My First Five Husbands (42 page)

T
HE MANAGER’S WIFE WILL DEAL WITH YOUR DAMAGED BALLS
.

P
LEASE LEAVE YOUR BALLS IN THE FRONT OFFICE
.

P
LAYERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN BALLS
.

Mark and Brendan and their cronies spent many a jovial hour out there, drinking beer and shooting pool. Every morning I’d stand in the kitchen drinking my coffee, looking out at the backyard, thinking,
I’m happy!
A novel feeling. I liked it.

Work was a little slow, however. Early in January of 1996, I lamented to my Guatemalan housekeeper, “I don’t know why I never get called in for movie auditions!”

“Turn a glass of water upside down in a saucer,” she said seriously. “Light a candle and pray daily to the water goddess for assistance.”

So I did, and say what you will, within a week, I was cast as the blinded, disfigured biology teacher in Paul Verhoeven’s
Starship Troopers
. To create my disfigured face, I had to have a plaster cast made. The special-makeup people came to my house, and we did it in the kitchen, with me holding on to the edge of the cabinet for dear life, my nostrils and eyes plastered over, my lips all but plastered shut, with a straw to breathe through. Before the twenty minutes were up, I couldn’t take it anymore, but they had what they needed. And that little role was a trip!

I did that job, relit the candle, and—hey, that little water goddess knew her business. I was immediately called to do Garry Marshall’s new film,
Dear God,
playing the crotchety mother of Greg Kinnear in his film debut. In the TV movie
The Margaret Mitchell Story,
I played Mitchell’s grandmother (her inspiration for writing
Gone with the Wind
). Shannen Doherty played Margaret Mitchell, and she was an experience. Fortunately, she liked me, and who better to play the head-strong, wild young flapper? After another candle, I agreed to play a farmer’s wife in
Rusty, a Dog’s Tale,
a talking-animal movie—but only if I could also do voices for two of the animals, so they gave me a loquacious, matronly cow and a fussy little duck. Such fun!

Late in August, the water goddess decided to test my mettle with a very dark film,
This World, Then the Fireworks,
as the insane mother of incestuous twins played by Billy Zane and Gena Gershon. Blasted in the face with a shotgun when the twins were children, she was another disfigured character. Not only disfigured, but crazy as a bedbug, a Bible-thumping lost soul. When the twins realize she knows about their affair, they smother her to death. Yeah. That’s beyond dark. That’s not even film noir—that’s dismal, inky, stygian black, baby. At the audition on camera, I pulled out all the stops, going wild-batty hysterical. When I finished the scene, the director said, “Well.
Now
I know what this movie should look like.”

After
Fireworks,
I asked my pal the water goddess if she could come up with a happier role, and she hooked me up with Martha Coolidge, who was casting
Out to Sea
, which would be Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon’s last collaboration.

“I can’t offer you one of the love interests,” Martha told me. “The producers have actresses in mind for those roles, but I’m going to ask to have the role of the cruise ship owner expanded for you. Are you interested?”

Interested? I left there floating on a cloud. As I recall, it was Cloud Number Nine.

Out to Sea
was great fun. I got to rhumba with Walter Matthau, who dove under my chiffon gown in an effort to hide from Dyan Cannon. Walter never learned the dance, so I had to whisper to him, “Turn left and dip me after two more steps” and “Now dive behind me,” while looking as if I’m being manhandled. He was wonderful to hang out with, full of unending stories and anecdotes. Jack Lemmon, whose love interest in the film was Gloria de Haven, was delightful but quiet off-camera. Brent Spiner was hilarious as the smarmy British entertainment director. Hal Linden and Donald O’Connor were also onboard, and I even got to do a bit of ballroom dancing with O’Connor.

Trying to negotiate the rhumba with Walter Matthau in
Out to Sea.

The juiciest gossip on the set was born of the snarky rivalry between Dyan Cannon and Elaine Stritch, playing mother and daughter. That and Gloria de Haven’s daily wardrobe crises. The wardrobe mistress went from trailer to trailer every morning, checking first on Cannon and Stritch, then de Haven, and ending up with me, bringing the day’s tastiest gossip with her. There were various altercations on the set between Elaine and Dyan, but Walter—never raising his voice—would suggest we take a short break, and when we returned to the scene, he’d always worked it out with them. Oh, Lord, that movie was too much fun! One of the best experiences in my career. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Martha Coolidge went straight home and had a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile,
The Guiding Light
fired their new music producer, so there went Mark’s job. In June he moved back to Austin, sleeping on friends’ sofas while looking for a house.

I told him, “Turn a glass of water upside down and light a candle.”

Hey, no stone left unturned. Or as a book on theatre critics says, “No turn left unstoned.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

A
s of this writing,
The Golden Girls
is playing on television somewhere in the world at any given moment of any given day. It was a smash hit in sixty countries and remains popular throughout the world. DVDs fly off the shelf (and I get almost two cents for each sale, by God!). Internet fan sites abound. It’s been almost fifteen years since I delivered my last line as Blanche Devereaux, yet she has made me one of the most recognizable women in the world, recently voted in one poll as the Fifth Most Beloved Celebrity Over Fifty-Five—after Mohammed Ali, Walter Cronkite, and I’m not sure who else. Mother Teresa and Shirley Temple, I would assume.

Ah, Fame! Celebrity! To be adored by throngs!

But wait a minute…who is really adored by throngs? Rue McClanahan or Blanche Devereaux? The throngs don’t know Rue McClanahan. They only think they do, because if someone appears to you nightly in the privacy of your bedroom, you must be intimately acquainted with her,
n’est-ce pas
? But Rue McClanahan has also played witches and bitches, killers and drunks. It’s the Fame of Blanche Devereaux, week after week for decades, that has laminated her to Rue until, to the public, the two seem inseparable.

My friends who knew me before Blanche love me for myself. And I love them. Most are “unknowns,” and the few who are famous I still love for themselves, warts and all.

Not all important people are famous, and not all famous people are important.

Let’s agree on that. Okay, little loves?

Late for my hair appointment one morning, I stopped at the bakery next door to get a fast bran muffin, then rushed outside and almost bumped into a guy who approached me, extending his hand. Thinking he was a panhandler, I pushed the bakery bag at him and said, “Here—it’s a bran muffin!”

Whereupon he said, “Oh, no, Miss McClanahan, I wanted an autograph.”

So a guy on the street thinks my name on a piece of paper is preferable to a bran muffin. If that’s what fame is, then—hot cinders! I’ve arrived! But I’m still on the same mission I was on when I was Little Miss Nobody. I want to do good work and be rewarded for my effort. Back then, I was thrilled if acting paid enough to cover the rent and an occasional beer. I’ve since added a few amenities to my list of simple needs, but the work is still what matters.

One May morning in Hidden Hills, Barbara Lawrence, my manager, sent me the script for
Millions of Miles,
a play about an over-the-hill prostitute and a shy widower living in Queens, to be presented in a small theatre north of Manhattan. It wasn’t very good, but I was interested in the role of the prostitute and wanted to work on her. I talked it over with Barbara.

“You wanna go disappear for a couple of months?” she asked.

“Heck,” I said. “Sure!” And we accepted it.

The frugal producers rented quarters for me in a funny old theatrical apartment hotel in the West Forties. I checked in, saw a couple of plays, and reported for rehearsals on May 19, where I met the director, Barry Nelson, and his wife, Nancy, the husband-and-wife producers, the stage manager, Joel Vig, the leading man, Milo O’Shea, the playwright, and two younger actors who rounded out the cast. Nobody else, no assistants. The stage manager was also the costume department. A minuscule budget, to say the most.

On the third day of rehearsals, I was returning from getting coffee when I saw a tall, slender man in a blue blazer talking to the director and producers, and kids, that was one good-looking dude. Thick, wavy brown hair. Big hazel eyes. Full lips, quick to smile.

“Rue, meet Morrow Wilson,” said Barry.

And Morrow Wilson shook my hand and said, in a low, mellifluous voice, “I saw you play Caitlin in
Dylan,
and you’ve never disappointed me since.”

How refreshing! Caitlin in
Dylan
in 1972. One of my favorite roles. And not one word about
The Golden Girls
.

Mr. Wilson stayed for the full day of rehearsals, but I was never told why he was there. Next day, he returned, watched rehearsals, and had several little private conversations with Barry and Joel. Was he a possible investor? A play doctor? Just an interested friend? It turned out he was there to give any assistance he could, gratis, as a favor to his friends, Barry and Nancy.

At the close of rehearsal the second day, I announced to the room in general, “Oh, gosh, I’ll never get all these lines learned without some help. Is there anyone here who could cue me for about an hour before rehearsals?”

After a moment, Morrow Wilson said, “I could do that.”

Method in my madness, folks.

The next morning, Morrow arrived at my apartment at 9:30 sharp, as dapperly dressed as he’d been at rehearsals, and I knew I was going to like him right away when he candidly asked, “So. How did you get stuck to this tar baby?”

I laughed and said, “Oh, I thought the role had possibilities. How ’bout you?”

“Well, Barry and Nancy asked me to produce this piece of poultry a while ago with the idea that Barry would make a career change from hotshot Broadway comedy actor to hotshot Broadway comedy director, but I could see five good reasons this play was going to go over the falls, and I made the mistake of leaving a message on their answering machine listing those reasons. So I didn’t hear from them for two years. Then Nancy called last week and said, ‘Remember that play you said was the worst play ever written?’ And I said, ‘I couldn’t have said it was the worst play ever written;
I
wrote the worst play ever written.’ She said, ‘Well, we’re taking it to Broadway starring Rue McClanahan and Milo O’Shea!’ And I said, ‘Wonderful! Rue McClanahan is the best comedienne in the English-speaking world, and a surefire box office draw. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’ Nancy said, ‘What are you doing Thursday?’ See, in show business, the only promises kept are the ones
you
make. So here I am.”

God, I loved the zingy way he talked, the silver-tongued devil! And it was heartening to meet someone who felt the way I do about keeping one’s promises. Yes, we eventually got around to running lines, but over the next several days, sitting with Morrow every morning, I was a lot more interested in the character on the sofa beside me than I was in the characters in the play. He was funny—no,
witty
. He had a gargantuan vocabulary, with which he spun interesting stories and raised thought-provoking questions. He had integrity and was decent in the rarest sense of that word. He could argue anyone into the ground and enjoyed verbal confrontations, but he never swore, never used four-letter words. He had more information in his head than any cranium should have been able to hold. He remembered every joke, every song, every piece of pertinent information he’d ever passed his eyes over, able to quote someone famous on any subject, but when I said something about his impressive intellect, he pointedly told me, “I am
not
an intellectual.”

Well,
I thought,
that’s how much
you
know.

Born in Manhattan, a direct descendant of one of the six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, Morrow had grown up in Vermont and Arkansas (in itself a bizarre mix), the eldest son of a professional writer and Southern mother. He’d gone off to Putney, an offbeat, prestigious school in Vermont, then to Columbia to major in English, and then straight to work at twenty-one as the first associate producer for David Susskind’s talk show. He’d spent his career in theatre, broadcasting, and advertising, always writing, always stirring things up. He’d been married to his first wife for sixteen years and to his second for seventeen years, and had now been divorced for almost seven months.

Good heavens,
I wondered,
how old is this man?

He didn’t look a day over forty-five, but when he mentioned he’d lived in Manhattan during World War II, I figured he had to be at least fifty-two. He was actually fifty-seven. I was sixty-three. Okay, I could buy that. Even if he did look like a kid of forty-five.

Morrow and I continued to meet every morning, and at rehearsals he became overtly flirtatious. Shocking! Believe it or not, I’d never been pursued by such a blatant flirt. But then I noticed he also flirted with the younger actress in the cast, so I wasn’t sure if he was making a play for me or just doing what came naturally. However, the more time we spent together, just the two of us, the more I saw a difference between the public and private playfulness.

Something I found sweetly odd about Morrow when we were alone together: He was shy. I found that terribly charming. I found
him
terribly charming. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be so fully engaged in conversation, to laugh like that, and think like that, and feel that deep-down frisson of
Hmm, now where might this be leading?
I liked the feeling of his lanky, six-foot frame striding down Broadway beside me. Those hazel eyes that didn’t break away from mine when I was talking, because he was genuinely
listening
to me. And those Jimmy Stewart lips—you know those lips!

Begging to be kissed.

I
found The Lump while I was getting a massage one night. Those of you—and there are far too many—who have felt The Lump know exactly what I’m talking about.

The fingertips stray across it:
Tra-la-la.

Then return:
I beg your pardon?

Then palpate:
What the hell…

Then grope:
Oh, my God!

The Lump, meanwhile, just sits there. Like a Lump.

“It’s under my right arm, and…I didn’t know who else to call, Morrow,” I said. “I don’t have a regular doctor here. Can you suggest someone?”

He said, “I do know someone. Dr. Steven Field. I’ll make an appointment right away.”

The next day, I had rehearsals upstate where the play was due to open in a week, so he made the appointment the following day, Friday, June 6, at 9:00
A.M
. When I arrived, Morrow was waiting on the sidewalk outside Dr. Field’s office. He opened the taxi door for me and gave me a firm, reassuring hug, but his expression was so solemn, his eyes so penetrating, I felt a twinge of anxiety.

The examination was brief.

“It’s breast cancer,” said Dr. Field without a shred of doubt.

The room—his voice in my head—that split second on the clock—everything seemed to slip off track, the whole world suddenly toppling.

“Breast cancer?”
I echoed. “But…I’m a vegetarian. I exercise every day. I get regular mammograms. And in my family…
no one
in my family…”

Clearly, he couldn’t be right, because cancer is something that happens to other people—right up until the moment it happens to you.

“How long have you been on hormone replacement?” he asked, consulting my chart.

“Seventeen years.”

“Well. There you go,” he said. And there I went. “The cancer is well into Stage Two. It’s already metastasized to the lymph nodes. You’ll need surgery right away.”

I struggled to assimilate the information he was giving me, grateful to know that a deeply concerned but comfortingly practical Morrow was waiting for me in the reception area. The person you need with you at an event like this is a producer, not a director. Someone who will take action instead of telling you how to feel. When I told Morrow the news, he took it in, showing no surprise or fear.

“I suspected as much.” He nodded, taking my hand. “Rue, you’ve had so much work to do on this play, I wasn’t going to say anything until after you’d opened, but now I want you to know that I love you. Whatever happens, I want to be with you over the long haul.”

The difference between the blackness of the examination room and the unfiltered sunlight of those words was almost too much. The thing I wanted to hear and the thing I most dreaded hearing had both landed in my lap in the space of fifteen minutes. For the first time in my life, someone was there for me with exactly what I needed, at the exact moment I needed it. I looked at Morrow and said, “I love you, too.”