SHIRLEY MACLAINE: “Over” But Not Out
by David Lefkowitz
(This article was first published May 2011 in Long Island Woman magazine.)
“I have an investigative nature, and I’ve been so privileged to travel. I’ve met an awful lot of incredible people, and I’ve really had an extraordinary life.”
Any reasonably lucky and active person should be able to say something similar, but when actress and author Shirley MacLaine makes a statement like that, well, the words “incredible” and “extraordinary” almost seems inadequate. This is a woman who lived briefly with a southern black family during the Civil Rights era, got smuggled into Leningrad in 1962, watched boxers fight to the death in Thailand, and made a pilgrimage across Spain. This is also a woman who palled around with some of the most famous actors and directors in Hollywood and had relationships with such notables as Danny Kaye, Robert Mitchum, Yves Montand, Andre Konchalovsky and the foreign minister of Australia. Oh yes, and she’s also the “kook” who has long believed in reincarnation, numerology, astrology, chakras and spiritual energy aligned with a Godforce.
“I think mathematics is the universe,” MacLaine noted in our late winter phone conversation. “I would not live my life by the numerological signs, but I think it’s an ancient art and important to include.” The Oscar-winning actress then explained how math is both poetic and perfect – even as it allows for imperfection and flexibility in such cases as pi, the never-ending number. Since our 40-minute chat would be woefully inadequate to even scrape the surface of MacLaine’s mystical beliefs, she puts a simple button on the topic by adding, “I think there are realities beyond our imagination.”
That said, those interested in pursuing her long-advocated theories can find a whole smorgasbord of New Age topics at her official and quite elaborate website, shirleymaclaine.com, while the layman may prefer perusing her sprightly new volume, “I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions,” published this month by Atria Books. The author of “The Camino,” “Sage-ing While Age-ing” and “You Can Get There from Here” didn’t realize what her latest book would be until she sat down with her editor who asked, “What do you want to write about next?” “He started suggesting things,” recalled MacLaine, “and I just said, `No, I’m over all that.’ He suggested something else, and I said, `No, I’m over all that.’ And he said, `Well, that’s a title; now write the book.’ That’s actually how it happened.
“When you get to be a certain age,” continued the actress, who turns 77 April 24th, “I feel very much like going over things and discarding the things that no longer attract my attention. I thought they were important in the past; they’re not anymore. Some of the things I completely ignored I now look at. The other thing I’ve noticed as I get older is that it really is true that almost everything in life is show business. I don’t know if I made that concept clear enough in the book. We have the theater of the Egyptian Revolution; we’ve always had the theater of war, the theater of politics, the theater of everything. And we are, in my opinion, writing our own script every single day. So maybe I’m in the right business after all: show business. But then it dovetails into life.”
In her book, MacLaine needles Hollywood types who live in a bubble and believe their own p.r. She quotes an oft-told L.A. adage: “Never marry an actress – she is too much more than a woman. Never marry an actor – he is so much less than a man.” But in our talk, the author is just as quick to defend her colleagues. “The idea of show business being life is not bullshit. We all live in the illusion of what we create; Hollywood people are just a bit more sophisticated about what illusion is. And about the fact that we are creating every single thing every single day. We write our own scripts, and wear our own wardrobe, and finance and distribute our truth. That’s what we do in show business.”
It should be noted that for all MacLaine’s deep thinking about the universe and the seeming resignation and crabbiness the title of her book might convey, she actually has a very playful nature and a motto of “rolling with it” that serves her well, especially at this stage of her life. Erma Bombeck may have titled her famous book, “If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I Doing in the Pits?”, but MacLaine heads her website with the more optimistic: “Life is a bowl of cherries, never mind the pits.”
It is this attitude that allows her to ruminate philosophically on topics that might lead others to knee-jerk rage and despair. For example, though she believes strongly in karma, she dismisses any talk of heaven, hell, devils or cosmic revenge. “When we talk about Al Qaeda, Hitler, Charles Manson, what we’re asking here,” she said, “is the question, `is there such a thing as evil?’ But one person’s evil is another person’s liberation. I agree with Gandhi that the devils are the ones rattling around in our own hearts. But I like to go deeper and ask, `What is the learning experience from these people we consider evil?’ I’m intrigued by what Einstein and astro-physicists are looking for – a unified field theory. Are we basically all one? I do think we all go to the same place and that hell is just a conceit, a fear-mongering punishment for those we don’t agree with.”
Since we detoured into the subject of terrorism, I asked MacLaine about a passage in “I’m Over All That” in which she admits that she’s weary of traveling, mainly because our concessions to national security have made airports such arduous, dehumanizing places. “On the one hand, you say we need to guard against letting ourselves be treated like sheep,” I note, “but on the other hand, you yourself are capitulating.” MacLaine acknowledges the paradox: “I travel when I have to, but frankly, I’ve done so much of it. And it’s different now; traveling has lost its majesty for me. Not just that whole theater of pain-in-the-assdom, but because the world is overpopulated and too violent. What’s happening everywhere in the world is a kind of consensus of authoritarian behavior to make people lose individual identity. And as [scientist] Paul R. Ehrlich used to say, it could be a result of just having too many people.
“The one thing that will continue,” continues MacLaine, “is that more people will be born than will die, unless we have some kind of Malthusian event where millions of people do die. I hope not, but who knows? We need to have a balancing, that’s for sure.”
The lure of stability seems crucial to MacLaine, whose dog, Terry, now gets much of the attention she once lavished on an array of lovers. “I don’t worry about having a boyfriend,” she states. “I don’t want to settle. I’m totally fine without one person. I’d be shocked to the stars if I met my twin soul or someone I thought was my soulmate at this age. But if I did, I would go with it.”
Asked if her very active love and sex life of the 1960s was a rebellion against her conservative upbringing, MacLaine retorts, “Why do you say the 60s? It was the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s! But I wasn’t doing it because that was when everybody was doing it. I was doing it because I was attracted to whoever the man was. I was a serial monogamist. I didn’t have affairs too often, but I did once or twice. But I’ve learned that when you’ve got the sexual tension out of a relationship, or when it tames down, you’re more honest about things. So I have relationships now where sex is still nice, but it’s not as intense as it was when I was younger. That makes it possible to establish more equal honesty in the relationship.”
Regarding her relationship with her daughter, Sachi, MacLaine says that, as it has been for many years, the rapport is “more like friends than mother and daughter. We go through our ups and downs, but it’s very nice. She would probably have a whole different opinion of it – like most daughters and children do of their parents.”
Rolling with life is also helping the actress cope with the inevitable slowdowns of age. “I am not afraid of getting older,” says MacLaine. “I am sometimes shocked when I can’t walk up a very steep mountain like I used to. I also have short-term memory problems that drive me crazy. But I try not to let it bother me. I try to live in the present and have it be all right.” Asked if she misses being a dancer, MacLaine laughs, “I’m so glad it’s over with! I couldn’t possibly get through a [dance] class. Even a beginner’s class because those are usually harder than the advanced, because you have to take the balance and the extension, and the pain is slower. Still, I am basically a dancer; that is my psychology. If you’re in trouble, and you’re in a fox hole, you want a dancer in there with you… It means I’m a team player, and I never pull any diva trips.”
Which shouldn’t fool anyone into thinking the divine-guided Miss M. is a pushover. She walked off “Terms of Endearment” mid-shoot when personality clashes became unbearable, and, during filming of “Steel Magnolias,” she took director Herbert Ross to task for his bullying of co-stars Dolly Parton and pre-superstar Julia Roberts. “I called him on his cruelty,” MacLaine recalls, “and he knew it was true. He also knew that I knew him because we’re fellow dancers.” So why was he being a meanie? MacLaine thinks a moment and then laughs uproariously. “Because he was a choreographer!”
On the same subject, MacLaine notes that Bob Fosse was a taskmaster, too, but not a vicious one. “He had an accurate compass on energy,” she recalls. “And I was proud of `Sweet Charity’ because I had an infected tooth on that whole picture and did the whole film basically with 106 fever.” The actress has fond memories, too, of Vincente Minnelli, who directed her in “Some Came Running.” “Minnelli used to direct the furniture – and the curtains and the interior decoration. He didn’t direct people, but that was his genius. He would cast perfectly and then let us do what we do best.”
Alfred Hitchcock, also, was mostly hands off when it came to guiding performances. “Hitch used to say, `The only thing that’s important is the script and the first preview. Nothing else matters,” recalls MacLaine. “But to tell you the truth, working with Hitch was an eating experience. He would lose a lot of weight before a movie, and then, on a movie – because the studio was paying for it – he would gain the weight back. Now, on `The Trouble with Harry,’ I had just come off being a chorus girl in Pajama Game and was nice and thin and lithe. But two or three weeks into the picture, the president of the studio called me and said, `What do you think you’re doing? You’ve gained ten pounds, and the cutaways in the scenes don’t make any sense!’ I told him, `Well, Hitch wants me to eat with him three times a day – and I love it!’”
The image of MacLaine eating and gabbing with gusto jibes with her current lifestyle, where having a meal with friends and more platonic relationships with men proves more satisfying than the hurly-burly of her previous decades or the siren call of cyberspace. “Frankly, I don’t think I will ever do email,” MacLaine says. “If that puts me out of touch with the entire population, I don’t care. I do use my cell phone all day; I’d be lost without it. But that keeps me in contact with the other person’s emotions, their mood, their space between words.”
Also fulfilling her need for contact is live performance, so MacLaine tours with her one-person, autobiographical show. “I put together a whole composite of film clips, television, singing and dancing, wall-of-life pictures. I use a remote-control device to stop [the clips] and then tell stories about my life. People enjoy it and can ask any kind of question they want from the audience. In fact, recently one woman stood up and said, `Did you know that your father proposed to my mother?’ She told me the name, and it was true! I asked, `Did they sleep together?’ And she said, `No, according to my mother, they didn’t. Your father was very conservative, and my mother was, too.” And then my dad went on to marry someone else. But it came out of the blue; it was so adorable. She asked me some more questions until I said, `Let me tell you: I had sex with your father!’ Of course I was joking, but it was funny. That’s what happens when I do these shows, it’s hilarious.”
That said, offstage and off camera, MacLaine prefers serenity. “I lived in New York City for 20 years, and I was on Long Island every weekend in the summer. If I was gonna live back east again instead of New Mexico, I would live on the Island all year and come to the city on weekends. But my favorite thing on Long Island is the winter. The summer is full of the elite that meet, greet and eat. Winter is more isolated. It’s wilder and more of itself.”
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SIDEBAR:
Some fun quotes from Shirley MacLaine’s “I’m Over All That.”
“I call it cosmic humor when people make good-natured fun of me. I’ve finally come to realize everything is God’s joke anyway. I’m just one of the characters in the comedy.”
“When a woman my age says they need to find a man, I tell them to get a dog. There’s no more loving and satisfying way to live than if you are content with yourself and your freedom.”
“Once at a party, the hostess served coke in a silver bowl. I thought it was Sweet and Low and put a silver spoonful of it in my coffee. Somebody later told me it was hundreds of dollars worth. That was the last time I was invited to her house.”
“I am an overachiever with a sometimes bulldog-like work ethic, but when I walked across Spain by myself, begging for food and sleeping in shelters, I soon learned the art of surrender and allowance.”
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BYLINE:
David Lefkowitz co-publishes Performing Arts Insider (TotalTheater.com) and hosts Dave’s Gone By (davesgoneby.org) on UNC Radio, where he serves as programming director. Read him at: https://davelefkowitzwriting.wordpress.com/about/. ▲
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