The Actor Within: Intimate Conversations with Great Actors

Piper Laurie

178 i Piper Laurie Piper Laurie’s Studio City cottage turned out to be a perfect meeting place for our interview and photo session. Nestled in one of the canyons behind Ventura Boulevard just minutes from where her career began at Universal Studios, her home is decorated with mementos of her distinguished acting career—photos and playbills—as well as large marble pieces she had sculpted and displayed throughout the house. We sat in her dining room talking about her roles, some of which garnered Oscar nominations, and how the ups and downs of her personal life shaped and informed the actor within. ‘‘Do you recall the first time you thought about becoming an actress?’’ ‘‘When I was two or three, I saw the child star Jane Withers on the stage in Detroit. As I watched this little girl lit up so beautifully and receiving applause, I imagined myself getting all that attention. I carried that image with me for a long time. When I got a little older, my mother signed me up for acting classes. In 1943, at the age of eleven, I performed in my first professional play at the Bliss-Hayden Theatre, now the Beverly Hills Playhouse . I played the little girl in The Guest in the House. Six years later. Universal Studios signed me to a seven-year contract.’’ ‘‘Did Universal try to make you over into a starlet?’’ ‘‘Yes, that’s how they saw me. They immediately cast me as the ingenue in banal comedies and poorly scripted films like Son of Ali Baba (1952). I didn’t have enough acting experience to turn these badly written cartoon characters into meaningful roles. After five unhappy years of this, I broke my contract by refusing to work. ‘Sue me, jail me,’ I told them, ‘but I’m not going to work here. I want my freedom.’ My family thought I was ruining my life. My boyfriend and my agent thought I was insane to give up all the publicity and the money. I was making several thousand dollars a week in the mid-1950s, which was a fortune back then. I was twentythree when they finally cut me loose. I decided not to act again unless I was o√ered good material. I left home, broke o√ an engagement to be married, and headed for New York City. I was determined to be good, really good.’’ ‘‘What was the New York drama scene like when you arrived?’’ 180 The Actor Within ‘‘New York back then was all about live television and stage plays. I had trouble breaking in because producers and casting agents thought, She’ll fall apart. She’ll never be able to remember her lines or handle the pressure. I remember one incident when I came to an audition and the author took me out in the hall and said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t even want you to read. We can’t take a chance on Piper Laurie.’ You see, Universal had produced tons of publicity that portrayed me as a bimbo. Abe Lastfogel, the head of the William Morris Agency, had warned me not to go to New York. ‘You’re a movie star,’ he said. ‘Movie stars don’t audition for plays!’ But I went anyway and became terribly frustrated. I was determined to attach new meaning to the name Piper Laurie.’’ ‘‘You needed a break.’’ ‘‘Yes, and I got it when a friend of mine knew a director who was looking for a girl to play on the Robert Montgomery Presents television show. He suggested my name for the part, and I got it. It was a fabulous production of Quality Town (1955). The morning after the show aired, my agent told me that he had just had lunch with the award-winning director , writer, and producer Joe Mankiewicz, who was about the most respected and creative person in town. He raved about this young actress that he had seen on television. It was me! I didn’t believe it, so he got Mankiewicz on the phone, and the man himself told me how much he enjoyed my performance. When I hung up, I just broke down and cried. No one of that stature had ever said anything positive about my work before. That conversation was life changing. After that, I started getting o√ers for other live television shows and serious dramatic stage roles.’’ ‘‘With...