The Stupid 365 Project, Day 4: Stars
October 4th, 2010
In an earlier stage of my life, I had the opportunity to interact with a lot of stars.
And I don’t mean the sitcom flash of the season or the newest substance-abusing paparazzi target (although I dealt with a few of those, too). I mean REAL stars, people who had made it — which can happen to the undeserving — and had stayed there, which can only happen to the very small number of performers whose personality and talent engage audiences for years and year.
And I learned something that will come as a surprise to none of you: Stardom is not actually good for personal development.
Take someone, put his/her face on a million screens, blow it up to 40 feet high, surround him/her for decades with people whose job description is to say, “Yes,” kowtow to him or her on the set, and you eventually get a monster. Or, if not a monster, at least someone whose disregard for others is leviathan in scope. There are plenty of these wretched people, and I think they’re the ones who went into it without a fully formed, fully independent sense of who they were. Without that, you’re no match for stardom. To survive, you have to be bigger than stardom from the get-go.
One of the great exceptions, in my personal experience, was Katharine Hepburn, with whom I had the privilege of working several times. Hepburn was Hepburn, and she would have been Hepburn if she’d been the wife of a country doctor. She had a strict New England code and she both lived by it and held others to it.
The first time I met her, I went up to her house, formerly the gardener’s cottage on the estate that long belonged to the director George Cukor. She came in from the garden, hands dirty, started to shake hands, looked at the hand she’d extended, and laughed. ”Look at me,” she said in That Voice. ”What you must think of me. I’ll be right back, and Phyllis will bring you cookes.” Phyllis was Hepburn’s long-time secretary and assistant. From the kitchen (it was a very small house) she called, “Many people prefer eating Phyllis’ cookies to chatting with me.”
Phyllis brought the cookies, and I took a quick, nervous look at the copy I’d brought for her to read — copy that would be used as a promo on NBC television for the production of “The Glass Menagerie” in which she was starring. She came back in, drying her hands on her pants, and said, “Are those my words? May I see them?” I handed them to her, and she read the page once and beamed at me and said, “But this is marvelous. You’ve caught me very well. Do you have a pencil?” I did, and I gave it to her. ”If I could just make one tiny change,” she said. She paused and looked at me, eyebrows raised, pencil poised over the paper. I assured her that she could make one tiny change. She made a tiny change, showed it to me, said again, “This is really quite good,” and asked if she could make another tiny change. Twenty minutes later, I’d been praised unceasingly and not one word of my original copy remained.
She read her version into a microphone once and said, “That felt like a minute.” It had been exactly a minute. ”Good,” she said, “so that’s done.” I asked her to sign the page and let me keep it, and she wrote “Good work!” on it and scrawled a big, looping signature. Ten minutes later, we were each drinking a glass of white wine, and talking a mile a minute. She told me stories about Spencer Tracy, which I found extraordinary because she had broken with a lifetime friend, Garson Kanin, when his book revealed the Hepburn/Tracy relationship while Mrs. Tracy was still alive, and I realized with a little start that she trusted me. The talk was mostly about acting, but there were some very personal elements as well.
I had just seen “Pat and Mike” in which she knocks half a dozen golf balls straight down the fairway in a single tracking shot: the balls had been cued up about four feet apart, and she got the club swinging and simply moved from ball to ball as the camera followed: no cuts, no tricks. I asked how she’d done it, and she said it was all in the rhythm and got up, took a poker from beside the fireplace, and started to swing it. ”The big problem,” she said in deadly seriousness, “was not hitting myself on the leg with the driver. I would have looked an awful pratt.” And she traveled the length of the living room swinging the poker back and forth.
After three or four hours, I left. The next day I found that she’d requested that I be her liaison for much of the production, and I went on to work with her on three shows, including the extraordinary “Love Among Ruins,” in which she starred with Olivier. I met her often, usually either up at the Cukor cottage or in her New York townhouse, and there were always cookies and usually a glass of wine.
I was more than half in love with her, which probably shows.
More stars, both bright and dark, to come.
|
This entry was posted on Monday, October 4th, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed under All Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
13 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 4: Stars” -
Beth Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 10:02 am
” Hepburn was Hepburn, and she would have been Hepburn if she’d been the wife of a country doctor. She had a strict New England code and she both lived by it and held others to it.”
The key is the code of behavior. Her New England background, especially when she was young and setting her values in stone, would have demanded that she acquire a stiff backbone and self-reliance. Being born into money, old money, brought with it obligation. She earned her stardom and reputation through hard-work and discipline.
There are some very talented people in the acting profession, Meryl Streep, being the only example I can think of. Streep and Hepburn knew how to mature, to grow old gracefully. And there is that indefinable but easily recognized talent. The spoiled children, especially those who waved goodbye to childhood many long years ago, don’t have the talent that Hepburn and Streep were born with. They are the products of publicists who make a fortune off them, keeping their names always in the spotlight, even if it destroys personality and the self-respect. There are some really sad cases in the news like the poor soul who is before a judge on what seems to be a weekly occurrence. When parents turn their child into a cash cow, that child has little chance of developing the qualities of a Hepburn.
Hepburn recognized talent in you. Everything I ever read about her made it clear that she didn’t suffer fools gladly. She certainly wouldn’t have wanted anyone on any project to which she attached her name if they couldn’t make her better. If her name was on a project, it became important and the expectations of her fans were high. She wouldn’t cheat her public by being anything less than her best.
It’s that old Yankee pride in work that has been accomplished.
-
fairyhedgehog Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 11:39 am
This is wonderful. I’m so glad for your mad decision to blog every day!
-
Phil Hanson Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
It’s fitting that you chose a “class act” as the subject for a post so early in your latest project. You do both yourself and Ms. Hepburn proud, Tim. See you tomorrow.
-
EverettK Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
“There are plenty of these wretched people, and I think they’re the ones who went into it without a fully formed, fully independent sense of who they were. Without that, you’re no match for stardom.”
Or much of a match for anything else in life! Sturgeon’s Law: 95% of EVERYTHING is crap. That applies somewhat to people as well as all of the things they say, do and create (as a group, not as individuals). The PR machines are excellent (in the sense of action, not in the sense of quality of product) magnifying crucibles, and they certainly magnify and purify whatever was there to start with. They have no interest in IMPROVING what was there to start with, and people rarely change a great deal once they’ve reached adulthood (in terms of their basic personality).
Ah, Hepburn. Damn you, Hallinan! You’ve made me envious, and I HATE being envious! 
-
Suzanna Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I’m so happy you are blogging daily and that your scope is wide ranging. I love learning about your early childhood, however pitiful or funny as you want to make it.
How fortunate you are to have spent time with the great Ms. Hepburn. I bet it took someone as smart and charming as you are to keep up with her! Thanks for sharing!
-
Laren Bright Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
My brother said he’d once run into Hepburn walking into his apartment in NYC when he was managing George Shearing. He said all he could do was sputter, “Miss Hepburn, you’re wonderful.” Had I ever run into her I shold hope I would have been half as eloquent.
-
Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Hi, Beth — You’re right on both counts, I think. Hepburn was a Yankee in the best sense, and the only current star who approaches her in talent or deportment is Meryl Streep. I don’t know why she liked me, but once it was clear that she did, I was on tiptoe all the time not to let her down. She did me the favor of assuming that I would do things right, and I did whatever was necessary to live up to that.
Thank you, Fairyhedgehog. So far, it’s fun — and what I hoped would happen is actually happening: it’s opening me to writing earlier in the day. We’ll see what happens as my tank begins to run dry, which is ABSOLUTELY in the cards.
Phil what a nice thing to say. She was unique in my experience, although I did work with some other extraordinary people, but Hepburn was always at the top of the list. One thing I left out was that she was totally without vanity. During a photo session, she asked for a mirror to be stationed next to the camera and looked at it before every shot but rarely did anything but rearrange the scarf she was wearing. When she caught me looking, she said, “I have a neck like a leg of poultry.” Hope to see you tomorrow.
Everett — PR, a which is sort of what I was doing while I was working with Hepburn, is the art of making mutton look like lamb. It’s almost disorienting when a PR person is handed something real. But with someone like her, all you can do is get out of the way. However clever you think you are, she’ll leave you in the dust, But then, being Hepburn, she’d compliment you on your creativity.
Suzanna — I’m so happy you’re reading it. My childhood was a long way from being Dickensian (and I’ll write about your house some day, I’m sure) and the fact that it was so generally sunny makes it easier to remember the miserable bits as funny. If it had been all miserable, I’d probably have been arrested by now as the Sombrero Killer. Although it took me years to be able to stand the smell of linseed oil.
Laren, that’s a great story, and I’m sure she said something gracious. Last year in the Green Room at the West Hollywood Book Fair, a little tiny woman with steel-gray hair came toward me, walking carefully, and I saw that it was Carol Channing. All I could think to do was applaud. And she said, “Why thank you,” and toddled on past. She’s weeeeeeensy.
Thanks for stopping by everyone.
-
Jaden Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Tim, you make me wish I’d met Ms. Hepburn. I’d have been too tongue-tied to speak.
You have a Beth posting, so I’m switching to my new pen name and will be Jaden from now on.
The Sombrero Killer…Love it!
-
Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Hey, Jaden — She was used to people being tongue-tied, and she broke through it pretty fast when it suited her to do so. Other times she hid behind the barrier.
Nice to have both of you here.
-
Sylvia Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
<3
-
Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Exactly.
-
Vicky Says:
October 24th, 2010 at 11:45 am
So very happy I went to Scottsdale’s Poisoned Pen for your talk and signing. What a delightful man you are! Just came across this from another email. After knowing Hepburn I am so surprised you are uncomfortable writing in a woman’s viewpoint. Since I am reading these in order and late at the starting gate. I can not wait until i get too the odd jobs. I have a feeling that picture is going to remain with me.
-
Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 24th, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Thanks, Vicky — that was a terrific day, and I was much more delightful than usual.
I really was uncomfortable about writing from a woman’s perspective. It scared me silly all through QUEEN OF PATPONG but now I can’t seem to stop; two of the three books I’m writing right now are from a female point of view. Thanks a lot for dropping by, and I hope you come back.
|
Share with your friends: |
