Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. Throughout movie history, there have been
Speaker 1: many talented couples famous for acting together on screen Bogie
Speaker 1: and Bacall, Newman and Woodward, Burton and Taylor, but one
Speaker 1: couple occupies a singular place in the show business pantheon.
Speaker 1: Eli Wallack and Anne Jackson. The couple met during a
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six production of Tennessee Williams This Property Is Condemned,
Speaker 1: and went on to star together on and off Broadway.
Speaker 1: Eli Wallack's legendary movie career includes films like The Good,
Speaker 1: The Bad and the Ugly, The Misfits, and The Godfather
Speaker 1: Part Three. Anne Jackson can be found in movies like
Speaker 1: Lovers and Other Strangers and The Shining. They were also
Speaker 1: early members of the famed Actors Studio. As part of
Speaker 1: our ongoing series to commemorate the seventy fifth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the Actor's Studio, we are celebrating those responsible for its success,
Speaker 1: which includes Jackson and Wallack. My guests today are two
Speaker 1: of this illustrious acting couple's children, Roberta and Katherine Wallack.
Speaker 1: The Wallack sisters grew up surrounded by theatre royalty, Alpaccino, Hume,
Speaker 1: Cronen actors, studio director Lee Strasburg. Even their babysitter was famous.
Speaker 1: Her name is Marilyn Monroe. The siblings would go on
Speaker 1: to become actors in their own right, members of the studio,
Speaker 1: and eventually sit on its Board of Directors. Later in
Speaker 1: the episode, I'll speak to Drama Desk nominee Roberta. Wallack,
Speaker 1: But first, Katherine Wallack is known for her numerous theater
Speaker 1: credits and appearances in Scorsese films like Goodfellas, The King
Speaker 1: of Comedy, and Gangs of New York. But the creativity
Speaker 1: gene doesn't stop there. She's also a jewelry designer. Since
Speaker 1: Wallach was raised in such an abundantly artistic household, I
Speaker 1: wanted to know what life was like at home behind
Speaker 1: the scenes for her mother.
Speaker 2: It was tough for her because right off the bat
Speaker 2: he wanted to be the show stopper.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: She was offered a role as I forgot the wife's
Speaker 2: name in The Honeymooners, Audrey Meadows, that's right, you know
Speaker 2: that story, And she ended up giving it up so
Speaker 2: she could kind of be a mother and an actor
Speaker 2: in New York, so she kind of gave up this
Speaker 2: huge opportunity to be with Jackie Gleason and Hrywood. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the way that it worked is that we had one apartment,
Speaker 2: went to the same school, except for two years we.
Speaker 3: Lived in London.
Speaker 2: We had a nanny and that was the saving grace
Speaker 2: of both my parents and their occupation. Why London, because
Speaker 2: they did a Maurice ciscal play called Love there and
Speaker 2: we ended up getting put into taken out of ethical
Speaker 2: culture on Central Park West and we got put into
Speaker 2: this school that was the absolute polar opposite, with uniforms
Speaker 2: and curtsying and standing up to know your times tables
Speaker 2: and it was extremely cruel in London, yes, and closed
Speaker 2: for cruelty to children eventually. Oh yeah. So we lived
Speaker 2: in England for two years. But other than that same apartment,
Speaker 2: my entire life West Side eighty first and Riverside, same school.
Speaker 2: You know, very dad was like military in his behavior.
Speaker 1: But does she do less with her career because she's
Speaker 1: a mom?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so, No, really no, I mean
Speaker 2: she didn't go into film as much, but she worked
Speaker 2: just as hard at.
Speaker 4: Theater and they did a lot of theater together, right.
Speaker 2: That was kind of their you know, calling card was
Speaker 2: They used to joke about how they got paid to fight.
Speaker 3: Eight shows weak.
Speaker 4: No, she didn't, and she wrote a book.
Speaker 2: She was writing another book, as you know, later in life,
Speaker 2: which never got finished, sadly, which was about being a mother,
Speaker 2: an actress, and a wife actually, And I would love
Speaker 2: to read those notes there at the Harry Ransom Center
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: When he did, he travel a lot, He was gone
Speaker 1: a lot working, He was gone a lot, and you
Speaker 1: didn't go with him when.
Speaker 2: We could in the summers you could, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: During the school year, your mother wanted you to have
Speaker 1: a normal life, that's right. And he would leave and
Speaker 1: which she would work while.
Speaker 2: He was gone sometimes sometimes, but no, for the most part,
Speaker 2: she was hanging with us, or she would go and
Speaker 2: hang with him, and we would be home with the
Speaker 2: with Nelly, who's a gap toothed woman from North Carolina,
Speaker 2: and I thought she was my mother.
Speaker 1: I have this very romanticized view of your parents right
Speaker 1: where they're sitting there at the dinner table and you're there,
Speaker 1: the two girls are there, your brother and family, friends
Speaker 1: and associates, and your father's talking all about what it
Speaker 1: was like shooting with O'Toole and what it was, and
Speaker 1: your mother's talking about shooting with Like did they regale
Speaker 1: you with stories of show business or they didn't give
Speaker 1: a shit about that.
Speaker 2: Now when their friends were over, they did, they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but for.
Speaker 2: The most part, I mean it was kind of strict
Speaker 2: around the table in what way. Well, dad was kind
Speaker 2: of strict, you know till I was eighteen. I kind
Speaker 2: of put him in his place once, but you know,
Speaker 2: we had table manners and had to raise your hand.
Speaker 2: Can I be excused? I mean stuff that you do
Speaker 2: not see no nowadays, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 2: recently a friend from high school said, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 2: was afraid to go to your house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, because my dad was like a dinner
Speaker 1: at our house resembles a production of One Flew Over
Speaker 1: the Cuckoo's Nets. Yeah, yeah, my dinner at my house
Speaker 1: is very different.
Speaker 2: Well, we had also screaming and get up and slam
Speaker 2: a door, and we're just like, hey, you know, life
Speaker 2: is normal. I mean theatrics going on, my mother crying,
Speaker 2: no tears coming down, you know, and like door slam
Speaker 2: one time she slammed, he slammed himself in the bedroom
Speaker 2: and then it got locked and he couldn't get out,
Speaker 2: and it gave him a bull in there, and so she
Speaker 2: went and got the super and when they finally got about,
Speaker 2: he went to like a movie they wanted sea together
Speaker 2: and just slammed the door at the front door of
Speaker 2: the apartment like I'm out of here, you know, fuck you.
Speaker 2: But he had a really bad temperament.
Speaker 1: He did. Oh really he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He would also like show up at the door wearing
Speaker 2: a wig and an apron. I mean he was crazy,
Speaker 2: you know, he was great. He was the best, a
Speaker 2: man of my dream. Seriously, I loved my dad more
Speaker 2: than anything.
Speaker 1: Did he come from a family where show business was
Speaker 1: in his family?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, they came from Poland full on. They owned a
Speaker 2: candy store in Brooklyn, had no money, all of them
Speaker 2: very easy, yes, his family, very easy, low key people.
Speaker 2: They all went off to become teachers, his sisters and brothers.
Speaker 2: His brother Sam was my mother's high school teacher.
Speaker 1: And what was the thing in him coming from a
Speaker 1: certain kind of family with their passions and stuff and
Speaker 1: their goals. What do you think it was that launched
Speaker 1: him into show business?
Speaker 2: I think from what my memory brings me is he
Speaker 2: they grew up like with one of those I forgot
Speaker 2: what they call them in the candy store where the
Speaker 2: pictures flip. You put a coin in and it's like
Speaker 2: a little movie, right, And I think because his dad
Speaker 2: was pretty strict abe, you know, Polish, very whatever, Jewish school,
Speaker 2: old school, he would run away sometimes from school and
Speaker 2: like put money from the register in this little movie
Speaker 2: thing and just watch these movies over and over and
Speaker 2: it was his.
Speaker 4: Escape, I guess fantasy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now you're a member of the studio. Your sister's
Speaker 1: a member of the studio. You're both on the board
Speaker 1: of directors of the studio. And what's your recollection of that,
Speaker 1: meaning their respective participation in the studio. Your mother was
Speaker 1: a member as well. Yes, So do you have any
Speaker 1: recollection of Lee and what Lee was to your dad
Speaker 1: and your mom?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: I was pretty young.
Speaker 2: I'm not that much younger, Birti's three years older than me,
Speaker 2: but and she was a student of Lee's. I was not,
Speaker 2: but I remember we used to go at a very
Speaker 2: young age. We used to go to Lee's house for
Speaker 2: passover and there'd be like this really cute guy leaning
Speaker 2: against a bookcase and that was alphag No or you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't know. I thought he was my grandfather. I
Speaker 2: didn't get it. I didn't know who he was. Roberta's
Speaker 2: middle name is Lee, so I'm like, oh, it's grand
Speaker 2: that I got another grandfather, because I only met one grandparent.
Speaker 2: So we would go there and we would look for
Speaker 2: the matza, and then he would give us a silver
Speaker 2: dollar if you found the Matzeigman. It was a very
Speaker 2: big celebration with all these people and very kind of
Speaker 2: happy Jewish situation that I really didn't understand that well.
Speaker 2: And then my other memories were at the studio itself
Speaker 2: watching Lee moderate and thinking, you know, he had an
Speaker 2: egg timer. For example, Frances Fisher would be up there
Speaker 2: and she'd take her shirt off and he'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: that was wonderful.
Speaker 4: Dear, that was wonderful.
Speaker 2: I was like, Wow, you know, this is the big
Speaker 2: guy behind the Wizard of Oz, behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: And you didn't get it.
Speaker 3: No, I didn't get it.
Speaker 4: He seemed charming.
Speaker 3: I liked him.
Speaker 2: He was an old dude and he had once in
Speaker 2: a while he had some cool shit to say.
Speaker 3: But I was like, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: You know whereas like Hume Cronin, Jessica Tandy, these people
Speaker 2: being around you know, George c. Scott and Colleen and
Speaker 2: those people, or Paul and Joann, those people had vibes,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. Being around those kind of
Speaker 2: friends or what would you call them, colleagues, colleagues, those people,
Speaker 2: I would feel the kind of gig young I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, I remember some people that really impressed me.
Speaker 1: Now, how would you say, because obviously you have this
Speaker 1: very serious business making jewelry, and you've been doing it
Speaker 1: for quite a while successfully, and I'm wondering was that
Speaker 1: something that you discovered, as many of us discovered, something
Speaker 1: to fill in those gaps of the average acting career
Speaker 1: where you're not always working as much as you want to.
Speaker 1: You sit there, go I got to do something.
Speaker 2: I would say yes, except for that, I'm one of
Speaker 2: those people that has to express myself artistically. I did
Speaker 2: all the flowers for all the weddings of my nephews,
Speaker 2: I designed my flowers, I catered for years, I tap danced,
Speaker 2: I was in a band. I mean, I have to
Speaker 2: constantly express So the thing that happened with the jewelry
Speaker 2: was when I was a kid. We went down to
Speaker 2: visit a friend of my dad's who is a not
Speaker 2: a friend relative, who had a bead factory on thirty
Speaker 2: eighth Street, and they let me go rampant in the
Speaker 2: basement and I went insane, and I was starting a
Speaker 2: string beads. And so from a very young age. It's
Speaker 2: also a family business. There's Wallack jewelry. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 2: that's not mine, you.
Speaker 4: Know, So it was just it's just a way of
Speaker 4: which I.
Speaker 2: Mean, there's pictures of me at six selling in the
Speaker 2: Hamptons on a towel in front of our house, you know.
Speaker 2: And but I guess at thirty, really I'm sixty almost five,
Speaker 2: so at thirty as.
Speaker 1: One, so the creative impulse to make the jewelry superseded
Speaker 1: way before acting career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I got my SAG card when I
Speaker 2: was seven in a film with my parents, which one
Speaker 2: Murray Ciskell Tiger makes out.
Speaker 4: It was the typeist in the Tiger movie.
Speaker 2: Version, right, And then you know I was not born
Speaker 2: to be an actress. My sister, I think felt that way.
Speaker 1: How would you describe your path as an actress?
Speaker 4: Oh, I kind of was like, well, I guess it's
Speaker 4: in my bone.
Speaker 3: You know, I should check it out.
Speaker 2: And I do things in that way, you know, which
Speaker 2: I guess is annoying to some people. But I once
Speaker 2: I for example, we were in Diary Van Frank and
Speaker 2: I said, look, don't put me in this if I suck,
Speaker 2: you know. The director said, I'm not putting you in
Speaker 2: if you suck. So I think I was smoking pot
Speaker 2: in the attic between acts and the girl who is
Speaker 2: my sister's understudy, said, Okay, do you really want to
Speaker 2: do this? Do you really want to be an actress?
Speaker 2: I said, oh, yes, definitely. It was so high, and
Speaker 2: so she took me and she called Bill Esper and
Speaker 2: said that said, I'm enrolling you, and you know, I'm
Speaker 2: getting you into this class. And for two years I
Speaker 2: studied Sandy Meisner technique with Bill Asper, and you know
Speaker 2: it went from there. I moved to Hollywood for four
Speaker 2: or five years and ended up catering vegan food to
Speaker 2: hippies on Melrose and you know, whatever the hell I
Speaker 2: was doing feeding meters and I did some really bad
Speaker 2: TV shows the thing in my gap and curled hair
Speaker 2: and fake tits, and I.
Speaker 4: Said, no, this is not right. Why are they making
Speaker 4: me look like everybody else?
Speaker 2: So they came back to New York and I did
Speaker 2: some plays and started kind of that's when I got
Speaker 2: into the studio. I think in nine and eighty nine
Speaker 2: or eighty five or something, I became a member, and
Speaker 2: you know, just kind.
Speaker 4: Of like took it easy because it's a hard belise.
Speaker 1: Knowing as you did that you had your cynicism about
Speaker 1: Strasburg himself. What becomes the lure of the studio? Why
Speaker 1: do you want to go to the studio?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 2: it's just the feeling of that it meant so much
Speaker 2: to my folks and had so much to do with
Speaker 2: their foundation and their sanctuary, and so I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see what this is all about. And
Speaker 2: even in the beginning, when I was in my twenties
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I'm just doing some scenes with people
Speaker 2: that were doing some stuff.
Speaker 3: I was like, what the fuck are you doing?
Speaker 2: You know? But then again, there is there's a way
Speaker 2: that the work is done there that is like no
Speaker 2: other place on the earth. When it works, when it
Speaker 2: works and when to something yes, and when people are
Speaker 2: brave enough literally brave enough to go there and not
Speaker 2: get up there and do what they're good at. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm going up tomorrow with one day notice, and I
Speaker 2: Am not going to do what I'm good at. My
Speaker 2: instinct is to get up there and you know, do
Speaker 2: my thing, you know, my shtick. But I wrote bow
Speaker 2: back actually and said no.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: He said, thank you so much. You know, you're so brave.
Speaker 2: I said, either brave or crazy. I said, I'm going
Speaker 2: there because I want to learn. I never want to
Speaker 2: stop learning. And that's what my folks taught me. Is
Speaker 2: like even into the nineties, you know, like before he
Speaker 2: really went into dementia land, you know, he was still
Speaker 2: trying to work and learn and you know, pitch himself.
Speaker 4: To directors and shit.
Speaker 2: He famously wrote a letter to Scorsese saying I want
Speaker 2: to be in one of your films, and Scorsese apparently
Speaker 2: thought it was a lie until he saw that he
Speaker 2: mentioned Cis Corman, so he realized, oh, you know, they
Speaker 2: maybe this is really like maybe in Stationary, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. Like he really wrote a letter to
Speaker 2: him saying, one of my bucket list things is I
Speaker 2: want to work with you.
Speaker 1: Actor's studio member Catherine Wallack. If you love conversations about
Speaker 1: the craft of acting, be sure to check out my
Speaker 1: episode with another Actor's Studio board member, the late Patricia Bosworth.
Speaker 1: Do you speak to Brando much for the book?
Speaker 5: No, I didn't speak to him at all. I only
Speaker 5: met him once at the Actor's Studio. I called him
Speaker 5: on the phone. He wanted to talk to me, originally
Speaker 5: because he wanted to talk about Kazan, and he actually
Speaker 5: wrote me a letter that he would talk to me,
Speaker 5: but then he decided not to and I really became
Speaker 5: so frustrated. I kept calling him and calling, and finally
Speaker 5: somebody said, why don't you call his dog.
Speaker 4: Alec.
Speaker 5: I did listen to this. I faxed, dear Fido, I
Speaker 5: want to speak to your master. Within seconds, the facts
Speaker 5: came back saying my master does not want to talk
Speaker 5: to you, and signed with two paw prints. This was
Speaker 5: Brando answering me.
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with Patricia Bosworth at Here'sthething
Speaker 1: dot Org. After the break, Katherine Wallack tells us how
Speaker 1: the Actor's Studio has changed in her lifetime, and later
Speaker 1: Roberta Wallack shares her experience starring alongside Joanne Woodward and
Speaker 1: being directed by none other than Paul Newman. While still
Speaker 1: in high school. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Actors Studio board member Katherine Wallack made
Speaker 1: her film debut at age six. She would go on
Speaker 1: to perform and stand out plays like The Beauty Queen
Speaker 1: of Lennon, The Walls of the Torreats, and Awake and Sing.
Speaker 1: I was curious what life in the theater was like
Speaker 1: coming up as a child of one of America's great
Speaker 1: acting dynasties.
Speaker 2: Well, we acted a lot together, which was such a joy,
Speaker 2: all four of us. We did The Flowering Peach directed
Speaker 2: by Bobby Lewis. We did a tour directed of Wilson,
Speaker 2: The Toyers directed by Brian Murray who was an actor,
Speaker 2: he wasn't a director at the time. We did dire
Speaker 2: Van Frank directed by Marty Freed. So you know, we
Speaker 2: we would like kind of go the Flying Walendos, would.
Speaker 3: Like go on the road.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was awesome and I think they pretty much took
Speaker 2: me often to get me away from my.
Speaker 3: New York pot smoking ways. You know, we had.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was Yeah, were you the troubled child?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you work in the theater were
Speaker 1: smoking pot. I did the the Orton play Loot. It
Speaker 1: was my Broadway debut, as they say, and I did
Speaker 1: the play with Joe Mahara and Jelcob Ivanic and so
Speaker 1: we want to make her and Charlie Keating played the husband,
Speaker 1: and my dressing room was above his, and during the half,
Speaker 1: Charlie Keating would smoke an enormous joint and the smoke
Speaker 1: would go up out his window, up the alleyway and
Speaker 1: go in my window of my room. I could smell
Speaker 1: the wheel. Because his character was supposed to make an
Speaker 1: entrance disheveled having been in a car crash, and he
Speaker 1: enters disheveled in a mess and chaotic and shop. He
Speaker 1: would smoke pot in his room and then they would
Speaker 1: we would do the second half, and he'd walk out
Speaker 1: and go, oh my god, he awful action on the road.
Speaker 1: And he was like wasted, And I thought, how the
Speaker 1: fuck do you act waste?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 2: I can't I mean except for like when we were
Speaker 2: in Dire around Frank and Tony Holland would say, bring
Speaker 2: on the dancing girls. When the Nazis would come and
Speaker 2: bang the door down, I mean, and I'm trying not
Speaker 2: to laugh, you know.
Speaker 4: Anyway, after that, I swiftly.
Speaker 2: Got my ass to class and stop smoking about I
Speaker 2: can't even smell it now, funny, really like, I really
Speaker 2: don't like the smell of it.
Speaker 1: Do you hate it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Kind of smoke? Since I'm thirty?
Speaker 1: What's the last job you did? What's the last show
Speaker 1: you did?
Speaker 2: I did two films during COVID that have now been
Speaker 2: written in from shorts to feature, and they kept me
Speaker 2: in my role. So we're about to shoot the you are, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Do you still like what you're feeling about acting now?
Speaker 1: How do you you still enjoy it?
Speaker 4: I absolutely love doing it?
Speaker 1: You do? Yeah? You're in and out of the studio
Speaker 1: when you're younger, and your parents, of course are members
Speaker 1: of the studio. How's it changed in your leftome.
Speaker 2: Well, back in those days, there was working working actors,
Speaker 2: and there was not the school filtering students coming in there.
Speaker 2: Weren't you know, this kind of influx of all different
Speaker 2: levels of.
Speaker 1: No relationship with the MFA program.
Speaker 2: Right, So there was like a very high standard. There
Speaker 2: was also kind of a looser attitude about when you
Speaker 2: could rehearse and go in. We all had keys. You
Speaker 2: could spend the night there if you stuck, which I
Speaker 2: have many times. You know, there was a very different
Speaker 2: kind of vibe. And I was the little one, you know,
Speaker 2: I was one of the few younger ones at the.
Speaker 1: Bohemian, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: And I took me three times to get in, and
Speaker 2: by the time I got in, I did Sidney Kingsley's
Speaker 2: dead End, you know. And by the time I got
Speaker 2: in they called me to tell me. I was like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, okay, fine and click. Because they put me
Speaker 2: through some major hoops to become a member, which was fine.
Speaker 2: I didn't want any special treatment. I get actually offended
Speaker 2: when during moderation in a scene where, you know, during session,
Speaker 2: people bring up my parents and I'm like, why.
Speaker 3: Didn't you bring up Joe's parents? Huh? You know, I mean,
Speaker 3: could you just get me break? Now?
Speaker 2: You really have to find that underlying thread, You really
Speaker 2: have to find that kind of old school connection because
Speaker 2: there's so many different energies going on there now. But
Speaker 2: you know, people that diss it and don't come and
Speaker 2: I just say, you know, it is what you make it,
Speaker 2: and I don't have a huge career right now, so
Speaker 2: it is my way of expressing, being able to express
Speaker 2: on the stage, and I cherish that. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: really lucky, you know. I see movies and plays the
Speaker 2: other day everybody stands up and yells bravo. My father
Speaker 2: used to get so pissed when people stand up and
Speaker 2: yell bravo just because they saw play.
Speaker 1: It's funny how your dad, who I worship, you know,
Speaker 1: the mark of a truly great film actor, to me
Speaker 1: is just the indelibility of these lines of theirs. Your
Speaker 1: father comes from a school, which I don't think he
Speaker 1: would claim to be a member of this school, but
Speaker 1: I kind of recognize a school of people which is
Speaker 1: just be the best thing in the movie. Doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how big your part is, just be memorable in the
Speaker 1: movie of your truthfulness. Your parents' legacy, what would you
Speaker 1: hope their legacy.
Speaker 2: Is that they were so in love with each other
Speaker 2: and that they worked together so well. The respect I mean,
Speaker 2: my father. If my mother said this was an umbrella,
Speaker 2: my father would say, your mother said, that's an umbrella.
Speaker 2: That's an umbrella. You know, devotion, devotion, artistic respect, and love.
Speaker 2: I mean that that would be you know what I
Speaker 2: would say, And they they really did their best at
Speaker 2: raising as normal if you could call us that healthy
Speaker 2: non involved in the hole. You know, they kept us accountable.
Speaker 2: And they also at the same time, like Dad was
Speaker 2: more proud of me making you know, ninety grand as
Speaker 2: a rep for an eyework company than he was if
Speaker 2: I was acting. Absolutely, he was like so much more
Speaker 2: proud of it. But yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 1: It was like interesting you mentioned that the legacy is
Speaker 1: their relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is. That's amazing because nowadays, like
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, there were so few of them
Speaker 2: that that work together as much as my folks. They
Speaker 2: really did, you know, always, especially you don't see it now,
Speaker 2: And as they got older, you know, they would write,
Speaker 2: they would do poetry performances and all sorts of churches
Speaker 2: and smaller theaters around New York. My father did student films.
Speaker 2: He and I worked together at the studio. We did
Speaker 2: Moon for the Misbegotten. I played Josie. Here he comes
Speaker 2: walking down the aisle. I'm like, that's Eli Wallack walking
Speaker 2: gumme oile.
Speaker 3: It was unbelievable, you know.
Speaker 2: After by the way, we stopped and Stephen Lang was
Speaker 2: the moderator, and Dad said, hey, can we try it again?
Speaker 2: And then he goes, yeah, go ahead, and we did
Speaker 2: it again with the notes they gave us.
Speaker 4: Can we do it again? He was like eighty something,
Speaker 4: you know, like that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Actress and designer Catherine Wallack my next guest. Roberta Wallack
Speaker 1: is known for her work on stage and screen, including
Speaker 1: her drama Desk nominated performance in The Model Apartments. She
Speaker 1: made her film debut while still in high school in
Speaker 1: the Effect of Gamma rays on Man in the Moon Maragos.
Speaker 1: Since Anne Jackson and Eli Wallack were so prolific throughout
Speaker 1: Roberta's childhood, I wanted to know how her parents balanced
Speaker 1: work with raising their children.
Speaker 7: Dad was gone much more so than mom, and they
Speaker 7: had an agreement basically to try and make sure as
Speaker 7: often as possible that they were not both gone at
Speaker 7: the same time, or if they were very often we
Speaker 7: would go with them. But she was around a lot.
Speaker 7: And also back then, when for instance, Off Broadway was
Speaker 7: still a fairly new thing happening in New York City,
Speaker 7: they did a lot of theater a lot, and the
Speaker 7: curtains were later they were eight o'clock, right, So we
Speaker 7: would all sit down to dinner at six eat dinner.
Speaker 7: I remember Mom always had to go take a nap.
Speaker 7: She would take a nap and then they would go
Speaker 7: off to the theater. But then whenever there was free time.
Speaker 7: She was a very hands on mom. I mean, I'm
Speaker 7: marvel at the stuff she was able to balance. We
Speaker 7: had help, fabulous help, Catherine. I always refer to our
Speaker 7: Nelly as our black mother, right, you know, who was
Speaker 7: amazing and came to work for us when I was
Speaker 7: only a couple of months old and she was very close.
Speaker 7: She really became, I am a family member. But the
Speaker 7: fact that she was able to balance being a wife,
Speaker 7: having the career that she had, which was pretty big,
Speaker 7: and to be mom to us was amazing. I mean,
Speaker 7: I have memories of her around the holidays, taking us
Speaker 7: always shopping to get new outfits and to see Santa
Speaker 7: Claus at Bonwood Teller's or whatever, Lord and Taylor's and
Speaker 7: Kath and I, my sister and I. Easter time, we
Speaker 7: always were outfitted in great little outfits to go to
Speaker 7: the Easter parade.
Speaker 4: They were very both of them.
Speaker 7: Actually, you know, when Dad was around, I realized fairly
Speaker 7: young that it was quality time versus quantity time. And
Speaker 7: I remember talking briefly to Kate Winslet about it, who
Speaker 7: was very concerned about being a mother, a working mother,
Speaker 7: and I said to her, I get that, and I'm
Speaker 7: not going to lie to you. Could be some therapy
Speaker 7: builds down the line, abandonment stuff. But kids, I think,
Speaker 7: very early on, realize and recognize that when their parents
Speaker 7: really love what they do, especially when it's something like acting,
Speaker 7: which every kid pretty much every kid wants to do
Speaker 7: all the time. Anyway, we give them a pass. We
Speaker 7: understand what that sensation is. I mean, I decided absolutely
Speaker 7: for sure I was going to be an actor at
Speaker 7: age six. I was taken on a date with Patty
Speaker 7: Tchaiyevsky's son Danny. We were both in school together. We
Speaker 7: went to see Oliver on Broadway six when I was six,
Speaker 7: and I remember sitting there and before that time, I
Speaker 7: kept thinking, well, do I want to be a.
Speaker 4: Ballerina or a nurse?
Speaker 7: A ballerina or a nurse, And then I went when
Speaker 7: I sat in that theater, I realized, oh, no, I
Speaker 7: want to be an actor, because then I can be
Speaker 7: a ballerina and a nurse, and I can also play
Speaker 7: a boy if I want to. I could be a
Speaker 7: boy nurse or a boy ballerina. I could be anything.
Speaker 1: Now, your sister mentioned how your dad was a pretty
Speaker 1: no nonsense guy when you was home. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of rules and manners and have you asked
Speaker 1: to be excused from the table.
Speaker 7: Well, he had been in the military, okay for way
Speaker 7: too long. And his estimation because his birthday was December seventh,
Speaker 7: Pearl Harbor Day, so he was already in the army
Speaker 7: and it was happy birthday. Here's another three years or whatever.
Speaker 7: You're stuck here. So yeah, he was very militant about time.
Speaker 7: If you were four minutes early, that was considered late,
Speaker 7: and he would pout for and not speak to you
Speaker 7: for about two hours. To this day, sometimes I'm if
Speaker 7: I'm walking in my apartment without my barefoot, I can
Speaker 7: hear my father's voice saying.
Speaker 4: I'll find you put your slippers on. Where are your slippers?
Speaker 7: You know, there were certain things that they were strict about,
Speaker 7: but in retrospect, I think it was kind of great
Speaker 7: because it gave us all a sense of ethics, a
Speaker 7: sense a work ethic, a discipline that you know we
Speaker 7: needed so consideration.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when did you.
Speaker 1: First become aware of the studio yourself? Was it through
Speaker 1: your parents and going there with that?
Speaker 7: I have an effective memory, a vague one of an
Speaker 7: older version of the studio of walking between these seats
Speaker 7: on a kind of rake. That's all I can remember
Speaker 7: about that. But no, my earliest memories of the studio
Speaker 7: are really more about Lee himself, about Strasburg. I think
Speaker 7: I mentioned to my middle name is Lee, after Lee,
Speaker 7: your sister, right, So he was for me a sort
Speaker 7: of grandpa figure. But when it came to the work itself,
Speaker 7: then we had a much more slightly reserved and what
Speaker 7: I would call more of a professional relationship, even though
Speaker 7: there was tremendous love and fondness there. So those are
Speaker 7: my earliest memories. I mean, I got into the studio
Speaker 7: in nineteen eighty, but I did my first feature that
Speaker 7: Paul Newman directed when I was sixteen.
Speaker 4: I was still in high.
Speaker 7: School, The Effect of Gamma, Right, So I was still
Speaker 7: in high school with Joanne.
Speaker 4: What was that extraordinary? Extraordinary?
Speaker 7: I mean I have yet to have an experience even
Speaker 7: remotely like it, I'm afraid, but whatever, it was extraordinary
Speaker 7: because from the moment of the audition. And fortunately, when
Speaker 7: I first auditioned, I think Sis Corman actually got me
Speaker 7: the audition. When I got in there, Paul didn't know
Speaker 7: who I was, who my parents were, and it wasn't
Speaker 7: until the very end that the casting director said something like,
Speaker 7: we'll say hi to your parents, and he went, who
Speaker 7: are your parents? And then I told him And then
Speaker 7: he told me the most hilarious thing I thought, which
Speaker 7: was that his first audition ever in New York City
Speaker 7: was with mom and that he absolutely sucked, and that
Speaker 7: he saw the look on me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: He said to Mom something like Annie, do you want
Speaker 7: to go rehearse first?
Speaker 4: And she kind of was a little skeptical.
Speaker 7: She said, oh okay, and they went to read it
Speaker 7: through and she just thought, oh boy, there goes this job.
Speaker 7: And so that I thought was hilarious. He said, you know,
Speaker 7: I've always loved your mom. That she was so gracious
Speaker 7: to me after I blew the job from both of us,
Speaker 7: So that was great. But he he treated me, even
Speaker 7: at sixteen, like a peer, and I was very serious.
Speaker 7: I mean I started training at the Neighborhood Playhouse when
Speaker 7: I was quite young. Charles Bush and I were in
Speaker 7: the same singing class together. We took singing and improv
Speaker 7: and stuff. But I lied about my age, which I
Speaker 7: found out. I guess my mother didn't have to. We
Speaker 7: both first studied at fifteen with Herbert Birkhoff, so again
Speaker 7: I was still in school. I lied about my age
Speaker 7: to get into the class, and I was in class
Speaker 7: with Joey Pantaliano.
Speaker 1: You have a list of people you studied with. It's
Speaker 1: a very heavy hitting list. Yeah, it's Berghoff, It's Hoggin,
Speaker 1: it's Bobby Lewis, it's Lee seacat bats And I mean
Speaker 1: the only name that's missing here is Win Handman.
Speaker 7: I mean when I study with everybody, right Norse Stella
Speaker 7: Adler was that by choice. It wasn't that I felt
Speaker 7: I was eliminating anybody. The truth is that from fairly
Speaker 7: early on I was working quite a bit, so I
Speaker 7: just didn't fe that I had to study with everybody.
Speaker 7: I mean, I was able to apply having worked with
Speaker 7: such extraordinary teachers, but also with amazing actors, and also
Speaker 7: growing up with amazing actors. I guess I didn't feel
Speaker 7: like I had to study with everybody. Again, it was
Speaker 7: more about quality, not quantity.
Speaker 4: For me. That was enough, you know.
Speaker 7: And yet what's funny is now, at sixty seven, I'm
Speaker 7: still studying. I'm taking an extraordinary Shakespeare course online with
Speaker 7: my friend Christopher Tubori who lives in the Philippines. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so that's been unbelievable. Penny Fuller is in our class.
Speaker 7: It's just awesome. And Giles Foreman who studied under a
Speaker 7: man called yat Melmgram and Christopher Fettis. And Christopher Fettis
Speaker 7: was the man who Anthony Hopkins based his role as
Speaker 7: Hannibal lecter on Christopher. He based lecture on christ Why,
Speaker 7: oh well, if you ever met Christopher you would understand.
Speaker 4: But Christopher was a master.
Speaker 7: He found did the Drama Center in London, which is
Speaker 7: as close to the equivalent of the Actors Studio as
Speaker 7: you could beat. Yes, yes, well actually no, I think
Speaker 7: Christopher was born in India during the rag you know,
Speaker 7: and all that. But what fascinated me and drew me.
Speaker 7: Although I had met Giles through Susan Batson many years ago,
Speaker 7: and I've been teaching at his studio in London and Paris,
Speaker 7: But what fascinated me about this whole lineage which is
Speaker 7: different than our training, but they're in some ways quite similar.
Speaker 7: Is that there are certain actors, the younger actors who
Speaker 7: have all worked this particular method.
Speaker 4: Shall we call it.
Speaker 7: Include Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy, And I just went, Okay,
Speaker 7: what are these guys doing?
Speaker 4: Would like to figure that Colin.
Speaker 7: Ferrell, Yeah, I mean amazing, amazing actors, you know, going
Speaker 7: way way back to Sean Connery.
Speaker 4: Et cetera, et cetera, who've all studied this.
Speaker 7: A group of these guys were all in after the
Speaker 7: Second World War. They all ended up fleeing the Nazis,
Speaker 7: and some of them were gay and whatever, and they
Speaker 7: all ended up in England, including which flipped me out.
Speaker 7: And I did not know this at the time. Michael
Speaker 7: Chekhov was part of that whole group, and Udah Hagen
Speaker 7: was interested. She was there as well. And it's based
Speaker 7: a lot on what we might call psychological gesture, that
Speaker 7: the repetition of a certain gesture over and over and
Speaker 7: over starts to elicit something emotional from within. It changes
Speaker 7: your rhythm.
Speaker 1: For example.
Speaker 7: Well, it gets a little more complicated because another part
Speaker 7: that fascinates me that I think Lee would have loved
Speaker 7: to because Lee was so interested in psychology as he
Speaker 7: got older and older, is that there's a lot of
Speaker 7: Yungian premise to this too, and so that each one
Speaker 7: of us human beings basically are components of four things sensing, thinking, into, iting,
Speaker 7: and feeling, and then it gets complicated on how you
Speaker 7: combine that. But basically, for me, I can't do my
Speaker 7: work without emotional memory, without sensory work, It's impossible. But
Speaker 7: there was always a part of me from when I
Speaker 7: was fairly young that started to feel like there's a
Speaker 7: little bit missing, there's a little something still cloudy. And
Speaker 7: this particular thing that I'm now working on, which is
Speaker 7: like learning an entirely new language, has much more to
Speaker 7: do with a certain level of precision. It has to
Speaker 7: do with almost a type of architecture to building a character.
Speaker 7: And again, you know, as a young actor, I remember
Speaker 7: realizing that someone like Sean Penn, who is such an
Speaker 7: internal actors you know, I don't like to use the
Speaker 7: word method because he gets such a bad rap. And
Speaker 7: also the true definition is whatever method works for you.
Speaker 4: That it seemed to me when you.
Speaker 7: Watch an actor like that over a long period of time,
Speaker 7: where he's so internal and it's so emotional as he
Speaker 7: gets older, he starts to shift more and al Pacino too,
Speaker 7: I think, to more outer stuff, so that you get that. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so did you get the balance between the two.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a TV show years ago and I have
Speaker 1: a scene in which the matriarch of the town who's
Speaker 1: going to bestow money on a medical clinic, and she's
Speaker 1: decided to withhold the funding for some quasi political reason.
Speaker 1: And I have the scene with her where I'm appealing
Speaker 1: to her to give us the money, and I'm like
Speaker 1: grinding my gears for the whole I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: because the thing you don't understand, I'm like, right in
Speaker 1: my sense memory, my dog died, I found the pigeon
Speaker 1: dead by the fucking road or whatever, and you could.
Speaker 4: Understand missus cunning it.
Speaker 1: I mean, my god, this is and we're done, and
Speaker 1: the director works with me, goes, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: have to do the whole show in the one scene, right,
Speaker 1: So if you don't have to do it, And as
Speaker 1: I have gone of these decades on, it becomes the
Speaker 1: word I use is technical. It becomes more to the
Speaker 1: inspiration is either there it isn't right, and I can
Speaker 1: summon it. No, no, no, we don't have a problem
Speaker 1: connect into some emotional absolutely oc current in me. But
Speaker 1: to me, the technical now, I don't want people to
Speaker 1: have to reach for the TV dialogue with.
Speaker 4: The said, which happens all the time, right.
Speaker 7: And the funny thing is is there's a great story
Speaker 7: that Dad told I think he wrote it in his
Speaker 7: book where as a young actor. They were original members
Speaker 7: of the studio, and he went to the studio during
Speaker 7: the day and he listened to Lee lecture and he
Speaker 7: got all excited and worked up about it, couldn't wait
Speaker 7: to run to the theater. He was doing Anthony and
Speaker 7: Cleopatra with Catherine Cornell with her company, okay, and he's
Speaker 7: playing the messenger or something. He was so excited, he
Speaker 7: was so amped up that he jumped a queue and
Speaker 7: cut out a page and a half of her dialer whatever.
Speaker 4: And she was furious.
Speaker 8: And Dad runs back to Lee and he goes, Lee, Lee,
Speaker 8: you know why you told me I was so excited,
Speaker 8: And Lee just looked at him and said, pick up
Speaker 8: your cues, Eli Darling, pick up your CUEO.
Speaker 1: Actors studio member, ROBERTA. Wallack, if you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: don't keep it to yourself, tell a friend and follow
Speaker 1: here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. When we come back. Roberta Wallack
Speaker 1: shares a memory of acting rivalry with her father Eli Wallack.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing. It
Speaker 1: makes sense that Roberta Wallack would go into the family business,
Speaker 1: having grown up surrounded by the cream of the crop
Speaker 1: in the acting world. I wanted to know what her
Speaker 1: parents thought about her following in their footsteps.
Speaker 7: They were interviewed once on a talk show and the
Speaker 7: interviewer asked, did you encourage your kids to become actors?
Speaker 7: And dad said, would you push your kid off a bridge?
Speaker 7: So I think that was a mixed thing. I mean,
Speaker 7: to be honest, and there were times where it really
Speaker 7: amused me no end where Dad would get a little
Speaker 7: bit jealous of me. I mean, I did the Sopranos
Speaker 7: and he said to me, what can I get on
Speaker 7: that show?
Speaker 4: And I said, Eli, call your agent.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not excuse me, go through the proper
Speaker 7: channels the way I had to, you know. So I
Speaker 7: think there was some of that, but also so lucky
Speaker 7: that I got to work with both of them on
Speaker 7: the stage many times, on television, on film, and so
Speaker 7: again we also were able to see each other as
Speaker 7: peers in a certain way, which I think was fantastical.
Speaker 1: What did your sister say with the show you all
Speaker 1: did together? And Frank, yeah, yeah, and she prayed you
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 7: We started it in Manhattan off Broadway, and don't I
Speaker 7: don't remember if Kath was in that original production or not.
Speaker 7: But then we took it to Canada and then we
Speaker 7: took it all around the country. We toured with it
Speaker 7: for a while. That was incredible. That was an amazing experience.
Speaker 1: I mean the Leicester for how long.
Speaker 4: Over a year or more.
Speaker 1: That's the most amazing thing to me. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to work with your wife, your girlfriends, right,
Speaker 1: one of your siblings or whatever. Right, But to work
Speaker 1: with your parents.
Speaker 7: Right, Except that I think again we were exposed to it.
Speaker 7: I mean we were exposed to it so young that
Speaker 7: it seemed fairly normal. And the advantage, of course, was
Speaker 7: I with both I was so familiar with how they
Speaker 7: both worked. I mean Dad asked me to cue him
Speaker 7: all the time, so I knew their instruments very well,
Speaker 7: and so that made it easier and comfortable. But for example,
Speaker 7: you know, stuff happens. I mean, of course, right, we
Speaker 7: were doing an a mirror play together and I had
Speaker 7: this very these very sexy scenes with John Shay, you know,
Speaker 7: and I said to the director, excuse me, but could
Speaker 7: you ask these two to leave the room while I'm
Speaker 7: they're not on stage while John and I are having
Speaker 7: this scene. I don't need to compound it with even
Speaker 7: more therapy. Thank you very much that I'm about to read.
Speaker 4: We suck aspect out of this room, please exactly? Or
Speaker 4: the funny things.
Speaker 7: I don't know if Kav told you, but there were
Speaker 7: a number of instances during Ann Frank, during other things
Speaker 7: that we did together, where and Brian Murray told this
Speaker 7: great story about we're doing walts of the Torriodors together
Speaker 7: and mom and Dad are having this huge fight. They're
Speaker 7: just into it. They're just going at it, and Catherine
Speaker 7: and I are paying any attention. We're just eating, We're
Speaker 7: talking to each other as if nothing is happening, and
Speaker 7: everybody else is just frozen and shocked, you know, but
Speaker 7: the two of us are like, this is a day,
Speaker 7: you know. Biggie, Yeah, no, Biggie, they'll be you know,
Speaker 7: they'll get through this.
Speaker 4: This is just part of you know.
Speaker 7: It's usually the Anne Jackson I can't act moment where
Speaker 7: she storms off and then god damn it, he says,
Speaker 7: you know, and whatever, and they go through this whole
Speaker 7: thing and then she comes back and it's as if
Speaker 7: nothing happened. So and they talked a lot about it
Speaker 7: being therapeutic for them to get fights on stage together.
Speaker 7: So I think there was an element of that with us.
Speaker 7: I mean one time I almost brought Dad up on
Speaker 7: charges though, when we were doing the Diary of Van
Speaker 7: Frank and we were in a black joking I'm not joking.
Speaker 7: Charge is meaning equity charges, no, of course, not criminal,
Speaker 7: but we were.
Speaker 4: In the middle of a blackout.
Speaker 7: We were in an exit and he started to give
Speaker 7: me a note in the dark, and I pulled him
Speaker 7: aside and I said, mister Wallack, you have anything to
Speaker 7: say to me as an actor. You talked to my
Speaker 7: stage manager and the stage manager will go to the director.
Speaker 7: Don't you ever give me a note again? And his
Speaker 7: tail went right between his legs. He was got I'm like,
Speaker 7: oh no, no, no no. In the meantime, I would
Speaker 7: sometimes beg my mother for a note, what.
Speaker 1: Did each of them, respectively teach you about acting?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Would she emphasize, Wow, you need to what and then correspondingly.
Speaker 4: Him, Okay.
Speaker 7: So in the earlier days, I would say, as I
Speaker 7: was saying before about how familiar I was with the
Speaker 7: way that they worked. Dad had to learn all his lines,
Speaker 7: I mean, have them down, pat. He had to first
Speaker 7: pretty much get those that down really quickly.
Speaker 4: Mom, on the other hand, did not care.
Speaker 7: She needed to know what the hell she was doing, whatever, whatever, whatever.
Speaker 7: And so the good news is I saw the value
Speaker 7: of both, right. So, I think the truth is that
Speaker 7: they never really came that directly at us in terms
Speaker 7: of acting. They really didn't. They really didn't talk about it.
Speaker 7: I think so. And I think they also respected the
Speaker 7: choices that I had made in terms of training.
Speaker 4: Although I had to fight Dad for that first role.
Speaker 7: He said to me when I got the role, when
Speaker 7: Paul Newman cast me in the film, he said to me.
Speaker 4: What about school? I said, what about it?
Speaker 7: I will do my school work and I will co
Speaker 7: star opposite Joanne Woodward. Enough, I wanted to go to
Speaker 7: professional children's school when I was a kid, and they
Speaker 7: said no. He said no, you will get an education
Speaker 7: like everyone else. In retrospect, I'm really glad that he
Speaker 7: said that.
Speaker 1: What about her? What did she want you to know?
Speaker 7: I think they both What they really wanted to instill
Speaker 7: was the joy of acting. To never lose that under
Speaker 7: any circumstances, to stay true to that pure joy.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm very much I would say more of
Speaker 1: your mother's school, maybe for different reasons, where I've worked
Speaker 1: with actors who came in and they were, you know,
Speaker 1: if not letter perfect, they were pretty damned close day
Speaker 1: one of rehearsals, right, Like, there's no discoveries that can
Speaker 1: be made. But if you're there, you're several steps down
Speaker 1: the board from where I am, and I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure what happens exactly.
Speaker 4: Cat accept that.
Speaker 7: For example, I'm saying here, I take longer usually to
Speaker 7: learn text, but then when I do, I don't forget it.
Speaker 7: I'm the one who gets the least number of notes.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm the same way once I get I have
Speaker 1: a very good memory. But my point is that I
Speaker 1: would say to myself, well, I found myself incapable, or
Speaker 1: at least I just didn't prefer maybe I was capable
Speaker 1: of going into rehearsal and having memorized all my lines
Speaker 1: and because what I need, what's missing is what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? Well?
Speaker 7: Look, I worked as a very young actor with Ruth
Speaker 7: Gordon and Gar Kannan directing, and they said to me,
Speaker 7: you have to have all your lines down before we
Speaker 7: start rehearsing.
Speaker 4: And to me, that was torture. It was crazy.
Speaker 7: You know, it was really hard for me to work
Speaker 7: that way, but out of respect, I thought, okay, we'll
Speaker 7: do that. So it's remarkable when you get to work
Speaker 7: with another studio member.
Speaker 4: I mean years ago, I did a little film.
Speaker 7: I don't think anything ever happened with it with our
Speaker 7: buddy Stephen Lang and Stephen and I immediately before the
Speaker 7: director even got into anything, we start improvising, we're jamming,
Speaker 7: we're doing all this stuff. By the time they say action,
Speaker 7: we're already into the scene with our own words first.
Speaker 7: So being able to am that way again, it's like
Speaker 7: playing with musicians, right, Being able to work that way,
Speaker 7: that is what I prefer still to this day.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Your sister was very candid. She did not have warm
Speaker 1: and glowing and idolatrous things to say about Strasburg. She
Speaker 1: said that when she was there, she was kind of like,
Speaker 1: maybe gett that. I'm not getting I'm not gonna when
Speaker 1: you were in the studio, you were there when Lee
Speaker 1: was there, Oh, absolutely, and what was your experience.
Speaker 7: So he taught me an extraordinary lesson very early on,
Speaker 7: which was I remember going up to do a scene
Speaker 7: and when it was over, I started making all kinds
Speaker 7: of excuses about how I didn't have a lot of
Speaker 7: time to prepare, and he went ballistic.
Speaker 6: Darling, I don't care if you have two minutes for
Speaker 6: twenty minutes work twenty years and my whole body is shaking.
Speaker 4: I'm like leaving my body and it.
Speaker 7: It was extremely valuable because I realized, yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: you have to do the work.
Speaker 4: You have to.
Speaker 7: I mean, yes, it's about having fun, but the flip
Speaker 7: side of that is also preparation. And this is something
Speaker 7: I know al Pacino doesn't credit himself with this, but
Speaker 7: that notion of which is very zen by the way of.
Speaker 4: You do the work, you do the work, You do
Speaker 4: the work, you do the work, and then you throw
Speaker 4: it all away.
Speaker 7: So Lee was incredibly inspiring because he had that laser
Speaker 7: beam ability to cut into something. But yeah, he was
Speaker 7: a human being. He had favorites. He liked young women
Speaker 7: and jeans and you know whatever. Okay, you know he
Speaker 7: had that. But he was incredibly insightful and it was
Speaker 7: fun to watch some of the really older established actors
Speaker 7: turn into kids. I mean, Shelley Winter's turned into a
Speaker 7: child in front of Lee. So a lot of people
Speaker 7: were terrorized by him. I thought he was quite funny
Speaker 7: a lot of the times. I mean I think I
Speaker 7: mentioned to you that in his class once he suddenly
Speaker 7: listed like thirty books in a row.
Speaker 4: And this is before self.
Speaker 7: Oh, I'm frantically writing down all of his references, and
Speaker 7: finally he gets to the end of it and he goes, yeah, button,
Speaker 7: He's addressing the whole class. He goes, yeah, but you
Speaker 7: don't read anyway, and I burst out laughing. So, yes,
Speaker 7: my experience was different. I adored him. I felt honored
Speaker 7: to work for him, and you got it and I
Speaker 7: got it. And also back to the Anne Frank thing,
Speaker 7: was I did it asked backwards out of respect for him,
Speaker 7: meaning I wanted to get into the studio as a
Speaker 7: member first before I studied with him. So that's what
Speaker 7: I did. And so when I went to study with him.
Speaker 7: He had not seen me do Anne Frank and I
Speaker 7: understood why because of Susan Strasburg playing it and he
Speaker 7: didn't want to see it, and I understood that. But
Speaker 7: he said to me, Donald, would you bring a scene in?
Speaker 7: I said, sure, if that's what you want me to do.
Speaker 7: And I remember setting up and doing my thing and whatever,
Speaker 7: and when it was over, and I felt pretty good
Speaker 7: because I had played it for so long. When it
Speaker 7: was over, I said, yeah, so I did my preparation.
Speaker 7: He went what I said, I did a preparations said
Speaker 7: when I said, well, while I was setting up, he went, ah,
Speaker 7: very good. I did not see that. So my experience
Speaker 7: with him was quite different. I mean, I'm aware, very
Speaker 7: aware because of historical information, particularly when he was younger,
Speaker 7: a lot of people had problems with him and issues
Speaker 7: and whatever. But for me going to work with him
Speaker 7: much later in his life, I think it had softened him.
Speaker 7: I mean, he was drinking chocolate milkshakes a lot, you know,
Speaker 7: he was. He was a boobie to me in a
Speaker 7: lot of ways. You know, I wasn't terrified by him.
Speaker 1: So my last question for you is your parents' legacy,
Speaker 1: and that is when you think about your parents, what
Speaker 1: comes to mind?
Speaker 4: Great love story?
Speaker 1: Right? Your sister said that she thought your fear she
Speaker 1: thought your mother was more talented than your father, and
Speaker 1: he kind of knew it.
Speaker 7: Right Well, it frustrated, similar to Paul and Joanne right binga.
Speaker 7: But but I think the truth of that. I would
Speaker 7: adjust it only slightly by saying, no one could could
Speaker 7: touch Annie on the stage. No one, so in that sense, yes,
Speaker 7: but when it comes to film, maybe not so much.
Speaker 7: Maybe that was Dad's territory more so, that's fair. But
Speaker 7: she was so instinctive. I mean, she was incredible. I
Speaker 7: remember her saying to her once something about improvisation.
Speaker 4: She just went, I hate that. I hate improvisation.
Speaker 7: I said to her, that's because Anne Jackson, your entire
Speaker 7: life is an improv That's how you live your life.
Speaker 7: We mere mortals have to actually train in that, but you,
Speaker 7: that's how you.
Speaker 1: You look forward to coming into a theater. As I
Speaker 1: used to someone said to me, why do you love
Speaker 1: the theater? I said, I know exactly what I'm going
Speaker 1: to say. I know exactly what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: I know exactly how they're going to react. I said,
Speaker 1: that's heaven. To me, for I'm a control freak. That's
Speaker 1: two and a half hours of just pure pleasure for me. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's interesting you say that about the movie and
Speaker 1: the stage thing.
Speaker 4: It's slight different set of muscles.
Speaker 7: And then there are those of us who are lucky
Speaker 7: enough to be able to adjust and do both, which
Speaker 7: has always been for me a joy that I've been
Speaker 7: able to jump between big screen, small screen and the stage.
Speaker 1: I think that you know, with your dad especially, I
Speaker 1: think to myself, because I'm I'm an enormous fan of
Speaker 1: your father, and there are moments of your father's career
Speaker 1: that are just so indelible to me, and he's one
Speaker 1: of the greatest movie actors of all time. Eli Wallack
Speaker 1: was a person who had this power of understanding and
Speaker 1: the character and insight and strength, and none of it
Speaker 1: was at the expense of the.
Speaker 4: End, right. I think that was to both of them.
Speaker 4: They were hugely generous.
Speaker 7: I mean not just as people but also as actors,
Speaker 7: amazingly generous.
Speaker 4: And that's something I hope too.
Speaker 7: I hope I've narrowed in big time because it's important.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: My thanks to ROBERTA and Catherine Wallack. This episode was
Speaker 1: recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. Were produced
Speaker 1: by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoben. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio