Don't Face Facts: Recycling Reinvention

When I moved to LA in the 1990's, it seemed like everyone I knew suggested I re-invent myself. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they meant. Was I supposed to pretend that everything up to that point hadn't happened? Keep the facts but give them a new interpretation? Were they telling me to lose weight? Or just dye my hair (again), change my name, and hope for the best?

Ruth Gordon is my go-to guru. So I decided to employ Ruth's version of re-invention--"Ignore the Facts". In an address to a Quincy, Massachusetts high school graduating class she once said (this is a paraphrase),"When I was young, if I had accepted the facts-- that I was not pretty, too short, bowlegged, with not enough talent, money, or contacts to be an actress, I never would have won an Academy Award". Something like that. Fill in your own blanks.

I wrote the above paragraphs back in New York, when I was prepping a show I'd written called BITCH!, based on the autobiography of Lady May Lawford (Rat Packer Peter's bigger-than-life mother). I had been desperate to sit on the "other side of the table", as actors like to call it--the side where the power sits: producer, director, writer, casting person, et al.  I wanted for once to make the choices, not to be the expendable people-pleaser hoping to be chosen. The Actor. Sigh.

It didn't turn out that way. No offense to the brilliant Joe Kinosian, who played Buddy, Lady Lawford's as-told-to.  No offense to lovely Melinda Buckley, our director, or to anyone connected with the piece!! No offense to the six or so talented women who did early readings of that little bitch of a show, but--only one understood the character, and there was no way she'd actually do the play. So I ended up playing the role myself. An Actor. Sigh. The Little Red Hen again. My growing pains were excruciating.

I'm revisiting this idea of Reinvention now, because-- obviously I'm older, I'm unexpectedly married, I'm spending a lot of time in the Midwest again, and, well, Covid changed things.  Covid forced me to sit with change. (Literally.  My expanded backside is proof.) But Covid also provided time to finish writing projects, to take Zoom classes with some extraordinary teachers, to read more, to value my life and friendships a little more, and to question the so-called facts about myself.

I'm typing this from Evanston, Illinois, a town I lived in from the ages of 17-21, during college. Strange to say, over the years, I've changed more than Evanston has.  I haven't worked in the Chicago area since the 70's, so I can't quite call myself an actor here. I'm an actor when I'm in NY or LA, where people sometimes remember my work. What I've mostly done here is write. And I love writing. I get to write roles that I can't possibly play. I get to make choices.

What does all this have to do with Elsa Lanchester?

She was born a bastard (as she called herself), and raised by parents who disdained wealth. They were poor but "advanced" thinkers of their time.  Elsa had almost no formal education, was an Isadora Duncan dancer at age 11, taught her own dance classes by age 14, started a children's theatre when she was a teen, founded a nightclub that became the rage of intellectual London (while still a teen), was sculpted and painted and glorified in song and poetry and novels, was touted as the "female Charlie Chaplin" for her silent film roles, was a popular singer (though she couldn't really sing), became an actor (though she never really enjoying acting), then married her soulmate, who turned out to be gay, moved with him to Hollywood, appeared in quite a few films, changed from a sylph to a matronly character actress, won a Golden Globe, was nominated for an Oscar, amassed wealth, collected art, wrote books, rekindled her singing career in Hollywood, then toured as a singer (though she couldn't really, you know, sing).

Were any of these changes intentional? Was all of it chance? Did she know she was re-inventing herself? Did she ever imagine that her inky, iconic likeness would permanently adorn the bodies of thousands of Bride of Frankenstein fans?

Is re-invention just a waiting game? 

A dear friend of mine who has re-invented himself MANY times says he thinks it always  starts with a decision made out of desperation. I wonder. Can we even judge our own re-invention? Or is it up to others to say we're someone new?

And my hero, Ruth Gordon--the girl from Quincy, Mass, who never faced facts?--the good pal, by the way, of Elsa Lanchester?--she dropped her last name (Jones), got kicked out of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1914 or so but didn't tell her parents, stayed in New York, and got an acting job-- without any training. Then she married Gregory Kelly, a matinee idol who died much too young, had an affair with the notorious married producer Jed Harris, gave birth out of wedlock when it just wasn't DONE (she went to Paris for awhile), became an unlikely Broadway leading lady, met Garson Kanin, then a boy wonder 16 years her junior, married him, wrote brilliant plays and films, created memorable roles onstage and film, and became a symbol of eternal enthusiasm.

Is re-invention just a matter of luck, or a decision to get lucky? Must it be a conscious act? Could re-invention be the natural result of living through a personal crisis, a change of locale or an everyday epiphany? Is it really self-realization? And can anyone re-invent herself, anywhere, anytime?

I'm still counting on it.

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Ruth Gordon and Elsa Lanchester, Masters of ReInvention, with Charles Laughton, Elsa's husband.