THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 22, 1996 TAG: 9604200056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines
SHIRLEY MACLAINE'S latest incarnation is Mrs. Winterbourne.
That's Mrs. Grace Winterbourne of the Marblehead, Mass., Winterbournes - a family so rich they don't have to bother counting their money.
In the new romantic comedy ``Mrs. Winterbourne,'' MacLaine plays another in a series of impressive character roles - this time as a wealthy woman who is so lonely that she willingly accepts an imposter into her family.
Coming on top of ``Guarding Tess,'' ``Steel Magnolias'' and the Oscar-winning ``Terms of Endearment,'' it just about cements MacLaine as the leading character actress of her age. At 61, after five Oscar nominations, some 40 films, a series of best-selling books and one-woman shows, MacLaine is bigger than ever.
It's a far cry from that August 1974 night when 1,500 angry ticketholders arrived at Chrysler Hall and found no Shirley - just a dark hall and a posted notice proclaiming ``Canceled'' on the door.
MacLaine, making a much-publicized professional debut in her home state, had disappeared - abruptly ending the one-week booking for her one-woman show ``If You Could See Me Now'' (which no one, at that point, could).
The opening had been plagued by massive sound problems. At one time, she urged the audience to ``give it up and come back tomorrow night.'' They cheered and encouraged her to keep trying.
Chrysler Hall stagehands reported that the furious leading lady's language was enough to melt the microphones, and there were also stories of a microphone being thrown across the stage.
The next day, MacLaine quietly boarded a flight to Newark, just one hour and 10 minutes before her scheduled second performance.
She claimed the hall's sound system was at fault; the hall claimed that the faulty equipment was imported by Mac-Laine's own crew.
In any case, the national headlines accompanying what remains Norfolk's most notorious show business walkout left Chrysler Hall with a black eye.
Bookers sued her for $125,000 for breach of contract (although they settled out of court for $25,000) and brought in Pearl Bailey to complete the engagement.
It was not a high point for Shirley MacLaine's local popularity.
``I'll never, ever again, go to see anything with her in it,'' one caller to this desk proclaimed. ``She has insulted Norfolk.''
``Yes, I walked,'' she said, sheepishly, in an interview a few years later, ``but it was the more professional thing to do, actually. Today, I find myself not getting as temperamentally upset about things that don't go professionally well. Since I've been in this business since I was 2 years old, I really like things to go well. Now, I'm seeing that there are lots of other learning processes going on simultaneously which probably have as high a priority as the show.''
It was clear that all was forgiven when she chose Virginia Beach, a mere 13 years later, as the site of her first seminar on ``Connecting with the Higher Self.'' A whopping $300 per person was charged for the two-day seminar - and it sold out.
MacLaine said, at the time, that ``I feel as if I have returned home. As a child, my family came to Virginia Beach during many summers. This is a high-energy place. There are a lot of thinking people here - from the military to Pat Robertson to Edgar Cayce.''
In her actual local debut, many years before, she lost her bra.
She was age 12.
``My father came to Virginia Beach on school business. He was the superintendent of schools of Rappahannock County. I appeared in a little dance recital locally, wearing a green, cloverleaf costume - and tap dancing. When I came out, I tripped over the curtain. Everyone laughed. It felt so good that I damn well wanted to go back and trip again. But I went on with the dance and in the middle of my number, the top fell off.
``It traumatized me for life,'' she said.
She was born in Waverly, Va., 50 miles west of Norfolk. In addition to being a school superintendent, her father, Ira Beaty, was a drummer and classical musician. Her mother, the former Kathlyn MacLean, was a philosophy teacher and former actress who wrote poetry, painted and eventually taught drama. Shirley began life on a peanut farm at Waverly but the family moved to Richmond when she was 2. A year later, brother Warren was born.
It remains one of the mysteries of show business how, from this modest, lower middleclass Virginia family, two such stars evolved with such notably separate careers.
``Warren would say it was in the genes,'' MacLaine said a week ago during an interview in Los Angeles, ``but I think it was something that was our destiny. Mother and Dad were both frustrated in their show business efforts but it was something they desperately wanted. We picked up their dreams and were destined to fulfill them for them.''
When she was 12, the family moved to Arlington.
``I took the bus into the city every day to take dance classes with Mary Day,'' MacLaine recalled. ``As a child, I waddled like a duckling. Dance classes, initially, were just to teach me to walk.''
At 17, she went to New York in hopes of becoming a ballerina but her pixie face, red hair, freckles and gangly arms made her more apt for musical comedy. She says she lived on catsup and water until she got a job in the chorus of ``Oklahoma.''
Her ``discovery,'' though, reads like something out of a Hollywood script. New star Carol Haney injured her ankle and couldn't go on in ``The Pajama Game.'' Shirley, who took the name ``Maclaine'' at random, went on as Haney's understudy. Movie producer Hal Wallis was in the audience and went backstage after the performance to give her a movie contract.
Hitchcock tested her and said ``you've got the guts of a bank robber,'' giving her star billing in her very first film, ``The Trouble With Harry'' (1955)
``Guts?'' she said. ``I didn't have sense enough to be scared about anything.''
Her co-workers on ``Mrs. Winterbourne'' sing her praises.
Richard Benjamin, the director, said, ``Shirley is a movie star. She's a trouper, a dancer. She comes to work. She challenges me by asking questions about everything. She questions every move her character makes. I cast Ricki Lake but I told her, `to hold your own with Shirley, you've got to come up to her standards.' It was a challenge.''
Miguel Sandoval, who plays her chauffeur in the movie, said, ``Shirley is so much fun on the set. She comes early in the morning in an old sweater and with the hair awry. She hangs out with the crew for a while - having coffee, before going into makeup and coming out looking like Mrs. Winterbourne.''
Brandon Fraser, who plays her son, said ``Shirley has a wealth of experience that comes from an understanding of humanity - not just from acting.''
Ricki Lake, who has the biggest risk of all with this film, said, ``Shirley lets you know she's been around, and why not? Talk about stress. I could not get it out of my mind that I was playing scenes with this woman. She's tough because she's good.''
Dressed in a proper outfit, with hat and gloves, Shirley MacLaine today laughs at the ``legend'' talk. ``I'm just still around. That's all,'' she said. ``I'm not a movie star. I don't even have live-in help.''
In spite of a reputation for colorful language and as the lone female of the 1960s Rat Pack (including Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin), she regards herself as ``still a middle-class Virginia girl. I haven't led a very wild life. Not really. I never took drugs. I had cocaine once in my life. I put it on cereal. I thought it was Sweet 'n Low. You can't be wild and work in this business. You're on the set at 5 a. m. Those who are wild are not working. Take my word for it.''
As for Frank and Dean and the Rat Pack, she said, ``They were like primitive children. I was like their mascot. It's funny, but they never related to me in any kind of sexual way. They never made a pass. In fact, if anyone else made a pass, they saw that they never got past first base.''
She describes her marriage to industrialist Steve Parker as ``serial monogamy.'' They were married in 1954 and weren't divorced until almost 30 years later, yet they seldom lived together. He lived in Japan where he managed and invested in Asian show business activities. Their daughter, Stephanie Sachiko, was raised mostly by him in Japan.
She doesn't think the marriage was so strange. ``When I was with my husband, I was really WITH him,'' she has said.
Her pet peeve at the moment is David Letterman, who called her ``nuts'' when co-star Ricki Lake appeared on his talk show recently.
``I was right to call him an a--hole on the air a few years ago. I certainly have no regrets. All I could think of when he called me `nuts' was `Where is my lawyer right now?' I'm concerned about trying to find some meaning in life, and he thinks that's nuts? The man hasn't asked an interesting question in years. He should learn how to do an interview.''
On the much-publicized differences between she and her famous brother Warren (who added a ``t'' to the family name), she said ``We get along much better than you think. It's just that, through the years, we were both so busy that we seldom saw each other. Yes, we're very different. Warren likes to prove everything scientifically. He's very logical. I'm very intuitive.
``Warren is so left-brained and I'm right-brained. You have to prove everything to him. I'm like our father and he is like our mother.''
MacLaine says she visits the Beatty children often. In spite of the fact that her brother was once the most noted womanizer in Hollywood, she said, ``I always knew he'd be a very good father. There was no question in my mind.''
MacLaine says she gets along well with her sister-in-law, actress Annette Bening.
``Just think of the alternative. He might have married Madonna,'' she reasons.
She says rumors that her brother offered her the role of Bonnie in ``Bonnie and Clyde'' are not exactly true. ``I hesitated and, to Warren, hesitating means turning it down.''
Her brother, who won an Oscar for directing ``Reds,'' is a painstaking perfectionist. ``I could never work with him,'' MacLaine said. ``I could never do that many takes.''
MacLaine is currently working on a new book, reading scripts for movies and even thinking about a Broadway show. ``There's a problem with the Broadway thing, though,'' she said. ``I would do the show only for seven months. Then, they have to replace me. Who, in the business, still wants to sweat that much - to sing, dance and act?''
She still plans to take her one-woman show on the road.
``I want to see if I can still get my left leg up,'' she said. ``I know the right one isn't working too well. But it's outright fear that gets me out there on the stage. I'm always afraid the magic won't be there. People become entertainers because they want to be loved. That's what it's all about.
``Maybe I didn't get enough love somewhere else in my life, and that's why I want to get out there. I have learned that people come because they want to be there. It's that simple. They're on my side, if I'll just get out there. Every time I go out there, I think `Maybe I won't get love tonight - but, then again . . . maybe I will.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Columbia Tristar Photos
Shirley MacLaine
FILE PHOTO
Shirley MacLaine as a dancehall hostess in ``Sweet Charity'' in
1969.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY by CNB