|
|
|
|
0 Comments
Paul McCartney (circa "HELP!") and a George Harrison lookalike (circa "All Things Must Pass") were in the audience to see me as Eliza Doolittle in an apocalyptic fundraiser. My makeup and hair were all wrong, and we seemed to be in a theatre on a moving train, nevertheless--I asked Paul to sign my programme. Next day, when I looked, he had signed his name AND someone else’s. BTW—he asked who was my favorite singer, and we both agreed on Ray Charles. Also—we didn’t have sex —but he gave me syphilis. And his hat.      Why I Don't Need Therapy, episode 463: the continuing saga of an embarrassing subconscious8/25/2022  Why I Don't Need Therapy, no 463:
In the dream, I was occasionally Lucie Arnaz, trying to get to Vegas for an awards ceremony for my ailing father, Desi. I lost one of my phones and couldn't remember the pin for the other one, so there was no way to let Lucy and Desi, Sr, know I was having trouble with transportation--that there were so many walls to scale and terrifying heights to conquer. "Just don't look down", I reminded myself. But I always looked down and panicked. When I remembered to look UP, I saw the biggest, pinkest moon that ever was. A moon for the ages. But I never made it to Vegas. Instead, I watched the ceremony on television, eating stale potato chips. My dear friend Carol Burnett was presenting, of course. Why I Don’t Need Therapy, no. 165: I looked out of my dream window and saw a beloved face, more beautiful than ever. She was lying by a curb, in puddles of rainwater, luxuriating. I called to her, pronouncing her name the way she liked: “Hedy (rhymes with Lady)! Do you need any help?” She replied, “I’m fine, darling. Isn’t the rain wonderful?!” I closed the window and went back to my dream.   Such a funny thing, being an actor AND a writer. Writing is something you can do alone--anytime, anywhere, for no reason at all, or for some specific goal or time slot or word count or deadline. Acting is something you cannot do alone--ever. Even a long monologue requires lighting designers, costumers, a director, people to drum up an audience, box office, ushers, graphic artists, stage managers, and, in Elsa's case, a piano player. (Lucky I'm married to one, huh?). Even when you write a piece just for yourself, to be Zoomed or YouTubed--you're hoping someone, somewhere, will see it. As an actor, you're never really alone.
Martha's Vineyard Playhouse just hosted four developmental performances of my newest solo piece, Elsa Lanchester Tonight! I'm eternally grateful to the staff there--and to the handful of people who saw the play and said they enjoyed it--even more grateful to the ones who asked questions and made me rethink a few moments. I've been percolating Elsa for decades, actually been writing the show off and on for maybe ten years, focusing on her for about three years, and---the script's still not right. It's fun--it's getting there--it's worth doing--but it needs another couple of rewrites. Even the brilliant actress Mary Louise Wilson took years to develop her legendary solo show, Full Gallop. (She'd disagree with me there--she wrote in a maid character who has maybe three? four? lines). In her delightful book MY FIRST HUNDRED YEARS IN SHOW BUSINESS, Ms. Wilson wrote that she worked on perfecting Diana Vreeland's voice alone, while she painted her kitchen. She negotiated with Ms. Vreeland's family for rights. She collaborated with a writer friend. She performed the piece here and there for pals and strangers and backers and, most importantly, she hung in there for ages--until somebody realized that she and her show were forces to be reckoned with-- and gave her a shot. Why does it take so long? For me, a lot of it is back to the actor/writer thing. I've been a professional actor for forty some years, with proof: check stubs and playbills and photographs and reruns. I've been a writer even longer--but just for myself, until recently, with very little to show for it. In the middle of a writing project I loved, I've dropped everything to take an acting job I didn't love nearly as much. Plays and poems get put aside for weeks or months or years to use the very same part of my brain that writes. Don't get me wrong, I'm GRATEFUL. I'm incredibly lucky that I've mostly done what I like throughout my life. It's a luxury, it's a privilege, and I am almost always happy onstage. What I learn from my next role might illuminate a unexpected facet of Elsa for me. This informs that, and so on, forever. But I'm gonna miss the old girl for the next couple of months, while I go away to do two plays in beautiful, bucolic Wisconsin. Maybe I'll cheat a little on the acting and sneak in a little scribbling, after rehearsals. Shhhhh! Just for myself, and Elsa.
My Elsa Lanchester obsession began when I first read her autobiography in the 1980’s. If you haven’t read it, you may want to stop right now to order it online or run to a bookstore to buy it. It’s called ELSA LANCHESTER, HERSELF, it was recently re-released, and it’s wonderful. The photos alone are mesmerizing—she looks like three different people over time, all with crazy hair and a dimpled chin. Adorable.
I’ve always loved autobiographies. Being somewhat of a lifelong depressive, they’ve buoyed me during rough patches. Reading about others overcoming obstacles is, as Ruth Gordon would say, “encouragin’”. (Read her memoirs, too. She and Elsa were pals, and kindred spirits.) It’s encouragin’ that some people have humble beginnings, grab instant fame, lose it, fall in and out of love, win a war, lose face, choose another path, lose a parent, find a mentor, survive an illness or two, go to prison, win the lottery, have a facelift, write a tell-all, start all over again, and turn out just fine. My favorite autobiographies make me laugh out loud. The pluck of some people! The real Elsa had plenty of pluck and determination, the stuff I aspire to. The film Elsa was a different story. Saturday mornings as a kid meant Universal horror films, hiding behind sofa cushions with my cousin. That’s where I first saw her in “The Bride of Frankenstein”, and--sorry, boy monsters—she’s the sexiest monster of them all, she steals the movie playing two roles in it, and she’s a GIRL. Girl Power! Thrilling! It was hard to put the beautiful monster with the white streaks in her hair together with the plump, older lady from the late show on TV, from Disney films in the 60’s, and from all the talk shows. The funny lady with the trilled Rs and big eyes, from “I Love Lucy” and “Here’s Lucy” and “The John Forsythe Show” and “Nanny and the Professor” wasn’t scary at all. Why didn’t they give her more screen time as Katie Nana in “Mary Poppins”? I was embarrassed for her. She deserved more than one sputtering scene, having to listen to Glynis Johns sing a song that she’d have done better. “That Darn Cat” almost made up for the slight, though. Elsa knew Hayley Mills?! Wow, right? Later on, when she was in that creepy rat movie, I started to wonder if she really was as batty as the characters she played. Her autobiography sorted that out for me. She wasn’t. I had seen the brilliant Charles Laughton, and loved him, most notably in “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and “Les Miserables”. His revelatory performances in those films lead me to the books, which I read much too young and loved anyway, because I remembered his face and lumbering body, heard his distinctive voice, in the characters of Quasimodo and Javert. Later learning that Elsa and Charles were married made sense, somehow. Two such odd, super-talented old English ducks, opposites in some ways—he was a “serious” actor, and she was a clown—but they made an interesting couple. I never knew the secret of their relationship until I read Elsa’s vivid book. It made me love them both even more. Read it. The first was in her mother’s ragged junior high autograph book:
“The River is flowing The River is flowing Your hat is blowing Please don’t let it blow away!” Since she’d attempted cursive handwriting, her mother didn’t chastise her. This she understood as encouragement. At age eight her commemoration of our 16th president was posted on the bulletin board: “1809 That was the time Early one morn Abe Lincoln was born.” There’s more, now lost. At nine, her study of familial hierarchy, thinly disguised as an ode to television, was published in a national educational magazine. At the time, she was living with a religious aunt and uncle, and entertainment was strictly monitored. Nobody saved the publication. At age twelve, she wrote a poem she considered worthy of Dickinson: “It is far worse To kill a rose Than to cultivate a thorn. The rose may never live again-- But from briar, a rose is born.” She agonized over its syntax and meaning, should anyone ask. No one did. She read poets from Spenser to Stevens to the boy who sat across from her in Spanish class to cummings and Carlos Williams, devouring anthologies of poets to imitate, lines to steal. She imitated, she stole, she bought fountain pens. As a teen, two of her poems were chosen by the high school English department for submission to another national educational magazine. Both were printed. Once again, the publication was not saved. A friend of a friend in another town copied one of these published poems and turned it in for his own English assignment. This poem was published in yet another national educational magazine, under the friend of a friend’s name. “Did his family save my poem?”, she wondered. She wrote furiously into the night: poems about injustice, poems about boys, poems about her own insecurity, poems about boys thinly disguised as poems about nature, about war, trains, loneliness, etc. In college, of course, she read Plath and Hughes and fell in love. “What are you writing?” her beloved asked. When she told him, he bought her a journal. “Keep writing”, he said. She did. “The perfect poem would have no words,” he announced one day. She tried this revelation on her Interpretation of Poetry professor. He was unimpressed. “I didn’t say it right”, she thought. “Maybe I don’t even understand it myself.” Then they married. “What are you working on?” her groom would ask. He was always working on something: woodcuts, his abs, plays, furniture design, drawings, performance art, cross-country cycling, learning to cook, to sail, to play the violin, to fly a plane, to tap dance. . . “Nothing;” She wasn’t lying. “I think I need to see a therapist.” She did, five days a week. “Are you telling her about me?” he asked. He didn’t believe in shrinks. “Of course not”, she lied. She began intensive phobia aversion therapy. She lost twenty pounds and took dance classes. They rhumba-ed all over their dreary apartment. “Are you writing?” he’d ask from time to time. “I’m working on it”, she lied. She got a job out of town, had several affairs, and finished phobia therapy. “I want a divorce”, she said. “Alright”, he said. She moved to a bigger city. On the nights she was alone, she started writing again.  You really, truly don't want to know what they've been doing to Mulberry Street. I'll update soon.
 When I walked into the building, I could have sworn they had been speaking English--but quickly switched to Italian. Three "women of an age" stood in what passed for the lobby of my new building, sizing me up. I passed them on my way upstairs and singsonged "Hello!" in passing, like I did every day. Silence. As soon as I reached the second landing they resumed their conversation. I had been warned that it may be difficult to make friends in the building. I was young, pretty, not Italian, and most importantly, not married. I lived alone and had no friends in New York except Georgia, the busybody older actress who had helped me get the apartment. Next day, when I came down the stairs en route to one of several survival jobs, the three women were standing in the same place. "Good morning!" No response. They watched me pass then dispersed, smirking. The short one with the frizzy hair stayed behind. "'Ey!" she called after me. I turned around. Her friends were gone. "'Ey, listen to me. Listen. Watch your back. You know what I'm sayin'?" I didn't. I'd honestly never heard the expression. "Watch my--back?" "Watch your back", she nodded. "You hear what I'm tellin' ya?" "Yes. O.K. Thanks", I said. It seemed like the correct response. She nodded again and went upstairs. On the first of every month, the tenants of all the buildings owned by the Stabile family brought their rent payments in person to the Banca Stabile on the corner of Grand and Mulberry. It had been a working bank, I guessed from the 1930's-era wooden teller windows and deco vault, but as a rental office used once a month, now gathered dust. The Stabiles, my landlords, preferred rent be paid in cash. The few times I had shyly slipped a check through the mail slot, I was told my check had been lost and I should come in and pay in person. I knew that meant cash. I counted my bills and knocked on the window of Banca Stabile. Mrs. Stabile sat in the back at a huge wooden desk, in the semi-dark. She was in her early eighties, small, and fierce. Paying my rent was, for me, scarier than a trip to the principal's office. "Siddown", she said. I did. "You like livin' in this neighborhood?" "Sure", I lied. My mother had always told me that my open face would betray me. "You like the building? You like your apartment? No complaints?" I was paying $225 a month to live in Manhattan, and could barely afford it. I was completely on my own. I had to hang on to my apartment. "Of course I do, Mrs. Stabile! I'm very grateful to --" "I was just makin' sure. So. I want to read you something. An anonymous letter from your neighbors." She pulled a piece of lined paper from an envelope. The writing was in pencil. She put on her specs and read it aloud: I was a whore, I was a deadbeat, I was stuck up and dirty and drunk, and I was probably diseased from the countless men coming and going from my apartment all hours of the day and night. Gobsmacked is the word. "Mrs. Stabile", I stammered, "I haven't even had a DATE in years!" "I believe you, honey", she chuckled. "I just wanted you to know what they're saying about you behind your back." My back? Watch my BACK! The bare lightbulb in my tenement kitchen lit right up. Later, I asked Georgia the names of the three women in the lobby. "Anna, Carmela, and Angelina", she said. "Anna lives above you--don't mess with her, she's mean. Carmela is the short one. I like her, she's OK. And Angelina is the one with the eye makeup and the crazy red hair. She goes back to Sicily every year for three months, some people say to collect money from her bordellos. She's a madame. Businesswoman. Why?" I didn't tell her why. Thirty years later, I'm one of the "women of an age" in the building. No longer young, often unemployed, still single, I continue to relentlessly chirp "Good morning" to people on the stairs. Most are pretty, unmarried, non-Italian, young women. Most do not respond. Carmela moved away, probably to Jersey. Anna still lives above me, and that's yet another story. Angelina, the businesswoman, got too old for the stairs and spent most of the rest of her life confined to her apartment. Mr. and Mrs. Stabile died and their grandchildren sold the buildings. The beautiful Banca Stabile is now "The Italian-American Museum", such as it is. Not long ago, I was coming back home from an audition when I saw paramedics hauling a shrunken Angelina down the stairs. Her hair was white and her eyes unkohled. Nobody was with her--no friends or family, nobody. In all our years as neighbors we had never had a conversation. She seemed distressed, confused. "Angelina, what's wrong?" She grabbed my hand and held on. "I'm no good. I'm no feel good. They takin' me now, Bella. They takin' me." She kissed my hand again and again. "I love you, Bella. Ciao! Ciao, Bella. I love you. I love you." I watched them put her in the ambulance, and waved goodbye.
 Michael and I used to see them in our favorite late night supper place on Spring. Lenny and Lisa. They were young and talented and famous. They were lost in love. They were gorgeous, and so was their baby. Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt rendezvoused in the next booth, also young and famous and in love. An elderly couple sporting fanciful hairdos (we liked to call them the Jetsons) sat in boozy silence over their Manhattans and tofu. It was a romantic time for some, I guess, the late-eighties in NYC.
Michael and I were single. "They're all watching us", Michael would say. "They want to BE us." It was a running joke. We were making $300 a week before taxes in a popular Off-Broadway play, auditioning and doing odd jobs by day to pay the rent on our Mulberry Street walkups. We'd met when I auditioned to replace an actress in the company. Michael was already in the show, and the director happened to be a guy I'd gone to college with in the Midwest. Occasionally nepotism works in one's favor. After I got the job we discovered we walked home from Macdougal Street in the same direction, stopping in at the only place along the route to be open late at night, Spring Street Natural, on the corner of Spring and Lafayette. It was a big but cozy hippie holdover, with wooden booths, organic food, and a mostly-neighborhood clientele. We became regulars, and fast friends. Michael's building, unlike mine, had been refurbished, one of the first in Little Italy to take aim at the exploding Soho rental market. His apartment was thrillingly clean. The walls didn't crumble and the fixtures were brand new. Sure, it was a studio, and he shared it with a roommate, but he wasn't ashamed to have people over. He cooked like a normal person with ingredients from glamorous nearby Dean and Deluca, and exhibited his collection of vintage eye cups in a rotating glass case. He hosted haircutting parties and Easter dinners and sleepovers to watch "Peewee's Playhouse" on Saturday mornings. For the first time, living in my neighborhood didn't seem so shabby. Turns out one of mafia don John Gotti's mistresses lived in Michael's building, too. Michael's phone was tapped and all the tenants were being watched by the Feds. But we didn't know that yet. I don't think we would've cared. It would've seemed par for the hood, as normal as the smell of mozzarella being smoked on a Monday. Over a quarter of a century later, Michael divides his time between residences, and I'm still in the old neighborhood, watching it change. Spring Street Natural is no longer on Spring Street--they've moved to Kenmare and changed the name to "Spring". Just "Spring". I've been there twice since they moved. The food's not as good and the bar isn't as welcoming, now that the original owner, Robert the Buddhist, is gone. Could be my imagination. Could be . Today my downstairs neighbor told me that Lenny Kravitz has bought the block up from my building and everything's being torn down and rebuilt so that other, younger, rich-and-or-famous people who'd rather die than be us can move right in. I took a walk by to look at the block halfway between Michael's apartment and mine. Everything is gone. Even the public playground is being dug up and re-designed. (Does the city take into consideration it's the only place for local children to climb jungle gyms? Could they have waited till summer was over?) Anyway, all the construction signs say "Kravitz Design". Good for him. Better than another Trump Tower. The condos will be lovely, I'm sure. The prices will be high, and the new tenants will complain about the noise and inconvenience of the Feast of San Gennaro and how hard it is to park, that the open fish markets smell worse in summertime, that Uber drivers don't want to get stuck on our crowded streets, that the patch of the Bowery nearest us isn't quite hip yet, that offkey marching bands playing corny Italian songs stop traffic on weekends, that our subway stations are the dirtiest in Manhattan, and that the old Asian ladies wave their canes at you if you walk these sidewalks looking down at your phone. In fact, they'll complain about all the remaining things that make this neighborhood my neighborhood. They won't get it. I didn't get it either, in the old days, when everybody wanted to be us. |
