Free Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life by Cindy Williams

and asked them both what kind of ice cream they wanted. I said I’d get it for them. Each wanted strawberry. With them waiting outside, I marched back in and ordered the biggest strawberry ice-cream cones I could buy. I glanced at them through the window, waiting. They were dirty and in rags. The same man that shouted at them told me to stay away from them.
    Once outside, I gave them their cones and told them to follow me. At the other end of my street was a Woolworths. My plan was to take them in and buy them each a new dress or whatever I could find when they were finished with their cones. As we walked I could see their mother with her begging baby on the other side of the street. I wondered if she worried about her two young daughters being out here. But then it was probably she who sent them to me with no thought of keeping them close to her. We got to Woolworths. We stood in the doorway. I didn’t want to enter before we had permission. I didn’t want a repeat of the ice cream parlor incident. I asked a clerk if they had children’s clothing. Somehow I managed to get across to the clerks that I wanted to bring in the children and buy clothes for them.
    The clerk said, “ Si .”
    I guess the idea of a sale overrode whatever gypsy prejudice she had. We were welcomed in. The children and I made our way to the clothing racks and they were ecstatic about selecting new clothes. I gathered clothing that I thought would be appropriate for them and with our arms loaded down with the new duds we went into the dressing rooms. First, I helped the little one try on the sweetest sundress. She was thrilled! It was perfect. Next I started helping the older child out of her tattered dress. She had chosen a dress and a pair of pants. She signaled to me that she could do it herself. I stayed in the room with them. She gave me an embarrassed look as she took her skirt off. It was then that I realized that this sweet little girl was a little boy! I made no notice of it and bought him the pants and the dress; or should I say the costume that I realized his mother dressed him in to garner more pity and more money. All that mattered in the end was that they had a bit of happiness. From that day on I was known on my street as “ La Loca Americana .”
    The night before my big scene with Alec McCowen on the Orient Express the click, click, clicking continued. My girlfriend upstairs was muy, muy busy! Finally when she took her rest, I couldn’t. Between her and the anticipation of the scene in the morning, I barely had a wink of sleep. The next day I tried to avoid Mr. Cukor. I was afraid he was going to give me another “lesson in the sun.” He was sitting in his director’s chair in the common area outside the dressing room trailers where he always sat with a script rolled up in his hand and an empty chair positioned directly across from him. I slithered along a building flattening myself as much as possible, trying to disappear.
    The production assistant came walking straight to me and yelled, “Found her!”
    I was escorted to my seat in the “sun.” For an hour we went over and over the script with Mr. Cukor telling me how Tooley might be feeling. There were degrees of emotion in the scene that he intended to wrench out of me.
    Finally he asked me, “Do you know your lines?”
    “Yes!”
    “Do you know your lines?”
    “Yes, sir!”
    “Good! Now forget them!”
    Mr. Cukor dismissed me. I walked to my trailer and climbed onto my bed. I was so anxious I fell asleep with my eyes open. They came to get me to shoot the scene. “Difficult” does not even begin to describe the experience. The more Mr. Cukor drove my emotions, the less I could give. During takes I could see him acting the scene out. I would cry between takes. The makeup artist would wipe the tears away and we’d go again. Once, Douglas Slocombe, the cinematographer, said he couldn’t shoot because I had tears rolling down my face. Alec was so kind to me,