Audition by Barbara Walters Page A

being “literary-minded” and backed it up by saying that I read “a great deal.” He also wrote that I was interested in “dramatic theatricals,” had both “initiative and creative ability,” and that I expressed myself “clearly and tersely.” As to what present interests, if any, he would like me to outgrow, he replied that I had “no trait” that upset him, nor did I appear to him to have “any bad habits.”
    All this he summed up at the end in that one sentence about my being a “normal” girl. (That’s probably what got me into Sarah Lawrence.) But he was no normal, average American father. I held that against him for years and judged what I had always thought to be his one-sentence contribution to the application as proof that he didn’t know me at all. Reading now what he actually wrote, I realize that it’s quite the opposite—I didn’t know him.
    In any event I went off to visit Wellesley and was immensely impressed. Along with Shelby, I also visited Sarah Lawrence for a personal interview. The school seemed small, which I liked, but my heart wasn’t there.
    This is what happened. Wellesley put me on the waiting list. I would not know until late summer whether they would have room for me. Pembroke, my “safe” school, turned me down. Sarah Lawrence wanted me. I was back to the insecurity of Kappa Pi versus Lambda Pi. What if Wellesley didn’t accept me after all? Where would I go? I had applied to only those three schools. I didn’t have the confidence to wait to see if Wellesley might take me or the courage to call the school and try to convince them that I would be a perfect candidate. So Sarah Lawrence it would be.

Sarah Lawrence
    I NEVER TOOK A science course at Sarah Lawrence College. I never took a comparative religion course or a language course or a math class. For years afterward I used to say I didn’t learn a thing. And I would jokingly add that if I had, I might have made something of myself. But when I read the course material Sarah Lawrence recently sent me, I realized that was not true.
    Part of the reason I didn’t delve into the more important academic subjects was that I took a course called “Theater” for my entire four years. At Sarah Lawrence you signed up to take three major subjects in three different areas. One of the majors was Theater. This was amazing to me—one could really just study theater? It was also a solution to a real dilemma: I had absolutely no idea what I really wanted to do “when I grew up.” Perhaps because I had spent my whole life in the world of show business, going to clubs and plays and meeting performers and behind-the-scenes people, I thought “Theater” was where I belonged. For me, lacking any other direction, it certainly seemed like a promising course to take. I liked the idea of learning how to construct scenery, familiarizing myself with costume design and lighting techniques, but most of all it was the idea of acting that interested me. I could imagine losing myself in the role of a totally different person. Somehow I felt I would be able to do that.
    We were also assigned great plays to read, among them The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, A Bill of Divorcement by Clemence Dane, T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party , and plays by Anton Chekhov and Sean O’Casey. I was especially moved by The Glass Menagerie , because it reminded me so much of my sister’s situation. In the play there is a rather frantic Southern mother who is trying desperately to find a “gentleman caller” for her emotionally and physically fragile daughter, who spends her days playing with her tiny glass animals. There is also a son, and when the mother too often forces him to find “gentlemen callers,” he abandons the family and is then racked with guilt. Although the situation was not exactly like mine, it was similar enough to resonate with me then and even today.
    To my joy, in my freshman year, I auditioned for and won the part of Mary