Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me Part 3

A lot of the old movie stars couldn't act their way out of a box of wet tissue paper, but they were successful because they had distinctive personalities. They were predictable brands of breakfast cereal: on Wednesdays we had Quaker Oats and Gary Cooper; on Fridays we had Wheaties and Clark Gable. They were off-the-shelf products you expected always to be the same, actors and actresses with likable personalities who played themselves in more or less the same role the same way every time out. Clark Gable was Clark Gable in every role; Humphrey Bogart always played himself; Claudette Colbert was always Claudette Colbert. Loretta Young was virtually the same character in every part, and as she got older, cinematographers kept putting more layers of silky gauze between her and their lenses to keep her that way and convince audiences she was still Loretta Young. Nowadays movie grips call the devices they use to conceal the physical evidence of aging "Loretta Young silks."

I was lucky because I became an actor at the beginning of an era when the craft was becoming more interesting, thanks to Stella. Once she told a reporter that she thought one of the a.s.sets I brought to acting was a high degree of curiosity about people. It's true that I have always had an unwavering curiosity about people-what they feel, what they think, how they're motivated-and I have always made it my business to find out. If I can't figure somebody out, I'll follow him like a weasel with persistence until I find out what his nature is and how he functions, not for any reasons of advantage-although I admit that when I was young I sometimes did it to gain an advantage-but because I'm curious not only about others, but about myself. I am endlessly absorbed by human motivations. How is it that we behave the way we do? What are those compulsions within us that drive us one way or another?

It is my lifelong preoccupation. I used to hang around the coffeehouses on Was.h.i.+ngton Square just watching people. If I was out with a woman, I tried to figure out why she decided to cross her legs or light a cigarette at a certain moment, or what it meant if she chose at a certain point in our conversation to clear her throat or brush back a lock of hair from her forehead. I used to sit in the phone booth of the Optima Cigar Store at Broadway and Forty-second Street looking out the window at people walking by. I saw them for perhaps two or three seconds before they disappeared; if they were close to the phone booth, they might even disappear in a second. In that flick of time I studied their faces, the way they carried their heads and swung their arms; I tried to absorb who they were-their history, their job, whether they were married, troubled or in love. The face is an extraordinarily subtle instrument; I believe it has 155 muscles in it. The interaction of those muscles can hide a great deal, and people are always concealing emotions. Some people have very nonexpressive faces. They carry a neutral expression around all the time, and it is often difficult to read their faces, especially Orientals and the Indians of North and South America. In such cases I try to read their body posture, the increase in the blink rate of their eyes, their aimless yawning or a failure to complete a yawn-anything that denotes emotions they don't want to display.

These are matters I have been interested in since I was a child. I was determined to know, to guess and to a.s.sess quirks that people did not know about themselves. I have tried to push and probe until I learned their potential for loving, for hating, for anger, for self-interest, for their taste in the things they wanted in life and how much they wanted them, to discover their perimeters and limits and find out how they were truly const.i.tuted. I have always been equally curious about my own potential and limits, and tested myself to learn how much I could stand of one thing or another-how honest I could be, how false, how materialistic or otherworldy, how frightened, to what extent I could take a risk and what terrified me most.

After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he believed he could get away with it. He was an ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people who attended the Actors Studio, and he tried to project himself as an acting oracle and guru. Some people wors.h.i.+ped him, but I never knew why. To me he was a tasteless and untalented person whom I didn't like very much. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio on Sat.u.r.day mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls. But Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella did-and later Kazan.

13.

MY MOTHER followed Frannie, Tiddy and me to New York a few months after I got there; my parents had split up again. She got an apartment on West End Avenue, and the three of us moved in with her, along with Tiddy's year-old son, Gahan. She promised to stay sober, but she couldn't manage it, and before long it was like Libertyville and Evanston all over again. She hid bottles under her bed and in the kitchen cabinets and started disappearing again. We tried to get her to stop, and sometimes she did for a few weeks, but then she would go on another bender. For us it was an emotional seesaw. followed Frannie, Tiddy and me to New York a few months after I got there; my parents had split up again. She got an apartment on West End Avenue, and the three of us moved in with her, along with Tiddy's year-old son, Gahan. She promised to stay sober, but she couldn't manage it, and before long it was like Libertyville and Evanston all over again. She hid bottles under her bed and in the kitchen cabinets and started disappearing again. We tried to get her to stop, and sometimes she did for a few weeks, but then she would go on another bender. For us it was an emotional seesaw.

During my year at the New School, I was a conscientious student, if unschooled in many aspects of life. Once, during rehearsals for a play, another member of the Dramatic Workshop came over to me and said he wanted to help me. Since I was eager to do my best, I listened intently to him. He said I should play my part with dignity.

"Yes," I agreed, "I'm trying to."

"But you should stand up a little straighter," he said. "Put your shoulders back, your chest out, lower your shoulders."

I tried to do all that.

Then he patted my crotch. "Pull this in a little."

I was horrified and stood motionless in stunned silence. When he did it again, I was almost paralyzed. Then he said, "What do you like? Men, women or children?"

Planting my foot for leverage against a scenery board nailed to the floor, I unleashed a punch that sent him sailing across the room and to a hospital with a smashed face. When I was chastised for this by Erwin Piscator, I told him that the man had made s.e.xual advances to me. He replied that hitting people wasn't the way people in the theater dealt with such matters.

At the end of the school year, Piscator took our group to Sayville, Long Island, to reprise several productions in summer stock, including Twelfth Night Twelfth Night, in which I played Sebastian. A lot of unbridled fornication occurred during that summer of 1944, and I was in the thick of it. One day Piscator lifted up the trapdoor to the loft where I was sleeping above a garage, found me with a girl and said I had to leave because I'd broken the "Rules of Summer Stock." I was disappointed because I was enjoying myself, but in those days I was like a newspaper blowing down the street in a strong wind: I went this way or that way depending on the gale. As luck would have it, because I was expelled I got my first acting job about three weeks later in I Remember Mama I Remember Mama. I simply stepped off one lily pad onto another. It has been that way most of my life. I've had lots of problems, but also lots of luck; in many ways I have led a charmed life. Subsequently I learned that one of the ladies in our company had been servicing Piscator all that summer, This tickled me; what an act of hypocrisy it was to send me home!

It was an agent, Maynard Morris, who suggested me for I Remember Mama I Remember Mama, a play by John Van Druten and the first nonmusical produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. I was twenty, but he thought I could play Nels, the son of two Norwegian immigrants, who was fourteen during most of the play. He sent me over for an audition at the office of Rodgers and Hammerstein. When I got there, Richard Rodgers looked up at me skeptically with dark, hooded eyes, s.h.i.+rtsleeves rolled up and a nasty expression. It was my first interview for an acting job, and I didn't know what to say or how to behave.

Rodgers looked at me impatiently and asked, "What's your name?"

"Marlon Brando."

"What have you done?"

"Well, I was in summer stock and played in Twelfth Night Twelfth Night and I-" and I-"

"C'mon, what have you done?" he said, raising his voice unpleasantly. he said, raising his voice unpleasantly.

I said, "Besides that, nothing."

After I read for the part, Rodgers told Hammerstein that he hated my audition and didn't want to use me, but John Van Druten liked me; he prevailed and I got the part.

I Remember Mama opened October 19, 1944, at the Music Box Theatre and I got a few fair reviews, but nothing special. The play was a hit and ran for two years. I remember it mostly for my fun offstage. On a questionnaire for my biography for opened October 19, 1944, at the Music Box Theatre and I got a few fair reviews, but nothing special. The play was a hit and ran for two years. I remember it mostly for my fun offstage. On a questionnaire for my biography for Playbill Playbill, I made up stories about myself, including my birthplace: Calcutta, India. Later on I told Playbill Playbill I'd been born in other places-Bangkok, Thailand, and Mukden, China. I have always enjoyed making up bizarre stories to see if people would believe them. Generally they do. I'd been born in other places-Bangkok, Thailand, and Mukden, China. I have always enjoyed making up bizarre stories to see if people would believe them. Generally they do.

Oscar h.o.m.olka, who played my father in the play, was a brusque, unpleasant, pompous man, which made him enjoyable to irritate. In one scene, as he got into a car that was pulled across the stage by a wire, he was supposed to blow the horn to summon the rest of the family. As he honked the horn, a prop man was supposed to blow a trumpetlike horn offstage loud enough to be heard in the back of the house. But every so often h.o.m.olka honked his horn and the prop man missed his cue and was several seconds late. This made h.o.m.olka furious; sometimes he would turn around and shout into the wings at the poor old cricket of a stagehand so loudly that the audience could hear him, and matters became very tense between them. The prop man kept promising to get it right, but one day when he wasn't looking, I stuffed his horn with Kleenex, and the next time h.o.m.olka honked his horn onstage and the prop man, with perfect timing, blew his, there was complete silence. He blew harder and harder. Still no sound. h.o.m.olka got red in the face and started bellowing at him from the stage while the prop man reached deeper and deeper into his lungs and blew with all his heart-so hard that he blew his false teeth out of his mouth. It was uproarious to see him fighting to get a grip on his choppers with his lips while still trying to blow the horn, and I almost had apoplexy.

In another scene Mama's sister had to say, "You certainly make a wonderful cup of coffee. It's so delicious I think I'll have another cup." On one occasion I poured salt and some Tabasco sauce into the coffee, and she had to drink a cup of this witches' brew, keep a straight face and ask for another cup.

Shortly after the play opened, I started stammering again. When I was supposed to say words like "the," "that," "there" or "those," my tongue got stuck on "th" and I couldn't finish the word. It was sporadic. Some nights I was fine; on others I suddenly started stammering midway through the play. Finally I taught myself how to deal with it: before a word in the play starting with "th" came up, I put my tongue in place so that it was ready. Keeping my tongue in the right place wasn't as easy as it sounds. It took a lot of concentration to do it without letting the audience know, and sometimes it stayed, sometimes it didn't.

I kept a bookcase at the theater, and when I wasn't onstage, I sat in a corner under a lamp set up by the prop man and studied. One night Richard Rodgers came to the theater, saw me reading in my corner in the short pants I wore onstage, and came over to say h.e.l.lo.

"Boy, you've got a lot of books there," he said.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Rodgers," I said.

"What are you reading?"

He leaned over and peered at the book in my hands. It was the Discourses of Epictetus; Discourses of Epictetus; then he scanned the other t.i.tles in the bookcase-Kant's then he scanned the other t.i.tles in the bookcase-Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Critique of Pure Reason and books by Th.o.r.eau, Gibbon and Rousseau. Then he looked at me with a perplexed expression and walked away without saying another word. He never knew how to say h.e.l.lo to me again. and books by Th.o.r.eau, Gibbon and Rousseau. Then he looked at me with a perplexed expression and walked away without saying another word. He never knew how to say h.e.l.lo to me again.

Edith Van Cleve, of the New York office of the Music Corporation of America (later MCA, Inc.), was now my agent. After I had been in I Remember Mama I Remember Mama about a year, she said that Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were about to produce a new play and she arranged for me to read for it. When I arrived at the theater, I discovered it was a cattle call. Dozens of young actors were waiting to compete for the same part. Every few minutes the stage manager called one to the stage where he recited a few lines and was then dismissed. When it was my turn, I walked onstage and an invisible voice said, "What is your name?" about a year, she said that Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were about to produce a new play and she arranged for me to read for it. When I arrived at the theater, I discovered it was a cattle call. Dozens of young actors were waiting to compete for the same part. Every few minutes the stage manager called one to the stage where he recited a few lines and was then dismissed. When it was my turn, I walked onstage and an invisible voice said, "What is your name?"

"Marlon Brando."

"Have you been in a play recently?"

"Yes."

The lights were on me. It was pitch dark on the other side of the footlights.

"What play, Mr. Brindel?" the disembodied voice asked.

"I'm in I Remember Mama." I Remember Mama."

There was a long pause in which I didn't say anything.

"Would you mind saying something?"

I thought the situation utterly stupid and absurd. After a lengthy pause, I said: "Hickory, d.i.c.kory, dock, the mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, the mouse ran down, hickory, d.i.c.kory, dumb." I accentuated the word dumb dumb.

There was another long pause, then a lot of muttering in the dark, and finally someone said, "Well, thank you, Mr. er-ah, Brindle, we'll be in touch with you."

That was my career with the Lunts.

During those early years in New York, I made friends.h.i.+ps that would last a lifetime: Janice Mars, William Redfield, Sam Gilman, Maureen Stapleton, Philip and Marie Rhodes, Carlo Fiore and others. Janice, who was from Lincoln, Nebraska, and had the same sense of humor I did, was an extraordinary singer, the host and main performer at a place called the Back Room, and in her view, we were like a family of waifs. "Flouting all the conventions, we were like orphans in rebellion against everything," she recalled in a letter to me recently. "None of us had emotionally secure family backgrounds, but we gravitated to each other and created a family among ourselves. I've never gotten over the feeling of family we had, even if it was all in my imagination. I'm nostalgic for it-that feeling-youth, our mutual support system, uncritical acceptance of each other-foibles, faults and all. Orphans of the storm clinging together."

Janice said I preferred women who were older than me, like Estrelita: "You were always looking for a subst.i.tute mother. You used to go to her when you got sick. Sometimes she'd come looking for you as if you were a bad boy. You hid from her in our closet.... You also had a perverse need to humiliate, to see just how far a female would go to indulge you. For you, s.e.x had as much significance as eating a Mars bar or taking a pill...your att.i.tude toward women was very ambivalent. I felt your power as a palpable aura, a magnetism you knew how to use manipulatively but also protectively. There was a seductive comfort in your touch. n.o.body could hold you, then or now...."

In a lifetime of making friends, none was ever closer or more important to me than Wally c.o.x. We had been playmates in Evanston at seven or eight, and we both moved to New York about the same time. He was making a living as a silversmith and craftsman of fine jewelry, but would entertain us with hilarious monologues. We resumed our friends.h.i.+p and it lasted until he died in 1973.

I'm not sure I will ever forgive Wally for dying. He was more than a friend; he was my brother, closer to me than any human being in my life except my sisters. We were born in the same part of the country, came from the same culture, shared the same values and had the same sense of humor. He was extremely funny and found me amusing, and we had wonderful times. The character he invented, "Mr. Peepers," was no more like him than he was like Nancy Reagan. Wally probably came closer than anyone I've ever known to being a genius. He spoke four or five languages and could talk knowledgeably about botany, history, physics, chemistry, electronics and many more topics. If he had chosen to, he could have been an outstanding scientist. We liked to hike in the woods together and never returned without an interesting rock, a delicate leaf, a gnarled branch or a face full of poison oak. He was as absorbed as I was by human foibles, and was one of my greatest teachers. At twenty, I was untutored and uncertain in my use of language. Almost as if he were leading me by the hand, Wally taught me how to speak and to see in words the melodies of life. When he died, I felt mystified and could not accept it. I took some things that belonged to him, including the pajamas in which he died, and saved them. Even now I have conversations with him; I curse him-"You son of a b.i.t.c.h"-and chastise him for dying. I also laugh at things when I'm alone because I imagine that he is there, laughing with me.

Not a day goes by when I don't think of Wally. Sometimes I wander around my house, pick up one of the chestnut walking sticks we brought home from a woodland long ago, think of something funny he said, and laugh. Then I swear at him, because he was an alcoholic who didn't take care of himself and died from a ma.s.sive heart attack.

14.

WHILE I WAS IN I Remember Mama I Remember Mama, my mother returned to Libertyville and reconciled with my father. Not long after she left, I had a kind of nervous breakdown that came on gradually, then was severe for several months. I stopped eating, lost ten pounds and felt depressed and vulnerable, but didn't know why. I still acted every night, but I was in emotional disarray. I never missed a performance, but life made less and less sense to me. I moved into a one-room apartment at Fifty-eighth Street and Sixth Avenue, and despite bringing a new girl to my bed almost every night, I was often lonely. I couldn't stand to hear people argue. If I heard anyone quarreling, I felt as if I were being consumed by insects and had to leave. I couldn't stand loud voices or loud noises. Even the slamming of a door sent me into a panic. Something was frightening me, but I didn't know what. I couldn't sleep well, was nervous, and I sometimes thought I was losing my mind. If I was offended in the slightest, I wanted to punch somebody. Nothing I did made sense or made me feel better. I didn't know what to do. I wandered around the city or went into a Christian Science reading room, sat alone and read for hours. I had never had much religion in my life-neither of my parents were believers-though a few times my mother had encouraged me to look for solace in the faith of my grandmother and Mary Baker Eddy. So I did, searching for anything that could help me understand what was wrong with me and make me feel better. It was the beginning of a difficult period of my life.

I spent more and more time with Stella Adler's family, who virtually adopted me after my mother left, and they may have saved my sanity. Stella was the daughter of Sarah and Jacob P. Adler, a great star of the Yiddish stage, and her husband, Harold Clurman, was a prominent and respected writer, producer and critic. Having dinner with them was like spending an evening with the Marx Brothers. In Libertyville I'd only met one or two Jews and never experienced Jewish humor, which is subtle, powerful and hilarious. The Adlers were so funny that I was convulsed every time I went there; jokes flew around the dinner table like bullets, half in Yiddish and half in English, and I laughed so hard that I nearly got a hernia.

Like all of us, Stella was an imperfect person, and her imperfections sometimes offended others. To some people, she was downright nasty. She would excoriate them in front of others, tear them apart and criticize them in the most vicious way, but she had great integrity as a teacher. During that troubled time of my life, she taught me not only acting, but about life itself. For reasons that I cannot understand, she was very fond of me and I am eternally grateful to her for it. I always sat next to her at dinner, and she was forever holding my hand. Sometimes I went into her bedroom before she went out to dinner and watched her while she was getting dressed. She would be sitting in front of the mirror in her panties and bra and would cover herself as I came in and say, "Oh, Marlon. Please, darling. I'm getting dressed."

"That's why I'm here," I said, "in order to see that you're dressed properly." properly."

A couple of times I grabbed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in my palms and she would say with a half smile, "Marlon, don't do that or I'll slap you."

I would look at her and say, "You know you don't want to do that to me."

We had a lot of flirtatious exchanges, and I suppose that somewhere not far beyond the horizon there was the possibility of a real encounter, but it never materialized.

There were three important teachers in my life. Like Duke Wagner and my shop teacher in Santa Ana, Stella gave me emotional strength at a time when I needed it by making me feel I was capable of something. When I was suffering, disjointed and disoriented, experiencing shock and feeling physically and emotionally disordered, she offered me not only her skill and talent as a teacher, but her home, her family, the largess of her personality and her love. She introduced me to her daughter Ellen, who, like Stella, was a beautiful, intelligent woman with a great deal of charm and presence, but who was almost always shorn of individuality by the presence of her mother. She was very photogenic and could have been a great screen personality, but because of conflicts with her mother, she never pursued the acting career that she should have had. After I met Ellen, one thing led to another, and I began a relations.h.i.+p with her that continued, off and on, for many years.

While I was being given a home and an education by the Jews who befriended me in New York, World War II was ending. The war had been remote from my vantage point of the Adlers' dinner table and the stage of the Music Box Theatre. No one had any real sense yet of what was happening to the Jews of Europe, and my knowledge of the war came mostly from the Translux Theatre on Forty-seventh Street and Broadway, where I went between shows to watch the pyrotechnics of mortal combat. While others were suffering and dying, to me the war had only meant not always getting the kind of cigarettes or candy I liked, crowded trains, a lot of people in New York wearing uniforms and the USO shows in which we performed. I had a sense that though the world had gone through a cataclysm, little had changed: in Harlem black people were still being treated as less than human, there was still rampant poverty and anti-Semitism and there seemed to be as much injustice as before. I was beginning to hear a voice in my head that said I had a responsibility to do something about it and that acting was not an important vocation in life when the world was still facing so many problems.

I was offered the chance to go on the road with I Remember Mama I Remember Mama, but I was sick of it and turned it down. It had taken me only one role to realize how much I hated playing the same part eight times a week-six evenings and two matinees-in a long-running production. Luckily, before I ran out of money I was offered a part in a new Maxwell Anderson play, Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe, which was to be produced by Elia Kazan, Harold Clurman and other members of the Group Theatre, including Stella, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg. In a letter I sent home telling my parents I had gotten the part, I told them: What is with the U.S. mail system? I fully realize that a carrier pigeon is fairly dependable, but in recent years Mr. Farley has made great strides in the field of postal communication, believe me! So why are you not writing? What about a letter?I am signed, sealed and delivered (the latter almost) into a show which was written by Max Anderson, to be produced by Harold Clurman and Elia Kazan and directed by H. Clurman. The play is called Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe-a play that deals with returning vets. I have a good part, however comparatively small (for which I am glad), but they liked me so much they are willing to pay two hundred a week, of which I shall net, what with agency fees and tax, about $154. This will enable me to save and at the same time allow me to cover any additional expenses I might have. It's a good break!Rehearsals start in two weeks. I leave "Mama" Feb. 6th. Got a nice long letter from Nana. She and you, Mom, are the greatest women in the world. I love you both dearly. It won't be long until I can give you the world world.Pop, you ain't 'rit' for years. I'm a little mad.

Love, all of it Bud P.S. Happy Birthday Pappy! I couldn't send a telegram because of the strike! The years to come will bring joy and contentment, Pop, if you let 'em, as Nana says.

Love and a kiss, old man Me.

I was given the part in Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe largely because of Stella. Harold had seen me in largely because of Stella. Harold had seen me in I Remember Mama I Remember Mama, but was dubious until she persuaded him to take a chance on me; then he gave me a volcanic part, the role of a psychopathic soldier named Sage McRae who returns home from the war and discovers that his wife, played by Ann Shepherd, has been unfaithful to him while he was at war. At first he refuses to believe it, then confirms his suspicions and kills her. There is an explosive, incandescent moment in the play when Sage admits shooting his wife and then breaks down, and it electrified audiences.

On the eve of leaving New York for out-of-town tryouts, I sent a letter to my parents that seemed to express my optimism and idealism at the time: Dear Folks:Well, I leave for Schenectady on Wednesday 13th and open on the 16th, then to Baltimore for a week and on to Newark for a week, then to New York tentatively in the first week of March.The show looks good. It's hard to tell at this stage of rehearsal just how good. My part is a sensational role that takes plenty of sweat. It's coming along all right, however. People that see it tell me I'm going to be very good, so I guess things will be O.K. I'm working like a truck and I hope to G.o.d the show is successful because I'd love a little rest and some time and money for piano and dancing lessons and a week or two in the country. On the other hand, it's well to keep busy and accomplis.h.i.+ng every day. We've been on the go day and night for about a week and a half. All this plus doing my show (which I left last Thursday) and I am sufficiently enervated for any occasion...You know, the more I hear the lines of the play, the more I am concerned that it is vitally urgent that every one of us do our utmost to arrange our lives in a rigidly self-disciplined pattern with precise direction and foresight in order to exist as a guide for others who are utterly confused and misdirected. Hysteria is as infectious as flu or dysentery. Half of the world is running crazily and fearfully toward the other half of the world with a l.u.s.t for security, and it has no other choice than to meet the other half, which is rus.h.i.+ng just as fast and just as scared, with a ripping smash that leaves the whole in the blue funks of blue funks. As Max Anderson says in the play, "You've got to take the lives in your two hands and change them-twist them and change them till you make a way to live!" till you make a way to live!" If I see somebody who can take care of himself and live and work and be happy, then I can do the same. This is such a necessary play. If I see somebody who can take care of himself and live and work and be happy, then I can do the same. This is such a necessary play. I hope to G.o.d it runs I hope to G.o.d it runs.Well, my sweet ones, good night for now.

Love, Bud

The play opened on February 17, 1946, at the Belasco Theatre. I got good reviews and so did Ann and Karl Maiden, who became my lifelong friends, but the critics didn't like it and it closed after less than two weeks. Still, short-lived though it was, Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe changed my life. Nothing, I learned, attracts women more than fame, money and success. changed my life. Nothing, I learned, attracts women more than fame, money and success.

I was out of work only a few weeks. After Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe, other job offers came in, including one from Guthrie McClintic, a producer, director and the husband of Katharine Cornell, who, with Helen Hayes and Lynn Fontanne, was one of the reigning queens of Broadway. Guthrie had seen Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe and offered me the part opposite his wife, of Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who falls in love with an older woman in George Bernard Shaw's and offered me the part opposite his wife, of Eugene Marchbanks, a young poet who falls in love with an older woman in George Bernard Shaw's Candida Candida. Guthrie was an entertaining, emphatic man with a bizarre sense of humor and a hernia that kept popping out when he laughed; when it did, he punched himself in the groin and pushed it back, which made him laugh even harder. Katharine Cornell was proper, quite empty-headed and very beautiful. She had the kind of stage presence that made her a star without having to be good, and there was a nebulous quality to her acting that I found difficult to relate to onstage; performing with her was like trying to bite down on a tomato seed. She acted and spoke lines in ways that were sometimes inconsistent with the character she was playing, but I tried to keep up with her. It was like two people dancing to a different beat, one of them constantly struggling to get in step with the other. Still, I enjoyed the play, which opened on my twenty-second birthday. Sir Cedric Hardwicke was in the cast, along with Wesley Addy and Mildred Natwick, whom I adored. Hardwicke was a Johnny One Note actor who had a single expression throughout the play and his career. He never blinked or flinched. Once he stood offstage watching me act, muttering and shaking his head in disapproval, and one of my friends heard him say, "Must be s.e.x appeal." He was probably right because I was hopelessly miscast in the role.

After Truckline Cafe Truckline Cafe and and Candida Candida, more offers came in, including some from television and Hollywood. I was in one television show called Come Out Fighting Come Out Fighting in which I played a boxer, but which required the talents of a sprinter. Because the show was live, I had to make a twenty-five-yard dash every few minutes from one set to another without missing a beat. In the script, after supposedly losing a boxing match, I had to take a shower and create the impression that I was depressed. I stood in my shorts waiting for the water to hit me, but the prop man missed his cue and forgot to turn it on. The camera kept rolling, but no water came out of the spigot. I didn't know what to do, so I thought, "Well, I'll look up forlornly and regretfully at the showerhead and think about how awful it was to lose the fight." Meanwhile I tried to will water to flow out of the shower. Then suddenly a deluge of water hit my face and my body that was so cold that the prop man must have gotten it out of the freezing compartment of a refrigerator. The shock took my breath away and I wasn't sure I could live through it. But the camera was on me and I had to keep going. I yelled, "Jesus Christ," completely dropping out of character. Afterward, someone complimented me for a fine job of acting in the shower scene. This was my last experience with live television. in which I played a boxer, but which required the talents of a sprinter. Because the show was live, I had to make a twenty-five-yard dash every few minutes from one set to another without missing a beat. In the script, after supposedly losing a boxing match, I had to take a shower and create the impression that I was depressed. I stood in my shorts waiting for the water to hit me, but the prop man missed his cue and forgot to turn it on. The camera kept rolling, but no water came out of the spigot. I didn't know what to do, so I thought, "Well, I'll look up forlornly and regretfully at the showerhead and think about how awful it was to lose the fight." Meanwhile I tried to will water to flow out of the shower. Then suddenly a deluge of water hit my face and my body that was so cold that the prop man must have gotten it out of the freezing compartment of a refrigerator. The shock took my breath away and I wasn't sure I could live through it. But the camera was on me and I had to keep going. I yelled, "Jesus Christ," completely dropping out of character. Afterward, someone complimented me for a fine job of acting in the shower scene. This was my last experience with live television.

In those days the Hollywood studios all had scouts in New York who kept an eye out for new faces on Broadway. It was the twilight of the old system when the studios all kept large stables of actors, directors, writers and producers under contract. I got feelers from several that wanted me to sign a standard seven-year contract, but I said I wasn't interested; if a good story came along, I said, I might sign for a single picture.

One of the talent scouts got word to Joe Schenck, a Twentieth Century-Fox executive who was one of the pioneers in the movie business, that there was a young actor he might be interested in. I went over for an interview, and Schenck, a frail near-octogenarian who had all but been put out to pasture by the studio, looked at this young kid in front of him and said, "What have you done, son?"

"I've done a couple of plays-"

"Why don't you get your nose fixed?" he asked.

"Why should I get my nose fixed?"

"Because you'll look better," he said. Then he turned around and looked at a huge picture of Tyrone Power covering the entire wall behind him. "Well, we'll talk some other time," he said, and that was the end of my interview.

Broadway producer Edward Dowling told me that the American Theatre Wing was going to produce a new play by Eugene O'Neill and asked me to try out for it. Although I had read several of O'Neill's plays, including Desire Under the Elms Desire Under the Elms, I'd always thought he was dour, negative and too dark, and I couldn't understand the philosophical import of what he was trying to say. But I told Mr. Dowling I'd come over for an audition. The night before, he sent me a copy of the script, which was about an inch and a half thick. I started reading it, but couldn't get through it because I thought the speeches were too long and boring. After reading about a tenth of it, I fell asleep. The next day I went to the theater and argued with Mr. Dowling and Margaret Webster, the coproducer, for about half an hour about why I thought the play was ineptly written, poorly constructed and would never be a success. "What did you you think of it?" I finally asked. "Tell me its virtues." think of it?" I finally asked. "Tell me its virtues."

I had to ask the question because even though I was spouting off with self-a.s.surance, I hardly knew anything about it, since I hadn't even read all of the first act.

Patiently, Eddie told me why he thought it was a good play and what he thought O'Neill was trying to say. I continued bluffing, still not having any idea of what the story was about, and finally told him that I didn't want to do it.

Of course when it opened The Iceman Cometh The Iceman Cometh was called O'Neill's masterpiece. was called O'Neill's masterpiece.

15.

INSTEAD OF The Iceman Cometh The Iceman Cometh, I acted in a play directed by Stella's brother Luther, A Flag Is Born A Flag Is Born. It was a powerful, well-written pageant by Ben Hecht with music by Kurt Weill, although it was essentially a piece of political propaganda advocating the creation of the state of Israel and indirectly condemning the British for stopping the Jewish refugees en route from Europe to colonize Palestine. At that time, September 1946, the New York Jewish community and Jews throughout the world were fixated on the future of Palestine and Zionism. I wanted to act in the play because of what we were beginning to learn about the true nature of the killing of the Jews and because of the empathy I felt for the Adlers and the other Jews who had become my friends and teachers and who told me of their dreams for a Jewish state. In hindsight, I think it was also because I was starting what would become a journey to try to understand the human impulse that makes it not only possible but easy for one group of people to single out another and try to destroy it. It was the beginning of a lifelong interest in the dark side of human behavior.

Everyone in A Flag Is Born A Flag Is Born was Jewish except me. Paul Muni, the star, gave an astonis.h.i.+ng performance, the best acting I have ever seen. I was onstage with him and he gave was Jewish except me. Paul Muni, the star, gave an astonis.h.i.+ng performance, the best acting I have ever seen. I was onstage with him and he gave me me goose-b.u.mps. His performance was magical and affected me deeply. He was the only actor who ever moved me to leave my dressing room to watch him from the wings. He never failed to chill me with one particular speech. I played a young Jewish firebrand named David struggling to find his way to Palestine; in a graveyard he meets the wounded and dying Tevya, a prophetlike man, played by Muni, who tries to help him but dies. David covers him with a Jewish flag, then exits, presumably to carry on the fight to make a homeland in Palestine. At the beginning of the second act I had a speech during which a sharp light came down from above and two other lights. .h.i.t me from the side. It was a fiery, accusatory speech that began with a pause. I waited a long time after the curtain went up, then quietly said, "Where were you?" I paused again and said, "Where were you, Jews?" Another long pause, and then I started to yell at the top of my lungs, "Where were you Jews when six million Jews were being burned to death in the ovens? Where were you?" It sent chills through the audience, which was almost always all-Jewish, because at the time there was a great deal of soul-searching within the Jewish community over whether they had done enough to stop the slaughter of their people-some argued that they should have applied pressure on President Roosevelt to bomb Auschwitz, for example-so the speech touched a sensitive nerve. At some performances, Jewish girls got out of their seats and screamed and cried from the aisles in sadness, and at one, when I asked, "Where were goose-b.u.mps. His performance was magical and affected me deeply. He was the only actor who ever moved me to leave my dressing room to watch him from the wings. He never failed to chill me with one particular speech. I played a young Jewish firebrand named David struggling to find his way to Palestine; in a graveyard he meets the wounded and dying Tevya, a prophetlike man, played by Muni, who tries to help him but dies. David covers him with a Jewish flag, then exits, presumably to carry on the fight to make a homeland in Palestine. At the beginning of the second act I had a speech during which a sharp light came down from above and two other lights. .h.i.t me from the side. It was a fiery, accusatory speech that began with a pause. I waited a long time after the curtain went up, then quietly said, "Where were you?" I paused again and said, "Where were you, Jews?" Another long pause, and then I started to yell at the top of my lungs, "Where were you Jews when six million Jews were being burned to death in the ovens? Where were you?" It sent chills through the audience, which was almost always all-Jewish, because at the time there was a great deal of soul-searching within the Jewish community over whether they had done enough to stop the slaughter of their people-some argued that they should have applied pressure on President Roosevelt to bomb Auschwitz, for example-so the speech touched a sensitive nerve. At some performances, Jewish girls got out of their seats and screamed and cried from the aisles in sadness, and at one, when I asked, "Where were you you when six million Jews were being burned to death in the ovens of Auschwitz?" a woman was so overcome with anger and guilt that she rose and shouted back at me, "Where were when six million Jews were being burned to death in the ovens of Auschwitz?" a woman was so overcome with anger and guilt that she rose and shouted back at me, "Where were you?" you?"

At the time, I was outraged along with most people, Jews and gentiles alike, that the British were stopping s.h.i.+ps from carrying the half-starved survivors of Hitler's death camps to a new life-people with little food, nothing to go on except a few dried-up handfuls of hope, including children still suffering from typhus and bleeding internally. That people fresh out of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz should be stopped on the open sea by British wars.h.i.+ps and interned again behind barbed wire on Cyprus was enraging. I did not know then that Jewish terrorists were indiscriminately killing Arabs and making refugees out of them in order to take their land; nor did I understand that the British had taken it upon themselves to authorize the forced removal of millions of Arabs who had lived on that land as long as the biblical Jews had.

The play, as well as my friends.h.i.+p with the Adlers, helped make me a zealous advocate for Israel and later a kind of traveling salesman for it. I explained my plans in this letter to my parents shortly after the play closed: Dear Folks:I am now an active and integral part of a political organization, i.e., The American League for a Free Palestine The American League for a Free Palestine. My job is to travel about the country and lecture to sympathetic groups in order to solicit money and to organize groups that will in turn get money and support us. The work will be approximately for two months. I don't know just exactly when I'm to be sent to Chicago.The facts concerning the Palestine conflict are little known but nonetheless shocking. You wouldn't believe the injustices and cruelties that the British Colonial Office are capable of. I'm not being rash. We have had an intensive training period-three weeks-at the end of which there is no viewpoint that has not been presented fairly and unbiased. I am sending you some literature on the subject. We will be leaving in about a week's time.I am not slighting my career nor am I slacking on my job. The work that we'll be doing won't be easy by any matter of means. It is a tougher and vastly more responsible job than anything the theater could offer. I'm going to do my best to add my little bit. I'm really stimulated more than I've ever been. I must rush away now. I will write in detail later.

After volunteering to raise money, I realized that the American Jewish community was divided over the issue of just how militant Jews should be in pursuing their aspirations for a homeland. Some supported David Ben-Gurion, who while publicly seeming to acquiesce to Britain's insistence that Jewish refugees be interned on Cyprus and other places, was secretly smuggling boatloads of them into Palestine. Others were more impatient and supported Jewish underground groups such as the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, whose leaders believed that terrorism and military action were necessary to wear down British resistance and lead to the early creation of Israel. I sided with the militants, as did a lot of my Jewish friends. Seeing the films made during the liberation of the n.a.z.i death camps had been a searing experience for me, and I thought that Jews, who had suffered so much, had to do whatever was necessary to acquire a safe place where they could not be punished further by the world. I contributed as much money as I could to the Irgun and helped raise money to buy food for the internment camps, then became a member of one of about twenty two-man teams that traveled around the country soliciting support for the League for a Free Palestine, which in fact was a front for the Irgun. In Jewish schools, synagogues and other places, we described how European Jews who had been lucky enough to survive Hitler's death camps were being imprisoned in displaced-person camps nearly as inhumane as those the n.a.z.is operated. And we argued that the British had to be pushed out of Palestine. There was always a lot of yelling at the temples we visited between the Jews who favored Ben-Gurion's approach and those favoring the terrorists whom I supported and who at the time were called "Freedom Fighters." Now I understand much more about the complexity of the situation than I did then.

16.