Free Read My Lips by Sally Kellerman Page B

first priority. Only if you worked and studied and got proficient at the craft would you havea long career. Not that you can’t get lucky and land a reality show these days, but chances are that won’t sustain you in the long run.
    Luana advised me to lie when I starting talking to agents, telling them that I had done summer stock. So I went to the Paul Kohner Agency for a meeting and coolly mentioned that I had done “summer stock.” Naturally, the agent I was meeting with asked me which summer stock I had done. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought about what summer stock I was going to be lying about. Luckily for me, he got an important phone call and ended the meeting abruptly. Needless to say, I didn’t sign with Paul Kohner.
    Enemy, which we performed at the Civic Playhouse on La Cienega, had won me my first real review: Although her fresh beauty was a delight to the eyes, her wooden portrayal left so much to be desired that she should get out of the business.
    Fantastic. This, of course, was the opposite of what I’d always thought: that I was talented but unattractive. Yet somehow this review—and not my imaginary summer stock experience—finally landed me an agent. Progress!
    That didn’t mean I got any better at auditions. In an effort to land a bit part on some television series looking for a “sexy” girl, I went to an audition on the Warner Brothers lot with a head full of teased hair and a bra stuffed full of toilet paper. Standing around, waiting for my turn to go in, I was tucking and poking at my tissue boobs. Yeah, baby, sexy!
    The director took one look at me and said, “Not only are you not sexy, but you’re like a cowering little mouse, and I can see your toilet paper.”
    Totally deflated, I left. On my way out I ran into writer and producer Jerry Davis, who worked on shows like Bewitched and The Odd Couple.
    “What’s a pretty girl like you doing wandering around, lost?” he asked.
    I told him my sad story, and he walked me into Bill Orr’s office. Bill was head of Warner’s television department and married to Joy Page, studio head Jack Warner’s stepdaughter. All of a suddenI was cast in an episode of Surfside 6 , starring Troy Donahue. Jerry, Bill, and I became fast friends. Then one day Bill called me at home with a proposition.
    “There’s a man I know,” he began, “who would like to get you an apartment . . .” That sounded great.
    “He would make sure you always worked,” Bill went on. That’s when what he meant dawned on me.
    “How could you think I was that kind of girl?!” I sobbed.
    Bill felt terrible. “Alright, alright. It’s okay. I’m sorry, don’t worry.”
    Now, if somebody called with the same offer today. . . . Just kidding.

    I MAY STILL HAVE BEEN NAIVE, YES, BUT AT LEAST I ’D LOST MY virginity. It was the 1960s: free love and no AIDS. Someone once told me, “If you’re still a virgin by the time you’re twenty-two, you’ll be frigid.” So I went right out at twenty-one-and-a-half to find someone who liked me better than I liked him and who wouldn’t tell anyone.
    I don’t remember even the name of the man who took my “snowflake,” as Morgan would say. He was very nice, but I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about the whole episode. I still feel bad that I never returned any of his calls. The experience was short lived and didn’t exactly produce fireworks. Even so, after I lost my snowflake, my buddy Bob Sampson and I made love once a year, whether we needed it or not. Good old Bob.
    Then, along came Bill Duffy.
    “If there’s anybody in the world I want to look like, it’s Bill Duffy,” Jack used to say about his friend Bill, also an actor. Bill was handsome, that’s for sure. I had been spending a lot of time with Jack and Bill and the wonderful actor Dick Bradford, who was in movies like The Legend of Billy Jean and More American Graffiti. He was also a painter. The three of them shared a house. Some nights Bill’s cousin Kenny