Shirley MacLaine on a life in pictures

At 90, veteran actress and Oscar winner Shirley MacLaine was in a spicy mood. Looking through photographs from her long career, mostly captured in black and white, she remarked: “Where are the nudes?”

Of a photo of herself sitting on the hood of a Cadillac on the Paramount lot, she said: “Here I’m just trying to be coy, on purpose. Damn. What an asshole!”

And another: “Oh, I wanted to see how my legs were photographed.”

They photographed well! “Well, I was born with good legs,” she admitted.

MacLaine always had a spark of seduction. She was a pixie-haired triple threat – singer, dancer and actress. She could turn every head known in Hollywood, and even some, like Dean Martin, whom she called the funniest person she had ever met. She says she had a crush on him, but it never developed romantically: “No! I was kind of afraid that if I got that close he would be less funny,” she declared. “And I think humor meant more to me.”

Her photo of this love-not-being, along with hundreds of others, from fellow Rat Packers to politicians, once adorned MacLaine’s Santa Fe home. She called it her “Wall of Life.” “I just started filling an empty wall and loved it,” she said.

She has just finished organizing this wall of life into a subtitled photographic memoir, entitled “The Wall of Life”.

It all began where she grew up, in Virginia, the daughter of two educators and older sister of future Oscar-winning actor and director Warren Beatty. “He was a little baby puppy, and I took care of him and watched over him,” MacLaine said.

While Warren waited for college to pursue acting, Shirley changed her last name to her middle name and danced all the way to New York, even before graduating from high school.

She attributes it all to two teachers who gave some prophetic advice: “I remember the day they sat me down and told me I had too much expression in my dancing. Maybe I’d like to think to become an actress.”

As the story goes, MacLaine was cast as an understudy in the original Broadway production of “The Pajama Game.” When star Carole Haney injured her ankle, MacLaine was thrown on stage with just five minutes’ notice. “I never had a rehearsal,” she said.

She succeeded, or at least Alfred Hitchcock thought so. He cast her in his next film, “The Trouble with Harry.” It was his first film.

She had lunch with Hitchcock almost every day: “I ate these huge Hitchcockian meals! she laughed. “The makeup and hair guy came to me and said, ‘Look, you’re going to gain weight,’ and I did! I gained 25 pounds.”

She says producer Hal Wallis also had an appetite for her talent, and maybe a little more. If she remembers, he greeted her at that famous door to the Paramount parking lot on her very first day: “He came out of his office, then walked towards my car. I rolled down the window. He s ‘leaned over and stuck his tongue down my throat.’

He then gave her a sports car, but without apologizing. “What a fool,” MacLaine said.

At the time, she had just married the only man she had ever married, businessman Steve Parker, who she described as the love of her life.

They soon had a daughter, Sachi Parker. Sachi’s parents had a famous and open marriage: MacLaine spent most of his time in New York and Hollywood, while Parker and their daughter lived mainly in Japan.

She was, she admits, an unconventional mother and wife.

His past adventures (if they can be called that) were hardly secret. She’s been pretty open about almost all of them. Yet she also said, “I don’t think I was that attractive. For a while, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m not sexy and attractive.’ But then I had my relationships, and they TO DO I think so.”

She was just as open to those she had never been with, like Jack Nicholson. When she won her Oscar for her role opposite Nicholson in “Terms of Endearment,” he couldn’t keep a straight face when she thanked him: “I wanted to work with Jack’s comedic chemistry Nicholson since his chicken salad sandwich scene in “Easy Pieces,” and having him in bed was such a middle-aged joy!”

She never stopped inhabiting memorable characters. She found roles that suited her and her age in films like “Steel Magnolias” and “Postcards from the Edge.” She was around 70 when she joined the cast of the TV series “Downton Abbey,” and she was 80 when she appeared in “Only Murders in the Building.”

For someone who claims to have lived several past lives, the photos from her current life make it spectacular. No wonder she thinks people have come back from beyond to talk about it with her, like Cecil B. DeMille, who died nearly 40 years before receiving the lifetime achievement award that bears his name : “I’m going to take this award home, and of course, I’ll talk directly to Mr. DeMille later,” she said.

MacLaine still lives in Santa Fe. She says she belongs here: “I love the antique feeling, it’s still there. It reminds me of myself!”

She’s well aware that time is running out to satisfy all of her curiosities, but she’s been very open about not being afraid of dying: “Oh, no. I’m kind of interested in going,” she said. -she declared. “I can’t wait to be part of the heavenly experience. I really am.”

But for now at least, Shirley MacLaine isn’t going anywhere.

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Story produced by Reid Orvedahl. Editor: Mike Levine.

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