Dear Cary - Dyan Cannon [36]
“Diane.”
“Yes?”
“No, it hasn’t.”
“What?”
“One day at a time. Keep your job up until the moment they yell ‘action.’ ”
So that Friday, Jack and I were back at the studio to discuss my screen test and what we assumed would be a contract. In the meeting room, Wald and five executives in late middle age sat around a table awaiting me. The executives reminded me of a bunch of old ladies playing bridge.
“Miss Cannon!” Wald greeted me. Boom, pow!
“Your intelligence radiates off the screen!” offered Suit No. 1.
“Your acting is sublime!” added Suit No. 2, and so on down the line.
“Your timing, perfect.”
“You’re going to be huge!”
I was beginning to like this.
“The camera loves you, but . . .”
Kerblooey.
Suit No. 4 came closer and squinted at me through spectacles as thick as architectural glass. I held my breath. “There’s a little problem,” he said. “It’s your nose.”
“My nose?”
“It’s too flat.”
“Too flat for what?” I asked.
“Oh, your nose is great,” one said.
“But you said it was too flat,” I answered.
“It really has character!” Those were fighting words. They might as well have said I reminded them of Jimmy Durante.
They all nodded to each other, individually and collectively, now less like old ladies and more like gnomes. Finally, Mr. Wald broke the impasse with a simple, “Thank you for coming in.”
Tipsy laughter spilled out of the open window on the second floor where our apartment was. I had completely forgotten about the party. It was some party. The building practically shook.
I slipped into the apartment. It was nearly bursting out of its walls with people, and they were whooping it up like the end of the world had been announced and everybody had been promised a free pass into heaven.
They were in high spirits and full of strong spirits. Luckily, nobody noticed me as I took the phone into the bathroom and locked the door. I just wanted to stretch out and be alone, so I laid some towels in the dry tub and rolled one up as a pillow for my head. Naturally, I called my mother, which was the same as calling my father too, because he always got on the extension.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” My mother could hear the tears in my voice.
“Mom, I’m deformed!”
“What?”
“My nose isn’t right.”
“Isn’t right for what?”
“I don’t know. But they talked like I’d been in the ring one too many times with Cassius Clay.”
“That’s crazy!” my father boomed, now on the extension and deeply offended. By insinuation, his own nose had been impugned. I had my mother’s eyes and my father’s nose. “Oy,” my mother said.
“It’s your nose!” Dad boomed. “Your nose is your nose. God gave you that nose! It’s not like you can do anything to change it!”
“Ben, there’s such a thing as plastic surgery,” Mom told Dad.
“No!” Dad boomed. “She’s too young to have plastic surgery! Her nose isn’t broken.”
“Ben, she wants to be an actress.”
“I heard her, Clara.”
This was typical. I would call my parents long-distance, and they would have a short-distance conversation with each other in their own home, cutting me out of the talk while they debated what was best for me. That was okay, though. It made me feel right at home.
“I have to get a nose job!” I said, breaking in. “What if the only thing standing between me and being an actress is my nose?”
The line went quiet, then slowly stirred to life with mutterings of “Oy” and “Errgh.”
“I don’t think a nose job is a good idea,” Dad said.
“You already said that, Ben. Honey, when you think this through you’re going to realize getting a nose job is crazy.”
We talked a few more minutes. When I hung up I immediately got out the phone book and looked for a plastic surgeon.
I didn’t really want surgery, but after my near miss, I wanted to be an actor more than ever. I wasn’t going to let the character of my schnoz stand in the way of a brilliant career. So, I figured if I were going to do something about my hideously flat muzzle, with its nostrils flaring across several zip codes, I would go to the best. And Dr. Andrew Park, I was informed by several people I trusted,