Casting Couch
Back in the Sixties, when I was starting out as an actor, I’d certainly heard of this particular piece of compromising furniture. But as I made the rounds of auditions, I had never encountered it, even metaphorically. The producers and directors I met were thoroughly businesslike: a glance at my photo and résumé, a few terse questions, and then I trotted out my two short, contrasting audition pieces, one light, the other serious. It was a good sign if I was permitted to get all the way through both without being interrupted by “Thank you!” in a tone that meant “You’re wasting my time.” It was an even better sign if I was given a call-back to read from the script of the play being cast. No insinuating remarks or veiled suggestions; they either liked me for the part or they didn’t.
So I was beginning to think that the casting couch was a relic of a cruder era, when unscrupulous producers expected aspiring actresses to pay for roles with sex. I wasn’t completely wet behind the ears: even from my limited experience I knew that homosexual directors and producers also abounded in the theater. But many actors were gay, too, and I wasn’t. During my first summer stock job, when I was seventeen, the star of the play hit on me repeatedly, to no avail, until he finally pronounced me “hopelessly hetero.” So although the casting couch ploy also figured when a man was being considered for a role, I never imagined it would be used on me. I was some years older than I’d been during that first job, and I wasn’t just straight, I was married. The term “gaydar” had yet to be coined, but I did know that gay men were often right when they saw through the closet doors of some straight men, even the ones with wives, who were a tad ambivalent about their sexuality. But I wasn’t.
Well, all right, human sexuality is a moveable feast. We’re all switch-hitters, to one extent or another, changing our stances and swinging at whatever pitches we think we might connect with, depending on the circumstances. For those who disdain baseball metaphors, I’ll put it in country terms: men and women alike, we’re like the horny dog who’d fuck a woodpile on the chance there was a woodchuck under it.
But six years, beginning when I was eleven and ending when I was seventeen, at two all-male private schools, at a time when adolescent hormones are raging, had fully persuaded me that boys didn’t ring my chimes. That there were predatory pedophiles at both schools, one of whom tried to blackmail me into going along with his advances in return for a better math grade (I turned him down, and he flunked me) firmly underlined my sexual preference. I feared the predators, certainly, but there were other gay teachers — “confirmed bachelors,” in the euphemism of the day — who weren’t attracted to children and didn’t abuse their power, and they taught me the best of what I learned in school. One of them, in particular, a history instructor, instilled in me a mistrust of conventional wisdom (and even of recorded history itself, since it’s always written by the victors), and a habit of consulting alternate sources whenever one opinion in a controversy becomes canonical. That skepticism has informed my attitude toward loudly-proclaimed gender preference ever since. Any man who says he hates gays doth protest too much, methinks.
In the winter of 1969, my agent got me an audition for a play that was Broadway-bound. I can’t remember its title, but it was an interesting piece of work. Bear in mind that the Cold War was still hot, and with the exception of occasional visits from the Bolshoi Ballet and other pillars of Russian culture that had survived the Bolshevik Revolution, plays from the Soviet Union hardly ever traveled to the United States, although some movies did.
And this play was not only a Soviet product, it even had a patriotic veneer, in good Socialist Realist style. It was a three-hander, two young men and a young woman, all of whom were working in various ways for the state, on far-flung projects designed to pull the USSR out of the devastation wrought by the Great Patriotic War. They had been friends at Moscow University, where both men had been in love with the woman. But the men had kept their feelings a secret. I don’t remember why; I never got a chance to read the full script, and the details of the synopsis I was given have trickled through my leaky memory along with the play’s title. In any case, they parted company after graduating, and although they stayed in touch by mail, their work kept them apart.
One of the men never revealed his love, but the other did, and unbeknownst to his friend, the woman accepted his proposal of marriage. She managed to arrange a work transfer so the two of them could settle down together. But before she had a chance to move, the second man, who had bent heaven and earth to get a short leave of absence, arrived at her door without informing her in advance. For, like the first man, he had decided, finally, to declare his love, not knowing that he came too late.
My reconstruction of the details of the scene is sketchy, but I do know it takes place in the depths of a Russian winter, and the second man, having walked from the train station, enters the woman’s warm apartment wearing boots, heavy gloves, a scarf, a fur hat with earmuffs, and several layers of clothing beneath his overcoat. She’s surprised and dismayed to see him (I think she had hoped to break the news to him in a letter), but of course she invites him in and prepares tea, as he takes off his winter gear, item by item, until he’s down to his shirt, trousers and socks. He’s too chilled to speak his mind right away, and in any case, the woman has already guessed why he has come. They make uneasy small talk while the man sips his tea and warms up a little, and then she forestalls his declaration of love by telling him, as kindly as she can, the bad news. I dimly recall that she even offers to put him up for the night on her couch, to save him from the cold, dark walk back to the station, and a long wait for the next train.
But the man turns her down. With methodical deliberation he begins to put all the layers back on, and as he does, he delivers a speech that is directed less to her than to himself. As I recall it, he speaks of the way he has lived his whole life a step behind everyone else, because he has never felt entirely sure of himself, or even of the ultimate value of his work (he’s an engineer of some kind), or of the state for which he does it. We’ve broken with Socialist Realism here: heroic workers building the People’s Paradise never express doubt of any kind, especially when it comes to the system. He barely mentions the woman or his friend, and when he’s completely dressed, he pauses for a moment gazing at her, nods, and leaves. The play doesn’t end there, but I can’t remember its final scene.
Perhaps it is this speech, with its hint of ambivalence about communism (and it’s barely a whisper, not enough to have attracted the attention of the Politburo censors), that persuaded the U.S. State Department to encourage a production of the play on Broadway. But I could be giving the speech and its message more political weight than it had. The play had already enjoyed a successful run on the West End in London, and the reviews hadn’t mentioned politics at all, praising it simply as a bleak but touching love triangle Chekhov might have written.
In any case, there was a certain advance buzz about it, and the producer had announced in the theatrical trade papers that rather than hiring established young stars for the three roles, he intended to cast unknowns. My agent was delighted, because I fitted the role, and landing a lead in a Broadway show right off the bat would benefit both of us. I was equally elated, and nerves gave just the right amount of urgency to my two audition pieces in front of the producer and director. I not only got a call-back, they gave me a synopsis of the script, and the full scene between the young man and the woman. I had three days to study the key speech, and I memorized it.
The auditions took place in the producer’s office, not on a stage, and along one wall there was a worn leather couch where nobody sat, because it was cluttered with loose files, scripts and other paperwork. I felt the gods were in my favor, for it was a cold winter day in New York, which meant I wouldn’t have to mime putting on my layers of clothes as I spoke. Dealing with a real overcoat, a scarf, a hat, boots, and two sweaters, the way I had practiced at home, gave a grave, deliberate rhythm and punctuation to the speech, almost ritualizing it.
I quickly took off my outdoor gear and then, imagining the girl was sitting on the couch, I addressed myself indirectly to her as I carefully put everything back on. After I finished the speech, the director and producer looked pleased, and when they thanked me, they sounded as if they meant it.
Several days went by, and I got another call. I returned to the producer’s office, but this time only the director was there. He gave me an affable smile and said that he’d been impressed by my previous audition. But he wanted to make sure I could “take direction.” So he said that this time, he wanted me to imagine that the girl had not only accepted my love declaration but was lying on the couch naked, waiting for me to join her. He told me to take my clothes off as I spoke the speech.
It didn’t make much sense, since the speech was all about failure and resignation, but I was flattered by the director’s praise and decided to regard the counterintuitive demand as an acting exercise designed to encourage spontaneity, a way of injecting sly, even playful, irony into the sad words. I complied but maintained the same gravity and deliberation I had used before. By the time I was finished, I was down to my underpants. The director nodded and said he would be in touch.
I never heard from him again. Instead, I learned from the trade papers that the play would be opening in New York with the original British cast, something the director certainly knew before my final call-back. At the time, the terms of Actors Equity’s agreement with producers of plays imported from England specified that they be cast with American actors, unless the producers could demonstrate convincingly that no suitable Yanks had been found for the roles. In this case, since the play wasn’t British, but Russian, the producer was on slightly shaky ground, but by going through with his final auditions, he could be said to have exercised due diligence in observing the terms of the union’s arrangement with the League of Broadway Producers.
But the producer wasn’t even present that day. I did my strip-tease only for the director. I’m certain he was gay and was just amusing himself in a voyeuristic way (he did not make a physical pass at me). It was an abuse of power, certainly, but nothing out of the ordinary in the theater. I felt humiliated and angry for a while, but another big audition came up, and I landed an excellent job –without any sexual strings attached – working at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut.
I shared a dressing room with another straight actor, and one day we were swapping theatrical war stories, as actors always do. I mentioned my experience with the Russian play (it opened on schedule with the British cast but did not run for long). The other guy laughed. “I read for that thing, too,” he said. “Same kinky twist at my final call-back. How far down did you strip?”
“To my shorts.”
“You must have done the speech faster. I got buck naked for the son of a bitch,” he said.
********
I wrote this piece for a magazine called Black Lamb, long before the current uprising against sexually predatory men in the entertainment business. Many well-known actresses and actors, some of them as old as I am, have finally broken their long-held silences about the casting couch and spoken about what they had been forced to do in return for a shot at stardom. As a result, television and movie titans have toppled, and some once-beloved performers have been disgraced. There are so many accusations and lawsuits flying around Hollywood that one of America’s few remaining lucrative export businesses might fail altogether, because its movers and shakers fear being targeted, and are quitting the business to avoid being pilloried by the news media.
But good riddance to them. They’re relics of the predatory era in show business. After Marilyn Monroe played the lead in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and become a star, she is alleged to have remarked that she’d never be forced to give anyone a blow-job again. But for her, the damage was already done. Despite her well-meaning husband Arthur Miller’s efforts to ease her out of her moments of black depression, by arranging regular sessions with a psychiatrist, she’d become addicted to alcohol and tranquillizers, and her self-medicating killed her.
It’s pretty to think that a new day in the entertainment industry, in show business, in corporate business generally, and in politics, will dawn as emancipated women and sensitized men rise to positions of power. But the operative word is power. The 19th century British politician Lord Acton remarked, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Abuse of power will never go away until what E. E. Cummings called “this busy monster manunkind” stops seeking it. And that will happen when pigs fly.