Marsha Mason on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse (Season 10 Ep 12)

not only was she married to writer Neil Simon she also took many of his plays to the big screen starring an award-winning films the goodbye girl Chapter two and only when I laugh her other film hits include Cinderella liberty heartbreak ridge and nick of time and she has found a comfortable place working on television with guest arcs on series like fraser army wives and the middle outside of showbiz she's a successful businesswoman having sold herbs wholesale to companies locally and regionally before starting a line of wellness bath and body products called resting in the river hello i'm ernie manouse coming up on interviews our conversation with Golden Globe winner and four-time Oscar nominee Marsha Mason do you find that certain characters stay with you after you're done with them it depends on the emotional content of the story for example when I was doing a play called Amazing Grace and again when I did Hecuba in Chicago those were really heavy emotional roles so the being able to sort of come down from those kinds of performances is a little tough and also your body feels that even if your minds already to let go you it's still sort of in your body and you you have to work out um it depends on you know what's required but an amazing grace for example it was based on a true story about the first woman who was actually executed on death row and so I had to be in a certain position for a long period of time and then with Hecuba because it was Greek tragedy there was a lot of big sort of emotional responses and those sit in your body for a while and so you have to kind of work those out and and also you just physically get tired I mean doing theater is I think Laurence Olivier said it it's like one of the biggest athletic experiences you can pass and especially the big shows you know like Shakespeare are when I did all's well in Washington DC the same thing so if you're acting a particular emotional scene yeah do you think your body knows the difference between truly experiencing it and performing it you are physically I mean I can only speak for myself I don't know you know what an actor who might have a completely different technique than I do in terms of how they approach a role they might have a completely different experience but for example I mean you just I it isn't as if you're making believe because you're in that sense you're in that emotional recall you're in that state for that period of time now you know of course that you can shrug it off after you finish but you your body doesn't it was still going to record or feel it the same way as if you were truly experiencing it have you learned your craft or are you still learning it oh that's interesting I was just thinking about that the other day actually when I was on the plane coming here I hope that I continue to work on it because after a while there's a certain part of your technique that that kind of comes automatically that's why it's important to continue working so if I'm not doing a movie or television then I I want to do theater because also those parts tend to be more challenging now at my age then say television or even film in terms of what I'm asked to do so it's very important to be able to keep yourself it's like you're a it's like you're a 12 you know horsepower engine there so you have to keep it well-oiled and functioning hmm talking about cars I want to take you all the way back though wonder the theater bug bite you my freshman year of high school really nothing before that well my my parents told me a story that when I was very young like around I don't know six or seven something like that they used to call me Sarah because I was so demonstrative and emotional and that was after sarah bernhardt but I don't have any real sense although I did have a very lively imagination yeah what was it that called you to this profession it was I was doing I was sort of I was playing a jack-in-the-box and some sort of Christmas show in the gymnasium of the high school that I went to and I had to pop up from the box plywood box at a certain cue and music or whatever and so I did it not knowing I just was more concerned about being hot in the box and then having to pop up on cue but when I popped up there was a whole several rows of small children in the front of the audience and they all went oh and that was it yeah did you want it to be theater did you know what exactly you wanted to perform yeah I mean I always assumed it was just theater the whole movie experience and television experience came much later I never really considered myself for a film I tried to go out to Hollywood once to visit some friends in Beverly Hills and the place so scared me that I came running back to New York so I wouldn't say that necessarily it was my first choice but then after I finished I was doing a television show called dr. Kildare for a friend of mine who I had worked with a stage director and so they said go down to LA and meet the agents down there and so forth and so on so I did and that trip was completely different and I felt totally at ease of course I made a dry run to the theaters before I mean to the studios before I had to go but then it was you know then it was just destiny that caused all the rest of it did you find once you started doing film work and television work that you approached it differently than theater work No partly because I believe the first two directors I had having been actors made a complete difference Paul Mazursky and Mark Riedel were the first two movie directors that I worked with on the first two films and I shot them both within the same year and they they had the dot they had a way of vocabulary of speaking to an actor they understood the process it's part of the problem I think with some young independent filmmakers who don't have the vocabulary or experience to understand how to communicate with an actor so I always tell them or young screenwriters everybody should direct once everybody should act once and everybody should write once because once you do it it doesn't have to be published doesn't have to be seen but you you gain a kind of respect for that particular discipline and you have a better understanding of the difficulties that that the other person is going through and also how to communicate your ideas taking your imagination and your ideas from your head and being able to communicate them to the individuals so that you get the results you want now of course we know you've acted I know you've directed have you written yes I wrote a memoir but I haven't written this probably yet yes creepily no I haven't written this is that I didn't you summer I think so yeah I'm gonna I'm thinking about it okay let me take you back at Dark Shadows oh my gosh you really aren't going back isn't that trippy and I think they're gone yeah yeah what are your memories of Dark Shadows uh well first of all it was archaic black and white you know I don't think we even had makeup people or anything then and it was on that series that famous series and I played at that time it was a word that I did I had to look up the word they said she was a doc see and I didn't do X ie I had no idea what that was and then I found out of course that she was a prostitute I guess around the docks and they called them dachsies or something so I had to have some kind and I become a vampire so I had to have those teeth and I tease my hair up in some really weird way we kind of spikes and all kinds of stuff I mean I don't know whatever happened to that footage I'm hopefully it's just disintegrated on the floor severed you say that about other flash - the very first movie oh no one of your shining moments you don't think well actually um I don't think it was too bad hopefully you know but um it was a pretty you know sophomoric kind of black and white picture but it was again a round car because it took place around demolition derby and I played the bad girl I almost get raped but I hit the guy over the head with a rock now Cinderella Liberty pretty early in your career you get to that point and then the wonderful response it gets yeah as a young actor what goes through your mind at a point like that well Oscar nomination yes you know in some ways the MA so much was going on in my life at that moment that I didn't have a chance really to absorb a lot of the sheer pleasure of it because I was doing a play the good doctor I had met Neil Simon the first day of rehearsal we had gotten married three weeks later and then that was the same period of time while I was doing the show that I was nominated for a Golden Globe and I won and I couldn't go and Marc accepted for me and and so I I didn't have a real clear sense of what it meant and also the Oscars were a much more lower key event there was no lunch and there was no red carpet like there is today I remember going out and shopping for a very simple dress and and I was married to Neil and so we actually gave one of the awards for I think the best screenplay to the sting or something so that was made me very nervous but as far as all the other part of it it was kind just Shirley didn't expect to win and just was incredibly overwhelmed I think and so to a certain extent in denial about the enormity of it reaction from the community after you you win or you get your nomination after you're recognized for such an early piece of work in your career how did that change interestingly enough probably not too dissimilar from way maybe the way it still is which is then of course they only send you parts about prostitutes with hearts of gold or whatever so as an actor you just get very frustrated by it and so you start to hope that something else will come along yeah now you mentioned Neil Simon I have this three weeks good idea to get married after knowing someone three weeks are not as well it was for me I mean we had a wonderful relationship and there was immediate chemistry and there were his two daughters and I I really loved the idea of being part of that family and taking their mother's place she had passed away it might have been a very different experience if she had been still alive so I had an opportunity to be a mother to two Ellen and Nancy and in their lives to this day so are you an impulsive person though every week seems pretty quick even if things are going well well my first husband was months I would say that in those days I probably yes I think you could consider me impulsive better and I think to some extent I still am impulsive prat not I don't think and personal relationships necessarily but it would just depend does it serve you better career-wise to be like that do you think ah I don't know um I don't know I mean sometimes I think it's really good just to follow your gut and when I haven't when I haven't followed my instincts about something I I wind up truly regretting it and having a miserable time and it's a painful lesson to have to learn there was a I've had a couple of experiences where I knew I shouldn't do something that was my initial feeling but I got talked into it for a variety of reasons and they were all good and valid reasons and it never wound up to be a really good experience whereas if I'm just out there bopping around doing whatever it is that I want to do and somebody comes along and I go okay often that you don't know I mean look at Cinderella liberty I mean I was at a CT is just a actress you know part of the company and boom there it was yeah I think the only thing is Elia Kazan said once and an article and I cut it out and I kept it in my wallet for years which is an actor or performer gets maybe he said maybe three or four lucky breaks and all you have to do and is to be ready for the meaning you have to be you have to be prepared to take it on yeah what do you consider the lucky breaks in your career well obviously Cinderella liberty and I would think Neil and and the goodbye girl those were you know the movies we did together the professional legacy that we have I think is really kind of pretty terrific I had heard the goodbye girl an original earlier drafts was about Dustin Hoffman's that's courier yeah how did that become what it is well Neil got kind of because we lived across the street from where Dustin lived and they were friends and everything and then I became friends with him too but he was always intrigued with this idea of somebody like Mike Nichols coming along with an out-of-work actor you know and struggling and everything so and becomes a star overnight and so he wrote an early draft that was called Bogart slept here and we we you know he he it was all about an actor a young actor who gets a lucky break has a family with a couple of children and it has to go out to Hollywood and what how does that change him and what does that well what what is the story behind that and as we were working on it and doing it it became clear to Neil that that wasn't nobody's really interested in somebody who always has already become successful and so when Dreyfuss and I read that script Richard what he did as he said I know what's wrong and he was they've given me three weeks and he backed up the story so that the end of the goodbye girl was actually the beginning of Bogart slept here oh so that character gets the job at the end Richard gets the job at the end and and she you know so I hope you just didn't spoil it for people who haven't no you guys because you were married did you find that Neil was writing for you as I understand it was pretty some he was writing his works and they just fit you well as opposed to I'm married to this woman I'm gonna write a great play for her well actually yes that's true because he thought and felt and said to other people I don't think Marsha really can do my material other than the good doctor he when I auditioned for the good doctor that was a completely different experience because it was a series of short stories that were based on Jacobean short stories and it was under a whole you know sort of evening so he wasn't sure that I could actually write his the traditional sort of Neil Simon you know material and one of the wonderful experiences that I had was after we were long divorced and everything Dreyfuss and I did prisoner of second Avenue in London at the Royal Haymarket and we had a huge success it was really phenomenal and Neil Kent was there at the beginning for some of the rehearsals and then he came at the end of the run and in you know and he said it was just perfection so he unders you know there was an opportunity to be able to to do his material that he had written prior to meeting me and then seeing it but he he wasn't sure that my rhythms were his his rhythms so but when he was writing the movies I think it was a little bit different for because it was a completely different genre for him so it was very and also we had the luxury of rehearsing we were Hurst on the set of the goodbye girl before we even shot he was there we could improvise some things he would add them you know or take it away or see what was working best and all of that but I think the goodbye girl is a kind of distillation of both of our rhythms I mean if you look at the bathroom scene and and a lot of stuff was taken from my life in other words the white mask was mine and do you know what I mean and that final speech at the end of chapter two was mine originally at a certain moment in our lives and chapter two was the semi-autobiographical right yeah tell me yeah is that odd to play in a sense your life up on stage and screen I know it it turned out not to be I mean like because originally it was a play and I didn't had no intention of doing the play so it was about four years I think after the play was written that we did the movie and I felt that that person in Chapter two was really was just a part of me a very small part of me I had become more of another person not another person but more of my own person so it was it wasn't so fresh that I think it would have been awkward yeah I don't want to leave this period of your life without asking something about the cheap detective and it seems to get overshadowed by Murder by Death yeah but cheap detective is a wonderful it's great it's just great and there was an interesting experience I probably wouldn't have been in that movie if it hadn't been for the fact that the character was originally cast as Lily Tomlin and at the last minute for some reason she couldn't do it and they were scrambling and I it was the only time actually I think that I actually said to Neil could could I do it and he wasn't sure and so we read it with race dark and and I don't know I don't think we read it with Peter but anyway so I wound up doing that wrong yeah a few years later than you to go your separate ways how does that then affect your career since and rightly or wrongly you've been so connected with Neil Simon's work then the two of you split up personally was that hard for the Hollywood community to handle while we were married there were people perhaps more women than who had some issues with the fact that I was married to him so of course and I wasn't really all that talented but fortunately because of the four Academy Award nominations which are your own group in other words actors nominating actors which i think is the purest of awards you know and so so that ameliorated some of the perhaps you know criticism or whatever but also at the time when we finally separated and divorced in the 80s the business was changing dramatically so again there was this confluence of a lot of things that were happening I was getting older the movie business was getting younger in the sense of what their focus was you the whole shift of how much a movie cost all of those issues were coming into play in a major way and I also feel there's been always a slight attitude towards women in film it just is I'm not quite sure why you know where you just I don't know whether it's the audience or whatever but the other part of it too is that all the research that gets done with focus groups and all of that changed I think the whole focus of how movies got made along with during that period of the independent studios which were independent with the exception I think guess Gulf and Western had just purchased Paramount and maybe Columbia Pictures we had just been bought by I can't remember what the entity was but anyway so that was changing too and so it was it became just a different business so it's hard for me to say that oh because Neal and I separated that I didn't work anymore I think and I did work because I did Heartbreak Ridge after that and but there was a definite sort of going you know not as much work coming in that way and in no way do I mean to imply that there wasn't a lot of work still coming out of you yeah yes no I'm before we run out of time shipbuilder so where does racecar driver this is one way of getting out my frustrations at not working enough but yeah I mean it was just a trip I was I loved it I did it for seven years I was part of a team and went to the National Valvoline runoffs and I was always finishing in the top four or five of my division so do you do it anymore no no barb yes I do yeah I loved it I had a great time it was it was a real Zen experience and and it was interesting too because when I first started out a lot of men you know were hmm and I gained their respect and and they gained mine and I had a great great great time and then you mentioned the farm and then you get into the earth and got into the herbs in the farm and moving to New Mexico which was also part of that thing of not feeling connected to LA and Hollywood anymore and so I just you talk about impulsive I just sort of said okay I'm gonna throw up the pieces of my life like a kaleidoscope and see how the pattern shifts when it comes down and impulsively but land out in Abiquiu New Mexico and Here I am 17 years later with a certified organic medicinal herb farm and a live product line so can I say well I've read that you're going to let that go I am I have it for sale I mean at 17 years I learned to be an entrepreneur and a businesswoman and a manager and all of that stuff and I just wanted downsizing by my life I work more in the theater and work more focused really seriously on writing and enacting yeah is there any part of the career that you wish you had tried something different or at this point looking back on it you're pretty happy with the choices you made I I feel I wish I had been a bit more mature at the early time so that I could have in a way enjoyed my success more but that was more my own anxiety and and insecurity and not feeling entitled or or our feeling coming from a kind of very Catholic you know you can't really enjoy or it's all going to be taken away kind of thing and I wish I had perhaps enjoyed it a bit more and and flown with it a little bit more but now having learned that I just appreciate everything that's happening to me and including coming here and so it's it's a it's okay well from sitting on this side we have thoroughly enjoyed all you have done thank pleasure to talk to you thank you so much my pleasure Marsha Mason thank you to order a DVD of this or any episode of interviews please visit Houston pbs.org you

Channel: HoustonPBS

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Id: grGqS_32Qrs

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2012