The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows (17 page)

The immediate problem of a kitchen was solved by laying a wooden board on top of the bathtub for an electric hot plate, toaster, and coffee maker. When we wanted to bathe, we had to remove the so-called kitchen to fill the tub. Instead of a closet, we had nails in the wall. For the longest time we slept on mattresses on the floor
.

We felt like a couple of college girls in our first apartment, and together we set out to clean and redecorate. I suspected that the previous tenants were color blind—the rooms were painted pink and black. Beneath the paint we discovered a rather nice marble fireplace, so we both got down to scraping the pink away
.

Furniture was added gradually. They did some bargain hunting at the Third Street Auction House. Cooking utensils and tables came from Cornelia Otis Skinner and Charlie Ruggles. Hal Wallis’ New York-based partner, Joseph Hazen, supplied lamps, and an older gentleman named Irving Sachs gave them chairs.

Winnie had met Irving Sachs, who was a regular passenger on a shuttle flight from Roanoke to New York City. Mr. Sachs was somewhere in his seventies and brought a bag of berries to eat on the plane. Winnie insisted upon washing the berries, and when she brought them back in a bowl on a tray with a white linen cloth, Mr. Sachs was impressed. He was the owner of a big clothing store in Roanoke and traveled to New York on buying trips. By the time the plane had landed, Mr. Sachs and Winnie were friends. That friendship soon included me
.

In a Gregory La Cava movie, Mr. Sachs would be a sugar daddy. In reality, he was a surrogate grandfather who was so enchanted with the girls and with what they were doing with their lives that he made them beneficiaries of many kindnesses, not the least of which was a trip to New York’s garment district to pick out some stylish additions to their wardrobes “on the house”. Irving Sachs remained a treasured friend to Dolores for the rest of his life. When she became a nun, he transferred his generosity to the Regina Laudis Community, and upon his death his sister continued his visits and his gifts.

Dolores soon found herself in a comfortable routine. She would arise late and go to Mass, then spend afternoons reading or writing letters or scraping paint. She still did publicity layouts for the fan magazines with young actors who were making movies in New York, such as Tab Hunter and Tommy Sands, and when
Newsweek
proclaimed her “Broadway’s newest star”, doors opened to the national magazines. She got her first cover—with Pogo—on
Parade
, followed by another on the
New York Mirror
. She appeared with Cyril and Cornelia on the covers of
Gotham Life Guide, Host
and
Where. Look
did a photo essay on her life with Pogo. Famed fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo shot a feature for
Cosmopolitan
of Dolores pub crawling in high-toned Manhattan, dressed to the teeth in Scaasi—after which she returned the fancy wardrobe and went back to her Forty-Fifth Street hovel.

She still walked to and even from the theater, which could be done without fear in the 1950s. On matinee days, she would be at the theater from noon until well after eleven at night. Still keyed up from the performance, she usually had a snack of matzoh, cream cheese and ginger ale, then wrote letters or did laundry until she was tired enough to sleep—usually around 3:00
A.M.

She was always the first of the cast to arrive at the Longacre, usually more than two hours before curtain, to give her time to do her makeup and hair and an hour to relax.

—Did you ever use the time to meditate or pray?

   
I was not inclined to pray in that circumstance. I wanted to clear my mind to prepare for the evening’s performance, and prayer does just the opposite. It engages the mind
.

On January 3, 1959,
The Pleasure of His Company
was declared a bona fide hit. On that day, the producers repaid the entire investment of $80,000, only eleven weeks after opening night, at a top ticket price then of $6.90.

Down the street,
Lonelyhearts
had opened to disappointing reviews—it was called grim, gloomy, bitter. Dolores received fewer valentines than she got for the play.
Variety
said she “glows with a spirited sensitivity”, but most reviewers just acknowledged her presence in the cast. I had inconsiderately sent my less-than-enthusiastic assessment plus reviews from the Hollywood trade papers and got this reply:

I received the trade reviews you sent. Sort of gave me a bit to think about in the
Reporter
. I haven’t had a blow in a review yet, and the first time is kind of stunning. However, after the newness wore off I had to laugh at myself for acting like such a typical actress type. The only salvation in this business is to learn early not to take yourself too seriously.

Every now and then, I would see Father Michael Doody, the priest who had officiated at Sheila’s wedding, because he was now living in Boston. Father Mike, as I called him, was the quintessence of Irish, right out of a John Ford movie. I thought of him as a continuity of my grandfather. He thought of himself as my guardian Jesuit
.

Mom and Pop, making yet another attempt at reconciliation, took a second honeymoon at the Kentucky Derby and stopped off in New York. Of course, they saw
Pleasure
and that served to sharpen a self-analysis of my performance. The excitement I felt when I was onstage had not flagged, but I became aware that the
cause
of my nightly nerves had changed. It was still generated by fear, but now I was going onstage afraid that I wouldn’t be as good as I was at the beginning or even as I might have been the previous night
.

I strongly and repeatedly suggested that Dolores investigate acting teachers in the city that boasted the best. High on my list was Uta Hagen, who was a major acting force on Broadway. In the late 1940s she and her husband, Herbert Berghof, had founded the well-respected HB Studio, and by 1958 few teachers equaled Hagen’s impact on the quality of acting in America.

Initially, Dolores resisted the suggestion. She felt classes were for actresses who wanted to do what she was already doing. I prevailed—nagged—pointing out that Jason Robards, Geraldine Page and Hal Holbrook still studied with Hagen. I think I was more delighted than she was when the Actors Studio coincidentally invited her to observe some classes taught by Sandy Meisner and Bobby Lewis. Those few classes whetted her appetite. She contacted Uta Hagen, who told her she would have to audition for the class. Now determined to be accepted, Dolores spent the next several days working up a scene from Sherwood Anderson’s
Winesburg, Ohio
and was accepted. For the remainder of her time in New York, she met with the actress-teacher once a week.

Uta’s classes were a highlight of those days in New York. I was sharpening my craft, inspired by her on-the-money critiques, though I admit the best feeling of all came from hearing her say, “No criticism
.”

Her challenge to me was to preserve a kind of innocence in my work. In a long run, you can become too comfortable, but there needs to be an edge so that the audience can feel that what’s happening in front of them is happening for the first time. Uta Hagen instilled in me a new and nearly unshakable respect for myself as an actress
.

Yet I remained restless. The weekends presented a special problem. With Sundays and Mondays off, everyone else in the cast left town after the Saturday night performance, not to return until Tuesday. Everyone except me had someplace to go to unwind
.

I mentioned to Winnie that I would like to find a nice, quiet retreat of sorts, a resort perhaps. Her friend Faith Abbott knew of a monastery of cloistered nuns in rural Connecticut, about two hours from Manhattan. It was an ideal setting, Faith said, for a devout Catholic woman to relax and meditate, and she would be happy to introduce me. I told her that I had had my fill of nuns and declined. But the idea of that kind of retreat kept creeping back into my thoughts
.

With the play such a major hit, leaving no question that Dolores would fulfill her year’s commitment, she and Winnie moved uptown to a new apartment on the east side.

It was a real New York apartment with a real kitchen, dining room, bedrooms, everything—and it was furnished too. The rent was $500 a month, now affordable because I was earning a performance salary of $425 a week, and expenses and responsibilities were split as before. I rationalized the extravagance to Granny by enumerating the advantages over our former home: a safer address with a doorman
and
an elevator man, both of whom you had to pass before you got to the seventh floor. Granny would not have been pleased to know that, although East Sixty-Eighth Street was some twenty blocks from the Longacre, I still walked to and from work. But I now had a place to host cast members, and a frequent guest was the pert Sandy Smith, my understudy
.

Sandy once told me she had taken the job as an
understudy
and had no ambition to play the part. She would regularly call to make sure I was showing up and would panic if I arrived at the theater a few minutes late. No Eve Harrington, she. When the East Coast winter introduced me to sinus problems that would plague me for years, Sandy would check on me several times a day. But the only performance I missed my entire year was the night Sandy was asked to go on so the producers could see her play the role in front of an audience
.

When the Tony nominations were announced for the 1958-1959 season,
The Pleasure of His Company
racked up four. Cyril Ritchard was nominated for Best Director and Best Actor, and Charlie Ruggles made the Best Featured Actor list. But the nomination that most thrilled the cast was Dolores’ as Best Featured Actress.

I flew back to be with her at the awards. She was exquisite that night, in fur and jewelry freebies offered by designers to nominees on the chance that someone would mention their names to the press. That was a cottage industry in 1959. Today it is a major business.

Not one to be impressed by celebrity, Dolores knew, nevertheless, that she was going to be in the company of some of the history-makers in her profession. The Broadway experience had increased her respect for stage actors, and she loved being a part of their tribe—whether she recognized them or not.

After dinner—and before the awards were announced—Dolores was in the ladies’ room with another nominee in her category, Julie Newmar. Julie found she had no money to tip the attendant, so she borrowed fifty cents from Dolores.

Dolores and I sat at
The Pleasure of His Company
table, which at the end of the evening was graced with a Tony. Charlie Ruggles was named the Best Featured Actor that season, the most popular award of the night. Dolores was not named Best Featured Actress. That honor went to Julie Newmar.

—And she still owes me the four bits
.