The Academy Award Winner in the Tattered Muumuu
Many years ago, I found myself in the back seat of a car heading from Manhattan to Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
My traveling companions were my friend Sharon and Academy Award winner Maureen Stapleton.
Yes, that Maureen Stapleton.
The driver, Josh, also a friend, was Maureen’s ex-husband’s son from his subsequent marriage. Got it?
The trip began around 7:30 in the morning. Sharon cheerfully announced:
“I have bagels!”
Without missing a beat, Maureen replied:
“I have wine!”
And she did.
At her feet sat a bottle of inexpensive jug wine. Not an elegant bottle. Not something selected by a sommelier. Not the sort of thing one imagines an Oscar-winning actress sipping while discussing her latest triumph.
Just wine.
Breakfast wine, apparently.
A year earlier, Maureen had won the Academy Award for her performance in Reds. At that moment she was one of the most celebrated actresses in America. Yet there she was, wearing a tattered muumuu and heading north on the Taconic Parkway in a tiny car.
We stopped a couple of times at service stations along the way.
As I watched her disappear into one particularly grim restroom, I remember saying to Sharon:
These attendants have no idea that the older woman in the tattered muumuu using their filthy bathroom is a famous Oscar winner.
It remains one of the sharpest reminders I’ve ever had that celebrity is largely a trick of context.
Place someone on a movie screen and they become larger than life.
Place the same person at a gas station off the Taconic and they become another traveler looking for a restroom.
Years later, another Maureen memory completed the picture.
I accompanied her to a star-studded event in Manhattan. The ballroom was packed with actors, writers, broadcasters, and assorted famous people. As we entered, Maureen looked around the room with wide-eyed amazement.
“There are so many famous people here!” She started pointing out the BOLD FACE NAMES.
I laughed.
“Mo,” I said, “you’re one of them.”
She shot me a glance that suggested I had completely misunderstood the situation.
I wasn’t witnessing modesty.
I was witnessing disbelief.
Maureen Stapleton never seemed entirely convinced by fame. She understood acting. She understood theater. She understood friendship. Fame struck her as something that happened to other people.
The destination the morning of the drive up the Taconic Parkway was Stockbridge Mass., where Sharon and I were doing marketing/PR work for the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Maureen’s daughter worked there, and Maureen spent time in the area during the summers. For many years the Festival put me up in a tiny fourth-floor room at the Red Lion Inn. Tiny doesn’t quite capture it. Room 434 was so small that years later, when I revisited the inn, I discovered it had been converted into a storage room.
My old accommodations had literally become a closet.
Which somehow feels right.
Memory works that way.
The grand events fade. The awards blur together. The important speeches disappear.
What survives are the odd details.
A bottle of cheap wine.
A tattered muumuu.
A service station restroom.
An Academy Award winner pointing excitedly at famous people.
And a fleeting glimpse of a person who never quite believed the mythology built around her.
The older I get, the more I think those moments are the real story.
Everything else is publicity.
David Mayhew
Maureen’s Oscar Acceptance Speech
If you’ve never seen Maureen’s legendary acceptance speech at the 1982 Oscars click here. It’s worth a look.
Other places to find me…
Life can’t be all wedding hearses, Broadway legends and questionable life choices. Sometimes people need a house. That’s my day job. If you’re buying, selling or just dreaming about a weekend place in Connecticut, here are a few places to continue the conversation:
• ConnecticutWeekendHomes.com
• ConnecticutBaedeker.com
• BuyYourSecondHomeFirst.net
• The Further Adventures of David Mayhew
Different websites. Same tour guide.