- Just who do you think
you're talking to like this? Don't you realize I'm a grandmother? - She's a different kind of person. Her beliefs are very strong. She's not ashamed to come
right out and say, yeah she believes in aliens and ghosts
and all that sort of thing. - I think I've been a mystic
since I was very young. I think I've always known
if I could get into sync with what the destiny was
I chose, I would be happy. I understood that unless I
went as close to the bottom of my identity as I could get,
I would inherit loneliness. I just have this talent
for falling in love with the wrong guy in the
wrong place at the wrong time. - Well how many guys were there? - Three. - Shirley is basically a lot
more interested in the world around her and her place
in that world than she is just in acting and what's going
on in front of the camera. - I think she brings
on the quality of truth because the camera's trained
the American actor to do that, because you can't get away
with over acting or lies. - There's nothing phony about Shirley and she conveys that as a performer. Whether she dances,
whether she writes a book, whether she has one
woman shows, or whatever. That's what she is and
that's what you get. - The one thing that
you can be certain about with Shirley MacLaine is that she started kicking up her heels,
and she will continue to kick up her heels both as
a person and as an artist. (upbeat music) - I come from a middle class southern Mason Dixon
Line, Virginia family. But underneath that veneer was the desire to break out all the time. Dad was from a small town,
Front Royal, Virginia. My mother was Canadian and
both wanted to, I think, express themselves in the
theater or show business. Dad was a musician, played
the violin and the drums. And told me on several
occasions that he had always wished to run
away and join the circus. Mother was a poetess. She read poetry very beautifully and read it all of our lives. So we had this sense of
appreciation for beautiful language relating to
expression through the face. So out of that environment
and the stimulation of two parents who basically gave up their dreams and hopes to be
anything in the theater, they gave it up to raise
my brother and myself. And so I, for one anyway,
I think went about fulfilling their dreams, and that's been most of my motivation
during my adult life. Warren and I went to movies all the time. We went every single weekend. It was our formal entertainment education. We knew all the stars. My favorite stars were Alan Ladd, Rita Hayworth, for a
period there Maria Montez. And Warren loved Charles Boyer when he said, come with me to the Kasbah. He was going around saying
that in the house for days. I was born with very weak
ankles, but when I was about two and a half, Mother
sent me to ballet school. My basic philosophical and
psychological discipline comes from my years in the ballet. I also developed very good
posture and a sense of grace early on, I didn't go through
that awkward teenage period. I would go every summer to
study with the teachers at the Ballet Theater School at
American School of the Ballet. I was 5'7" on flat feet so on point I towered over whoever was partnering me. There was no one in the western
world besides an oak tree that could partner me with
any success, and lift me too, by the way, because I'm not light. So I thought, no this is not right for me, I'm not petite Pavlova
or anything like that. I auditioned for a show and got
in it, and I guess I was 16. The show was Oklahoma and we did the subway
circuit of Manhattan. And I got my experience
of what it was like being in a Broadway show that summer. Rogers and Hammerstein asked me to go to London and do the London company. My dad and mother both asked me if I would please continue with my education, and I went back and
finished the next two years. And as soon as I graduated
I went to New York and everything happened from there. But it was sort of like my destiny. I auditioned for Me and
Juliet, got into the show. Everybody in those days
had to sing and dance and at least know how to read some lines. Joan McCracken was the
comedy star of the show. She was married to Bob Fosse at the time. We used to see Bob Fosse lurking around the back of the theater
smoking a cigarette, studying Joan, studying the rest of us. Well Joan then started
Wednesday and Saturday matinee acting classes, and anybody
who wanted to come, went. I never took an acting lesson
except for those periods. Then they held auditions for The Pajama Game and I auditioned. They had brought Bob
Fosse out from California, and Bobby was choreographing it and I guess they needed
dancers who could be heard, I don't know, but they gave me the part. There was only six dancing slots, as they say, and all
those dancers had to sing. - First time I'd heard
about Shirley MacLaine was from Alfred Hitchcock. It seemed that she was
part of the chorus line in a play called Pajama Game. Hitchcock was in the audience the night that Carol Haney couldn't go on. - Even today when I hear, um, ♪ Hey there you with
the stars in your eyes ♪ Or I hear (tongue clicking). I get sick, I get sick. Oh they said well Carol Haney is out, something has happened
and someone by the name of Shirley MacLaine is
going to go on for her. Well they hissed and booed,
they threw things at the stage. All I could think of was, I'm gonna drop the hat in Steam Heat. I didn't think that I
didn't know the part, that I didn't ever had a
rehearsal with the singing, I didn't know what key I sang in. I had a typically limited
dancer's point of view about the area in which I was well
schooled, and that was dancing, and I was gonna drop
the hat in Steam Heat. Well I threw the hat up
in the air to catch it and it was right in the spotlight, and I dropped the hat, and I said oh shit. The first few rows heard me even though it was under my breath
and they went (gasping). And then I apologized,
I said oh I'm sorry, and then I picked up the
hat and kept dancing. Then I was ready to go to
stage right, and the two guys peeled off and left me in
the center of the stage. And the audience stood up and they gave me the standing ovation and I felt lonely, I felt very lonely and unprepared. I had worked, of course,
dancing since I was two for this moment
which was now 18 or 19. I didn't know what to do. - As it happened, in true Hollywood style, a very big producer here at
Paramount, Hal Wallis was in the audience, and
saw this sassy, saucy, talented, sexy, beautiful
Shirley MacLaine on the stage. After the show he went back and offered her a Paramount contract. - I was put under contract to Hal Wallis and I went back to the chorus
and stayed in the chorus. Although no one else was assigned to Carol Haney as an understudy. And about three months
later she was out again, and Hitchcock was there
the night that I went on. You see what I mean? It was like a destiny, that little angel on my
shoulder or something. Really, I feel that way. - She had that remarkable gamine quality. The actresses of that period
were all rather lacquered. Their hair was lacquered, the
performances were lacquered. They were all very
shiny and all lipsticked and fussed up to the teeth. Alfred Hitchcock didn't want that. What he wanted was
young talent and removed from all the slickness you
saw, at that time anyway. - Hitch was wonderful. He didn't treat me or anyone else as though we were irrelevant. But he was so pixie like and so intelligent and
so discerning and funny. I loved the idea of working for Hitch. But that would've meant going
on location with Hitchcock to Stowe, Vermont, and then
going immediately to California. And I was going with a man named Steve Parker who was
an actor also in town. The moment I met him I felt this touch of destiny as though I had to marry him. And we decided to get
married because it would mean if I didn't marry him then,
I'd maybe not see him again. I used to eat with the
makeup and hair people because they're the first people I saw in the morning and the
last people I saw at night. I would tell them how it
was going with my marriage, so they became my friends. But the AD came to me one
day and said, you mustn't eat with them, you must eat with
the above the line people. I didn't know what above the line meant, but that means the creative people. The crew's over there,
creative is over here. I don't know why. I would still eat with them. I did what I wanted and
I really don't know why. - [A.C.] The first picture
was Trouble with Harry with John Forsyth. But it wasn't until she did a picture with Martin and Lewis
called Artists and Models that she had the opportunity
to sing and dance. - [Announcer] The most
exciting and delightful star discovery of the year. Everybody says that Shirley's
going far in pictures. Jerry thinks she's gone too far already. (water bubbling) ♪ Say that you're my sweetheart, my love ♪ - [A.C.] And pow,
overnight Shirley MacLaine became one of our biggest stars. - It was kind of a dream
come true for me because of my earlier years when I was a
kid, going to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis films,
they were everything to me. But I was now thrust into a
film which was their second to last film together, and there
was some tension on the set. Jerry is a genius, he
is a comic scientist. - Oh I gotta get new soles. - [Shirley] And I loved his
addiction to technology. But Dean was a little more human. ♪ More and more in Alvarado ♪ - The whole experience was
here are my childhood idols having tension between
them, which was palpable, and yet they did the work
and they were both wonderful. And I saw it sort of like
watching two parents breakup. I felt bereft because I knew they weren't going to
work together anymore. - [Announcer] Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. - Pat it in, beat it out, oh oh oh oh. ♪ On my tray there who dobs
and dabbles with the brushes ♪ ♪ To the gals who look so fetching ♪ ♪ To the guys who do the sketching ♪ - After Artists and Models,
Mike Todd called me. I had heard about Mike Todd
but I didn't have any idea what it was like to meet
him, he was a whirlwind. And he said, okay kid, I think
you can play a campy Hindu. I said a Hindu, I can't play a Hindu, I'm Scotch Irish, what do you mean? Campy, she's gonna be campy. And all of the really
good high class Hindus were fair, they had freckles and red hair. That's what he told me. But you know he could
con you out of anything. (upbeat music) And at two o'clock in the afternoon, he had dyed my hair black,
cast me in the part, and put me on a plane to
go to Durango, Colorado, because they were waiting for me to shoot. I called Steve from Colorado and said, I'm in Around the World in 80 Days. - [Announcer] Bringing to
life Shirley MacLaine as the delectable, incomparable
Aouda, Maharani of India. - It was on that picture that
I learned how to light myself, Marlene Dietrich taught me,
showed me that the camera should be high and the
light should be low, and she taught me about
the fine gold chain trick, which is you put one half
of a gold chain here and you take it under your chin and
you put the other half up here and that helps you with your
double chin if you have one. I loved working on that picture. And then we went to Japan on
Around the World in 80 Days. And Steve, a large part of his
life had been spent in Japan, so he felt like he was going home. And it was on that trip that I
conceived Sachi, my daughter. After we finished 80 Days,
Steve had established a position in the country
of being an impresario, so he would go back and
forth from here to Japan and do work there, bring work here. I was more or less alone in Hollywood. The wonderful thing about
that is he didn't demand that I go there, of course
I never would've anyway. One of the reasons we got married was we both felt that the other was free. And I really did require that. But I was essentially
working all the time. And when Sachi was born I got
a nanny, a succession of them by the way, that is very
difficult when you're a working actress when
you have a young daughter. I was mostly traipsing
around the comedy landscape. Although, Hot Spell was
just solidly a drama. But where I really learned
to do the comedy and drama simultaneously was in Some Came Running. - [Announcer] Based on
the second controversial novel by the author of the sensational and memorable From here to Eternity. (dramatic music) A standout performance
by Shirley MacLaine. ♪ You'll miss the bestest pal ♪ ♪ You ever had ♪ - Dames. - [Shirley] The character
of Ginnie was so pathetic and yet she had such courage
and so much selflessness that it made you smile through your tears. - That was the day of Hollywood glamor. And on the scene came this
gangly, shaggy haired, red headed woman with
too much junk jewelry. But was so refreshing, refreshingly simple and honest, no pretense. This was an amazing kind of debut. - Nobody never been this
sweet to me before, Dave. And you're sober too, practically. - Yeah. (somber music) - Dave! Dave, be in love with me! Oh I love you so much! I never met anybody like
you in my whole life. Oh I love you so awful, awful much. - Don't cry, silly, don't cry. - When Frank saw the footage
of what we had done on Some Came Running, he wanted
to change the ending so that Ginnie got in front of the
bullet that was intended for him. And he said, let the kid die,
maybe she'll get a nomination. He loved discovering new
talent and that's probably what went on with us, and I learned
so much from him and Dean. And the whole experience was remarkable. - [A.C.] When she did the Martin and Lewis picture she got to know Dean very well. - Hey, give me a little kiss. - Sound idea, it's smooth talking you. - You wait right there and
I'll be there in a minute. - I'll wait for you. - And I think through Dean
got to know Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter
Lawford, and that whole Rat Pack, and it was only natural
that they would take to her as she would take to them
because she was one of the guys. With all of that prettiness
and that sexiness that she had, she was
still one of the guys. - I was a mascot to
them, I was like a pet, I wasn't like a woman. And I didn't even think
of myself that way, I had this husband someplace
and I think I was more interested in working and how to develop these different channels
for expression anyway. And I saw these men who
were fantastic on the stage, and they could stay up all
night in Las Vegas and do two shows a night, and get
up at six in the morning. All of that was very interesting to me. And their spontaneous humor
and their camaraderie. I was really drawn to that. They were my teachers and I was only 22. I think it was a very
exciting, adventurous family, because I was essentially
alone and they all knew that. They protected me from some
of the sharks in Hollywood. I couldn't have gone off
and had a lascivious affair that would've ended up hurting me or gotten married six
times if I had wanted to, because they were there to
protect me, more or less. - You know something about
her makes me want to just sort of like put my arm
around her, or something. I don't know what it is and I'm not sure she even really knows what it is. But there's this incredible
vulnerability that is in her face and in her eyes and
the way she carries herself. You can really see it in a movie she made called The Apartment. (dramatic music) - [Announcer] Ingredient number one, a very warm, very wonderful story about a boy, a girl, and a very
special kind of problem. (singing cheerfully) - Are we dressing for dinner? - No, just come as you are. - Say, you're pretty
good with that racket. - You should see my backhand. Wait'll you see me serve the meatballs. - Shirley has always been
an instinctive actress. In other words, I might go
home and beat a scene to death with a stick until I got it, whereas Shirley would let
it go in how she felt. Which is why she would like to do scenes, you know, in two or three
takes, because they would be the most fresh, and
very often that's true. - We never improvised a thing. And if one word was left
out, the script girl would come leaping into the scene
and say, oh no no, cut. Oh she drove me crazy, that girl. - There's a long scene early in the film where you first see Shirley,
she's running the elevator, and the timing is extremely important. And Billy Wilder said, alright
we're gonna do it in one. And Izzy Diamond would be watching what you're saying, he'd
be watching the text. So then Billy would come
over and Izzy would go, (whispering), and he would go, ah ha. And he would come over and he'd say, Shirley you missed this, you
missed that on the first page, and you missed this on the second page. Let's go again please. Now finally about take 12, he made her do the whole damn thing again
instead of just a pickup because he didn't want to
cut it any word in there. And from that day on, I wanna tell ya, Shirley came in and she had that script, I think she knew my lines,
her lines, everybody's lines. - You know you're the only one around here who ever takes his hat
off in the elevator? - Really? - The character's you meet. Something happens to men in
elevators, it must be the change of altitude, the blood rushes
to their head or something. Boy I could tel you stories that. - I'd love to hear them. Maybe we could have lunch
in the cafeteria some time. Or some evening after work? - 27. - Oh. - I hope everything goes alright. - Well, I hope so. Wouldn't you know they'd
call me on a day like this, what with the cold. How do I look? - Fine. Wait. - Thank you. You know that
was the first thing I ever noticed about you when you were still on the local elevator, you
always wore a flower. - Good luck, and wipe your nose. We were, I guess the
safe duo on the screen. It was like high school
sweethearts, I guess. Or maybe possibly two older sisters. I don't know. Wonderful man. - [Robert] When I did Two for the Seesaw, Shirley and Bob Mitchum really
kind of sparked each other. They liked each other very much. And they used to rib and kid each other, and have jokes going right and
left, laughing and laughing. It was an enormous stretch for her playing this supposed Jewish
girl from New York city, but she did it wonderfully
well, I thought. (dramatic music) - Brother, how long have
you been on the wagon? - A year. - Where you been, in jail? - She could portray the various
qualities that are needed of the character that she's
portraying because she is not herself a particularly vulnerable person, she's very forthright, very strong, and she knows her own mind. - I didn't think in terms
of would this be good for my career or I don't like this
scene, you'd better fix it. I never did very much of that. I just sort of went with the punches, enjoyed the people I was working with. If I didn't enjoy anyone
I was working with, there was no question in
my mind I'd just walk away. I was wearing a can can
dress that weighed 75 pounds, courtesy of Irene Sheriff. They asked Juliet Prowse
and myself to do the can can which was choreographed for, I suppose, gold medal athletes, because
when you do the can can for the film, you can rest
after each one of the turns. But they wanted us to do it all at once to entertain Khrushchev. I thought I would go into cardiac arrest, that's what I remembered that day. And then he wasn't too pleased
when the press asked him, what did you think of the can can? He said, I think the face of humanity is prettier than its backside. So they asked me what I
thought of what he said, and I said I think he's upset
because we wore panties. 'Cause in the old days in
France they didn't wear panties and that was the whole point. When you kicked, that's what you saw. This feeling of life being more important behind the camera and around the camera than in front of the
camera was always with me. I never felt empty in Hollywood. I think because things were
going well it afforded me the opportunity and the
freedom to explore elsewhere. I never did it out of
the sense of loneliness although I was alone a lot. But I had a lot of love
affairs during that time that took up a great deal
of my emotional life. We had a marriage that
respected that in one another. Steve was living in Japan, so he had his own relationships going on. He used to try to get me
to go to premieres with good looking men, and I
thought that was so silly. I would go in my convertible
Plymouth and go up and do my interviews and
walk along the red carpet and go out the ladies room in the back and go home, you know. It was all such an obvious media grope. - I think the roles that
attract Shirley the most are certainly the roles
that she's very famous for, are roles in which the
characters slightly victimized. She's the little, the
little man struggling against forces that
are bigger than she is. - I remember Lou Wasserman asked me if I wanted to do Charity and I said, yes I'd love to and I think
Bobby Fosse should direct it. He said, who's Bobby Fosse? And I said he's a choreographer but he's a great director, I just know it. - [Announcer] So full of
rhythm, color, movement, life, it will set the musical
comedy pace for years to come. ♪ Hey big spender ♪ - [Announcer] That's Sweet Charity. ♪ She's a brass band ♪ ♪ She's a harpsichord ♪ - [Announcer] That's Sweet Charity. That's Sweet Charity. Starring Shirley MacLaine as. - Charity, Charity Hope Valentine. - [Announcer] In the
performance of a lifetime. - What you do in bed is your business. - Uh you see, I wasn't even
in bed, I was in a closet. (loud crashing) - To each his own. - There is again another
example of her ability to be vulnerable and
funny at the same time. She somehow manages to do it in a way that she's smiling through the
pain, which is a quality that, again, makes her vulnerable and endearing. It's like she's trying to rise above the sadness of the situation at all times. - And I remembered that when
I did Some Came Running, that if you really play
the character truthfully, everything is the truth, then the comedy will be funnier and the
drama will be sadder. - She has wit on the screen
and she has the ability to make us laugh without
chasing cheap laughs. I mean she's wry, she's dry,
she's never overly sentimental. She's an artist. - I was never a sex symbol
and I was not a great beauty, so the character is what mattered to me. I had always wanted to do character parts. I guess basically that's what
I was is a character actress rather than an ingenue
or even a leading lady. I look for those aspects of
human life that are authentic and real, regardless of whether
they're attractive or not. Well 40 is not an older person,
you know, I don't think. But that's what happens
to you in Hollywood, they seem to think of you as
an older person when you're 40. The parts that I did
around that period were the possession of Joel Delaney
and desperate characters. But the scripts didn't work,
the pictures didn't work. Anyway, I worked for George
McGovern, whom I adored, I thought he was a very moral man, so that when scripts
would come along I would turn them down because I
was working for McGovern. It was probably worth me
giving up my career to try to defeat Richard Nixon is
the way I looked at that. - I met Shirley a long
time ago when I first ran for the United States Congress and she was interested
in my strong positions. She was extremely selfless and generous in helping me in many ways. None of it was to put Shirley forward, she was forward without me. I was the beneficiary of
her, obviously her fame. - And then after that I went to China, I was really interested in
seeing this country that I had sat in a hotel room in Hong
Kong and peered over the new territories and thought, what
are they doing over there? And I took a women's delegation. I took about eight to 12
people including the crew that came from all
different walks of life. And the way they related to this revolution was what I filmed. I wanted to show what the revolution had perpetrated in relation to women. It's called The Other Half of the Sky, which the Chinese referred to
as the female of the species, they're the other half of the sky. My persona was my passport to go anywhere. I could go anywhere in the world, and did. I traveled all over the world by myself. And because I was who I was, I was invited into all
sorts of levels of society. By the time I got finished
with politics in China, I don't think there was much
career for me in Hollywood. So what I decided to do
was return to my roots, and I went back to ballet
class and put together an act. - Well I received a phone call, the voice at the other end
said, this is Shirley MacLaine. I felt sure one of my friends
was playing a trick on me. Anyhow she said that she was
interested in doing an act in Vegas, that Gwen
Verdon had recommended me. When Shirley decided to do a Vegas act, that was like a very brave step. I mean you're one person, you're out there holding
the entire evening. It's not even like playing a
character or being in a play. - You have to find your stage identity, you have to really know
who you are on the stage. You have to have lived
a little, died a little, had your heart broken a little, been triumphant a little,
failed a lot, and been able to have, I guess, experienced
yourself in public. Then you know, sort of, who you
are when you walk out there. It's called getting
your stage legs I think. And it's only really about
who you are not what you do. That's all they want
to know is who you are. - Shirley is not the best
dancer in the business, the best singer in the business. But she proved that she's one of the best entertainers in the business. - Imagine me at the Lido, the most famous nightclub
in the whole world. And I'm gonna play it. ♪ I've played the palace
and I've played the dumps ♪ ♪ I can do plies and I can do bumps ♪ ♪ I've taken my bows and
I've taken my lumps ♪ ♪ But lord help me I love it ♪ - Shirley has this sense of reality that she shares with people. It's not a movie star pretension, it's just being one of the guys. She's in a beautiful
gown, but there's no BS, she says what she thinks and
the audience gloms on to that. She's one of them. - When I read a script
and my scalp tingles, I know I should do it. The one script that worked
after I had reached that so called of a certain age,
age was The Turning Point. And that was about two
women who had to face the decisions that they
had made when they were younger and what that meant to them today. The character of DeeDee was
nothing of what I would've done. My character would've been more like Emma who was the Anne Bancroft part. But I knew a lot of women
who had made the decisions to give up the ballet and
go and just become a mother, and perhaps a teacher
like DeeDee had done. - Shirley and I come from a
tribe of people called dancers. Gypsies are known for their
fortitude, for their humor, for their endurance, for their talent, and for their unflagging
devotion to the show. So she understood the
frustration of the character. I thought she brought some
very, very special gifts to the interpretation of
DeeDee, and the hunger that the character had for
recognition, which is a very important part of
Shirley's psychology still, she has this hunger for recognition. - Even though I was playing
a part that I couldn't identify with, just to be back
in the world of the ballet it swirled me back to my
childhood and to my beginnings. I had such a structured
family life in Virginia with the underlying reality that
they didn't really want it, that they thought they should
raise children this way, that I never really wanted
a structured family life. I wanted unpredictability. I wanted each day to be different. As a result, my daughter
is much more conservative than I am, and usually children are more liberal than their parents. I would create the reality every minute that I found at my disposal and I didn't very often
do the same things twice. And I think I still live that way. - I think that she has not
been the most conventional wife and mother in the world, but I think she had great
feelings both originally for her husband, as she
still does for her daughter. But has always felt that
the pivot to her personality was the capacity to share
her work, her talent, her writing, her acting, her dancing, and her involvement in the
things she deeply believed in. Shirley sees everything as
a constructive experience, even her marriage to Steve which was, you know, finally terminated and so on. Not many of us can do that, you know? If there's been reasons
in our lives that we feel were unpleasant, we try to
sort of forget about it. Shirley always incorporates
that season as some lesson to be learned, some experience
that you have to go through and that it helps to make
you a stronger person. - Well my response to
someone who has a life outside of acting is a
very warm positive response because I think it is the most important, philosophical way to live,
and that is to live beyond the camera, or live beyond
one's work, because, for example, I'm not my
work, I'm not what I do. I think it takes a lot of
time and wisdom to learn that. I don't know Shirley that well, but I know she has an avid
interest in everything. I think she's one of
these actresses who just, she moves within her
personality, she moves within the age of her personality,
she doesn't try to fight that. She's moved on since then instead of, like many people, fighting
the process of time. She just does it. - She's probably done 40, 45 features for almost every studio in
town, and almost each part has been different and demanded
a different portion of her talent on the screen, all the
way from the Martin and Lewis pictures where she was romping
around singing and dancing, to Terms of Endearment
where she was a mother. (laughing) - Oh mama, that's the first
time I stopped hugging first. I like that. - Get yourself a decent maternity dress. - You had to get one in, didn't you? - The transition into being an older actress was
not all that difficult. It really came down to where
are the great parts rather than what do I look like and
what will they think of me. - This ability to access tremendous depth so she could do a very poetic
gesture that would convey a great deal, you know,
and make you feel a lot, like in Terms of Endearment
when Deborah Winger dies and she looks away, it is heart breaking. - Aurora Greenway personifies
so many aspects of femaledom. You either know somebody like Aurora or think that you are Aurora. She's my favorite character. How are you? It's not my fault, but I'm sorry. - If you wanted to get me on
my back you just had to ask me. - It didn't have one
note, it had many notes, and it had many opportunities
to show a big range of talent. Sadness, joy, happiness. It encompassed many qualities, all of which Shirley has by the way. The minute I saw the picture I knew she was gonna get an Oscar. - Shirley's a very strange amalgamation. She came on the scene as a gamine, a waif, she refers to it as victim characters. We're aware of her political involvements, her feminist viewpoints, her
metaphysical explorations. Through the press and books,
we've seen her grow up and there still is that original quality. However, she has become
a very strong individual. She's outspoken, she's forthright, and if she keeps going, she could wind up like the character she
plays in Steel Magnolias. - Maybe sometime I could arrange
for us all to get together. - Maybe not. - Well why not? - Shelby, I managed in a few
decades to marry the two most worthless men in the universe
and then proceeded to have the three most ungrateful
children ever conceived. The only reason people are nice to me is because I have more money than God. Now I'm not about to
open a new can of worms. - Ouiser. - What? - If this is really how
you feel, it isn't healthy. Maybe you should think about coming down to the guidance center
and talking to someone. Would that help? - I'm not crazy, M'Lynn, I've just been in a very
bad mood for 40 years. - I had written the screenplay, I had adapted my play for the screen. And when they started
rattling off the names, well I think it's going to be Sally Field, I think it's going to be
Daryl Hannah, I think it's going to be Julia Roberts, it's
going to be Olympia Dukakis, and then it was going
to be Shirley MacLaine. Everyone knows someone
who's completely erasable, irritating, irrepressible,
infuriating, and lovable, and that's who Shirley had come to my little hometown to play. - After making this decision
that we would test to see what she looked like without
makeup and in a gray wig, I guess I'm a character
actress now, she said to me. And she said if I'm gonna do that, I gotta go all the way, and so she did. Brave for an actress to
work without any makeup. - All the men on Steel Magnolias, the crew and the above the
line men, thought there would be a colossal cat
fight between the six of us. The opposite happened. We'd band together and
understood each other in ways, without even speaking, that the rest of the
crew couldn't comprehend. They all talked about it. We made friends on that
film that exist to this day. - Miss Ouiser. - What? - There's somebody that wants to see you. - Who? - I've opened the can of worms for you. - What? Hell, Owen Jenkins. - Hello, Louisa. Remember me? - My god you look different. Have you shrunk? - You look terrific. You've hardly changed at all. - I'm not as sweet as I used to be. - When the cast of Steel Magnolias
first arrived on the set, which was in my hometown
in Nakadish, Louisiana, it was a really, it was
a surreal experience. And there was a call, and this voice says this is Shirley MacLaine, I'm
just over here at my house and I was sitting out on the
wharf just not doing anything, and I thought maybe
you'd like to come over. It was Shirley's way of saying, okay I'm here, I'm doing
this film, this script that you wrote, I want to know everything. And I believe I went over
and we sat on the wharf and we sat there for hours
and hours into the wee hours just talking about every aspect of her character and life and this town. And she was doing her research
but she was also doing what Shirley does best which
is a seeker and a searcher. - I think that Shirley believes in magic. I mean I think that
she believes in perhaps there are no coincidences,
that there are no accidents. - Well I think I've been a
mystic since I was very young. I think I've always known
there is something that is, something I almost purposefully chose. I always felt that if
I could get into sync with what the destiny was
I chose, I would be happy. And I've relatively done that. That's got nothing to do with religion or nothing to do with, it's
a kind of spiritual knowing that resides at the bottom
of one's own identity. - I think Aurora Greenway is one of the great heroins of film. She is a mass of contradictions. She has extremely strict morals, but then of course will bend
them when they need to be bent. I think that's one of the
reasons that she must be such a joy for Shirley to play because
it's an opportunity for an actress to express absolutely
every trait of a human being. - I think Aurora will
probably be on my tombstone. Love her. And to go from Terms of
Endearment and how many people identified with that
whole dysfunctional family to Evening Star, you know
15 years later, and how, facing how she has not done a good job in raising the grandchildren,
but also cannot understand the pain that
young people seem to be going through because
she is so indomitable. If your mother had lived she would be so horrified at the way you turned out. - If my mother had lived, I wouldn't have turned out this way. - How much younger is she than you? - Much. - At least you found the
great love of your life. - Oh come on, don't give me that. You've had great loves
or loved great, whatever. - Well the love that I felt and the love that they felt somehow didn't coincide. But I'm still looking. - There she is, the evening star. She shines first, she shines brightest, and she shines longest. - I think I've always
fashioned my life in a way that didn't have boundaries
and didn't have restrictions. That's the brilliance of trust
and taking it day by day. And I think I feel that I go
day by day with everything. Moment by moment with everything. That's the secret I've learned. You can't make any kinds
of plans, basically. Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans. ♪ If they could see me now ♪ ♪ That little gang of mine ♪ ♪ I'm eatin' fancy chow
and drinkin' fancy wine ♪ ♪ I'd like those stumble
bums to see for a fact ♪ ♪ The kind of top drawer,
first rate, chums I attract ♪ ♪ All I can say is wow, look where I am ♪ ♪ Tonight I landed pow
right in a pot of jam ♪ ♪ What a set up, holy cow ♪ ♪ They'd never believe it ♪ ♪ If my friends could see me now ♪ (dramatic music)
