Prairie Tale: A Memoir

by Melissa Gilbert

  They were right, too.

  ten

  ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES A WOMAN

  To prepare for Splendor in the Grass, I went back to Jeff Corey and had even more uncomfortable conversations about sexuality. If I had been older, wiser, and mouthier, I would have asked Uncle Ray and my mother why we were remaking a movie whose 1961 original starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood was nearly perfect. But there was a lot of excitement around the idea of letting Hollywood see me in a new light in this sexually charged story of two young people in pre–Depression era Kansas, whose attraction to each other was thwarted by the day’s conservative mores and their small town’s class divides.

  So I had to talk to Jeff about falling in love and what sex was like, things I didn’t know anything about and had no desire to discuss with an older man who looked like a skinny version of Santa Claus in Birkenstocks. When he asked if I knew what it was like to feel a strong attraction to a boy, I said no and tried not to openly cringe.

  “Haven’t you ever had any crushes?” he asked.

  “Those, yeah,” I said, shrugging uncomfortably.

  “And you’ve felt butterflies in your stomach?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, just imagine what it’s like to feel butterflies in your entire body,” he said.

  Then we talked—actually, he talked and I listened—about attraction, sexuality, and desire. I did my best not to freak out when he explained the difference between desire for another person and downright hunger for them. I feared he might ask me a question or that I would get way more information than I wanted, and I didn’t know how I was going to manage if he took it any further.

  I can appreciate the information Jeff was trying to convey. Relationships, and their sexual undercurrents, are at the heart of almost every performance a young adult and adult actor gives. I just wasn’t ready to go there so openly.

  Making it stranger was the process I went through simultaneously with wardrobe and makeup to get ready for the role. It wasn’t enough for me to play Deanie; I also had to look like a ripe young woman, apparently riper than I was in real life. They literally rebuilt me for the movie, emphasis on built. In addition to new hair, makeup, and fingernails, they gave me visibly more pronounced curves with a girdle and a corset, and a sumptuously padded bra and painted-on cleavage.

  I wore a padded bra on Little House because I didn’t have any boobs to speak of, and once you were a woman on that show, you couldn’t be smaller than a B cup. But the effect on Splendor was entirely different. I didn’t know what to make of myself when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to say, “Good Lord, that’s not me, it’s like some creepy drag-queen version of me…help! Get me outta here!” However, as I began to assimilate the new exterior, my insides were beginning to change as well. Indeed, another side to the wholesome, tentative little girl began to emerge. Not coincidentally, Uncle Ray scheduled Douglas Kirkland to shoot my first true glamour photo session at this time. When my mother said, “Make the camera fall in love with you,” my head was filled with a new set of thoughts. The shots came out great. Maybe a little oversexualized for a girl of seventeen, but pretty nonetheless; maybe I had to jump way beyond myself in order to pull back to who I really was at that time.

  Throughout this process, director Richard Sarafian and the network executives overseeing the production were casting for the young man to play Bud Stamper, the handsome object of my desire. Needless to say, I was intrigued and, for the first time, involved in the decision-making process.

  The choice came down to two actors, and I had to do a screen test with both. I found out they were in their early twenties; one was blond and the other had dark hair. For the screen test, the director chose the “down on your knees before me, slave woman” scene, probably the most incendiary and sexually layered scene in the whole picture. I was convinced Richard picked it to test me as much as the guys.

  In the scene, Bud grabs Deanie by the wrists and makes her kneel in front of him, her face to his crotch, and says, “Down on your knees before me, slave woman. Tell me you’d do anything for me.”

  She bursts out crying.

  “I’d do anything for you,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

  I was scared and uptight doing the scene with the blond actor, Michael, who went first. It was easy for me to break down and cry as he pushed me to the floor because the whole thing scared me. I knew what was being implied, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it, and I didn’t feel any chemistry with Michael. Then I did the scene again with dark-haired Cyril O’Reilly, and it was a completely different experience.

  I chalk it up to chemistry. From the moment I looked into Cyril’s eyes, I was history. The wind was knocked out of the room. It was like the shot down the hallway in Poltergeist: dolly in/zoom out. I didn’t feel threatened or intimidated by him at all. I felt completely safe. Maybe it was because he had my father’s coloring. Maybe it was because he drank and smoked and the smell of alcohol and cigarettes had been programmed into my brain as good, familiar, and manly after seven years of being hugged by Mike. One thing I do know: it didn’t hurt that he was absolutely gorgeous.

  I was thrilled when Cyril got the job. Our first rehearsal was in an empty office in Uncle Ray’s building. Richard Sarafian, Cyril, and I sat around a table and prepared to read through the script. It was a rare occasion when I was left alone with coworkers without a guardian, my mother, or Uncle Ray nearby. After a few minutes of friendly chitchat, Dick Sarafian said, “Okay, let’s get down to business.”

  Cyril closed his script and looked at both of us.

  “Before we do this,” he said, “can we get something out of the way?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I’ve got to do this one thing so it’s not hanging over us,” he said. “Just so it’s done.”

  “Sure,” Dick said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  Suddenly he leaned in and kissed me. I’m talking a real, mature, deep kiss. Then he sat back and stared into my eyes, looking for a reaction. Cyril seemed pleased. He said, “There. Now we don’t have to do that for the first time again.” Flushed and flustered, I said something like, “Well, then, there it is.”

  Had I been able to keep my wits about me, I might’ve asked him to try it again. But my head was spinning in a pleasurable daze the likes of which I’d never experienced. I felt that kiss somewhere deep in my abdomen and from there it spread warm and glowing out past the tips of my fingers and the ends of my toes and through and out each strand of my hair. It was like liquid electricity. That was it. Cyril had closed the sale before I even knew I was in the market for anything. All I knew was that I wanted more of whatever that was.

  Shooting the movie was an extraordinary experience for me. There was the love story on-screen, and then there was the even better real-life romance that developed away from the camera. I fell in love for the first time. Cyril would come over to my house after work to rehearse and there was a lot of making out when my mother wasn’t checking on us, and there was much more intense kissing in the trailer once we began production.

  To replicate the look of 1920s Kansas, we shot in older neighborhoods in Altadena and Pasadena. We had fun learning to drive vintage cars. I was the youngest among the ridiculously talented cast that included Eva Marie Saint, Ned Beatty, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who was a new young actress generating incredible buzz within the industry. She had recently married actor Peter Horton and didn’t want to work, but the producers wanted her to play Bud’s older sister, which was such a terrific role that Michelle agreed to do it.

  She came in and was mind-bogglingly beautiful and sexy sexy sexy in a really quiet, earthy way. We had one scene together, the New Year’s Eve scene when she is gang-raped in a car and takes off. It’s a pivotal moment for Deanie, who, in her desperation and pain, later tries to take on a bunch of dudes in a car and ends up trying to kill herself. I was entranced as I watched her work. She
was grounded, centered, and focused. She clearly had a process, which fascinated me, as I didn’t yet have one.

  One day early in the production, my mother pointed to Ally Sheedy, who was making her film debut as one of Deanie’s two close friends. She complimented her looks and predicted Ally would be a big star someday.

  “I can just feel it,” she said. “I can see something special in her.”

  I remember cocking my head toward her, feeling slightly jealous that she would say that about someone other than me. She was right, of course.

  I was just glad she wasn’t peppering me with questions about my relationship with Cyril. I spent all my private time after rehearsals and before I was needed in front of the camera with him, talking, sharing secrets, and of course, making out. The movie’s crew was for the most part from Little House, so it must have freaked them out to see me, their little Half Pint, following this guy around the set like a puppy. Making out with him on camera, though, was awkward for me.

  He would whisper in my ear, “Relax. Relax. It’s okay.” And I’d say, “They know that we do this in private.”

  “No, they don’t,” he insisted. “They really don’t.”

  But they must have.

  Bizarrely, much of the time I was with Cyril, talking or making out, I was dressed in the Deanie garb. My butt was girdled and my boobs were padded. My face was made up and my fingernails were acrylic and I was wearing a hair piece. On the outside, I was totally artificial. I was the best Hollywood could create, painted-on cleavage and all. Yet none of that stuff mattered to Cyril. What was underneath was exactly what he wanted—the real me.

  Though he never commented directly, Cyril looked past the shading, highlighting, and padding; he got past all of that figuratively and literally. By my seventeenth birthday, which I celebrated on the set, we were on the edge of going all the way. We would get right up to it and then one of us would go “no, no, no.” It was usually Cyril who would stop and say, “You’re not ready. You don’t have to do this.”

  He read me correctly. He really was a hell of a guy. After growing up slowly, I felt like the pedal was suddenly pressed against the metal and I was hanging on tightly to prevent myself from crashing. I wanted to go all the way, but then I would get scared and convince myself I wasn’t ready to add that milestone to my life. My brain and body were at war. I would push Cyril, then back off, and then push again. It was like a dance, a very frustrating dance, one we did in my trailer, in his trailer, or at my house.

  Since he lived in Hollywood and I wasn’t allowed to drive that far by myself or alone at night, he would usually come to my house. He would show up on the doorstep smoking a cigarette and my mother would turn to me with a disapproving look and say, “It’s just gross to walk up to someone’s house with a cigarette.”

  Oh, and he would usually have a beer, which was something else my mother would comment on. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that she didn’t like him. It was more her way of talking around actual concerns. Cyril and I would sit outside and talk while he drank his beer and smoked his cigarette, and then at opportune moments when no one was looking we would make out wildly and go through our yes-no-maybe-not-yet dance.

  We spent the last week of production shooting at High Falls State Park in Forsyth, Georgia. My mother accompanied me to this small southern town that was no more than five miles from the “Welcome” sign to the next town. The film’s cast and crew took over the local Best Western, where my mother and I had adjoining rooms. A wrap party was scheduled for the last day of production, and after shooting the last scene, everybody went back to the hotel to shower and change.

  Somehow I managed to get Cyril into my room without my mother’s knowledge. I was determined that this was going to be the moment when it all happened, when I changed. I knew this was a monumental time in any girl’s life. It really is a moment when we first try on our woman shoes, which is especially challenging and scary when the whole world wants you to stay a child! Once again I relied on that voice inside me, the one that pushes me to move forward even if I’m terrified. Particularly if I’m terrified.

  I knew it was a momentous occasion. Not an ounce of magnitude was lost on me. I was scared it was going to hurt. I was scared of not knowing how to do it. I was scared of all the things that could be horribly wrong with doing it, including the possibility I could end up pregnant. I was scared that if I did go all the way, Cyril wouldn’t want to see me anymore because nice girls didn’t do it. I was scared I couldn’t be Half Pint anymore. I was scared my mother would disown me if she found out. I was scared I’d be thought of as a skank.

  I was scared of so many things, and yet when push came to shove, the voice in my head took over and said, Look, at some point you’re going to do it. You love this man, he clearly loves you. Sooner or later it’s got to happen.

  Well, it turned out to be sooner. Cyril couldn’t have been sweeter, nicer, kinder, or gentler. It wasn’t scary, and it wasn’t awful. In fact, it was actually very sweet and very tender, exactly the kind of experience I would highly recommend to any young woman. God bless Cyril O’Reilly and his dear, gentle heart.

  Afterward Cyril snuck out and went to his room. We arrived separately at the wrap party, where we had an even more exciting time stealing glances at each other from across the room as we talked to people, knowing we had done this incredible thing and nobody else knew. It was the sweetest secret, and just a wee bit dangerous.

  We flew home the next day, sitting next to each other on the plane. As we snuggled up against each other, I started to sing a Lionel Richie song, which was very uncharacteristic of me. But the words just floated out: Thanks for the times that you’ve given me. The memories are all in my mind. (It’s “Three Times a Lady,” but the verses were more important than the chorus here!) I sang it into Cyril’s ear from beginning to end. It was a whisper sort of singing. Soft, warm, and just for him. It made him cry. I wiped tears from my eyes, too.

  I think both of us felt strongly for each other. We had shared a great deal of intimacy but we also knew we weren’t going to stay together. (Someone else knew, too. Years later, Cyril told me that my mother had made it clear to him that he was not going to get anywhere near me once the film was completed.) It was a beginning and an end all at the same time.

  After returning to L.A., Cyril and I saw each other a few times and we talked regularly on the phone. But I could feel us drifting into our separate lives. I was a high school senior, and he was already a man. That was real life.

  I had sent for applications to Harvard, Northwestern, and USC. I couldn’t decide between a career as a brain surgeon or an obstetrician, though whenever I thought seriously about heading off to college the next year, I heard my grandfather’s voice chime, “Who leaves a hit show? You have to be a moron to leave a hit show.”

  I didn’t know for sure what I was going to do until early June, when I was scheduled to take the SAT. On the morning of the four-hour test, I grabbed my No. 2 pencils, said good-bye to my mother, and drove to Cyril’s apartment. We made love until the afternoon. Then I drove home, looked my mother right in the eye, and said, “The test went great.”

  That sealed a new kind of deal. Such deceit and rebellion were brand-new to my repertoire. Sitting here as a parent now, I’m cringing! So many things could’ve happened on my way to Cyril’s. I could’ve had a flat tire or gotten in an accident. I could’ve lost my way. I could’ve been murdered; after all, I was terrified of driving through Laurel Canyon, since for years my mother had drummed into my head that its twisty streets were filled with monsters like Charles Manson and the Hillside Strangler.

  But the lure of a booty call proved stronger than all those potential mishaps and fears. And that’s just what it was, a booty call. Both Cyril and I knew it, and knew we were at the end of the line for no reason other than we were living two completely different lives. The veneer of our romance had worn off and it was simply time for us to move on. The decision was a mature one, bu
t that didn’t make it painless. In fact it hurt like hell. I had a burning sensation in the middle of my chest. (About a year later, well into my relationship with Rob, we would name that feeling. We called it “the Sharp.”)

  That itself was a lesson. I learned love could be as painful, hard, or perplexing as it was wonderful and intoxicating. As with everything, the rewards didn’t come without risks. For me, talking about it with friends helped get me through the weirdness and withdrawal of no longer receiving the love and adoration that had been pouring over me the last few months. I told my ice skating friend Beth that I’d lost my virginity, and after that went well, I told my Little House set guardian Julie and her sister Katie (I think their mother knew, too), and I told Bunny, who passed the news along to Alan.

  I also told Brooke Shields. We weren’t exactly close friends, but our paths did cross pretty regularly. (There’s an unspoken bond among former child actors. Even if the experience of being a working kid wasn’t hellacious, there’s still a sense of having been in the trenches together.) So, there we were at a celebrity ski event in Sun Valley, Idaho, a few months after Cyril and I had ended things, talking about boys, when I dropped the bomb. I said, “I’ve done it.” Brooke put the brakes on whatever she had been about to say and her whole face seemed to shape itself into a big, shocked oval. She pulled me closer to find out what I knew that she didn’t.

  “What was it like?” she asked.