That's Why the Lady Is a Lady

"My God, they think I sit about all day with a bloomin' tiara on my head," says Deborah Kerr, "like the woman in the margarine commercial." Smiling wickedly, she looks out the windows of the Ritz Twer suite and waves a pale hand toward Park Avenue, and the Hudson, and all the moviegoers west of it. "Damn it, I am not the dowager empress! But then, they have seen me play all those ladies-in-pearls, so one really can't blame them."
True. Even her Karen Holmes, the abrasive, alcoholic nymphomaniac of "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY," didn't change the public's mind. Before it came "THE HUCKSTERS" and "YOUNG BESS," and after it, "THE KING AND I" and dozens of other films in which Deborah Kerr was, as she puts it, "about as sensual as an oyster," and always seemed, somehow, to be wearing strands of pearls, even when she was not. Her casting was understandable; she is a lady; and movie actresses with breeding are rare as movie executives without suntans. But dowager empress? Ask Frank Sinatra, who was nervous about doing a picture with her ("I believe Frank actually thought he couldn't swear in my resence"), but enjoyed it so much that he has sent her flowers every Mother's Day since, or Robert Mitchum, wh is not known for his rapport with leading ladies but gushes for 10 minutes when her name is mentioned, or Robert Stack, who got through his first Hollywood awards-dinner speech because Deborah, who was seated next to him, noted his nervousness, leaned over and whispered, "Bob, before you start, just look 'em straight in the eye and say to yourself, '----'em!'"
Or ask her directors. Vincente Minnelli, Walter Lang, John Frankenheimer, Elia Kazan - they begin by explaining how much fun a set becomes when she is on it, then quickly add that she has been on sets consistently for 30 years because she can act. Though she has been nominated for six Academy Awards and lost ("I did mind missing that 'S U N D O W N E R S' Oscar"), she has salvaged myriad movies with the depth, dignity and effortless reality she can breathe into a souffle scenario. This winter, soon after her 48th birthday, her 43d film, "THE GYPSY MOTHS," will open, and she has just completed "THE ARRANGEMENT." Elia Kazan, who directed the latter, a screen version of his own autobiographical novel, insisted that no other actress play the character that is really his late wife, Molly.
"Now, if you ask Gadge," says Deborah, leaning forward confidentially, "he'll say that the characters are all fictional, and I don't think that any of us approached the parts as if we were playing actual people, but every so often, as we worked, gadge would say to me, 'Remember how Molly was at a moment like this, how she would just not bend on this particular point?' That's really the way he has always worked with me: he does not get specific about sense memories and so on; instead, we'll sit and recall people we knew, and I'll say, 'Oh, it's the way she was,' and he'll say, 'Yes, that's it, use it!' and you know, Gadge hasn't changed one bit in the years since we first met." She smiles, looking wicked again, and adds, dryly, "If anything, he's more so. He's violent, vivid beyond belief, and utterly brilliant. His genius is his incredible enthusiasm for actors, for that curious thing that makes people act. All of us are either timid, shy and frightened, or very, very extroverted, and Gadge knows exactly how to crack the shell of your timidity, or harness your extroversion. Somehow, he makes you, as an artist, feel - 15 feet tall! For him, I'll play anything. Anything. I've always said, 'Gadge, if it's two lines as the charlady, I'll do it!'"
Her eyes bright, she glances at the parson's table by the sofa, and points to the tea service the waiter has brought. "Elia Kazan," she announces, "could make that teacup act!" Of course her first brush with Kazan was in "Tea and Sympathy," on Broadway. The symbolism of the bit of white china on the table strikes her, and she laughs. "I was terrified of doing that play, and after three days of rehearsal, I said to dear Gadge, 'Let me out of my contract, let me go home!' He simply said no, but when Gadge says no, there is very little more one can say. Opening night, I nearly collapsed. All of show business was out front, not to mention the critics, and I kept saying to myself, '____'em,' but it didn't help. The curtain went up, and I went totally blank. Thank God I had an exit right after the first little bit, to get the tea things.  As soon as I was off, I croaked, 'My God, I'm going to faint!' Well, they stuck my head between my legs and gave me smelling salts and I just kept saying over and over, 'Don't make heavy weather, girl, don't make heavy weather . . . '"
She learned the phrase from her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who headed a drama school in Bristol, and performed the amazing feat of having her first child at the age of 47. "I remember saying to her,  'Good heavens,  Aunt Phyllis, uh, what was it like?'  She simply said, 'Oh well, mustn't make heavy weather of things.'  And those words have always given me confidence,  something I lack profoundly. As a child,  I  was the worst sort of timid,  underweight  washout.  I loathed boarding school,  and  the tapioca  pudding  they  made  us  eat.  I  called  it frog  spawn.  I can't look at frog spawn to this day  without thinking of  boarding  school."
"How often do you look at frog spawn?"
"Oh, all the time, because we have a large pond at home in Switzerland, and in the spring, it's covered with it. At any rate, I studied dance with Aunt Phyllis, and longed to be