Life Is Not a Stage (6 page)

Most of the tenants were older and only one was a fellow student at the academy, Sonya Benke. Sonya and I very quickly became wonderful friends. We’d often bring back a quart of ice cream to share from a shop called Rikers down the block on the corner of Broadway. Once we took out a Ouija board. We took turns asking questions while holding the divination planchette. I asked the spirits whether I would ever get the chance to work with the great Rodgers and Hammerstein. It was the kind of innocent and childlike wild dream aspiration akin to a hapless Cinderella wondering if her prince would ever come. Rodgers and Hammerstein were the pinnacle of success on Broadway and the theater’s most famous duo. I think I had recently seen a performance of
The King and I
and loved it so much. I thought, “Oh, what a thrill it would be to one day play Anna and sing those songs.” But what remote chance did I have, a million to one perhaps? Not according to the board. It said “yes.”

One of my ice cream/Ouija friends was a woman across the hall. She was big and tall and funny as all get out. One night she came in and had a white stain on her dark dress, and it didn’t look like anything from Rikers.

“What’s that?” Miss Innocent wanted to know.

“Oh, this guy tried to, you know…” She explained nonchalantly that it was semen. My brother Joe was the first one to talk to me in any graphic detail about sexuality. Before I went to New York, he gave me a book to read and said I could ask any questions. So I knew a little, but was still very curious.

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I took care of him. I beat him up.” That was about the extent of any sexual education from my peers.

For the first couple of weeks, I was terrified to look up at the skyscrapers from the sidewalk below, having never seen a building higher than two stories in Owensboro and vicinity. It had also been frightening in the beginning to walk the couple of blocks to church for daily mass in the predawn winter darkness. Guys driving by in cars would pull over and try to proposition me. But that feeling of fear, too, was fleeting. Since then, I have never felt a lot of danger being in New York. Even in the most difficult times of my childhood, I sensed the presence of a kind of guardian angel around me. Given my situation and how I was raised, I was (and still am) very hypervigilant. I was always very aware of people. I could read their vibrations and sense danger. I was able to follow my intuition long before I knew what the word meant. If I was in a building and I saw a strange and scary person in the elevator when the doors opened, I knew to wait for the next one. Don’t tempt fate!

I began to adapt fairly quickly to life in New York, ensconced at the Three Arts, having met some of the students and the teachers and settled into a routine at school. Attitude is important, and what was expressed deep in my core was how thrilled I was to be at the American Academy. From the start, it was a supportive environment. And with few exceptions in my career, the spirit in that school has carried over to theater productions and studio sets. I never felt any jealousy. We recognized that each of us came with our own distinctive talents and our particular strengths and weaknesses. For example, when word spread that I was one of the few students who could sing, people went out of their way to include me in any activity where music was involved. The feedback from both teachers and students was encouraging, whether it was praise that bolstered your confidence or critical guidance to help you step through your fears and grow. If you were serious, focused, worked hard, listened well, and tried to be a good friend, you found a strong extended family grounded in love, mutual respect, and shared purpose.

With all the hard work, this was also a time of liberation, and I made sure to also have a lot of fun despite living on very little. My friend Sonya and I would go to the Horn & Hardart automat, the early- to mid-twentieth century’s idea of a fast food chain. We would go up to a wall of little windows displaying ready-made food. You put a coin into a slot that unlocked the little door so you could take out your fruit cup. When Sonya’s mother came up to visit from Washington, D.C., she took us to dinner at my first fancy eatery, Jack Dempsey’s Broadway Restaurant (owned by the famous heavyweight boxer). “Whoa, this is something!” I said. There were lots of people, white tablecloths, and things on the menu I had never been able to afford, such as a steak.

It was also an exciting perk going to school in the Carnegie Hall building. We found a way to sneak into the upstairs portion of its famous performance hall. One day, I saw the legendary cellist Gregor Piatigorski rehearsing with the symphony, his long fingers caressing the neck of his instrument and the other hand smoothly guiding the bow back and forth. As he finished his solo and rested his bow, he looked up with his intense Russian profile accentuated by dark raised eyebrows toward the conductor, Dimitri Mitropoulos. He suddenly started shaking his head back and forth in a cadence as if saying, “No, no, no, no.” I whispered to my friends with firm conviction, “He’s not happy.” But no one else besides me seemed to take notice of his displeasure. As the rehearsal went on, I realized that I had jumped to a conclusion. It was just his mannerism to follow and feel the music and no sign of discontent. Here I was worried that somehow Dimitri was not doing it right.

While at the academy I also decided, “I’m going to have a boyfriend, and it’s going to be great.” Jerry Sanyour, a classmate, came along to fill that role nicely. He loved to dance, and so did I. We would go to Greenwich Village on a Saturday night with Sonya and another boy. There’s a first time for everything, and my true inexperience came out (literally) as he held me on the dance floor. Hmm, what’s that? Oh, so that’s an erection.

One of the establishments in the Village we went to as part of my continuing education about life was the Rainbow Club. On the stage, there was this beautiful girl with a great figure. For her last move, the girl took off her bra and she was suddenly a flat-chested he. To my knowledge, I had never seen nor met a homosexual or a cross-dresser, but the Rainbow would change all of that. That same night, a great big burly blonde with long hair spotted me from the stage and walked over. Titanic was her name. She had a cigarette and gently blew the smoke in my face as she imparted a short but succinct nugget of wisdom: “Don’t worry, honey, I was young once.” It would take a little while before I fully understood what she meant. She had seen the somewhat disturbed look on my face. She saw that I had so much to live through to truly understand. When I was young, I could be very judgmental, something that my oldest brother, Joe, worked with me to temper. The compassion was not quite there, because I had not had much opportunity to make many mistakes up to that point (but I sure made up for it later). Titanic’s quip helped me truly step forward and remove any remaining hesitation.

The intensity with Jerry ramped up as well. One day, we sat in a little park area on Riverside Drive. “I have to tell you something,” he said in that tone that could only mean something heavy and serious was about to be delivered. My mind raced in the pause. What could he possibly say? He was a bit dark-skinned and had curly hair. Was he going to tell me he was black? It was a good guess but not right. “I’m Middle Eastern,” was the big revelation he wanted to get off his chest.

“Yeah. So? I don’t understand.” He wanted me to know his background and his religion. I told him that it didn’t matter to me. He must have experienced some prejudice and wanted to get it out in the open and cleared out of the way on the front end of our relationship.

A bigger issue was that he wanted to get serious and have sex. We made out, but it was nothing compared to today’s standards. As a token of his affection, he had given me a small gold football charm he had been awarded in high school. But I said, “No, we can’t.” I was getting more and more confident in my career, and I didn’t want to get embroiled in something that could take me off track. And I was only seventeen going on eighteen. Also, I still went to confession!

He started dating someone else because I wasn’t putting out, but he never asked for his gold charm back. We remained friends and continued socializing for a while. Many years later, when I was appearing in Toronto I got a letter from a woman who lived there. She had been a very close friend of Jerry’s and sadly informed me that he had died much too young. “He always talked about you and what a great time of life that was.” A couple of years later, I got another letter, this time from his mother. She knew that he had given me the little football, and would I mind sending it to her? I did, along with a heartfelt note.

Speaking of prejudice, there was a matter I had to take care of regarding myself. To most of my fellow students, I must have sounded very amusing with my charming combination of southern drawl and midwestern twang. Whenever Teresa Gnassi from the Bronx and I got up to speak in class, we were made fun of, but in a nice way. “The accent you have is one of the most difficult to lose,” my wonderful speech teacher Aristide D’Angelo said. “It’s almost more difficult than a foreign accent.” Before I could get totally discouraged, he added, “But if you really follow my advice and really practice the exercises I will give you, pretty soon your ears are going to hear what you’re doing and you’re going to be able to correct it.”

Seeing my accent as a huge obstacle to my goal, I was an eager and motivated student in his class. We took the bull by the horns. The girl fresh out of Rockport would say, “Aiiiiice creeeeem,” stretching out those vowels as if I had all the time in the world. “No, it’s ‘ice,’ like ‘eye,’ not ‘aiiiiiii.’” I’d go home and practice, practice. “It’s ‘down town,’ not ‘daauuun tauuuuun.’” “Repeat—down…town…down…town.” Another tough one was “that.” My version seemed to go on twice too long—“tha-eeeeet.” Mr. D’Angelo wanted me to talk more in clipped Middle Atlantic syllables.

Just before I went home to Rockport during a break to visit for the first time, I went to Mr. D’Angelo. “The people back there are going to make fun of me, too. They’ll think I’ve gotten all snooty.”

He replied, “It doesn’t matter. Practice. Use it. Hear the difference.” That’s exactly what I did. It worked. I brought with me my new Mid-Atlantic accent, but when I was with family, I would revert back. Mr. D’Angelo was brilliant, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for his patience with me.

While I was getting rid of my accent, the other teachers got to work to take whatever raw talent I had in me up to a higher level. One day, one of the acting teachers, Ed Goodman, asked me in class to do something to demonstrate a point about human behavior. “All right, Florence, you look out the window. Just start looking out the window.” So I went over to the window and that’s what I did. I kept looking out the window, keeping quite still and concentrating on the task. I thought to myself, “This is not so difficult. I could stay still like this for hours.” Nothing broke my attention for a few minutes until the teacher’s voice broke the silence.

“Now, that is
not
human behavior,” he said in critique of my performance.

“But you told me to just look out the window,” I shot back, wondering what I could have possibly done wrong on something so simple.

“Well, that’s all well and good,” he explained. “But a normal person would change their posture, fold their arms, shift their weight, or do something.” The devil was in the details.

Another kid was doing a scene, and Mr. Goodman lashed out: “For God’s sake, why are you sitting like that? Do you have a problem with your entrails?” The word “entrails” threw me for a moment, especially said with his British-sounding inflection. “Oh, he means intestines,” I realized. Mr. Goodman was not the only teacher who could be tough. Perhaps it was their way of helping us develop a thick skin in preparation for the certainty of a critic’s bad review. Being judged was never easy and nothing new to someone with a Catholic upbringing. You get used to it, and just try to find a way to get through it.

Mr. Goodman also said something that I immediately took to heart and have passed along to others countless times: “Keep a cool head and a warm heart.” It’s so important in this business.

We learned in the acting classes that it was more than just rehearsing your lines. You had to dissect them and be able to answer anything about your character, the “who, what, when, where, and why.” We learned how to do our own stage makeup, and how to make ourselves look older. One of the first important tips I learned was that you didn’t have to make up your face for the whole theater. You only had to concern yourself with how you looked to the people in the first ten rows. Beyond that, they would need binoculars to see your face in any detail. An actor who doesn’t do this will look pretty grotesque to those up front.

The key thing is to learn your flaws and find a way to correct them. When I started doing television, my education took a greater leap forward. I learned more techniques and asked a lot of questions. Soon I was doing my own makeup because I didn’t like being fussed over, and still do to this day. I start with a base and then apply different tones from there. You need to be very careful to blend so your rouge doesn’t make you look like a circus clown. With putting on eye shadow, try not to go too light in the shade. It will give you a big flap when you close your eye. My biggest pet peeve is reserved for those who do a great job on their face but neglect to also do their ears. You see it a lot on television newscasters—lovely faces framed by big white ears. Drives me crazy! Last but not least, if you care about your skin’s long-term health and appearance, make sure you clean your face extremely well before you go to bed. Don’t slack on this one. I don’t care how tired (and/or drunk) you are.

Body movement and how you carried yourself on the stage was also an art like choreography. We trained how to faint without killing ourselves in the process. There was a specific way you could gently go down so as to not crack your head open. In another class, we trained on how to look like you were straining to push against something very heavy like a huge rock. Anytime I find myself standing with my shoulders slumped and my posture looking more like a question mark than an exclamation point, I still hear Sarah Mildred Strauss barking at me with her aristocratic rolling R’s, “Rrrrribs up!” I will also never forget a comment she made to the class that I think she did for my specific benefit: “Remember that the boy you think you love at eighteen is the same one you won’t spit on at twenty-one.”