After Reading Susan Strasberg

Hi, Susan -- can I carry your books?

As I recently mentioned, my interest in the screen career of Susan Strasberg inspired me to finally acquire copies of her two books, BITTERSWEET and MARILYN AND ME, both works of autobiography. I've read them both now and, while I was very pleased to discover that the personality captured in these capably written books was bright and resourceful and good company, it was disconcerting to find out how frustrated, unhappy and tense she was for so much of her short life. These books make the reader want to reach out to comfort someone who is no longer there.

It was appalling to read the details of the constraint that characterised her relationship with her famous parents, the violent ups and downs of her mostly disastrous love life (which began with a teenage affair with older married man Richard Burton), the hellish abuse that rained down upon her during her marriage to Christopher Jones (whose work I fill find it hard to enjoy again), and the additional tears that came with the birth of her daughter Jennifer, who was born with heart and soft palate problems (both eventually corrected by surgery). She writes with enthusiasm about her early successes, especially those on the stage, which suggests she may have been happier as a stage actress; she writes about her films with less feeling, and is surprisingly (but understandably) antagonistic toward two of my favorites, THE TRIP and PSYCH-OUT, for, as she claims, romanticizing a drug culture whose disastrous effects she had already seen at first hand -- Jones had coerced her into trying pot and peyote, but she had steered clear of LSD because it was a chemical, unnatural, and her feelings about it were confirmed when her younger brother Johnny had taken acid in a despondent mood and leaped from a high window in an unsuccessful suicide attempt, the year before she made those two films. (His life was saved by an awning -- which then bounced him through another glass window.)

BITTERSWEET was written in 1980, when Strasberg would have been nearly 40, and it ends on a note of hard-won wisdom and clarity; she has learned to love a man's soul before his flesh (a difficult lesson for her), to act in order to live (not vice-versa), and she is writing the book that her mother always intended to write, making that family dream come true. My only criticism of the book is that it becomes sketchier as it nears the end, rendering many more contemporary episodes as mere vignettes, probably evidence of the working actor's schedule bearing down on a publishing deadline.

MARILYN AND ME, written in 1992 (when she was approximately the age I am now), presents a subtly changed Susan Strasberg, who was by then a drama teacher as well as an actress. While the book delivers an interesting, candid, fully dimensional account of her friendship with Marilyn Monroe, I found it more rushed, less illuminatingly written than BITTERSWEET. The final chapter crams in an unseemly number of epigrams from other people, often applied to subjects they weren't talking about, and it gave me the off-putting impression of a text written by one of those motivational speakers, or by a teacher so insecure or limited in her own eurekas that she must reference and apply the wisdom of others. The only positive news about this book, really, is that its author has finally become her own mother, Paula Miller Strasberg, likewise a teacher, whose 1966 death in her mid-fifties left her daughter feeling so vulnerable and alone. Unfortunately, part of that metamorphosis was that this valiant survivor would also die young, of the same disease that claimed her mother, at the age of 60, in 1999. The dust jackets of both books mention that Strasberg was working on a novel at the time of their publications, but the (at least) 12-year project never came to fruition.

One of the more surprising episodes of BITTERSWEET, for me, reveals that Strasberg's friendship with Noel Harrison and his family got her interested in Reichian therapy. After reading some introductory books loaned to her by the Harrisons -- including Orson Bean's ME AND THE ORGONE (which Strasberg calls the best and most comprehensive general introduction to Reich's theories, and which I'm presently adapting into a screenplay for a romantic comedy) -- she embarked on therapy for herself and her infant daughter, which restored some much needed pink color into the bluish baby and had apparently worthwhile psychological benefits for herself. It amazes me to think that, while Noel Harrison was making episodes of THE GIRL FROM U.N.C.L.E and Susan Strasberg was making THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL!, they were both involved in Reichian therapy. The world is a much more interesting place than our entertainment usually lets us know.

Walk A Mile in Our Shoes

Also known as "More Vacation Pictures." Click, as they say, to embiggen.

On June 20, Donna and I visited Bob and Kathy Burns, whose peerless collection of fantastic film memorabilia provided a wonderful evening of nostalgic distraction. Here I am holding one of Glenn Strange's original Frankenstein boots -- and Glenn's own shoe is still inside it! The outer part feels like felt and the sole feels like wood!

Here Donna achieves her lifelong dream of playing Weena to Rod Taylor's Time Traveller in the actual Time Machine. ("How do they wear their hair in your time?") This Rod is a wax likeness, but his smoking jacket is the original and the rear wheel of the device "Manufactured by H. George Wells" still rotates.

When I was very young, a television broadcast of Wm. Cameron Menzies' INVADERS FROM MARS sent shivers through me, especially the scenes involving the bubble-encased Martian leader. Here I am, in what I call my "Dr. Strange" shirt (which Donna made for me), holding the original prop bubble that the Martian drones carted about from place to place.

Another lifelong dream realized as Bob and Kathy took us to the original Bob's Big Boy in Burbank -- on a Friday, too, when the parking lot turns into a weekly classic car showcase. (Kathy surprised us by proving herself an expert car aficianado who can date '57 Chevy by sight.) The West Coast Big Boy formula differs from the one we have here in the Midwest -- mayonaisse and some kind of red relish instead of our tartar sauce -- but as much as I like the local recipe, I think I may actually prefer the original, which tasted to me like a more substantial, satisfying Big Mac. By the way, I don't make the claim that I resemble the mascot of this fine restaurant, but as I stood outside waiting for our table, children began to climb on me.

Me and Donna with Kathy and Bob. We love them, and we love this picture.

On the set of Larry Blamire's new "old dark house" spoof A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, I bump into actor Andrew Parks -- beloved by millions as Kro-Bar from THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA, but especially beloved by me as Truphen Newben of TALES FROM THE PUB.

Here's Larry Blamire himself. Larry is usually on his feet, calling the shots, while onset, but I pleaded with him to rest for a moment on this prop chair which -- according to set gossip -- previously appeared in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Perhaps one of our eagle-eyed readers can find it and send us a frame grab?

In the lunchroom, we had a nice talk with Rondo-winning artist Frank Dietz and James Karen about Mr. Karen's fine performance in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Donna charms John Saxon at the 34th Annual Saturn Awards.

Here's Donna and me sharing a moment of triumph with our old friend, producer Alfredo Leone, who won the Saturn for his involvement in Anchor Bay's THE MARIO BAVA COLLECTION, VOLUMES 1 and 2. Alfredo kept trying to get my award, and my wife, away from me, but be that as it may... The flash on our camera began to fail us here, and I've done what I can to brighten it. The same goes for the next and last shot of the day...

On the evening of June 26, Donna and I attended a public interview of actor/author/raconteur Orson Bean at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California. Orson's lovely wife Alley Mills -- an actress you may remember from THE WONDER YEARS, now working on the soap THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL -- was there too and we coralled her into this commemorative photo, taken in the building's lobby. Unfortunately, she was feeling the onset of a sore throat and didn't join us for dinner, but we drove Orson to one of his favorite French joints, Lilly's, and talked about a project we're cooking up.

Though he put on a brave and friendly face that evening, Orson looked visibly shaken by the loss of his friend George Carlin just three days earlier. He told me that their friendship went back 45 years, but they became especially close friends only 8 or 9 years ago. He reminisced about how George had been married for a long time to a woman he loved very much, was destroyed when she suddenly passed away and withdrew into seclusion. Then he happened to meet a friend of the Beans named Sally, and they had their first date when the Beans invited them both to dinner. They stayed together from then on. On the night George died, Sally called Orson and his wife Alley and they went over to hold her hand for a couple of hours. Sally was upset, of course, but like anyone who had spent any length of time living with a comedian, mined humor from her pain; she told them how she imagined George at the Pearly Gates, trying to convince St. Peter that all the bad things he said about God were all in good fun.

Orson told us that the true measure of George Carlin can be seen in the fact that he befriended a Christian like himself and, despite his coarse public image, respected whatever life choices made people happy. He even provided an enthusiastic blurb for the cover of Orson's forthcoming book, MAIL TO MIKEY, which is a book about finding God but written in harsh, rather un-Christian language. In a sense, Carlin's last public act will be endorsing a book whose aim, underlying its profanity, is to teach suspicious souls the value of getting on one's knees once a day and thanking Someone or Something for the gift of life.

Orson Bean's New Book

I've written here in the past about my admiration for this gentleman to my left. Actor, author, raconteur, cutting-edge educator (he and his second wife once founded an arts-oriented school where kids were graded for self-expression), stand-up comedian and game show panelist, Orson Bean -- I feel -- has lived an exemplary life. His two works of autobiography, ME AND THE ORGONE and TOO MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH, are amazingly brave and candid works of self-exploration that encompass such matters as his experience in Reichian therapy, the founding of his school, an LSD trip, being stalked by a Satanic cult in Australia, and the failure of his second marriage following a visit to Sandstone (a free sex community) and later experimentation in open matrimony. I should note that the failure of Bean's second marriage was not a failure of the bond between husband and wife; I'm told that Carolyn Bean is still very much a part of Orson's current life with third wife, actress Ally Mills. They all spent last Thanksgiving together.

While visiting Mark Evanier's blog last night, I was surprised and pleased to learn that Orson has written a novel -- his first -- a novella, actually, as the whole thing amounts to less than 125 pages. Originally called MIKEY, it's apparently about spirituality as experienced by people outside of, or alienated by, the Church. Initially, Orson's agent couldn't place the book because Christian publishers found the book too candid (it reportedly includes some profanity and allusions to sexual activity or human sexuality) and mainstream publishers found it too... spiritual. With great largesse, Orson opted to give the book away free online for a short time... until Barricade Press, a publisher in Fort Lee, New Jersey, came forward to express interest in publishing a more polished draft. Now retitled MAIL FOR MIKEY, the book is set to be published in early October 2008.

I haven't read it yet, but I'm betting it's as interesting and as embracing of life and its mysteries as anything else Orson Bean has written.

I Still Dream of Orson Bean

A journal entry from April 23, 2003:

Dream: I was walking down 7th street downtown, mostly nobody around, and entered a department store where I saw a familiar stranger shopping. I couldn't quite place him; he looked like somebody I knew, but he had a little white mustache and, if I ever had seen him, he was older than I had seen him before. I hovered, watching him shop in an area filled with little glass-domed clocks, hoping the name on the tip of my tongue would make itself known to me before he disappeared. Then he got a call on his cellphone, and once he started talking in his funny, boistrous, mock-industrious voice, I knew this fellow was Orson Bean.

He yammered into the phone: "I've written a hit song, I tell ya! It's got 'hit' written all over it. What's it called? Are you kidding? I'll tell ya what it's called, my good man! It's called 'My Name Is Love and I'm Gonna Break Down Your Door, But It's Not You I Want - I'm Gonna Grab That Hot Daughter of Yours and Carry Her Away!' What? Are you kidding? The title is not too long! The title is what's gonna sell it! Why, the kids'll eat it up like pancakes!"

He put his phone away, took a piece of paper from a nearby jewelry counter, patted himself down, then abruptly turned to me: "Hey, you! You got a pen?" Before I had a chance to answer, he reached out and pulled a pen from my breast pocket and started scribbling something down, like he was jotting down the lyrics of this crazy song before they slipped his mind. He seemed crazy with excitement at what he'd just hatched. Then he folded the paper, handed my pen back to me, seized both my hands and shook them warmly. "I couldn't have done it without 'cha, but don't let that go to your head," he said, releasing me and starting to move away.

I said, "Mr. Bean, before you go -- there's something I've been wanting to tell you since I was 18." He looked a bit bewildered and came back, saying, "Really? What's that?" "Well," I said, "I just wanted to say 'thank you for writing ME AND THE ORGONE.'" He threw his head back with his mouth in an big O shape, squeezed his eyes shut as if it was all too much to bear, then shook my hands vigorously, even bowing in mock theatrical fashion to kiss them. "Why, thank you, thank you, my boy!" he said, making too much of a fuss. All around this little scene, people in the store who had gathered to watch this meeting of two Americans stood beaming fondly at us and applauding.

Then I woke up. The first thing I thought was, "Shit, watch me get online now and find out that Orson Bean has died." Happily, this wasn't the case and I'm even happier to say that Orson Bean is still among the living and employed.

It was odd of me to have this dream, because it wasn't prompted by anything recent. I hadn't read ME AND THE ORGONE since I was 18 years old. It's an autobiographic account of the failure of Bean's first marriage, his adventures in Reichian therapy, and how he fell in love with and married his second wife, Carolyn. (I must interject here that one of the reasons I was prompted to read this book -- which was passed on to me by an acquaintence named Peter Umbenhauer who taught a course on Wilhelm Reich at the University of Cincinnati -- was that I had seen the Beans together numerous times on the 1970s "candid" game show TATTLE TALES, where I learned a lot about the two of them and came to think of them as possibly the coolest couple on the planet. I got to know more about their background by reading ME AND THE ORGONE, which was a "three E" book: engrossing, enlightening and entertaining. I think Joe Dante must have read it too, because he seemed to know the book when I mentioned it while telling him, years ago, how pleased I was to see Orson Bean pop up in INNERSPACE. But I digress; I digress like hell.

I haven't read ME AND THE ORGONE since I was 18, but the first thing I did after waking from this dream was to get online, confirm that Mr. Bean was alright and then look up his book in the usual search engines, to see if it was still available. It is, and if any of this interests you, you should read it. My researches also revealed that he had since written another volume of autobiography which I'd also like to read. He and Carolyn are no longer together, apparently; he has since remarried to Ally Mills (the mom from TV's THE WONDER YEARS) and I'm sure they're a neat couple, too.

I don't know how much feedback Orson Bean gets on his books, but I want to re-read the one I remember so fondly and maybe read the more recent one too, and satisfy this unrest in my subconscious by dropping him a line of appreciation. Whenever I have a vivid dream like this, some little devil seems to tell me that these familiar strangers -- people I've known all my life in a sense, but who are in fact strangers -- need to hear from me on some level, and it's always an emotional battle of sorts to deny the force of the dream and come to the more sensible conclusion that these people are probably getting along just fine without me.

I don't know why I decided to blog about this two-year-old dream today, except that maybe the seed was planted by the fact that Donna and I dined last night at a wonderful new Argentinian tapas restaurant called The Argentine Bean. And there was an even stranger coinky-dink that occurred as I was writing this, when the aforementioned Joe Dante e-mailed me with this little story about "The Wilhelm Scream," which he says shall be heard again (several times) in the December 2 installment of MASTERS OF HORROR, which he directed.

Now that I think about it, Kate Bush once wrote a wonderful song about Wilhelm Reich called "Cloudbusting" -- which I guess ties today's blog to yesterday's!