SECTION ONE
PAGE FOURTEEN
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-THREE, SEPTEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
AMERICA'S
ANSWER TO BARDOT
THE YOUNG JANE FONDA
XIV.
It was during her run in Invitation to a March that
Jane began to feel herself being drawn closer to Voutsinas.
"All her other relationships, they had been too
quick, like striking a match," he told me. "So as quick as quick as
the match burns, it goes out. We grew together slowly."
Jane
thinks their romance will last a long time.
"Andreas," she said, "Andreas is the kind
of person who, when be lived over in a cold water flat, he had, no icebox.
So he saved his money from unemployment to g out and buy an icebox and he
came with a Venetian mirror. He never got an icebox.
No icebox, but he had a Venetian mirror.
I remember when I first saw Andreas in class with Susan,
he had a big mustache and he wore T-shirts and very tight pants and I thought he
was a sailor, and I used to think to myself, 'Well, I'll say one thing he
looks clean, anyway.' He always looked so clean, he was always so well dressed,
but he was always with Susan. And
then he did a scene with Susan in class, and he was very good.
"As
a matter of fact, he kind of took the scene away from her. Then I kind of met
him around Lee's---l remember New Year's Eve, and he was with Annie Bancroft.
And I used to see them together, and as far as I was concerned then, anybody
that was close to Annie Bancroft really knew what he was talking about, and he
used to compliment me, so I was always very flattered.
"He
showed interest. He used to ask me how the play was going and he thought I'd
be good for the part and so on and so forth.
And then the path of the Strasbergs and the class and just life brought
us together more frequently. And
then came a time when he was going to direct me in a play in summer stock called
No Concern of Mine and I must say he made me very nervous.
"He
wouldn't just let things be, I mean he'd always have to get analytical. I mean
he always had to become very personal. It
made uncomfortable because I didn't dig it and I didn't know whether I trusted
him or not. And yet the thing that I kind of liked was I was not very
happy at the time and every time Andreas was around I always felt comfortable in
another way, I always felt, "Well, he can take care of the situation.' And
then we did the play together and I mean my feeling for him was as a friend who
made me a little uncomfortable and as a director whom I admired, but his
directing was highly personal.
"On
the one hand it would make me angry and on the other hand, I would respond to it
and on the third hand, as I said to him once, it made me feel like. . .mainly
because I hadn't been able to really talk to anybody, I mean I really hadn't
carried on a conversation with anybody for such a long time and there's a
particular way he has of talking.
. .and I said to him, "You make me feel like I would imagine a mad person in a
sanitarium must feel when they're put into a warm whirlpool bath.
Being with him was like being in a whirlpool bath."
To
which Voutsinas added:
"Very
symbolically, at the time she told me this, the taxi was going right down in a
tunnel. It was very funny. It
was the Park Avenue tunnel and the taxi was going right down, ssssssshhhhhhew!"
"And then," Jane said, "he
did my audition with me at the Actor's Studio and that was at a time when I felt
pretty bad about my acting. My
confidence was not too good and I guess it was the way we worked together and we
became very close and I got sick and he took care of me.
"Well, part of it was psychosomatic
and part of it was that I had the flu, but the flu raged to a 105 degree
temperature because there was a final audition coming up and because there was
the Actor's Studio Benefit coming up and Invitation to a March, both of
which I was terrified of.
"I got really sick and he took care of
me and then I got offered the part in Walk on the Wild Side I asked
Andreas if he would come with me because I didn't want to go to Hollywood
because I was frightened and because the last experience had been so unhappy,
and that's how the rest of it started. I
must say that wise people had always told me that good relationships begin
slowly and up until then I'd always had relationships that were, you know, like.
. .you know what I mean, you can say it, I can't say it, And they're right.
When something grows it's got much more, it's tangible, it's got depth, it's
got meaning, it's something that you know and you can sense."
They
are both undergoing psychotherapy, one of several common experiences that
continue to bind them even more tightly, although their friends say that
Voutsinas' embrace has given her much more security than any analyst's couch.
"Jane
never knew how to relax until she met Andreas," said Madeline Sherwood.
"She never had any discipline, either."
Jane
herself told me,
"He's changed me more than analysis. He
saved me a lot of money in analysis, I think."
After
a party in her apartment last Christmas Eve, for example, Jane told me:
"There
were people in this room that I think I really love.
But one year ago, I didn't give a damn, I mean I didn't have any friends.
Out of choice, not out of necessity.
I just didn't care about people," a confession which helps explain
why the mere mention of her name brings such disdain In Hollywood.
"But now I realize," she added, "that there are people,
all kinds of different people, that I really care about." ##
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