Lady Parts
Authors: Andrea Martin
ANDREA MARTIN’S
LADY PARTS
Why I Fly to Atlanta to Get My Hair Cut
Here Are Some Other Things I’d Rather Do Than Write
Some Things I Think About but Don’t Say Out Loud
Wherever You Go, There You Are
My First Head Shots, Circa 1970
SCTV,
or “What Do You Think of This?”
H
ello, everyone. And welcome. Before you begin reading my book, I need to come clean and set the record straight. I am not Canadian. I’m American.
Gasp.
I know, I’ve disappointed you, maybe even angered you. If you want to return this book and get a refund, I don’t blame you. Who wants to invest time in a liar? How can you trust me now, or for that matter, anything I say in this book? Even Oprah wouldn’t have me on her network.
Please, before you judge me too harshly, I need you to know I never meant any harm. Greater powers than I have spun my tale of mistaken identity out of control over the years, until it’s become fact. You, Canada, have always been kind and warm and welcoming to me. You’ve opened your hearts and pocketbooks. You have made me one of your own. And now I spit in your face. I disgust myself.
What is the origin of my deceit?
My assimilation into Canadian life was not any elaborate scheme to use or exploit the good people of Canada. I did not come to Canada to dodge the draft. It was neither a court order, nor a kidnapping nor witness protection that brought me to your fine country. The fact is, I visited Toronto in 1970, fell in love with the city on the first day, and stayed. From that moment on, I was an honorary Canadian, and no one ever asked to see my papers. Well, airport security did, not to mention Canadian immigration, the IRS, and the border patrol, but you lovely people with television sets did not. And so the myth continued.
For the last forty years, I’ve called Canada my home, or my second home, but out of all my homes, Canada has been my favourite. Okay, now I’m pandering.
If you stick with me past this disclaimer, I promise I won’t disappoint you. I’ll fill you in on the details of my life, all the juicy, indulgent, humiliating details of my dual existence and how I’ve come to be known (in my inflated head) as Canada’s favourite illegitimate child.
W
hen Steve Martin suggests a title for your book, you listen.
At first, upon hearing the title, I felt uncomfortable, and a little embarrassed. I was one of eight dinner guests at Steve’s home, and we were all sitting around the table, where an animated conversation about my forthcoming book was as delicious to my ears as his chef’s choice of arctic char and aged New York steak was to my palate.
“Perky Tits
!” Steve Martin yelled out. “That should be the title of your book.” The seven other dinner guests—Marty Short; Eugene Levy and his wife, Deb Divine; Laurie MacDonald and her husband, Walter Parkes; a couple I was meeting for the first time, the distinguished author Frederick Tuten and his partner, Karen Marta, an editor for
Vogue
—all of them began to laugh. Happy for the attention but nevertheless shocked by the description of my private
parts, I was intrigued as to why Steve had come up with
that
title.
“Wow, what made you think of that, Steve?” I asked, giggling and flattered that he even cared I was writing a book. How could I question the great Steve Martin, whose bestselling books and their titles
Shopgirl, Cruel Shoes,
and
Born Standing Up
are genius? But aren’t all those titles much tamer than
Perky Tits
? Was he being facetious? Was he just tossing out a funny title to get a laugh?
Believe me, I was grateful and relieved that someone else was suggesting a possible title for my book. I had been fixating on titles for months. It was a fabulous trick I had unconsciously discovered as I convinced myself I was writing my book, when all along I was just procrastinating my perky tits off. Steve and I began to engage in book-title banter, and the rest of the dinner guests weighed in. I threw out a couple of my ideas.
“She’s the Best Thing in It.”
Silence, mixed with disdain.
“TMI: Too Much Information.”
“Dated,” Steve said.
I offered up another. “
You Look Like Someone
.”
“Too self-deprecating!” someone else yelled out.
“How about
Fake Beaver
?” I asked timidly as I began to lose my bravura and settle into my comfort zone of low self-esteem. “I think it’s good because it describes my fake status in Canada as a Canadian, when all along I am
an American, with immigration status, living in Canada, which is home to the beaver …” Oh boy, what the hell was I talking about? I started back-pedalling.
“No, too vulgar,” someone said. “
Perky Tits
is much better.”
“Yes, yes,” another voice chimed in, “
Perky Tits.
I would buy that book.
Perky Tits.
It describes your personality.
Perky Tits.
It cuts right through. There’s Tina Fey’s
Bossypants,
and Andrea Martin’s
Perky Tits.
”
“Really?” I said weakly, slowly doubting myself. It was clear I was an uninspired fraud, not an author. I had no pulse on what would sell. On who I was. I was definitely going to give my advance back to HarperCollins.
“It’s a part of your past,” Steve said. “It’s relevant.”
How did he know my perky tits were a part of my past? I guess he’d read Paul Shaffer’s autobiography, in which one chapter is dedicated to my pert boobies. He would have read that, when I was younger, I wasn’t shy about saying the word “tits,” nor, for that matter, showing them to anyone who was mildly interested. In fact, the chapter in Paul’s book is entitled “You’ve Seen These Haven’t You?” Yes, it is true, during the ’70s when I first met Paul and we were both starting out in our careers, I was a freewheeling breast exposer. I must have been fond of my boobies, because I remember flashing them more often than not. But didn’t everyone do stuff like that then? And why recall those boob-flashing moments in my life and name a book after them?
Why did “perky tits” have such negative implications for me, and why was I being so resistant to a title that everyone at the dinner table said would propel them to buy the book?
“Perky.” I had always hated that word, a word too often used to describe my persona. Is that the only way I came across, cheerful and lively? What was I, a Jack Russell? Where were the other adjectives used to describe the real me: dark, deep, enigmatic, profound, complex, loyal, intelligent? I’m a Doberman pinscher, goddamnit. I have Doberman pinscher written all over me. “Perky” was synonymous with superficial. “Vanessa Redgrave is mesmerizing and heartbreaking as Mary Tyrone, in
Long Day’s Journey into Night,
and Andrea Martin as her maid, Bea, is perky.” That’s the kind of review I was used to. Not that there’s a maid called Bea in
Long Day’s Journey,
but if there were one and I had been cast in the part, you can bet your perky tits that I would have been called “perky.”
Years ago, at the height of
SCTV,
a journalist from
Playboy
wrote an article on the seven cast members. He described his first impression of each of us. Catherine O’Hara was enigmatic. John Candy, warm, inclusive. Andrea Martin, he wrote, was perky and accommodating. There is only one word, in my opinion, worse than “perky” and it’s “accommodating.” Who’d want to be around that person all the time? Well, me, if she were my maid.
Here’s the thing about writing a book about yourself. You hope you’ll do a good job about revealing who you really
are, or what’s the purpose of writing? Sure, I hope you’re entertained, and that you get a couple of good laughs out of this book, but in the end, I’d like you to know that there’s more to me than just being perky, which doesn’t mean that I won’t use the title Steve Martin suggested. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. After all, I’m accommodating …
Wait, wait. I have it!
Complex Tits,
by Andrea Martin. It has
New York Times
bestselling book written all over it.
Nota bene
:
In the end, my beloved editor nixed the title
Perky Tits.
He was concerned that people would be offended by the word “perky.”
I
was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, and although Maine is one of thirteen states in America that border Canada, this fact is meaningless to my story. However, it
is
interesting if you’re a geography buff. Thirteen states? That’s surprising, isn’t it? Didn’t you think it was more like eight?
Anyway, I have always thought that I was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time. I should have been born in the ’20s. I’m more of a flapper kind of gal. Think Zelda Fitzgerald, but not as heavily medicated. Big eyes, curly brown hair, able to do the Charleston really well. Here are some other adjectives people have used to describe me: perky (again!), quirky, loud, and fun. (Also: over the top,
not subtle, too broad, give someone else a chance, pulling focus, chewing the scenery, and rat-like.)
I’m Armenian. My grandfather’s name was Papazian. He came to Maine in 1920 and saw the name “Martin” on the side of a truck. So he took the name. He also took the truck. You know who else is Armenian? The Kardashian sisters. In fact, they have brought so much positive energy to the country that Armenia is thinking of changing its national anthem to “I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie.”
In any case, I grew up in Maine, home to Republican country clubbers, yachts, and lobsters, about as far away from my reality then as a penis is to my reality today. I was proud to say I was from Maine, though. I still am. It has an exotic feel to it, especially if you’re an actress. With the exception of Linda Lavin and the twenty-something, multi-talented Oscar-nominee Anna Kendrick, how many actresses do you know who hail from Maine? Well, Bette Davis used to have a home there, and her then husband Gary Merrill often frequented bars wearing skirts. But they were anomalies. They were transplanted movie stars. I was an authentic Mainiac, so I could claim the title Actress Born in Maine. Pine trees, the ocean, and fried clams were in my blood. I could recite every poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Maine’s poet laureate, by heart.
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis
In spite of my love for the state, I always felt like an outsider, a second-class citizen. My dad wasn’t a banker, like I imagined all my friends’ dads were. He was a grocer. Not only did he
not
go to an Ivy League college, he didn’t even go to high school. And our skin was dark, and our hair was black, and our voices carried all the way to Newfoundland.
Because I didn’t have blonde hair, a ski-jump nose, and freckles, I worked really hard at being liked. I was voted Homecoming Queen at Deering High School. At our yearly high school variety show, I was the headliner, performing solo comedy routines à la Carol Burnett. I dated the captain of the baseball team, and both of us were voted most popular. I defined myself as an “actress.” I couldn’t play tennis, couldn’t ski, couldn’t skate, couldn’t swim or play bridge, but I was funny.
Here is an entry from my diary when I was twelve:
I love acting. I want to grow up to be an actress. If I do really good with my grades, maybe my parents will let me act.
Clearly I flunked grammar, but the rest of my grades were passable, because at thirteen, I was cast in my first professional play at the Kennebunkport Playhouse, in Kennebunkport, Maine. The New York touring company of
South Pacific,
starring Penny Fuller as Nellie, used locals in the supporting parts. I was chosen to play Liat, the Polynesian princess.
A swarthy Armenian was the closest thing to a Polynesian princess they were going to find in the state of Maine.
To compensate for my ethnic insecurities, I found a hobby that allowed me to be anything I wanted to be. I had an active imagination. I spent most of my childhood in the attic in my house, and although this fact makes me sound like the crazy woman in
Jane Eyre,
I was what you might call a gregarious loner. The only place I felt safe to live out my fantasies was in the attic.
I dreamed of being on Broadway. Chita Rivera was my idol. I had seen her annually in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where my family had a condominium. She appeared at the El San Juan nightclub, in her own show, with three backup singers. I was mesmerized and bolstered by the fact that someone who didn’t look like Sandra Dee could have a career in the theatre. Chita was exciting and brash and dark and funny—everything I thought I was or could be.
After graduating from high school at age eighteen, I left Maine to attend Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. I couldn’t wait to travel far away from my provincial home turf. Being a mediocre student in high school, I had few options for my secondary education. I had read that Stephens College had a fabulous theatre program. Tammy Grimes, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, was a graduate. That was enough for me.
I lasted one year at Stephens. The student body looked like Miss Missouri and her fifty-three runner-ups. I looked like Olympia Dukakis. The college was gated, and an adult
female made the rounds at night, taking roll call. I felt constrained and rebellious. I ran away, was put on social probation, and then transferred to Emerson College in Boston. I was a small-city girl in a big collegiate town, which included Harvard, Radcliffe, BU, Boston College, and Northeastern. The city was alive and exciting and stimulating and dangerous for a girl searching for her identity. And there were no gates. None. The city was an open pasture for promiscuity. I soaked in love wherever I could find it.
An affair with my French lute teacher led to a year at the Sorbonne, where I fell in love with a Moroccan engineering student, which led to six months in Fez, where I stayed with his family, all of us sharing one room where we slept on mats on the floor, which then led to another year in Paris, where I fell in love with an Israeli soldier while studying mime with Jacques Lecoq at his École du Mime, which led to a final year at Emerson, where, in 1969, I finally graduated with a bachelor of science in speech and theatre.
I don’t remember studying much while I was at Emerson. I remember acting classes, alongside Henry Winkler, who later became a superstar as Fonzie on
Happy Days
, and I have wonderful memories of Emerson’s program at Deertrees Theatre in New Hampshire, where one summer I performed Nancy Twinkle in a production of
Little Mary Sunshine
and Simonne the servant in the light summer fare
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton
Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, more commonly known as Marat/Sade.
The day after graduating from Emerson, I took a train directly to New York City. I bought a
Backstage
magazine in which I read that there was an open call for the national touring company of
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.
Miraculously, two weeks out of college, I landed the part of Lucy and got my equity card. I toured the United States with a group of actors who were mostly from Canada. On the road, I fell in love with the actor playing Linus. Lucy sleeping with Linus—Charles Schulz would have been horrified. But we were discreet. What happens on the back of a tour bus stays on the back of a tour bus. I followed him to Toronto, where he was from. Soon I fell in love with Canada too.
It happened that fast, my love affair with Canada. I crashed at Linus’s pad at Bloor and Clinton Streets one night in July 1970, and I stayed. I unpacked my bags, cashed in my US unemployment cheque, walked to Honest Ed’s, where I bought a set of steak knives for $4, and set up house.
Toronto was a melting pot of nationalities. I felt like I belonged. I immigrated to Canada in 1970—actually, to Niagara Falls, where I crossed the border in a barrel (anything to get some film on myself), and I became landed. Back then it was easy. All you needed was $50 and a free weekend to trap fur.
Linus and I and another young actress lived together on Clinton Street on the second and third floor of a tiny,
dilapidated semi-detached wooden house. Dried remnants of grass mixed with broken beer bottles made up our front lawn. The first floor of the house was inhabited by a couple who were drunk most of the day and homicidal most of the night. We could hear her screaming for her life as he smashed chairs against the wall that were clearly meant to smash her. I’m not sure why we stayed in these treacherous surroundings, nor why we never called the police. The three of us were in our twenties, naive, and self-consumed. This ongoing domestic abuse only added colour to our already colourful existence trying to be actors.
The second floor of our apartment consisted of two small rooms, a kitchen, and a sitting room–cum–living room. The third floor, the attic, where we slept, had two tiny rooms with slanted ceilings that prevented even me at five foot two from standing up. There was just enough space for a double bed, or should I say double mattress. We spent many a cozy night in the small, hot, unventilated front room, where we sat on the floor, eating out of a fondue pot. Linus wrote songs and serenaded me with his guitar. We took up a lot of space with our simmering youthful romance. Our roommate, a beautiful young ingenue, kept quietly to herself.
We all lived together for a year until I returned to Paris, and Linus and I went our painfully separate ways. The pretty ingenue eventually gave up acting, but Linus has had a successful career in Canada for over forty years now. When we
run into each other, it’s always a lovely reminder to me of my beginnings in Toronto.
I’ve driven by Clinton Street a few times since leaving there in 1971. Not much has changed. The house is still there, and the grass out front seems a little greener. It’s a wonder the house has never been torn down and another home built in its place. It still looks so shabby.
I parked my car in front of the house just recently, and a sea of memories came pouring in:
My first agent, Michael Oscars, who I met within a week of landing in Toronto. I walked into his office, introduced myself, and he signed me on the spot. In fact, he’s been my agent for over forty years, and our relationship is the longest I’ve had with a man outside of my father.
My first commercial, for Kit Kat, in which I was directed to hold the candy bar, look directly into the camera, bite the candy, chew the candy, and meow, all on the count of thirty.
My first part in a movie, Ivan Reitman’s film
Foxy Lady,
in which I appeared semi-nude. (Don’t rush out to find it; the film is out of print, thank God.)
My first car, an orange Volkswagen convertible, which appeared back in my life thirty-five years after I had sold it. The present owner had tracked me down. She told me the car had been in her garage for years and she was about to sell it. She called to ask if I wanted to buy it back. I considered it. I’m as sentimental as they come. I finally declined the offer. I was living permanently in New York at the time and had no use for the car.
My introduction to pot, at Rochdale, a hippie high-rise on Bloor Street.
My first live Canadian stage show, in 1972,
Godspell.
After leaving
Godspell,
and over the course of my career, I performed in almost every province across Canada. I acted in dinner theatre productions of
Vanities
and
Not Enough Rope
in Toronto, appeared in
Private Lives
with Maggie Smith and Brian Bedford at the Stratford Festival, was cast in the Charlottetown Festival production of
Anne of Green Gables
(a rite of passage for any Canadian actress), and was a regular on CBC’s variety show
The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour,
starring Hart Pomerantz, who later became a successful lawyer in Toronto, and Lorne Michaels, who went on to produce
Saturday Night Live
. I toured British Columbia in a Chrysler industrial show with Martin Short and his soon-to-be wife, and my
soon-to-be sister-in-law, Nancy Dolman. I performed in
Salvation
, a rock musical in Winnipeg. I filmed the TV variety series
The Sunshine Hour
in Halifax with Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty, and hosted, along with Dame Edna,
Just for Laughs
in Montreal.