This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Throughout movie history, there have been many talented couples famous for acting together on screen Bogie and Bacall, Newman and Woodward, Burton and Taylor, but one couple occupies a singular place in the show business pantheon. Eli Wallack and Anne Jackson. The couple met during a nineteen forty six production of Tennessee Williams This Property Is Condemned, and went on to star together on and off Broadway.
Eli Wallack's legendary movie career includes films like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, The Misfits, and The Godfather Part Three. Anne Jackson can be found in movies like Lovers and Other Strangers and The Shining. They were also early members of the famed Actors Studio. As part of our ongoing series to commemorate the seventy fifth anniversary of the Actor's Studio, we are celebrating those responsible for its success,
which includes Jackson and Wallack. My guests today are two of this illustrious acting couple's children, Roberta and Katherine Wallack. The Wallack sisters grew up surrounded by theatre royalty, Alpaccino, Hume, Cronen actors, studio director Lee Strasburg. Even their babysitter was famous. Her name is Marilyn Monroe. The siblings would go on to become actors in their own right, members of the studio, and eventually sit on its Board of Directors. Later in
the episode, I'll speak to Drama Desk nominee Roberta. Wallack, But first, Katherine Wallack is known for her numerous theater credits and appearances in Scorsese films like Goodfellas, The King of Comedy, and Gangs of New York. But the creativity gene doesn't stop there. She's also a jewelry designer. Since Wallach was raised in such an abundantly artistic household, I wanted to know what life was like at home behind the scenes for her mother.
It was tough for her because right off the bat he wanted to be the show stopper.
For sure.
She was offered a role as I forgot the wife's name in The Honeymooners, Audrey Meadows, that's right, you know that story, And she ended up giving it up so she could kind of be a mother and an actor in New York, so she kind of gave up this huge opportunity to be with Jackie Gleason and Hrywood. Anyway, the way that it worked is that we had one apartment, went to the same school, except for two years we.
Lived in London.
We had a nanny and that was the saving grace of both my parents and their occupation. Why London, because they did a Maurice ciscal play called Love there and we ended up getting put into taken out of ethical culture on Central Park West and we got put into this school that was the absolute polar opposite, with uniforms and curtsying and standing up to know your times tables and it was extremely cruel in London, yes, and closed for cruelty to children eventually. Oh yeah. So we lived
in England for two years. But other than that same apartment, my entire life West Side eighty first and Riverside, same school. You know, very dad was like military in his behavior.
But does she do less with her career because she's a mom?
No, I don't think so, No, really no, I mean she didn't go into film as much, but she worked just as hard at.
Theater and they did a lot of theater together, right.
That was kind of their you know, calling card was They used to joke about how they got paid to fight.
Eight shows weak.
No, she didn't, and she wrote a book.
She was writing another book, as you know, later in life, which never got finished, sadly, which was about being a mother, an actress, and a wife actually, And I would love to read those notes there at the Harry Ransom Center right now.
When he did, he travel a lot, He was gone a lot working, He was gone a lot, and you didn't go with him when.
We could in the summers you could, yeah, but.
During the school year, your mother wanted you to have a normal life, that's right. And he would leave and which she would work while.
He was gone sometimes sometimes, but no, for the most part, she was hanging with us, or she would go and hang with him, and we would be home with the with Nelly, who's a gap toothed woman from North Carolina, and I thought she was my mother.
I have this very romanticized view of your parents right where they're sitting there at the dinner table and you're there, the two girls are there, your brother and family, friends and associates, and your father's talking all about what it was like shooting with O'Toole and what it was, and your mother's talking about shooting with Like did they regale you with stories of show business or they didn't give a shit about that.
Now when their friends were over, they did, they did.
Yeah, yeah, but for.
The most part, I mean it was kind of strict around the table in what way. Well, dad was kind of strict, you know till I was eighteen. I kind of put him in his place once, but you know, we had table manners and had to raise your hand. Can I be excused? I mean stuff that you do not see no nowadays, you know what I'm saying. And recently a friend from high school said, oh, yeah, I was afraid to go to your house.
Yeah, you know, because my dad was like a dinner at our house resembles a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nets. Yeah, yeah, my dinner at my house is very different.
Well, we had also screaming and get up and slam a door, and we're just like, hey, you know, life
is normal. I mean theatrics going on, my mother crying, no tears coming down, you know, and like door slam one time she slammed, he slammed himself in the bedroom and then it got locked and he couldn't get out, and it gave him a bull in there, and so she went and got the super and when they finally got about, he went to like a movie they wanted sea together and just slammed the door at the front door of the apartment like I'm out of here, you know, fuck you. But he had a really bad temperament.
He did. Oh really he did.
Yeah.
He would also like show up at the door wearing a wig and an apron. I mean he was crazy, you know, he was great. He was the best, a man of my dream. Seriously, I loved my dad more than anything.
Did he come from a family where show business was in his family?
No?
No, they came from Poland full on. They owned a candy store in Brooklyn, had no money, all of them very easy, yes, his family, very easy, low key people. They all went off to become teachers, his sisters and brothers. His brother Sam was my mother's high school teacher.
And what was the thing in him coming from a certain kind of family with their passions and stuff and their goals. What do you think it was that launched him into show business?
I think from what my memory brings me is he they grew up like with one of those I forgot what they call them in the candy store where the pictures flip. You put a coin in and it's like a little movie, right, And I think because his dad was pretty strict abe, you know, Polish, very whatever, Jewish school, old school, he would run away sometimes from school and like put money from the register in this little movie thing and just watch these movies over and over and it was his.
Escape, I guess fantasy.
Yeah. Now you're a member of the studio. Your sister's a member of the studio. You're both on the board of directors of the studio. And what's your recollection of that, meaning their respective participation in the studio. Your mother was a member as well. Yes, So do you have any recollection of Lee and what Lee was to your dad and your mom?
Yeah?
I do.
I was pretty young.
I'm not that much younger, Birti's three years older than me, but and she was a student of Lee's. I was not, but I remember we used to go at a very young age. We used to go to Lee's house for passover and there'd be like this really cute guy leaning against a bookcase and that was alphag No or you know, I didn't know. I thought he was my grandfather. I
didn't get it. I didn't know who he was. Roberta's middle name is Lee, so I'm like, oh, it's grand that I got another grandfather, because I only met one grandparent. So we would go there and we would look for the matza, and then he would give us a silver dollar if you found the Matzeigman. It was a very big celebration with all these people and very kind of happy Jewish situation that I really didn't understand that well.
And then my other memories were at the studio itself watching Lee moderate and thinking, you know, he had an egg timer. For example, Frances Fisher would be up there and she'd take her shirt off and he'd be like, oh, that was wonderful.
Dear, that was wonderful.
I was like, Wow, you know, this is the big guy behind the Wizard of Oz, behind the curtain.
And you didn't get it.
No, I didn't get it.
He seemed charming.
I liked him.
He was an old dude and he had once in a while he had some cool shit to say.
But I was like, that's interesting.
You know whereas like Hume Cronin, Jessica Tandy, these people being around you know, George c. Scott and Colleen and those people, or Paul and Joann, those people had vibes, you know what I'm saying. Being around those kind of friends or what would you call them, colleagues, colleagues, those people, I would feel the kind of gig young I remember, you know, I remember some people that really impressed me.
Now, how would you say, because obviously you have this very serious business making jewelry, and you've been doing it for quite a while successfully, and I'm wondering was that something that you discovered, as many of us discovered, something to fill in those gaps of the average acting career where you're not always working as much as you want to. You sit there, go I got to do something.
I would say yes, except for that, I'm one of those people that has to express myself artistically. I did all the flowers for all the weddings of my nephews, I designed my flowers, I catered for years, I tap danced, I was in a band. I mean, I have to constantly express So the thing that happened with the jewelry
was when I was a kid. We went down to visit a friend of my dad's who is a not a friend relative, who had a bead factory on thirty eighth Street, and they let me go rampant in the basement and I went insane, and I was starting a string beads. And so from a very young age. It's also a family business. There's Wallack jewelry. I mean, it's like, that's not mine, you.
Know, So it was just it's just a way of which I.
Mean, there's pictures of me at six selling in the Hamptons on a towel in front of our house, you know. And but I guess at thirty, really I'm sixty almost five, so at thirty as.
One, so the creative impulse to make the jewelry superseded way before acting career.
Yeah, I mean I got my SAG card when I was seven in a film with my parents, which one Murray Ciskell Tiger makes out.
It was the typeist in the Tiger movie.
Version, right, And then you know I was not born to be an actress. My sister, I think felt that way.
How would you describe your path as an actress?
Oh, I kind of was like, well, I guess it's in my bone.
You know, I should check it out.
And I do things in that way, you know, which I guess is annoying to some people. But I once I for example, we were in Diary Van Frank and I said, look, don't put me in this if I suck, you know. The director said, I'm not putting you in if you suck. So I think I was smoking pot in the attic between acts and the girl who is my sister's understudy, said, Okay, do you really want to do this? Do you really want to be an actress?
I said, oh, yes, definitely. It was so high, and so she took me and she called Bill Esper and said that said, I'm enrolling you, and you know, I'm getting you into this class. And for two years I studied Sandy Meisner technique with Bill Asper, and you know
it went from there. I moved to Hollywood for four or five years and ended up catering vegan food to hippies on Melrose and you know, whatever the hell I was doing feeding meters and I did some really bad TV shows the thing in my gap and curled hair and fake tits, and I.
Said, no, this is not right. Why are they making me look like everybody else?
So they came back to New York and I did some plays and started kind of that's when I got into the studio. I think in nine and eighty nine or eighty five or something, I became a member, and you know, just kind.
Of like took it easy because it's a hard belise.
Knowing as you did that you had your cynicism about Strasburg himself. What becomes the lure of the studio? Why do you want to go to the studio?
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's just the feeling of that it meant so much to my folks and had so much to do with their foundation and their sanctuary, and so I thought, Okay, I'm going to see what this is all about. And even in the beginning, when I was in my twenties and I'm like, I'm just doing some scenes with people that were doing some stuff.
I was like, what the fuck are you doing?
You know? But then again, there is there's a way that the work is done there that is like no other place on the earth. When it works, when it works and when to something yes, and when people are brave enough literally brave enough to go there and not get up there and do what they're good at. You know, I'm going up tomorrow with one day notice, and I Am not going to do what I'm good at. My instinct is to get up there and you know, do
my thing, you know, my shtick. But I wrote bow back actually and said no.
No.
He said, thank you so much. You know, you're so brave. I said, either brave or crazy. I said, I'm going there because I want to learn. I never want to stop learning. And that's what my folks taught me. Is like even into the nineties, you know, like before he really went into dementia land, you know, he was still trying to work and learn and you know, pitch himself.
To directors and shit.
He famously wrote a letter to Scorsese saying I want to be in one of your films, and Scorsese apparently thought it was a lie until he saw that he mentioned Cis Corman, so he realized, oh, you know, they maybe this is really like maybe in Stationary, you know what I mean. Like he really wrote a letter to him saying, one of my bucket list things is I want to work with you.
Actor's studio member Catherine Wallack. If you love conversations about the craft of acting, be sure to check out my episode with another Actor's Studio board member, the late Patricia Bosworth. Do you speak to Brando much for the book?
No, I didn't speak to him at all. I only met him once at the Actor's Studio. I called him on the phone. He wanted to talk to me, originally because he wanted to talk about Kazan, and he actually wrote me a letter that he would talk to me, but then he decided not to and I really became so frustrated. I kept calling him and calling, and finally somebody said, why don't you call his dog.
Alec.
I did listen to this. I faxed, dear Fido, I want to speak to your master. Within seconds, the facts came back saying my master does not want to talk to you, and signed with two paw prints. This was Brando answering me.
Hear more of my conversation with Patricia Bosworth at Here'sthething dot Org. After the break, Katherine Wallack tells us how the Actor's Studio has changed in her lifetime, and later Roberta Wallack shares her experience starring alongside Joanne Woodward and being directed by none other than Paul Newman. While still in high school. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Actors Studio board member Katherine Wallack made
her film debut at age six. She would go on to perform and stand out plays like The Beauty Queen of Lennon, The Walls of the Torreats, and Awake and Sing. I was curious what life in the theater was like coming up as a child of one of America's great acting dynasties.
Well, we acted a lot together, which was such a joy, all four of us. We did The Flowering Peach directed by Bobby Lewis. We did a tour directed of Wilson, The Toyers directed by Brian Murray who was an actor, he wasn't a director at the time. We did dire Van Frank directed by Marty Freed. So you know, we we would like kind of go the Flying Walendos, would.
Like go on the road.
You know.
It was awesome and I think they pretty much took me often to get me away from my.
New York pot smoking ways. You know, we had.
Yeah, I was Yeah, were you the troubled child?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So.
I don't know how you work in the theater were smoking pot. I did the the Orton play Loot. It was my Broadway debut, as they say, and I did the play with Joe Mahara and Jelcob Ivanic and so we want to make her and Charlie Keating played the husband, and my dressing room was above his, and during the half, Charlie Keating would smoke an enormous joint and the smoke would go up out his window, up the alleyway and go in my window of my room. I could smell
the wheel. Because his character was supposed to make an entrance disheveled having been in a car crash, and he enters disheveled in a mess and chaotic and shop. He would smoke pot in his room and then they would we would do the second half, and he'd walk out and go, oh my god, he awful action on the road. And he was like wasted, And I thought, how the fuck do you act waste?
I have no idea.
I can't I mean except for like when we were in Dire around Frank and Tony Holland would say, bring on the dancing girls. When the Nazis would come and bang the door down, I mean, and I'm trying not to laugh, you know.
Anyway, after that, I swiftly.
Got my ass to class and stop smoking about I can't even smell it now, funny, really like, I really don't like the smell of it.
Do you hate it? Yeah?
Kind of smoke? Since I'm thirty?
What's the last job you did? What's the last show you did?
I did two films during COVID that have now been written in from shorts to feature, and they kept me in my role. So we're about to shoot the you are, Yeah, I'm excited.
Do you still like what you're feeling about acting now? How do you you still enjoy it?
I absolutely love doing it?
You do? Yeah? You're in and out of the studio when you're younger, and your parents, of course are members of the studio. How's it changed in your leftome.
Well, back in those days, there was working working actors, and there was not the school filtering students coming in there. Weren't you know, this kind of influx of all different levels of.
No relationship with the MFA program.
Right, So there was like a very high standard. There was also kind of a looser attitude about when you could rehearse and go in. We all had keys. You could spend the night there if you stuck, which I have many times. You know, there was a very different kind of vibe. And I was the little one, you know, I was one of the few younger ones at the.
Bohemian, Yeah, you know.
And I took me three times to get in, and by the time I got in, I did Sidney Kingsley's dead End, you know. And by the time I got in they called me to tell me. I was like, oh yeah, okay, fine and click. Because they put me through some major hoops to become a member, which was fine. I didn't want any special treatment. I get actually offended when during moderation in a scene where, you know, during session, people bring up my parents and I'm like, why.
Didn't you bring up Joe's parents? Huh? You know, I mean, could you just get me break? Now?
You really have to find that underlying thread, You really have to find that kind of old school connection because there's so many different energies going on there now. But you know, people that diss it and don't come and I just say, you know, it is what you make it, and I don't have a huge career right now, so it is my way of expressing, being able to express on the stage, and I cherish that. I mean, I'm really lucky, you know. I see movies and plays the
other day everybody stands up and yells bravo. My father used to get so pissed when people stand up and yell bravo just because they saw play.
It's funny how your dad, who I worship, you know, the mark of a truly great film actor, to me is just the indelibility of these lines of theirs. Your father comes from a school, which I don't think he would claim to be a member of this school, but I kind of recognize a school of people which is just be the best thing in the movie. Doesn't matter how big your part is, just be memorable in the movie of your truthfulness. Your parents' legacy, what would you hope their legacy.
Is that they were so in love with each other and that they worked together so well. The respect I mean, my father. If my mother said this was an umbrella, my father would say, your mother said, that's an umbrella. That's an umbrella. You know, devotion, devotion, artistic respect, and love. I mean that that would be you know what I would say, And they they really did their best at raising as normal if you could call us that healthy non involved in the hole. You know, they kept us accountable.
And they also at the same time, like Dad was more proud of me making you know, ninety grand as a rep for an eyework company than he was if I was acting. Absolutely, he was like so much more proud of it. But yeah, I think it was.
It was like interesting you mentioned that the legacy is their relationship.
Yeah, I think it is. That's amazing because nowadays, like you know, I mean, there were so few of them that that work together as much as my folks. They really did, you know, always, especially you don't see it now, And as they got older, you know, they would write, they would do poetry performances and all sorts of churches and smaller theaters around New York. My father did student films. He and I worked together at the studio. We did Moon for the Misbegotten. I played Josie. Here he comes
walking down the aisle. I'm like, that's Eli Wallack walking gumme oile.
It was unbelievable, you know.
After by the way, we stopped and Stephen Lang was the moderator, and Dad said, hey, can we try it again? And then he goes, yeah, go ahead, and we did it again with the notes they gave us.
Can we do it again? He was like eighty something, you know, like that's beautiful.
Actress and designer Catherine Wallack my next guest. Roberta Wallack is known for her work on stage and screen, including her drama Desk nominated performance in The Model Apartments. She made her film debut while still in high school in the Effect of Gamma rays on Man in the Moon Maragos. Since Anne Jackson and Eli Wallack were so prolific throughout Roberta's childhood, I wanted to know how her parents balanced work with raising their children.
Dad was gone much more so than mom, and they had an agreement basically to try and make sure as often as possible that they were not both gone at the same time, or if they were very often we would go with them. But she was around a lot. And also back then, when for instance, Off Broadway was still a fairly new thing happening in New York City, they did a lot of theater a lot, and the curtains were later they were eight o'clock, right, So we would all sit down to dinner at six eat dinner.
I remember Mom always had to go take a nap. She would take a nap and then they would go off to the theater. But then whenever there was free time. She was a very hands on mom. I mean, I'm marvel at the stuff she was able to balance. We had help, fabulous help, Catherine. I always refer to our Nelly as our black mother, right, you know, who was amazing and came to work for us when I was only a couple of months old and she was very close.
She really became, I am a family member. But the fact that she was able to balance being a wife, having the career that she had, which was pretty big, and to be mom to us was amazing. I mean, I have memories of her around the holidays, taking us always shopping to get new outfits and to see Santa Claus at Bonwood Teller's or whatever, Lord and Taylor's and Kath and I, my sister and I. Easter time, we always were outfitted in great little outfits to go to the Easter parade.
They were very both of them.
Actually, you know, when Dad was around, I realized fairly young that it was quality time versus quantity time. And I remember talking briefly to Kate Winslet about it, who was very concerned about being a mother, a working mother, and I said to her, I get that, and I'm not going to lie to you. Could be some therapy
builds down the line, abandonment stuff. But kids, I think, very early on, realize and recognize that when their parents really love what they do, especially when it's something like acting, which every kid pretty much every kid wants to do all the time. Anyway, we give them a pass. We understand what that sensation is. I mean, I decided absolutely for sure I was going to be an actor at age six. I was taken on a date with Patty
Tchaiyevsky's son Danny. We were both in school together. We went to see Oliver on Broadway six when I was six, and I remember sitting there and before that time, I kept thinking, well, do I want to be a.
Ballerina or a nurse?
A ballerina or a nurse, And then I went when I sat in that theater, I realized, oh, no, I want to be an actor, because then I can be a ballerina and a nurse, and I can also play a boy if I want to. I could be a boy nurse or a boy ballerina. I could be anything.
Now, your sister mentioned how your dad was a pretty no nonsense guy when you was home. Yeah, there was a lot of rules and manners and have you asked to be excused from the table.
Well, he had been in the military, okay for way too long. And his estimation because his birthday was December seventh, Pearl Harbor Day, so he was already in the army and it was happy birthday. Here's another three years or whatever. You're stuck here. So yeah, he was very militant about time. If you were four minutes early, that was considered late, and he would pout for and not speak to you
for about two hours. To this day, sometimes I'm if I'm walking in my apartment without my barefoot, I can hear my father's voice saying.
I'll find you put your slippers on. Where are your slippers?
You know, there were certain things that they were strict about, but in retrospect, I think it was kind of great because it gave us all a sense of ethics, a sense a work ethic, a discipline that you know we needed so consideration.
Yeah, when did you.
First become aware of the studio yourself? Was it through your parents and going there with that?
I have an effective memory, a vague one of an older version of the studio of walking between these seats on a kind of rake. That's all I can remember about that. But no, my earliest memories of the studio are really more about Lee himself, about Strasburg. I think I mentioned to my middle name is Lee, after Lee, your sister, right, So he was for me a sort
of grandpa figure. But when it came to the work itself, then we had a much more slightly reserved and what I would call more of a professional relationship, even though there was tremendous love and fondness there. So those are my earliest memories. I mean, I got into the studio in nineteen eighty, but I did my first feature that Paul Newman directed when I was sixteen.
I was still in high.
School, The Effect of Gamma, Right, So I was still in high school with Joanne.
What was that extraordinary? Extraordinary?
I mean I have yet to have an experience even remotely like it, I'm afraid, but whatever, it was extraordinary because from the moment of the audition. And fortunately, when I first auditioned, I think Sis Corman actually got me the audition. When I got in there, Paul didn't know who I was, who my parents were, and it wasn't until the very end that the casting director said something like, we'll say hi to your parents, and he went, who
are your parents? And then I told him And then he told me the most hilarious thing I thought, which was that his first audition ever in New York City was with mom and that he absolutely sucked, and that he saw the look on me.
You know.
He said to Mom something like Annie, do you want to go rehearse first?
And she kind of was a little skeptical.
She said, oh okay, and they went to read it through and she just thought, oh boy, there goes this job. And so that I thought was hilarious. He said, you know, I've always loved your mom. That she was so gracious to me after I blew the job from both of us, So that was great. But he he treated me, even at sixteen, like a peer, and I was very serious. I mean I started training at the Neighborhood Playhouse when I was quite young. Charles Bush and I were in
the same singing class together. We took singing and improv and stuff. But I lied about my age, which I found out. I guess my mother didn't have to. We both first studied at fifteen with Herbert Birkhoff, so again I was still in school. I lied about my age to get into the class, and I was in class with Joey Pantaliano.
You have a list of people you studied with. It's a very heavy hitting list. Yeah, it's Berghoff, It's Hoggin, it's Bobby Lewis, it's Lee seacat bats And I mean the only name that's missing here is Win Handman.
I mean when I study with everybody, right Norse Stella Adler was that by choice. It wasn't that I felt I was eliminating anybody. The truth is that from fairly early on I was working quite a bit, so I just didn't fe that I had to study with everybody. I mean, I was able to apply having worked with such extraordinary teachers, but also with amazing actors, and also growing up with amazing actors. I guess I didn't feel
like I had to study with everybody. Again, it was more about quality, not quantity.
For me. That was enough, you know.
And yet what's funny is now, at sixty seven, I'm still studying. I'm taking an extraordinary Shakespeare course online with my friend Christopher Tubori who lives in the Philippines. Yeah, so that's been unbelievable. Penny Fuller is in our class. It's just awesome. And Giles Foreman who studied under a man called yat Melmgram and Christopher Fettis. And Christopher Fettis was the man who Anthony Hopkins based his role as
Hannibal lecter on Christopher. He based lecture on christ Why, oh well, if you ever met Christopher you would understand.
But Christopher was a master.
He found did the Drama Center in London, which is as close to the equivalent of the Actors Studio as you could beat. Yes, yes, well actually no, I think Christopher was born in India during the rag you know, and all that. But what fascinated me and drew me.
Although I had met Giles through Susan Batson many years ago, and I've been teaching at his studio in London and Paris, But what fascinated me about this whole lineage which is different than our training, but they're in some ways quite similar. Is that there are certain actors, the younger actors who have all worked this particular method.
Shall we call it.
Include Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy, And I just went, Okay, what are these guys doing?
Would like to figure that Colin.
Ferrell, Yeah, I mean amazing, amazing actors, you know, going way way back to Sean Connery.
Et cetera, et cetera, who've all studied this.
A group of these guys were all in after the Second World War. They all ended up fleeing the Nazis, and some of them were gay and whatever, and they all ended up in England, including which flipped me out. And I did not know this at the time. Michael Chekhov was part of that whole group, and Udah Hagen was interested. She was there as well. And it's based a lot on what we might call psychological gesture, that the repetition of a certain gesture over and over and
over starts to elicit something emotional from within. It changes your rhythm.
For example.
Well, it gets a little more complicated because another part that fascinates me that I think Lee would have loved to because Lee was so interested in psychology as he got older and older, is that there's a lot of Yungian premise to this too, and so that each one of us human beings basically are components of four things sensing, thinking, into, iting, and feeling, and then it gets complicated on how you combine that. But basically, for me, I can't do my
work without emotional memory, without sensory work, It's impossible. But there was always a part of me from when I was fairly young that started to feel like there's a little bit missing, there's a little something still cloudy. And this particular thing that I'm now working on, which is like learning an entirely new language, has much more to do with a certain level of precision. It has to do with almost a type of architecture to building a character.
And again, you know, as a young actor, I remember realizing that someone like Sean Penn, who is such an internal actors you know, I don't like to use the word method because he gets such a bad rap. And also the true definition is whatever method works for you.
That it seemed to me when you.
Watch an actor like that over a long period of time, where he's so internal and it's so emotional as he gets older, he starts to shift more and al Pacino too, I think, to more outer stuff, so that you get that. Yeah, so did you get the balance between the two.
I'm doing a TV show years ago and I have a scene in which the matriarch of the town who's going to bestow money on a medical clinic, and she's decided to withhold the funding for some quasi political reason.
And I have the scene with her where I'm appealing to her to give us the money, and I'm like grinding my gears for the whole I'm like, you know, because the thing you don't understand, I'm like, right in my sense memory, my dog died, I found the pigeon dead by the fucking road or whatever, and you could.
Understand missus cunning it.
I mean, my god, this is and we're done, and the director works with me, goes, you know, we don't have to do the whole show in the one scene, right, So if you don't have to do it, And as I have gone of these decades on, it becomes the word I use is technical. It becomes more to the inspiration is either there it isn't right, and I can summon it. No, no, no, we don't have a problem
connect into some emotional absolutely oc current in me. But to me, the technical now, I don't want people to have to reach for the TV dialogue with.
The said, which happens all the time, right.
And the funny thing is is there's a great story that Dad told I think he wrote it in his book where as a young actor. They were original members of the studio, and he went to the studio during the day and he listened to Lee lecture and he got all excited and worked up about it, couldn't wait to run to the theater. He was doing Anthony and Cleopatra with Catherine Cornell with her company, okay, and he's
playing the messenger or something. He was so excited, he was so amped up that he jumped a queue and cut out a page and a half of her dialer whatever.
And she was furious.
And Dad runs back to Lee and he goes, Lee, Lee, you know why you told me I was so excited, And Lee just looked at him and said, pick up your cues, Eli Darling, pick up your CUEO.
Actors studio member, ROBERTA. Wallack, if you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep it to yourself, tell a friend and follow here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back. Roberta Wallack shares a memory of acting rivalry with her father Eli Wallack. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is here's the thing. It makes sense that Roberta Wallack would go into the family business, having grown up surrounded by the cream of the crop
in the acting world. I wanted to know what her parents thought about her following in their footsteps.
They were interviewed once on a talk show and the interviewer asked, did you encourage your kids to become actors? And dad said, would you push your kid off a bridge? So I think that was a mixed thing. I mean, to be honest, and there were times where it really amused me no end where Dad would get a little bit jealous of me. I mean, I did the Sopranos and he said to me, what can I get on that show?
And I said, Eli, call your agent.
You know, I'm not excuse me, go through the proper channels the way I had to, you know. So I think there was some of that, but also so lucky that I got to work with both of them on the stage many times, on television, on film, and so again we also were able to see each other as peers in a certain way, which I think was fantastical.
What did your sister say with the show you all did together? And Frank, yeah, yeah, and she prayed you do that.
We started it in Manhattan off Broadway, and don't I don't remember if Kath was in that original production or not. But then we took it to Canada and then we took it all around the country. We toured with it for a while. That was incredible. That was an amazing experience.
I mean the Leicester for how long.
Over a year or more.
That's the most amazing thing to me. I mean, it's one thing to work with your wife, your girlfriends, right, one of your siblings or whatever. Right, But to work with your parents.
Right, Except that I think again we were exposed to it. I mean we were exposed to it so young that it seemed fairly normal. And the advantage, of course, was I with both I was so familiar with how they both worked. I mean Dad asked me to cue him all the time, so I knew their instruments very well, and so that made it easier and comfortable. But for example,
you know, stuff happens. I mean, of course, right, we were doing an a mirror play together and I had this very these very sexy scenes with John Shay, you know, and I said to the director, excuse me, but could you ask these two to leave the room while I'm they're not on stage while John and I are having this scene. I don't need to compound it with even more therapy. Thank you very much that I'm about to read.
We suck aspect out of this room, please exactly? Or the funny things.
I don't know if Kav told you, but there were a number of instances during Ann Frank, during other things that we did together, where and Brian Murray told this great story about we're doing walts of the Torriodors together and mom and Dad are having this huge fight. They're just into it. They're just going at it, and Catherine
and I are paying any attention. We're just eating, We're talking to each other as if nothing is happening, and everybody else is just frozen and shocked, you know, but the two of us are like, this is a day, you know. Biggie, Yeah, no, Biggie, they'll be you know, they'll get through this.
This is just part of you know.
It's usually the Anne Jackson I can't act moment where she storms off and then god damn it, he says, you know, and whatever, and they go through this whole thing and then she comes back and it's as if nothing happened. So and they talked a lot about it being therapeutic for them to get fights on stage together. So I think there was an element of that with us.
I mean one time I almost brought Dad up on charges though, when we were doing the Diary of Van Frank and we were in a black joking I'm not joking. Charge is meaning equity charges, no, of course, not criminal, but we were.
In the middle of a blackout.
We were in an exit and he started to give me a note in the dark, and I pulled him aside and I said, mister Wallack, you have anything to say to me as an actor. You talked to my stage manager and the stage manager will go to the director. Don't you ever give me a note again? And his tail went right between his legs. He was got I'm like, oh no, no, no no. In the meantime, I would sometimes beg my mother for a note, what.
Did each of them, respectively teach you about acting?
What?
Would she emphasize, Wow, you need to what and then correspondingly.
Him, Okay.
So in the earlier days, I would say, as I was saying before about how familiar I was with the way that they worked. Dad had to learn all his lines, I mean, have them down, pat. He had to first pretty much get those that down really quickly.
Mom, on the other hand, did not care.
She needed to know what the hell she was doing, whatever, whatever, whatever. And so the good news is I saw the value of both, right. So, I think the truth is that they never really came that directly at us in terms of acting. They really didn't. They really didn't talk about it. I think so. And I think they also respected the choices that I had made in terms of training.
Although I had to fight Dad for that first role.
He said to me when I got the role, when Paul Newman cast me in the film, he said to me.
What about school? I said, what about it?
I will do my school work and I will co star opposite Joanne Woodward. Enough, I wanted to go to professional children's school when I was a kid, and they said no. He said no, you will get an education like everyone else. In retrospect, I'm really glad that he said that.
What about her? What did she want you to know?
I think they both What they really wanted to instill was the joy of acting. To never lose that under any circumstances, to stay true to that pure joy.
You know, I'm very much I would say more of your mother's school, maybe for different reasons, where I've worked with actors who came in and they were, you know, if not letter perfect, they were pretty damned close day one of rehearsals, right, Like, there's no discoveries that can be made. But if you're there, you're several steps down the board from where I am, and I'm not quite sure what happens exactly.
Cat accept that.
For example, I'm saying here, I take longer usually to learn text, but then when I do, I don't forget it. I'm the one who gets the least number of notes.
Right, I'm the same way once I get I have a very good memory. But my point is that I would say to myself, well, I found myself incapable, or at least I just didn't prefer maybe I was capable of going into rehearsal and having memorized all my lines and because what I need, what's missing is what are you gonna do? Well?
Look, I worked as a very young actor with Ruth Gordon and Gar Kannan directing, and they said to me, you have to have all your lines down before we start rehearsing.
And to me, that was torture. It was crazy.
You know, it was really hard for me to work that way, but out of respect, I thought, okay, we'll do that. So it's remarkable when you get to work with another studio member.
I mean years ago, I did a little film.
I don't think anything ever happened with it with our buddy Stephen Lang and Stephen and I immediately before the director even got into anything, we start improvising, we're jamming, we're doing all this stuff. By the time they say action, we're already into the scene with our own words first. So being able to am that way again, it's like playing with musicians, right, Being able to work that way, that is what I prefer still to this day.
Now.
Your sister was very candid. She did not have warm and glowing and idolatrous things to say about Strasburg. She said that when she was there, she was kind of like, maybe gett that. I'm not getting I'm not gonna when you were in the studio, you were there when Lee was there, Oh, absolutely, and what was your experience.
So he taught me an extraordinary lesson very early on, which was I remember going up to do a scene and when it was over, I started making all kinds of excuses about how I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, and he went ballistic.
Darling, I don't care if you have two minutes for twenty minutes work twenty years and my whole body is shaking.
I'm like leaving my body and it.
It was extremely valuable because I realized, yeah, you know, you have to do the work.
You have to.
I mean, yes, it's about having fun, but the flip side of that is also preparation. And this is something I know al Pacino doesn't credit himself with this, but that notion of which is very zen by the way of.
You do the work, you do the work, You do the work, you do the work, and then you throw it all away.
So Lee was incredibly inspiring because he had that laser beam ability to cut into something. But yeah, he was a human being. He had favorites. He liked young women and jeans and you know whatever. Okay, you know he had that. But he was incredibly insightful and it was fun to watch some of the really older established actors turn into kids. I mean, Shelley Winter's turned into a child in front of Lee. So a lot of people were terrorized by him. I thought he was quite funny
a lot of the times. I mean I think I mentioned to you that in his class once he suddenly listed like thirty books in a row.
And this is before self.
Oh, I'm frantically writing down all of his references, and finally he gets to the end of it and he goes, yeah, button, He's addressing the whole class. He goes, yeah, but you don't read anyway, and I burst out laughing. So, yes, my experience was different. I adored him. I felt honored to work for him, and you got it and I got it. And also back to the Anne Frank thing, was I did it asked backwards out of respect for him, meaning I wanted to get into the studio as a
member first before I studied with him. So that's what I did. And so when I went to study with him. He had not seen me do Anne Frank and I understood why because of Susan Strasburg playing it and he didn't want to see it, and I understood that. But he said to me, Donald, would you bring a scene in? I said, sure, if that's what you want me to do. And I remember setting up and doing my thing and whatever, and when it was over, and I felt pretty good
because I had played it for so long. When it was over, I said, yeah, so I did my preparation. He went what I said, I did a preparations said when I said, well, while I was setting up, he went, ah, very good. I did not see that. So my experience with him was quite different. I mean, I'm aware, very aware because of historical information, particularly when he was younger, a lot of people had problems with him and issues
and whatever. But for me going to work with him much later in his life, I think it had softened him. I mean, he was drinking chocolate milkshakes a lot, you know, he was. He was a boobie to me in a lot of ways. You know, I wasn't terrified by him.
So my last question for you is your parents' legacy, and that is when you think about your parents, what comes to mind?
Great love story?
Right? Your sister said that she thought your fear she thought your mother was more talented than your father, and he kind of knew it.
Right Well, it frustrated, similar to Paul and Joanne right binga. But but I think the truth of that. I would adjust it only slightly by saying, no one could could touch Annie on the stage. No one, so in that sense, yes, but when it comes to film, maybe not so much. Maybe that was Dad's territory more so, that's fair. But she was so instinctive. I mean, she was incredible. I remember her saying to her once something about improvisation.
She just went, I hate that. I hate improvisation.
I said to her, that's because Anne Jackson, your entire life is an improv That's how you live your life. We mere mortals have to actually train in that, but you, that's how you.
You look forward to coming into a theater. As I used to someone said to me, why do you love the theater? I said, I know exactly what I'm going to say. I know exactly what you're going to say. I know exactly how they're going to react. I said, that's heaven. To me, for I'm a control freak. That's two and a half hours of just pure pleasure for me. Right, But it's interesting you say that about the movie and the stage thing.
It's slight different set of muscles.
And then there are those of us who are lucky enough to be able to adjust and do both, which has always been for me a joy that I've been able to jump between big screen, small screen and the stage.
I think that you know, with your dad especially, I think to myself, because I'm I'm an enormous fan of your father, and there are moments of your father's career that are just so indelible to me, and he's one of the greatest movie actors of all time. Eli Wallack was a person who had this power of understanding and the character and insight and strength, and none of it was at the expense of the.
End, right. I think that was to both of them. They were hugely generous.
I mean not just as people but also as actors, amazingly generous.
And that's something I hope too.
I hope I've narrowed in big time because it's important.
Yeah.
My thanks to ROBERTA and Catherine Wallack. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Maureen Hoben. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio