The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/The Unknown and the General

Written by
Stephan Morrow

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Abstract: An experienced actor recounts his memories of working with Norman Mailer on the productions of Strawhead and Tough Guys Don’t Dance, both directed by Norman Mailer.

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URL: https://prmlr.us/mr08morr

My black T-shirt feels painted onto me with sweat and my fingers are slippery inside the black leather motorcycle gloves as my chest heaves from the exertion, desperate for oxygen. I am going eighty mph on my Harley—and giving it to Marilyn at the same time. Her back is arched to get as much of me as she can and as she hits a peak, belts out, “Gee Rod, it’s like fireworks on the Fourth of July.” This is how it goes in my mind. Except this is no dream. I’m in a church. No. It’s not a church anymore. It’s been converted into a theater: The Actors Studio. And I have just finished performing in a scene from Norman Mailer’s play Strawhead about Marilyn Monroe.

There is a pause before the next scene begins, as if everyone, audience included, has to take a breather after what just unraveled before them. And into this gap rises a husky matron who, with a piercing voice, suddenly launches into a loud harangue: “You don’t know she did that. How dare you? What right have you to take such liberties? I was her first roommate in Hollywood. I was her best friend. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

It is Shelley Winters. She seems ready to ream Norman at full blast for quite a while, but before she can completely bring the performance to an untimely halt, an older, bull-necked man with a pronounced nose in a long, deeply lined face, also stands up, turns to her full face, and says “Shelley. Shut up. Sit down.”

And, instantly, she does. It is Elia Kazan, the moderator of the Playwrights and Directors Unit. So we continued that afternoon and finished the fragment of the play we had prepared. But the next time we presented it, at just about the same moment, another heckler stood up and started a harangue repeating Shelley’s rant almost verbatim and the play again broke down.

Except this time it was Norman who had written it—he had planted her in the audience and was now investigating that uneasy but fascinating theatrical territory of where make-believe ends and reality begins. Talk about turning a disaster into a victory. Whew.

I’m superstitious, I admit it. Or I’m at least given to paying attention to signs—when I see them. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when about a week before Norman was supposed to show up in L.A. for a book tour, I was traveling around back of the group house I live in with other, mostly thwarted souls obsessed with filmmaking of an independent sort, to pick a lemon off of our tree, when something orange caught my eye nestled among its roots. Lo and behold, it was a copy of Norman’s Ancient Evenings that in some bizarre way had found a resting place there. A thousand pages of Egyptian arcana, embalming procedures, and cavorting of various Egyptian gods and demons. I confess, I had read some but not all of it, yet out of some weird sense of loyalty, I couldn’t leave it there and picked it up, brushed away the less crusted dirt and dropped it off at my workbench area where it would receive its own embalming at some later date. So there it was. And exactly the next day I got the call from Judith, Norman’s most loyal assistant whom I had gotten to know over the last decade, and who was now inviting me to attend a talk Norman was giving and afterward join him and his party for dinner.

At that time, there had been quite a splash in the press about his long and illustrious career as a writer spanning fifty years, and his anthology of his work, The Time of Our Time, had been respectfully received, but almost nowhere was there more than a scant line or two mentioning his writing and directing in theater and film. This was dismaying to me, both because that was, in fact, how I had come to know and work with him, but also because—through my experiences with him as a performer—I knew firsthand that as a writer and, more particularly as a director for the stage and screen, he was first-rate. Yet for some reason, he never seemed to receive his just due in these endeavors. His theatrical and film projects, though admired by some, were criticized mercilessly and scoffed at by others. Sometimes I wondered if there weren’t some secret cabal that had decided the gods had dropped enough manna on him already in the form of his talent for prose, and to ask for more was offending to them, so he paid accordingly. If some praised his work for the stage and screen, others slaughtered it. But to me, as an actor who was working cheek by jowl with him as a director and interpreting the lines he would give me—I was always flying. When I would hear someone excoriate something we just had finished performing, for example, at the Studio, I would wonder if they had seen the same piece I had been in. To me, the dialogue was always rich, and the scenes were powerful—outrageous maybe, and certainly male in their impulse, but juicy to perform in, they were a hell of a dance, and never, ever, boring. Norman was always pushing the envelope of conventional behavior. He was always interesting.

Of him as a director—they knew nothing at all. I suppose, in these days when the worth of a director is gauged by how many commercial hits he’s had, Norman didn’t loom large on the landscape of Godzillas, but I think that this may be a reflection of the times we live in, rather than a reflection of his merit as a director. Because if it’s true that being a good director is related to some psychological zone of leadership, as it happened, Norman had it in spades. In his presence there was an amazing aura of commitment—one had the feeling of participating in something of great import, ground-breaking, historic even, and you gave one hundred and ten percent of your stuff as an actor. I can’t speak for others of course, but I never heard too much of the common griping or bitching during our stage-run of Strawhead at the Actors Studio, or during the shoot of Tough Guys Don’t Dance. Norman often used the metaphor of a general marshalling his troops to describe the work of the director, but I always thought he was more benevolent and inspirational than any military man I had ever heard of. Rather, he seemed to have something more like the inspirational power of a preacher or rabbi, maybe.

I think it would be a great disservice to his work to have this sound like just some sort of epistle of adoration, so I’d like to go back to the beginning of our work together, our first encounter, and then chronicle some episodes from the projects we did together that might be illuminating. Apparently I’ve been privy to some moments that not too many others have, and if I can re-create some of them, maybe I can give my opinions some basis. There’s nothing better to stir up the creative juices than a damp, cloud-hooded day in the Apple. The fruity colors of the garbage spilling out of the cans stand out a little stronger against the gray cement in an especially attractive funk, the smells are mostly just wetness—the gods are about to make their move in the arena above—one’s nerve-endings start trilling with expectation, and it makes me, for one, feel alive and especially capable. And I needed an extra dose of spunk, because on a day like that, I would cross paths with Norman Mailer.

The floors of the Actors Studio were being shellacked, and so the theater was unavailable, but rather than canceling the session it was relocated. Nobody seemed to know exactly where, as if it were a secret place, so the entire entourage of maybe three dozen wandered up Tenth Avenue from Forty Fourth Street, as if guided by an invisible hand. Maybe they were afraid that if people knew, they wouldn’t show. Anyway, on we went, and it was still Hell’s Kitchen then (not “Heaven’s Gate,” which is what I call it now) and the slums and dark alleys we passed were good enough for me—they fed me, “preparing,” as I was, to play a young Scottish gang leader in Dundee, who was trying to get out of the endless rounds of “bovvers” (gang brawls where kicking was the main jab) and go straight. As I stalked up the avenue, I found myself hunching over, like a boxer, protective of my psyche, not very chatty, irritated by everything—from the steady honking and screaming sirens approaching and then fading, to the kid who somehow managed to trip right in front of my feet (I admit I was tempted). But these fumes wafting around my brain gave rise to the unmistakable feeling that a claw was slowly tightening around my skull—and the deeper it gouged, the more I wanted to bust out—perfect for the part I was about to play. In short, Stephan, the actor, was having a good day. We ended up on the eighth floor of what was nothing less than an empty warehouse building. Yes indeed, no lie. A few scoop lights at one end over what was apparently the playing area, and a few dozen folding chairs facing it, made up what would be our theater for this event.

To say that this dusty industrial space had the surreal quality of a Fellini movie would not be an exaggeration. Not just because of the barrenness amidst the scattered pools of light, but because sitting in those few wooden chairs was a roster which included the likes of: Arthur Penn, Joseph Mankewicz, Ellen Burstyn, Elia Kazan, Joseph Heller, Pete Masterson, A. R. Gurney, Harold Brodkey, Jonathan Reynolds, and Norman Mailer.

Though I had worked hard on my character, I didn’t expect to find that playing a character with an accent, or this particular accent was, in some mysterious way, terrifically liberating. Perhaps the distance it created from my own personal reality gave me a mask, behind which I could leave my particular self behind, and be free. Though not a Scot by blood, I felt as if some atavistic tribal chord of Scotland was throbbing inside of me—unless it was the terror I felt in front of such an audience of heavyweights—that put an extra zing into my performance. Suffice it to say, if there had been any scenery to chew I would have had a feast. A spirit of heroic proportions flew into my chest like a madman on wings and lodged there with steel talons. I couldn’t have shaken it even if I had wanted to—it was bigger than I was. And when it was over, with people milling around the way they do after a main-event bout, I knew in my bones, that it was one of those times in my life where it had, indeed, been my night. Now it was fortunate that I felt this because I happened to catch sight of a large flock of white hair next to me. It was Norman inviting another cast member to play Arthur Miller in a play of his about Marilyn. Since that actor, though capable enough, was a soap opera actor, an occupation held in rather low esteem by some young stage actors, I naturally felt that I might also be worthy of such an invitation. The adrenalin pumping through me that night, had given me a little more bravado than I might otherwise have had.

So I planted myself in Norman’s path and, be damned, sure enough he turned and as if it was all in the plan, said “And you. There’s a role for you. Not the lead, but a role I think you might find interesting. He’s a stuntman, and one thing he does is take Marilyn for a ride.”You’ve already heard what that scene was like, and that was just the beginning, but what’s really significant here is that he offered me a role in his play only because of the merit he saw in the work—he didn’t know me from Adam. A gesture of that kind of fairness is almost unheard of in the Byzantine casting channels of theater and film. To give a young actor a break, without asking for credentials, or who he knew, or was connected to, with the only consideration being the work itself, seems like it is almost looked upon as heretical by the powers that be. So that was my first sense of Norman, that he was a stand-up guy—a fair man. Rare indeed.

One of the most satisfying things for an actor is to have a director who receives and fully absorbs what the actor is doing in his performance. The director is the actor’s objective eye and his mirror reflection. At the same time, a gifted director is one who creates a safe space, say, a sandbox of the mind, where the actor can cavort, search, get naked—psychologically or otherwise—and yes, fall on his ass, if it comes to that, without fear of retribution. In short, where he can be free to take risks and, if his instincts are ripe, land on his feet. Norman didn’t miss a trick and, it was understood, if the actor felt the urge to try something that might embellish a scene, he could, and if it worked Norman was likely to keep it in. Not to be misconstrued as license to rewrite the author’s lines, no, this was more in the vein of breathing life into the lines by extending their physical life. The first time this happened for me was a rather small moment, but one that opened up a door that ushered in an abundance of future opportunity. My character, Rod, had picked up Marilyn in a bar where one of her first lines was a challenge. “Gee, Rod, why are all those boys staring at you?” The line called for a simple answer of “I don’t know.” Instead something sparked and, taking my cue from her, I looked off in the direction she had suggested and then sashayed over a few steps to where this imaginary bevy of queenly young men might be, and with a gesture of defiance, a Sicilian “fungoo,” grabbed my crotch at them, so to speak. The gesture spoke volumes, and opened up the scene—the audience guffawed as if they could see this imaginary little group. This happened during a performance and none of it had been planned. Now it should be noted that, in addition to Norman’s openness, this was, after all, The Actors Studio and there, when you were on, you went all the way with what you were doing—if an impulse hit you, you were free to dive after it. I didn’t know from what cesspool of the subconscious this impulse sprang from, but it felt right and Norman loved it. Afterwards he told me to keep it in—it was right for the character. To me this was the real thing, theater on the edge: genuine collaboration between author and actor.

Recently I read about a young, raging, female playwright that had lit up the London stage with a play that included a character getting anally assaulted with a broomstick, another character shooting junk through his eyeball. She was touted as terrifically brave, and her writing groundbreaking.What’s peculiar to me about this is that when Norman put things up, at least as dark as this, fully a decade before in our production of Strawhead: A Portrait of Marilyn, the audiences almost yawned, barely raising an eyebrow, defiantly unimpressed. And nothing he wrote was ever gratuitous—it never felt as if anything we did was exploitive or pornographic. He simply had a curiosity for those who walked on the wild side, and was committed to pushing out to the edges of what was considered acceptable behavior on stage. Which leads me to a scene that takes place between Marilyn and Rod, right after their motorcycle ride. Norman was not yet through running with the demons of the night. After she and I dismounted, I was supposed to pull her down to her knees by the hair; apparently, how I did this was a little too gentle for Norman’s taste. He wanted something, frankly, more brutal.

He: “Well, look. This is not Stephan, Boy Scout. This is Rod, Stuntman and stud extraordinaire. Can I show you?” Feeling a little foolish, I nodded. Grabbing a fistful of air he brought his arm down twisting it with a vicious grunt. Did I mention that the actress playing Marilyn was his daughter? Well, so she was, but before we go off speculating about various and delicious Oedipal delights, suffice it to say, after I was given the license I needed— indeed, a father’s permission—WHAM, down she went.

The scene didn’t stop there. In the next instant, I found myself within a zipper-jerk away from being the first actor in the history of The Actors Studio to be fellated during a performance. At that moment, Marilyn flings off her platinum wig and the actress, Kate, refuses to go on with this “tabloid bullshit.” Of course, the whole thing was a set-up, and this is, in fact, the moment when the play stops mid-stream, with the heckler, previously mentioned, standing up and haranguing the playwright.

One night, shortly before a performance, Norman approached me in some consternation. “Look, about that cassette with the Doberman sounds. It turned out badly. I don’t want to use it, unless I have to. I want to try and keep it more in the vein of live theater.” He peered at me closely, his sharp blue eyes driving in on me. “I have this idea. What about if you tried it? Could you do something? ”My mouth opened and closed as I caught myself from saying “Like what?” I was blank—it took a long moment for what he was suggesting to sink in. Then, “Sure.Where uhh ... do you want me to do it?” I was trying to be a sport about the thing, but I could only imagine myself out there in the center of the stage, maybe even off a little to one side, writhing and growling, for all I was worth, like some rabid psychotic, less like Rod and more like Renfield’s soul brother. A whole performance going down the toilet in one unfortunate flush. I must have been transparent in my despair. So he said, “Well, I mean for you to do it in the wings upstage. You go offstage and make the sounds from there.”

Small comfort. This was the story. To wit: Rod, who was determined to get back a diamond necklace from his ex-girlfriend would have to retrieve it from the neck of her Doberman, and thereby kill it in the process. So I was going to be making the sounds of Rod grunting in his efforts, simultaneously with those of the dog snarling with rage, then whining in pain and finally gurgling in his death throes. Never mind that I had never taken a sound effects lesson in my life, as if there were such a thing. Or that I could only vaguely conceive of what a Doberman might sound like in such circumstances, alive or dead. Well, sometimes you can’t plan and you have to just jump and pray. And sometimes, just because of this, when there’s nothing preconceived, instinct takes over—there’s no thought involved—and though there may be very little recollection of what exactly happens, something extraordinary may occur. Maybe Norman didn’t realize how much of the dog I had in me—or maybe he did and knew better than I. But I doubt that he was expecting the symphony; nay, hurricane might be more accurate, of sounds that issued forth from that little corner in the wings. I have only a hazy recollection, like some werewolf, of that first time we did the scene. I am convinced, though, that if there had been any fur it would have been flying. The audience must have thought so because, as I recall, there was a spontaneous ovation for it.

They say that the hardest thing in art is to know when to stop. Sure enough, small moment of triumph that I had snatched, perhaps from the dark jaws of disaster. Still, the way the Doberman scene opened, left me unsatisfied.Why would any dog, especially a trained attack animal, just wait to be slaughtered? Didn’t make sense. Clearly something was missing for the scene to have some street credibility. Then I got the idea. And yet, because it was a fragile one, or perhaps because I didn’t have the strength of my convictions, I found myself eagerly waiting for the night I had found out there was a good chance Norman would arrive very late or not at all. I would try it. It would either work or it wouldn’t, and if it didn’t nobody would be the wiser except me, and maybe the more astute souls in the audience. I had a strong feeling that this idea was valid, yet I wouldn’t know for sure until it was up in front of an audience. And if I brought it up casually to Norman, and I happened to chance it at the wrong moment, say, in the dressing room when he might be having an irritating moment with another actor or, worse yet, with his lovely though provocative wife, Norris (who was also in the cast). Or if I just presented it clumsily, it might easily get shot down, and we would never know if it could have worked or not, which, in my heart of hearts, I believed would have been very unfortunate. So that night, as I slithered across the stage, giving a low whistle for the dog, Bowie knife slipping quietly up out of my engineer boot—I slowly drew out the large, soft, bloody steak Rod had especially brought for the occasion. The mushy, red flesh swaying back and forth from my black-gloved hand, spread something nauseating into the air as if bloody vapors were slowly drifting out into the house. It wasn’t so much that you could hear a pin drop—you couldn’t, because there was a storm of little gasps rolling around out there. Maybe because it was not imaginary, but a small dose of something real, palpable, in this minimalist production—it stood out and it resonated, that pulpy piece of meat, so that I knew in my bones I had made a small but stunning contribution to the piece. I was thrilled, to say the least, and then I did a double take. There was a flock of familiar-looking white hair in the last row. Impossible. Norman was presiding at the PEN meeting at the UN and not here tonight, or at least not until much later. After the show, sure enough, there was Norman in a formal three-piece, pin-striped blue suit looking for all the world like a banker. He caught my eye and, solemn-faced, stormed straight up to me. As he approached I heard a strange hymn-like phrase thunder past me. “Here comes the Judge. Halleluhah.” Ho. Ho. Joke’s on me. When he reached my elbow he immediately broached the subject of the steak. “What kind of meat was that?” (I was a vegetarian at the time, and wouldn’t have known a sirloin from a shoe sole.) I shrugged. “Steak?” Then he moved in on me. “Do you know what Dobermans love to eat?” he demanded. I saw a large black hole opening at my feet into which my cherished spirit of collaboration was diving headfirst. Busted. I hadn’t even done my homework. Who knew what Doberman’s ate? Meat. Red. What other mysterious substance could they possibly crave? Who knew? Maybe someone, but not me. Suddenly his face lit up with a look as if he had suddenly remembered something. A smile creased his mouth and, as his eyes started to twinkle ferociously, he was whisked away by an old crony, arm around his shoulder, who more direly needed his attention. So he had been yanking my chain. I had paid the price for my boldness. Later he gave his formal approval and for the rest of the run he even paid for the steak.

The run was not without some moments of tension and ruffled feathers. We had a few interns helping us out backstage and one of them got into a dispute with the young stalwart running the lights. It seems that the lighting kid had a pretty full plate up in the booth and had asked the intern to help him out and sweep the stage. The intern, not too diplomatically, had answered the request with “I’m not here to be a friggin’ janitor.” Things had escalated and gotten out of hand with the two young bucks squaring off and in the end the intern had stalked off. The Actors Studio tends to be somewhat on the egalitarian side, so if anyone had been just pulling rank, that would have been given short shrift, but it was not hard to see that there was a lot to be done up in the booth. Moreover, as it happened, the lighting booth techie had been somewhat generous in his praise about what I was managing to pull off in the play and, since it’s true that generosity is not especially abundant in the theater, he was in a position to see every night’s efforts and his comments were especially valued. But more than the flattery, I really appreciated the warmth of spirit he brought to the production. He was one of those buoyant personalities that can bring some levity to an otherwise grim moment. To further complicate things, it turns out I had also developed an acquaintance with the intern and, prideful though he might be, he was a good sort in the end. And since there are never enough volunteers for a show, even at the Actors Studio, I thought it would be worthwhile to approach him and said so to Norman. “Lemme talk to him, I think I can get him back.” Norman answered “No. We don’t want him if he’s not interested.” I persisted. “Look, we had a small crew before, now we have almost no one backstage. I’m telling you. I know him a little. I think I can bring him back.” Norman repeated himself even more sharply the second time. “It’s only good if he’s interested.”

Work Cited

• Mailer, Norman (1983). Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little Brown.