Just as I Am

by Cicely Tyson

  Vinnette later invited Clarence up to the stage, and after chastising him with a smile, she turned to me and said, “Miss Cicely, doesn’t he look like he could be your brother in the play?” I nodded yes, and on the spot, she offered him a role in our production. Clarence had no theatrical experience, but that didn’t matter to Vinnette. That woman could make an actor out of anyone.

  At the dinner seated next to Clarence and Gloria were Dick Gregory, the comedian and civil rights pioneer, and his wife, Lillian. I met other longtime personal friends of the Cosbys for the first time. Amidst the clink-clank of silverware and laughter, Bill stood at the head of the table and offered us a toast. Those gathered raised their crystal in congratulations. The entire occasion was absolutely lovely.

  Late that evening as I entered our upstairs suite, an object caught my eye on my side of the queen bed. There lay my mother’s gold band, atop the folded-down crisp sheets. I gasped as I picked it up and studied it in disbelief. No way could that band have been there during my frantic search. In fact, Miles and I had stripped off and shaken out the duvet and sheets. No one had been into or out of our suite since, Camille later confirmed, and yet mysteriously, our bed had been remade with that ring placed on top of the taut linens. I realize now, decades later, that my mother was attempting to get a message to me. Before the ceremony, she’d hidden that ring because she could not, from her grave, offer her consent on the journey I was undertaking. She knew all too well the painful corridor I was entering. She’d navigated the passageway of my father’s infidelity and did not want that for me, her eldest girl. I’ll tell you, I hurried up and got that ring back to Emily. The entire occurrence spooked me.

  The next afternoon, Miles and I were enjoying our final moments with the Cosbys when an announcement came over the radio. “We interrupt this program with a news bulletin,” said the broadcaster. “Jazz musician great Miles Davis married actress Cicely Tyson yesterday at the Massachusetts home of Bill and Camille Cosby. UN ambassador and former congressman Andrew Young officiated the ceremony.” Miles and I glanced at each other and then burst into laughter, mostly because we couldn’t believe our small private wedding had qualified as breaking news. I mean, you’re going to cut into programming on a holiday weekend when people are relaxing with their families? It seemed ridiculous to me. And that was just the start of the nonsense. In the coming days, I can’t tell you how many people called me to say how they’d fallen out of their chairs when they’d heard that radio announcement. “Why didn’t you tell me?” a few of them said. I’d laugh while thinking to myself, Because I didn’t want you to know. My business is my business, thank you very much.

  Miles and I didn’t go on a honeymoon, given that I was set to begin work on a project soon after our wedding. We did, however, enjoy a short trip down to New Orleans. During the plane ride, Miles opened up a newspaper and spotted a Black woman, a professional cheerleader whose name happened to be Mary Sargent, the same as my mother’s mother. The woman also strongly favored me. “Is that you?” Miles asked, laughing. I glanced at the photo, and given the similarity of our features, even I did a double-take. We both giggled, and he then set aside the paper and took my hand. “Listen,” he said, “the last thing I want to do is ruin your career. I am in this with you and for you. And I will do everything I possibly can to make it right.” He’d heard the talk around town that I had no business with a man like him, that his demons would eventually pull me down. He wanted me to know, from his lips to my ears, that he intended, to the best of his ability, to uplift me during our marriage.

  In the Big Easy, we visited Dooky Chase, the legendary restaurant owned by Leah Chase, queen of creole cuisine. Miles frequented the restaurant whenever he was in town, as did countless Black luminaries, including Dr. King himself. That place had gumbo good enough to make you take your shoes off and shout along the aisles. You should’ve seen Leah’s face when Miles and I, arm in arm, walked through her door. She quickly escorted us to a private booth in the back and even had her kitchen crew stir up a meatless version of her gumbo. What a beautiful human being she was. For years after that day, she’d often proudly tell her customers, “You know, Miles and Cicely stopped through here right after their wedding.” She, too, had heard the radio announcement of our vows. She couldn’t believe her restaurant was our first stop as husband and wife.

  * * *

  Around the time Miles and I married, I had my hands in a trio of projects. The first two—a film with Richard Pryor and a TV movie based on the life of trailblazing educator Marva Collins—were filmed back-to-back. The last, a Broadway show with Liz Taylor, ended in a lawsuit.

  I’d never met Richard before we costarred in Bustin’ Loose, the 1981 comedy featuring Joe Braxton (played by Pryor), a con man with a past as colorful as his mouth. In a chance at both parole and a kind of personal redemption, Braxton agrees to transport, via bus, eight special-needs students and their teacher, Vivian Perry (portrayed by me) from Philadelphia to a farm in Washington, where a fresh start awaits the children.

  I have David McCoy Franklin to thank for the project. David, a shrewd entertainment attorney and then husband to Shirley Franklin (who was eventually elected mayor of Atlanta), had brokered major deals for some of the top Black stars, including Miles, Peabo Bryson, and Roberta Flack. In the early 1980s, he also represented both Richard and me. David and I were riding in the elevator one day when he said to me, “Richard wants to do a movie with you.” I stared at him as if he’d suggested I fly to Jupiter, a notion I found no less absurd than me playing opposite the most foul-mouthed performer of that era, however much of a comedic genius he was. “Richard Pryor?” I said. “What on earth kind of movie would I ever do with Richard?” Richard, he explained, had been quite fond of a schoolteacher who’d once shifted his trajectory. He wanted to create a movie in tribute to her, and David had me in mind to portray the teacher. I still couldn’t fathom it. “Why don’t you read the script and tell me what you think?” he said. Crazy as it sounded, the story line pulled me in. It apparently did the same for audiences. Though many had initially scratched their heads upon hearing of my on-screen pairing with Richard, the film hit at the box office, debuting in the top spot on its opening weekend and ultimately grossing $31 million domestically.

  On the film set in Washington State, Richard was as painfully shy as I’d heard he was, often disappearing into his trailer. Fragility lived behind all that cursing and ranting, a gentleness. Maya Angelou once told me she’d witnessed that side of him when she delivered a scintillating performance on The Richard Pryor Special? in 1977. She never forgot his tenderness toward her, which, it seemed, went hand in hand with his reticence. His gentleness was on full display as he interacted with the children on our set. Those kids just loved Richard, and as he laughed and played around with them, his shyness fell away. His own childhood had been marred with such dysfunction. He was reared in a brothel run by his grandmother, and his mom, an alcoholic, worked as a prostitute. He’d survived sexual abuse. Like Miles and scores of other sensitive souls among us, Richard sought solace from his demons through drugs. But while with the children in our crew, the sober Richard was a complete sweetheart. Perhaps he felt a kinship with those young’uns that he’d missed out on during his own boyhood.

  Whenever Richard hadn’t stolen away to his trailer, he talked endlessly about his fishing expeditions. He absolutely loved the sport and would often return, between film days, with bags of his fish for the crew. For some reason, I’d always wanted to learn how to fish. Perhaps the idea of solitude on the vast seas is what appealed to both Richard and me. Once, when I had a day off from filming, I stepped into a Seattle sporting goods store and said, “Is there anyone here who can teach me how to fish?” The salesman chuckled. “I’m sure a lot of people could,” he said. I had my hair and makeup person with me, and our plan was to rent a boat, set sail on Lake Washington, and cast our lines. Sure enough, the salesman found us an associate who agreed to take us out fishing that
morning. He helped me get my line in the water, and all of a sudden, my rod began twisting and turning all over the place. My eyes bulged as I gripped the rod, attempting to keep myself from flying overboard. “You’ve got a big one!” he shouted as he ran to my side. Turns out it was a six-pound bass.

  That was only the beginning. By dusk, I, the neophyte, had managed to catch five more fish, all salmon, every one of them flipping and flopping as much as I did whenever my rod got to moving. Back on set, I proudly handed out my gutted and cleaned fish to my fellow castmates and set aside my largest salmon, in the sink, especially for my costar. “Tell Richard to come here,” I said to my assistant. Richard stepped into my trailer soon after and we chatted for a bit, with him wondering the whole time, I’m sure, why I’d called for him. On his way out, he spotted the gigantic fish. “Oh by the way,” I told him, “that’s yours.” A smile spread across his face. “Did you catch this?” he asked. My salmon was twice the size of any he’d ever brought back. “Yes,” I smirked. He laughed, snatched it by the tail, and slammed the door on his way out. He didn’t speak to me for three days, which I thought was just hilarious. Jealousy is the strangest of the vices.

  I moved on from novice fisherwoman to educational trailblazer for my work on the CBS made-for-TV movie The Marva Collins Story. Marva, an Alabama native educated in a one-room schoolhouse, had risen from her state’s segregated school system to earn her teaching degree from Clark College in Atlanta. She taught in Alabama for a time before moving to Chicago, where she became frustrated with the lack of resources and poor test scores of low-income Black children in the public school system there. In 1975, she parlayed that frustration into a newfound passion. Using her personal savings, she opened Westside Preparatory, a private school housed on the upper floors of her brownstone in West Garfield Park. Students included her son and daughter, as well as a handful of other children, some of whom were thought to be “learning disabled.” Within a year under her strict-yet-nurturing tutelage based on a modified Socratic method, every one of her students had scored five or more grades higher on standardized tests, an eye-popping success that eventually caught the attention of President Ronald Reagan (he wanted to nominate her as Secretary of Education, but she declined). The school expanded as force-of-nature Marva welcomed students deemed “unteachable” and turned them into academic stars. In 1981, I had the privilege—and the challenge—of portraying her. Morgan Freeman played Marva’s husband, Clarence Collins.

  The film shoot was difficult from day one, largely because Marva was there for all of the filming. She had every right to watch from the sidelines, of course, especially given that she’d lived the inspiring story. And yet the distraction of her presence, as well as her frequent input to the production crew, just about drove me crazy. My friend Dr. Walter Leonard, himself an educational pioneer who was then president of Fisk University—and who’d helped engineer Harvard’s groundbreaking affirmative action program—once came to visit me on the set. After a full day of observing, he pulled me aside. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said. I didn’t either. Marva wanted to be sure I portrayed her exactly as she wanted to be portrayed. Fair enough. Trouble is, her approach made it nearly impossible for me to relax and do my work, a fact that I mentioned to the director. I don’t know whether the director said anything to her about my complaint, but I think it not a coincidence that she pulled back on her comments. Somehow, despite Marva ogling me the whole way through, I turned in a performance good enough to earn me an Emmy nod. I only hope dear Marva, who passed on in 2015, felt I did her life justice. Her legacy is one we should all celebrate. It is proof that our children, when accorded the attention and respect they deserve, are capable of greatness.

  Marva’s hovering was nothing when compared to Liz Taylor’s smirking. In 1983, Liz’s production company, in conjunction with Zev Buffman, presented a stage revival of The Corn Is Green. I played the main character, Miss Moffat, an English spinster teacher, and was the first Black actress to take on the role. Critics excoriated the show, as well as my performance in it (I never could get down that British accent), but that had nothing to do with the small kerfuffle between Liz and me. Near the end of the show’s run, I—someone who had, up to then, never missed a single one of my scheduled performances—requested one night off to attend a tribute to Miles. When the show’s director would not grant me the time off, I took it anyway. I was subsequently—and unjustly, I might add—fired and replaced for the remainder of the production. I promptly sued Liz’s production company for the earnings they still owed me. We shouldn’t have had to go to court. I tried to reason with Liz’s team, tried to come to an agreement that would’ve saved us all a headache. But the show had done poorly, and they seemed intent on recouping at least some of their losses. I heard Liz went through four lawyers in attempting to mount a defense, and she no doubt spent hundreds of thousands in fees. As the court battle played out, many others in the industry stopped speaking to me altogether, simply because I’d dared to sue someone of Liz’s caliber. Let me tell you something, my dear: If the situation had been reversed, Liz would’ve sued my nylons off, do you hear me? I would’ve been down on Sunset Boulevard, living in a cardboard box and begging for my supper, and no one would’ve cared. I knew I had a strong case, and I intended to see it through. Once the suit was filed, Liz and I didn’t speak directly about it.

  That changed years after the verdict. As I entered the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for an engagement, an attendant whispered to me, “James Earl Jones is having dinner in the back.” In Hollywood circles, folks knew how much James and I adored one another, ever since those days when we’d both played in The Blacks and Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. Before meeting my dinner companion, I stopped by James’s table to greet him. Not until I walked up did I realize that Liz Taylor was there with him. We exchanged one of those fake double-cheek kisses, and she laughed as she said to James, “You know something? Cicely sued me.” She then turned to me and smirked, “And how much money did you get?” I raised my shoulders, thrust my nose heavenward, and announced loudly enough for the room to hear, “I was awarded more than a half-million dollars.” She just shook her head and grinned. Liz might’ve been Hollywood’s golden girl—but I claimed the golden egg.

  * * *

  My marriage with Miles was a study in opposites. When our energies were in sync, the partnership was powerfully fulfilling. We played our roles to perfection: he, the ailing soul yearning for a salve, and me, the willing healer, ever ready at his side with the vial of medicine. The good times were never in short supply. Particularly in the early years of our marriage, we laughed far more than we battled. Once Miles straightened his spine and again picked up his horn, we sashayed all over town and beyond, from one fancy dinner and concert to the next, the whole time savoring the limelight and amused by the question written on so many faces: How on earth did these two get together?

  It did not matter to me what others thought about our union. It still doesn’t. I married Miles not because of the world’s opinion of either of us, but because of who we were for one another in private. For Miles, I was the Trusted One, the person he’d dared let enter the most troubled corridors of his heart. “I know she’ll never leave me,” he’d often say to his friends. “Not Cicely. Never.” For me, Miles was my opportunity to feel deeply needed in this life, and in the satisfaction of his need, I experienced profound love. That love, however, came mixed with grief.

  The better Miles got to feeling, the greater his tendency to backslide. I’ll tell you, that man did not have nine lives, but ninety. By 1982, he’d grown strong enough to go on an international tour, his first after five long years away from the stage. By then, and even after I’d dragged him to see Dr. Shen, Miles had already had some slip-ups, dabbling in coke and throwing back shots when he was out with his friends. Though we never talked about his drug use, I knew about it—and he knew I knew. I could sense when he was using from the moment he entered the house. He walked differently. He sme
lled differently. He spoke differently, even when he’d had only one beer. Then when sober, he wore his guilt on his brow and couldn’t even look me in the eye after knowing all I’d done to help his behind crawl back to sobriety. Miles could not hide from me, even at his slickest. So when it came time for him to take to the road, I recognized he was too vulnerable to go alone. I set aside a project and joined him for the first half of his tour. He used less when I stayed close. A few weeks into the tour, when my film could no longer be postponed, I flew out to Los Angeles—but not before calling for backup.

  Miles had always been quite fond of his nephew, Vince Wilburn Jr., son of Dorothy Mae Davis, Miles’s older, and only, sister. The family lived in Chicago, and even during Miles’s stretch away from the spotlight, Vince and Miles had remained close. From Vince’s earliest years, whenever Miles had come through Chicago for a concert, Dorothy would take her son along to witness the magic from backstage. Vince became so mesmerized with the drums that Uncle Miles, gratified by his nephew’s passion and burgeoning talent, purchased his first drum kit for his birthday. He’d often mail him records of the greats he admired, musicians like Al Jackson, Charlie Watts, Buddy Miles, and James Brown. Vince had unknowingly played a part in Miles’s return to the trumpet. During that period when Miles had sworn off his horn, young Vince persisted in talking music with his uncle, and when he visited, he’d badger Miles to play alongside him. Miles often refused. But eventually, as his emotional recovery caught up with his physical one, he reached for music again.

  A few weeks before I had to leave Miles in Paris, I called Dorothy. Vince, then in his teens, had grown into quite an accomplished percussionist. “What would you think about Vince joining Miles on the road for a few weeks during his summer break?” I asked her. She wholeheartedly agreed—and I exhaled. I didn’t expect Vince to watch over Miles the way I did; I would never hoist such a responsibility onto a child’s shoulders. And yet I knew that leaving Miles in the presence of loved ones would perhaps dampen his desire for drugs. He’d have someone to tend to, someone who looked up to him like the musical giant that he was. The plan worked. For the rest of the tour, Vince became his uncle’s shadow, as hypnotized by the sounds of brilliance as he’d been the first time he’d watched Miles play in the Heartland. Vince eventually joined Miles’s band as a drummer and traveled all over the world with him. When either Vince or I was close by, Miles strayed far less. During that trip with his nephew, he never once slipped.