Read In My Father's Shadow for Free Online Page B

looked up in mild surprise as if to say,
Is it really that funny
? And that, of course, made it even funnier.
    M Y NEXT FORAY into motion pictures began in June of 1947 when I was nine years old. My father was still staying next door with Aunt Geraldine, and he was about to film his freely adapted version of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. One afternoon I came home from school to find the entire cast assembled in the living room and getting ready to read through the shooting script. I ran up to my father standing at the front of the room like a benevolent teacher who waits for the class to settle down. “Can I stay and listen, Daddy?”
    “Yes, if you’re very quiet.”
    Our homey living room was stuffed with actors. Most were Mercury Theatre regulars who had first worked with my father on Broadway and then followed him to Hollywood, but there were a few new faces: Jeanette Nolan, a well-known actress in radio about to make her film debut as Lady Macbeth, and Dan O’Herlihy, fresh from the Gate Theatre in Dublin and playing Macduff. Then there was a lean young man of nineteen who called himself Roddy McDowall. He had won fame as a child actor in
How Green Was My Valley
and
Lassie Come Home
, and now he was about to make his Shakespearean debut as Malcolm in my father’s
Macbeth
. Although I recognized Roddy from his
Lassie
movies, which Marie and I had wept through more than once, he was ten years older than I, which, as far as I was concerned, put him on another planet.
    I found myself some space on the floor and was prepared to be mute for the next hour when, to my surprise, Charlie sauntered into the room and was handed a script. He sat down on the floor next to me. “Are you going to be in the movie, too, Granddaddy?” I asked in a whisper. Then, when he nodded, “Who are you going to be?”
    “One of the three witches.”
    I thought he was kidding me. How could a bald man play a witch? On the other hand . . . before I could stop myself, I scrambled to my feet and ran up to my father, the only person left standing in the hushed room. “May I have a script, too, please? I want to be one of the three witches.” To my dismay, everyone laughed.
    “We have all the witches we need, Christopher.” Although my father spoke with measured calm, the look he gave me was one of irritation. “Now please sit down like a good girl and don’t interrupt us again.”
    “Please, Daddy, can’t I be in the movie? Please, can’t I, Daddy—“
    “There are no parts for little girls in
Macbeth
!”
    “Let her read a few lines, Orson,” Charlie put in mildly. “She reads pretty well for a kid her age.”
    “Oh, all right.” My father handed me a script with the sigh of a man submitting to an unreasonable demand against his better judgment. “Christopher, if you insist on being in
Macbeth
, you’ll have to be a little boy.”
    “Okay!” I sang out with an alacrity that made everyone laugh again. And that was how I landed the part of Macduff’s son.
    Having satisfied my father that I could rattle off my lines with aplomb, even though I had little understanding of what they meant, I began my movie career in earnest. First I was fitted for my costume. I was used to wearing not much more than a swimsuit or summery dress, and now, beginning with the wool hat on my head, I was layered in heavy clothing meant for unheated castles and windy Scottish moors. Under my long wool tunic, I wore a woolen shirt and tartan plaid trousers. Then a tartan shawl, which matched my trousers and the headband on my hat, was draped over the tunic, tied around my waist, and held in place by a metal ornament pinned to one shoulder. My costume was made still more uncomfortable by the scratchy feel of wool against my skin, yet every morning, when Marie helped me into it, I was merry with excitement. It was cool and crisp that early in the day, and soon my father’s chauffeured car would come to collect me, and I would ride beside him all the way to the