Lights, Camera, Angst

just an ordinary old camera. An inanimate object. But if it could speak, what stories it might tell.

It went everywhere, from Rosalyn Carter’s hotel room to a leper colony, from George Bush’s office to Al Capone’s old hide-out (when I interviewed Muhammad Ali, whose home it is now).

It knew I was a writer, not a photographer, but it was often asked to take photos to accompany my articles even if I was so mechanically challenged my husband had to load the film. And it never told a soul.

It kept its mouth shut, as it rested on my bra, that day I went to the outdoor set of “The Great Waldo Pepper.” After I finished interviewing Robert Redford, it sat quietly as I said to him, “Look, I have to tell you something. You’re not supposed to bring a camera onto a movie set unless you belong to the union.” I reached under my sweater, and my bosom immediately became two sizes smaller, as out it came.

“Secondly,” I said sheepishly, “I hear you’re a real prima donna when it comes to having your picture taken. They say you always insist on being shot from only one angle, and that you have to have final approval on all your photographs.

“Number three,” I said, “you’re all messed up from doing those stunts on the wing of the airplane by yourself. You look awful.

“And,” I hesitated, “number four. I’m the world’s worst photographer. Now, would you do me a favor? Would you step outside the trailer with me, go into the woods behind a tree where no one can see us, and--would you let me take your picture?”

Without saying a word, he got up, motioned for me to follow him into the woods and allowed his picture to be taken from behind the trunk of a huge tree. It appeared six weeks later as a cover piece on a magazine that went to 1 million homes. And, of course, it was the worst and ugliest picture of him ever published.

I remember how my hands shook as I took the camera from my bag after I interviewed ex-gangster Mickey Cohen soon after he was released from the penitentiary. “You’re not going to take my picture with that,” he said.

“These are my orders, Mickey. But that’s not all,” I said, as I took a pretty little tea rose from my blouse pocket. “My editor wants me to take you smelling this.”

He took the delicate pink rose in his coarse leathery hand, and as he smelled it, a curious look came onto his face, as if this were the craziest thing he had ever done in his life.

But the strangest thing that ever happened with this camera was with Jacques Cousteau. The entire two hours it took to interview him, instead of looking at him as he spoke, I kept my eyes glued on my camera. I didn’t know where else to look. The poor man had just gotten off the “Today Show” with his fly open. And I didn’t want to tell him until after the interview, because I felt it might upset him and stifle our talk.

Later, as I focused the camera on him, I said, “Monsieur, may I ask you just one more question? Did you go to the bathroom between the time you got off of national television here and the time you met me?”

“You American journalists ask the most ridiculous questions,” he said, bursting out laughing. “Women particularly. But I have to tell you that this is the most ridiculous question of all. Now may I ask you a question, madam? What’s it your business when I go to the bathroom?”

“I’ve my reasons, monsieur,” I said, winking, pointing to his you know what.

“Oops,” he said, as the camera caught him with his mouth open.

Margaret Mead was the most patient person with both my camera and me, as she stood there leaning on her cane early one windy morning. Yet for some unknown reason, no pictures came out. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have the patience of Margaret Mead. He looked so important and stately as he sat there in his black suit, as his eyes darted apprehensively back and forth at the camera and me. Finally, after my jumbling and tumbling too long, he called the Universal Studios publicity department to get us some old photos.

Jimmy Connors sized up the situation immediately. “You don’t look as if you know how to work that thing,” he said.

“I don’t,” I answered. “But I have an editor who says he has me do this because he likes the spontaneity of my photos. But if you ask me, I think he’s too cheap to hire a real photographer.”

“Just tell him that I ran the hell away from you, and I just wouldn’t let you take my picture,” he said, jumping up and running toward the tennis court. Without quite realizing what I was doing, the camera and I started dashing after him, and the camera snapped a shot of Connors racing away. The photo ended up on the cover of the Detroit News Sunday Magazine.

Jimmy Stewart was very stilted. I just couldn’t get him to relax. He stood there as if he were about to be shot with a gun. I had interviewed Evel Knievel that morning. Evel hadn’t liked me. He’d sensed that I wasn’t really impressed with his masculinity. Afraid of what I was going to write and to enhance his image, he had given an anatomical assessment of a certain part of his body, and he had immodestly indicated that his was the world’s longest. So I related the story to Stewart, to loosen him up.

“Uh, uh, uh--he told you that? He actually said that?” Stewart said. And before he realized it, the camera started clicking away, capturing the silliest smile that had ever appeared on Jimmy Stewart’s face.

Warren Beatty had just finished a three-hour in-depth interview. “Now you have to let me take your picture,” I said.

“Says who?” he said. “Nobody takes my picture.”

“OK, so I’m nobody.”

Next thing I knew, he grabbed my hand, and outside we went. (I never learned how to use a flash.) As I started focusing, he said, “Hey, the sun is supposed to be in back of you, not in back of me. I’m not sure how this is going to come out,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I tried to assure him. “You’re a good-looking man.”

“Yeah. And I want to stay that way,” he said emphatically.

There were many who wouldn’t let me come near them with my camera. I tried to shoot Mickey Rooney as he was racing around his dressing room wearing just his underpants, about to change into his street clothes after appearing onstage in Chicago.

Then there was Mae West. As I entered her plush apartment, two bodyguards let me know in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to interview Mae, I had better hand over both my tape recorder and camera. So the interview took place while the camera sat in the corner, sulking with the tape recorder.

George C. Scott also gave me a hard time. He didn’t like my questions. After the interview, I started shooting some pictures. “Enough is enough.” his public relations man said, whisking us both out of the room.

I liked Bette Davis. She was very intelligent, honest and quite blunt. “Look, when you get to be my age,” she said, “you don’t let people take your picture unless you feel they really know what they’re doing. And I don’t get that feeling with you.” So she had the studio send my editor some photographs of her.

Lucille Ball was the same. “Be truthful with me,” she said, looking into my eyes, “you aren’t really comfortable with that thing, are you?” I shook my head yes, showing my ineptness, as the camera, feeling quite rejected, was put back into its case.

I tried to take a picture of Fred Astaire dancing. He said that he’d talk to me as long as I wanted and answer any question I’d throw at him, but no way was he going to let me take his picture, standing still or dancing.

Then there was that time with Norman Lear. It was right before he left for work at 6:30 in the morning, in the backyard of his Brentwood home. Unlike Archie Bunker, he wasn’t at all condescending. He tried his very utmost to be patient as I stood, red in the face and flustered, with sweat oozing from my forehead. When I focused, all I could see was black.

I checked the camera. The right light. The right speed and setting. The sun was in back of me. His wife came outside and told him his chauffeur was waiting. “Uh, dear,” he said to me, “I really have to go now.”

“Please, please,” I said, “just a minute more. Something must be wrong with this camera. It worked yesterday.”

“Uh, dear,” he repeated with a smile now on his face. “May I make one little suggestion?”

I looked up.

“It might help if you took off the lens cover.”

I’ve just completed writing a book and haven’t been doing much interviewing lately. And I haven’t had much use for this camera. So yesterday I gave it to my son, Warren. He’s a real estate negotiator and can use it in his work. Eventually, I’ll buy a newer model, something much simpler and easier to use, with not as many complicated gadgets.

Life keeps changing, and you have to go along with the new, I keep telling myself. Yet giving something away doesn’t mean that you have to give away your memories too.