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I knew that was the case, because from the time I was very young, I was a “watcher.” Perhaps that is a somewhat typical trait for a middle child: to be watchful of how your parents and siblings interact with one another. I utilized my skills as a born watcher to get the lay of the land, so to speak, to see how certain things played out with my sister. If I saw that she got in trouble for something, then I wouldn’t do that. I was seemingly full of all sorts of survival instincts and was always carefully watching how different scenarios played out. I learned a lot from watching and would then apply what I learned to the way I behaved. To a large extent, I came to realize in retrospect that I did that to garner the attention and approval I so desperately craved from my parents, especially from my father. By watching how my father negatively responded to Alicia’s and Gordon’s defiant refusal when he lined us up in the kitchen for teaspoons of cod liver oil, I would be almost gleefully willing to take not just my own dose but my siblings’, as well. I was what you would call a “people pleaser”—a huge people pleaser!
Because I was healthy and strong like a boy, my father was always telling me to pick something up or to move something. I would always say, “Sure, Dad! Whatever you need, Dad!” I was obsessed with pleasing him. When he would go to the lake with me, I wanted to show him what a strong swimmer I was. I would swim out till the water was over my head and then yell back at him, “Daddy! Look at me, Daddy! Watch me, Daddy.... Watch me! Please watch me, Daddy!” I just want to cry when I think back on things like that—of how desperately I craved his attention and wanted to be a “Daddy’s girl,” which I never was.
Was it that unrequited desire to be noticed that stimulated my secret dream to become somebody everyone would watch and admire? Well, we know what the shrinks of the world would say about that. And while, as a child, I never consciously put two and two together that it was my fervent desire for attention that sparked that secret dream, what I did know from an early age is how to “milk it.”
I can remember during World War II, when I was eleven, how my parents’ friends would talk about the atrocities of the war and about the young boys who were losing their lives. Inevitably, someone would say, “Oh my! Look at Marion.” That was because I would be crying. Now, don’t get me wrong. The stories they told were, in fact, heartbreaking and tear-inducing, but as a watcher, I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew just what I needed to do to capture their attention—to get them to look at me. I can even remember that when I was much younger—even as a toddler—I liked it when people would pick me up and say, “Oh my goodness, what a sturdy little girl you are!” I know this may sound like I’m making it up, but I literally remember being that young and being concerned if the attention I was getting wasn’t all positive.
If someone picked me up, all I could think about was if I had wet pants, and if I did, I hoped beyond hope that they didn’t notice. I would have been only three years old, and yet I clearly recall thinking that. It was a part of being a born watcher, I guess. I was always extremely aware that whenever someone would glance my way, pat me on the head, and say, “Isn’t she cute?” it was my cue to turn it on, double down, and be cuter than ever. I always seemed to be very aware of the effect I could have on people by acting, and I was never shy about using my prodigious skills to get the attention I wanted. It always worked like a charm—except with my father, who was the one I targeted the most.
Although I never succeeded in capturing the coveted attention of my father, I was aware that he had a lot on his mind. Our nation, and the world, was at war; jobs were hard to come by; money was always scarce; and if all of that wasn’t enough to divert his attention from me, the birth of my brother sealed the deal. While Alicia and I were strong and healthy children, Gordon was not. He had tuberculosis of the bone in one leg and was always in and out of the hospital and constantly in a cast or a brace. His one calf bone was soft, and when he tried to begin to walk, it bent backward. He went through an operation in which healthy bone from his other leg was placed into the diseased one to see if this could make it grow, but the operation wasn’t successful.
My feelings about Gordon, like those about Alicia, were extremely mixed, but in a totally different way. On the one hand, I had tenderhearted feelings toward him and what he was going through, and yet there was also a part of me that resented him. On many occasions, I would just get sick and tired of how much attention he demanded from my parents and my sister and me. I have memories of feeling guilty about the way I felt toward Gordon. But I also remember those feelings being drained out of me as my emotional needs were completely disregarded and I was constantly being told to help Gordon do this or that, along with being enlisted to handle a variety of other chores.
While I did at times harbor resentment for Gordon, I think those feelings were really more geared toward his disease than toward him. I always felt very sorry for him and was constantly amazed that, in spite of what he went through, he developed a fairly good sense of humor. I remember when he was in his early teens, his bad leg had to be removed below the knee. They then fitted him with a wooden leg, which was difficult for him to get used to. And yet, while trying to make this prosthetic leg work, while suffering these phantom pains in the leg they removed, he would always make jokes about his situation. I recall one time, when he was a bit older and had learned to drive, that a police officer pulled him over and told him to get out of the car. He used to get us all laughing by telling us about the look he got from the officer when he told him he would be happy to comply but first had to get his leg out of the trunk. He actually got an awful lot of humorous mileage out of his wooden leg.
As I got older, into my forties and fifties, and my life and career became established, I would often find myself thinking about Gordon: what he had to deal with, how I had harbored resentment toward him, and how he managed to keep up his sense of humor in spite of his difficulties. I remember once, after being married, having children, getting divorced, becoming a successful actress and going through therapy, I had an epiphany regarding my childhood feelings toward Gordon. One day, he came over to help me paint a wall, and afterward, we sat and talked over a bottle of wine. As we talked, something just hit me, and I blurted out, “Thank God for you! If it weren’t for you, I would never have become who I am! Everything I am is because of you!”
He was rather shocked by my outburst and said he certainly didn’t see it that way. But I explained that I had come to realize that my desire to be someone and the way that I was able to develop the strength and the resolve to do the things I had always dreamed of doing stemmed from being so independent and having to take care of myself and my needs when I was a child.
Like me, Gordon took after my mother when it came to having a flair for the dramatic, and as an adult, he was able to secure acting roles in stage productions and television programs, such as Renegade; Murder, She Wrote; and Trapper John, M.D. He also landed a regular role on the daytime drama General Hospital in 1985 and appeared in small roles in a handful of feature films, including 1978’s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, 1980’s Cuba Crossing, 1987’s Deep Space and 1993’s The Beverly Hillbillies (as Hank), which was the last film he did.
While he was talented, he never achieved any real success as an actor and always had difficulties that stemmed from his disability. He had a tendency to be very unrealistic in the way he approached life, and was constantly in need of help when it came to keeping his place clean and paying his bills. I think that was due to the fact that, unlike me, he had become so reliant upon others as a child.
He passed away in 1995, at the age of sixty-six, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found myself thinking about him more often—always with sincere fondness. He dealt with such incredible challenges throughout his entire life but was always able to laugh and make others laugh. He was a very sweet person and a very good actor.
In retrospect, I look back on my childhood as being a happy one. As I have gotten older and have thought back on my early years, I have com
e to terms with the fact that my parents may not have had the best marriage. But life was rough for them, as it was for so many people who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. They dealt with numerous difficulties simply to get by and to do the best they could for their children, and they remained dedicated to one another until my father died in 1960, at the age of seventy-two. I think my mother, like me, may have always held on to a secret dream of living a life in which there were no worries about money and no worries about having to care for a child with special needs. I believe she would have loved her life as a young woman to have been one in which she would travel, encounter all sorts of adventures, and then return home to host dinner parties where she would dramatically regale her guests with her adventurous tales. But I also think there was a part of her that fully embraced the life she actually lived and that she knew my father dearly loved her.
I believe that he did, and to this day, when I think about them, I have one vivid memory that is so seared into my brain, it’s as if I can actually see them in front of me. There is music playing on the radio, he is holding her, and they are dancing together in our little living room. That is the way I choose to remember my parents. And I think they would both be more than fine with that.
Chapter 3
My Inspirations
We didn’t have a television when I was growing up. That was not unusual. Very few families in our neighborhood did. What we did have was Theatre Arts Magazine and movie magazines, all of which I was obsessed with, a radio, a local movie theater and a library. It was within those entities that I escaped both to dream about my future and learn how to go about getting there—how to launch the career I was so thoroughly assured was my destiny. Every time I made my way to the Carnegie Library and climbed its granite steps, I was on a mission to find out everything I could about how famous actors and actresses had established their careers.
My greatest source for this information was these big Who’s Who books, which gave me insight into all sorts of famous people. And while I found it interesting to learn where these people were born and what they had accomplished in their lives, the information I was desperately seeking was what happened in between their births and their accomplishments. How did they get to where they were?
At times, the search for this information took on a sense of panicked urgency. It was my destiny to live out my secret dream, and yet I had no real idea of how to go about it or what I should be doing in that very moment. That sense of urgency to start making things happen hit a crescendo when I went to a local stage production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit and then read his first autobiography, Present Indicative. Coward, I learned, had appeared in concert with choirs, had studied dance, and was performing professionally on the stages of London’s West End by the time he was twelve years old. This hit me hard, because I was already thirteen and had done nothing.
If anyone at the Carnegie Library noticed me poring over books that detailed the early lives of Coward or Helen Hayes or Katharine Cornell, I’m sure I just looked like any other studious young lady. What they didn’t perceive was that, as I turned each page, my heart would race faster, my breath would become shallow, and my stomach would begin to churn. “Here I am, thirteen years old, and I’ve done nothing,” I would quietly agonize to myself. “I’m not getting anywhere!”
Unlike many young girls who go on to become actresses, I was never a performing child. I never took dancing lessons or put on little shows for my family and friends. I was, by no means, the center of attention in my home. That would have never been possible, because my brother needed every bit of the attention my parents had to give. It is also interesting to me, when I think back on how obsessed I was with my secret dream to act, that I never thought of acting in films, on radio, and certainly not on television. My dream was always to act onstage.
The reason I find that a bit peculiar is that it was the performers on radio and in film whom I listened to and went to see who were my inspirations. Radio was a really big part of our lives, and my favorite show was I Love a Mystery, which was about three detectives who traveled all over the world. I also loved LUX Radio Theatre, which was an anthology series that adapted Broadway plays and Hollywood films and was sponsored by Lever Brothers, who made LUX soap and detergent. These programs were performed before a live studio audience, hosted by the great film director Cecil B. DeMille, and featured stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell.
While I never gave any thought to radio as being a venue in which I hoped to someday perform, LUX Radio Theatre would, ironically, provide one of my first through-the-looking-glass moments, as when I was in my early twenties and under contract with Paramount Pictures, I was cast as a LUX Girl in a commercial for LUX Radio Theatre. Doing that commercial also provided me with my first residual reward, not in the way of money, but in boxes of LUX soap, which would arrive in the mail for years to come—long after my days as a LUX Girl were over. Between the arrivals of those sudsy gifts, I wouldn’t give them any thought, and then another one would show up. I can’t tell you how many times I saw a package being delivered and imagined that some secret suitor was sending me chocolates, only to rip it open and find another box of LUX soap.
Along with radio, I found my inspiration on the big screen. One of those who inspired me and—along with Noël Coward—had me losing sleep over how I was doing nothing to forward my dream was Shirley Temple. Because we didn’t have a television, the Shirley Temple movies were my first introduction to entertainment and acting, and I was fascinated with her. Not only did I see her on the big screen, but Shirley was also, in a way, a part of our family’s everyday life for many years during the Depression. My parents were in no financial shape to be able to give us expensive toys, but we were the proud owners of the grandest and most beautiful Shirley Temple doll ever made.
Our ownership of the Shirley doll stemmed from a rash of colds that had Alicia, Gordon and me all sniffling, sneezing and coughing. My father had been sent out on a mission to buy some cough medicine at the local drugstore. While there, he noticed they were running some sort of raffle in which the grand prize was this magnificent Shirley Temple doll. Knowing I was a big fan of Shirley’s, he purchased a little key, which was then used to see if it would unlock the box the doll was in. And, by golly, he had bought the winning key! Along with causing quite the initial commotion when he returned home with the story and the physical reward of his win, that doll went on to become both a fixture in our home and a constant reminder to me that time was passing by without my having even taken my first step toward establishing my acting career. That reminder took on a more frantic concern that could be summed up with one thought: Shirley, who had been acting since she was three years old, who by the age of seven was an established star, and who had even been awarded a special Juvenile Academy Award, was only six months older than me!
Ironically, in a twist that was, on one hand, a part of my secret dream and, on the other, another surreal through-the-looking-glass experience, many years later I would actually meet Shirley Temple—and she would know who I was!
We crossed paths on New Year’s Day of 1999 at the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. Shirley was serving as the grand marshal, and I was there to ride on a float that featured a few of the iconic mothers from famous television shows. I remember being at the Tournament House, a grand white mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard that once belonged to the Wrigley family, of chewing gum fame, and is now the headquarters of the Tournament of Roses. It was very early in the morning, before the parade began, and someone asked me if I would like to meet Shirley. I will openly admit to being a bit flustered, if not outright overcome with emotion, as I thought back to watching her on the big screen and sharing our home with a doll of her when I was a child. But yes, of course I wanted to meet her!
So I was led over to where she was standing. I was nervous and had a huge grin plastered on my face as we were introduced. I then opened my arms to embrace her
in a hug, and she abruptly stepped back from me and said, “No, no! Don’t mess me up!”
In that split second I felt my entire body go into a free fall, as if all my blood had drained out of me and I was in a falling elevator. I wasn’t expecting that sort of a reaction from her, and it sent me off-kilter in a big way. Whatever happened in the few moments that followed, I can’t say I really remember. But I do recall thinking, Oh, of course! This poor woman has been pawed by people her entire life, and she has her hair all done up, and, and . . . But I stepped away from her and just wanted to cry.
A short time later, my press agent, Dale Olson, saved the day. He was talking to Shirley, and she motioned toward me and asked, “Is that the woman who played the mother on Happy Days?” He confirmed that I was indeed that woman, which resulted in a “do over” in which I did get the chance to meet her and was totally awed that she knew who I was. As I stood there with her, the memories of watching her on the screen and of the face of that old doll flooded my mind. I thought of my father and the incredulous look he would have flashed if, when he returned home with that doll, someone had told him that many years in the future his daughter would meet Shirley Temple and that Shirley would know who his daughter was!
I have often thought it was interesting that, while it was by seeing Shirley Temple on the screen that my secret dream first bubbled up and formed, I never imagined myself acting in movies, and certainly not in television, but rather on the stage. And it was, in fact, the stage on which I made my debut as an actress—as Tom Sawyer’s aunt Polly in a seventh-grade production of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.