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and a surprisingly strong voice, Shirley MacLaine first turned her attention on me on the day when she discovered that I was scheduled to fly to Hollywood to screen-test for the part of Laurey in the movie version of Oklahoma!
    “Get me the part of Ado Annie. I am Ado Annie,” she demanded, and gave me a hearty pat on the back.
    “But, Shirley, I don’t have the job yet. I can’t tell Rodgers and Hammerstein who to hire,” I said in what I thought was a reasonable voice.
    “But I have to play Ado Annie. I am Ado Annie,” Shirley shrieked, unafraid to ally herself with the flirt from Oklahoma! who just “cain’t say no.”
    “I’ll definitely mention your name.”
    Later, I lived up to my promise and did suggest that Shirley MacLaine be considered for the part of Ado Annie, but she did not get the part. Gloria Grahame did, but Shirley, of course, sailed on to other, better things.
    Many years later, Marty and I were in a charity performance of It’s a Wonderful Life at the Geffen Playhouse, along with Annette Bening, who is married to Shirley’s brother, Warren Beatty.
    After the show, Shirley and Warren were outside waiting for Annette, when Shirley saw me.
    “There she is, Shirley Jones! We were in our first show together,” Shirley screamed to all and sundry.
    In contrast, Warren said nothing and shot me a smile.
    Years before he married Annette, I was coming out of Saks Fifth Avenue, in Beverly Hills, when Warren, always a world-class Casanova, strolled up to me and said, “You are so beautiful. Would you go out with me?”
    “I’m married, Warren,” I said, surprised that he didn’t know.
    “That doesn’t make any difference.” He sounded genuinely surprised that I would for even one second consider my marital status the slightest impediment to our embarking on a liaison.
    As poised and exuberant as Shirley MacLaine was and is, in recent years I managed to surprise her soon after I’d stopped dying my hair and let it go naturally white.
    Shirley took one look at me, and her eyes widened in shock and she said, “Shirley Jones, that’s very brave of you. I take my hat off to you. You’ve got a lot of guts to let your hair go white in this business.”

    My stint in Me and Juliet was memorable for me because Sari Price was in the cast and would become my lifelong friend.
    One other bright and shining memory from the run of the show: one morning, out of the blue, I received a telephone call from my mother informing me that my father was on the way to see Me and Juliet and spend time with me in Chicago.
    “But Daddy is scared of flying!” I said. (Come to think of it, so is Marty. Strange how the people we love often exhibit similar traits and phobias. . . .)
    My father was, indeed, petrified of flying. But the depth of his love for me was such that he braved the flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago and showed up at the hotel where Sari and I were staying.
    Sari was instantly captivated by him, particularly when he asked us what we wanted to do the next day. We told him we’d both been longing to experience Chicago’s beautiful parks, and he immediately hired a car to take us there and then to lunch afterward.
    In the evening, after the show, he came with us to the next-door piano bar and bought beer for us and all the kids who worked with us. It was so cute.
    I was sad when he left but promised to come home for a visit as soon as I could. Soon after he left, I received a memorable telephone call from my agent, Gus Schirmer, “Hello, Laurey!” he said. Against all odds, I had won the part of Laurey Williams in the movie version of Oklahoma!
    I was ecstatic. Soon after, I went home to Smithton to see my parents, and I met the first movie star I’d ever encountered in my life—the inimitable, the notorious, the once-in-a-lifetime legend Mae West.
    I’d always been fascinated by Mae. I had been named Shirley Mae Jones, but the Mae was after one of my mother’s sisters, not Miss West. But that