I graduated from college and entered a two year MFA acting program in San Francisco. I stayed in the program for one year only—mainly because the acting school kindly requested that I not return for a second. The truth was, during the year in the acting program my psyche and heart were cocked toward the phone. I was awaiting the call from my mother telling me that my father had died now that the cancer, which he’d kept in abeyance for years, had returned and pervaded his body. I was drinking throughout the year and doing coke—those were my only coping skills—while I awaited the collapse of the empire that was my father. How would I handle his death? I wanted to return home to Bronxville, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. There’d be no departing from career tracks now. What little childhood I had was over and now was the time to pull it together and grow up. My mother was already seeing me as a replacement for my father, not just in the emotional support department, but the financial one as well. An impossibility for a confused 22 year old girl numbing herself on drink and coke.
That my father ran the family was a given. My mother and I gladly reaped the fruits of his labor and didn’t know anything about bank accounts or finances or what we were living on. Nor did we want to. He died on April second, a mere month before I would leave bleak San Francisco and the acting program. I was ready to go home to the Bronxville house nestled in the woods and over a little stone bridge that led the way to the Sarah Lawrence campus—but my mother insisted I finish out the year.
I returned to the school where I had to perform while having no real foundation as a human let alone a character in a play. To make matters worse, once a week I’d go up to do a scene in front of, not just the teachers, but the entire company of actors on the main stage across the street (the school was associated with a prestigious regional theater) and get ripped apart in front of the entire company. If you glance sideways at constructive criticism it can appear as mean-spiritedness and the criticism did lean toward the mean here. Thankfully in the company at the time was a sweet and encouraging Annette Bening. “You did great!” she’d say to me with a cheerleader’s punch to the air, buoying me up after a performance. She seemed to know I needed an encouraging word. There’s no underestimating what an act of kindness can do for the lost and hurting.
When I got home my mother was frantic and frightened which came out as anger toward me, the disappointment. Though I wasn’t sure how I’d disappointed her. The alcohol and drug use must have factored in to the anger. She wanted me to do one thing and one thing only: GET A JOB. Now I was leading a fairly desultory life and working was not on my agenda. I was a wreck myself and didn’t know how to pull it together and actually work. What with my liberal arts degree, I was trained to do absolutely nothing. I managed to come up with a few odd jobs: working in an art book store and for a college lecture agent. But I didn’t stay at any one place too long.
Then in keeping with the family tradition, my mother sold the Bronxville house and moved into a cramped apartment in Manhattan. Another home gone, though I couldn’t blame her. She didn’t need to be running a big house in the country just because I hated living in the city.
The apartment was barely big enough for me, my mother and the Steinway, but we also had her two best friends: Mary Jane and Annie Ross the jazz singer (of Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross fame) living there half the time in those cramped quarters. We’re talking a 1980’s two bedroom cracker box apartment, not a Park Avenue classic six.
Once in the city Frances still gave her soirees, bringing together her cafe era show business friends. Annie Ross sang, composers John Wallawitch and Murray Grand did special material. Now I’m naming true New York characters. Performers who were sophisticated and witty and of another era. I realize very few reading this will have heard of them, but these show folk were the mainstays of my youth. One night Bobby Short showed up with Gloria Vanderbilt and performed. Professor Irwin Corey, all five feet of him, would go up to do his act which Annie and my mother dreaded because once on, you couldn’t get him off. He was always zonked on pot and his act went on forever. “Someone go up there and tell him to get off!” my mother would say to Annie in a stage whisper. Practically stomping her little high-heeled foot.
With my father gone, my mother’s friend Billy Roy accompanied her on the piano—though she still did a medley of my father’s songs. Her phrasing, as always, infused with thought, heart and emotion. Everyone loved coming to these evenings where friends packed in like sardines around the Steinway and my mother served Beef Stroganoff and Hot Chicken Salad.
But I confess, living with my mother, Mary Jane Kanter, Annie Ross, and our cat in a two bedroom apartment on York and 89th street was stifling. At 23 and without any forethought or planning—other than throwing some clothes haphazardly into a bag— I told my mother I was going to Los Angeles to visit my friends Liane and Viv whom I’d met during my junior year abroad in London. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was moving, though that was in the back of my mind. I didn’t think she could handle it. The visit to LA lasted 30 years.
Even across a continent, Frances was on my case to get a job. And I was game to get one. I truly was. Here I was in LA with dreams of making it big in . . . well, something or other. I knew I’d never get married (the one thing my mother really wanted for me) so a career was what I could offer by way of a consolation prize.
Viv, Liane, and I got a bungalow on Sierra Bonita off Melrose and I registered with an employment agency. Within a week I was offered a job at William Morris to be the assistant to Gayle Nachlis, the one equity agent at William Morris. She handled every regional theater west of the Mississippi. I couldn’t have prayed for a better job. Then I awoke sick one morning. Feeling as though I’d been hit by a bus. I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow and could barely stay awake. My eyeballs ached. I called the Morris office and said I couldn’t take the job. And I was sick, very sick it turned out, but I also think I was scared to take this job; I didn’t think I could live up to its demands. I was frightened and concealing a drug addiction in my back pocket. After spending my nights doing coke with a bunch of gay guys I’d met at Koontz hardware, it turned out I had a raging case of hepatitis.
Instead of taking the prestigious job at William Morris (incorporating my love of regional theater into my work) I ended up taking a job at The Honey Sanders Agency which stood next to Pink’s Hot Dogs on the corner of La Brea and Melrose. Honey had two offices, one in NY and one in LA. My mother had met Honey at a cocktail party and told her her daughter was looking for a job. The agency was housed in a mid-century motel style building and their one big client was Betsy Palmer, who was keeping their doors open with the commission they got off her tour of Hello Dolly. I made a whopping 200 a week, no medical insurance, no perks. Now this was a job I could handle.
I loved Honey who’d made a career out of playing Bloody Mary in road companies of South Pacific. She was a Jewish New Yorker who, I guess, looked Polynesian if you squinted and sang the hell out of Bali Hai and Happy Talk. The other thing about Honey, she was very rich but tight with a dollar. After two years my $200 a week salary went up $20 dollars which she paid me in cash “Albert can’t find out about this.” she said when she offered me the raise, referring to her husband back in Sands Point. She’d peel off two tens and hover the $20 bucks over my open hand, like Uriah Heep, before giving it to me. But Honey was kind and funny if tight fisted. She wore an enormous diamond ring and, when negotiating, she’d place her hand over her heart at just the right moment, flash the rock, and say “Gentleman, let’s get down to business and talk real money.” Meanwhile, having hepatitis I slogged my way through each day at Honey’s where I was expected to keep long William Morris Hollywood hours for $200 a week. I was experiencing bone deep exhaustion and I’d hobble home and be asleep by 7:30 each night.
I stayed at Honey’s a few years and it’s worth noting, I got sober during my stay at Honey’s and right before I’d make the move into casting. The story of how and why I got sober goes something like this . . .
this old New Yorker got all the name references as well as full knowledge of what is a classic six. Nice installment.
Love reading the vivid descriptions of the people and moments in your journey!! So good!