Nobody Really Knows Me
T can still see myself, age three, walking into the big auditorium
in my home town of Richmond, Va., for my first dancing lesson.
There were three boys and 25 girls. And, of course, the mothers
gleefully watching their offspring. I loved it!
It has been said that I went into show business because I've al
ways been an extrovert or because my mother, who used to act in little
theaters in Toronto, Canada, and later taught dramatics at Mary
land College, wanted to see her own ambitions realized through me.
The truth is that I got into show business because 1 was born
with weak ankles and couldn't walk straight! When I was three,
Mother enrolled me for dancing lessons, strictly for orthopedic
reasons. Rather than make it obvious and make me apprehensive
about taking corrective measures, she convinced me what fun it
would be .
She was right! I loved appearing before an audience. But now
that I look back and I didn't feel this at the time I think 1 did
so well because I must have been a lonely child. The audience be
came my friend.
A year later I gave my first public performance at the Mosque
Theater and learned a very important lesson. I accidentally tripped
on the curtain and everybody laughed so hard that I kept tripping
through the rest of the show. I should have gotten wise and left
ballet for acting right then !
Instead, 1 went right on figuratively knocking myself flat to be
come a dancer, having a lot of laughs and cries in doing so but never
quite making people know me the real Shirley MacLaine, not the
one in gossip columns or fan magazines.
Well, maybe I am hard to understand at first. 1 have a wonderful
marriage with a man whose business keeps him thousands of miles
away most of the time; my career is at a high point, yet I'm subject
to moodiness and depression. I'm supposed to be a friend of the
most exciting people in Hollywood, yet I'm still lonely.
Despite all this, I don't think I'm any more complicated than
anybody else, and maybe my own story unadorned by malicious
gossip or laudatory press-agentry will prove it.
That early taste of audience approval, for example, led me to
a lonely and different life right from the start. I tried to make
friends, but my schedule was so crowded there just wasn't time.
When I was in school I got up at six, took the bus at seven, started
classes at eight. 1 finished school at noon and went straight to
Except ME By
cheerleader practice, or one of the many other activities 1 volun
teered for. Those lasted until 4 ; next I would rush to my dance
lessons; home for dinner at 7:30; then rehearsals until midnight.
It's easy to see why today's hectic schedule doesn't bother me.
In spite of the fun I got out of dancing, it wasn't everything
to me. If I hadn't broken into show business, I might have become
a physicist. I majored in physics in high school and would have
taken it in college if I had continued my formal education.
I always had a great desire to learn undoubtedly my father's
influence but the desire to entertain was greater. My father was
in education before he became a band leader, and then turned to
the real-estate business. That part of his life was not lost on me,
either. Dad, who is still in real estate in Virginia, claims I could
have done as well in his field as in mine, maybe because of what
happened when I was 12 or so.
Dad was "SITTING ON A house" one weekend which means he
was waiting in a car and keeping an eye open for prospective
buyers for a certain home. I told him cockily that if he could sell
a house, so could I ! Dad wanted to step out for some coll'ee any
way, so good-naturedly he said, "I'll let you watch the house for
me, and if you show it to a buyer I'll give you 10 percent of my
commission." He left both me and his half-smoked cigar in the
car and walked off.
1 had never smoked before but then I had never sold a house,
either. So I put the cigar in my mouth and had just lighted it when
a family Walked into the house. I rushed in after them. Ry the ,
time I caught up with them, I was so green and coughing so hard
that they must have taken me for a lung patient. I staggered ahead
of them and, between coughs, described the home in glowing terms.
Two days later they bought the house, but I've yet to get my com
mission from my father!
He more than made up for it, however, when he helped me get
started in New York. I used a summer vacation to try out for the
chorus in the revived "Oklahoma!" and Dad paid all the expenses
until I got the job.
The years in New York were neither as easy and fun-filled nor
as miserably difficult as they have sometimes been described. I
moved into an apartment hotel for girls only. No male visitors
were allowed above the lobby, and the doors were locked at 1 1 :!(). It
(Coiumned on payu II J
SHIRLEY MacLAINE
She's the most talked about and least understood star
in Hollywood -possibly because she has never
before revealed so much about herself and her marriage
Family Wevkly, January 29, tOOl
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