Dance While You Can Read online

  Every day of my childhood, and even later, I must have felt I was the chattel of their repressed creativity, molded by a society that demanded that a father be the breadwinner and the mother be the housekeeper. And now I realized more than ever that whatever I was in the world, or indeed in my inner life, was a direct result of those two people who sculpted and conditioned my feelings, both consciously and unconsciously.

  Say what I would about the influence of the world around me—my teachers, friends, and life itself—my parents were the root of my identity: all the selves within me that I was attempting to bring into some kind of balance with the world in which I functioned today. And Mother was, because of her constant attendance, the eyes through which I had learned to view life.

  She was my female parent. I was her female child. The values of the feminine then were the energies I was grappling with. Did I have the patience that she did? The tolerance, the talent for nurturing? Did I have the capacity to be less self-centered and more giving to others as my mother had? Certainly I would be more understanding of others the more I understood myself. But I had approached life and the pursuit of excellence and creativity from such a masculine point of view. My masculine assertiveness had not been a problem for me. But my feminine talent for surrender had not been one of my strong suits. What did the act of surrender feel like?

  I remembered the night Mother had seen me in Madame Sousatzka. She had begun to cry ten minutes into my portrayal of a possessive, demanding, committed, and passionate music teacher; and she never stopped. She was wracked with silent sobs.

  When it was over, she said, “Oh, Shirl. That was your destiny—not mine. I always wanted to be a star, but this was for you to do—not me. I realize that now. I could never have given a portrayal like that.”

  I couldn’t speak after her confession. I guess I had been waiting for it for forty years. I would never have had the emotional honesty or courage to voice such a painful surrender. I never loved her more. I wondered how different our lives would have been if she had lived more for herself. Would I have been diminished?

  I remembered the day she asked me to teach her to meditate. She settled in her chair with taut urgency. When I spoke of relaxation, I saw her shoulders slump in release, but her face retained its determination to relax. I laughed to myself. Her determination was alive and well in me now. She could afford to give some of it up. Mother could walk through a room with such determination that she collided with the furniture. She was of tough Canadian stock, this patient, tolerant woman who continually surrendered to the will of others. Ah, but the surrender carried an emotional price tag that we all had to pay. She never let us forget that everything she did was for us.

  I gently placed my hand on Mother’s brow, as I guided her through a meditation. Her neck was stiff and unyielding. She felt her own rigidity.

  “Just relax,” I said gently, “and try to find the God within yourself.”

  She opened her eyes. “The God within myself?” she questioned.

  “Yes,” I answered. “God is within you. When you pray, you speak to God. When you meditate, you listen to God.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, “Oh, Shirl,” she said. “Don’t say that.”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “Don’t say God is within me.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” she said, “I know that when I pray to God outside of myself that he is really there. If you say God is within me, then I don’t trust it, and therefore I have no one to pray to and no one to listen to.”

  I was stunned at the implication of what she said. Could it be that the level of her self-esteem was so low that she couldn’t countenance the idea that God could be within her? Was I an arrogant, self-centered know-it-all because it made sense to me? If I saw God within myself, wouldn’t I then see God in everyone else?

  The meditation didn’t work. We both realized we couldn’t even begin.

  “Oh, Mother,” I thought, as I inched along the freeway. “Am I going to work today because of you? Do I act because of you? Am I me because you couldn’t find a way to be you?”

  The traffic began to pick up. My thoughts flashed to money. Mother never felt comfortable that there was enough money. “Don’t spend money on bringing me to California,” she’d say. “We’ll just wait until later when we can afford it.”

  “But I can afford it now.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” she’d say. “You work so hard for your money.”

  “I know,” I’d say. “But nothing is more important than being together when we can.”

  “Oh, Shirl,” she’d go on. “We have to save our money. You never know what might happen.”

  Oh, yes, I knew that. I’d heard that fear expressed so many times from the beginning of my childhood. I thought now about my own relationship to money. The car I was driving was rented. I didn’t want to own one.

  My values were becoming more simple as time passed. Was I rebelling against my mother’s fear? I didn’t really want to own much of anything anymore. I found myself desiring to give away half my wardrobe. I remembered how she used to lovingly make most of my clothing. Skirts and blouses were her specialty. She’d hunch over her sewing machine and have a colorful outfit for a summer date in a day. I think I thought I didn’t deserve it. And now the idea of accumulating more possessions was becoming even more burdensome to me. Why? I think I wanted to feel liberated from the worry that valuables carried.

  “Simplify. Simplify,” as Thoreau used to say. I was beginning to understand what he meant. Mother was constantly concerned with who would inherit her Wedgwood and crystal. She wanted assurances that her valuables would stay in the family. I only wanted the cookie jar. She thought I had no appreciation. She was hurt by my lack of interest.

  I had even had discussions with my agent about giving up everything. I couldn’t work for nothing, because I would undercut my fellow players; but I could, I thought, put myself on a meager budget and give everything else away.

  I guess my notion of giving up material wealth had something to do with wanting to experience the feeling of complete surrender. But to what would I surrender?

  The closest I could come to defining it would be the surrender to total liberation. Liberation from possessions, from the worry that went with them. Liberation from being encumbered, tied down. Liberation from needing to be insured, from needing to feel I needed.

  I thought perhaps Mother Teresa had the right idea. She’d move into a donated Hilton Hotel suite with her nuns of service and proceed to have the place stripped of everything: drapes, carpets, furniture … everything.

  Having accomplished that, she never compared or judged her material surroundings. She never felt deprived, because she had taken a vow to live with nothing. It must have been liberating for her in the most profound sense. I knew I wasn’t nearly so evolved that I’d be happy living that way. But I was doing a lot of thinking about it.

  In my discussions with my agent, I realized how complicated such an act would be. The decisions of who to give my hard-earned money to would be as burdensome as how to make a lot of it. My “movie star’s closet” was crammed with clothes, both from pictures and from travels around the world. Decisions of what to wear became time-consuming and confusing, whereas to have, say, ten outfits—one for each day of the week, with maybe three or four that could slop over—would be a liberation.

  Having lived through several Malibu fires, I remembered that most of what I wanted to save revolved around my notes, some treasured pictures and books, and my cashmere and silk sweaters. Nothing else was really important to me. I guess the sequined Bob Mackie-type gowns from my show would have been a practical salvage, but my mind didn’t work along these lines. I found myself thinking more in terms of what I would need to survive, rather than what I would need to get up on a stage. Yet, why were so many clothes still in my closet? It’s true that I wore them all at one time or another. Yet my idea of a good trip around the world
would be to take one small suitcase that I could carry and live out of.

  I had no real jewelry. Most of it had been stolen anyway. Ostentatious flashing of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and the like was an invitation to mugging and, more to the point, a spectacle designed for conspicuous consumption. And for that matter, the old-fashioned movie queen image was dated anyway.

  I had not been a collector of art or rare antiques. I had never wanted a yacht. I did not have expensive taste in anything really, except comfort. That was why I loved my cashmere and silk sweaters. Something that traveled light, wouldn’t wrinkle, and wasn’t heavy was my idea of luxury. Perhaps I was addicted to the idea that one travels fastest who travels alone. Yet when I took a trip, I always packed too much and never wore most of it.

  Underneath all of it, perhaps I didn’t really want to have more than my parents had had. Perhaps their experience during the Depression was still a part of me. They had talked of it often. I had registered every word of their fear and compromised dignity. Now, in my middle fifties, I was beginning to look at the effect on me in a more serious way than I ever had. On the deepest, most personal level, I wanted to work out who my parents had been to me. I knew that I couldn’t get on with the future until I had learned and realized the past.

  I had written so much about inner peace, balance, and harmony in cosmic terms, when all of it really came down to fallout from Mom and Dad on this earth. What a joke. You think you have a handle on God, the Universe, and the Great White Light until you go home for Thanksgiving. In an hour, you realize how far you’ve got to go and who is the real turkey.

  Such was my state of mind as I finally pulled up to the front gate of the Burbank studio, and the old guard there looked into my face and said, “Gosh, it’s so good to have you on the lot, Miss MacLaine.” He went on to say that I had been one of his favorites since he was a youngster! I felt a flush of gratitude, smiled, blinked—and then wondered what that said about my age. As I continued on to Soundstage 17, the white walls of the buildings surrounded me, bringing back that familiar glare that always gave me a headache by lunchtime.

  A parking attendant guided my car into a reserved parking space, asked if there was anything that he could help me with, and pointed out the makeup trailer. I proceeded to the makeup trailer, said hello to the makeup man, and sat down on the chair.

  There was coffee brewing on the makeup counter, as an A.D. (assistant director), bright and energetic in the personage of a delightful blond eighteen-year-old girl, cheerily asked me if I would like to have a burrito for breakfast. I declined, made my amenities to others in the trailer, and before the makeup man could apply a thin base of Max Factor Fair on my face, I lurched out of the chair, ran to my assigned motor home, forced open the door, stumbled forward to the bathroom, and threw up. “What was it?” I thought. Was it the fruit? The freeway? First-day nerves? Could I be afraid of the three-page monologue? Or could I, having relived the past on the way that morning, simply be getting rid of old stuff and making a rather physical transition into something new and unfamiliar?

  The A.D. came after me. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Nothing really,” I replied, in between heaves. “I’m sure I’ll be all right.” The last thing in the world I wanted was for anybody to think I was incapable of being disciplined. The thought of not being able to perform what was expected of me made me feel even worse. I would, above all, get through this first day and not hold anybody up. In fact, holding anybody up on any day would be a fate worse than death for me. I would live up to my obligations regardless. I was my mother’s daughter.

  I knew when the A.D. said, “Okay,” and left my trailer that it wouldn’t take five minutes for news of my vomiting jag to go around the entire crew, worry the director, and potentially necessitate a change in the schedule. Just worrying them bothered me.

  The first wave of nausea over, I sat down in my motor home and began to meditate. I visualized a perfectly calm stomach, using white light etched with blue. I began to feel better, as the visualization became real and penetratingly worked its healing magic. Taking deep breaths and trying to smile, I made my way back to the makeup trailer and sat in the chair again. The makeup man applied rouge to my cheeks and the nausea welled up to match.

  I ran back to the motor home, threw up again. Now, for sure, they’ll think I can’t work today, I thought. I vomited again, sat down, meditated, felt better, returned to the makeup trailer, crawled into the chair, whereupon the makeup man applied eyeliner and eyelashes. Again the nausea welled up. Nothing like making sickness a farce, I thought. I bolted out of the chair a third time, ran back to the motor home, leading the kind driver in the parking lot to wonder whether I was perhaps seriously temperamental. I threw up again, finished, and feeling better, returned to the makeup trailer.

  The pretty A.D. had watched all of this and said, “Don’t you want us to reschedule today?” “No,” I said. “I’m going to be fine. Now I’m sure of it. Let’s say that I just threw up three times: one for mind, one for body, one for spirit.”

  Everyone in the makeup trailer laughed, the tension was broken, and lo and behold, I was fine.

  To this day I’m not really sure what happened. When I look back on it now, I realized I was going through a transition of coming to terms with aging, work, time, parents, and myself; and I was inherently dramatic enough to express it on the first day of work, another trait my mother had handed down to me. Frustration might be profound, but dramatic release was a definite outlet of choice. Sometimes even I was impressed by its potential effect on others.

  CHAPTER 2

  Makeup Trailer

  I sat in the makeup chair trying to relax with my eyes closed, allowing the makeup artist to do whatever he wanted to do with my face. How many hours had I spent in makeup chairs all over the world? Zillions. But not as many as most actresses. I simply didn’t have the patience, and I had never wanted them to make me over. I sort of liked my face the way it was.

  I had always been suspicious of the formulas observed for making up people’s faces to be photographed by the camera—the lip line that conformed to cookie cutter prescriptions, the eyelashes carefully glued to create a cheek shadow when lit from above, the arch of the eyebrow usually plucked so that it could be more controlled, the contour of the rouge that accentuated the high cheekbones, the mixtures of the eye shadows that accentuated eye color—all those techniques were observed and duplicated as though out of a magic silver screen makeup textbook. As much as I had been conditioned to be disciplined and fulfill what was expected of me, I didn’t like the idea of looking like everyone else, even if they were beautiful. I didn’t like consensus beauty.

  I was imbued with the need to be my own individual self, which included my makeup (I couldn’t sit still for it) and my dressing habits (I made the worst-dressed list nearly every year). My attitude seemed to carry with it a devil-may-care carelessness, but in truth I think I was refusing to be repressed, molded, or sculpted into the vision that other people had for me. Because something had been traditional was enough reason for me to rebel against it. I wasn’t loud or obstreperous in my nonconformist attitude, I just walked away from it. I wouldn’t be there. I’d disappear.

  And now, as I sat in the makeup trailer gazing at myself, I realized I was allowing the makeup man to do anything to my face he wanted to. He’d know how to camouflage the telltale lines and the contours of aging. I had always been the youngest kid in the flick. Now I was the grandmother; I had become a survivor. I could use all the help I could get. I would accept such a need as gracefully as possible. At least I had learned to surrender to that.

  I looked around the trailer. There was that look in the eyes of my coworkers which silently acknowledged that I was there before many of them were born. It had been almost forty years since I first came to Hollywood. I was now the one who had been around the longest.

  And what did “longest” mean? Did it mean I knew more than they? No. I didn’t really know any more now tha
n I did then—in fact, probably less. The more I experienced, the more I realized what I didn’t know. And confidence? When you’re young, you’re oozing with it. Now I wondered where that had come from.

  In fact, most of my Hollywood youth seemed like a dream, mirroring the very dream the town purported to be. Had I lived out a dream I had as a small child? Not really. I hadn’t consciously remembered wanting to be “a Movie Star in Hollywood.” Warren and I had gone to the movies every week of our lives and sometimes every day. We had given ourselves movie stars’ names at periodic times. We played out scenes from our favorite films. But we never “had to” get to Hollywood. No. For me it had happened as an outgrowth of my training as a dancer in New York. I had been a chorus girl understudy who had gone on for the star in a musical comedy called The Pajama Game. A producer (Hal Wallis) saw me, signed me to a contract, and brought me to Hollywood.

  And I had grown with it naturally, or at least that’s how it felt. Yet the dream itself was just as elusive to me now as it had been every day of my life for nearly forty years. And now, sitting in yet another makeup chair, the dream images flashed away as each new layer of dream paint was applied to my face on this morning in 1989.

  I remembered Metro, with its splashed white soundstages, seeming broader and higher and longer than the soundstages at other studios. Makeup and hair had not been taken care of in makeup trailers in the old days. There had been whole makeup departments then, housing the great artists of face and hair. Bill Tuttle or Frank Westmore or Wally Westmore and others applied makeup to the stars’ faces in small cubicles. I used to watch the screen giants enter the makeup building hung over from the night before, shrouded in scarves, squinting at the morning behind dark glasses, fearing that their innermost horrors would be reflected upon their faces and recognized. I used to wonder if that would happen to me when I got older and more lived in.