Life Is Not a Stage

Deep down, I didn’t think it was going to take me that long, and ultimately, it didn’t. But now when I talk to people about this time of my life, I tell them that once I was in it, there was no way Dr. Jehlinger or anybody could have stopped me short of throwing me down on those tracks and running me over. I was hypercritical of myself even as a beginner, in the kind of insecurity that drives artists not to rest on their laurels. So I thought I was awful as the distraught and suicidal Sophie. But fortunately, Dr. Jehlinger saw some potential in me, or perhaps he was influenced by Christine Johnson’s letter of recommendation. At best, Dr. Jehlinger must have admired the guts of a kid from the country choosing such a scene. I made the cut. One remarkable postscript to this story happened when I appeared on a recent talk show. One of the hosts had somehow located a copy of Dr. Jehlinger’s hand-scribbled evaluation form from that audition and presented it to me. At the bottom, he wrote, “This girl has some promising qualities. Possible to become a promising actress.”

The next order of business was finding affordable housing and right away, since my one night budgeted at the Barbizon was history. The school arranged for a room at the Three Arts Club for Women on West 85th Street. It was established in 1906 to provide women pursuing careers in music, drama, and the fine arts with a place to stay. It had eighty-seven rooms in total and a supportive and safe social environment.

My room was the size of a walk-in closet. There was no window, the only light coming from a light bulb on the ceiling. There was a linoleum floor, a tiny closet, and a desk. The bathroom and communal shower were down the hall. And even though the bed was little and narrow, it was the first one in my life that I didn’t have to share. The place was clean, with not a cockroach to be found. Back in Rockport, I’d get up at night to go to the bathroom and the floor would be covered with them. It was not pleasant to have creepy-crawlies on you. The chiggers, mosquitoes, head lice, and you-name-it were also great motivation to leave home. So I loved the Three Arts Club. It felt good and safe.

Most of the tenants were older and only one was a fellow student at the academy, Sonya Benke. Sonya and I very quickly became wonderful friends. We’d often bring back a quart of ice cream to share from a shop called Rikers down the block on the corner of Broadway. Once we took out a Ouija board. We took turns asking questions while holding the divination planchette. I asked the spirits whether I would ever get the chance to work with the great Rodgers and Hammerstein. It was the kind of innocent and childlike wild dream aspiration akin to a hapless Cinderella wondering if her prince would ever come. Rodgers and Hammerstein were the pinnacle of success on Broadway and the theater’s most famous duo. I think I had recently seen a performance of The King and I and loved it so much. I thought, “Oh, what a thrill it would be to one day play Anna and sing those songs.” But what remote chance did I have, a million to one perhaps? Not according to the board. It said “yes.”

One of my ice cream/Ouija friends was a woman across the hall. She was big and tall and funny as all get out. One night she came in and had a white stain on her dark dress, and it didn’t look like anything from Rikers.

“What’s that?” Miss Innocent wanted to know.

“Oh, this guy tried to, you know…” She explained nonchalantly that it was semen. My brother Joe was the first one to talk to me in any graphic detail about sexuality. Before I went to New York, he gave me a book to read and said I could ask any questions. So I knew a little, but was still very curious.

“What did you do then?” I asked.

“I took care of him. I beat him up.” That was about the extent of any sexual education from my peers.

For the first couple of weeks, I was terrified to look up at the skyscrapers from the sidewalk below, having never seen a building higher than two stories in Owensboro and vicinity. It had also been frightening in the beginning to walk the couple of blocks to church for daily mass in the predawn winter darkness. Guys driving by in cars would pull over and try to proposition me. But that feeling of fear, too, was fleeting. Since then, I have never felt a lot of danger being in New York. Even in the most difficult times of my childhood, I sensed the presence of a kind of guardian angel around me. Given my situation and how I was raised, I was (and still am) very hypervigilant. I was always very aware of people. I could read their vibrations and sense danger. I was able to follow my intuition long before I knew what the word meant. If I was in a building and I saw a strange and scary person in the elevator when the doors opened, I knew to wait for the next one. Don’t tempt fate!

I began to adapt fairly quickly to life in New York, ensconced at the Three Arts, having met some of the students and the teachers and settled into a routine at school. Attitude is important, and what was expressed deep in my core was how thrilled I was to be at the American Academy. From the start, it was a supportive environment. And with few exceptions in my career, the spirit in that school has carried over to theater productions and studio sets. I never felt any jealousy. We recognized that each of us came