On the eve of my birthday, I wanted to share an anecdote concerning one of the major life lessons I experienced years ago when I was still in my twenties. Before I moved East for law school, I was working on a book project that entailed interviewing actresses from the 1960s-era about their lives and careers. I interviewed almost 15 of them before I decided it was time for me to put the project aside and go back to school in order to continue my education. I still hope to finish the project someday. The experience of interviewing these women helped me beyond just learning about their careers, it also helped teach me a lot about human nature. Perhaps the biggest lesson of all came from my interactions and dealings with one actress in-particular who I did not have the opportunity to interview in the end. She was the closest I ever came to dealing with an actress who had a deluded, narcissistic, self-involved Norma Desmond-complex. (In contrast, almost every other actress I've ever met or interviewed has defied this stereotype by being earthy and realistic about their careers and, more importantly, about themselves. Even though this actress lived up to negative stereotypes that exist about actresses, I've found that she was the exception, and not the rule.) This actress was signed to a long-term studio contract when she was about 20 years old and made her film debut in a major motion picture that was one of the most acclaimed films of its time.
She continued working in films and television throughout the 1960s and would play second-leads in films, including appearing in one of the biggest flops of the 1960s, guest-starred on almost all the television programs of the era, and worked opposite some legendary stars. However, despite her accomplishments, she has rarely done theater and, to my knowledge, has never appeared on Broadway. Her career would be considered good by any stretch of the imagination, but she never really landed that really notable or major role that would have made her superstar, or even a cult figure. Her 1970s and 1980s career consisted of roles in TV movies and continuing to guest star on television shows. She has continued working through the years, but in increasingly smaller and smaller roles. Sometimes, she'll show up in a movie just for one scene, with only a handful of lines. This actress always had a quality on-screen which made her seem low-key, down-to-earth, like the girl (or woman) next-door. She was my high school history teacher's favorite actress of all time. When he knew I was trying to interview 1960s-era actresses for my book project, he hoped I would be able to interview her.
It was while interviewing another 1960s actress, who happened to be friends with this woman, that I was finally put in-touch with this actress to ask her for an interview. (The actress I interviewed who was friends with this woman had enjoyed her interview with me, took a liking to me, and gave me her friend's contact information and urged this actress--when she saw her for dinner later that week--to consent to the interview.) After the actress I had interviewed confirmed with me that she had spoken to her friend about me and that she was expecting my call, I called her at the phone number provided to me. I don't remember what I was expecting from her, but I definitely was not expecting her to turn out to be the way she was when I spoke to her the first time. She was cold, uptight, defensive. I understood that she might not have been readily accessible because I was a stranger, so I tried to be as polite as possible to her. She said that she wasn't sure she wanted to do the interview because she didn't like the calibre of the actresses that I had already interviewed and didn't want to be associated with them.
By that point, I had already interviewed Tina Louise and Stella Stevens, among many others. I recall her saying, "I know you interviewed Tina, and she's very pretty and attractive, but she's not a real actress." I also recall her saying "I know you also interviewed Stella, but I'd rather be in a book with women who have class." I was kind of stunned at how dismissive she was about the careers and attributes of these other actresses, particularly because her career, in my humble opinion, wasn't THAT much different or better than theirs. I explained that the book was about the actresses who worked in that era, and that I intended to take a broad approach and cover all the different kinds of actresses working during that time, and that it was not my intention to suggest that they were similar other than the fact they worked during the same time and had experienced the last decade of the classic era of Hollywood. She didn't seem satisfied by that explanation and continued emphasizing that she wanted to be in a book with women who had "class." I asked her who she would have felt comfortable being in a book with. She said "Maggie Smith and Judi Dench," which further stunned me because there is no way that this woman's career even came close to matching their accomplishments.
She also disparaged another actress I had interviewed and said that she didn't want to be associated with her because she doesn't work anymore. The other actress she cited was someone who had enjoyed a good career, which started on Broadway and extended into films and television, for about 25 years from the early 1960s to the late 1980s and left the business after some family tragedies. I tried to explain that that other actress she was disparaging had left the business for personal, rather than professional, reasons, but she didn't seem convinced and continued to disparage her for not working anymore and continued to feel that being associated with individuals like her in a book would reflect badly upon her.
Eventually, this actress gave me an ultimatum. She said she would only agree to an interview for the book if I would agree that I would only include actresses that she approved of, and if I would completely drop from the book all of the actresses I already interviewed who she felt weren't worthy of being associated with her. This was years ago, when I was in my 20s, and I should have told her at the time "Sorry, out of respect to the women I already interviewed, I cannot do that." However, because I was young and naive and because I wanted to interview her, I said I would strive, from that point on, to include women in the book that were of a "higher quality" so that the proportion of "acclaimed" actresses in the book would outnumber the ones who might be considered less "respected." (However, I didn't agree to drop the women I already interviewed that she disapproved of.) On that basis, she agreed to the interview.
To put things in perspective, I also interviewed Jacqueline Bisset and Susannah York for this book project and neither of them raised an eyebrow over the other actresses who were already interviewed, nor did they ever ask me to delete them from the book. Susannah York herself was hardly warm and accessible when I interviewed her on the phone. She was cold, reserved, defensive and haughty at times, but she still did the interview, always answered my questions, and never disparaged the other women already interviewed. When I interviewed Bisset (who was one of the most intelligent, articulate, down-to-earth individuals I've ever encountered in my life), she acknowledged that she wasn't familiar with all of the people I had interviewed up to that time. However, she admitted that she didn't know or work with every actress who was in the business back in the 1960s, and it wasn't her place to judge their careers and, as such, she didn't let that deter her from agreeing to an interview with me. It always amazed me that actresses who were clearly much more acclaimed than this actress in-question were less status-conscious about who they might be associated with. I guess they were less insecure and more confident about themselves than this actress was.
Even though this actress agreed to an interview with me, trying to get her to agree to a time for it became another issue. Everytime I followed up with her to try and schedule it, she kept putting me off. She said she was busy auditioning for roles, or was busy working on a movie or TV show, and couldn't find time to meet with me. I agreed to be patient because I believed she was being sincere. Eventually, I realized she was a very glum and humorless individual, especially about herself. Each time I called her, I found myself engaged in conversations that were odd, to say the least. At times, she asked me about my political beliefs. At the time, I was more conservative than I am now, though I could hardly be considered an extreme right-winger, and I've always been respectful of individuals who views differ from mine. (For the record, I'm more middle-of-the-road now with my political views, and I intend for this blog to remain apolitical.) However, this didn't sit well with her and I was subjected to lectures from her. One time, the subject of the FBI as an organization came up. I said that I respected the FBI and she became very indignant and asked me on the phone, "Don't you have issues with the way they invaded people's privacy during the Hoover years? Oh, I forgot, you're sort of a Republican kind of person, aren't you?" I should've taken umbrage to statements like that, because she didn't know me, she wasn't taking the time to know anything about me, and yet she was passing judgement on me and making assumptions and generalizations. I also thought it was weird that she had such strong, negative opinions about the FBI because she had guest-starred more than once on the old Efrem Zimbalist/Quinn Martin-produced "The FBI" TV series made during the Hoover years of the 1960s, a show which Hoover himself purportedly approved of. It was strange that she harbored these beliefs, and yet took acting jobs in projects that helped portray the FBI in a positive light. I ultimately concluded that she was someone who, despite her political beliefs, didn't always put her money where her mouth was.
One of the times when I called her to ask if she might be able to find time to schedule an interview, I had obviously called at an inopportune time when she appeared to be upset. She said she had received some bad news moments earlier. I apologized for my timing and said "I'm sorry to hear about that. I hope whatever happened will work itself out." She suddenly snapped at me and said "Of course it's not going to work itself out! How can you even imply that it's going to work itself out?!" I politely ended the call and wondered what it was that had upset her so deeply. Later in the week, I was reading the newspaper and saw the obituary for the husband of the actress who was friends, and put me in-touch, with this woman. He had passed away suddenly the same day as when I had called this actress. I realized that she must have learned, moments before I called, that her friend's husband had passed away and she was upset about it. But, still, I did not know what had happened and, because I also knew that other actress and had met her husband who had died, she could have at least explained what had happened to them that had made her so upset considering that she knew they were the ones who put me in-touch with her to begin with.
I remember another time I called her to see if she might have time soon for an interview. She had just finished a TV miniseries where she had a supporting role. She proceeded to tell me that she was also offered a part in a major motion picture that was filming concurrently around the same time. She didn't want to appear in the feature film because of its violent content, and that the script gave her nightmares, but she ultimately accepted it because "if you turn down work, people will think you don't want to work." In the meantime, while she was waiting to find out when she would be needed on location for that feature film, she was offered the aforementioned TV miniseries, which partly dramatized the life of a historical figure that she revered. She told me how she was worried all summer that she would have to forego her role in the miniseries in order to go film her handful of scenes in the feature film. She was very dramatic as she described her "turmoil" because of her worries that the schedules for both productions might conflict and she would have to give up her role in the miniseries in order to appear in the feature film that she had accepted first, but didn't really want to be in. She said there was one week when the production managers of both shows had worked out that she could fly from the location of the miniseries to go film her scenes for the feature film. But then the director of the feature film decided at the last minute to cut the scene entirely from the shooting schedule and just pay her off. She said she just received her paycheck for the feature film she never got to work on, and she said she felt guilty cashing the check. While this was happening to her, most of her fellow actors were striking that summer in order to try and negotiate better terms for themselves for commercial residuals. It seemed very self-indulgent that she was making a big deal complaining about being offered two jobs whose schedules conflicted with each other just to make herself sound important.
Other times I spoke with her further underscored the extent to which she had developed a lofty view of herself as an actress. She told me the time she had been offered a script for a horror film and how offended she was by the offer that she "threw the script across the room." She continued on by describing how she is very picky about the projects she gets involved in and that "I don't just read a script. I study it." I thought to myself as she said this "What do you think other actors do with their scripts? Line their bird cages?" I already knew that an actor or actress doesn't just read the script to know their lines, they each have their own process where they go over it carefully in preparation for filming. It sounded funny to me how she was singling out her own preparation process as if she were unique in order to imply that other actors don't study their scripts, or have their own process, when they prepare to shoot it.
One of the last times I heard from her was when she contacted me to say she was leaving the country for awhile to make a feature film in Europe that she was excited about participating in. I realized that this was the end of the line and that she had no intention of ever granting me the interview she had promised. I later saw the film she made and she had a minor supporting role in it, certainly nothing as major as she had indicated to me. I wondered for awhile if maybe I had approached her the wrong way, but then I considered how I had successfully interviewed almost 15 other 1960s actresses and things went smoothly with them. I soon learned that this actress was not particularly well-liked or well-respected by her own peers. One of the other actresses said about this actress, "She's full of sh-t! She was always weird and never seemed to have any friends. And I never cared for her acting, either. I thought she was as flat off-screen as she was on-screen. She was boring as sh-t!" Another actress said about her, "She's a funny little bird. She's always been a snob. I was in acting school with her and she was always a bit of a debutante and a princess. One time I saw her when she came back from making a film overseas in a country where there was a lot of turmoil and starvation and I asked her how was the trip. She just shuddered very dramatically and said 'Oh, so depressing!' and then walked away without saying another word." Yet another actress told me that this actress has been rumored for years to be a lesbian, not that that would have made a difference to me if she were or were not, but she suggested that perhaps this actress was uptight with me because she feared I might inadvertently find out about her purported lifestyle if I interviewed her. (Even if that were the case, it still wouldn't explain her odd behavior because there are plenty of gay and lesbian actors working in show business who are clearly open-hearted and considerate individuals.) However, the actress sharing this unconfirmed rumor with me joked, "If she is a lesbian, she must be a lonely one because I can tell you from first-hand dealings with her that she's not friendly to other women!"
I realized in retrospect that perhaps my weird dealings with her, and her refusal to ever pin down a time to do an interview with me, had less to do with me and perhaps more to do with her insecure, self-indulgent and self-involved personality. I learned a lot from dealing with her that I have tried to apply to my life and career. To begin with, when she began to make unreasonable demands, I should have stood up to her more and made it clear that this was my book project, not hers, and if she wasn't interested in participating in it as I had presented it to her, then perhaps it wasn't meant to be. That way, I wouldn't have wasted time on her and I wouldn't have put myself in a position where I would be treated that way. In that sense, I take responsibility for having put myself in that situation. Nevertheless, because of my experience with her, I learned how important it is to treat ALL people, no matter who they are, with respect and dignity and not make any sort of condescending presumptions about them. I never want other people to feel the way I felt after dealing with this woman. I also learned that it's important to be upfront with people and to not string them along with false and empty promises. I know that Tina Louise is not a well-liked individual, but she was always very upfront with me about where she was coming from. There was no subterfuge, no question about where you stood with her and, even if she wasn't always diplomatic, at least I knew what I needed to do and what was expected from me. (In contrast to this actress I've been discussing, Tina Louise was a woman of her word. I found that, if Tina Louise has agreed to help you with something, she helps you all the way. There's no mealy-mouthed indecision with Tina Louise like I experienced with this actress.) I also learned the extent to which it is wrong to make assumptions about people based upon their appearance or demographic. This actress always played level-headed, intelligent women and I found her to be the complete opposite in real life. I found her to be a pseudo-intellectual who wasn't down-to-earth at all, wasn't as bright as she presumed she was, was inarticulate, and was one of the most airheaded people I've ever encountered in my life.
But perhaps the most important thing I learned from this experience is to have some humility and perspective about oneself. I found it sincerely unseemly and unsettling hearing her disparage other actresses who had comparable, or perhaps even better, careers than hers as if she were somehow superior to them. It was clear that her sense of her stature in show business was completely disproportionate to reality and that she was a very insecure individual. I am always mindful to never denigrate a peer or competitor in an effort to elevate myself the way she did about her peers. It's one thing to harbor such opinions personally, it's another thing entirely to actually express them in a tactless manner. I think my experience with this actress is one reason why, even though I have always had a great regard for people in the arts and the work that they do, I still hold them to the same standards as the rest of society and expect them to be held accountable for their actions and behavior. I sensed that this actress had a sense of entitlement about herself and my experience with her reminded me how nobody--not politicians, actors, or the wealthy--has a right to behave with an air of condescension or superiority. In that sense, I'm very grateful to have had the experience of dealing with her because, in spite of her, I inadvertently learned a great deal about human nature and how to conduct oneself with respect, dignity, and integrity.