by Gene Wilder
Her dressing room door was open. Carol was sitting in her panties and bra, with a little towel over her lap. She wasn’t wearing her wig. I walked over to her and stood in the open doorway.
“I know I’ve been difficult to work with,” she said. “I want to thank you for putting up with me. It must have been terribly annoying for all of you.”
I assumed she meant the “nightclub act” after each curtain call, or perhaps the fact that her husband started every applause for her, matinée and evening. There was something vulnerable in the way she looked at me that I hadn’t seen before.
“I need it,” she said.
My heart sank. I gave her a smile and a gentle nod good-bye as all the bitterness drained out of me. I thought she expressed more awareness of what had happened that summer than I would have thought she was capable of.
“Thank you, Carol. Good night.”
MARGIE: What’s with this screaming-at-a-woman business? You never screamed at a woman before?
ME: Once a year. I screamed at my mother when I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
MARGIE: How did it feel?
ME: Terrible. I couldn’t stop crying. I don’t want you to think that I don’t ever get angry, but letting the anger at Carol burst out of me that way—no thinking, just the rage pouring out—that was new. My screaming wasn’t such a big deal—it was kind of funny in a way, and it makes a good story. I think the big deal was that I did it in front of all those people.
Margie waited for me to catch up with where I think she wanted me to go.
MARGIE: Tell me.
ME: When I was a kid, my mom and dad took me to a restaurant that specialized in barbecued spareribs and delicious ice cream sodas. On the front of the menu, it said, “Pig on the Cob.” My dad and I had the spareribs; my mother had an orange ice cream soda. In between bites of his pig on the cob—which my father, by some strange Jewish logic, assumed meant “ribs of beef”—he said, “Annette wanted me to buy that chair from her for $150, and I told her, ‘Personally, I think it’s a piece of junk, but my wife wants it, so, okay, I’ll give you $50 for it.’ ” He said it in the cutest way—as if he were telling a joke.
My mother turned red and said, “Annette introduced us! We wouldn’t be married if it hadn’t been for Annette!”
“What’d I say? Annette didn’t mind. She even laughed when I said it.”
“I’m not cheap!”
“Of course you’re not cheap. Who said anything about cheap? All I said was—”
“I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID! If we didn’t have a penny to our name, I still wouldn’t be cheap! Annette’s going to think that we’re cheap.”
The people at the table next to us turned to watch. My father stopped eating.
“Jeanne—what’d I say? It was nothing. I was just making a little joke.”
My mother stood up and started hollering. “I KNOW WHAT YOU SAID! DON’T KEEP SAYING IT WAS NOTHING. . . . IT WASN’T A JOKE!”
Now all the people in the restaurant turned to look at us. My father was baffled.
“Jeanne, come on now, honey—don’t get so excited or you’re going to get sick. All I said to her was—”
“ALL YOU SAID TO HER WAS THAT WE’RE TOO CHEAP AND WE CAN’T AFFORD TO BUY A CHAIR.”
I put my chin on my chest. I was afraid to look at any of the people who were watching us. My lips kept moving without making sounds: Please stop, please stop, everyone’s watching. . . . But at the same time I was thinking, Good for you, Mama, good for you. What courage—to scream in front of the whole restaurant. Poor Daddy. Good for you, Mama.
After a long pause, Margie said, “Time’s up, Gene. See you Wednesday.”
MY FIRST LOVE
I was asked by Mike Nichols to “stand by” for Alan Arkin and Eli Wallach in Murray Schisgal’s play Luv, which Mike was going to direct in the fall. “Stand by” is a polite way of saying “understudy,” with one great difference: if you’re a stand by, you don’t have to go to the theater each night—you just call in half an hour before curtain to see if the actor you’re standing by for has arrived. Mike said, “You’ll turn me down, but I’m going to ask you anyway. You might find it better than acting in some junk.” That fall I was offered other jobs, but they were all junk. So I decided to stand by until something worthwhile came along.
One afternoon, Corinne asked if I’d like to come to dinner. She had invited her former college roommate, Mary Jo, and thought maybe I’d like to join them. “You remember Mary Jo, don’t you?” (Mary Jo, whose “original lips” I dreamed of kissing long after I said good-bye to her in Iowa City, thirteen years ago.) I said, “Sure, I’d like to join you.”
Everyone close to Mary Jo just called her Jo. She had married, disastrously, had a five-and-a-half-year-old daughter by that marriage, and left her husband before the baby was born. Jo looked almost the same as she did when we first met. Her little daughter, Katie, was wild—adorable and wild. I made her laugh during dinner and by the end of the evening I knew that she liked me.
After dinner I walked Jo and Katie to their apartment building, which, by some curious happenstance, was only six blocks away from my new one-room apartment on Seventy-third Street, just off of Madison Avenue (rent-controlled for $214.00 per month).
The next day I called Jo and asked her for a date. We went to see Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue. During the movie I put my arm around her shoulders. She responded warmly. I took her home and kissed her good night. It was a beautiful kiss.
SALESMAN REVISITED
Alex Segal—the man who had directed me in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—called and asked if I would come over to David Susskind’s office. When I got there, he offered me the part of Bernard in a two-hour CBS television presentation of Death of a Salesman, starring Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock. It felt as if life was playing a game with me.
I got a four-week leave of absence from my job with Luv and flew to Los Angeles. I stayed at the Montecito Hotel, sometimes referred to as the Actors’ Hotel, because you could get a living room/bedroom, plus kitchenette, for eighty-five dollars a month. We rehearsed for three weeks in a huge building on Beverly Boulevard, next to CBS Television City.
I had rented a little Volkswagen so I could drive to and from rehearsals. I didn’t know Los Angeles very well, but the assistant director gave me a very simple route to take from my hotel to the rehearsal hall.
One day, after rehearsal, I thought I knew my way well enough to try a slightly different route back to the hotel. I had been driving for about five minutes when suddenly my whole body got clammy. I felt as if all the blood had drained out of my face. My arms were warm, but my forehead was cold. I thought I’d better pull over before I had an accident. I was on Melrose Avenue and Wilcox. When I looked up, I saw the Black/Foxe Military Institute drill field right in front of me. I was staring at the same field that I had marched on, twice a day, just before being beaten up each night. My sense memory knew what my brain didn’t.
After three weeks of rehearsal we taped Death of a Salesman in four days. I never told Lee J. Cobb how my life had changed after I saw him on Broadway in this same play, when I was sixteen years old. It seems stupid now—not to have told him—but I was afraid it would sound mushy.
Mildred Dunnock, however, became my new best friend—during rehearsals and the taping—always giving me encouragement and a smile when I finished a scene. And when I needed advice, I turned to Mildred.
On our last day, after we finished taping, she asked if I’d like to have dinner with her. I said I would like that very much, so long as I was paying. There was a favorite restaurant she used to go to when she worked in Los Angeles, called Don the Beachcomber. She introduced me to Mai Tais.
When I got back to New York, I was asked to take over Alan Arkin’s role in Luv and play it until it closed, sixth months later. I was on Broadway for the fifth time. I also started seeing Mary Jo regularly. The Demon had not left his calling card for months now; I felt almost impre
gnable. I was also in love, for the first time.
chapter 14
“SORRY I CAUGHT YOU WITH THE OLD LADY.”
It had now been three years since I heard from Mel Brooks. In all that time I never got a phone call from him, or a letter, or a telegram. I had given up hopes of being Leo Bloom in Springtime for Hitler.
I was taking off my makeup one day, after a matinée performance of Luv, when someone knocked on my dressing room door. I opened the door and there was Mel, standing in the hallway, with a tall gentleman standing behind him.
“Mel!” I said, in a slight state of shock.
“You don’t think I forgot, do you?” He said it very seriously.
Then he introduced me to the tall gentleman with him, Sydney Glazier, who was going to produce Springtime for Hitler. Mel started talking as if he were just continuing a conversation from yesterday.
“Now listen—you know I love you, but Zero Mostel is going to play Bialystock, and I can’t just spring you on him because he’s got approval of anyone who plays Leo, so you’ve got to do a reading with him, just so he can see for himself how good you are.”
The morning of the reading I went to my regular appointment with Margie, dressed in a “character coat” I had borrowed from the wardrobe rack at Luv.
“What’s the matter?” Margie asked.
“If I don’t get this part, I’ll just be a good featured—maybe supporting actor—for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little, Gene?”
“Margie, you know more about psychology than I ever will . . . but I know more about show business than you do.”
A few hours later I knocked on Sidney Glazier’s office door. It was 11:30 A.M. Mel opened the door and gave me a hug—I could see Zero Mostel in the background—and then Mel pulled me into the office.
“Gene . . . this is Z. Z . . . this is Gene.”
This huge, round, fantasy of a man came waltzing towards me. My heart was pounding so loud I thought he’d hear it. I stuck out my hand, politely, to shake his, but instead of shaking my hand Zero pulled me into his body and gave me a giant kiss, on the lips. All nervousness floated away. (I think Zero did it for that reason.) I gave a good reading and was cast in Springtime for Hitler.
A BELATED THANK – YOU NOTE TO
JEROME ROBBINS
Dear Jerry:
When we worked together it was the best of times and the worst of times. But I’m more grateful to you now than I ever could have conceived I would be. I’ll tell you why:
1. If you hadn’t miscast me in Mother Courage, I wouldn’t have met Anne Bancroft.
2. If I hadn’t met Anne Bancroft, I wouldn’t have met Mel Brooks.
3. If I hadn’t met Mel Brooks, I would probably be a patient in some neuropsychiatric hospital today, looking through the bars of a physical therapy window as I made wallets.
MY FIRST MOVIE
It was March. Filming on Springtime for Hitler was to begin in May, but in the meantime I was offered a small part in a movie called Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and to be directed by Arthur Penn. The company was already filming in Texas. I got a one-week leave of absence from Luv. My understudy took over for me.
I arrived in Dallas on a Monday afternoon and was driven forty miles to the smallish hotel where everyone (except the stars) was staying. On Tuesday morning I went to the set—which was just someone’s big outdoor porch. Arthur Penn introduced me to the pretty young woman who would be playing my fiancée. Her name was Evan Evans.
“Evan, this is Gene—Gene, this is Evan.”
We said hello and shook hands. Then Arthur said, “All right, why don’t we run through this first scene—just lightly—while the camera is setting up?”
The first scene started with Evan and me kissing on her porch, until I notice that my car is being stolen. We started our rehearsal locked in a big embrace, as we kissed, and after a few moments Arthur said, “Now they’re stealing your car, Gene.” I jumped up and said my line—something like, “Hey, that’s my car!” Arthur said, “Good! All right—let’s try one.”
Evan and I started kissing, the camera started rolling, and the assistant director yelled, “CAR!” I jumped up and said, “Hey, that’s my car!” Arthur said, “Cut! Very good! Let’s do one more, and then we’ll move on.”
And that was my introduction to movie acting. Fun! A little strange, to start kissing someone you’d just met two minutes earlier . . . but it was fun.
Three weeks later I flew to Los Angeles to do the interiors of my scenes in Bonnie and Clyde. We were on a Warner Bros. sound stage. My first scene began with Evan and me sitting in the back of her car, supposedly chasing the Barrow Gang. I waited for Arthur Penn to call, “Action.” Arthur was sitting alongside the camera—out of frame, of course—but not more than five or six feet away from me. As soon as I heard him say, “Action,” I started to act. Sounds sensible, doesn’t it? But Arthur immediately called out to the camera operator, “Keep rolling,” and then he gave me my first revelation of what it means to be an “actor’s director.” While the camera was rolling, he said, “Gene, just because I say ‘Action,’ doesn’t mean you have to start acting—it just means that we’re ready. I could see you had something cooking inside, but you weren’t ready to act yet. Film is cheap. Keep working on whatever you’re working on and start acting when you’re ready.”
The scene went very well.
When we took a break, the assistant director came up to me and said, “Don’t get used to what just happened—you’re not going to find many directors who work like Arthur.”
In the next scene I’m riding in the back of a car with the Barrow Gang. Near the end of the scene Gene Hackman tells me a joke. Arthur Penn asked us to rehearse the scene, very lightly, before filming it. When we got to the joke I asked Gene not to tell me the punch line until the cameras were rolling, because I didn’t want to feel obligated to fake my laughter when the time came. We started the scene, which was going very well, and then Gene told me the joke. Well, the joke was so dumb that when it came to the punch line—“Whatever you do, don’t sell that cow!”—I laughed until there were tears in my eyes, because I couldn’t believe how dumb this silly joke was that I had been waiting to hear. (From an acting point of view, not having heard the joke before had helped me a great deal.) We did the scene several times, and I laughed harder each time—mostly, I think, because Gene Hackman was so enthusiastic each time he told me this stupid joke.
When filming was over, Arthur Penn told me that he had never envisioned the part being played the way I did it. I asked him what he meant, and he said he never imagined its being funny. Then I asked him why he thought of me for the part.
“I saw you on Broadway and thought you’d be right for the part.”
A few months later I asked Warren Beatty the same question. He said, “I saw you on Broadway and thought you’d be right for the part.”
Maybe I’m exaggerating—to the extent that they didn’t use the exact same words—but who cares? They both said that I was in a movie because they had seen me onstage, which was just what I told Gene Saks would happen, in Louisville, Kentucky, when he quit directing The Millionairess.
chapter 15
SECOND MOVEMENT
SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER
In May of 1967 I went to my first press luncheon. It was on the afternoon before filming was going to start on Springtime for Hitler. Everyone had a place card. Mine was not at the main table, which had place cards for Mel Brooks, Joe Levine (the man who had put up half the budget), Sidney Glazier, Zero Mostel, and Dick Shawn. Zero examined all the place cards; then he picked up Dick Shawn’s card and my card and very deftly, like a ballet dancer, swapped them. I was now sitting next to Zero.
When dessert was being served, I got up and excused myself. Mel asked where I was going, I told him that I had a doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t miss. The truth was that I didn’t want to miss signing up for my last
unemployment check. (It was up to fifty-five dollars a week by that time.)
______
Katie had never seen her biological father. He had wined and dined Mary Jo and led her to believe that he was a big shot in the investment business. When Jo became pregnant with Katie, she found out that her husband was not only a liar, but was also broke and a drunkard. She told him that he was not going to be the father to her child. So she walked out after three months of marriage and raised Katie on her own.
I started having dinner with Jo and Katie two or three nights a week. Before dinner was ready, I would perform “circus tricks” with Katie. I would lie down on the floor, with my knees pointed up, and Katie would try to stand on my knees while I held her hands. It always made her laugh—especially when she would start to fall and I would catch her. Then the three of us would sit down to eat.
After dinner I would kiss Katie good night, and Jo would put her to bed. When Jo came out of the bedroom, she’d lower the lights in the living room, and we would lie down together on her couch, fully clothed. Then the habit started: after about twenty minutes Katie would open her bedroom door with a devilish grin on her face and say, “Hi, Daddy.”
“DYING IS EASY. COMEDY IS HARD.”
Comedy is hard—if you’re not a comic actor. And drama is hard if you’re not a dramatic actor. Some actors are blessed with the talent to be good in both—Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, for example. I wish I were blessed that way, but I’ll never be as good in drama as I am in comedy. Still, good acting is good acting. As Bette Davis told Paul Henreid at the end of the film Now Voyager, “We have the stars, Jerry—why ask for the moon?”
