Read Online Kiss Me Like A Stranger: My Search for Love and Art by Gene Wilder - Free Book Online
Authors: Gene Wilder
Ads: Link
Mr. Robbins asked me to come back the next day and audition again. This turned out to be a habit of Jerome Robbins’s—to keep actors reading, so that he could be “sure,” and also,
I’m
sure, so that he could get ideas for how to direct certain scenes. (According to Actors Equity, you’re supposed to pay an actor after three readings, which Mr. Robbins never did.)
After my fifth reading I was told that I would have to do one more
final
audition. The competition for the role was between me and Gerald Hiken—the wonderful actor whose first scene at The Actors Studio I had snuck in to watch from the balcony. By this time my confidence had dropped a few notches. The horrible trap is that an actor tries to remember what he or she did that impressed the director originally, and, unfortunately, the actor starts imitating what he thought he did. Nevertheless, after my sixth audition, I got the part. Barbara Harris was cast as the Prostitute, and Zohra Lampert was cast as the mute daughter of Mother Courage.
Rehearsals were a little strained. Mr. Robbins thought that the best way to get us into Brecht’s Communist/Socialist way of thinking was for all of us to play Monopoly during our lunch hour. I should have known that there was trouble ahead.
We opened previews at the Martin Beck Theater to a packed house. I had a rousing and funny scene toward the end of the first act, after which Mother Courage and her daughter and I pushed Mother Courage’s wagon to our next destination (on a revolving stage), accompanied by some thrilling music. Before the curtain could come down, the audience burst into applause. Anne and Zohra and I were filled with joy. But Mr. Robbins cut the heart of the scene the next day. He said, “That isn’t what Brecht wants. It’s the intellectual ideas that he’s trying to get across, not the conventionalemotion that we get in American plays.” (My father would have said, “Was you there, Charley?”)
Jerome Robbins found a patsy in every production—someone he could pick on if he was frustrated with how things were going. (Many famous directors have been guilty of the same habit—Otto Preminger and John Dexter, to name two.)
Robbins had selected a wonderful actor by the name of Eugene Roche to be his patsy. One afternoon, when everything Mr. Robbins was doing seemed to make things worse, he started in on Eugene in front of the rest of the cast. We all had to stand there and listen to Jerry Robbins railing and belittling—until he crossed the line. Eugene, who was a devout Catholic with five children, stood up and said:
“Listen, you little fuck—if you insult me one more time, I’m going to come over there and smash the teeth out of your fucking face.”
From that time on, Eugene Roche became Jerome Robbins’s favorite actor.
After the previews began, Anne Bancroft’s boyfriend came to pick her up each night, after the show. The boyfriend’s name was Mel Brooks.
When I met Mel for the first time he was wearing a black pea jacket, of the kind made famous by the merchant marines. Mel said, “You know, they used to call these urine jackets, but they didn’t sell.” Anne and I burst out laughing. She’s probably still his best audience.
I was terribly miscast in
Mother Courage
. Most of us were—especially Jerome Robbins. Despite Anne’s Academy Award that year for
The Miracle Worker, Mother Courage
closed after three months.
When the closing notice went up, Mel asked if I would like tospend a weekend with him and Anne on Fire Island. He said that he had thirty pages of a screenplay he was writing and that he wanted to read it to us. It was called
Springtime for Hitler
.
I went to visit them on a weekend in June. Mel met me at the dock where the ferry comes in, and then he and I went fishing off the surf for about an hour. After dinner Mel asked Anne and me to sit down, and then he began reading the first three scenes of
Springtime for Hitler
, almost verbatim as they
I’m
sure, so that he could get ideas for how to direct certain scenes. (According to Actors Equity, you’re supposed to pay an actor after three readings, which Mr. Robbins never did.)
After my fifth reading I was told that I would have to do one more
final
audition. The competition for the role was between me and Gerald Hiken—the wonderful actor whose first scene at The Actors Studio I had snuck in to watch from the balcony. By this time my confidence had dropped a few notches. The horrible trap is that an actor tries to remember what he or she did that impressed the director originally, and, unfortunately, the actor starts imitating what he thought he did. Nevertheless, after my sixth audition, I got the part. Barbara Harris was cast as the Prostitute, and Zohra Lampert was cast as the mute daughter of Mother Courage.
Rehearsals were a little strained. Mr. Robbins thought that the best way to get us into Brecht’s Communist/Socialist way of thinking was for all of us to play Monopoly during our lunch hour. I should have known that there was trouble ahead.
We opened previews at the Martin Beck Theater to a packed house. I had a rousing and funny scene toward the end of the first act, after which Mother Courage and her daughter and I pushed Mother Courage’s wagon to our next destination (on a revolving stage), accompanied by some thrilling music. Before the curtain could come down, the audience burst into applause. Anne and Zohra and I were filled with joy. But Mr. Robbins cut the heart of the scene the next day. He said, “That isn’t what Brecht wants. It’s the intellectual ideas that he’s trying to get across, not the conventionalemotion that we get in American plays.” (My father would have said, “Was you there, Charley?”)
Jerome Robbins found a patsy in every production—someone he could pick on if he was frustrated with how things were going. (Many famous directors have been guilty of the same habit—Otto Preminger and John Dexter, to name two.)
Robbins had selected a wonderful actor by the name of Eugene Roche to be his patsy. One afternoon, when everything Mr. Robbins was doing seemed to make things worse, he started in on Eugene in front of the rest of the cast. We all had to stand there and listen to Jerry Robbins railing and belittling—until he crossed the line. Eugene, who was a devout Catholic with five children, stood up and said:
“Listen, you little fuck—if you insult me one more time, I’m going to come over there and smash the teeth out of your fucking face.”
From that time on, Eugene Roche became Jerome Robbins’s favorite actor.
After the previews began, Anne Bancroft’s boyfriend came to pick her up each night, after the show. The boyfriend’s name was Mel Brooks.
When I met Mel for the first time he was wearing a black pea jacket, of the kind made famous by the merchant marines. Mel said, “You know, they used to call these urine jackets, but they didn’t sell.” Anne and I burst out laughing. She’s probably still his best audience.
I was terribly miscast in
Mother Courage
. Most of us were—especially Jerome Robbins. Despite Anne’s Academy Award that year for
The Miracle Worker, Mother Courage
closed after three months.
When the closing notice went up, Mel asked if I would like tospend a weekend with him and Anne on Fire Island. He said that he had thirty pages of a screenplay he was writing and that he wanted to read it to us. It was called
Springtime for Hitler
.
I went to visit them on a weekend in June. Mel met me at the dock where the ferry comes in, and then he and I went fishing off the surf for about an hour. After dinner Mel asked Anne and me to sit down, and then he began reading the first three scenes of
Springtime for Hitler
, almost verbatim as they
Similar Books
