Read My Lips (3 page)

“T
HE DAY YOU MET
J
EFF
C
OREY WAS THE DAY YOU RUINED YOUR
life,” my darling mother liked to say.

My father grumbled that Jeff Corey’s class was where I learned to say “fuck,” a word my mother would never have used.

As for me, there was no question in my mind that the day I met Jeff Corey was the day my life began.

The Professional Actors Workshop, as Jeff’s class eventually became known, was up Cherokee and off Franklin Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. I had started studying there right after graduating high school. For a while I also attended LA City College, mostly for my parents’ sake. At LA City College they made me take pantomime. I didn’t like it. Jeff didn’t like pantomime either. No more college.

Jeff’s classes were initially held in the garage/theater behind his house. At the time he was in his early forties, with deep-set eyes and dark, wavy hair that had begun to recede a little. He had been working in movies since the early 1940s and was building quite a career as a character actor in films like
My Friend Flicka, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Killers, Brute Force,
and
Home of the Brave.
Things looked good for Jeff until he was named as a former member of the Communist Party and subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. After he refused to name other supposed Communists, he was blacklisted and unable to work as an actor, so he began sharing his skills with a new generation.

Norma Jean Nielsen had told me that Jeff’s garage was the place to be if you wanted to get serious about acting. For one thing, he’d worked with James Dean. James Dean had died in a car crash the year after I graduated high school. We were all devastated, for as
kids we totally related to his on-screen suffering, to his need to be appreciated and acknowledged. Instead he was ignored. Misunderstood. Treated like a disappointment through and through. James Dean was the embodiment of an entire generation—my generation—the expression of all our frustration at 1950s repression, the lack of communication we were raised with, and all the angst that we could no longer hide.

I continue to think of Jimmy Dean as Cal in Elia Kazan’s
East of Eden,
a performance to this day I still find so heartbreaking.

“But dad . . . I gotta way to do the lettuce . . .”

Marlon Brando, that brooding, powerful, sultry chameleon, changed our art forever, by bringing Method acting to Hollywood. He was our hero, but James Dean was our spokesman, pouring all our 1950s confusion out all over the screen.

That first night I went to Jeff’s I was so nervous, all baggy sweaters and jeans, plopping down in the middle of the floor and trying not to be noticed. I had the classic actor’s syndrome: “Don’t look at me! . . . Wait! Wait! Look at me!”

We did a scene from William Saroyan’s play
Beautiful People
that night. Later Jeff asked me, “Have you ever acted before?”

Oh God. . . .

I told him about my limited experience,
Meet Me in St. Louis
and the Joan of Arc auditions. “Well, you have talent,” he said. That was nice to hear, but there was something more. There was something about Jeff that immediately put me at ease. He was so sincere, so understanding. He understood that we were all searching, emoting, trying to make sense of our lives.

I remember that, after I’d been working with him in class for a while, Jeff told me during a private session, “You’re just beautiful.”

His remark struck me in an entirely new way. I was sure the beauty he was talking about was inside me, not surface beauty. The idea that I could be beautiful on the outside still felt strange. No matter what anyone saw on the outside, I still felt too gawky and uncomfortable in my skin to let any compliment on my appearance sink in. However, Jeff saw things in me in those classes,
things that were buried. Maybe I still felt fat, but he made me feel as though I had something to offer.

Jeff’s concept of beauty was one of the most compelling aspects of the way he worked. At the time “Method” was the word where acting was concerned, but Jeff didn’t limit himself to one style. He gave us many tools, and it was up to us to choose the one that worked best. Most of all, to him acting was about seeing the beauty, the importance, the meaning in everything. One night he showed us photos of broken-down fences and weeds, all dilapidated and overgrown.

“See,” he said, “that’s beautiful.”

Everyone looked at the photos, nodding. They were all so serious. I felt more truly, deeply alive in that moment, in those classes, than ever before in my life.

J
EFF ATTRACTED AN INCREDIBLE, FASCINATING GROUP OF STUDENTS
at every level of ability. There were a lot of men, but the women were an impressive gang too. Carole Eastman was acting then, but would soon go on to write
Five Easy Pieces.
She was fiery and spunky, with such confidence. Jeff’s class is where I met Luana Anders, one of the dearest friends of my life. Luana had a Doris Day look, and we bonded immediately over acting and how we just did not understand boys. When Shirley Knight—later an Oscar nominee—joined the class, Luana and I hated her because she was so pretty and could already cry on cue. Though my friend, the television producer and director Larry Arrick, used to say, “If crying is acting, my Aunt Fanny would be a star!”

But I hadn’t met Larry yet, and all I knew was that I couldn’t cry on stage. (In real life, however, it seemed I never stopped.) Shirley appeared to have it all together. When she invited Luana and me to her house, we were stunned by how grown-up it seemed. She had a fireplace, she had a husband, and she was knitting, while Luana and I were these doofuses in our jeans. She was only
one year older than me, but she was married and could sob on stage. Clearly I had to get my act together.

But in a way I have the men in Jeff’s class to thank for sticking with my studies. If I was tired and not feeling motivated to go, I would think of the cute guys in class, and that got me out the door. When I first arrived at Jeff Corey’s, James Coburn, eventual Academy Award winner and star of
The Magnificent Seven
and
The Great Escape,
was there, and so was Richard Chamberlain (I would later swoon madly over him in the television series
The Thornbirds
). Irwin Kershner was a classmate who went on to direct films like
The Eyes of Laura Mars
and
The Empire Strikes Back.
I thought he looked a bit like a button salesman.

Then there was Roger Corman. Saying that Corman later became a film producer is like saying that Walt Disney dabbled in amusement parks. Roger remains one of Hollywood’s most prolific producers ever as well as a writer and director. He has done everything from westerns to horror films and will be remembered for movies like Little
Shop of Horrors
and
Fall of the House of Usher.
He mentored people like Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. Back then he was already making movies but was in the class to learn more about actors. He was funny to watch—he often kept his eyes closed while speaking or turned his back to the rest of us.

Roy Thinnes, who would go on to star in the TV series
The Invaders,
was in our class too. I had such a crush on him. Robert Blake, television’s
Baretta,
was also there. Bobby was quite insightful in his way, a little angry, and oh-so talented. He had grown up in front of cameras, starring as Mickey in the
Our Gang
television series when he was just five years old. I remember working on a scene with him for two months, in which we had to embrace. The day before we were going to do it in front of the class, right in the middle of our embrace, he tore away and yelled, “Fuck ’em! We’re too good for ’em. They can pay us or we’re not going to do it!”

Looking back, I was probably relieved. And a part of me understood. I find it much harder to do a scene in class than to do a play in front of an audience. In class you feel much more exposed, more vulnerable. On stage you can sink into at least a little anonymity, knowing the audience is “out there” beyond the lights. In class it’s up close, personal, and you’re there for criticism. To this day I would be scared to death to go back to the Actor’s Studio, where I later studied, and perform for that crowd of professionals.

And then there was Jack Nicholson. Jack was in Jeff’s class, but I remember first connecting with him at the Gallery Bar along with Dick Chamberlain, Carole Eastman, and writer Bob (Robert) Towne. Both Carole and Bob went on to be nominated for Academy awards, Bob winning for
Chinatown.
The Gallery Bar was so intimate, like a womb, tiny and dark and a whole world unto itself. This was the place to be before the coffee house scene really took off. There were two theaters across the street as well, so it was always full of up-and-coming actors. Others would drink, but I sipped a 7-Up.

Jack’s personality sucked you in the moment you met him. He was from New Jersey, but to talk to him and listen to his easy, folksy delivery, you would have thought he was from somewhere like Texas. I thought he was so cute, with his dark brown hair and bright eyes. Such a devilish grin.

That night I asked him if he wanted to go to a beach party with me. When he said yes, I went straight over to my parents’ house to make fried chicken and potato salad. There was no romance—I didn’t long for Jack the way I did for Eddie—but I decided after that party that we should be best friends.

And great pals we were. Once he and his then-girlfriend Georgianna—a real stunner from acting class—came with my family and me to Balboa Island. Balboa Island, south of Los Angeles in Orange County, has long been a vacation spot attracting locals and tourists alike. I loved the pier and the pavilion, eating ice creams, and riding the ferry. That was the weekend I found out
that Verve Records wanted to sign me based on the demo that Lincoln and I recorded before graduating Hollywood High. Dawn got the demo into the right hands, and now it looked like I would have a real shot. I was giddy, so Jack and I were goofier than usual. Georgianna was mortified when Jack and I stood at the edge of the water yelling, “Boobs!!!” across the bay into the night air. We vowed that “boobs” would forever be our secret word. Boobs. Years down the line, if one of us wanted to know if the other still cared, we would just say, “boobs,” and if the other answered, “boobs” back, we knew everything was still the same between us. That’s how racy we were back then. However, I haven’t tested the theory in years.

In class it was almost always impossible for me to work on scenes with Jack because I’d be laughing so hard. If we had to kiss, forget about it. I’d fall off the couch in hysterics. That’s what I did when I was embarrassed, as I often was with boys. I preferred to sit in Jack’s lap and tell him my problems. “You like my devil eyebrows, Sal?” he used to say during class, with a smile.

But the man who kept me coming back to those classes was Jeff, with his infectious enthusiasm. He showed us that there were so many different ways of going about your life and career as an actor. You had to make choices, but you could live life on your own terms if you worked hard and were willing to accept the consequences. Jeff had certainly done that.

I admired people who lived on their own terms, especially women. Women who had the courage to follow their own instincts, like Katharine Hepburn. Here was a woman who, after enduring some commercial failures in the midst of an otherwise remarkable career, was labeled box office poison. So she left Hollywood and returned to the stage to do
The Philadelphia Story,
written for her by her friend Philip Barry. But she bought the rights. When the play was made into a film, she cast herself in the lead role of Tracy Lord, sandwiched between Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. And she went on to be nominated for an Oscar.

Jeff offered a safe place for us to be ourselves—bad, sad, confused,
or just giggling—and to be a part of something. That sense of belonging was becoming essential for me. The day I went to Verve Records to sign my contract with their A&R guy, famous jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, I went alone. I didn’t know him; I didn’t realize I would have to record with a band I’d never met. There was no Hollywood High trio—my friends weren’t there with me. Maybe eighteen-year-olds today have it all together, but I was flat-out scared. Once I signed on the dotted line, I walked out the door and never followed through, never asked what we were going to record and when. I walked away from Verve and let the world of acting envelop me, let that magic take me away. There I could release all my fear; there I had encouragement. There it was safe to be me.

At Jeff’s we were insulated from glitz and glamour, not thinking about Hollywood or stardom. For us, all that mattered was learning to act, to become good at our craft. But on breaks from Jeff’s class in the Hollywood Hills, we would all step outside for a talk or a smoke. Some nights we could see the giant klieg lights of the movie premieres below. Looking at those lights grazing the night sky, it was as though I was back in the bathroom mirror again:
Someday . . .