Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

TAPE to TYPE FRED ROBBINS interviews SUSAN HAYWARD Fred: You are now a Southern housewife, aren't you. Susan? Susan: Yes, indeedy! Mrs. Eaton Chalkley. suh, from Carrollton. Georgia. Fred: Are you happy, being an emigre from Hollywood? Susan: Well. I think Fm probably the luckiest woman in the world. I have the kind of home life I like . . . and we live with pretty much down-toearth people, you know. Real people. I think that in Hollywood one is sometimes caught up in the wrong kind of crowd . . . too much business, business, business . . . and not enough of really living as a human being. Fred: Give the secret to the men of the world. How can they be married successfully to a working actress? Susan: Well, it’s a very difficult problem for any man, but / found a man who’s not from Hollywood . . . who’s completely unHollywood. is not interested in the business, and I am his wife. Now once a year it’s my pleasure to work in a picture — it’s like playing a game and a great joy for me. My husband can usually arrange his businesses so he can accompany me and sort of let me do what I want for a little while . . . but then I go right back to being that wife and that’s the most important thing in the world to me. Besides, what do they say about prize fighters? Quit while you’re on top? Fred: You’re still on top, Susan. Susan: I’m liable to quit at any moment. Fred: You look so beautiful, Susan. What are your secrets? Susan: I think you can thank Mr. Chalkley for that. . . . And I spend most of my time outdoors, looking at trees, just enjoying life. No day is exactly like the next day but my whole being is concentrated on that ranch. I’m there when I’m needed and Fm not gallivanting off some other place. Fred: “A Girl Who Quit When She Was Ahead.” Is that your story? Susan: I haven’t quit yet. The End p Susan’s in UA’s “Summer Flight.” Hear Fred on his “Assignment Hollywood.” 82 mond. who had originally been sent to the Rosses by the Madison Boys’ Club to take speech and dramatic lessons in the hope that this would save him from becoming a juvenile delinquent, didn’t tell her — was that her brother had said to the Rosses, “Well, some people think my sister is cute. / don’t think so — but I’ll bring her around.” She wasn't yet ten when she showed up at the Rosses’ place. Her hair was a straggly mop; her clothes were ill-fitting handme-downs; her speech left something to be desired. She asked, “Kin oi have one uh dem muhstid samwiches?” Nevertheless, she was cute. She was scared, too, until John Ross asked her to do a pantomime. Then everything was okay. Acting as if she were somebody else, actually being somebody else for a few minutes, was fun. For while you were someone else, you didn’t have to remember that your father, a New York cab driver, had deserted the family when you were eight and you hadn’t seen him since; you didn’t have to remember that your mother worked long, hard hours in a restaurant; you didn’t have to remember that sometimes when you played in the New York streets with the other kids, you were so hungry that a piece of bread could seem as wonderful as a birthday cake. By playing parts, your dreams could come true. Ross liked Patty’s pantomime, and soon she was studying and working with him steadily. As her speech cleared up, she began to play parts on television and in movies; in the TV version of “Wuthering Heights” and in the New-York-made films, “Happy Anniversary” and “The Goddess.” In every production she was somebody else. The resemblances between Sue Lyon and Patty Duke stop when it comes to how they first got their big break. Patty was twelve years old when she won the part of seven-year-old Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker” — the same role she later played in the movie. Yet her ability to be the little blind girl flowed out of her studies with her dramatic coach, her experience on TV and in movies, and her specific preparation for the audition. And, although possibly she didn’t know it. out of her own underprivileged childhood. She lived the part A year and a half before the play was to be cast. Patty and Mr. Ross began working on the part. She read all the books by and about Helen Keller. (Sue Lyon, on the other hand, says that she skimmed through the book. “Lolita,” but has never finished it. This “skimming through” is exactly what Lolita herself would have done if someone had handed her a big, fat, forbidding book and said. “You must read this.”) Patty stumbled around the Rosses’ apartment, eyes closed, to get the feel of being blind. Occasionally, the Rosses tricked her and rearranged the furniture, but that only added to the illusion that she was really blind. To pretend she was deaf was a little harder. Perhaps if she imagined that she was out playing in the streets and the kids were teasing her and she couldn’t stand what they were saying another moment, she might be able to retreat from the noise of the world. But just as she was getting the hang of it, Mr. and Mrs. Ross would ask, “Want a coke, Patty?”, and she’d give herself away. She heard. It was hard. After a while, however, nothing stood in the way of her being Helen Keller. Helen Keller was deaf, Helen Keller was dumb, and Helen Keller was Patty Duke, closed off and shut out from everyone else. When it came time to audition, the producer didn’t meet an actress; he met seven-yearold Helen Keller, who once in a while played at being twelve-year-old Patty Duke. And, of course, she was signed immediately to a contract. The second question asked both girls, “Does your personal and profession life fuse and get you confused?” sue lyon. From the moment Sue Lyon walked into the casting office, and producers Stanley Kubrick and James Harris blinked at each other and exchanged the unspoken message, “This is Lolita ,” she has been defined by others as being Lolita, on and off the screen. In this she is not alone. People who meet Jayne Mansfield in the flesh can’t accept the fact that she’s not just that, all flesh, and they try their darndest not to admit that she’s a sensitive, college-educated gal who can utter something else besides baby-talk. Then there’s Raymond Massey, who was identified for such a long time with his stage and screen depiction of Abraham Lincoln that, up until two years ago. strangers would stop him on the street and whisper, “Hey, Abe. whatever you do, stay away from Ford’s Theater.” More recently, women in supermarkets, refusing to believe that Massey is not Dr. Gillespie, confront him with requests as, “Doctor, I’ve been bothered by varicose veins. I wonder if you . . .” Mrs. Sue Karr Lyon, Sue’s mother, has stated succinctly the dilemma facing her daughter. “The thing that worries me,” Mrs. Lyon confesses, “is that people may confuse my daughter with that slimy character she plays.” Mrs. Lyon’s fears have a solid basis. She has publicly expressed the hope that “the PTA won’t cut me to pieces. When I went to school to pick up Sue’s books, her teachers were very, very cool to me.” And Sue says bitterly that the parents of some of her friends “are narrow-minded and say the wrong thing.” Newspapers do their part to foster this “Sue Lyon is Lolita” reaction. Recently, for instance, under the banner headline “Sexpot Symbol Race Is On,” Sue was nominated — along with such high-voltage symbols of sex as Stella Stevens, AnnMargret, Julie Newmar, Jane Fonda, Barbara Eden and Claudia Cardinale — as the most likely candidate to succeed Marilyn Monroe as “pinup for the world.” It must be said, however, that there is something about the way Sue walks, talks, acts and reacts which encourages this sort of typecasting. At the Venice Film Festival, for example, she fed fuel to the newspapers by declaring that she would like to play tbe lead in the life story of Marilyn Monroe. (This was the day after the night that she finally had secured a special police permit to see herself on-screen as Lolita ; previously, 16-year-old Sue was kept out of the New York premiere by a rule forbidding the showing of the film to minors.) When asked whether her published quote about wanting to play Marilyn was accurate, Sue replied, “Well — the question was, ‘If you had to play one celebrity, who would you choose?’ And I guess her name