Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(20)
I didn’t spend a ton of time with these veterans at first, but anytime we got together, we talked about deeper matters, and as I slowly learned more and more about the people who protected our freedoms, I began to look for ways to give back.
In 1976 and 1977, Mac came to see a few of our basement plays whenever he was on leave from his assignment as a tactical officer at West Point. I was a pretty ragged kid then, with torn-up jeans and a T-shirt and lots of hair. He was spit-shined, strong as Atlas, and had a deep, powerful voice.
“Gary, what are your goals?” Mac asked me one day after a show. He wasn’t grilling me. I sensed kindness within his toughness. He was interested in other people’s lives and genuinely wanted to know about my goals. But I wasn’t sure if he was asking about my goals in life or my designs on his sister. Possibly, he wanted to know where we wanted to go as a theater company. So I described my goals for Steppenwolf, how I wanted to take it as big as possible. We had a conversation, a real conversation. This elite former company commander and me, a long-haired American twenty-one-year-old with big dreams. Of all things, we connected on the subject of leadership.
In high school, at the height of the war, I had been oblivious to so much that was happening in Vietnam. Yet in the early years of Steppenwolf, as I began to form genuine friendships with these military veterans, they began to open my eyes to so much more. I knew the war hadn’t gone well. I remembered casualty reports on the news and knew the reports were grim. But now I was meeting actual veterans who’d lived there, served there, fought there, and I knew that many of the Vietnam veterans who’d returned home hadn’t been honored for their service.
I didn’t know what to do yet about this, if anything. But I felt something stirring inside of me. Honor needed to be granted. Respect was due. A simple “thanks” needed to be said. It would take a few years before I figured out any sort of next step. But in the meantime, I had theater and Moira’s family members, and I knew something in our country desperately needed to change. I would start where I could. With Steppenwolf. And without being able to articulate it this way yet, I would begin to do my part to give back.
CHAPTER 4
The Corner of Hollywood and Love
Moira, sweet Moira. Her story—our story—is intertwined with Steppenwolf and Chicago and Hollywood and the anything-goes culture of the day, as well as hopes and dreams and stops and starts.
In the summer of 1975, Steppenwolf was under way with one final production of the original group of high school kids, a play called The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel. My only involvement was writing the music. It would be another year before the fuller ensemble formed, and over the course of the summer, I worked part-time for my dad, played in my bands, and as often as I could I would take a break from all that to visit Terry and Jeff at Illinois State University.
The school had a summer repertory theater for students, and Jeff and Terry took me to see a production of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize– winning Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The actress playing “Maggie the Cat” absolutely came alive up onstage. Maggie is a desperate character, rejected and scorned, who wears a negligee for the entire first act of the show. She attempts to seduce her estranged husband while trying to coax her dying father-in-law to give them his Mississippi cotton plantation.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the actress playing Maggie—long brown hair to the middle of her back, blue eyes and beautifully expressive face, and a dynamic stage presence. She had the raw power of classic Broadway and film actresses like Colleen Dewhurst or Geraldine Page, and her beauty reminded me of Natalie Wood or Sophia Loren.
After the show, Jeff introduced me to her. She was a theater student named Moira Harris, and our initial meeting was quick. Somehow, I found out that she had a crush on Jeff, so I headed back up to Highland Park and continued playing in my bands and working for my dad. I didn’t see or hear of her for some time, although later, when she played the role of Blanche DuBois in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at ISU, I hopped in my ’69 Camaro and drove down to see that play too. Once again, she was electric. I never knew what she would do next onstage, and every movement she made captivated me. And once again, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
In January 1976, Jeff and Terry and I started holding meetings at Illinois State to put together the Steppenwolf ensemble, and Moira was one of the actresses Jeff and Terry invited to the meetings. We held lots of meetings, and after one I drove Moira back to her dorm. We clicked quickly. She was funny, offbeat, highly intelligent, and sexy. When I stopped in front of her dorm, Moira jumped out, said a quick “see ya,” and hurried inside. Rats.
It wasn’t until the summer of 1976, after Moira had joined Steppenwolf, that she began to show any interest in me. Everybody in our new company who came from Illinois State needed a place to live. I’d already found an apartment in Lake Bluff that Terry and I were going to share, so everybody piled into our apartment at the start, sort of commune-style, and all kinds of things happened in this little apartment until people found other places to rent. Moira and Nancy Evans soon found a rental to split in nearby Highwood, and Moira and I realized our attraction for each other was growing. Pretty soon, we became a couple and soon after decided to live together. Moira’s parents were none too happy about our decision. It was the 1970s, the days of “anything goes,” and Moira and I squabbled and broke up, got back together, then squabbled some more, then broke up, then got back together. Lather, rinse, repeat.