Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life (2 page)

On Sundays, my father would waylay his drinking until the afternoon. In the morning he would, without fail, drop me off at church to attend Sunday school. I learned all of my Bible stories. I loved the powerful images and escaped into them. Jesus and Moses and the great people of the Bible. I believed in Jesus and all the miracles, and for that hour in Sunday school, I was safe. I attended many churches—Church of Christ, Baptist Church, Presbyterian Church, United Church of Christ, and Calvary Church. I attended them all! At one point my father even allowed my grandmother to start taking me to the Roman Catholic Church in Dallas where we heard the Mass in Latin. If it was Sunday, I was in church. I even won a Bible for perfect attendance at a tent revival. This was my first stage appearance so I remember it well.

When the preacher called me up to accept my Bible, I was terrified.

“Cynthia, would you like to say a few words to the congregation?” He held the microphone to my mouth.

Trembling, I could only manage one word. “No!” I was presented my Bible and traveled back down the aisle, people reaching out to pat me on the head.

I was ten when my mother and father announced we were moving back to California. My grandmother would be going with us. Her brother, Joe, had moved with his family to California two years previously and opened a shoe repair store. By then Mama Helen had passed away. The only ones attending her funeral were my grandmother, my mother, my father, my sister, and me.

We drove cross-country caravan style. Naturally, I rode with my father in the truck while my mother, sister, and grandmother followed us in a ’56 Chevy. The trip turned out to be an unexpected pleasure because my father stayed sober the entire way. At first we lived in an apartment in Santa Monica. It was damp and cold compared to the heat we had “battled” in Texas, as my mother would say. In a month my parents found a small house back in The Valley to buy. My mother immediately got a job working at a restaurant at the Van Nuys airport. My father was hired at an electronic manufacturing company, and my grandmother retired to the back bedroom in the new little house, where she returned to watching her soap operas and wrestling matches. We lived in a traditional American neighborhood with friendly people and orderly sidewalks lined with plum trees. I loved it except that my mother continued to opt for a nighttime shift at the restaurant, which allowed my father free rein to resume his all-night drinking. This was my normal.

We had a fenced-in backyard and a large garage. Here I began putting on shows, writing and directing sketches, enlisting my sister to costar with me. We packed them in! Neighbor kids came in droves, sometimes bringing their dogs. Everyone sat on old chairs and trunks that I had fashioned into makeshift stadium seating. We became a big hit in the neighborhood! Around this same time, my mother and father found a new church for me and my sister, Carol, to attend—the First Methodist Church of Reseda. I joined the Methodist Youth Fellowship. The MYF, among other things, helped to sponsor the church’s ice-cream social. This particular year, they wanted to put on a talent show. With the vast experience I had garnered from our stupendous garage productions, I volunteered. I poured my soul into the show—writing, casting, directing, and, of course, acting. I wrote a Soupy Sales parody, which was a real crowd-pleaser. We sold out both performances at fifty cents a ticket. When church camp rolled around, they asked me to help out with that talent show, too. It was so encouraging.

High school was a game-changer for me. First of all, I made a great friend—Lorie Gorenbein. She was very bright, with a wicked sense of humor. We were each other’s confidante, as girls will be. She was strong in ways I was weak and vice versa. We each had mothers who were strict about our sugar intake and eating habits, but in different ways. Where my mother’s kitchen was stocked with Brewer’s yeast, alfalfa sprouts, unpasteurized milk, and bran, Lorie’s mother, Natalie, kept her refrigerator filled with actual edible foods like bagels and cream cheese. What neither of them knew was that we would sneak off on Saturdays and go to the local McDonald’s. We’d each buy a bagful of twenty-two-cent cheeseburgers and twelve-cent fries. Then we’d mosey over to June Ellen’s Doughnuts, which was right across from the high school, and buy three doughnuts each! Then we’d swing by the Orange Julius for a beverage. We’d take it all back to her house, hide in her bedroom, and eat really fast, praying we wouldn’t get caught. My sister once warned us to watch out, because one day we’d wake up and be blimps! But that junk food was no match for our teenage metabolisms.

Lorie and I were involved in high school politics. I was voted in as the Girls’ League vice president and she was voted in as the Girls’ League social director. Girls’ League was a school organization that handled functions such as dances, homecoming, fundraisers, and dress board. Female students who had been ticketed for dress-code violations such as skirt above the knees, improper grooming, or inappropriate hairstyle (too much ratting) were called before the dress board. These girls would then be chastised for heinous fashion infractions that if left unchecked would surely lead to a life of crime and degradation. As Girls’ League vice president, I had the dubious honor of conducting this crucible. Anyone with three tickets was automatically suspended. One of my jobs was also to collect the tickets and deposit them in a box in the Girls’ vice principal’s office for her to review.

These “tainted” girls were instructed to come to the auditorium at lunchtime on Wednesdays and stand before the board for questioning. The first time I conducted this meeting I was upset to see some members of the board eating their lunch while our quarry stood before us. I thought it was rude and asked them to stop. Some became indignant and wanted to know just when they were supposed to have their lunch. I said I didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t until after we finished with dress board. I must confess I didn’t really care about eating my lunch, since my mother had recently discovered alfalfa sprouts and was now including large handfuls in my warm and wet tuna salad sandwiches.

See, here’s the thing. Each week the same girls were called in. Girls who didn’t come from a family that had the kind of money to afford matching sweater-sets. They came from homes filled with financial and emotional strife, or worse. You could see it in the way they cast their eyes down in embarrassment and humiliation, or clinched their thumb in the palm of their hand for something to hold onto. This group of girls just couldn’t see past their own lunch to observe the trauma they were inflicting. My friend Lorie felt the same way, and this is why instead of taking over the tickets to the Girls’ vice principal’s office, we deep-sixed them in a trash can behind the auditorium. But the thought did cross my mind about getting caught or called into the vice principal’s office to be asked why she hadn’t received any tickets.

Lorie even said, “Cin, what if we get caught?”

I told her, “If that time ever comes, we’ll think of something.”

We didn’t have to wait long. That time came swiftly one day, marching down the hall behind us.

“Miss Gorenbien! Miss Williams!” It was the dreaded Girls’ vice principal.

“I need to speak with both of you!”

Lorie and I could not slow down. We could not allow her to catch up with us until we rearranged our skirts to fall below our knees. We did this by unrolling them at the waistband. We made it by the skin of our teeth before she swept in.

Putting an arm around each of our shoulders and squeezing tight, she said, “Girls! I’ve been meaning to call you into the office.” Even with the Girls’ vice principal between us, I could practically hear Lorie’s heart pounding. “I have to let you both know how proud I am of the work the Girls’ League has been doing this semester. Our dress code campaign has paid off! I haven’t received one violation ticket. Good work!”

We sputtered out our thank-yous as she traveled on down the hall. That night we went to McDonald’s and Orange Julius celebrate. (June Ellen’s Donuts was closed.)

Along with Girls’ League, I tried out for many school activities. The swim team—didn’t make it. The cheerleading squad—didn’t make it. But then one illustrious day, auditions were held for the school talent show, so I tried out by performing a Bob Newhart routine, “The Driving Instructor.” Not only did I make it into the talent show, but the drama teacher, Mr. Kulp, asked me to take Play Production. He said if I had an elective open, he would skip me past Drama I and put me into Drama II and Play Production. (Thank you, Bob Newhart!) The Play Production class was filled with people who were different from the rest of the student body. There was a kind of electric camaraderie. We performed
Our Town
,
The Man Who Came to Dinner
,
The Bald Soprano
,
The Madwoman of Chaillot
, and
The Diary of Anne Frank
. Mr. Kulp was a formidable director who expected discipline and excellence.

In the class was a girl named Sally Field. I was in awe of her. Even at fifteen she was a great actress. When we would perform plays, she would be in the “A” cast. I would be in the “B” cast. She was head cheerleader. I had sprained my ankle on the down-beat of my routine. I did, however, make it to the drill team. She soon left school to play
Gidget
and then
The Flying Nun.
Sally was going to be on television. How exciting! For as much as I loved acting, I didn’t dare consider it as a potential career. So I started thinking about becoming a registered nurse. More specifically, an ER nurse. I loved the idea of helping people in crisis, tending to them, comforting and reassuring them. Not to mention the drama of the PA system calling “Nurse Williams, you’re wanted in Emergency.” There were two small problems. One, I could only manage to get a C in Mrs. Katzman’s physiology class and that was after repeating it in summer school. Who would want to be tended to by a nurse with a C in physiology? And the second problem was blood! When I saw it, I passed out! My nursing career became a fading dream.

My grandmother had been suffering from heart problems, and one day took a turn for the worse and was rushed to the hospital where she passed away. When my mother came home early the next morning and broke the news to us, I asked her if Grandma had suffered. She said, “It was the strangest thing. I woke up in the night and found her awake, praying. I could tell she was weak. I asked her ‘Mama, are you afraid?’ She had a big smile on her face, her eyes were bright and clear like a twelve-year-old and she said ‘No, Frances, I’m not afraid’ and a few minutes later she was gone. Oh, Cindy, it was peaceful! I hope I go that way.”

And even at the age of sixteen, I thought “Me too!”

By the time high school graduation rolled around, I knew I had no chance of scoring high enough on the SAT to get into a university. And even if I had, I knew I would never be able to afford it unless I got a scholarship. With my grade average being a C+ that was never going to be the case. In the end, fate drove me. I found the Los Angeles City College Theatre Arts Department. Friends in my high school drama class had mentioned it, and a few were going to enroll. And that’s what I decided to do, too. My father was absolutely against it. He did not want me to move out of the house. My mother tried to talk me into taking a secretarial course. Even if I had decided to do this instead, I knew it would be futile because I had taken typing in high school and could do no better than thirty-two words a minute with three mistakes. No, I had no future and no business being a secretary. My mother finally relented and they paid the minimum enrollment fees, plus $40 monthly rent for a room in a house across the street from the college, and $10 a week living expenses. I had very little money and no car, but still I was thrilled to be out of the house and enrolled in Theatre Arts.

On the first day of college, those enrolled in the Theatre Arts department were gathered for orientation. Jerry Blunt, head of the department, addressed us. He told us that out of the 308 enrolled for the two-and-a-half-year program, only twelve would make it through to the end. That’s how serious this theater arts program was. I was excited about the challenge. I looked around the assembly hall wondering who these twelve people would be, and hoped I stood a chance.

We hit the ground running. The required courses were Beginning Acting with a scene prepared each week. We had to take Costuming or Shop. I chose Costuming. A Dialect class, a History of the World Theatre class, and Stage Movement were all required. We had to maintain excellence and discipline. Three tardy marks and we were out of the program. It was rigorous. But I loved every single moment of it. I had found my niche; I was like a duck to water. I was exhausted and inspired all at the same time.

In my Beginning Acting class I met a fellow student named Lynne Stewart. She was so talented and had a phenomenal sense of humor. We were partners on our first scene assignment and had to write and perform a three-minute pantomime. Lynne and I wrote about two women sitting on a park bench, sharing a box of popcorn, people watching, then getting very competitive over a handsome guy walking by. We got an A! We also got a few laughs! Lynne and I became best friends and have been ever since. She would go on to play Miss Yvonne on
Pee Wee’s Playhouse
, and years later we would marvel over the fact that dolls had been made in the likeness of the characters we had played—Miss Yvonne and Shirley Feeney.

When it came time to buy books for courses, I had to ask my mother for the money. My mother could not grasp this concept.

“Why is there a charge for schoolbooks? Schoolbooks are given out freely by the school.”

I tried to explain that it is different in college; you have to buy your own books. My mother’s response was, “Well then, you’re going to have to get a job and pay for your books yourself, because I don’t have any more money to give you.”

I went to the Financial Aid office to apply for a small loan, but was turned down because ironically my parents’ combined income was a little too much for me to qualify. So I did as my mother said and got a job working in downtown Los Angeles. I had to leave school after my eleven o’clock class each day to catch the bus to Union Street where I worked for a law firm as a relief PBX operator. When the receptionist took lunch, I worked the switchboard. Also part of my job was closing files of cases that the firm had completed. I was good at the PBX part but lost when it came to closing what were referred to as “dead files.” I would do some artful maneuvering on my desk so that the stack of files would appear to have dwindled. (They were in my bottom desk drawer!) I told myself I’d get to them tomorrow. (I felt very guilty.) I managed to keep this job through the first semester. However, because of bus fare and other expenses I hadn’t counted on, I was never able to save enough money to buy my books. When I needed to study from a particular textbook, I would borrow them from Lynne. If I needed to study for a play, I checked them out of the campus library. And I managed. I was never late for class. I always had my scene work prepared, and by the second semester I started a new job near the school at the International House of Pancakes on Vermont and Santa Monica.