Read My Lips (11 page)

Once I landed in the hospital, there was no hiding what had happened from my parents. They both knew what I had done. My mom told me that my dad cried when she told him about the abortion, sobbing, “Why didn’t she know she could come to us? Didn’t she know we would have helped?” What a difference from the angry, stern father I had come to expect, the one who hated my braless outfits and torn jeans and rebellious nature. He was heartbroken.

Now I realize that I probably could have gone to them for help. My parents, bless them, no matter how they felt about my choice of career, saw just about everything I ever did. Set dressing as a dead body? They were there. One line in a play at the Pico Playhouse? They got tickets. And who can forget my riveting delivery
of the words, “You may go right in,” on the live television program
Playhouse 90
? Not only did my parents tune in; they also told all their friends to do the same. I was mortified. What a jerk I could be, not appreciating how my parents supported me. So they wanted a lady. So my dad didn’t want a crybaby. Who could blame him? And despite his stern nature, he was encouraging, even if I couldn’t hear it. That above all is clear in this letter he later sent me, which I came across while writing this book.

January 8, 1963

Darling,

The enclosed check does not give me the right to offer advice, but being your father I just naturally use my dictatorial powers and suggest that
:

1. You think positive.

2. See people in your profession.

3. To talk [to people in your profession].

4. Practice acting by yourself if necessary, before the mirror.

5. Ditto #4.

6. Ditto #4.

7. Realize the truth—that you are a fine actress.

8. Have faith and trust in God.

9. And—Help yourself by asking for work! Don’t be afraid to ask. You have ability to offer and the world needs entertainment more than ever, what with all the discontent around the globe.

10. Above all—don’t worry, you always have mother and me.

Dad left out one of his favorite lines:
Did you tell them that you get all your talent from me, Sal
?

I was blown away when I found this letter. I didn’t remember ever receiving it. I’d been too self-centered to realize that despite
my dad’s quick temper and my mom’s picky ways, they not only cared about me but also wanted for me what I wanted for myself.

In the early 1960s my father worked in downtown Los Angeles as the vice president of a small crude oil company. He knew that neighborhood was one of my hangouts and would often ask me to go to lunch with him and meet the people in his office. But I never did. I was sure he would hate what I was wearing, so I always begged off and made excuses. I’m so sorry, Dad—and grateful.

A
FTER THE WHOLE ORDEAL
B
ILL AND
I
MADE LOVE ONE LAST
time, as a goodbye. In the wake of the abortion and our breakup, I was depressed. I resumed my sad-sack routine of lying around, going to the unemployment office and acting class, waiting tables, and eating Oreos.

Thank God for David Bennett, Bob Sampson, and Roy Thinnes, who got me out of bed and off to auditions. David and I were spending so much time together that I had begun to call him my cousin. We had met at Jeff Corey’s, and at first I thought he was the most obnoxious guy on earth. He would say things like, “You’re going to be a star,” which I hated because I was sure if he said it out loud, no one would believe him and it would never happen. One of the first times we went to the movies together David showed up at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard wearing a white Bombay suit and a bad toupee. I couldn’t bear those white suits and hairpieces, but I couldn’t imagine life without David, either. My father loved him because he looked after me so well. Later, when David moved to New York City, I remember my dad saying, “That’s great,” but asking him, “Who will take care of Sally?”

One day, early in 1962, David and Roy tried to get me to audition for
The Marriage-Go-Round
at the Pasadena Playhouse with Don Porter and Marsha Hunt.

“Get in the car,” they insisted.

“I’m not sexy. I’m not going,” I wailed.

But off I went. A week or so later, while I was lying in bed, the phone rang.

“I’m sorry,” the voice said, “but you didn’t get the part.”

Figures,
I thought, and rolled back over to go back to sleep. Then the phone rang again.

“I was wrong. You’ve got the part.”

I can only assume that their first choice had passed.

After the run in Pasadena I got to perform with Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the Kenley Players presentation of
The Marriage-Go-Round
in Columbus, Ohio. But that meant I had to pull out of a play called
Camino Real,
which was being done at Company of Angels with Leonard Nimoy directing. Leonard and Dick Chamberlain and Vic Morrow helped start the now-famous theater as a place where actors could work and rehearse without the pressure of commercial success. It was founded in 1959 in a parking lot at Vine and Waring, behind a restaurant. I hammered in maybe two nails and would sometimes work as an usher at Angels if a friend was doing a play there. Today it is the oldest repertory theater in Los Angeles.

When I got back from Ohio, they were still rehearsing and trying to get the play off the ground, struggling with annoying bureaucracy and things like permits. Leonard was the one who really made the Angels fly. I remember him taking me aside one night after I’d shown up late for rehearsal—again.

As we stood in the parking lot, I could see that Leonard was frustrated.

“Why is it that you talented people are always coming late?” he asked.

Talented?

I missed the part about being late. I was just thrilled that he said I was talented!

Camino Real
didn’t get off the ground, but in 1962 Michael Shurtleff’s
Call Me by My Rightful Name
did. I was cast in it opposite my lovely Bob Sampson and directed by my good friend Tom Selden. There’s nothing like a play. Throughout my career I have
tried to do them as often as I could, just to humiliate myself. This one, though I least expected it to, launched my career.

At the time I was still waiting tables at the Chez. Joe Stefano, who had written Hitchcock’s
Psycho
and was producing and writing
The Outer Limits
for television, had seen me in
Enemy of the People.
Luckily for me, he bothered to see me again in
Call Me by My Rightful Name.

“I can’t believe the growth!” Joe said to me after the show, as I was standing in the parking lot with Bob. “I may be doing a TV series, and if I do, I’m going to find a part for you.”

As he drove away, I turned to Bob Sampson and said, “I’ll be in the restaurant for the rest of my life.”

Six months later a script showed up at my apartment with a note:
The part is Ingrid, the magic is yours.

Now, thanks to Joe, after eight years of studying and waitressing and doing gigs like playing a Swedish blind date wearing big, tall antlers, on
The Fred MacMurray Show,
I finally had a real part: Ingrid, the nurse in an episode of the TV series
The Outer Limits
called, “The Human Factor.”

“There is nothing wrong with your television set . . .” the oscilloscope voice announced at the beginning of every
Outer Limits.
It was so otherworldly and creepy and fun.

On the first day of shooting Joe was there, paying close attention. He turned to the director and said, “Does she understand her motivation?” The director said yes. He then turned to Conrad Hall and William Fraker, two incredibly talented cinematographers—both handsome, both bearded—and told them, “Make her look like a movie star!” That was Joe Stefano—a product of Old Hollywood. Connie and Bill handed me a muskrat collar and a cigarette, lit me, and that was it. A star was born.

I felt great until I saw a rough cut of that episode. Then I jumped in my car, hit the gas, and drove one hundred miles per hour to the television set of
Combat,
which Vic Morrow was filming. We went to his trailer and I sobbed, “I’m not just ugly, I’m untalented!” Vic was a darling. He comforted me and sent me on my way.

To highlight that first episode, Joe took out an ad in
Variety.
It included a note to me for all to see:
Your shining moments in “The Human Factor” reveal your own very special glamour
—
the kind we think of when we think of a classic “movie star”
—
and will, we believe, create an exciting and new image in the minds of all those who already know you to be a skilled and genuine actress.

At the time Jerry Bick, my agent and friend, had already dumped me as a client. I begged him just to keep me on his roster so if someone did happen to call, I’d get the message. The day the
Outer Limits
episode aired, Jerry was on the Universal lot. One of his colleagues walked up and said, “Hey, Jerry, I saw your client on TV last night. Guess she’ll be moving to William Morris today.”

And that’s just what happened. I’ve never stopped working from that day forth. Joe Stefano started my career in television, and I’ll never be able to thank him fully.

Joe not only cast me again, but he also wrote an episode of
Outer Limits,
“The Bellero Shield,” with me in mind. Martin Landau was cast as my husband, and Broadway legend Chita Rivera played my barefoot housekeeper. This time I was a conniving and ambitious housewife in a housecoat with a mink collar. I killed the most adorable alien you’ve ever seen and then ended up trapped in a big glass bubble. Chita taught me how to scream. At the end of that episode the bubble—my barrier to freedom—was removed, but I didn’t believe it. I had created my own bubble, my own prison. I stood there, trapped, in a prison of my own creation.

O
NCE
I
SIGNED AT
W
ILLIAM MORRIS,
I
DECIDED TO AUDITION
for the Actor’s Studio. It had been around since the late 1940s and was notoriously difficult to get into. But I needed to keep studying, and I wanted to raise my game. I had been working on a scene with my dear friend Elizabeth Hush for about two months. In the scene we were both supposed to be drunk, though neither of us really drank. But the night of the audition Liz (I’ve decided to blame this on Liz) said, “Hey, why don’t we have a drink?” And
so we did. We got into the Actor’s Studio under false pretenses—we were actually drunk, not just playing drunks. In fact, I’ve have never been so sick in all my life. I weaved home in the car and spent the next two hours throwing up in the bathroom. But hey, we got in!

I worked at the Actor’s Studio, feeling so fat that I wore muumuus and tried anything to lose weight. Hollywood was—is—very unforgiving when it comes to appearances, and there’s nothing like being on stage or on screen to really bring out your insecurities. (Most of all,
I
was unforgiving. People of all sizes work in Hollywood—I just wanted to be one of the thin ones.) So everyone was getting into amphetamines, food combining—whatever they heard would work. I took some sort of shots that contained apples. I went on fruit fasts. You couldn’t just eat figs—they had to be Kadota figs from the Third Street Farmer’s Market. I went with Roy Thinnes (on whom I still had a terrible crush at the time) to get some sort of magical shots—I had
no
idea what was in them—that were supposed to allow me to eat whatever I wanted. I injected pregnant women’s urine. People now ask if I was ever anorexic. The answer is no—I wasn’t that disciplined.