The American People (From Resident Alien)
The American people have done so much for me, have restored so fully my self-confidence, that I am constantly twisting and turning in an effort to live up to their expectations of me. Ingrid Bergman said, 'You must go on stage knowing they want you to succeed.' She meant American audiences. In England the people in the stalls sit back in their chairs with folded arms, saying in their stony hearts, 'We've paid a hell of a lot for these seats. We hope you're going to DO something.' In Manhattan, the audience is leaning forward eagerly, crying, 'Tell us!' You can tell them anything - how to be beautiful, how to successful, how to be thin, how to be saved. They will listen intently.
As a friend remarked, I decided to come to America at an age when most people decide to go into a nursing home. I wish I could have come here sooner when I had the energy and the optimism to fling myself with more abandonment, more total commitment into all the opportunities for self-promotion that are offered to me, but I couldn't pay my fare. When I say this people laugh nerviously as though it were a joke, but it is the ugly truth. I never earned more than twelve pounds a week in my life in England. There it was enough. . . But I would have been saving for three years to spend three hours in Manhattan so I waited until I was invited by Mr Bennett, the darling of the Shubert Theatre, to visit Manhattan.
That is the story of my life: I go where my fare is paid.
As a friend remarked, I decided to come to America at an age when most people decide to go into a nursing home. I wish I could have come here sooner when I had the energy and the optimism to fling myself with more abandonment, more total commitment into all the opportunities for self-promotion that are offered to me, but I couldn't pay my fare. When I say this people laugh nerviously as though it were a joke, but it is the ugly truth. I never earned more than twelve pounds a week in my life in England. There it was enough. . . But I would have been saving for three years to spend three hours in Manhattan so I waited until I was invited by Mr Bennett, the darling of the Shubert Theatre, to visit Manhattan.
That is the story of my life: I go where my fare is paid.