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Inevitably, some of her early engagements were at the unemployment-insurance office, and she had to live in a cold-water flat "where the roaches rattled the dishes." Within three months, though, she was accosted in Greenwich Village by a Hungarian producer named William Gyimes, who looked "like an Oriental-rug salesman." "Hey," he said, "are you an actress?" "He's crazy," she thought. But she said yes and was launched.
Gyimes staged an off-Broadway revival of Ibsen's Lady from the Sea that lasted only three weeks but got Sandy an agent who wheedled her into a Palm Beach production of William Inge's Bus Stop. At the same time, Elia Kazan was casting Inge's new Broadway production, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and when Tuesday Weld suddenly lammed for Hollywood, Sandy became understudy for two roles. She used to report in with a pun reflecting her desperation: "Dennis, anyone?"
Slippery Splash. She was off-Broadway next in John Steinbeck's Burning Bright. Then followed two bigger opportunities, Motel with Siobhan McKenna, which folded in Boston, and Face of a Hero, starring Jack Lemmon. Says Jack gallantly: "If Sandy had been playing my role, we'd probably still be running." The show closed after 36 performances, and she switched to Graham Greene's Complaisant Lover, which starred Sir Michael Redgrave. In an ingenue supporting role, she made her splash opening night when the elastic of her half-slip gave way. As the silk was heading for the boards, she glided upstage behind a sofa and deftly stepped out of it, thinking she had been unobserved—until the house rattled with applause. Sir Michael dryly recalls "her obvious star quality."
Meanwhile, Elia Kazan remembered her "originality" and cast her as Natalie Wood's nasty girl friend in her first film, Splendor in the Grass. Then came "my most favorite play, my favorite experience," A Thousand Clowns. "Before that, I was always in a position to be fired. After every rehearsal, I knew they were discussing whether to let me go." Besides, the Clowns company (including Gene Saks, William Daniels, Jason Robards) meshed like the Budapest String Quartet. Robards was "wild, fantastic, my most favorite actor that I ever worked with." Among other things, "he taught me what it means to have a full enjoyment of what you do. I hear actors say, 'Oh, I hate to act,' you know. And I do, too, sometimes. But I know I really don't, you know."
Winging & Plinking. That led to Any Wednesday, which had a tryout so calamitous that before the play opened it went through one leading man (Michael Rennie), five directors and 13 endings—the 13th on opening night. The script was so unpromising that it took five coproducers to cajole in the $100,000 nut. As it turned out, Any Wednesday came in on rubber heels—a Broadway term describing a sleeper smash that confounds the handicappers.