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She is equally hardheaded about the rest of her career, always keeping track of the intricate plan she has long since worked out. When she quit ballet, she knew that she still needed dancing to get ahead, so she continued her lessons. Acting lessons she refused. Says she, with supreme self-confidence: "I was afraid they would change me." Now she has signed for Can-Can, because "for my career I should do a musical now." The decision was complicated by the fact that dancing makes Shirley actively ill. She has an imbalance in the canals of her inner ear and gets travel sick as well. "Even if I'm in shape," says she, "I get sick when I'm doing a new step. To know you're going to get sick every day—I'd rather have a baby."
Just Deserts. Apart from talent, persistence and visual charm, what makes Shirley MacLaine a real ring-a-ding is her conversation. "Her candor has a whisper of regret and apology if she thinks she may hurt you," says Playwright Clifford Odets, "but she will say anything." Some non-whispered, non-regretted items:
¶ On New York Times Critic Bosley Crowther—"Dean of critics! Nonsense! He's like he is because he's insecure. He likes the sexpots; that shows you where his taste lies. And I went and bought the s.o.b. a lunch. I threw up for four hours."
¶ On religion—"I'm an orthodox coward."
¶On parties—"I go to cocktail parties every six months. Then I get sick on Seven-Up. At formal dinner parties, I'm forever making terrible mistakes. Sometimes they don't invite me back."
¶ On entertaining—"I don't know how. We owe people dinner from ten years back. But they keep asking us." ¶ On Method acting—"Not for me. In Hot Tin Roof I felt the actors were wading through two feet of dirt and Tennessee Williams was loving it."
¶ Spoofing the typical Hollywood reporter question about what she sleeps in—"It depends on who I'm with."
Says Shirley, as if to explain herself: "This is a time of individuals in motion pictures. Movies are not made on the grand scale that they used to be—and neither are people. The movies are looking for something different and special, and I'm a combination of too many things to be part of a trend. When I see a door open, I walk through it. I'm sure not going to beat it down. I'm going along the crest now, and I'm enjoying the ride. I've got everything I want, and I don't think everything's happened too fast. Hell, no. I think I deserve it."