Marlene (37 page)

I have a sad memory of Poland when we were there in midwinter. The theaters were beautiful, but so many traces of war still remained—destroyed cities, desolation everywhere …

In Warsaw, we stayed in the only hotel still standing. Dressing rooms were prepared for us in each theater where we performed, so that we could change. It was bitterly cold, but the Poles were anything but. They loved our performances.

When I came out of my room, women were kneeling on the floor, kissing my hands, as well as my face. They said that they knew that I had fought on their side during the Hitler era and told me that even the prisoners in the concentration camps knew of my commitment, and that it had given them new hope. They so overwhelmed me with their memories and their kisses that I was moved to tears.

I visited the Memorial of the Warsaw Uprising and wept again. I had been full of hatred for so many years, and now, standing on the site of the former ghetto, I felt this hatred plunging the rest of the world into darkness. It brought a lump to my throat, and I felt the weight of guilt for the whole German nation more than I had during the Nazi rule, which had driven me from my homeland.

As for Burt Bacharach, when he became famous, he could no longer accompany me on tour around the world. I understood that very well and have never reproached him in any way.

From that fateful day on, I have worked like a robot, trying to recapture the wonderful woman he helped make out of me. I even succeeded in this effort for years, because I always thought of him, always longed for him, always looked for him in the wings, and always fought against self-pity. Whenever he had the time, he still worked on the arrangements for my songs, but as director and pianist, he had become so indispensible to me that, without him, I no longer took much joy in singing.

When he left me, I felt like giving everything up. I had lost my director, my support, my teacher, my maestro. I was not bitter, nor am I today, but I was wounded. I don't think he was ever aware
of how much I needed him. He was too modest for that. Our separation broke my heart; I can only hope that he didn't feel the same way. We were like a true small family, when we traveled together, and laughed at everything together. He misses that, perhaps.

Now, I again traveled alone and revisited the countries in which I had lived. I've often sung in Paris at the Olympia and at the Espace Pierre Cardin, where I received such a royal reception that I immediately signed for a second engagement. Under these circumstances, I could scarcely refuse! Of course, I have loved Paris for a long time, but I also loved Cardin, his organizational talent, and his generosity. He took good care of the people who worked for him.

In 1961, the director, Stanley Kramer, came to Las Vegas and asked me to play in
Judgment at Nuremberg.
After that film I never again set foot in a film studio. Since Hollywood thought I would dominate the whole film, I didn't have an evenly matched partner. The fact that Spencer Tracy's name was on the film credits certainly influenced my decision to take the role. At that time he was in poor health, and his working hours were adjusted to accommodate this—mornings between ten and twelve, and afternoons between two and three.

Spencer Tracy was a very lonely man, or so he seemed to me. I don't understand how a man can feel lonely when he shared such love and friendship with Katharine Hepburn, but … Perhaps he drew his strength from solitude. He was the consummate loner, long before this type became fashionable.

I can no more judge
Judgment at Nuremberg
today than I could when it was being filmed. But if the film was successful to some extent, it was due to Tracy. He was a stamp testifying to quality. A wonderful man, Spencer Tracy was a wonderful actor as well.

Undoubtedly he was a man who had suffered very much, and death must have been a relief for him. He deserved a more
pleasant life, but egocentrics often do not have simple lives. And nobody was more egocentric than Spencer Tracy.

He terrified me. Compared to other men I have known, he had a very mordant sense of humor. With just a look or a single word, he could mortally wound one! I loved him for this reason, and because he knew how to command. He refused to stick to the studio's working hours. He worked when he pleased, and everyone—including me—waited patiently for the prescribed time like race horses at the starting gate. I found that he was perfectly right to claim that privilege. So I never raised an objection.

We performed together in a good scene, though it was not written with great skill, which revolved around a cup of coffee. I trembled when I had to speak my line, tense with fear that I might not get the right tone and the audience might laugh at the wrong time. But Tracy made the matter easier for us.

So, after
Judgment at Nuremberg,
I no longer wanted to do a film.

I was so busy with my career as a singer and with my commitments all over the world. But, above all, I hated the restrictions during the shooting of a film. I preferred the stage by far. The freedom to express yourself as you please, no cameras, no directors constantly looking over your shoulder. And, above all, no producers. In a word, I loved the stage, and I've been loyal to it.

A further advantage of the stage over movies—at least in my eyes! I come on without disguise or false appearance. I don't have to play a “woman of easy virtue,” and for a long time this was my role on the screen. I alone choose my songs and sing what the words suggest to me.

When I told Gilbert Becaud that I would like to sing, “Marie-Marie,” he looked at me and laughed. “That's a song for a man,” he said. “It wouldn't be the first time that I sang a ‘man's song,' ” I replied. Despite my answer, he wasn't really convinced that my idea was a good one, but he allowed me to include “Marie-Marie” in my repertoire.

When I visited him with Burt Bacharach, and he heard the band with Burt's arrangement, there were tears in his eyes. I sing
this song in French, German, and English. It's one of my favorites. In advance, I explain, in the language of the country, that it's about a prisoner who writes to his girl. Then, everything is clear.

If I sing a lot of “men's songs,” it's because the lyrics are more meaningful and dramatic than in songs written for women. Naturally, there are also “unisex” songs! But I sing “Makin' Whoopee,” for example, only in tails. It would be unsuitable to wear a dress and sing that song. The same goes for “Let's Take It Nice and Easy.” A splendid song for a man—but not wholly suited for a woman. Oddly, certain words sound out of place in a woman's mouth, but witty coming from a man.

When I give a performance without this quick-as-lightning change of costumes (my record time is thirty-two seconds), I have to give up some of the most beautiful songs in my repertoire. But to put on a tuxedo while the audience waits, and then run to the end of the stage and make a surprise entrance from the other side requires a lot of work and the help of experienced dressers. And this was not always possible, since in some theaters, the backstage area was too small to permit this kind of acrobatic change of costume.

Nonetheless, the performances I gave in women's costumes were also effective. I sang many simple sentimental songs, and these went over well.

I'm not a “mike eater,” as opposed to most other variety singers, some of whom actually hide behind the microphone. The position of the mike stand is always carefully laid out. I check it before every performance to determine the distance and height are correct in relation to my face. Each time I take the microphone in my hand and walk around the stage, I always hold it rather low to make sure that it doesn't hide my face.

There's a French song that I especially love, and that I always sang standing near the piano, holding the microphone in my hand: “Je tire ma reverence.” It's an old song that made a name for Jean Sablon. In America, where audiences supposedly don't care for this kind of song, people listened to it in rapt silence. I didn't translate the words but simply went with the original lyrics, and merely announced: “And now a farewell song.”

For a while, I left the true paradise the concert stage meant to me, since I had finally let myself be persuaded to make a TV special for an American producer and the firm that was financing my stage show.

All my wishes—all my technical requirements—were met. The production company was able to obtain a theater in London. It was still in the process of construction, but I liked it and preferred it to a New York studio.

Since I've always loved British audiences, and they seem to like me as well, I thought the mutual enthusiasm would carry over on TV.

But I didn't know that the law prohibited the filming or photographing of a paying audience. The audience must be “invited.” So hundreds of admission tickets were distributed to the employees of different firms, who hadn't the slightest interest in my recital. And this was the audience before which I had to perform. Cameras had been set up in the auditorium to film the audience, which apparently was not displeased; women straightened their husbands' ties when they noticed the cameras were on them, and they touched up their hairdos to make the best impression.

In addition, I had my own difficulties on the stage. The orchestra and the conductor, Stan Freeman, who normally were behind me on the stage, were put backstage, so that we were no longer in close communication. Against his will, Stan had to wear earphones to hear me properly—he couldn't see me. Being a polite gentleman, he made no objections—unfortunately I didn't either. “Don't make waves,” I had told myself.

I sang my songs in all the languages I knew, without pause. I tried only to salvage what was salvageable. Not that American television has such high standards. Generally, it's the worst. But that wasn't my problem. I just wanted to give a performance as good as those I had given on Broadway and all over the world. In vain. But it wasn't my fault alone. I do have a deeply ingrained
sense of fairness, and I put the blame where it belongs. I also assume responsibility for my part.

I've never forgotten that show. They'll probably rebroadcast it again after my death. Prospects of a great success!

In all the years that I've performed on the stage as a singer, I've never cancelled any performance—no sore throat, no illness, no excuses. I was always there one or two hours before the performance. Until that disastrous evening, when I tripped over a cable backstage, and broke my thigh bone. That happened in Sydney, in 1976, in the last week of my Australian tour. I leaned on my producer's shoulder, and he helped me to my dressing room. He cancelled the performance. I managed to make it to my hotel room, and waited until the next morning when the X rays could be taken. Incorrigible optimist that I was, I didn't want to believe that I was seriously injured.

After an anxious night, I learned the next day that I had broken my left femur. After my leg was placed in a cast, I was flown to California to the hospital of UCLA. Since my husband was in California at the time, I wanted to see him. From there, I was shipped to New York. I say “shipped” because that's what it was. I lay on a stretcher, I could hardly move, and felt like a piece of furniture. But the shipping costs were considerably higher. Contrary to what has been reported in the press and in certain books, I did not undergo a hip operation. I was put into traction. A piece of metal was screwed into the bone just below the knee, and heavy weights were tied to the metal, with a rope hanging over both sides of the leg. This is what they call “traction.” It's hellish! You lie on your back, condemned to immobility, and at the mercy of the nurses—some of whom you have to pay off—in addition to the astronomical cost of a shabby room in a New York hospital.

I'm sure that some hospitals are cleaner than others. But the one to which I was taken was so filthy that, due to my condition, I had to ask my really good friends to come clean my room.

The food was atrocious, I worried about patients who didn't have any family or friends in New York, and who had to eat what
they were served: chunks of indigestible, half-frozen food that was all the same but given a different name each meal.

The patients around me, who were just as hungry as I was, all told the same stories. They sent me a few messages through the nurses, some of whom came from the Philippines and were quite charming. They really took care of us, as opposed to the Americans, who were utterly indifferent to their jobs and were keen on only two things: their “rights” and their salary. I spent several months in this hospital.

When the doctors decided to remove the traction, they put me in a cast that extended from my thorax to my injured leg. I spent the end of the year in this place, neglected by nurses who had no time for me. I used to wonder how sick people adjusted to Christmas and New Year's.

I had to do exercises every day with my healthy leg. The “therapist”—a girl so young, I wondered how she could have had time to receive her training and diploma—came every day. But on holidays she disappeared.

It was a terrible time, but it was my own fault! I should have put up a fuss, or stayed in Australia with the remarkable Dr. Roarty and the caring nurses. But I wanted to be close to my family and had insisted on leaving Australia.

That was a mistake, I realized later. But it wasn't the first mistake I made. I remember a guest performance in Washington, when my director, Stan Freeman, had to pull me out of the orchestra pit. This fall had caused no fractures, but half of my leg was torn. It was the first of a long series of accidents. I was alone in Washington, misjudged the severity of my injury, and waited twelve hours before calling a doctor who didn't help me. Why didn't I go to Walter Reed Hospital, where I would have been accepted, without question, as a veteran? A riddle! …

I continued my tour through other American cities and through Canada. My leg was bandaged, but the wound refused to heal despite daily treatment. When I sang in Dallas, I phoned my friend, Dr. Michael De Bakey and asked if I could see him on Sunday, my day off. I was in Houston on the next Sunday morning. Dr. De Bakey was waiting for me at the door to his clinic.