Bright Lights, Prairie Dust by Karen Grassle

Author:Karen Grassle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE AGENT CALLED ABOUT A PART and told me to “wear a dress and no makeup.” Sure, I agreed, though there was no dress in my closet. In the ’70s, it was common for actresses in Hollywood to wear tight jeans and little tops that revealed their midriffs, false eyelashes, and plenty of eyeliner. That look was “in,” but the look, the agent said, was not helping Michael Landon cast Caroline Ingalls, Pioneer Mom.

I had to ask: “Michael Landon—which one of the Bonanza brothers was he?” Little Joe. Okay, I thought, the cute young one, got it. For years Bonanza was the top-rated show on television, an American institution on Sunday nights.

The agent went on: “Landon’s becoming a good director. He just did an episode on Love Story.” I had actually watched it on our little old TV with no cable hook-up. Its rabbit ears provided mostly black-and-white fuzz, but I could hear the marvelous Eileen Heckart.1

The interview was in a few days, so taking a deep breath, I went looking for a dress—most of my clothes were still in New York. At Design Research, known for modern designs like Marimekko fabrics and the classic bentwood rocker, I got lucky. The dress was made to order: soft, light brown wool with a fuzzy texture, a modest turtleneck, a flared skirt, and not too short. It fit softly over me, revealing enough to let them know what I looked like. And only forty dollars. I gulped and bought it. It’s an investment.

I was encouraged when I arrived at Paramount Studios by a drive-on pass, much nicer than the usual routine: make a U-turn at the guard gate, hunt for a place in the large parking lot outside the studio, and hurry in the glaring sun down the hot asphalt streets bordered by cement “stages” with no windows, usually to a nondescript office building with poor signage. But that day, I got to park near an old office building at the northeast end of the lot where I saw “Desilu” on the pavement. I climbed the stairs to a dusty hallway and some offices once capacious and luxurious, now looking as if they’d been closed up since the ’50s. The wall-to-wall carpet was faded to a noncolor, the furniture retrieved from the prop shop. A window onto the past. Since I’d arrived in Hollywood, I had been in a few casting offices—Universal, MGM, Fox—and none looked like this. Like our old Ford, it had seen better days. Like our bungalow, its heyday was past. It felt as if I had fallen through time into an old movie, just long enough to find my way to the future.

Halfway down the silent hall, I arrived at the office, my face naked, almost—I cheated with a little brown eye shadow. The secretary showed me to a waiting room. It was completely empty but for me. Puzzling. I was used to waiting rooms full of young women who looked a lot like me, quiet rooms where we eyed each other, competition zinging the air we tried to breathe.

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