Read Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life for Free Online Page B

a writer or filmmaker, but maybe I could become one and maybe I could write and act in my own film.
    I was nervous walking into the interview, but more than that my feet were killing me from the same cheap shoes I had been wearing since I worked at the Whisky. My nerves subsided when I entered the room. The two program directors couldn’t have been nicer. They immediately put me at ease. But after interviewing me, they had to turn me down for two reasons. I didn’t fit the criteria for the program because I was an actress, not a filmmaker. The other reason was the program provided artistic opportunities for low-income minorities. (Edna is an African American writer.) Affirmative action had just been put into place, and they rightly were trying to balance the scales that had been so unfair to people of color for so long. I argued that I was a minority myself; I was half Sicilian, and my family was economically challenged.
    I was told, “Cindy, you’re an actress, that’s what you studied to be. We know two young producers who are starting a management company for young talent. We’d love to call them and set up an interview for you. Their names are Garry Marshall and Fred Roos.”
    A week later I found myself sitting in front of the mirror at my mother’s vanity. I was wearing my Whisky wraparound skirt, my ill-fitting white blouse, and those same cheap, crappy black patent leather pumps. I was looking into her magnifying mirror contemplating my eyebrows, which were too thick and too unruly. I was also covering up the chronic dark circles under my eyes, desperate to appear pretty and professional for this important interview.
    I glanced out my mother’s bedroom door and down the short hallway that separated her bedroom from my father’s. I could see him sitting in his chair. He was watching television. I was sad for him. We all were. The cancer had trumped the bad feelings that all of us had held toward him. That afternoon my mother was taking him to the VA to check in for his surgery that was scheduled for the next morning. The surgeons were attempting to remove the mass from his lung and hopefully save him.
    He called to me, “Cindy, honey, come here.”I got up from the vanity and walked toward his room. “Look at this guy, you’re gonna like him.” I stepped inside his room, and turned toward the TV. Bob Dylan was singing “Tambourine Man.”
    I said, “That’s Bob Dylan, Daddy. And you’re right, I do like him!”
    “He’s real good, I like him a lot. I like the way he sings,” he said.
    “Me too,” I said. I kissed my father and told him I loved him.
    As I turned to go, he said, “I love you, too, honey, and good luck with your interview.”
    I replied, “Good luck to you, too, Daddy.”
    Someone once said that change is the only constant in life. And both my father’s life and my own were about to do just that.
    Although my mind was filled with concern for my father, the meeting with Garry Marshall and Fred Roos seemed to be going well. They asked me a little bit about myself. I summed up my entire acting career to that point; which consisted of the plays I had been in at Birmingham High School, and Los Angeles City College. And for good measure I threw in writing, directing, and acting in “The Ice Cream Social Talent Show” for the First Methodist Church of Reseda. If they weren’t impressed, they were at least amused, and they seemed to like me. Garry Marshall asked me to get up and turn around. I did. His comment to Fred Roos was, “I like her. She’s like a pudgy Barbara Harris.” I was thrilled to be compared to this Tony-winning Broadway comic legend. I didn’t even mind the “pudgy” part.
    I liked both of them, and had to contain my joy when they told me they wanted to represent me in their newly formed company, Compass Management. I left their office in a state of euphoria.
    The next morning we learned the surgeons could not remove the mass from my father’s lung. The mass had