The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? by Michael Kearns Read Free Book Online Page A

There is something that connects you, and as an actor, you must find that connection in every role you play.
    “Begin in real life. You have something in common with every person on the street, every member of your family, every student in your school.”
    I can honestly say it was the most valuable lesson about acting that I ever learned and it eventually provided the blueprint for my life’s work.
    This is not to suggest that Miss Epstein was uninterested in the nuts and bolts of performing and putting on a good show. When I once played a critical telephone scene, mistakenly grasping the dangling phone cord with the mouthpiece to my ear instead of my mouth, she greeted me backstage upon my exit with a few expletives that took me weeks to recover from. I had disgraced her—and myself.
    Miss Epstein wasn’t shy about investigating my home life to see if some domestic drama was interfering with my concentration. She confronted my mother: “Is he getting enough sleep?”
    “Yes,” my mother lied. The nights alone became more and more frequent the older I got. I desperately clung to my reputation as an actor. Acting would save me.
    Yet visits to my father were traumatic. “I will never be like him,” I promised myself. He was doing more time in the state hospital’s mental ward. Mom felt it was her maternal duty to take me to visit him, an experience that has haunted me ever since.

CHAPTER 10                
    There was a large room, like an auditorium, lined with row after row of cots. Assuming a standing position in anticipation of our arrival, he was fairly easy to spot. Even in his deflated state, he was taller than the others.
    As we navigated our way to his cot, a stranger’s shaky hand reached for me. Another one of the patients muttered something unintelligible. But most were in vegetative states, drugged out and numbed out. My dad would say “Hi,” and shake my hand. About fifteen minutes later, when the mounting silence became unbearable, he’d say, “Bye,” and shake my hand again.
    Weather permitting, sometimes he’d meet us on the hospital’s front lawn. My mother attempted to instigate a conversation, which usually resulted in revisiting an unfinished argument between the two of them. On some lucky occasions, Grandma Katie came along, which normalized the disquieting situation even though my mother’s jealousy of her mother-in-law was palpable.
    Grandma Katie was a sincere Catholic, not a religious hypocrite, which must have made my mother feel unworthy. My father had also cast my mother as the wife who was incapable of being as perfect as his mother. And then there was my growing affection for my grandma, coinciding with intensified feelings of distrust toward my mother.
    Grandma kept things moving by relating a tidbit from the newspaper or an anecdote about a relative and always offered some insight into the weather we’d just had, were presently having, or were about to have.
    My mother also resented Miss Epstein. Even though she found her mother role untenable, she didn’t want to see me playing the role of son to women I’d cast as substitute mothers. She demanded all the attention.
    At some point, I realized that my mother’s support of my career was not unconditional; it was based on how my accomplishments reflected on her. While she wasn’t exactly a stage mother, she did glom onto my success. My achievements were her achievements—make no mistake about that.
    When my acting teacher called to say that she’d arranged for me to audition for a role at the St. Louis Municipal Opera, my mother initially thought that it was some kind of prank. I knew otherwise and as I stood in a long row of young boys, all approximately nine years old, there was little doubt in my mind that I would be chosen to appear in Take Me Along with Betty White and Jack Carson.
    Chosen to be the understudy of the boy they cast, I was close to being right. I attended all the rehearsals and checked