In Pieces(32)
After many months of safely exploring the dimensions of my newly constructed acting envelope, I was given a scene to play that stepped—if only a toenail—outside of the mild emotional landscape of situation comedy. In the scene, Gidget’s father has refused to speak to her, marching angrily off to his room, which sends our girl into a complete tizzy. Hoping to be forgiven for something that only midsixties television could define as a problem, she goes to his room to confront the situation and her father.
When we were ready to film the scene, I stood behind the flats of the set, waiting to hear someone say “Action.” And as I looked down at my hand gripping the knob, preparing to enter the bedroom of Gidget’s father, one part of my brain was rehearsing the lines, “Please, Daddy, please…” while another part of my brain went somewhere else. When action was called, I opened the door, stepped into the room, then looked at my father—her father—and began to cry with such force I couldn’t speak, except in hiccupping spurts, while a constant ribbon of snot rolled out of my nose. I moved across the set to sit on the bed—next to Don—just as the scene had been blocked out, saying everything, doing everything we had rehearsed, but suddenly I was trying to control a borderline case of hysteria. Don, looking deeply concerned, began running his hands up and down my arms as though he wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue the scene or stop to comfort me. He continued the scene and I was grateful—still am. Someone in the dark finally whispered “Cut” as though not wanting to wake the baby, and after a long beat the crew began to applaud, while Don held me tight in his arms, rhythmically patting my back, saying without words that he was proud of me. I didn’t know where the emotion had come from, much less how I got to it.
Unfortunately, that first take was in a wide “master” shot, like looking at the scene with the binoculars backward. When we moved tighter, into over-shoulders and finally into close-ups—when the camera can practically see inside your brain—I was unable to find any real emotion at all. I was dry, as they say. But the moment stayed with me. I didn’t know what I had learned, didn’t know if it had been about the scene or about Don, or if it belonged somewhere in Sally. I didn’t realize it then that that’s what acting really is. Any and all of that, mixed together.
Toward the end of production and after the show had been on the air for about five months, I was asked to fly to San Francisco one Saturday to do a haphazard personal appearance. Whenever the studio or the network wanted me to appear somewhere, it was always Bill Sackheim (the “showrunner,” or producer of the series) who did the asking. When I was first hired—the fresh-off-the-turnip-truck newcomer—Bill looked me in the face and sternly said, “You know, Sally, you can’t change your mind.” I couldn’t imagine what on earth he meant, though it did give me a jolt. Bill always seemed friendly and was endlessly avuncular, but everything coming from him felt very little like a request and very much like a demand. Because I was so new, I never thought to ask how giving up my precious weekend, my few days of sleeping past sunup, to host a fashion show in San Francisco for an auditorium filled with high school girls would actually benefit the show. I wish I had.
Gidget even made an appearance at one of Ricky’s gymnastics meets in Berkeley. That trip I loved.
Nevertheless, a few days later, there I was, standing onstage describing outfits very similar to the clothes Gidget wore on the show. Since I wasn’t good at cold readings, I didn’t use the script I’d been handed right before stepping on the stage. Instead, I tried to point out what each young model was wearing as she walked out, just as I saw it—which needed no explanation at all. In between, I filled in with snippets from my day on the set, told the audience about the cute boys hired as extras, confided in them about watching all the kids leave together as I stayed to work through the rest of the day. Which in reality, I never noticed… I don’t think. I shared with everyone the amazing loop-de-loop ride I was on, felt comfortable talking to these young women, something I had rarely felt when talking to the girls I’d gone to school with. And the young women in the audience seemed to accept me, like it was a whole room made up of my friend Lynn, whom I was losing sight of as we traveled in different directions. After the fashion show had ended, I lingered onstage, answering questions, genuinely wanting to talk to everyone.
Slowly they started to move out of the audience, climbing onto the stage with me, chatting at first, then asking me to sign things. They’d hand me scraps of paper or programs, and since I hadn’t signed many autographs, I didn’t know what to write to each of them. When they ran out of paper, they wanted me to sign their clothes or even their arms. As more and more came onto the stage, I felt their friendliness turning into a hunger for something I didn’t have, and as their urgency began to overwhelm me, I tried to push away from them. But instead of moving back they crowded around me, frantically pulling at my clothes and hair, like they were playing a game of “Red Rover,” only now the arms were locking me in, not out. As I bent down, covering my face with my hands, I suddenly felt a huge presence pick me up, effortlessly hoisting me over his head and holding me high in the air. “I gotcha, Gidg,” beamed the big man as we waded through the crowd, which now looked more like a flock of evil birds than a group of high school girls. I’ve always thought that perhaps this guardian angel was the school janitor because he wore a uniform, but I’ll never know for sure. After he set me down in a utility closet and flipped on the light, he left.