Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art (12 page)

Three weeks later I flew to Los Angeles to do the interiors of my scenes in
Bonnie and Clyde
. We were on a Warner Bros. sound stage. My first scene began with Evan and me sitting in the back of her car, supposedly chasing the Barrow Gang. I waited for Arthur Penn to call, “Action.” Arthur was sitting alongside the camera—out of frame, of course—but not more than five or six feet away from me. As soon as I heard him say, “Action,” I started to act. Sounds sensible, doesn’t it? But Arthur immediately called out to the camera operator, “Keep rolling,” and then he gave me my first revelation of what it means to be an “actor’s director.” While the camera was rolling, he said, “Gene, just because I say ‘Action,’ doesn’t mean you have to start acting—it just means that
we’re
ready. I could see you had something cooking inside, but you weren’t ready to act yet. Film is cheap. Keep working on whatever you’re working on and start acting when you’re ready.”

The scene went very well.

When we took a break, the assistant director came up to me and said, “Don’t get used to what just happened—you’re not going to find many directors who work like Arthur.”

In the next scene I’m riding in the back of a car with the Barrow Gang. Near the end of the scene Gene Hackman tells me a joke. Arthur Penn asked us to rehearse the scene, very lightly, before filming it. When we got to the joke I asked Gene not to tell me the punch line until the cameras were rolling, because I didn’t want to feel obligated to fake my laughter when the time came. We started
the scene, which was going very well, and then Gene told me the joke. Well, the joke was so dumb that when it came to the punch line—“Whatever you do, don’t sell that cow!”—I laughed until there were tears in my eyes, because I couldn’t believe how dumb this silly joke was that I had been waiting to hear. (From an acting point of view, not having heard the joke before had helped me a great deal.) We did the scene several times, and I laughed harder each time—mostly, I think, because Gene Hackman was so enthusiastic each time he told me this stupid joke.

When filming was over, Arthur Penn told me that he had never envisioned the part being played the way I did it. I asked him what he meant, and he said he never imagined its being funny. Then I asked him why he thought of me for the part.

“I saw you on Broadway and thought you’d be right for the part.”

A few months later I asked Warren Beatty the same question. He said, “I saw you on Broadway and thought you’d be right for the part.”

Maybe I’m exaggerating—to the extent that they didn’t use the exact same words—but who cares? They both said that I was in a movie because they had seen me onstage, which was just what I told Gene Saks would happen, in Louisville, Kentucky, when he quit directing
The Millionairess
.

In May of 1967 I went to my first press luncheon. It was on the afternoon before filming was going to start on
Springtime for Hitler
. Everyone had a place card. Mine was not at the main table, which had place cards for Mel Brooks, Joe Levine (the man who had put up half the budget), Sidney Glazier, Zero Mostel, and Dick Shawn. Zero examined all the place cards; then he picked up Dick Shawn’s card and my card and very deftly, like a ballet dancer, swapped them. I was now sitting next to Zero.

When dessert was being served, I got up and excused myself. Mel asked where I was going, I told him that I had a doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t miss. The truth was that I didn’t want to miss signing up for my last unemployment check. (It was up to fifty-five dollars a week by that time.)

______

Katie had never seen her biological father. He had wined and dined Mary Jo and led her to believe that he was a big shot in the investment business. When Jo became pregnant with Katie, she found out that her husband was not only a liar, but was also broke and a drunkard. She told him that he was not going to be the father to her child. So she walked out after three months of marriage and raised Katie on her own.

I started having dinner with Jo and Katie two or three nights a week. Before dinner was ready, I would perform “circus tricks” with Katie. I would lie down on the floor, with my knees pointed up, and Katie would try to stand on my knees while I held her hands. It always made her laugh—especially when she would start to fall and I would catch her. Then the three of us would sit down to eat.

After dinner I would kiss Katie good night, and Jo would put her to bed. When Jo came out of the bedroom, she’d lower the lights in the living room, and we would lie down together on her couch, fully clothed. Then the habit started: after about twenty minutes Katie would open her bedroom door with a devilish grin on her face and say, “Hi, Daddy.”

Comedy
is
hard—if you’re not a comic actor. And drama is hard if you’re not a dramatic actor. Some actors are blessed with the talent to be good in both—Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant, for example. I wish I were blessed that way, but I’ll never be as good in drama as I am in comedy. Still, good acting is good acting. As Bette Davis told Paul Henreid at the end of the film
Now Voyager,
“We have the stars, Jerry—why ask for the moon?”

Zero Mostel had a car and driver assigned to him when filming
for
Springtime for Hitler
began. I was surprised when he announced that he would pick me up each morning and that we could travel to work together.

Joe Levine—the man who put up half the budget and was going to distribute the film—went to a screening room with Mel and saw the first eleven minutes of the dailies. After he saw them, he said, “I don’t know what the hell that Wilder guy is doing. I got twenty-five thousand dollars for you to get yourself another actor.”

Mel calmed him down and talked him out of having me fired. (I was only getting ten thousand dollars.) Mel didn’t tell me about this incident until a few days later.

Toward the end of the next day, we were about to rehearse my big “hysterical” scene for the next day’s filming. I was anxious to see how Zero and I would play it together. Mel said, “Go!”—he never said, “Action,” like every other director—and I gave it my all. When the scene was over, the whole crew laughed and applauded. I was worn out and a little hoarse, but I could see that it was going to work when we filmed it the next morning.

Mel looked a little dazed. “What do you mean, ‘tomorrow’? We’re filming it today! Right now! We’ve got just enough time.”

“Oh, Mel—oh, my God! I thought we were just rehearsing. Wait a minute. . . . Wait a minute. . . .”

An image flashed into my mind. I remembered fencing for the All School Championship at the Bristol Old Vic. I was sweating and felt depleted of all my energy. My fencing master called out, “Jerry, grab a handful of that raw sugar.”

I said, “Mel—get me some Hershey bars.”

“Hershey bars??”

“Yes, Hershey bars!”

“With or without nuts?”

“It doesn’t matter! Just get me—no, wait!
Without nuts
—the nuts might get caught in my throat in the middle of the scene.”

Somebody ran out and got some Hershey bars. I ate two of them, had a drink of water, and said, “Ready!”

I had given the scene some prior thought, of course, but only just enough to decide what would get my “motor” going:
This giant hulk of a man—not the character called Bialystock, but Zero Mostel, the actual actor standing in front of me, who grabbed hold of me in Sidney Glazer’s office and kissed me,
on the lips—
is now making all these strange gestures and keeps trying to get me down on the floor and pounce on me. . . .

The scene went very well.

There was another scene that might illuminate more of the way I work. The character I played in the film was called Leo Bloom, and he always carried a blue security blanket with him everywhere he went. Zero Mostel grabbed my little piece of blue blanket, and I nearly went
crazy
until he gave it back. At the time we were filming
Springtime for Hitler,
I had a little dog named Julie. I had made the saddest mistake when I first got her, a year earlier. I took her to Central Park and kept throwing a ball for her to chase. She loved the game, as most dogs do, but one time I threw the ball too hard and too far, and it rolled into one of those water ponds that are emptied in the winter. Julie ran after the ball and then dove into the cement pond and disappeared. I ran to get her, and when I reached the pond, I saw Julie limping on the cold cement as she tried to walk towards me. Now, a year later, when I took out my blue blanket and rubbed it against my cheek, I did a sense memory: I imagined that it was Julie I was holding—not a blue blanket—and I was rubbing my cheek against her curly fur, feeling it and smelling it. And then Zero Motel grabbed her out of my arms and was going to throw her away . . . and I went crazy.

We were at the Lincoln Center fountain on the last day of filming, waiting for the sun to go down. I was sad that the film was ending,
of course, but also very happy. I wasn’t broke; I was in love—for the first time in my life—and I knew that I had been part of a unique film, working with the two most unusual people I had ever met. The outrageousness—the complete audacity—of Zero and Mel remains with me. Once in a while, when I’m confronted by some pompous authority figure who thinks that his job outranks any artistic concerns, I think of Zero and how he might handle the situation: let out a loud fart and then say, “Oops, I beg your pardon. . . . now what was it you were saying?”

When the sun finally went down, the cameras started rolling, and I started running around the edge of the Lincoln Center fountain, shouting for all I was worth, “I want everything I’ve ever seen in the movies!” And the fountain was turned on, in the film and in my life.

July 1967

MARGIE
: You want to get married?

ME
: Yes.

MARGIE
: And you’re sure?

ME
: I know that I love her.

MARGIE
: I didn’t ask you that. I know you love her. I’m asking if you’re sure you want to get married.

ME
: I can’t go on any longer letting that little girl call me “Daddy.” It makes me feel good, but it hurts, too, because I’m not her daddy and she’s never had a daddy. . . .

 

Pause.

 

MARGIE
: Where are you?

ME
: I’m right here—I didn’t go away.

MARGIE
: What are you thinking?

ME
: If Jo and I get married—do you think it will last?

MARGIE
: So long as she adores you.

Katie’s biological father showed up one day at Jo’s apartment. Jo asked him what the hell he was doing there, and he answered that he was hoping to see his daughter, just for a few minutes. Jo said something like, “You wait seven years, and now you want to see her?” She kicked him out and told me later how grateful she was that Katie hadn’t answered the door.

Springtime for Hitler
finished filming in June. I flew with Jo to El Paso, Texas, and took the bus to Juarez, passing the same gigantic sign,
MEXICATESSEN
, as we crossed into Mexico. Jo got her divorce the next morning.

We were married in October. Katie was seven years old. I found a small, but beautiful, garden apartment on Eightieth Street, between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, for $480 a month. (Four-hundred-eighty?? Yes!)

There was a single tree in the middle of our small garden. Katie and I went out there on the day we moved into our new home. I carved a heart shape in the bark with a small paring knife, and in the middle of the heart, I carved:

G W
LOVES
K W

Katie wrote me a little note that night:

I love gene. he is thin. he is handsome.

I wanted to adopt Katie as soon as possible, but there was a New York State law that required a six-month waiting period.

We were a happy family. I loved it when Katie bounced into bed with Jo and me, just for a little while before going to her own bed, so that we could all watch
Creature Features
—old black-and-white monster movies that Katie was too frightened to watch alone. But the scary parts made her laugh when we all watched together. After six months we went to a courthouse in lower Manhattan.

THE JUDGE
: Now Katie, do you want to be adopted?

KATIE
: I don’t know.

 

(“Oh, my God—now what?”)

 

THE JUDGE
: Well, Katie—you know that your mommy and Gene are married, and they love you, and they both want you to be very happy. But I need to know if you really want to be adopted.

KATIE
: (with a devilish smile): . . . I don’t know.