of me knew better, I bought that point of view. My mother made it easy to buy, especially in the early days before the Rosses got horrible. The Rosses laughed, life was happier at their place, eating dinner out every night was fabulous, at least at first, and on the other side was a woman out of Kafka. They didn’t have to do much to diminish her. My mother was giving the Rosses their ammunition; she loaded every gun for them.
Also, my mother was a willing victim a lot of the time. She didn’t want to be poor, she wanted to be taken care of. Her weakness was that it was at almost any price, and that price included me. The Rosses saw to it that there was always some cash for Mrs. Duke, and Mrs. Duke would take her cash and go away, Even now she sometimes says things like, “I was her mother. I deserved some of that.” A lot of stage mothers have that attitude; it’s not unique to mine. But it’s more like a sibling attitude than what I think a mother’s should be.
It took me a long time to realize the resentment I had against my mother. I was angry at her on the most important level there is, at the very bottom of my soul, and I think I had a right to be angry. A parent makes an unspoken agreement with a kid: “You’re here. I got you here. Now I’m going to take care of you.” The expectation isn’t, “Oh, by the way, there are these two people who live on Seventy-fourth Street who are going to make you an actress, but you have to go live with them and they’re going to take care of you—even though you’ve already given your allegiance to me, your mom.”
And my mother still expected my loyalty. When the Rosses weren’t around, she would say, “I’m your mother, and I never see you. I’m your mother, and I told you to do this. I’m your mother …” It wasn’t in me to say then what I feel now, which is, “What are you talking about? I didn’t put me here. You did. I didn’t invite the Rosses into my life. You did.” When my mother was emotionally ill and needed to be hospitalized, she’d always say, “Don’t let them lock me up.” And the anger I felt came from the fact that she had lockedme up. Turning me over to the Rosses was like taking me to Bellevue and throwing away the key.
The Rosses coached other kids besides me and my brother, and occasionally they’d have four or five of us there of a night. That was fun, like the Hollywood Canteen, with all the actor kids hanging out together. But a kind of attrition took place for two reasons. One was that once my success started to happen, the Rosses’ energies grew so focused on me that the other kids just fell away. The other was that these kids, like Joey Trent, the gorgeous boy from the Beanie-Weanie commercial, came from very strong families: there was no way that kid was going to live with anybody but his mother and father, no matter how much the Rosses claimed it was hampering his career. The same thing happened with Susan Melvin, a quite talented little girl whose mother was one of the few people who would say, “What are you doing, John and Ethel? This is weird. My kid is not gonna stay here. She has a home. Tell me where you want her and I’ll bring her there, but I’m not leaving her here.”
The only kid who stayed over at all regularly was a little boy named Billy McNally whom the Rosses discovered shining shoes in front of the Metropole on Broadway near Times Square. His family was also very poor, so the Rosses struck up the same kind of agreement with them that they had with my mother, and Billy came to live with us. He was about two years younger than me, and I adored him because I wasn’t alone anymore, I had a colleague, somebody my own age who also thought the Rosses were a little nuts. When they’d go to bed at night we’d get together and whisper. “What’d they say about this?” “What’d they say about that?” “Can you believe what she did?” Billy stayed with us until he reached that “awkward
Also, my mother was a willing victim a lot of the time. She didn’t want to be poor, she wanted to be taken care of. Her weakness was that it was at almost any price, and that price included me. The Rosses saw to it that there was always some cash for Mrs. Duke, and Mrs. Duke would take her cash and go away, Even now she sometimes says things like, “I was her mother. I deserved some of that.” A lot of stage mothers have that attitude; it’s not unique to mine. But it’s more like a sibling attitude than what I think a mother’s should be.
It took me a long time to realize the resentment I had against my mother. I was angry at her on the most important level there is, at the very bottom of my soul, and I think I had a right to be angry. A parent makes an unspoken agreement with a kid: “You’re here. I got you here. Now I’m going to take care of you.” The expectation isn’t, “Oh, by the way, there are these two people who live on Seventy-fourth Street who are going to make you an actress, but you have to go live with them and they’re going to take care of you—even though you’ve already given your allegiance to me, your mom.”
And my mother still expected my loyalty. When the Rosses weren’t around, she would say, “I’m your mother, and I never see you. I’m your mother, and I told you to do this. I’m your mother …” It wasn’t in me to say then what I feel now, which is, “What are you talking about? I didn’t put me here. You did. I didn’t invite the Rosses into my life. You did.” When my mother was emotionally ill and needed to be hospitalized, she’d always say, “Don’t let them lock me up.” And the anger I felt came from the fact that she had lockedme up. Turning me over to the Rosses was like taking me to Bellevue and throwing away the key.
The Rosses coached other kids besides me and my brother, and occasionally they’d have four or five of us there of a night. That was fun, like the Hollywood Canteen, with all the actor kids hanging out together. But a kind of attrition took place for two reasons. One was that once my success started to happen, the Rosses’ energies grew so focused on me that the other kids just fell away. The other was that these kids, like Joey Trent, the gorgeous boy from the Beanie-Weanie commercial, came from very strong families: there was no way that kid was going to live with anybody but his mother and father, no matter how much the Rosses claimed it was hampering his career. The same thing happened with Susan Melvin, a quite talented little girl whose mother was one of the few people who would say, “What are you doing, John and Ethel? This is weird. My kid is not gonna stay here. She has a home. Tell me where you want her and I’ll bring her there, but I’m not leaving her here.”
The only kid who stayed over at all regularly was a little boy named Billy McNally whom the Rosses discovered shining shoes in front of the Metropole on Broadway near Times Square. His family was also very poor, so the Rosses struck up the same kind of agreement with them that they had with my mother, and Billy came to live with us. He was about two years younger than me, and I adored him because I wasn’t alone anymore, I had a colleague, somebody my own age who also thought the Rosses were a little nuts. When they’d go to bed at night we’d get together and whisper. “What’d they say about this?” “What’d they say about that?” “Can you believe what she did?” Billy stayed with us until he reached that “awkward
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