Woman; 123; Viveca Lindfors

[Announcer] An in-depth exploration of the world of women today with Sandra Elkin. [Elkin] Good evening. And welcome to Woman. My guest this evening is a Broadway actress. The winner of The New York Drama League Award, a grandmother, a divorcee [giggling] a film actress, the winner of the Berlin Film Festival Award, mother of three and a Capricorn born in Sweden. [giggling] She is Viveca Lindfors. Welcome to Woman, Viveca. [Lindfors] Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. [Elkin] I left out some 50 movies, 50 broadway plays. [Lindfors] Yes. [Elkin] and various other things that you have done. [Lindfors] Well, if you had to put everything in, we would have to be here for, like, 50 years, right? Cause' that's how old I am. [Elkin] Let's talk about what you're doing now. [Lindfor] Ok. [Elkin] At the moment, you're in New York doing your own one woman show called, "I Am a Woman". [Lindfors] Yes, actually we tried to stay away from the title. I, a one woman show and I'm haunted by - there's no way to get away from that everybody uses that word. Because somehow it's, um, it's not something that interests people somehow. So we try to stay busy. We keep saying it's a play about

one woman and many women, or a journey, or a search and we avoid the "one woman" but maybe that's a mistake, maybe I'll just say "that's it, it's a one woman show" it's a terribly different one woman show from what you've seen before, when women were freaks, had to be freaks in order to do anything. [Elkin] Talk about the evolution of "I Am a Woman" then. [Lindfors] You be in the evening. [Elkin] Why why did you do it to begin with? [Lindfors] Well, I think to begin with, which is about four or five years ago-that's almost how long I've been at it, uh, and that's the struggle is still on, you know, to fight for it all the time. I think when I started it was a purely, uh, you know, when I say a commercial choice - I mean I was going around reading Brecht and the agency that I worked with said, wouldn't, couldn't you put together another evening and I kept thinking of things like Mark Twain and things like that [giggle], but finding a female Mark Twain and I couldn't think of anyone, I said, there is no woman writer that I could do a whole evening, but somebody was already doing

Colette. So, I said to myself, why don't I just put together things about being a woman. So, I said, how would you like the title "I Am a Woman"? They said, oh that's marvelous. It's such a corny title but it really works, you know. [Elkin] What else could you really say? [Lindfors] In those days, I was, ehm, I was very unaware of the movement. and, ehm, I even hate to admit this, but I was even, like so many other women, feeling embarrassed about being interested, like saying who needs it, you know what I mean - I want to be with men, that kind of thing. Right? So, um, I started to work on the show about myself and then went to a friend of mine, a director, Paul Auster, and I said, Paul, I don't want to keep working on this thing totally by myself it's too isolated, how would you live to work with me on it?

Maybe now, I might have gone to a woman, but I just didn't know a woman that I thought I could go to, because people have said to me - oh, you choose a man. I said, well, I choose a human being, I mean I'm not going to discriminate. So, he was very funny on it. He said, I would just - he first read what I'd put together, and said that I would love to do it, because I didn't want to get rid of all my hang ups that I have about women and he said in an interview, not too long ago, that this involvement of this evening has, in a way for the first time, I have women friends, which is very interesting. You know, so we started to work and he said, you know we've got to - we've got to do a lot of - we must read everything that goes on today. So, I said, fine, I started to read and it went click. [Eklin] Um, hmm. [Lindfors] it really went click - I was flabbergasted, I thought I was liberated. I've had analysis for many many years; however, with a very Freudian analyst, so I thought that, that whole thing was

taken care of and I realized, I realized, such, such a tremendous amount about so, being a woman about the conditioning that I had submitted myself to and, uh, still suffer from, and that I wasn't really liberated at all. [Elkin] Before we get into that. [Lindsfor] Yeah. [Elkin] Let's backtrack and talk about exactly what the show is. [Lindfors] Well, the show is a search. The show is a journey. It is a journey of a woman and many women. Me, you, anybody, who, at a certain point in her life, has to say, "who am I?" And what am I doing with my life? Right? That's not so different from what, perhaps, a man feels, too. But in the particulars, in this particular time, when the threat of our own need for identification with ourselves, right, erm, which is now open up, in the sense that the choices are possible, so now we have to really know who we are, so we don't get lost, right? So, I imagine that most women

feel the threat of the thing - they can have a freedom that's possible, the choice that's possible, and, are terribly threatened and afraid to lose what we know is being a woman, right? So that, the evening is really a journey of women looking back to see, what do I want to hold on to? Where did I really feel totally fulfilled? And where were, where was the neurosis that stopped me, and what caused it, and what can I do about it? And I've got to understand it, and now I want to be this - they want to do all those things, and I still want to hold on to what I knew in the beginning made me feel so marvelous, right? Um. [Elkin] What do they all have in common? They all have in common, I think, I don't um, I think you're going to take this, they all have in common that they want a man. That they want a connection with a deep intimate

connection with another human being. What they find out, all of them, is that their neurosis comes from lack of fulfillment in other areas, and that therefore, the relationship with a man becomes a tower, a prison. Ehm, instead of a flight of fulfillment. I mean that when you first begin a relationship with a man, it seems like the world opens up, right? And instead, it seems like, to so many women, the world closes down, right? So, it is for the prison, it is with a fulfillment, and I think they all have that in common although some of the women do not understand it, right? So, I am showing various women in various moments in their lives, and therefore telling kind of a story line of a woman in search being told through different characters, right? [Elkin] Who are some of the women? [Lindfors] The evening is, in a way, framed by the spirit of, eh, Annie Frank, age 14, and Anais, main age 70 to

72, Lillian Hellman, age 77, did Collette. So that you have the spirit of Annie, which is matching the spirit of the two older women. So that you know, in a way, we don't have to lose it. We can feel like Annie. And we can, yet, be an Anais. And so we ended with a nice name. [Elkin] What have you learned? [Lindfors] What have I learned? I have learned that, um, I see I have moments of what I see when I'm out of the tunnel. I have learned that I have been in a tunnel a lot, as a woman. Knowing that the light is there and I want to be out there, you know, being in contact with the world, um. Sharing the world with myself. Um, being part of the world. Um, being part of forming the world. Uh, being part of the responsibility for creating a world that I want to live in.

I know now, I know know, that that is what I have to do. And in a way, the evening, is almost a first step towards that. I had many ambitious efforts in that direction before, but I always stepped back. Always step, I say, I can't do it - the man has to do it. And then if you got messed up I got angry at the man, but this time I've stayed in with it, all the time and it's - I'm part of the growth of the show constantly. I've learned that I got to be right in there, and, as a matter of fact, I feel better but I'm not protected. And whenever anybody protects, me I go crazy. It's like I don't have enough trust to be protected. I must be right in there, I must do it, I must be part of it, I must be active. And I think that that is, um, I'm allergic to authority positions, especially if I'm powerless. I made powers, I am manipulated so that I am powerless, and somebody takes over and this,

unless I really trust that person, I want to have it. And if I really trust that person, he usually trusts me and we do it together. And I must say, that my relationship with Paul, who with whom I wrote and he directed it, the trust is total, total, total. And we treat each other as total equal human beings, um. There is absolutely no, no conflicts between us. I, I would say that I, I have conflicts about this thing that we're talking about, It doesn't matter whether it's a man or a woman. If it's a woman, I had the same conflict, you know, so is the whole manipulating thing of being the weaker one that I really am very very allergic to. [Elkin]: Do people think that because you've been an actress for a long time that you've been liberated for a long time? [Lindfors]: Yes. This [stammers] you, you know you always made your living, you've traveled all over the world, you've married many times etc. etc. etc. and actually, while I was working on this show I um

my marriage broke up. And it was a marriage of 18 years and it was in many many many ways a very good, promising marriage. And it was a terrible blow to me that it broke up. I mean just I was just shattered and um in a way I was lucky in the sense that he choose a very young woman and I said well then at least it's his problem I said well it's his problem because he's copping out of facing old age with me and he sees himself in me and he used to quote this thing I read one day said to me you know ah I'm I'm I'm reading something in New York Times which really is funny he said I don't mind being a grandfather but I don't like to be married to a grandmother. And I thought how extraordinary but that's really I think what happened it's like I think in a marriage often or in an intimate relationship the other person becomes you. And if there's something in you that you don't like and you see that you see yourself in that other person its

it's trouble right? Can't run away from either yourself or yourself in the other person. So any how the fact that he abandoned me as I felt. I felt terribly abandoned. I realize that my God I have very little substance to stand on my own. Now-" "[Elkin]: Even though-" "[Lindfors]: Even though-" "[Elkin]: you had worked all your life?" "[Lindfors]: I was famous this that and the other. I felt totally lost, totally abandoned and petrified. And I can imagine how other women my age, I'm over 50, feels in a moment like that. I felt how am I going to find another partner? How will I have the energy to start another relationship at this stage of my life? And I just felt it was- I was just petrified, really petrified." "[Host]: Do feel marriage is still viable for you? I mean is that something you still want? That kind of thing, again?" "[Lindfors]: [exhale] No. In this sense I like a deep

relationship. And in a way I have to say deep. But I like a real relationship. with a man. And, and I want to depend upon the flow that that relationship gives me. I don't want to depend on that person. I don't want anybody to depend upon me but I do want to depend upon the flow that happens between two people. I am I think. I'm 97 percent sure I am a one-man woman. I like that kind of relationship with one man. Uh, I like to have a totally fulfilled life in many-many other areas and I don't want anything to stop me from that. If that relationship stops me from fulfilling my self in other areas [inhale] I- I- I can't have it. I must have been held back a lot. But I think I've done it to myself a lot. I think my own guilt, my own guilt of thinking a woman aught to be doing this and that. I mean, I think I had a

very old fashioned idea of what it was to be a woman. "[Host]: Do you think most women feel that way or do-" "[Lindfors]: Yeah." "[Host]: you think its changing?" "[Lindfors]: No. I think most women do feel- and I think it's changing but I think the difficulty in changing here and also here is enormous I think enormous. Now, I'm always happy when I- I'm happy to be- I'm happy to be doing the show at this time. [small laugh] Right? That's just a lucky, terri- terrifically lucky thing that I started to work on it because that was out of a need of my [background cough] own that it happened to become a need of the world at the same time is just one of those lucky things. And uh, it's very encouraging to me to meet younger women that are not as [pause] screwed up as I am who have- the ?pattern? and has not been going on for so long. You get to talk to a lot of women don't you after your show you have a symposium. What are some of the things they say to you?" "[Lindfors]: Well, the first question they all ask is

how did you- how did you do this show? And it is as if women I think, have an enormous need to ah, learn and understand the slowness of- of eh, getting a piece of work together. Uh, we are, I think, inclined to give up quickly because we really have not been trained or we haven't been looked upon as people that should accomplish something. So it's a whole new thing for us to accomplish. We were told to accomplish you know having a baby cleaning the house etc. but actually cleaning and keeping up a house is not as- so different from putting together a show. It's the same thing - at it every day, you know? You gotta clean up one corner then you have to clean up another and you have to go back and clean. It's the same thing. So we women should feel quite capable because we've been very capable all our lives and there's no reason that uh we can't take this same capability handling the house and the children out into other areas of

life to where we want to go to. As a matter of fact, I think that we have a kind of a systematic more slow, more real, more feet on the earth, you know, we're not so involved in machines we've had to deal with the kids and all kinds of emergency situations flexibilities situations. Women are dealing with that much more. I think we should, in a way at this point now, when it's all open for us, and we are ready to go in and deal in a man's world, we ought to not to be so ah, apologetic for the kind of uh, work we have been doing we have done quite a lot of work and we should really take that strength and that capability into a man's world because I think their world is you know? I mean, I think they're pretty screwed up in many ways, you know? I get into the business world and I think to myself my God they are less organized than I am, and I'm an actress. You know, I'm an artist. So, I don't think we have to a- apologize so much for what we have been doing. When somebody says I'm just a housewife. I say my God. Let a man

take care of a house. It's a very difficult thing to do. It takes nerve, it takes talent, it takes all kinds of stuff." "[Host]: Yes, I don't believe anyone should apologize for being a housewife-" "[Lindfors]: No." "[Host]: -ever." "[Lindfors]: No. That's right. It's a job. It's a it's a terrific job. But what was your question? [laughs] "[Host]: What are the questions that women ask you after-" "[Lindfors]: Uh,-" "[Host]: -they've seen the show?" "[Lindfors]: So that's one question they ask. And I tell them how long it took me and that it probably came out of a kind of frustration so that I was able to use my own frustration in a creative way. And I think that's another important thing for us to learn, right? That we can use our, what we call, our negative sense of our weaknesses, and by strengthening it we can use that for the work that we are doing. I suppose that's what you've been doing, right?" "[Host]: In a way." "[Lindfors]: In a way." "[Host]: Yes I think so, very much." "[Lindfors]: Right." "[Host]: You made a statement once about actresses." "[Lindfors]: Did I?" [Both laugh] "[Host]: Yes." "[Lindfors]: God." "[Host]: You said very few actresses are not neurotic." [Host]: Would you [Lindfors]: I suppose what I meant, I was almost I [Host]: do you want to defend yourself or stick by that or what? [Lindfors]: I, uh

I would say now that I would say very few women are not neurotic. Think women are neurotic." "[Host]: Oh, you you have to explain that." "[Lindfors]: Yeah. I know it sounds like a put down and I don't mean it that way at all. I think it is good for us, at this moment, to realize that we are neurotic. Why we are neurotic, and that we gotta get rid of it. You know? I think it's a- it's a dangerous defense mechanism so ?inaudible-bad edit? absolutely fine. I think women are neurotic." "[Host]: Can can you be more specific in in ways that you think women are neurotic?" "[Lindfors]: Well, I- I- I think that we are just being let out, right? in the s- same way as the negro in a way. who uh,- the women and the negro for quite some time, have been in a safe position, right? We didn't have to be responsible for anything. It was, he's doing it, the

masters doing it. I can sit back and be very wise, right? Now, I think that also creates a kind of a neurosis now when you- particularly when you have to go out and now say I'm going to be those people that I have criticized- now I have to do it, right? Uh, Then you have to live for yourself. Which is healthy. I think to live through another person is very neurotic. And I think that women have done that. Uh, Betty Friedan has a marvelous uh, sentence in 'My Evening'. Where she says uh, 'until all women learn to share and take on the responsibility for the backing of the world instead of being a burden themselves, they will continue to be destructive to their husbands, to their children and to themselves'. And I suppose that because uh, we have absolutely been like- we've been kept like children or like Nora, right? We've been in a- in a doll's house. When you are grown up that that's- that's- to- totally unreal situation. And it's bound to make you

neurotic. The Doll's House by the way is really a brilliant, brilliant play. And I'm using a tiny piece from there. "[Host]: Are women treated very badly in theatre? Do you feel you've been discriminated against?" "[Lindfors]: Yes, um,-" "[Host]: Have you always felt that way?" "[Lindfors]: I don't think [Lindfors] I don't think I understood it, I think that I have perhaps a tendency to play the martyr, and I've had to fight that a lot, you know? And I've been in analysis and- I hate to be the victim but I think I play the role of the victim right. So, you could say we have allowed ourselves to be discriminated against. Well, the power in the theater, in the movies, is held by men. And he of course has. put the woman in to the kind of a situation where he- I don't mean this again, in a mean way, because men are is conditioned as we are. Right. They're as blindfolded about many things as we all, and have been.

There was an interesting thing that happened... When I started out as an actress. Um, I followed- I mean, people like Gretta ?Garbor?, like Catherine Heppburn, like the Katharine Hepburn was really your pet actress of mine. And she's different, she's- she was-" "[Host]: She was very independent." "[Lindford]: Yes. She is what I think um, ?Betteford Dannigan? talks about- those few exceptional women that did learn to compete. Not as women, but as human beings, have paid a price and did in a sense become mutations and these mutations suffered and surmounted their own identity crisis. And, in a way if you think of uh, Catherine and that she's a total exception, some plays you have a sense of a price has been paid. Right? Um, Bette Davis... Now the women that didn't want to pay that

price have left... ?Irene Dunn?, ?Claudette Colbert?, ?Paulette Caudare?... You know? I mean, what happened to them? What happened to them at the age of 35? Uh, they had their glorious period- And as a matter of fact, the whole film industry was kind of marvelous, wh- films were made about marvelous women, strong women, most of the time they were just- they're just wives. [laughs] And they are um, sometimes actresses, but-" "[Host]: Do you take being called aggressive?" "[Lindford] I don't like to be called aggressive. I prefer the word active." "[Host]: Do you dislike aggressive because it's a male term, or?.." "[Lindford]: No, I don't say so. I just don't like feeling aggressive, I think. I like to feel active. And I like to- and I like to act. I mean, move. uhh I like to be able to- if I feel something, I want to act on it. If I feel something

at this, I don't want to have. I admire myself when I say 'I don't want to have it and that's that!' Very hard... If that's called aggressive, then I like to be aggressive, but I don't think it's being aggressive. I don't think of the word aggressive and- I think of the word aggressive, more as an unfair thing. I could be wrong. I don't know, what is a word anyhow." "[Host]: But I was going to ask you if you thought women, you know, working in theatre have to be that..." "[Lindford]: Women in theatre have mostly played this kind of game - under the table, you know? I mean, playing the dumb blonde, right? And then [she makes a cat *hiss* sound] going on stage and really taking over. So, it's been a totally schizophrenic situation. Marilyn Monroe is THE example of it... This brilliant girl- brilliant, really brilliant mind, who had to play the dumb, sexy blonde. And since she had very little knowledge about how brilliant she was- I think she knew it but she couldn't... I think she knew it very

much. I think she knew it, but she couldn't act upon it. Because of condition and because of what they did to her. I mean, they did... [reluctant mouth noise] Incredible things to her." "[Host]: That's another quote-" "[Lindford]: She was way ahead of time." "[Host]: -I'd like to ask you about before we run out of time... "[Lindford]: Yeah." "[Host]: -And you said at one point that it wasn't until you were 45, before you got a little bit of wisdom concerning life. Do you want to explain that or expand on that a little bit?" "[Lindford]: Yeah, although I want to say though that that doesn't necessarily mean that, generally speaking, people who'll get to that point when they're 45. I think that depends upon, you know, the kind of a time you're living in- when I think of my mother at 45 an myself at 45, or my grandmother to 45... Who knows what- where they were at? And where I was at, at 45. an interesting thing that's been happening to me lately, is that I'm beginning to have a sense of perspective. I really have a certain amount of years to look back at.

And that I think gives you a certain amount of wisdom, you know? [chuckles] Welcome! [both laughing]" "[Host]: I'll look forward to that." "[Lindford]: You have a few years to go. [Lindfors] Yet, you don't feel you're quite. You feel you're in the middle of it, but you can understand things because you have a sense of perspective." "[Host]: So, really, you don't have any very strong fears about age?" "[Lindford]: No." "[Host]: Uh, you don't mind coming on television saying I'm 15 years, yeah." "[Lindford, speaking before host finishes] No. No. No. I have no fears about age. I only have one fea- [chuckles] I am only afraid of being afraid. That's the only thing I'm afraid of. And that still happens to me." "[Host]: Since your marriage has broken up does it happen more, do you think? [Lindfors] mmmmm "[Lindford]: No. I think. The time that has passed since my marriage broke away- up has been such an incredibly- [pause, exhale] Constructive time, in spite of the unbearable agony that it

caused. But, I think that the fact that I survived it and then realized you know I had to... look for me somehow and learn how to stand on my own feet... That was a lesson that a lot of young people learn early. They say 'look I want to kno- know that I can be by myself before I can team up with somebody. So, I think is a very terrific thing. So, I would say that I'm getting less afraid." "[Host]: And less afraid age too?" "[Lindford]: I don't think I'm afraid of age at all." "[Host]: Did you used to be?" "[Lindford]: Yeah. I think so. I think when I was about 40/ 45 I think I would Panic, I don't think so much afraid of age, as I felt what age, that age was pointing out to me. Jesus Christ you haven't done it! You know? What's the matter with you?!" [laughing] "[Host]: Viveca we're out of time. I'm sorry we could go on forever. I thank you for coming, good night, see you next week." "[Lindford]: Yes, age is an interesting thing to talk about. Yeah."