Marlene Read online

  Spencer Tracy was a very lonely man, or so he seemed to me. I don’t understand how a man can feel lonely when he shared such love and friendship with Katharine Hepburn, but … Perhaps he drew his strength from solitude. He was the consummate loner, long before this type became fashionable.

  I can no more judge Judgment at Nuremberg today than I could when it was being filmed. But if the film was successful to some extent, it was due to Tracy. He was a stamp testifying to quality. A wonderful man, Spencer Tracy was a wonderful actor as well.

  Undoubtedly he was a man who had suffered very much, and death must have been a relief for him. He deserved a more pleasant life, but egocentrics often do not have simple lives. And nobody was more egocentric than Spencer Tracy.

  He terrified me. Compared to other men I have known, he had a very mordant sense of humor. With just a look or a single word, he could mortally wound one! I loved him for this reason, and because he knew how to command. He refused to stick to the studio’s working hours. He worked when he pleased, and everyone—including me—waited patiently for the prescribed time like race horses at the starting gate. I found that he was perfectly right to claim that privilege. So I never raised an objection.

  We performed together in a good scene, though it was not written with great skill, which revolved around a cup of coffee. I trembled when I had to speak my line, tense with fear that I might not get the right tone and the audience might laugh at the wrong time. But Tracy made the matter easier for us.

  So, after Judgment at Nuremberg, I no longer wanted to do a film.

  I was so busy with my career as a singer and with my commitments all over the world. But, above all, I hated the restrictions during the shooting of a film. I preferred the stage by far. The freedom to express yourself as you please, no cameras, no directors constantly looking over your shoulder. And, above all, no producers. In a word, I loved the stage, and I’ve been loyal to it.

  A further advantage of the stage over movies—at least in my eyes! I come on without disguise or false appearance. I don’t have to play a “woman of easy virtue,” and for a long time this was my role on the screen. I alone choose my songs and sing what the words suggest to me.

  When I told Gilbert Becaud that I would like to sing, “Marie-Marie,” he looked at me and laughed. “That’s a song for a man,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time that I sang a ‘man’s song,’ ” I replied. Despite my answer, he wasn’t really convinced that my idea was a good one, but he allowed me to include “Marie-Marie” in my repertoire.

  When I visited him with Burt Bacharach, and he heard the band with Burt’s arrangement, there were tears in his eyes. I sing this song in French, German, and English. It’s one of my favorites. In advance, I explain, in the language of the country, that it’s about a prisoner who writes to his girl. Then, everything is clear.

  If I sing a lot of “men’s songs,” it’s because the lyrics are more meaningful and dramatic than in songs written for women. Naturally, there are also “unisex” songs! But I sing “Makin’ Whoopee,” for example, only in tails. It would be unsuitable to wear a dress and sing that song. The same goes for “Let’s Take It Nice and Easy.” A splendid song for a man—but not wholly suited for a woman. Oddly, certain words sound out of place in a woman’s mouth, but witty coming from a man.

  When I give a performance without this quick-as-lightning change of costumes (my record time is thirty-two seconds), I have to give up some of the most beautiful songs in my repertoire. But to put on a tuxedo while the audience waits, and then run to the end of the stage and make a surprise entrance from the other side requires a lot of work and the help of experienced dressers. And this was not always possible, since in some theaters, the backstage area was too small to permit this kind of acrobatic change of costume.

  Nonetheless, the performances I gave in women’s costumes were also effective. I sang many simple sentimental songs, and these went over well.

  I’m not a “mike eater,” as opposed to most other variety singers, some of whom actually hide behind the microphone. The position of the mike stand is always carefully laid out. I check it before every performance to determine the distance and height are correct in relation to my face. Each time I take the microphone in my hand and walk around the stage, I always hold it rather low to make sure that it doesn’t hide my face.

  There’s a French song that I especially love, and that I always sang standing near the piano, holding the microphone in my hand: “Je tire ma reverence.” It’s an old song that made a name for Jean Sablon. In America, where audiences supposedly don’t care for this kind of song, people listened to it in rapt silence. I didn’t translate the words but simply went with the original lyrics, and merely announced: “And now a farewell song.”

  FIRST STEPS IN TELEVISION

  For a while, I left the true paradise the concert stage meant to me, since I had finally let myself be persuaded to make a TV special for an American producer and the firm that was financing my stage show.

  All my wishes—all my technical requirements—were met. The production company was able to obtain a theater in London. It was still in the process of construction, but I liked it and preferred it to a New York studio.

  Since I’ve always loved British audiences, and they seem to like me as well, I thought the mutual enthusiasm would carry over on TV.

  But I didn’t know that the law prohibited the filming or photographing of a paying audience. The audience must be “invited.” So hundreds of admission tickets were distributed to the employees of different firms, who hadn’t the slightest interest in my recital. And this was the audience before which I had to perform. Cameras had been set up in the auditorium to film the audience, which apparently was not displeased; women straightened their husbands’ ties when they noticed the cameras were on them, and they touched up their hairdos to make the best impression.

  In addition, I had my own difficulties on the stage. The orchestra and the conductor, Stan Freeman, who normally were behind me on the stage, were put backstage, so that we were no longer in close communication. Against his will, Stan had to wear earphones to hear me properly—he couldn’t see me. Being a polite gentleman, he made no objections—unfortunately I didn’t either. “Don’t make waves,” I had told myself.

  I sang my songs in all the languages I knew, without pause. I tried only to salvage what was salvageable. Not that American television has such high standards. Generally, it’s the worst. But that wasn’t my problem. I just wanted to give a performance as good as those I had given on Broadway and all over the world. In vain. But it wasn’t my fault alone. I do have a deeply ingrained sense of fairness, and I put the blame where it belongs. I also assume responsibility for my part.

  I’ve never forgotten that show. They’ll probably rebroadcast it again after my death. Prospects of a great success!

  In all the years that I’ve performed on the stage as a singer, I’ve never cancelled any performance—no sore throat, no illness, no excuses. I was always there one or two hours before the performance. Until that disastrous evening, when I tripped over a cable backstage, and broke my thigh bone. That happened in Sydney, in 1976, in the last week of my Australian tour. I leaned on my producer’s shoulder, and he helped me to my dressing room. He cancelled the performance. I managed to make it to my hotel room, and waited until the next morning when the X rays could be taken. Incorrigible optimist that I was, I didn’t want to believe that I was seriously injured.

  After an anxious night, I learned the next day that I had broken my left femur. After my leg was placed in a cast, I was flown to California to the hospital of UCLA. Since my husband was in California at the time, I wanted to see him. From there, I was shipped to New York. I say “shipped” because that’s what it was. I lay on a stretcher, I could hardly move, and felt like a piece of furniture. But the shipping costs were considerably higher. Contrary to what has been reported in the press and in certain books, I did not undergo a hip operation. I
was put into traction. A piece of metal was screwed into the bone just below the knee, and heavy weights were tied to the metal, with a rope hanging over both sides of the leg. This is what they call “traction.” It’s hellish! You lie on your back, condemned to immobility, and at the mercy of the nurses—some of whom you have to pay off—in addition to the astronomical cost of a shabby room in a New York hospital.

  I’m sure that some hospitals are cleaner than others. But the one to which I was taken was so filthy that, due to my condition, I had to ask my really good friends to come clean my room.

  The food was atrocious, I worried about patients who didn’t have any family or friends in New York, and who had to eat what they were served: chunks of indigestible, half-frozen food that was all the same but given a different name each meal.

  The patients around me, who were just as hungry as I was, all told the same stories. They sent me a few messages through the nurses, some of whom came from the Philippines and were quite charming. They really took care of us, as opposed to the Americans, who were utterly indifferent to their jobs and were keen on only two things: their “rights” and their salary. I spent several months in this hospital.

  When the doctors decided to remove the traction, they put me in a cast that extended from my thorax to my injured leg. I spent the end of the year in this place, neglected by nurses who had no time for me. I used to wonder how sick people adjusted to Christmas and New Year’s.

  I had to do exercises every day with my healthy leg. The “therapist”—a girl so young, I wondered how she could have had time to receive her training and diploma—came every day. But on holidays she disappeared.

  It was a terrible time, but it was my own fault! I should have put up a fuss, or stayed in Australia with the remarkable Dr. Roarty and the caring nurses. But I wanted to be close to my family and had insisted on leaving Australia.

  That was a mistake, I realized later. But it wasn’t the first mistake I made. I remember a guest performance in Washington, when my director, Stan Freeman, had to pull me out of the orchestra pit. This fall had caused no fractures, but half of my leg was torn. It was the first of a long series of accidents. I was alone in Washington, misjudged the severity of my injury, and waited twelve hours before calling a doctor who didn’t help me. Why didn’t I go to Walter Reed Hospital, where I would have been accepted, without question, as a veteran? A riddle! …

  I continued my tour through other American cities and through Canada. My leg was bandaged, but the wound refused to heal despite daily treatment. When I sang in Dallas, I phoned my friend, Dr. Michael De Bakey and asked if I could see him on Sunday, my day off. I was in Houston on the next Sunday morning. Dr. De Bakey was waiting for me at the door to his clinic.

  He was very pleasant, examined my injury, and told me it could be closed with a skin graft. I told him that I still had three performances in Dallas but would come to Houston immediately afterwards. “Don’t wait too long,” he said.

  In contrast to the disorder that reigned in the other hospitals where I had been a patient, De Bakey’s clinic was wonderfully organized. Beautiful rooms, charming staff. De Bakey worked day and night, and visited me twice a day, sometimes even at eleven o’clock in the evening, to make sure that everything was all right, and that I and the other patients were being well cared for. Michael De Bakey is certainly one of the greatest doctors of his time. Like so many other former patients of his, I hold great admiration for him, and tremendous gratitude for his high ethics and the great compassion with which he ran his clinic.

  Apropos of hospitals, next to Houston I would also recommend the University Clinic of Los Angeles. It is an excellent place, and the doctors there are tops. I spent only three days there in my giant cast, and the nursing care was superb. The nurses, pretty-as-a-picture Californians who were not only cheerful but also friendly and efficient, took excellent care of me. One of the nurses accompanied me when I was transported to New York. I was fastened to a stretcher, but my escort spent the entire night awake, in case I should need anything. A sweet, beautiful girl.

  But, back to Houston. Before the operation, the staff didn’t even remove my nail polish. “Don’t touch her beautiful hands,” De Bakey had ordered. The doctor who did the skin graft suffered a detached retina two days after he operated on me (I learned this later). But Dr. De Bakey supervised my whole case.

  When I came out of the anesthesia, my leg lay in a cast. The surgeons had taken a broad strip of skin from my left hip. It was painful. A lamp was shining on the spot, so that the “scarlet” salve that had been applied over it would dry. The piece of skin was large, much larger, it seemed to me, than the wound on the leg. When I asked why so large a piece of skin had been cut, I was told, “If the graft doesn’t take, we have another piece, in the refrigerator, so we can make another try.” Naturally, I didn’t expect the first graft to take. All my optimism had vanished after the months I had spent with the unhealed leg. A crew of doctors, young and old, examined me three times a day. Three weeks later I was told I could get up and slowly walk up and down the hospital corridor. Once, twice, then three times a day. Finally, Dr. De Bakey after many hugs, escorted me to the car so carefully and solicitously that I was moved to tears.

  I phoned him from Sydney later, when I broke the same leg. He spoke with the doctors there, was reassured that “only” the thigh bone was broken, not the skin itself, and gave me the name of the best orthopedic surgeon in America. Once again, he had placed a protective hand over me, and saved me from the mistakes I might have made. He made the decisions for me—my “hero,” Dr. Michael De Bakey. His right hand, Sonia Farrell, was my guardian angel.

  After my thigh was completely healed, I spent two months at home, still in a cumbersome cast. When it was finally removed, I could walk. I had become stiff, but I could walk, clumsily, with an iron will. My left leg is still stiff because of the traction, but I can walk.

  Since then, I’ve read scores of reports of people who have endured the same torments and who tell me about their “immense affliction.” That’s very sad; I, on the other hand, don’t feel particularly afflicted. I limp, of course, but that’s not a disaster. I manage rather well. I limp only slightly, and those who really love me find my gait quite interesting. My hobbling will disappear with time, and I’ll be like a “newborn” again. At any rate, that’s what they’ve said. May God grant this grace!

  Today, I live in Paris. Konstantin Paustovsky has written, “A man can die without having seen Paris—and yet he has seen it in his dreams and his imagination.”

  No one could better describe the charm of Paris. My own words seem feeble, but in accordance with Paustovsky’s wish (it was he who inspired me to write), I will try to describe the unfathomable magic and fascination that Paris holds for me.

  Its light melts even the hardest heart. The light of Paris is blue. By this, I don’t mean to say that the sky is blue. That it is not! But the light is blue. It cannot be compared to any other light in the Western world. You have the impression that you’re wearing blue-tinted glasses, which is much better than seeing everything through rose-colored glasses.

  In this light, the Seine also has a magical effect, even if we know that sometimes it is very muddy. It has its own magic. The tiny, crooked streets, and the majestic boulevards—created by a taste that has disappeared from our world—have been beautifully preserved in Paris. The only other place I can think of that has this same feeling is, oddly, Buenos Aires, a city so similar to Paris that tears came to my eyes the first time I saw it.

  The fascination that Paris holds is as difficult to describe as the love between a man and a woman. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are—as Alan Jay Lerner says—wonderful and peaceful seasons of incomparable beauty, in Paris and in all France. In Paris you can rest, and let the world pursue its own mad course. When someone dies, it’s said that “angels carried him away.” Here is a poem that can describe this city, this country which I love, better than I can.

&nb
sp; DREAM AT TWILIGHT

  White meadows in twilight gray

  The sun sets slowly

  The stars begin to shine.

  Now I go to the most beautiful woman,

  Far across the meadows in the twilight gray

  Deep in a bush of jasmine.

  I go slowly

  Through twilight gray in the land of love,

  I don’t hurry.

  A soft velvet ribbon

  Draws me through twilight gray

  In a gentle, blue light.

  Otto Julius Bierbaum

  EPILOGUE

  AS FAR AS THIS book goes, everything is true, even though there are imperfections and certain things that have been left unspoken. Pain and sorrow are private matters.

  I’ve done my duty. I’ve always assumed my responsibilities. That’s all that counts for me.

  It’s well known that I’ve always had a great mistrust of reporters and other people who wanted to write about me.

  Only I know the truth about myself. The truth about all the years spent on the stages of the world. The truth that some writer friends also wanted to express.

  Hemingway:

  “She’s courageous, beautiful, loyal, charming, and generous. She’s never boring. In the morning, in the shirt, trousers and boots of an American soldier, she looks as special as she does in the evening or on the screen. Her honesty as well as her sense of the comedy and tragedy of life are responsible for the fact that she can never truly be happy, except when she loves. She can also joke about love, but it’s gallows humor. Even if she had nothing but her voice, she could break your heart with it. In addition, she has this beautiful body, and the timeless beauty of her face. What if it does break your heart if she’s there to put it together again?