atmosphere, and musicality. . . . At her best, and in a crowded female vocal field, she is one of the rare true originals.”
It feels good to get such encouragement from a critic I respect, especially for doing something I love as much as performing live.
Yes, I was one of those kids who wanted to perform from the very first moment I could stand on two legs, find my lungs, and hold a makeshift prop. Sure, I’m better known to audiences as an actress than as a singer. However, for me, there’s never been a separation between singing and acting. Singing is acting; it’s telling a story through music. Acting may have been my chief role for a long while, but singing has always been its understudy; now it’s taking the lead. Over my more than fifty years as a performer, I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, screwed up a lot up and gotten some things right. And I’ve done it all here, where I call home: Los Angeles.
I love Los Angeles. It may be a huge metropolis but it is still my little town, the one I’ve known all my life, for better or worse, through richer and poorer, through blue skies and smog. I have always lived within a twenty-file-mile radius of where I was born and raised, so I feel like a real small town girl in many ways. Today, LA is sprawling and still growing. There’s so much traffic that I can take a nap between signals.
Down the hill to the south from my home in the Hollywood Hills is the entertainment capital of the world. I’ve watched West Hollywood grow from a little burg to an incorporated city. I’ve seen wide open spaces get gobbled up, from the Hollywood Hills and the Valley to Studio City and Santa Monica, with builders scrambling to make their creations safer from inevitable earthquakes.
But to me Hollywood is still the place where Santa Monica Boulevard had one shoe repair joint, Coombs Hardware store, and a five and dime. It’s where I stood in front of Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard—the main drag of much of my life—talking to my friends about acting or boys. It’s where I got malts on Hollywood Boulevard; and at night, left the door to my apartment unlocked. Open. Free.
We have grown and changed a lot over the years, my town and me. If Hollywood is about anything, it’s about reinvention and survival. Hollywood has taught me plenty about both, whether I wanted to learn those lessons or not.
I have always known I would never live anywhere else, no matter what my life held i
n store. After all: Every great Hollywood story needs a strong third act. I’m working on mine.
CHAPTER 1
The Day I Ruined My Life
TO ME HOLLYWOOD WAS NEVER ABOUT GLAMOUR OR FAME. IT was about the work, going to class, doing plays. But that didn’t mean I was immune to its charms. I’ve always loved movie stars—Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Greta Garbo, Vivian Leigh, and my darling Jennifer Jones—as well as musical stars like Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and, of course, Doris Day.
Then one day, when I was around fifteen years old, I saw Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! Marlon was changing the face of acting then—and with it, my life. There he was on the screen, gazing casually out the window, wearing white Mexican drawstring pajamas, with Jean Peters spread out behind him in bed. The minute I saw him in those pants—no shirt—standing at the window with that steamy sexuality oozing from his every pore, everything changed. I changed. There was a new reality, and it was his raw vulnerable emotion and sex. From then on out I saw every one of Brando’s pictures five, six, even seven times. The Wild One, On the Waterfront, The Men, Guys and Dolls, Sayonara—I never missed a one.
And then one night lightning struck: I actually met Marlon in the flesh at Cosmo Alley. Just south of Hollywood Boulevard, it was a club behind the Ivar Theater that was a quick stroll from some great fixtures of 1950s Hollywood that are still going strong today: the Pantages and Musso and Frank’s. You could hear folk and blues at the Cosmo, and it was one of my favorite places to hear jazz. It was dark, nothing fancy to it. Just throw on some jeans and go hear some music and forget your troubles. I even subbed there as a waitress a few times.
That night I had gone to the Cosmo with a friend to hear Stan Getz play. Working the door was Al Lettieri, a good friend and great character actor who would go on to play Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo in The Godfather.
“Come on,” Al said. “I’ll sit you right over here.”
Al sat us down right beside—guess who? Marlon Brando.
Taking my seat next to my idol, I stared straight ahead, afraid to breathe.
Suddenly a star-struck tourist spotted Marlon. “Hey!” he called out in an exuberant Southern accent. “Marlon Brando! Sayonara! On the Waterfront! How Do You DO?!”
Marlon loved it. He threw his head back and laughed.
I still didn’t look. I didn’t budge. Eyes front, wishing all the time that I had the confidence, the freedom to express my great excitement.
But that’s how I stayed. For two entire sets of one of my favorite musicians, I was frozen, not so much as tapping a toe. Before I knew it, the music had stopped and the lights came up.
“I’m gonna go,” my friend said.
As he got up to leave, I remained rooted, and without looking, I uttered weakly, “Bye.”
Then Marlon turned to me and started to speak.
“Okay, so, what are you, an actress?” he asked.
Breaking free of my spell, I whirled around to face him. “Yes, I am, and I don’t think that’s funny!”
“Well, would you like to go for a ride with me?” he said.
“Yes, I would.”
I followed Marlon out to his rather nondescript white car. Once I’d spotted him driving it down Hollywood Boulevard and was so excited that I almost wrecked my own dilapidated Chevy. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t being chauffeured around in a limo. Another time, when it was raining, I spied him going into the movies on Sunset, wearing white pants. White pants in the rain?! My mother would have gasped in horror. Of course, I ran out and bought my own pair as soon as I could scrape together enough tip money.
But now here I was with Marlon, Marlon Brando, slipping his frame behind the wheel, and I was sitting in the front seat right next to him. He pulled out of the parking lot and began driving down the alley. I looked around, quiet, trying to be nonchalant about it all.
Then, after about half a block, he leaned over and touched my arm. That was enough to send me reeling, feeling so many conflicting impulses at once. I was so hopelessly in love with him that I was both scared and thrilled. I immediately pulled away. I didn’t know what to do, and I had no idea how to act.
“Riiiight,” Marlon said, a little pissed off. “I wouldn’t want to spoil this ‘beautiful friendship’ we have.”
He turned the car around and dropped me off back at the club.
I stood there, watching my hero drive off into the night. I was bursting out of my skin with excitement. I ran to the nearest pay phone to call my best friend, Luana, to tell her I had just been in Marlon Brando’s car. I was twenty years old and I had actually been in Marlon Brando’s car.
I MUST HAVE COME OUT OF THE WOMB SINGING AND ACTING. I knew I wanted to be a performer ever since I was a skinny little kid growing up in Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley. In the middle of my sophomore year we moved to Park La Brea in Los Angeles, and I went to Hollywood High School. By then I was a five-foot-ten, 170-pound, thick-wristed, moon-faced, duck-billed blonde in saddle shoes and a very unflattering blue wool skirt that hid layers of crinoline and chub held in place by a Playtex girdle. The term “leading lady” didn’t exactly jump to mind.
I remember sitting down with my bag lunch on a bench under a tree in the tiny quad on my first day at school when, like a vision emerging from the midday sun, came these four beautiful girls. They were so stylish, they wore makeup—just enough—and they floated up to me in their high-heeled shoes. I’d never seen anything like them. Wow, I thought, fashion.
I looked up at them, my tomato and mayonnaise sandwich sticking halfway out of my mouth.
“Evidently someone doesn’t know whose bench they’re sitting on,” one of the fashionable foursome said.
I stood up, grabbed my sack lunch, and went straight to the girls’ bathroom. There I pulled myself together and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. I had a mantra for times like these: “Someday . . .” I said to my reflection, “Someday . . .” I did this in times of stress. It was a quiet reminder that things would always get better. I was on a path to somewhere better, somewhere different. Someday . . .
I had started the mirror pep talks as a young child. I was constantly putting on shows for anyone who would watch, singing for anyone who would listen, and even for those who wouldn’t. But the self-chats were my secret. And as long as I was banishing myself to the bathroom for lunch—I ate there for the next three weeks—I was going to make good use of my time. Every time somebody came into the bathroom, I hid in the stall, sandwich and all.
I soon learned that each bench outside in the quad was for a different club. There were bad-girl clubs (they smoked) and wholesome-girl clubs (they studied and dressed cute). Some clubs had mild hazing; some had auditions. As time passed and my personality beamed out, I got more comfortable and made friends. I had to brave a little rejection at first, and I was sure that no club would want me because of my size. But I eventually got into one of the more goody-goody clubs. My friend Mary Finwall was in the bad-girl smoking club, but I loved hanging out with her.
Despite that rocky beginning, I ended up having a ball in high school. No boyfriends, mind you, but lots and lots of friends. Boys still teased me—calling me names like “Barge!” “Boat!” “Klondike Sal!” I hit five-foot-nine in fifth grade, so being self-conscious about my size was nothing new. I coped the way a lot of people do—I began to embrace my role as class clown and being one of the guys. A friend of mine once told me that he heard I was the most popular girl at Hollywood High. Excited, I told my mom. She simply said, “Dear, you don’t want to be popular. You want to be beloved.”
My grades were poor, but I did get As in choir and gym. I was always putting together trios with my best pals, especially my friend Barbara Black. Our accompanist was often our classmate Lincoln Majorga, a fabulous keyboardist who went on to play with Quincy Jones. We sang after school; we performed at school events. Anywhere and everywhere. In high school it was all about Nat King Cole, the Four Freshme
n, and Shake, Rattle and Roll. My friend Dawn Adams’s family knew Norman Granz, the founder and head of Verve Records, and Dawn promised to help me get a demo to him. Lincoln and I would record it before graduation.
My friend Norma Jean Nielsen was the only person—besides the mirror—to whom I admitted my big secret, my performing secret: my desire to be up onstage. I was afraid to admit it out loud. Singing was one thing—it was about your voice. But saying out loud that I wanted to act felt different. I was afraid that people would think that I, the clown, suddenly believed that I was pretty enough to act. But by twelfth grade I was ready to dive in. With a little encouragement—and thanks to my imposing size—I got to play the mother in Hollywood High’s production of Meet Me in St. Louis. I even got to sing in the show.
Lavender blue . . . dilly dilly. . . . .
My friend Hooper C. Dunbar III brought his mom to the play. Hooper really did look like a “Hooper C. Dunbar the Third.” He had big owl glasses, and though I can’t remember whether he wore a neat little sweater vest, I feel like maybe he should have. But he was spiritual and had an innate kindness that made me feel safe. Unbeknownst to me, his mother enjoyed my performance so much that she got hold of a copy of my high school picture and submitted me for a real movie audition.
“You’d be perfect for it!” she later enthused.
That’s how I found myself in the running to play Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of the George Bernard Shaw play Saint Joan. Soon I was standing in line with about three hundred other girls from all over the world at a big theater in Los Angeles. The way the auditions were set up, you could see the person in line ahead of you audition and hear a bit of the judges’ response. The girl who went right before me was very talented, or so I thought. I watched her closely and saw her raise her arms skyward to God. Such enthusiasm! The judges appeared to be very impressed, and she looked quite pleased with herself as she exited. Wow. That was something, I thought. I had to give it a go.
Read My Lips Page 1
