How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am Read online

  Don’t You Dare Show Up!

  Recently, I was offered a considerable amount of money just to show up and mingle at a party in Philadelphia. Not to speak. Just to mingle. I couldn’t do it. I imagined myself mingling, and I’m sure more than one person there would have asked what brought me there. “Are you a friend of the host?” “No, I’ve never met him. I’m here because they paid me to come and mingle.” I stayed home.

  It all brought to mind another time when I was not only not paid to show up but told if I did show up, I’d be thrown out of the building. When I first came to New York in the fifties, I was able to get a meeting with a major casting director. The woman seemed very pleased to meet me and said I seemed like just the kind of young person she liked to reach out to, a serious, dedicated fellow. I assured her I was, and she said she’d be in touch in a few weeks and would be able to place me in a very small guest role on a popular weekly drama.

  I walked out of her office at least one inch off the ground. This was in a period when no one had any interest in placing me in anything, other than on a line to see if there was a cab available for me to drive, which is what I was doing at the time.

  On the way to the elevator, I ran into a young woman I knew from Uta’s class. She turned out to be working as the casting director’s assistant. She seemed surprised to see me, and when I told her of the meeting, she said, “I remember you as someone who took a lot of long pauses when you did scenes in class.” She didn’t mean it as a compliment. I instantly became uneasy and assured her that I could go as fast as anyone wanted me to, and all those long pauses would certainly present no… She didn’t seem to be listening, and as she walked away I swallowed hard and said it was really nice to see her.

  After about a month of not hearing from the casting director, I called my former classmate and asked if I could take her to lunch. She said she didn’t eat lunch in such a way that I chose not to ask about dinner.

  I let another few weeks of silence from the casting director go by before I wrote what I thought was a very friendly letter reminding her of our meeting and told of meeting her assistant and the pauses issue. I assured her there’d be no problem with pauses and hoped I would still hear from her.

  What I heard instead from an agent with whom I was having some conversations was that the casting director told him if I as much as showed up in the lobby of the building where she had her office, she’d have me thrown out!

  I showed the letter I had written to a couple of friends to see if I had missed something, but no, it was a pleasant letter from a young man looking for a job. I can only assume that what angered her was it was also a gentle reminder of a broken promise. So it wasn’t just teachers who could be abusive.

  Later when I was working enough that people had heard of me, I ran into her a couple of times, and she couldn’t have been nicer. Neither of us mentioned the past.

  Recently, a friend of mine told me this casting director’s name came up in a conversation with George C. Scott, and he went ballistic, so evidently her hostile nature was not just visited on me. It’s highly unusual when anything is personal. If it’s happening to you, it’s most likely happening to others.

  In all this time I’ve never run into the casting director’s assistant, my former classmate. I know she went on to be a producer. If I did run into her, I probably wouldn’t recognize her, and if she introduced herself, I’d probably smile and be pleasant to her as well. Oh, I’m not saying I wouldn’t slip a long pause or two into our exchange.

  A Kiss with Troubling Ramifications

  When I was studying at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, there was one teacher who thought it was humorous to needle me and other students. This whole needling humor thing is tricky. It’s, of course, stock-in-trade for many successful entertainers. If you’re going to see Don Rickles, for example, it’s what you expect. Needling humor that doesn’t amuse the person being needled ends up as just mean.

  Although I didn’t find this teacher particularly amusing, his needling didn’t prevent me from basically liking the guy. That’s why a couple of years later when I ran into him in New York and he invited me to dinner, I accepted. I was around twenty years old and hardly knew anyone in New York, so I looked forward to the evening.

  He invited me to his apartment, and the atmosphere was such that I felt free to say to him that while I always found him to be a nice guy, he might want to take a look at that needling thing. He seemed very appreciative of the observation and correctly took it as a sign that I cared about him. At the end of the evening he said something like, “You’re such a sensitive young man. May I kiss you good night?” Still being pretty naïve about this type of thing, I assumed he meant on the cheek. Even though I was uneasy, I tried to appear casual as I said, “Sure.” On hearing that, he planted a smacker on my lips. I was stunned, quickly said goodbye, and got out of there.

  From the time I was around twelve years old and tried to kiss Myrna Auerbach’s cheek in seventh grade, I’ve never had any doubt about the direction of my sexuality. At the time of the teacher’s kiss, I understood so little about what makes a homosexual that I actually wondered if it was like virginity. I knew that if a girl had sex she was no longer a virgin. I wondered if that also meant that being kissed by a man made you a homosexual. I’m still not sure if I was unusually naïve or just normally naïve. My problem was I had no idea where to get the answer to that question. Having no one else to ask, about four months later when I ran into the teacher, I asked him. He said, “You’re a homosexual if you think you’re a homosexual.” Well, I knew I wasn’t a homosexual, as surely as I knew he was.

  In any case, it reminded me of a young woman I had dated when I was around twenty. We didn’t have sex, but close, and she asked me if she was still a virgin, and I said, “Absolutely.” Still, I had a few tough months when I thought I had lost my heterosexuality.

  Years later this man married a famous actress and I did a movie with her, but of course I chose not to tell her that before he kissed her, he had kissed me.

  Getting Better and Getting Banned

  Something important was happening to me. I had now been acting for over five years. I had always been doing scenes, getting used to being in front of tough teachers, and in spite of a general lack of encouragement, I was gaining confidence.

  I was also fortunate enough in my first year with Uta to become friends with a young woman named Eleni Kiamos who suggested me for a leading role in an off-off-Broadway play where I got a nice notice in a trade paper that led to my getting an agent.

  Once I asked my agent’s partner if I should have pictures made, and he said, “Sure. Then the people who don’t want to see you will know who it is they don’t want to see.”

  There was only one place I was working. That was on the Sunday morning dramas on CBS filmed in New York City. Eleni had introduced me to the casting director, who was her friend. With a friend like Eleni you don’t need many friends. I seemed to be a favorite over there and only there. One day a group of us gathered around a table for a reading. As I recall there were James Earl Jones, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, among others. After the reading, the producer and director decided they didn’t need so many people. They gave five or six actors (not me) twenty-five dollars and thanked them for coming, making at least some feel they weren’t good enough. When I saw that, I went to the person responsible for hiring me and said, “This is inappropriate. You really can’t do that.” She said, “This is the way we do it.” I said, “I can’t let that happen.” She said, “Well, if you want to report it, we’ll hire the people, and you’ll never work here again,” and that’s exactly what happened. There’s something called principle, and it always came ahead of anything for me when I realized something was wrong, simply because I had no choice. It wasn’t that I was such a wonderful person. I simply had no choice.

  Mad Men

  I started getting parts where I quickly learned that the abuse I got in Uta’s class and at the Pittsburgh Playhouse al
so came from nervous directors. My first live television appearance was on the hour-long Armstrong Circle Theatre. It was about the nuclear submarine the USS Nautilus going under the North Pole. The director, who had not said anything to me throughout rehearsal, suddenly took me aside close to airtime and angrily said, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to make a fool of yourself—not just yourself but the whole cast—not just the cast but the United States Navy.” I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked. He said, “You’re coming off stupid.” I have a copy of that show from 1958. I looked at it recently, and unless I drastically changed my performance just before airtime, which I doubt, I’d say the director was coming off hysterically.

  I’ve since heard from others that his behavior toward me wasn’t unique. I think most of us have had problems only with people who’ve had problems with many others. In the 1960s, I auditioned for a Broadway show that was going to be directed by a very famous Broadway director, an icon in the world of comedy. As I came onstage, he shouted to me from the audience, “Charlie Baker [the head of the William Morris Agency’s theater department] tells me you’re the funniest young actor in New York. Let me see you do something funny!” I made a face, and everyone laughed. Then I began to read for the role. I was about five lines in when the icon called out to me from the back of the theater in what sounded to me like a disgusted voice, “It’s a comedy, Charlie!” I stared at him a moment and said, “I know.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the part, which was eventually given to an excellent young dramatic actor who had never been known for comedy, before or since.

  This very successful director came from a school of comedy you most often see today in sitcoms. Set up—joke. Set up—joke. I’ve never worked liked that. Comedy can come by more than one choice. If you embody the character as best you can, the rhythm most likely will not be set up—joke but will come from the character’s natural rhythm, which will vary according to the character.

  Directors of the old school not only don’t care for this, it alienates them, because they don’t understand what’s happening.

  That wasn’t the first time that happened to me. In my second Broadway show, the director of the Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies critically told the leading man, who happily passed it on to me, “I have no idea what Grodin is doing out there,” but the audience’s response to me made his comment irrelevant.

  Early in my career I wrote a piece of material and sent it to a famous comedian. He graciously responded and said he thought it was funny, but he wrote all his own material. He then added, “Don’t make a career out of me.” I was never sure if that last line was a joke, but years later I ran into him when he had also become a famous director, and he ranted and carried on quite seriously about how offended he was that he wasn’t asked by the studio to direct a movie I had written.

  Different versions of that happened over the years. Once in a dramatic role I was supposed to physically assault the great actor Pat Hingle, who was making his first appearance since falling down an elevator shaft in real life. Pat was on crutches, so naturally I was somewhat careful about how aggressively I went after him. The director, a real bully, shouted over the PA system, “You’re coming off like a sissy.” He also ridiculed James Caan, who did a lot better for himself in the years to come than the director did.

  Robert Redford was also in the cast, but I don’t remember the director ever yelling at him. There’s something about Redford that would discourage that. He and I hung out a bit when we were both in our early twenties. We once went over to the one-room studio he was renting on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He said the first day he moved in, he opened a closet door to hang up his jacket and found there was a bedroom there!

  Lee Strasberg

  Through an introduction from my friend Eleni Kiamos, who had become an assistant to Lee Strasberg, I was given an interview. I remember sitting alone with him in his study, and he asked me what actors I admired. I said, “Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and Paul Muni, in his early work.” Mr. Strasberg looked at me for the first time and invited me to join his class, I believe because he agreed Mr. Muni was better—less elaborate—in his early work.

  Again, I saw no real point in attempting to take an imaginary shower to develop our so-called sensory abilities, but I chose not to say anything. I also didn’t understand the emphasis on relaxation exercises. For me, the way to relax is to try to connect to the character and what he’s all about and find that person in myself. That will give you something to think about other than the audience, which is the best way to relax. I’d rate that as a much better idea than to essentially try to fall asleep in a chair, which is how a lot of teachers teach relaxation, but I chose not to question Mr. Strasberg. Maybe I was finally getting tired of being kicked out. Or maybe it was because I never received any abuse from Mr. Strasberg. I believe that an exercise that is essentially getting you relaxed enough to fall asleep in a chair is only useful if you’d like to be able to fall asleep in a chair.

  Here’s an acting exercise I would use if I ever taught, which I won’t. I would instruct: Take a bottle of water and empty it into a tall glass, holding it over the glass until absolutely the final drop goes in. The concentration and focus required to be sure you’ve got that last drop is what’s needed in acting.

  I would never be interested in teaching acting because to teach suggests that acting is a viable profession to pursue. If kids realized the tiny percentage of people who make a living in show business, at least half the acting schools and drama departments might have to close up shop.

  Confidence is an absolute necessity for anyone who appears in front of a camera or large groups of people, and it’s certainly necessary to be prepared in every way to have that confidence. It’s startling to me how many actors underestimate the importance of being absolutely confident of knowing their lines. Amazingly, in ten years of studying acting I never heard any teacher say that. Some actors believe it’s not in their interest to know the lines too soon—they feel it will lead to an interpretation before they’re ready. When I say learn the lines early and thoroughly, I’m not talking about interpretation but in the way you would learn to count to ten. The interpretation can come whenever you want, or when the director asks for it. Some English directors insist you show up for the first day of rehearsal knowing the lines. Good idea.

  I was obviously getting better, because Mr. Strasberg astonishingly would cite what I was doing as an example of what to do. Once I missed class, and the next week he came over to me and asked if I was okay. That was extraordinary, because in my experience, Lee Strasberg was not a person who reached out. The two most socially uncomfortable people I’ve ever met are Lee Strasberg and Woody Allen.

  I studied with Mr. Strasberg from 1959 to 1962. He must have had thousands of students over the years, and yet in 1975, thirteen years since I had last seen him, on opening night on Broadway of Same Time, Next Year, a two-character play I did with Ellen Burstyn, Lee Strasberg was the first person in my dressing room after the show. He said, “You were very good.” I asked, “You remember me?” He said, “Of course I do.”

  After signing a letter saying if I was invited I would accept, I was then invited to join the Actors Studio. It’s ironic that the Actors Studio protected itself from rejection, while its members have to deal with it unrelentingly.

  Julie

  The off-off-Broadway play I was in when I was twenty-one was ominously titled Don’t Destroy Me. The playwright, Michael Hastings, was English. One night our director told us the agent for the playwright was coming to see the show. The next day the director informed us that after seeing the play the agent had committed suicide. She assured us it had nothing to do with our presentation of his client’s play. I completely believed her. I’m sure I’ll say this again. Who knows what anyone else is living with?

  Another time, the director, a lovely woman who teaches today, told me the celebrated actor Hume Cronyn had seen the play and said of me, �
�He could be very good, once he gets over his problem.” I asked, “What’s my problem?” She replied that Mr. Cronyn hadn’t said, but she could get his number for me if I wanted to call and ask him.

  I imagined the conversation. “Mr. Cronyn, this is Charles Grodin. I understand you saw Don’t Destroy Me and said I could be very good once I got over my problem. I was wondering…” I chose not to call.

  After one performance my buddy Julie Ferguson from the Pittsburgh Playhouse came to see me. We walked down the street after that, and I think I surprised us both when I put my arm around her shoulder.

  Julie was very different. Once we were rehearsing a scene at the Playhouse and I suggested we take a break and get a sandwich across the street. She said okay and went into the ladies’ room. I went to the men’s room, came out, and waited for her outside the ladies’ room. After a certain amount of time, I called out her name. There was no answer, so I went across the street to the sandwich shop, where she was sitting at a booth having a sandwich. I went over to her and said, “I thought we were going to get a sandwich.” She said without hesitation, “You didn’t say with you.”

  After that walk down the street with my arm around Julie’s shoulder we eventually became a couple and got married. That’s when the trouble started. Not trouble the way we normally think of it—a different kind of trouble. Neither Julie nor I had ever lived with anyone, and it was almost immediately clear that she just wasn’t all that comfortable sharing living space with someone. The late comedian Milt Kamen once said the reason he never got married was because when he’d come home there’d be someone in his apartment.