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« on: November 10, 2019, 10:14:09 PM »
Another one, originally published in the November 5, 1963 issue of the Philadelphia Daily News.
TITLE: SHE SKIPPED GRATZ HIGH CLASS TO CATCH 'IGUANA' BUS
Shirley Grossman figured that if she cut her last class at Gratz High, she could be at the North Philly Station in time to catch the 2 o'clock train to New York. That way, she could get to Manhattan in time to race to an agent's office, breathlessly hopeful that he might be looking for young dramatic talent.
"There I was," she remembers now, "in skirt and sweater and saddle shoes, running around to all the agencies, never getting anywhere." Shirley Grossman is getting somewhere now. She plays a screechy, vindictive schoolteacher In "Night of the Iguana." It is her first movie. It won't be her last.
Along the way, her name has become Grayson Hall, and the shape of her dreams has altered. "My stage name was Shirley Grayson," she explains. "Then I married Sam Hall, a television writer. He always called me Grayson, instead of Shirley. Well, I then became Grayson Hall."
It sounds like a boys' dormitory, and not even in Hollywood will they call her pretty. She has interesting green eyes, flecked with hazel, and a lean, dedicated face.
Even as a class-cutting, saddle-shoe wearing teenager, she did not dream of being in the movies.
"I dreamed stage dreams," she says. "I went to Temple, and I worked with the Neighborhood Players. Those were great years. Then I went to New York.
"My family was furious. My mother always wanted me to be a teacher. My father screamed and screamed. I thought I'd show them.
"I wound up in a cold-water flat on W. 34th Street, working part-time doing research at Borden's, for $50 a week. I worked hard, day and night, and I wound up with pneumonia.
"They took me to a hospital and treated me for pneumonia and malnutrition and wouldn't let me out until I had gained 10 pounds. After that, my father said, 'Okay, you want to be an actress, go ahead. But at least take some money so you won't starve to death.
"I got a job with Jose Quintero at the Circle in the Square. I thought this was easy. Then, nothing. I never got discouraged though. I always thought about what the next job would be, not about how long it was between jobs.
Recently, she played the madam In "The Balcony." It is a rigorous part, abstract and wildly intense. She played it for 18 months in an off-Broadway theatre and someone told John Huston about her.
He called her in for an interview. "Huston was so nice, so charming," she recalls. "I was so nervous it was pathetic. He sat there and said, Tell me about some of the things you've done.'
"I froze and couldn't think of a thing I'd done. He roared with laughter. He asked me about myself and I couldn't think of anything. All the time he sat there looking at me like I was a plate of chopped liver."
Huston liked what he saw, and she was signed for the "Iguana" teacher role.
"I had never been out of the country before," she said in the lobby of the Hotel Paraiso. "My husband says I've never been south of Atlantic City. So here I was in a strange country, in a foreign situation, making a movie. It's a whole new craft to me.
"I have a big face, and I'm used to moving it. Here, I have to remember to keep my eyebrows still."
She had trouble keeping her stomach still one afternoon, when Huston's lust for realism nearly sent a busload of talent over a cliff.
In the movie, Richard Burton is guiding a busload of school teachers through Mexico. Skip Ward, who once owned a swimming scholarship at SMU, plays the bus driver.
"We were careening down this mountain road," Burton says, "and Huston and the camera were on the bonnet (hood) of the bus.
"Skip could barely see out, and the brakes were wearing thin. Anyway, he spun off the road, and the front wheels were dangling over the side of this cliff.
"Skip said he wanted to back it up. I told him no, just leave It be. The scene calls for a lot of screaming by the women, and we got screaming. I had to help them off the rear of the bus one at a time. One of the lady school teachers fainted, and had to be excused for the rest of the afternoon.
"All Huston did was take a puff on that cigar, and say, 'All right, kids, that was fine.' I get the feeling he was frightened by an actor at one time."
"Yeah," someone suggested. "His father."
Despite the hazards of climate, food, insects and daredevil directors, Grayson Hall is glad she came. Making a first movie with Burton, Ava Gardner, and Deborah Kerr is like a rookie batting fifth behind Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. "I couldn't be In better company," she admits. "The cast couldn't be any more first-rate. Burton has great talent, and he may also be one of the sweetest guys who ever lived.
"Liz Taylor? Well, based on what I heard I was prepared to dislike her. But she and I could be friends. She's so generous. The Actor's Studio in New York needed funds. Someone asked her if she would send a check.
"She wanted to know how much. How can you tell someone how much? So she sent a check, and it was for $10,000. She says she's going to design a dress for me. How will that be for an exclusive?"
When the movie is over, she will have that dress for a souvenir, and some impressions of movie-making she won't be able to tell the graduating class at Gratz High. "There are times," she says, "when I can't believe I'm here. Can you imagine, working with John Huston. Why, he's a legend, a myth. I find myself thinking, how can I call him John?"
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