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

in every night at half-hour to see if he was okay to go on. And I received a check for thirty-five dollars.
    The Muny, as it is affectionately called, remains one of my hometown’s prize attractions. Located in beautiful Forest Park (where my near-death ice-skating mishap occurred), it is a twelve-thousand-seat splendid outdoor amphitheater.
    My first professional job was a joyous experience, largely based on my interaction with Betty White. In her thirties and unmarried, Betty White chose me as her lunch date every single day of the weeklong rehearsal period. She bought me a hot dog and a soft drink and we’d each save some of the bun to feed to the birds. Why did she assume this maternal role? Perhaps simply because she could sense how badly I needed it.
    Several members of the chorus of singers and dancers also parented me. This was my first exposure to same-sex couples, who behaved no differently from their male-female counterparts. My introduction to gay men and lesbian women interacting was pleasantly uneventful.
    While Betty White (who sent me Christmas cards postmarked “Beverly Hills”) seemed to be a fairly healthy sort, I was warned that not all actresses who lived on the West Coast possessed her upbeat disposition.
    One day on the bus, en route to acting school, a man noticed the words “Junior Theater” boldly imprinted on the oversize envelope I was clutching, crammed full with my scripts and voluminous notes. I had begun taking private classes with Miss Epstein since she had pronounced me “gifted.”
    “You gonna be an actor?” he asked. “Let me tell you somethin,’ kid. I got a niece out in Hollywood. Big star. Big house. Big swimmin’ pool, the works.”
    “Really?” I asked, not knowing where this was leading.
    “Won an Oscar, for God’s sake,” he said. “But you know what, kid?” There was a long pause. He leaned toward me and stared into my eyes. Finally, he whispered (so the driver and the other bus riders couldn’t hear), “Shelley Winters. And she ain’t happy.”
    In my mind, I compared my mother’s transparent sadness to the tragic Miss Winters’. I didn’t look like Rock Hudson or Montgomery Clift, actors who shared the screen with Miss Winters. I didn’t believe that I was handsome enough to be an actor. I thought, “How can I become better looking?”
    I began having photographs of myself taken at Walgreens drugstore, using coupons that I’d cut from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch . I’d nervously wait for a week or so to get them back so that I could analyze each and every one of them.
    That smile needed some work. And the hair could undergo some finessing to bring out my features. What to do about those sad eyes?
    I would save up enough money (and clip more coupons) for my next photo session. Like a sculptor, I believed my face was clay that I could mold by determination. After a couple of years, I actually began to look less ugly.
    “He willed himself into being handsome,” my mother would tell people in later years, when I was considered above average. I never asked, but I guessed that she was referring to my obsession to be photographed.
    I remember that she had a photo taken of herself around the same time; whether she was the inspiration for my photo shoots or I was the inspiration for hers isn’t clear. But our intentions were unquestionably the same; we were both assessing our marketability. Hers was taken in a studio; her shoulders were draped in some black fabric and she was looking a bit doomed in spite of her attempt at a half smile. If she was trying to assess her degree of charisma, I wonder if she knew that it was in serious jeopardy of becoming extinct.
    I intervened, suggesting that she needed some dazzling hairstyles when she embarked on her manhunts. I had taken great pleasure in combing my Grandma Katie’s long, luxurious mahogany-colored hair as she enjoyed The Lawrence Welk Show .
    I had developed some innate know-how when it came to Mommy’s