Shirley Jones (14 page)

Marian, a truly liberated woman, was stern, determined, but a romantic who, in the end, jettisons all her principles and falls deeply in love with Hill. The part was wonderful, and I had no intention of losing it. Besides, Jack and I badly needed the salary I’d be paid to star in
The Music Man
.

Initially, Jack L. Warner, the head of Warner Bros., decreed that Frank Sinatra should play Professor Harold Hill, but—in an exquisite irony, given Sinatra’s past history in walking off
Carousel
—Meredith Willson, who created
The Music Man
and composed the score, decreed that unless Warner Bros. cast Robert Preston, who had played Professor Harold Hill on Broadway for two years to great acclaim and won a Tony for his bravura performance, there would be no movie.

Naturally, the autocratic Jack L. Warner—who firmly believed that Sinatra was a more bankable star than Preston—was determined to stick to his guns. To mollify Meredith Willson somewhat, Warner tried a different tack by approaching another major box-office star, Cary Grant, and inviting him to play Hill. Cary, to do him credit, disagreed, and informed Warner that no one other than Robert Preston should play Hill. Warner capitulated, and Preston won the part he had deserved all along.

A stellar cast was assembled, from eccentric British actress Hermione Gingold, who was cast as Eulalie Shinn, the wife of the irascible mayor, played by Paul Ford, to a young Ron Howard, who was cast as my little brother, Winthrop Paroo.

At first, I was slightly nervous about working with Robert Preston in
The Music Man
, as he’d been doing the show on Broadway for two years, with Barbara Cook as Marian. I was worried that he might cite Barbara and her brilliant performance in the show all the time: “But Barbara did this scene like that . . .,” and so on. But Bob was so great, so bighearted, that he never once mentioned the Broadway show or Barbara Cook to me. And his performance as Professor Harold Hill was consistently fresh and new.

Before we began, I started working on the dance numbers with
The Music Man
’s distinguished choreographer, Onna White.

Aware of her reputation and her talent, I came clean immediately: “I just have to tell you that I’m truly not a dancer.”

She replied, “Honey, by the time we finish this movie, you are going to be the best damn dancer around.”

One of the great joys of working on
The Music Man
was acting with seven-year-old Ronny Howard. He was shy and his father was always on the set, but Ronny was already a pro. He assumed the lisp manifested by his character, Winthrop, without the slightest problem and always knew his lines word perfect. He was adorable.

However, British actress Hermione Gingold, who made her Hollywood mark in
Gigi
, was not particularly pleasant to work with. She was aloof and spent most of the breaks in shooting sitting all by herself on the side of the set, ignoring everyone else. She didn’t bother to get to know me at all, so that was that.

Some of the scenes were shot in Mason City, Iowa, which was Meredith Willson’s hometown, on which he had based the fictional River City.

While filming, I made the shocking discovery that I was pregnant. For a while, I kept it a secret, in case the producers discovered it and fired me on the spot. Jack was out of work, and Marian the librarian was such a terrific part that I decided to hope for the best. Then, one day I realized that my pregnancy was becoming startlingly obvious. Shaun had been a ten-pound baby, and Patrick was clearly going to be the same. There was no way of hiding my pregnancy anymore.

So I invited Morton DaCosta, the director and producer of the movie, to have lunch with me. Morton had also produced and directed the movie
Auntie Mame
, with Rosalind Russell, and he went on to direct Jack and me in
Maggie Flynn
on Broadway. I told him the truth, knowing that too many of my scenes were already in the can for him to fire me from the movie.

When I gave him my news, Morton gulped, then decided that all would not be lost. From then on, he decreed, I was to be shot only from the waist up. I would also thenceforth be wearing a corset, and, if necessary, extra panels would be added to my dress so as to disguise my condition.

The costume department laced me up in tight corsets, tighter and tighter by the day, and the camera crew did shoot me from above the waist only, but that still didn’t prevent my pregnancy from being an enormous problem when we were shooting the last scenes of the movie.

Robert Preston and I were standing on the footbridge, shooting the most romantic scene in
The Music Man
, in which he sang “Till There Was You” to me, and he was holding me extremely tight against his chest. As he kissed me passionately—the only kiss that took place between us during the movie—his eyes were closed. All of a sudden, the baby in my stomach gave an almighty kick!

Bob practically passed out in shock. Then he straightened up and gave me a quizzical look.

“That was Patrick Cassidy,” I said by way of explanation, as I had already been told that my baby was a boy, and we had decided to call him Patrick, a lovely Irish name.

Years later, long after I made
The Music Man
, I assumed that Bob had recovered from being kicked in the stomach by my unborn child. He was appearing on Broadway, and Patrick, who had always been a great fan of his, went to see him.

After the show, Patick went backstage and was escorted to Bob’s dressing room. He held his hand out to Bob. “My name is Patrick Cassidy.”

Robert Preston took three steps back. “Oh, no! We’ve already met.”

Then he gave a big smile, and all was forgotten.

I was now an Academy Award winner for
Elmer Gantry
, and the star of one of the last blockbuster Hollywood musicals,
The Music Man
. While money wasn’t exactly pouring in, by rights it shouldn’t have been a problem.

But as always, Jack spent money as if it were going out of style. He decided, out of the blue, to remodel our house. As I said before, he was a talented interior designer and brilliant at designing and finishing furniture. So I kept silent while he built a workshop behind the house and started to design and build a sunroom, complete with barbecue and a poolroom.

In some ways, I was thankful that Jack was only remodeling the house, not insisting that we sell it and buy another one. His biggest dream was always to buy a farm in Vermont, perhaps as a second home, and I dreaded the day when he declared the time was ripe for us to start hunting for it. So I concluded that the workshop was a small mercy, although we couldn’t afford it. Despite the fact that we often didn’t have enough money to pay the bills, I continued to watch in silence as day after day the machinery Jack persisted in ordering was delivered, along with expensive furniture and antiques. If I ventured to broach the sore subject of our finances, he simply tuned me out. He didn’t want to hear about it. You could say that both of us were adept at playing the same game: he didn’t want to hear about my money worries, and I definitely didn’t want to hear about his infidelities.

Until I made
Two Rode Together
in 1961 with Richard Widmark, the thought that I might retaliate for Jack’s infidelity and have an affair myself never once occurred to me.

Sex was the furthest thing from my mind when I met the movie’s director, John Ford, who was to win the distinction of becoming my all-time most unfavorite director, although I did admire his work on such movies as
Stagecoach
.

Before I met John Ford, I’d already heard through the grapevine that he wasn’t a woman’s director and that he believed women belonged in bed, that being their only value.

Apart from Ford’s attitude toward women, the story of
Two Rode Together
wasn’t particularly inspiring, and John Ford knew it, which didn’t add to his mood during the shoot. The plot revolved round Jimmy Stewart, who played the partner in a saloon, and Richard Widmark, an army lieutenant who was helping my character (who went by the name of Marty Purcell) to find her younger brother, who had been kidnapped by Comanches.

The first day when I showed up on the set for
Two Rode Together
, in Brackettville, Texas, I discovered that my part was being totally rewritten, although it was just hours before the cameras were to start rolling.

Before we started shooting, I tentatively approached John Ford and asked him how he wanted me to wear my hair, and he just growled, “Do whatever you like, but just do it.” He didn’t give me any direction throughout the entire picture, and I thanked my lucky stars that I was working with Richard Widmark, who was kind and helpful to me, and a good actor, as his performances in
The Alamo
and
Judgment at Nuremberg
attest.

Aside from John Ford’s marked lack of concern for me and the part I was playing, I was utterly thrown by the long white handkerchief that he had permanently hanging out of the corner of his mouth, as if he were chewing a straw or something. If ever he deigned to give one of us a direction, he’d yank the handkerchief out of his mouth, yell out a few instructions, then shove it back into his mouth again. By the end of the day, he had chewed it to shreds.

The first time I saw Ford chewing his handkerchief, I mouthed my shock at Richard Widmark. He shook his head, then leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “Just don’t ask him, Shirley, don’t ask him!”

So I bit my tongue and said nothing.

Thankfully, John Ford’s lack of connection with me didn’t mean that the shooting of
Two Rode Together
was to be wholeheartedly unpleasant for me. I was thrilled to be cast in this movie with Jimmy Stewart, as he was a good friend who was born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, close to my hometown, Smithton.

From the first scenes, Jimmy was as helpful to me as he could be. Later on, when we worked together in
The Cheyenne Social Club
, for the only time in my career I dried up. Jimmy said, in his Jimmy Stewart style, “W-w-well, don’t worry, Shirley, j-just say whatever comes into your head, and it will be p-p-perfect for the scene.” I did, and he was right.

Jimmy Stewart was as endearingly funny and charming offscreen as he was on. In particular, he told me an adorable story about the birth of his twins, whom he worshipped at first sight.

Thrilled and excited to bring them home with his wife from the hospital, he raced there in his car, narrowly escaping a speeding fine from a watchful traffic warden. Arriving in front of the hospital, out of breath and overwhelmed, he parked his car and ran upstairs to his wife and the babies.

Jimmy wheeled his wife down to the lobby in a wheelchair and left her there, the twins in her arms, cooing happily. Then he went out to the car and promptly drove straight home, without them! He was so absentminded he had simply forgotten all about them!

His long-suffering wife later confided in me that this story was not an isolated incident. To describe Jimmy Stewart as befuddled and absentminded, it seemed, was the understatement of the year.

That first day on location for
Two Rode Together
, during a break in shooting Richard Widmark came over to me again, clearly feeling sorry for me because it was so obvious that John Ford had snubbed me. I didn’t take it personally, though, as I knew how John felt about women in general.

Besides, I had two-year-old Shaun with me on location (along with his nanny), and that made me happy.

As shooting progressed, Richard Widmark made me happier still.

It all started out because Richard, who was then in his forties and was married to a playwright, had a car at his disposal while we were shooting the movie. So when we had some time off, he offered to show me the countryside. To my delight, I discovered that he loved nature as much as I did, and that he understood that I wasn’t this sophisticated, dedicated actress, but was natural and adored the country.

So we’d set off in Richard’s gray Ford and he would talk to me about the beauty of the country as we drove, rather like my father once had all those years ago when he drove me to Pittsburgh for my weekly singing lessons.

Soon, Richard stopped the car in a clearing and started kissing and hugging and touching me. Then he pulled away from me and said, “Don’t worry, we are both married, and I’m not going to take advantage of you. You’re twenty years younger than I am, you’ve got children, and I really care about you. But under different circumstances . . .”

We kissed again, then and often, in Richard’s car, during our long country drives, and in his trailer, between shots. But I never went all the way with Richard. Despite Jack’s infidelities, I still loved him, and I wanted to be true to my marriage vows. Richard understood.

On my seventieth birthday, Marty arranged for many of the stars with whom I’d worked to each create a congratulatory video message for me. So there was Richard Widmark, up on the screen, larger-than-life, giving me birthday wishes after all those years.