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By Root 442 0

hit the fan—a kid—and you were just trying to get along. In the beginning, you really didn’t have much control of your craft. You could only follow your instincts—good ones as it turned out—but how were you to know if the choices you were making were the right ones? Can anyone remember how insecure [it is to be] twenty-three and be suddenly saddled with all the kudos and the notoriety you received? It was embarrassing. You couldn’t think it was deserved. You couldn’t believe you were actually responsible, and Poppa had always said you’d never amount to a tinker’s damn. What the hell was going on? Sure, it’s nice to know you’re doing something right for once, but can it rate all that? You became an actor because acting seemed to be the only thing you had any aptitude for, the only place you’d found where people said, ‘You’re pretty good at that.’ And it was fun and a good place to hide. Most actors hide behind the characters they play. It’s a way of exploring life from a lot of other folks’ point of view. It is exciting to get to ‘be’ all those other people without the responsibility for their actions. The trouble is that the public identifies the actor with the characters he plays, and that creates a schism right there.… Certainly the perks and the money aren’t bad. They can grease the skids, but everyone should know that money and perks can’t buy the important things.”

Was Jocelyn right when she said that rapid success and, more important, other people’s reactions to it, were hard to handle for an uncertain kid from Illinois? It’s difficult for me to remember exactly what I felt so long ago. What I remember most about A Streetcar Named Desire was the emotional grind of acting in it six nights and two afternoons a week. Try to imagine what it was like walking on a stage at 8:30 every night having to yell, scream, cry, break dishes, kick the furniture, punch the walls and experience the same intense, wrenching emotions night after night, trying each time to evoke in audiences the same emotions I felt. It was exhausting. Then imagine what it was like to walk off the stage after pulling these emotions out of yourself and waking up in a few hours knowing you had to do it all over again a few hours later. In sports I was always a very competitive person, and there was a fundamental part of me that was determined not to fail as Stanley Kowalski, to excel and be the best, so I applied pressure on myself to act the part well every time. But it was emotionally draining, wearisome, mentally oppressive, and after a few weeks I wanted out of it. I couldn’t quit, however, because I had a run-of-the-play contract.

What I hated most was matinee days, when I’d wake up, look at the clock, discover I was late, and have to run across town to get to the theater on time. Several times I ran all the way from my apartment at Fifty-second Street and Fifth Avenue to Forty-second Street and Broadway for a matinee only to discover that it was the wrong day: it wasn’t Wednesday or Saturday, and I could have slept longer. Most days, I got up about two in the afternoon after an adventure or two the night before, then fell asleep about an hour before I was supposed to be at the theater; when I woke up, I had to dash across town in a sweat. I was due there no later than eight-fifteen to put on makeup, but I liked to arrive a little earlier to lift some weights and work up a sweat to give Stanley the appearance I wanted for him. I usually showed up as late as I possibly could and sometimes got there late. I hated going to work.

Of course there were advantages to success in a Broadway play, and not merely the $550-a-week paycheck, which I suppose was equivalent to about $5,000 now. Although I’d told my father when I was rehearsing for The Eagle Has Two Heads that I wanted to look after my own financial affairs, he persuaded me that I was not only too busy, but too inexperienced with money to handle it properly, so I turned my check over to him; he paid my rent, gave me pocket change and invested the rest. The money that came with A Streetcar Named Desire