Helen Hayes - On Reflection: An Autobiography

Copyright 1968 by Helen Hayes and Sandford Dody All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-54122 Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-59077-289-8

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N ATIONAL B OOK N ETWORK

M Y DEAR G RANDCHILDREN ,

At this writing, it is no longer fashionable to have Faith; but your grandmother has never been famous for her chic, so she isnt bothered by the intellectual hemlines. I have always been concerned with the whole, not the fragments; the positive, not the negative; the words, not the spaces between them. I loved and married my Charlie, your grandfather, because he was both poem and poet. What wonders he could work with words.

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before another. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings.

No one can tell me that mans presence on earth isnt expectedeven announced. Because the magi come to each new babe and offer up such treasures as to dazzle the imagination. For what are jewels and spices and caskets of gold when compared with the minds and hearts of great men?

What can a grandmother offer in the midst of such plenty? I wondered. With the feast of millenia set before you, the saga of all mankind on your bookshelf, what could I give youJims children? And then I knew. Of course. My own small footnote. The homemade bread at the banquet. The private joke in the divine comedy. Your roots.

This, then, is the grandmothers special gifta bridge to your past. It goes back, of course, to the beginning of time, but I cannot give it substance until my entrance. After all, I am the star.

I arrived with the century but, like the rest of mans history, mine begins with the Fall. I arrivedHelen Hayes Brown didon the tenth of October, 1900, in Washington, D. C. Center stage, of course. Part of the first harvest, I was in plenty of time for Thanksgiving and looking back on a lifetime filled with the usual quota of pain and guilt and might-have-been, I still offer up a loud hosanna. Its been marvelous. Yes. I came with the century and I believe always in leaving with my escort. It would be nice if it can be managed. I dont want to miss a thing.

Heaven knows my life hasnt always been wise and faultless. It is a pastiche made up of opposites, of lethargy and bossiness, of pride and guilt, of discipline and frivolity. It hasnt always been a model and worthy of imitation, but it was round and it was real and I lived it all greedily.

Your grandmother is an actress who has spent her working life pretending to be gay or sad, hoping that the audience felt the same. More often than not I succeeded. Offstage, I was not always in such control. The technique of living is far more elusive. Alas! One does her best and, like Thornton Wilders Mrs. Antrobus, I have survived.

Cast by the fates as Helen Hayes, I have played the part for all its worth. Child, maiden, sweetheart, wife, and now grandmother. We play many parts in this world and I want you to know them allfor together they make the whole. Trials and errors, hits and misses, I have enjoyed my life, children, and I pray you will, too.

This book is yours, Charlie and Mary; and I leave it in trust for you to be read only when you have reached your maturity. For this is not a fairy story but a tale of grownups who often acted like children, which is quite another thing. It is sometimes called farce and ofttimes tragedy. The combination makes the twin mask which is the symbol of the theatre in which I have spent my years.

And soin highlights and shadows, bits and pieces, in recalled moments, mad scenes and acts of follyall chiaroscuro and confettithis is what it was like to be me, all the mes; what it was like to live in such exciting times and know so many of the men and women who made it so.

What are little grandchildren made of?

Some good and some bad from Mother and Dad
And laughs and wails and Grandmothers tales.

I love you.

G RAMMY

A CTORS cannot choose the manner in which they are bom. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

In reality, one does not always frown with displeasure or grin with delight. Misery and joy are fleeting emotions, often too swift to be captured, caged, and labeled. But the actor must insure audience recognition as well as approval, and there is a language with which he communicates. He is an artist and he is artful. I am afraid that this becomes second nature and it carries over to the actors life. We search desperately for truth, we actors, and then we improve on it.

In physical torture the actor remembers to look agonized. In ecstasy he quickly becomes wild-eyed with abandon. Even that ultimate moment of truththe act of dyingcan become a farewell performance in the hands of the dedicated who have been known so to extend and postpone a final exit that it becomes truly a cross to be borne by fellow actors and spectators alike.

If this sounds like ridicule, then I must share it. I am an actress and there are times when the superimposition of an emotion has double-exposed the genuine article. Most actors are the same. Relationships, casual or intimate, are frequently played out as they might be in theatre, heightened, dramatized, staged with echoes of past dialogue and gestures that corrupt the spontaneity. Of course, without a prepared script, others do not always react as expected. They dont always pick up their cues. It is then that there is real drama and hell to pay.

We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was. I recalled Barries Maggie Shand in What Every Woman Knows. I had acted her with fine success and decided that my marriage was going to be an even greater triumph. There was no source material too remote, no detail too smallwhether observed in others or gleaned from literaturenot to be incorporated into the characterization. Heaven knows, I adored Charlie. My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.

I approached maternity in much the same way. The golden fruit of a marriage made in heaven wasnt enough for me. I decided that Whistlers Mother was going to seem like Medea when compared to the perfection of my motherhood. I studied the character and started to draw my portraithalf Olympias and half Mary Cassatt. The mother to mother them all. No matter how real the emotion, the habit of acting is hard to break. If you are a star, then it follows that you must twinkle mightily. There is a price for stardom and, unfortunately, ones family shares in the payment.

By the very nature of my position, I always seem to be center stage, even when I dont wish it. Well, there are worse places to be, and its a great part. Surely my longest run. But there are occasions when I look at myself in the glass and wonder where the original Helen isbefore she was handed the manuscriptthe unrehearsed Helenand then I wonder whether indeed there ever was one.

There must have been a time when I was unquestionably authenticthe real McCoy. Before I started playing my repertoire of roles. How far back can a body go? Through how many stage doors and alleyways and yellowing programs? How do I find the source?

My first recollection.... The beginning as I remember it.... My mother came home.