Since it was a bright Alabama summer day and the sequence took place at night, large sheets of duvetyn (dense, feltlike black fabric) had been placed over the windows and doors, turning the shoe box of a house into a cave filled with movie lights—airless and stifling. The scene was shot simply, with the cinematographer, John Alonzo, following me handheld as I moved from room to room, collecting Norma’s sleeping children, then into the front room to flatly explain their existence. And as I held my body in Norma’s world, sweat rolling down my neck and between my breasts, I had the flicker of a thought: Burt was going to be arriving on set soon, maybe he was already waiting for me in my motor home. I could feel a tug on my mind, some part of me preparing to leave myself, leave what I wanted behind, to give over, to serve someone else’s needs. This sliver of a moment is so clear in my mind. I felt Norma’s strength, just as she was beginning to feel it herself. It was as if Norma gathered that fragile piece of me in her arms with the rest of her children, set me on the sofa, and said to me, I want you to hear it from me. This is who I am, without sentiment, apology, or appeasement.
While they were setting up the last shot, Marty and I stepped outside to get some air and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the light I saw Burt, laughing and talking with the crew. I walked toward him, looking like a greasy-faced, sweaty mess, and hugged him, my arms wrapped around his neck. Even I could smell the unmistakable field-hand odor radiating from my body. But when my condition registered on his face, his disapproval an instant smack, I immediately turned around and walked back into the airless cocoon, keeping Norma away from Burt’s critical eye, leaving Marty to welcome him, shaking his hand. I was sitting on the floor in the corner, hovering over the performance, when Marty returned to the set, and after looking through the lens to check the shot, he sat on an apple box next to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. I looked at him from the corner of my eye without turning my head, and I could feel words through his steady tender grip. Words he didn’t need to say.
As with Sybil, I never stood outside of Norma Rae to see how much of her story was, in reality, mine. On first read she’d seemed as foreign as if she’d stepped from a flying saucer, but when Norma is pushed against the wall, when everything in her is on the line, she springs onto a worn worktable with a sign over her head—the coffee table of my past. Her struggle to stand up, her fight for respect, was the same as mine, for my work and myself. Through each day of working side by side with Marty, as Norma’s sense of dignity gradually emerged, I stood taller. As she unleashed her rage, I felt freed. When she found her voice, I heard mine. By standing in Norma’s shoes, I felt my own feet. If I could play her, I could be me.
20
The End of the Beginning
IN A SMALL screening room at Fox studios, I sat next to Baa, an audience of two as we watched Norma Rae for the first time together. As with Gidget fifteen years earlier, I’d never visualized the film becoming a product to be put in the marketplace. It was all so secondary to the experience of doing the work, secondary to having Marty in my life. Even after the film had wrapped, that moment when everyone vows eternal friendship only to vanish from sight, Marty had never let me go. Month’s later he was still reaching out, asking me to join him for lunch at the studio where his office was located, or Adele would invite me to their home for an early dinner, telling me to arrive at 5:30, and if I didn’t show up until 5:45, Marty, no doubt, would have started eating without me.
And as my mother and I sat in this tiny room with a huge screen, saying nothing when the film ended and the lights came up, I didn’t know what to think. I waited for Baa to respond, for her unbridled enthusiasm, her avalanche of joyous support allowing me to be joyous too. But she looked as numb as I felt and as we wandered out of the building, she sounded only lukewarm, expressing concern about Marty’s simplistic, documentary-style approach, saying, “I don’t think he helped you very much. He doesn’t even use any music.”
I worried that she thought it had nothing glamorous to offer, probably because I worried I had nothing glamorous to offer. I’m sure she was frightened for me; I was totally on the line. But even now I can hear the swipe she was taking at Marty, knocking him for his direction, and I distinctly remember pulling away from her, from the importance I’d always given to what she thought. I can see in my mind the two of us driving home that day, so different from the drive home after my first performance at school. We had both traveled an unimaginable distance since then. This time it was my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the road, away from hers as she watched my face. Feeling damned with faint praise I said, “It’s scary. It’s just me.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
What flashed through my head was the fear that I wasn’t enough to hold an audience for two hours. After a deep breath I exhaled. “Yikes. Bring on the dancing girls.”
Norma Rae was the first film in which I was the star, and from the moment I was given the role my mother’s reaction had seemed subdued. Did I feel that way then or is it just as I’m thinking of it now? She had so diligently stood by me, never complaining that she needed a life of her own, and when I’d dream of running off to live in New York or the mountains of Colorado or an apartment in Paris, she’d clasp her hands together with one smack, then hold them under her chin as if she were saying her prayers, “Oh… take me with you.” And all this time I’d thought that I had been taking her with me, thought that what was happening to me was happening to her as well. But it was not happening to her. It was happening to me… alone. I had grown out of her sphere of influence because it had happened to me, every day of my career had happened to me. Not her. I had left her behind and it jarred us both.
Marty called a few days later to tell me that Norma had been accepted into the Cannes Film Festival, which would be held, of course, in France. Up to that point, the only people who had seen the film were the production team and a cluster of 20th Century Fox executives, which included Alan Ladd Jr. (Laddy), head of the studio. But now the festival’s selection committee had clearly been added to that list. Plans were immediately put into motion; Laddy and his wife, along with several other executives, would be attending the festival. Marty and Adele were going, as were Hank and Irving (the Ravetches) and Beau Bridges (who is wonderful in the movie). They all agreed to fly to Paris, then down to the C?te d’Azur to stay in the historic Carlton Hotel for ten days. And they needed me.
Taking pictures of the paparazzi at Cannes. Beau and Marty thought I was nuts.
The change in me over the last months, since Norma wrapped, had been gradual but unmistakable. And even though I couldn’t completely sever the pull that Burt had on me, deeper, truer pieces of me had started to flare out, moments that were always met with Burt’s shocked disapproval. Who is this selfish, angry person? Where’s that sweet girl you used to be? That sweet girl I used to be had never existed, not singularly. And never would again. The dynamic between us had changed, because I had changed. He couldn’t hold on to me and I wouldn’t stand still. As I began pulling away, he tightened his grip, sometimes literally.
When I called to let him know I was planning to attend the festival, he asked in a huff what the hell I intended to do there. It was a waste of my time. But it was the South of France, I told him, and I’d never been there, hadn’t traveled to Europe since my one disastrous trip after Gidget with the girl who’d been my stand-in. His tone then changed to one of deep disappointment, explaining that I’d be seeing places he wanted to show me, that I was spoiling it for him. When I couldn’t be either bullied or seduced out of my decision, he lashed out: “You don’t expect to win anything, do you?” And I truly didn’t. Never even considered it. But I was going. And when I wouldn’t change my mind, he slammed the phone down, cutting off any more conversation—if that’s what it had been. For the eleven-hour 747 flight to Paris, I sat with Hank Ravetch, feeling wondrously free.