Betsy Blair was born in Cliffside New Jersey. She was a child model, became
a chorus dancer at fifteen, and appeared on Broadway in Panama Hattie and
William Saroyan’s The Beautiful People. She was married to Gene Kelly
for sixteen years and appeared in many motion pictures, including Marty, for
which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Betsy Blair lives in London.
In her recently published memoir, The Memory of All That; love and politics
in New York, Hollywood and Paris (Knopf), she candidly talks about her early
days on Broadway, life with Gene Kelly and her experience as a blacklisted
actress during the McCarthy era.
I recently
had the opportunity to talk to her while we were both in Los Angeles.
On Early Broadway as a Dancer
CTJ:
What makes this book so special is that you share the extraordinary events
of your life in such a way that makes the reader connect with you on surprisingly
common ground. You make us feel like we’ve sat down with you in your
kitchen with a cup of coffee, while you inspire us with your courage.
BB: It makes me feel good that you felt that way.
CTJ: You talk a lot about your Mother instilling confidence
in you throughout your childhood. Do you credit this confidence with being
able to fearlessly start auditioning at an early age, working, commuting,
holding your own?
BB: Certainly. I was in France recently and there were two
French women I didn’t know who said very politely, “What’s
your book about?” and I said, “It’s a memoir so it’s
about me, but I think it’s my mother who is the heroine. It’s
really true – it’s what your mother gives you, well your mother
and your father, but your mother mostly in some cases. It’s how you
face everything, or what makes you want to.
CTJ: Picturing you commuting at sixteen and deciding, “I’m
just going to audition for a Broadway show” - that had to come from
confidence in yourself.
BB: Well, I think also it was a bit easier then in the sense
that we didn’t know everything – we didn’t know how hard
it was. You just gradually do it and that’s easier than when you know
how hard it is.
CTJ: You seemed to make transitions easily – from having
one line in PANAMA HATTIE to being the ingénue in THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE,
and from stage work to screen work…
BB: My daughter, who’s a psychoanalyst when I say,
“I was lucky”, she says “Mommy it wasn’t luck, it
wasn’t luck – it’s what you do.” I think there is
luck. I don’t mean to refute her, but it was lucky. It was lucky that
I met Saroyan, lucky that I got – okay, I could dance but so could everybody
who was a dancer. I just eased into it. Sometimes when I lived here (in LA)
I used to think if we lived in NY I’d be having a better chance to be
an actress because I’d be in the plays – that was what I thought
I should be doing – but I also knew that if we had lived in NY, it wouldn’t
have been like people who live in NY who are struggling young actors without
any money. So I was lucky and Saroyan was the only one who would have done
that – he was a madman! As they said, he might ask a taxi driver (to
do a part).
CTJ: He had a lot of faith in you – which was definitely
earned, but was lucky as well…
BB: It was lucky. It wasn’t earned. I hadn’t
done anything.
CTJ: You talked about having problems with producers not
paying you when you were working at the International Casino in NYC and regretting
the fact that you were not apart of Equity. When did you join, and how did
it make a difference to you?
BB: Nightclub dancers weren’t a part of Equity then.
I joined when I was in PANAMA HATTIE. In nightclubs I knew it was $35 a week,
and now it was $45 a week, and we didn’t work as hard. It was only one
show a night. In the nightclub we did twice a night: 8-10 and 12-2.
CTJ: I feel that there is a strong sense of community on
Broadway that seems very different from Hollywood.
BB: It really is like a club. If you’re ever in a show,
it’s forever.
CTJ: And there are two traditions you had then that we still
have now: going to Sardi’s between shows and playing in the Broadway
show softball league. There’s a great picfture of you and Gene Kelly
playing on that league in the book. How was this different from Hollywood?
BB: There’s never been – I’m trying to
think – there was Hamburger Hamlet here and Schwabs certainly and the
Blackwatch Delicatessan used to be a hangout – but that was because
the Actors Lab was there so we’d hang out before class, but they’re
all gone. No, there isn’t the same kind of thing here.
CTJ: Are you still acting?
BB: Yesterday someone at the Festival of Books (held in Los
Angeles) came up and asked me “are you still acting?” and I said,
“Yes!” She said, “I’m going to make a film about a
young woman and I’d like you and Ernest Borgnine (ed.: her co-star in
MARTY) to play the grandparents”, and I said, “Fine! That would
be great fun!
CTJ: Would you ever think about coming back to Broadway?
BB: I think the theatre particularly should be practiced
all the time and I’m not sure that I would feel that I was…I’d
rather go act someplace in a little theatre and see – or get into practice
somehow.
CTJ: Did you ever want to dance with Gene Kelly in any of
his movies?
BB: No – I was a very, very good chorus dancer, but
I wasn’t Vera Ellen or Cyd Charisse. There was a moment when Vincent
Minelli was going to cast me in something else that Gene wasn’t in,
but it didn’t happen. I would have loved it – and the truth is
I was never in a Technicolor film all the years I was here. I was afterwards,
but not in a Hollywood one and since I was a redhead then, I would have liked
it – to have been in a color film.
CTJ: Did you continue dancing after you moved to Hollywood?
BB: We always danced – like ballroom dancing –
and Eugene Loring used to have a class at MGM that I used to go to for years
– but not seriously.On Tolerance, the Blacklist, and early Union activism:
CTJ: You were involved in SAG politics as early as 1946,
proposing the formation of the first Anti-Discrimination committee. You also
talk a lot in your book about tolerance and about prejudice.
BB: It seems to me to be so obvious – it’s ridiculous
that there is such a thing (as prejudice). People are frightened of something
different. Having a feeling of unknown is inescapable. It’s like they
say in Rodgers and Hammerstein: “You’ve got to be taught to hate
and fear.”
It’s ridiculous. I never had it (prejudice) because my mother, again,
or just because of life – you know, to find out about homosexuals when
you’re 15 when in those days, nobody knew anything – that was
another thing that was very lucky – and given the fact that my mother
was like she was – I thought, “Oh that’s interesting”.
I didn’t think, “Oh isn’t that awful or weird…Very
interesting – another part of life”. My natural feeling is it’s
just completely ridiculous. I always knew it – and therefore whatever
you can do against what creates those horrible things that have happened in
the world, and certainly in this country – it should be eliminated.
And if it has to be by law, good – do it by law – but it really
should happen naturally. It shouldn’t be.
CTJ: You experienced prejudice in being blacklisted for your
politics. (In 1947, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House for Un-American
Affairs Committee, published (with the help of informers) a list of people
deemed to be Communists and a danger to the American people. Many Hollywood
careers were ruined by this blacklisting.)
BB: I guess I always knew that there were enemies out there
that hated what you were doing – it didn’t seem to affect me till
it did.
CTJ: Even then, I think it was really brave to do what you
did and continue to stand up for what you believed in, not renouncing your
politics just for the sake of your career.
BB: I thought, “It’s alright. I don’t need
the movies. Who needs the movies? I’ll go be an archaeologist. I’ll
go write a book”, I thought. I couldn’t at the time – I
tried to write a novel but I couldn’t. And I already realized I shouldn’t
be in the sun – so I thought, “How can I be an archaeologist?”
I took a six weeks course in Russian, thinking maybe I’ll go into language
seriously…so it was because I didn’t have to earn my living, I
was fortunate. Of course I had to be brave. Of course I had to say “No”
but I also was lucky that it was that easy to do.
CTJ: Do you think if you’d have been under contract,
in the studio system, things would have been different?
BB: I would’ve done it anyway.
CTJ: Would they have protected you more? You talk about how
you only got to do MARTY because Gene Kelly threatened to stop shooting at
MGM if they didn’t let you do it (in spite of the blacklist).
BB: Well, if you were a big star, they might have - but I
now realize I wasn’t really a big star. I don’t mean I didn’t
get to be – but I realized I wasn’t “the girl next door”.
I wasn’t what I thought I was. So I probably never would’ve been,
under any circumstances, a real movie star. Well, there were a few …there
was Julie Harris and we sort of looked a like except she was tiny and I used
to be tall….and well, Eva Marie Saint was different and she was more
classically pretty too. I was really – even though I was young and cheerful
and all that stuff, I was really a character actress. I actually think probably
if I had done that studio bit it would have been better for getting to be
known, famous and all that, but it wouldn’t have changed much I don’t
think.
CTJ: You don’t hear about many women being blacklisted.
BB: Yes, well you see there were people – as the photograph
of (the Hollywood Ten- a group of famous Hollywood Actors speaking out about
the blacklisting) going to Washington – there weren’t any women
in that photograph. Maybe they’d gone to the rest room at that moment
or something. I think the plane had stopped in St. Louis or Chicago because
of the weather or something, so that photograph was taken at that stop. So
maybe they weren’t there – but they are hardly ever mentioned
– the ones that were on the plane – and Marsha Hunt, I never see
anything about her, but she’s still alive and I saw her in London recently
and you hardly – it’s the same old thing – they were there
– but they’re not talked about much. I know Gail Sundergard is
talked about. I don’t know. They were certainly there at meetings and
demonstrations and speeches and things and blacklisted…
CTJ: But you don’t hear about them as much.
BB: Yeah.
CTJ: Has your perspective on America and that time period
changed, now that you don’t live here?
BB: Well, I thought everything was much better until lately.
I mean everything is terrible and this is where I don’t know if it’s
because I don’t live here. And I completely believe that the American
people do always right the wrong – I mean this Constitution provided
for it and eventually it works – but at the moment it seems –
well the Supreme Court that ‘s the worst, I think. I don’t know.
No, the worst is Bush but this Supreme Court – that was supposed to
be the independent thing that saved us from everything in the world. And so
it is quite – so my perspective is - at the time, we thought that was
the worst, then it was Vietnam and then it seemed as if we were learning and
then the Cold war was over but at the moment, it’s not good.
CTJ: There seems to be a dangerous encroaching parallel of
sorts, today, with celebrities who voice dissenting opinions to the situation
in Iraq being labeled as “Anti-American” or “unpatriotic”.
BB: If they say it out loud.
CTJ: Do you think history could repeat itself, and we could
be seeing another “invisible” blacklist?
BB: Yes, but the only thing is – everyone’s so
aware of it now whereas then when they were keeping it secret, you had to
sort of convince – it was hardly in the newspapers. Whereas atleast
now, it’s still in the newspapers. In London, I was reading it, from
the Herald Tribune, it’s true, but I knew about the singing group (the
Dixie Chicks) and Susan Sarandon. That was all in the paper so whereas in
the beginning of the blacklist, none of it was – the original blacklist.
CTJ: So you would just find out you were on it because you
weren’t being hired?
BB: No, not only that, you’d find out because the committee
would announce names and then the Red Shadows was published. But nobody admitted
that it was actually happening. The employers didn’t admit it, and maybe
they’re not admitting it now, but I think they are. I think the radio
stations, the record companies, they’re saying “Well, we can’t
have that”. So there is that difference – which may be better
for now.
CTJ: At least it’s being acknowledged.
BB: Which eventually, the black list, the original one, was
too.
CTJ: Do you wonder about who were the informers? You talk
about being betrayed, named to the committee, by people you were sharing your
home with?
BB: You do get intrigued but I don’t want to get too
intrigued. Where there’s a mystery, you sort of want to know.
CTJ: You said that one of the things the FBI noted as being
part of your questionable behavior was the fact that you met Paul Robeson.
Why was that significant?
BB: They were crazy.
CTJ: The fact that you were able to keep working, looking
for other countries to work when you weren’t able to get any more jobs
in Hollywood because of the blacklist is a testament to your strength.
BB: Even though I wasn’t nurturing it, the desire to
act is really powerful. It’s got to serve itself, doesn’t’
it? That’s why I said “yes” to that woman yesterday. Also,
if you’re just alive, you do want to do something.
CTJ: A lot of people could have just given up
BB: Yes, but it’s quite boring – to just give
up.
CTJ: Do you have any advice for actors today?
BB: There’s one thing. You have to really want it more
than anything. The thing you have to have is that real passion, that real
desire – and to be open to …well, now there are all these possibilities.
There are so many actors, there are also so many more outlets. Some of them
horrible, but it’s the real desire to do it.