Just as I Am: A Memoir

by Cicely Tyson

  That summer, I mentioned this to Carole. She and Bill had a place in Paris, and every August, they’d invite me and a guest to join them there. “Carole,” I said as the two of us were preparing dinner one evening, “I hear you’ve always thought Bill and I were having an affair.”

  She glanced over at me. “Yeah,” she said.

  “Carole, look at me,” I told her. “Why in God’s name would I be living in your house with you, Bill, and your children and having an affair right under your nose? What is the matter with you, huh?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “What was I supposed to think?” she said, chuckling. “That’s what everybody was saying all over town.” Can you believe that? People’s minds work in the strangest ways.

  Looking back on it now, I still shake my head when I recall that Haber had the audacity to ever waltz me into his house without first asking Carole whether I could live with them. Guess who’s coming for lunch and then staying for nearly a decade? Me.

  * * *

  Around New York, everyone I knew had been talking constantly about how to carry on Dr. King’s legacy, how to move his dream from rhetoric to reality, asking ourselves the question that hovers above our nation now: What will be our part in the revolution? We were also easing the ache caused by King’s tragic loss, attempting to replace the emptiness and dream with a new sense of hope. Our leader had planted the seeds for change. We, those left holding his grand vision, were charged with ensuring its growth for future generations. Arthur Mitchell and I would talk on the phone for hours, trading ideas. “Let’s do this or that,” we’d say. “No, that won’t work.” Early one morning a few weeks after we lost King, my phone rang. It was Arthur.

  “I’ve decided what we should do,” he said excitedly. I rubbed my eyes and looked over at the clock: 3 a.m. “I’m going to form my own dance company,” he went on, like it was noon, “and I want you with me.” The fervor in my friend’s voice, the passion with which he spoke, dragged me from my bed. I washed my face, pulled on a trench over my pajamas, and took a cab over to his place a few streets away. On Arthur’s living room floor, amid papers and photographs he’d assembled while brainstorming, we sat talking about how we could move his vision forward.

  “Wait a minute,” he said after we’d been talking for an hour. “We need one more person to be in on this.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  His face brightened. “Let’s get Brock Peters,” he said.

  Out the door we went over to Brock’s place a few streets away. Arthur pressed the buzzer, but nobody answered. We rang again. Finally, we heard Brock’s sleepy voice over the intercom. “Who is it?!” he asked.

  “It’s Arthur and Cicely,” Arthur announced.

  “What’s the matter?” Brock asked.

  “I’m going to form my own dance company,” Arthur explained, “and I want you and Cicely to join me.” Brock lumbered downstairs moments later. Once Arthur had persuaded him of the urgency of his idea, Brock threw on his coat and walked with us to Arthur’s apartment. There, with his eyes dancing, Arthur shared with us his vision. He dreamed of opening a classical ballet school, a place where Black children—toes pointed, horizons expanded—could learn the rigors and discipline that had lifted him toward prominence. He wanted to pass on to them the same gifts, the same dedication and unassailable work ethic that had carried each of us to that moment. More than anything, he wanted to awaken in them a dream, strong and pulsating, of a world beyond their own. Though poverty and prejudice surrounded them, it need not define them. A few hours later when the city stirred awake, the three of us were still talking, still huddled in that circle with our hearts wide open.

  That is how Dance Theatre of Harlem began more than five decades ago—in the wee hours, with a trio of visionaries clustered together on a living room floor. All those years earlier when I’d first met Arthur, he’d assured me we’d one day work together. That morning as the sun peeked up over the horizon, my friend’s dream took both flight and root.

  Arthur, ever a doer, got right to work clearing a path as Brock and I stood close, handing him his shovels. Dorothy Maynor at Harlem School of the Arts, near 141st and St. Nicholas Avenue, had been asking Arthur to teach classes there, and when he visited, he spotted potential in the school’s bare-bones gym. He used his personal savings of $25,000 to remodel the space, installing a dance floor and ballet barres. More funding trickled in—along with mirrors, at last!—as the three of us lent our star power to luring in donors. Many of the potential investors we approached couldn’t truly envision Arthur’s dream for a first-class Black dance center, because in 1968, there was absolutely no precedent for such a notion in the elite and deeply prejudiced world of classical ballet. But if the three of us were involved, some came to believe, then the venture had to be solid.

  Anything Arthur asked me to do, I did: I cofounded the first board of directors, solicited grants, worked with renowned dressmaker Zelda Wynn on costuming, taught a course about how to tell a story, graceful yet gripping, through dance. Lorenzo James, Arthur’s longtime friend, was a critical part of our efforts. And though Arthur eventually brought in his Caucasian teacher Karel Shook, a well-known ballet master, to partner with him in the venture, Shook is often miscredited with having cofounded Arthur’s dance company. Frankly, that’s no surprise. Since the days when ancient Greeks stole advanced concepts of architecture, philosophy, and mathematics right out of the palms of Africans, whites have been taking credit for Black successes, co-opting our ingenuity at every turn. But to be clear, on the morning when Arthur, Brock, and myself formed the blueprint for the school, Shook was not yet a thought. While he indeed contributed mightily later, it was Arthur, Brock, and I who first lifted Dance Theatre of Harlem off the ground. And in between all the going and the doing and the launching, I served as Arthur’s confidante, the friend who, during our nightly phone calls, lent an ear and moral support.

  Before long, Arthur had opened his doors to children from the Harlem neighborhood, charging them fifty cents a week for a place in history. At the outset, he had about thirty students. Arthur pushed every one of them to stand on their toes and reach past mediocrity toward a virtuosity the dance world has seldom witnessed. And in so doing, he defied the notion that Black bodies were not made for classical ballet, that the lines of our figures weren’t suited for arabesques and pirouettes. During the summer of 1968, all of Harlem gathered, it seemed, to watch these gifted dancers arch their backs toward excellence. Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne were in attendance. So were Sidney, Ossie, Ruby, Maya, and scores of other notable artists. With every leap and grand jeté, their exacting standards became a source of our shared pride.

  Dance Theatre of Harlem quickly outgrew its original space, and by 1971, it had moved to its current quarters, a parking garage at 466 West 152nd Street. Arthur renovated the new space with a gift from Alva B. Gimbel. When Lorenzo invited Alva to observe the dancers (by then, classes were being conducted in the basement of Church of the Master in Harlem), Alva declared, “These children should not be in a basement! They need a home of their own.” On the spot, she wrote the dance company a check for $50,000. That same year, Arthur prepared his students to present three ballets at the Guggenheim. The mostly white audience applauded and was moved to tears. The group took its talents overseas soon after, performing in the Netherlands. Not only had Arthur, chief ambassador for Black classical dance, preserved Dr. King’s dream and made it international, he’d done so in lockstep with the Black Arts Movement—alongside poets and painters and singers and actors who protested not just with picket signs, but through the mastery of their crafts. They believed, as Arthur and I did, in the unique transformative power of the arts. A well-told story, in whichever artistic medium it is delivered, can touch corners of the soul otherwise unreachable.

  14

  Rebecca

  MY WORK on Sounder began with a prediction. In the spring of 1971, I was set to fly out to Los Angeles to start work on the film, a
nd as was true with every important moment in my life, I wanted to share this one with Arthur. He’d been overseas on tour with his students, and we hadn’t yet connected about my role. So on my way to the airport, I stopped by his place to give him my good news in person. “I’m going out to Hollywood to do my first big movie,” I said, joy lifting my cheeks.

  “And if you do,” Arthur said, “you’re going to be nominated for an Oscar.”

  “And if I am,” I told him, “you will be my escort.” We hugged and I went on my way.

  Even before filming began, skepticism abounded over whether Sounder would resonate. The short three-year gap between Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 and our first day on set in 1971 felt more like a decade. Throughout the sixties, there’d been a major political shift among young Blacks in particular, some of whom were weary with King’s passive resistance and favored forceful rebellion. The change became more pronounced after we lost King—and movies began mirroring the evolving times. Theatergoers longed for brazen Black characters, heroes willing to take up arms in battling racial violence, in place of conciliatory Negroes serving as white America’s moral conscience. This new spirit was, in part, what gave rise to Blaxploitation cinema, the genre that, as I see it, did more to impede our progress than to fuel it. In such an environment, director Marty Ritt made the brave choice to feature a loving Black family in a plot that neither satisfied the thirst for Black rebel characters nor reinforced the stereotype of us as heathenish villains. It was bold. It raised eyebrows and doubts. And even Paul Winfield and I, the principal actors, wondered whether anyone would show up to see the film.

  First things first: The story of Sounder may have been stolen from a Black man. William H. Armstrong is said to have penned the 1969 children’s book upon which the film is based, and he even won the Newbery Medal for it. But while preparing for the film, a young Black author I met insisted he’d written the story during the years he worked for Armstrong. He even gave me a signed copy of his original draft, and it breaks my heart that I no longer have it and cannot track down the man’s name. I loaned his draft to Lonne Elder and never got it back. The same thing happened, years later, when I began work on A Woman Called Moses. Harriet Tubman’s nephew gave me a book of hers, and poof, it disappeared.

  From the script’s opening line, Rebecca crawled under my skin. I could see her, feel her, touch her. Though, as I’ve told you, I’d initially been asked to play the teacher—a smaller role, but a no less beautiful one—nothing in me stirred when I read that part. Also, it was a role I could’ve played in my sleep. Rebecca, in contrast, was a character of substance I wasn’t sure I could depict. Beneath her placid exterior lived a quiet complexity. I knew who this woman was—a long-suffering wife and mother who brought to mind the woman who reared me, as well as the myriad Black women who’ve carried our world on their shoulders—which is why I knew it would prove challenging to do her justice on-screen. That I was terrified to take the role was, for me, a sign that I should. Intimidation is a prerequisite to growth as an artist.

  At the start of the project, I stopped first in LA to meet with the crew about costuming and hair and then flew on to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for filming. By the time I stepped on set, Rebecca had already taken me over. I’d of course pored over the script and started in with my usual inquisition: Why did the writer create the character? Why was she given the name Rebecca? How does her dialogue reinforce her characterization? Rebecca’s purpose, in a word, was support. She was the rock sustaining those children while her husband was in jail for the “crime” of ensuring his family could eat. I took all of that in as I read. And once I allowed Rebecca’s essence to dislodge my own, she began manifesting in my gestures. One morning when I was cleaning, I began doing everything with my left hand. What the devil is wrong with me? I thought. Rebecca must be left-handed. Sure enough, one afternoon between takes on set, Kevin Hooks, who portrayed my eldest son, said, “Mama, let’s play ball.” He picked up the ball with his left hand and threw it. “Kevin, are you left-handed?” I asked. He nodded. It stood to reason that Rebecca’s firstborn, like his mother, would be a leftie. So I played Rebecca completely from my left side.

  I also got Rebecca’s hair right. Just as I’d done in East Side and every other film I’ve been in, I felt determined to bring authenticity to my character. During the 1930s in the South, poor Black women typically cornrowed their hair, as well as wrapped their heads while laboring in fields and kitchens. I called on Omar, the stylist I’d been working with in California, and I asked her to cornrow my hair. She knew how to braid, but because she wasn’t a union worker, she couldn’t do the job. So I began calling around to see whether I could find someone in my network. Through a friend, I connected with a woman who was married to an African, and when she and her husband had lived on the continent, the women there taught her how to cornrow. She wasn’t a union worker either, but somehow, we were able to bring her in. She’s the one who gently parted and braided my hair into perfectly spaced rows.

  Filming went on for several weeks, and one scene in particular will always be memorable. Near the end of the film, after Jim Crow’s injustices have separated Nathan and Rebecca for months, the two run toward each other along a long dirt road and embrace. Everywhere I go, folks ask me about that scene. After we’d filmed the tearful reunion, Marty Ritt, compassionate soul that he was, came over and put his arm around my shoulder. “Cic,” he said, “I think we’re going to have to do that again.” I stared blankly at him, knowing that I’d emptied myself fully into the previous take. “Why?” I asked him. He nodded toward the cinematographer, John Alonzo. “When you were running to meet Nathan,” Marty said, “John’s eyes filled with tears and he isn’t sure he got the shot.” Oh boy. “You know,” I told him, “I don’t think I can do that again, Marty.”

  Once a scene like that is done, it’s impossible to repeat. The moment has come and gone. The next take will perhaps give you something equally moving, but it will be different. Acting, at its core, is about surrendering to a moment and allowing it to give whatever it has. I get baffled about people who just won’t let things be, onstage and in life. Life is unfolding exactly as it is meant to, exactly as the Spirit intended. Leave it alone and let it play out. Marty understood that, and yet thanks to a weepy cinematographer, he needed the scene again. So I attempted it, and of course, it lacked the pathos of the original. Thank God that John eventually discovered he’d captured the first take. His tears, though they’d obscured his own vision, hadn’t blotted the camera lens. As filming wrapped that day, I’ll always remember what Marty said to me. “You know, Cic,” he said, “this is supposed to be a children’s film. But if we’re not careful, we’re going to make a damn good movie”—one that could transcend its category.

  Paul Winfield was slated to be the movie’s headliner. I was to receive second billing as his costar. After the movie was complete, Paul called me. “Congratulations, Cic,” he said. “For what?” I asked. He explained that the directors and producers had decided, upon viewing the finished work, to make me the star and Paul my costar. I was flummoxed. “Why would you let them do that?” I asked, disturbed to hear that his contract would not be honored. He chuckled. “When you see the movie,” he told me, “you will understand.” That is how, for the first time in my career, I became a headliner. And it happened not because I’d orchestrated it, but because heaven had.

  When the film landed in theaters on September 24, 1972, the outlook seemed bleak. Paul and I were together that day, walking up Broadway. We looked over into a theater we passed and there wasn’t a soul at the box office, not even a person in line to buy tickets. We didn’t say a word to one another. We just kept walking in silence. I don’t care how many shows an actor has played in, a single question hangs over every opening day: Will this time be good enough? I went home and cried privately over the disappointment, as I’m sure Paul did. But those tears dried up soon after when the reviews came in. Some praised Sounder as a courageous co
unter to the new wave of Blaxploitation characters, noting how the film portrayed an affectionate and devoted Black couple rarely witnessed on-screen. Others mentioned how it put the Depression-era struggles of Black folks into historical context, all while Nathan and Rebecca put our humanity on full display. Nobody, not even me, expected Sounder to receive such strong reviews.

  The phenomenal critical reception lit a match under the executives at 20th Century Fox. They realized what they had and launched a media blitzkrieg, pouring more than a million dollars into a massive promotional campaign. They quoted every positive word of every review and organized hundreds of screenings all over the country. Religious and civic organizations endorsed the film, and a study guide was even created. The movie went from struggling at opening weekend to becoming a major box-office success.

  I love telling this story because it flies in the face of the notion that Black films don’t sell. First of all, the very designation of a movie (or any product) as “Black” smacks of superiority. When a Caucasian actor stars in a film, no one calls it a white film. It is presumed universal. When a film has a Black cast, however, it is immediately sidelined into its own dimly lit corner, disconnected from the broader human experience and believed to be incapable of speaking to a wide cross-section of people. This is utter nonsense. When film companies put their marketing machines behind a movie featuring a Black cast, as 20th Century Fox did with Sounder and as Marvel did with Black Panther (rest in power, Chadwick Boseman), such films can and do often perform well. Not every project will take off, of course, no matter the racial heritage of its actors. But how can directors and studio heads declare a film a failure when they’ve put little to no effort into promoting it? As I see it, time is ripe for directors of color to continue what many now are doing: creating and distributing our own content and investing in our genius.