I’m Over All That Read Free Page B

a one-woman search party looking for a glimpse of who the man I loved at the time really was. They certainly didn’t know any more about themselves than I did. They avoided their own search by becoming other men on the screen. I, in turn, avoided mine by searching for them in lieu of myself. Therefore, I never really took acting all that seriously. I acted when the director yelled “Action.” In those early days of my career, I never thought much about the script or the part I was playing. I just did it when I did it. But the search for who someone else really was became a never-ending pleasure and pursuit for me. In a way, acting was a means for me to explore other people.
    Later, when I worked with Yves Montand, I became fascinated with the intellectual art of singing and acting. He had just come off a love affair with Marilyn Monroe. That fascinated me too, because I had heard so much about what went on with her when making Billy Wilder’s films. I was also a great admirer of Simone Signoret. To be close to Yves meant learning more about Simone. We did My Geisha together. We shot it entirely in Japan, which was a culture none of us was familiar with. So we were each splashed up against a foreign environment, forcing us to cling together on the all-Japanese set in order to understand what was going on.
    As I look back on all my romantic movie-world relationships, which seem to always be so intriguing to the civilian world, sex was basically a non-issue. To me and the man involved, it was more about exploring identity and communicating emotionally. On that basis, so much can be learned that is valuable and growth-producing. The bugaboo of sex can interfere with real communication because it is so complicated and fraught with guilt and power plays and acting, no matter how physically satisfying it can be.
    As a person whose hobby and vocation has been the study of character and human nature for seventy-six years, I feel qualified to expostulate on the subject of leading men—and I don’t just mean actors. I ultimately had more relationships with journalists and political leaders than with fellow actors. I think I was slumming in power. I wanted to know what it felt like to be able to help entire societies (as political leaders can do) or to blow the whistle on those same politicians to keep them honest (as journalists can do). I will never get over any of them.

I’m Not Over My Wall of Life. I’m Under It.
    I sit gazing up at the photographs that speak of the cast of characters in my life and times. They are so varied—from pictures of my childhood to pictures taken just a few months ago.
    There are my parents, my parents’ parents, my early dancing school teachers, my teenage years of cheerleading, me with the high school football captain, and school performances. My early years in New York as a dance student and then as a chorus dancer in Oklahoma (subway circuit at age 16 !) and Me and Juliet . Sometimes I look at these pictures, peer into the past, and feel that it’s all happening now. I even have the picture of myself and other chorus dancers from Pajama Game as we walked the rocky shores of Jones Beach. It was taken the afternoon before the night I had to go on for Carol Haney without a rehearsal of any kind.
    I was half an hour late at the theater, and stretched across the stage door entrance were Jerry Robbins, Bob Fosse, Hal Prince, and George Abbott (that’s a picture I don’t have but can see in my mind as clear as anything). They were frantic because Haney had twisted her ankle and couldn’t walk, much less perform. I didn’t know the lines, the song lyrics, or the dances. All I could think was: “I’m going to drop the hat in ‘ Steam Heat. ’”
    Thoughts became reality. I dropped the hat and said “Shit,” right out loud. The front row gasped.
    With the help of all the cast members I got through the show and received a standing ovation at the curtain call. Strangely, I never felt so