Madeline Kahn (14 page)

She phoned William Lewis repeatedly, begging him to help find a way to get her back into the show. He made inquiries with the producers, even though he believed that Madeline’s primary interest was an expense-paid trip to Hollywood, where she could audition in her spare time. His suspicions rose when she learned that through his work with Sid Caesar he knew Mel Brooks. Right away, Madeline asked whether Lewis could land her an audition. He replied, “A word from me isn’t going to help you, my dear.” Patinkin loved working with Madeline, and bringing her back to
Candide
“certainly would have improved the show,” he says. However, he approved of Costa, too. Moreover, “Everybody was on contract. . . . I don’t know how it would have been accomplished.” Madeline didn’t know, either, but that didn’t stop her from making inquiries in the midst of an increasingly confused production.

As Patinkin was shoved aside and replaced by director Michael Kidd, even Bernstein’s morale drooped. It became obvious to everyone that
Candide
was in trouble. According to Patinkin, things got to the point that once, when the chorus came in a bar late in Lewis’s big number, “Bon Voyage,” Bernstein fell to his knees and bit Ted Chapin on the leg.
²³
Moreover, as Lewis points out, “We sang 177 performances in a row of those things! That was a real singing show.” As Madeline was soon to discover, eight performances a week in a tough sing was not the key to her happiness. With no hope of a New York engagement,
Candide
limped its way to the Kennedy Center and closed there without her. She went back to looking for work.

Because she’d been “put on hold,” Madeline hadn’t lined up other jobs. She later told columnist Arthur Bell that after the completion of
What’s Up, Doc?
she worked only once in the next year, in an industrial show.
²⁴
(Either her old friend Michael Cohen or a new friend, Steve Novick, both in advertising at the time, might have gotten the gig for her.) Apart from this, Madeline took singing lessons and acting and dance classes.

She studied dance not for professional reasons alone. (At least a few lessons were for belly dancing, something she never needed in any role.) Before, she had been “zaftig, sexy, voluptuous,” Robert Klein says, but even during
Two by Two
, she was sensitive about her weight. When a Boston theatergoer gushed, “You’re so much thinner in person!” Walter Willison had to spend two hours reassuring Madeline. Now, having seen herself on a big screen at last, and determined not to be perceived as Eunice, Madeline wanted to lose weight. Michael Karm remembers that after inviting friends over for dinner, she’d throw away any leftovers. But that wasn’t good enough. After all, what was to stop her from fishing the dessert out of the trash for a late-night snack? Her solution was to sprinkle the garbage with kitchen cleanser. “Nothing could be better than to lose weight and be thin,” Madeline wrote in her personal notebook. “Yet, when you succeed (and
esp
. as in my case, finally, without trying, because of
real
change) people look worried, as though you were dying.”
²⁵

For the rest of her life, she continued to police her weight, and she showed considerable discipline. Reporter Claudia Dreifus remembers a lunch meeting, around 1973, when Madeline’s meal consisted of a single boiled egg. In an interview with me, her close friend Gail Jacobs suddenly realized that, though they’d dined together often, she’d never seen Madeline eat an entire portion of anything. By the mid-1970s, the girl who looked like an opera singer was gone for good, and in her place stood a movie actress.

Despite her protestations of joblessness, Madeline did field other work during this period. In 1972, when Jimmy Stewart returned to his signature role as Elwood P. Dowd, in a
Hallmark Hall of Fame
adaptation of Mary Chase’s
Harvey
, Madeline played Ruth Kelly, a nurse in the sanitarium. The role isn’t large—and in this adaptation, it’s smaller than usual—but it provided important early exposure on a prestigious, nationally televised program certain to draw large audiences. She shared several scenes with Stewart and Helen Hayes, and for the rest of her life, Madeline could say that Jimmy Stewart told her she was pretty—it’s in the script, after all.

Madeline also took the part of Antonia, Quixote’s niece, in a curious studio recording of
Man of La Mancha
, released by Columbia Masterworks in 1972. The cast featured the television star Jim Nabors as Quixote/Cervantes and the opera star Marilyn Horne as Aldonza/Dulcinea. Madeline
received fifth billing, after actor Jack Gilford (Sancho) and tenor Richard Tucker. Antonia has one number, an ironic lament in which she and Quixote’s housekeeper (Irene Clark) claim “I’m Only Thinking of Him,” all the while betraying transparent self-interest. Spanish-flavored, like the entire
Man of La Mancha
score, this number is a trio, as the Padre (Tucker) consoles the two women. Madeline sails through her high-lying cries of “Woe!” and gets the thrill of harmonizing with Tucker, one of the Metropolitan Opera’s most acclaimed artists. Madeline was in the recording studio only for that one number, Horne says. She wouldn’t meet Madeline until their mutual friend, Matthew Epstein, introduced them a few years later.

Meanwhile, Bernie and Shirley Wolfson divorced, and Bernie married his third wife, Marti, who was close to Madeline’s age. The couple moved to Manhattan, which would remain Bernie’s home for the rest of his life. Madeline made an effort to see them at least a few times each year, and this period marked the most frequent contact she’d had with her father since he divorced her mother. Robyn Wolfson stayed with Shirley, and so she and Madeline saw less of each other. They never bridged the gap between them, Robyn says wistfully, and they didn’t have an advocate to bring them together, as Jef tried to do with Madeline and his father. When a friend once remarked that Madeline had a half-brother and a half-sister, Madeline snapped, “No, Jef is my
brother
.”

The world met Eunice Burns on March 10, 1972. With mostly terrific reviews and great box office, Madeline’s debut commanded attention—including at home. “We were all very proud,” Jef Kahn recalls. “
What’s Up, Doc?
was the first clear sign that the door was open. Whether she would be able to capitalize on it, we didn’t know, but it was a great thing.”

Already the income Madeline had earned from a long run on Broadway and in Hollywood meant greater financial security than she’d ever known. She did continue to help pay for her mother’s expenses, and soon, Paula Kahn quit her job with Actors Equity. Once Jef started college, Paula, determined to break into movies herself, rented out the house in Queens, and moved to Westwood, in western Los Angeles. Seeing Madeline’s success, Paula “may have had jealousies or resentments, but she’s very clever,” Jef says. “If I were Paula, I would be thinking, ‘This may work out very well for me. So you
go
, girl.’”

Paper Moon
(1973)

IN PETER BOGDANOVICH’S NEXT FILM,
PAPER MOON
, MADELINE DELIV
ered what would long stand as her most nuanced screen performance. Her characterization of Miss Trixie Delight includes a standout scene, a long speech on a hillside that had the cast and crew talking about an Oscar nomination as soon as the director cried “Cut.”

Adapted from Joe David Brown’s novel
Addie Pray
(1971),
Paper Moon
is a picaresque tale about a small-time confidence man, Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal), and his precocious sidekick, Addie (Tatum O’Neal, just nine years old when shooting started). While the script leaves room for doubt that Moses (also called Moze) is really the orphaned Addie’s father, the casting of a real-life father and daughter pretty much settles the question—and also provides much of the fun of watching the picture. Drawn to the project because he’s the father of two girls, Bogdanovich used black-and-white photography and deep-focus compositions to locate his characters in a time, the Depression, and a place, Kansas, where individuals stand out against flat landscapes, vast skies, and never-ending roads. Alvin Sargent’s script takes a three-act approach: In the first, Moze and Addie meet and strike up an uneasy but gradually warming alliance; in the second, their relationship is threatened by Miss Trixie, a cooch dancer who must be dispatched by Addie; in the third, Moze runs afoul of a bootlegger and a corrupt sheriff (brothers, both played by John Hillerman), bringing the tale to its conclusion.

“Lots of people thought I was wrong for that role after
What’s Up, Doc?
” Madeline told the
New York Times
, “but Peter knew I could be different. I don’t know how much more different two parts could be, although I guess they both concern desperate ladies, don’t they?”
²⁶
In many ways, Bogdanovich’s treatment of Miss Trixie marked a step up from
What’s Up,
Doc?
for Madeline. Not only a burlesque performer, but also a burlesque of femininity and the opposite of the no-nonsense, tomboyish child, Addie, Miss Trixie isn’t glamorous, exactly, but she’s sexy. And this time, Ryan O’Neal can barely keep his hands off of her, a marked improvement over Eunice’s sorry lot. Physically, Miss Trixie is all burgeoning curves and curlicues, from her wavy hair to the frilly dresses that cling just a
little
too tightly to her body. The first time we see her, walking toward the camera as she leaves a carnival tent, she’s jiggling in a way that Madeline never did on camera before or after—thanks to a brassiere, with support but without restraint, that production designer Polly Platt, Bogdanovich’s ex-wife, created especially for her. That entrance still elicits laughter, and it identifies Miss Trixie’s character. Instantly, Addie (like the audience) sees through her, and the ensuing scenes confirm our first impression. Miss Trixie is on the make, flattering Moze in exchange for gifts, though she withholds sex because she’s hoping for something more substantial than a free ride and a new wardrobe. To appear respectable, she tries to pass as a refined Southern lady, even traveling with a lady’s maid, Imogene (P. J. Johnson).

At first, Addie dislikes Trixie simply because she’s an interloper: She usurps Addie’s place in the front seat of the car and as the only female in Moze’s life. Addie rebels, refusing to return to the car after a picnic, and Trixie climbs up a hillside to cajole her, bribe her, appeal to her vanity, and cuss at her, in succession. Addie is unmoved. Finally, Trixie drops all artifice and asks, “So how ’bout it honey? Just for a little while? Let ol’ Trixie sit up front with her big tits.”

In the screenplay, the line was merely “Let ol’ Trixie sit up front,” and when Bogdanovich proposed the change, Madeline balked. “She had a certain moral code,” O’Neal observes. After
Paper Moon
premiered Madeline—pulling out the script to prove that “big tits” didn’t appear on the page—told a reporter, “I don’t find things like that easy to say.”
²⁷
In rehearsal, she told Bogdanovich she would prefer to say “big ones” instead. “All right, well, say that,” Bogdanovich replied. Yet whenever they got to the speech, Madeline said something different. At one point, seeing her struggle with the line, young Tatum piped up, “Why don’t you just say ‘knockers’?”

The scene is composed of two long shots of Madeline, crosscut with close-ups of Tatum. In the first shot, Trixie comes up the hill and tries to win over Addie. In the second, the camera has moved in closer, and Trixie speaks from her heart. “As we got ready to make the second setup,” Bogdanovich remembers, “just before we did the first take, I went
over to her and I whispered in her ear, ‘Just say “tits,” just once. Just try it.’ Then walked away. Didn’t even wait for her to react, I just walked away. I didn’t know if she’d do it.”

She did. “And that was the first and only time she said it in her life, because we only did one take,” Bogdanovich says. “What I love is the little smile, a kind of embarrassed smile she gives after she says it, which is just Madeline reacting to the moment.” At the end of the scene, Madeline “slipped and fell but caught herself and played it into her character,” O’Neal remembers. “That was an accident; she could have rolled down the hill, actually,” and she’d only just recovered from a broken leg. O’Neal admires the way Madeline “could turn a moment that wasn’t rehearsed into something nicely spontaneous.”