Before leaving Hollywood behind, MacGraw starred in 1980's Just Tell Me What You Want, which Warner Archive has just released on DVD for the first time. And while the sophisticated romantic comedy didn't strike a chord with audiences in its original release, time has been kind to this hilarious film. The tale of a kept woman (MacGraw) and her billionaire paramour (comedian Alan King) -- and how they learn that love is just another negotiation -- balances literate wit (Cabaret screenwriter Jay Presson Allen adapted her own novel) and outrageous slapstick (MacGraw and King's brawl at Bergdorf Goodman is the stuff of legend).
MacGraw, 72, spoke to Movieline by phone from her home in New Mexico:
You really had not done a lot of comedy at that point...
I had not done a lot of work, period. Let's cut to the chase. And I was lucky enough to be asked to meet [director] Sidney Lumet by his and my agent, the legendary Sue Mengers. She said, "Sidney and Jay Allen are interested in you for this movie," and I said, "Are you kidding?" She said, "You have to meet them; this is the best experience you will ever have, because he's really an actor's director." So I went to meet them, and I guess did some readings and stuff, and his reputation preceded him. They had already won numerous awards, as we know, and I met [Jay] for another project that didn't materialize, and I loved her. She was smart and funny and had great, great taste and education. She was someone I came to be very crazy about.
Sidney was a dream director for any actor, but particularly one like me, who had no education on how to act. And to be surrounded by that level of expertise, from every single member of the cast and crew, and of course led by someone who knew every single thing that he wanted to see and hear on film, so there was nothing accidental going on. It was tremendously well-rehearsed and prepared, and it was an eye-opening experience. I loved every second of it.
It's a very interesting cast -- you've got these Hollywood legends like Myrna Loy and Dina Merrill, an up-and-comer like Peter Weller, and at the center of it all, you were coming off a period of not having worked [McQueen had barred her from doing so during their marriage], and then Alan King, who was mainly known as a stand-up comic.
And then also there was Keenan Wynn, let's not forget, who I was crazy about. It was just inspired casting, in terms of those people, and to be someone with relatively little experience, chucked into the middle of that crowd, was spoiling. They were all so generous and kind and helpful to get whatever they could get out of me, but watching them work was just an inspiration. Because, you know, sometimes you go to work, people have varying degrees of experience, and if, like me, you don't have a lot of experience in terms of acting lessons and so forth, you're flying without a net.
In the case of working with Sidney Lumet, he had prepared us to have the script memorized and to come to New York and start working on what turned out to be three weeks of rehearsal -- this was a luxury beyond anything you can imagine. And the blocking was done after we were all so comfortable working on what he worked on us to do, so he could then bring his lighting guys in and say, "OK, this is where they're going to be moving and walking and sitting -- light it." Usually, it's the opposite: It's all set up, and you pick your way through it, hoping you can hit your mark and say your piece at the same time.
I had no real experience studying acting; I came to it having done other things for a living for many many years, and I have this gigantic respect for experience and technique. In film, there's so many little things where not just the actor can blow his lines, but technically, it doesn't quite come off in the perfect way envisioned. And if you have the intelligence -- which I lacked, at the time -- to take a serious acting study as a priority, you're prepared to come up with your stuff at a time when maybe something else is going wrong. And so I felt very very, very lucky to have gotten that part, because any number of people would have been terrific in it, but the experience was definitely spoiling.
You came to the film having had a couple of relationships with very powerful men who were used to getting their way. Did that inform how you played the character?
Oh no -- you know, it's funny, I don't think so. I think that a certain kind of woman is attracted to... You know, power is very attractive to some of us. I don't know whether it's true now, but certainly it was true then, and it's not to pass comment on the two major men in my life, for sure. But I bought the story, I bought the relationship, I thought that Jay had written a very clear and very smart script about people who are all three-dimensional, even more so when they were played by such intelligent, complicated human beings. So I guess I should say that I joined a family and believed everything that was done.
It was easy enough to... I mean, Alan King was an enormously attractive man. Besides being incredibly funny and smart, he was sexy. It wasn't hard to imagine having a big crush on him; it wasn't a stretch. We have sort of a stereotypical idea of what's supposed to be a typical leading man. Alan was as much a joy to be paired off with as any I ever had. I love his performance, and it reminds me of a couple of people I know. He was a very smart actor, and he and Sidney were friends and very clearly connected, and I watched that performance develop over our many scenes together, and it was a tremendous learning experience. Imagine the luck of getting to work with Myrna Loy! Oh my God.
Were you guys able to hang out between scenes?
I love the phrase "hanging out," in a way, but when everybody is at that level, and they were brilliant, this handful of actors, we were having a lovely time, but we were working. There are certain instances where everybody waits for seven or eight hours while they get the sunset shot right, but this was in New York City: "Time is money, we're all ready, we're all rehearsed, now we're gonna do it." Which I loved.
Of course the iconic sequence for this film would have to be your tussle with Alan King at Bergdorf Goodman. How choreographed was all that?
Two-three-kick, four-five-six-slap, seven-eight-nine-raincoat -- it was as specific as a dance sequence. And I will tell you an incredibly funny story: I had a wonderful mother, who was, at the time, very recently a widow, very bright, terrific values, not at all sure what her daughter was doing in the movies with that education. And we were staying in a hotel near Bergdorf's; that's where I lived in New York. I said to her, "Would you have any mild curiosity about watching the shooting today?" She was way too smart to sit around and watch take 47 of three lines of dialogue, you know? So we walked over, and the scene started, and there she was in hat and gloves, they put her near the camera. She was not a dear little old lady; she was a really smart, very accomplished intellectual, cool lady. We get through the whole thing, trying not to laugh, of course. I think Alan was hoping to God that I wouldn't give him the lethal kick by mistake. And the thing was over and my mother said to me -- the only comment she ever made, in my whole career, which had been going on for some time -- "Dear, I had no idea you worked so hard." [Laughs] Isn't that great?
And I also remember one moment of terrible panic, because I have a terrible throwing arm. When I would ask my son, when he was growing up, "Do you want to go outside and throw the baseball?", he'd say, "No, no thanks, Mom." When they handed me that perfume bottle and said hit that pyramid, I just hoped to God I would hit it because that's how bad my throw is. But it really is a fabulous scene. That's Sidney. He choreographed that scene. We trashed the bottom floor of Bergdorf's, and it was as much fun as it's possible to have while making a movie.
And he's certainly one of the quintessential New York directors.
Oh, yeah! And I'm a New Yorker, and working in New York was divine for me. I loved working there, and going to work there, which I've been able to do three or four times in my career, and I just love it. It's my favorite.
You're out west now, though, right?
I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I travel a tremendous amount, I'm in New York and California a lot, but then also I like faraway places a lot.
I know you've gotten very involved with yoga and with animal rights activism in recent years. Do you miss the industry at all?
Well, "the industry," I was never connected with, although I was married to the head of production [at Paramount]. But it wasn't my scene. I don't mean it deprecatingly; I have a more mixed bag of friends and acquaintances, some of whom are in the film business, but more of them aren't. And I don't think I miss it at all right now. I go to the movies all the time, and I live in a city that probably has more extraordinary foreign and independent films than anywhere in the country -- [except] maybe San Francisco and New York. It's very, very rich, and I'm very dazzled by those early filmmakers who were primarily interested in the story and the emotional life and less in whether there was a tie-in with Burger King or a Mattel made-in-China doll that looks like the leading lady. I mean, it's not my idea of the art form.
I'm dazzled by the people that make great movies, every one of them, whether it's the cinematographer, the person who does the music, the director, the writer. And the sense that it takes a whole community to make a masterpiece. I know enough people in all those other parts of the film industry to know that they know when it's really working, even if they're not the actor, even if they might be the head grip. There's a sense on the set when something is really working, and in that sense, I love the art form. But the business, politics and God knows, the media frenzy and privacy invasion, I don't miss whatsoever.
You did do the Love Story reunion on Oprah this year, and there was the implication that you and Ryan O'Neal might consider dating.
Oh, that was a whole bunch of... That kind of stunned me, because Oprah is a great place to say something important, it really is. She's so bright and she has such a serious version of what she wanted to do with pop television and she succeeded, that to waste time on stuff like that annoyed me. Really, one of the things I wanted to say on Oprah -- because she's a person who's done such extraordinary service, and that's part of her message, and it's something I feel very strongly about -- we had so much room to talk about what are we doing with our lives now as opposed to rehashing a 40-year-ago adventure. So all of that silly nonsense was time-wasting, as far as I was concerned.
Given the platform, of the things you're involved with now, what would you have most liked to discuss?
What I really would like to just say is that anything we do for other people, no matter how small, counts. It's incredible -- people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and his wife, this model they have done for mega-help. It's moved me to tears that they've done this. But those of us who don't operate at that level can still change the world. We're at a moment now where we have to. On every level: environmentally, in terms of sexual misunderstanding, in terms of our commitment to peace and our commitment to quality of life all over the planet, and so on. And I live in a community where this is a really big piece of why we live here. So I just thought, you know, it's great if you have an extra bunch of millions, and it's fabulous, but my mother taught me that if we don't have anything, and we can come up with a dollar, that it goes into that bigger pool of community and changes the world. And that's what I wanted to say.
It's so easy to perceive of a big movie star, whether now or then, and imagine that it's all about money and power and cars and planes and all that stuff. But the power that it gives you to try to set an example is enormous. God knows Oprah has done it, and I believe that's the way those of us given some sort of break need to operate, because there's so many people who live such suffering lives with no sunshine in them. Nobody's clapping when they come into the room. It's a question of priorities. I don't believe, as fast as things are moving now, and as saturated as we are in a kind of vulgar pop media that concentrates on celebrity and not much else, that I think we all have a responsibility to say, "Hold on a second -- how's the public school doing in your community?" I just think every little bit changes the face of our world. There's this cynicism now, and this grayness, and I'm just sick of it. I think the biggest drug of the last hundred years is celebrity, and people are just stoned on it.
Well, you've talked about the idea of celebrities being role models, and I'd argue that one of your most impressive achievements is showing that there's life away from the spotlight.
A great life! A great, rich, adventuresome, human-scale life. Of course! And there are many many people who have figured this out, but unfortunately, when the Kool-Aid is passed around, a lot of people just get loaded on it, and some really important stuff gets lost. And lives get lost, which is the saddest part. If you're not ready to live when the clapping stops, you've got a real problem. And it does stop, unless you continue to seek out being the center of attention, and then, I guess, it goes on a little longer.
I feel like the people on Celebrity Rehab are more addicted to the camera that's in their face than they ever were to booze or drugs.
There's no question at all. Oh God, that [show]'s just disgraceful! So if, because they all do have substance abuse problems, if they don't go into a situation where nobody treats them specially, where they realize they're just part of the human race, they're not gonna get sober. And that's the really heartbreaking thing. To make a quote, "good show" out of somebody's meltdown, God, it's like throwing the gladiators to the lions. I think it's appalling. It's disgusting, and honestly, there are so many rehabs now that are just about making money. Lives are being lost. Anyway, that's another subject.
I think I'm a very lucky woman. I've had this astonishing career for someone who has no background preparing me for it. And the miracle of working with people like the ones I worked with on Just Tell Me What You Want, and an agent smart enough to say this is something you should be lucky enough to do ... I'm very lucky. This doesn't happen to a lot of people.
Well, thank you for your time, and for taking me on your 30-year-old adventure.
No, I think it's longer... Oh it is 30, right. The other one's 40. That's surreal to me -- I'm not being coy, but... [Whispers] These are really scary numbers. [Laughs] I mean, because it's sort of easier to say one's age than to say, "Forty years ago..." and you know you weren't peering through the bars of your crib.