My Days Page 5

  While some, if not most, of those “poor others” seemed to apply themselves and take school seriously, I had little care about majors or minors, or dances or dating, or anything else other than having the chance to perform in plays. During my time in college, I was very independent. I was more determined than ever that I was going to see my secret dream become a reality—that I was going to be someone—and that this was the path that would lead me there. That was my focus.

  I never thought of myself as being a loner, but during my time in college, I was a lone wolf. I did have a small group of friends, but perhaps even they felt the way students who didn’t know me felt: that I was aloof. If they did think that, I can’t say I ever gave any thought or concern to it. Unlike my fellow students, I didn’t have any close friends whom I did everything with. I didn’t go to the dances or other social events. I wasn’t popular and certainly wasn’t a member of any clique. Was that by design—a part of my plan? Again, it wasn’t something I gave much thought to, and when I think back, I believe had I been more of a social butterfly, I would not have been so focused on and driven about achieving my goal.

  When I wasn’t at school or at home, I would hang around the Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park, which had been built in 1935 as a tribute to Shakespeare’s Old Globe in London for the California Pacific International Exposition. At the conclusion of the exposition in 1937, the San Diego Community Theatre leased the Old Globe from the City of San Diego and renovated the theater. I loved everything about being in and around the Old Globe and made it a point to get to know many of the people who worked there.

  During that time, I also found a few drama coaches (again, all rather eccentric little old ladies) for specific studies, was appearing in plays at school, and was constantly checking the Green Sheet, a local publication that listed the auditions being held at the theater groups in the area, such as the La Jolla Players, the La Mesa Players, the Lamb’s Players and about five or six others. I was constantly going on auditions and got the role of an old lady with a Scottish accent in The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, by J. M. Barrie, for which I won my first acting award—an ashtray or some sort of coaster. To be honest, I could never really tell what it was, but I was proud of it—proud to be acknowledged for my work—and I still have it to this day. Soon after winning that first award, I was also the recipient of another, for my appearance in the La Jolla Players’ production of Chekhov’s A Marriage Proposal.

  I garnered attention both in auditions and performances by being good at accents, of which I did quite a few, thanks to the training of all those little old lady coaches. Because I could do accents well, I was cast in another Barrie play, What Every Woman Knows, and in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, in which I got to show off my cockney English accent.

  My proficiency with the cockney accent also landed me a role as a young English maid at the Old Globe. It would be the start of what would become my long-term association with the Old Globe and playing maids. While at school, students from our drama department would work with actors from the Globe, doing scenes and plays, and when I heard they were doing Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, I was determined to get the role of Viola. That, sadly, didn’t happen. I simply didn’t have the legs for the part of the play’s heroine and protagonist. And so, while some other girl, one blessed with long-legged attributes, was given the role, I did get a consolation prize and was cast as Olivia, the wealthy lady of noble birth who lives in Illyria.

  My four years of study at San Diego State, augmented by the many auditions I had gone on, the roles I had been cast for, and the accolades I had received for my performances, provided me with both the assurance and confidence I would need to step out into the real world in pursuit of my “career,” a word I had begun using instead of “dream” during my final year of school.

  As my time at San Diego State wound toward completion, America, and most of the world, had recovered from World War II. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began simmering, and the war between Communists and capitalists was coming to a rolling boil.

  As for me, 1950 would prove to be an important milestone. One evening shortly before finishing school, as I recall, I was having dinner with my parents at home when the conversation turned to my future plans. By this time, the pursuit of my dream had become the pursuit of a career, and for the first time, the evening’s discussion took on an air of seriousness and pragmatism.

  “How will you support yourself?” my father asked.

  “I won’t need much,” I recall telling him.

  I knew it would be rough, and perhaps even rougher than I let on to them. But that meant little or nothing to me. I would soon be stepping out on the stage of life as a fiercely determined young woman with a degree in drama and even a little teaching credential I could always fall back on (although falling back was something I never gave a lick of thought to). I was certainly aware that life on my own—really on my own—might come with some challenges. I remember thinking about the evening my parents and I discussed my future.

  Who are my parents to question my enduring spirit in the face of challenges? I thought. They had certainly had to deal with challenges of their own. My father had to leave us to work in Panama. My mother, who had been a credentialed teacher in Canada, had difficulties getting her teaching credentials in the United States. She was always taking classes to better herself, and when we first came to California, she got a job teaching on an Indian reservation in East San Diego. The reservation was a fairly long drive from our home, and because of that, she had to live away from us for a while. I remember her saying that it was a horrible job and that she hated being away from her family, but it was one of the steps she had to take to get her U.S. teaching credentials.

  Once she did receive her teaching credentials, she got a job at a little grammar school in Rancho Santa Fe, an exclusive area of San Diego inhabited by those of the “spiffy” class. She ultimately worked her way up, gained the respect of her colleagues and the parents of her students, and was given the opportunity to serve as the school’s principal. I always felt that she enjoyed that job, although it did present its share of difficulties, as she had to deal with those wealthy, spoiled kids and their even more spoiled mothers. I knew it was hard for her at times, and yet she had a unique ability to rise above the problems and personalities, and those rich folks from “the Ranch,” as it is known, loved her.

  I was impressed with my parents’ ability to rise up and face down anything that got in their way. It was a trait that had clearly been instilled in them by their parents and grandparents. And so, with the DNA of dogged determination coursing through my body, and with a 1950 diploma from San Diego State University to boot (I was actually a few credits short but would quickly remedy that), I knew the time had come to become somebody—to fulfill my childhood dream and to make my career a reality.

  Chapter 6

  My Marriage

  Throughout my time at San Diego State, I was determined that romance would not get in the way of my plan. During my senior year, I continued to appear in local theater, where I received a lot of support for my efforts and encouragement to venture up the San Diego Freeway or, as Californians call it, the 405, to seek film work in Hollywood.

  While working in the motion picture industry was never really a part of my plan, I figured it could be a good way to capture the attention of Broadway producers, and so I started giving serious thought to introducing myself to Hollywood filmmakers. That encouragement-turned-thought soon transitioned into a plan, one that was interrupted by a force I had sworn I would never allow to interrupt me: romance!

  That dreaded but oh, so alluring force of romance was made manifest in my life by a handsome young actor named Freeman “Effie” Meskimen.

  I had actually met Effie somewhere around 1948 or 1949, when we were cast together in a local production of Liliom, the Ferenc Molnár play that became the inspiration for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. Effie was cast in the
lead role of Liliom, a tough, cocky carousel barker who falls in love with a young maid named Julie, played by yours truly. During the run of that show, I began harboring the second great secret of my life, one that was so secret I myself wasn’t sure about it: that I was falling in love with Effie.

  While I constantly tried to push that thought out of my mind, knowing it could have serious repercussions on my career, it kept oozing back in, as love tends to do. Damn you, Freeman Meskimen, I would think to myself during my final months of school. Here I am, soon to have my drama degree in hand, and on my way to Broadway via Hollywood to fulfill the destiny of my first secret. The last thing I need is to allow myself—my drive and ambition—to be diverted by romance! And yet within moments of having that thought, my mind would do a complete turnaround, and I’d slip off into thinking of the very sexy, handsome and moody Effie.

  I’ve always had a bit of a moody streak. Because of my awareness of that, I was, perhaps, more attuned and attracted to that quality in others—and Effie had moodiness in spades, which I loved.

  Effie was two years older than me and had been raised in Texas by a Scotch-Irish farm family. He didn’t grow up in an environment that promoted education, and certainly not the arts, but Effie was very different from his family. He was extremely sensitive and would play his guitar and sing folk songs. He loved reading poetry and Shakespeare and books of all sorts to expand his horizons. And he had an air of moody vulnerability that worked well for him as an actor. He had served in the U.S. Navy during the war, which was something I could never really imagine. In San Diego the naval base and its training facilities had been crucial to the American mission during World War II, and sailors were a part of the fabric of the area. Whenever I had encountered sailors back then, they always appeared to be a tad bit crude and exuded bravado, worldliness and confidence—traits you couldn’t find in Effie with a microscope.

  For all the sexy moodiness and sensitivity Effie naturally possessed, he had clearly missed the line when bravery was being handed out. Not only wasn’t he brave and bold like all the sailors I had encountered, but he also wasn’t even brave and bold like me! That never bothered me. In fact, it was just another quality that endeared him to me. I have always liked to inspire people, and I liked to rely on my own sense of courage, confidence and bravery to inspire him.

  He was one of those kinds of guys who didn’t like a lot of things, while I loved everything. As I look back, I think our love grew because he admired my ability to be playful and confident in every way and place except for the bedroom. I had not dated much during high school or even at college, so I was both uneducated and unsophisticated when it came to sex. I would rely on my playfulness to overcome that, and at times, right in the middle of the romance, I would say, “I don’t love you, Effie Meskimen!”

  He would laugh and say, “Yes you do, and we’re going to go get married!”

  One time after I expressed my denial of love for him, Effie’s response included a coda he had never used before. “Yes you do, and we’re going to go get married . . . right now!”

  Those last two words are, perhaps, the most dangerous ones that can ever be uttered by someone who is usually not so confidently and decisively forceful to someone who is courageous, bold and playful. They are words that can prompt a naïve twenty-one-year-old woman with a love of the dramatic to grab the hand of her moody twenty-three-year-old lover and, in the middle of the night, drive from San Diego to Yuma, Arizona, to elope—which is what we did.

  It was all so exciting and delightfully dramatic, although it was also all just an unreal blur. I can’t recall much more about the actual ceremony other than I was wearing a little tuxedo shirt and a plaid skirt, and I have hardly any memory of our drive back to San Diego as a newly wedded couple. What I do recall is spending our wedding night in Pacific Beach, where we strolled out to the end of the Crystal Pier and then stayed in a little motel.

  As for our honeymoon, we got up the next morning, checked out of the motel, and began looking for a place to live. We found a room to rent near the college, and how we came up with the money for it, I’ll never know. Because of his navy service, Effie had a GI Bill, which provided educational assistance to service members, veterans and their dependents, but it wasn’t much, and as for me, I had no money at all.

  It was all so childlike. We had just gone off on a whim and gotten married, had a little place to live, and were off to become actors. We didn’t have anything except for some plates and silverware we had received as gifts from my college friends, who were shocked and amazed that we had actually gotten married. But I remember we both seemed to be relatively content and happy in our own little naïve way—which was in stark contrast to the way my parents handled it. While I can’t say that either Effie or I gave our impromptu marriage much thought, the same was not true for my parents, who, upon our return from Arizona, were devastated over the news of our less than well-thought-out nuptials.

  “God damn you!” my mother seethed as my father quietly cried. “What were you thinking?” she continued, with daggers flying out of her eyes.

  Although I found my parents’ reaction to our marriage surprising, in retrospect, I understand it. They never saw it coming. I had never admitted to anybody that I even liked, much less loved, Effie, or anyone else. From the time I was a young girl, I had always thought and would gleefully proclaim that I was going to marry someone very important—a status no one would attribute to the man who was now my husband.

  As the days and weeks following our marriage went by, my mother’s anger dissipated into disappointment. However, she eventually came around to accepting that I was now a married woman, and even became helpful and encouraging. But she was never happy about it. She knew that a marriage can be the greatest interference to someone pursuing a career—especially one that demands the kind of focused determination that acting requires. I’m sure her anger and displeasure came from thinking that her daughter’s dream had been intercepted by some Texas farm boy just as the brass ring was coming into view. And yet at the time, I felt her reaction to the situation was rather over the top, and being young, naïve and terribly dramatic, I rather reveled in the drama of it all (although I was smart enough to never let her know that).

  In a way, it pains me to say this, but I think the truth is that I entered into my spur-of-the-moment marriage with Effie in such a cavalier fashion simply because it was a fun and adventurous thing to do. I also do believe that the dramatic aspect of it had a great appeal to me. While my mother lost many a night’s sleep wondering how I would move forward with my life and career, I gave that little thought. Did I love Effie? Yes, I did. But I believe that I viewed my marriage to him in much the same way I looked at doing a play—enjoying the run and then looking forward to what was next. I never felt my determination to pursue my career had been jeopardized by marrying Effie, although I can’t say I ever really gave much thought to the role he would play in my life as I moved forward.

  Chapter 7

  My Move to Hollywood

  In the days and weeks following my marriage, I didn’t think of myself as much as a newlywed as I did a student who still needed to finish up a couple of college courses. I had no money, which meant I was doing only a bit worse than Effie, who was also finishing up his studies and had what little financial benefit he received from the GI Bill.

  Around that time, I formulated what I began calling my “five-year plan”—a strategy to transform myself from a young woman with a college degree in theater into an established and successful actress. Those were the only two roles in which I ever saw myself. My real-life role of being someone’s wife was never one that was either a part of my plan or one I saw myself playing. And yet, as the decade of the 1950s dawned, that is what I was.

  Was my marriage to Effie a conventional one, predicated on true love, the building of a life and family, and the thought of growing old together, to end only when death did us part? Not hardly. I did love him and care for him, but
as I have said, entering into the state of matrimony was akin to playing a part. I never gave it one iota of the serious consideration I did to my career plan.

  As the months went by, I found that my expectations of what married life would be like (if, in fact, I even had such expectations) were low—very low. My husband was a dear, sweet fellow, but one with what seemed to be a total lack of focus and ambition. I did love him, but it was a love that saw me caring for him more maternally than matrimonially. I was always trying to motivate him and encourage him, but for the most part, I seemed to always be worrying about him. At times, there would be a brief flash in which he showed me that he had the potential to become focused on doing something and becoming something. He could be very convincing in short spurts that something was going to happen. And I was always willing to buy into it and thought something was going to happen, too, but it never did.

  Effie’s moments of motivation were always short lived, often painfully short. His moodiness was becoming more than a temporary state and, instead, the dominating feature of his personality. He was depressed and developed an ulcer early in our marriage. He also had another problem, which, to me at the time, went without notice or concern: his drinking. It was only many years later, when I became better educated on the adverse effects of alcohol, that I came to believe that Effie had been an alcoholic from the time he was very young—by the time he left the navy.

  I didn’t come from a family of drinkers. They weren’t Puritans, but they were Scotch Presbyterians. My father had a strong work ethic. He was a Mason, and my mom was in the Eastern Star, was a PTA president, and was always active with the League of Women Voters and her book clubs. She was also a caring wife and mother, whose pot roast, to this day, remains one of my favorite dishes. Holidays at our house weren’t great, because those were the Depression years, but they were happy family times in which alcohol played no role. Our family may not have been the role model for Father Knows Best, but we did shun vices and embrace morality. Because of that, I was never around anyone whose life was impacted by alcohol and its abuse. As I got older, went to college, and then married Effie, I became aware that, unlike the family I grew up in, alcohol was a regular part of many people’s lives.