My First Five Husbands (15 page)

The afternoon of November 22, 1963. The boss burst in and announced, “President Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas!” The entire company gave a joyous cheer. I sat stunned, noticing one dear older woman also sitting there in shock. I went to her desk and we touched hands as the others danced around the room, whistling exuberantly. Having witnessed the civil rights conflict since childhood, I knew that not everyone wanted to believe that all people are created equal. I was aware that not everyone was as inspired and filled with hope as I was when charismatic Kennedy beat out Nixon for the White House, but I would have expected this bigoted response from rednecks, not these Californians with whom I’d had lunch and played cards on breaks. For the first time, I realized what they really were.

A few weeks later, I got cast as the heroine’s sidekick in a television drama called
I Make a Circle, You Make a Circle
—a sizable part requiring a week’s work. Like most aspiring actors, I’d kept my showbiz ambitions a deep, dark secret from Upjohn, strictly under wraps, certain they would fire me if they knew about it. So I “got the flu” for a week, shot the TV show, then returned to typing out weekly reports and eating lunch with the hatemongers.

I was delighted when John and his cousin, Jay, invited me to share the rent on a big house in Studio City. Mark and I had a large, lovely bedroom, a small bedroom, and a bathroom to ourselves. Jay was very smart, and he and I played word games to our hearts’ content. I enrolled Mark in a little preschool, where the cost was figured according to one’s income. It wasn’t a very good curriculum and he was bored to tears, but for two dollars a day I couldn’t do any better.

“Mother,” Mark asked me one day later that summer, “do I have a father?”

“Of course, sweetheart, everyone has a father,” I replied.

He asked, “Where’s mine?”

The question broke my heart. He hadn’t seen Tom since that day in Pasadena when he was seventeen months old, so of course he didn’t remember. Did I owe it to Mark to try again? Might Tom have softened in the intervening years? I was terribly nervous about calling, but a mother lion will go to any lengths for her cub, and my cub needed me to do this.

“Hello, Tom. How are you?”

“Oh. Hi, babe.” Tom replied nonchalantly.

“Mark has been wanting to enroll in a five-day swimming class at the YMCA,” I forged ahead. “But the class is at nine, and I have to be at work at eight. I was thinking if you took him and then dropped him off at preschool…well, the class is only an hour, and he really wants to learn to swim.”

“Okay,” he said, to my relief, but then added, “As long as it’s only five days.”

So for five days I dropped Mark at Tom’s apartment before eight, and Tom took him to swim class at nine, then dropped him at the little preschool. Surely, Tom would quickly come to love this remarkable child, I thought. After the week was over, Mark could swim, but there was no follow-up from Tom. Mark never asked about his daddy again. He seemed mollified. Not me. In fact, I was angry.

“Maybe you could just help out with the cost of a better preschool,” I suggested.

“Sure, babe,” he said. “I’d like to. But I know I won’t unless you enforce it legally.”

“I could do that through a process server,” I said.

“Great,” he said. “Do that.” Then he deftly avoided the process server all three times required by law, and that was the end of that.

J
ohn had begun going out alone, all but ignoring me, so one night I stopped him at the door and asked, “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been thinking we should loosen the reins,” he said.

Keep your eyes on the highway, kids, in case of a crash landing.

John was shooting another picture—without me—and one night Jay offered to watch Mark so I could visit the set, just to be with people for a while. There was a smart, funny fellow from Chicago, Marty Schlar, also visiting the set, and we started chatting. He invited me to his apartment to have a bite to eat, and I accepted. No hanky-panky, we agreed. And we meant it. In his big one-room studio, we were sitting on the daybed enjoying food and conversation when we heard an odd scrambling on the roof. We looked up and saw a large figure spread-eagled on the skylight, spying down on us. John Patrick Hayes had followed me and managed to climb onto the roof. He was shouting something, but his words were garbled through the glass.

“John! Climb down and come in for something to eat,” Marty called to him, amused.

Moments later, in charged John, full of righteous Irish wrath.

“Rue! Come home. Now!” he demanded, and I followed him home, laughing all the way.

So let’s see…

I was rotting at Upjohn. Tom didn’t give a fig about Mark. John wanted me to loosen the reins, while keeping me haltered. A change was definitely in order, and like an angel from heaven, Mervyn Nelson came out from New York City to visit Theatre East.

“Rue, you’re one of the two or three best actresses in the business,” he told me, and I said, “Thank you!” but I was wondering,
Who are the two he considers better?
Maybe Kim Stanley and Geraldine Page, to whom I admittedly took a backseat—but not too far back.

“I’m directing an Off Broadway musical in October, and I want you to audition for the producers and conductor in September,” he said. “New York’s the place for you, Rue. You’re New York material.”

Well, hell, Mervyn, tell me something I don’t know.

“Do you think you could be happy in New York?” I asked Mark the next day. “With no yard to play in?”

“Sure, Mother, I’ll play inside,” he said with his heart-melting, matter-of-fact sweetness.

It didn’t take any more hippos to fall on me. The last week of July 1964, I gave Upjohn a week’s notice and gave Hollywood the finger.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
left everything in Los Angeles. My grandmother McClanahan’s quilts, my diaries, most of my clothes, my old car, and a whole lotta baggage, if you know what I mean. I dropped Mark off with my parents at the Dallas airport—almost more than I could bear—and met Melinda’s new baby, Mimi, who was even then a special sort of critter. My family, Lord bless them, didn’t raise an eyebrow over my move to New York. I guess they had gotten used to my behavior.

So New York City,
hyar ah come
!

With two hundred dollars saved from my job at Upjohn, plus two hundred my parents gave me, I had enough to make ends meet for six weeks. (That was 1964, remember. These days, you can hardly buy lunch for that kind of dough.) Mervyn offered me an army cot in the tiny office of his Manhattan apartment for a few weeks. No closet, so I lived out of my suitcases, sharing the apartment with Mervyn’s various male friends, who came and went at all hours, and a French Canadian traveling salesman, who occasionally bunked on the sofa. He asked me out, but
Mas, non!
I didn’t lay a hand on him. But
sacré bleu!
Was I lonesome. With a Capital Lone.

I knew only one or two people in New York, so I called the delightful Marian Hailey, who’d starred in that TV show I did while I was at Upjohn. She was busy, busy, busy with offers and agents and opportunities to which I had no access, subletting a gorgeous Central Park West apartment that belonged to the brilliant, aging movie actress Gladys Cooper.

“I’ll let you know if one of the other actresses staying here leaves,” Marian promised.

Meanwhile, I was stuck on the Army cot without even a Canadian to keep me warm.

And where was Mervyn? At the Paper Mill Playhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, doing the delicious
Bus Stop,
starring Johnny Ray, pop music’s heartthrob
du jour,
as Bo. Johnny Ray’s huge hit “Cry” was all the rage, so it was a big deal when Mervyn arranged for me to audition for the role of Cherie—a role I’d played, loved, and was dead right for—in Johnny Ray’s enormous living room. (Don’t conjure any visions of the so-called casting couch. Mervyn was present.) It was a fabulous apartment, with an electric movie screen that rolled down across the windows in the huge living room. I was wide-eyed and intimidated—until I read a few scenes with Mr. Ray. I knew Cherie inside and out and played her to the hilt, but dear Johnny didn’t cast me in the role. Mervyn later said it was probably because Johnny thought I would steal the show. (That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.)

When
Bus Stop
opened, I went to see it. Johnny Ray was bone skinny, wore a hearing aid, and had a speech impediment. To compensate, he spoke very loud and threw himself about the stage like a windmill. The actress playing Cherie was lost in the melee. Heck, the
furniture
was in peril! So while it had seemed at first like a grand opportunity, that job would’ve been a dead end. Not to mention hazardous. One of those major disappointments that faded into quiet little islands of “Oh, well…”

After all, nobody’s perfect for every role.

Except me, dammit!
I want to play every role!

All right, not
every
role. Not the woman in
Misery
. Or
Medea
. And not Lady Macbeth. I don’t want to play miserable, rotten—well, now, wait. I loved doing the rotten Miss Hannigan in
Annie
and miserable Madame Morrible in
Wicked
. So I guess I do want almost every role.

But I like the funny oddball characters best. Sort of like in life.

A
room became available in the apartment with Marian Hailey. A bed! A closet! For a week. Then Marian got a job out of town and gave up the sublet, so I and Marian’s roommate, Carol—a tall, buxom beauty of about twenty—had to look for our own digs. We sublet a place from another actress, Joan Darling, sharing the pull-out sofa in a tiny ground-floor studio. Enchanting! I was living in Greenwich Village! I walked down the sidewalk feeling like I owned the world. Carol and I peeked into Joan’s closet. She’d left behind chic winter outfits and boots she wouldn’t need in L.A. Oh, the temptation! She was a tiny thing, apparently, but one really chic black-and-white-checked ensemble fit me. I’m embarrassed to admit that I wore it out on the town a couple of times—with her black boots. Snazzy!

One brisk evening, Carol said, “I have a date tonight with a gorgeous stage manager, and we need a date for his friend. Would you be—”

“Yes!”
No arm-twisting needed.

These two fellows showed up at our apartment, and wowzie-wowwow. The stage manager, Oz, brought his funny, handsome actor pal Robert Guillaume, who’d recently done the musical
Kwamina
on Broadway (and later starred in his own TV series,
Benson
). Bob and I hit it off at once. Both men were black and slightly uncomfortable being out in public with us, even then, but we all went merrily off and had a wonderful evening. I was delighted when Bob called me a few days later. Carol and I had been displaced yet again, and Carol was moving in with Oz.

“I’m going to be out of town for a month,” Bob said. “You can stay at my place. Come on over and I’ll show it to you.”

Perfect! His apartment was attractively put together. So was he. We listened to the album of
Kwamina,
and I developed an instant crush on his beautiful tenor. Playing “Goldilocks,” we tried out the kitchen chairs. They were too small. We tried out the living room chairs. They were too large. Then we tried out the bed, and it was
juuust
right. I’d give that bed an A.

Bob departed and I moved in, playing
Kwamina
every night, kvelling over his voice.

Oh, yeah. I had a crush.

My first job in New York was Mervyn’s
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
. I had to audition four times, singing, then dancing, then reading, for the writers, for the conductor, for the choreographer, for the producers, for the mice in the corner—and, of course, for Mervyn. At my first audition, I waited in the wings, listening to a gloriously soaring soprano on stage.
Oh, Lord!
I thought.
I have to follow THAT?
As the owner of the golden lungs came off, I told her, “Wow! You sounded absolutely marvelous!”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Loretta Rehnolds. Everybody calls me Lette.”

“I’m Rue McClanahan. Nice to meet you.”

“God, your hair is so thick,” she said. “I’ve got this mosquito fuzz, so I’m acutely aware of anyone with good hair.”

“Oh, yeah, my coarse Indian mane.” I shrugged self-consciously. “Like a horse’s tail.”

I hadn’t yet learned to take a compliment gracefully.

For my singing audition, I’d picked “Shy” from
Once Upon a Mattress,
the show that brought Carol Burnett fame, a song effective for loud if untrained voices. Lette and I made it through all four auditions, were cast in the show, and spent the next fifteen weeks rehearsing, then performing, sharing a dressing room with two other supporting actresses. Lette had been hired for the heavy singing chores and to play the ditzy role of Ruthie. I was playing the equally ditzy Hazel and understudying the starring role of Willa Da Wisp. I got the brainstorm to play Hazel with a lisp, announcing at my entrance, “Hi, my name ith Haythel.”

PHOTO INSERT 1

Melinda and me in our blue corduroy frocks made by Grandma Fannie, with Mother. Melinda hates this picture of herself. I think she’s precious.

My dad, Bill, when he met Mother. Woof!

Thomas Lloyd Bish, twenty-three years old.