See you in a month. I can’t wait to come home for Christmas.
Much love,
Diane
Mr. and Mrs. Jack N. Hall:
The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the
Theatre cordially invites you to attend Dark of the
Moon, a program to demonstrate the work now
in progress, February 16 and 17, 1967.
Mom and Dad … Doesn’t this crack you up? They sent this to me instead of you. Get back here quick so you can come see it. I hope you like my interpretation of Barbara Allen. I sing that Joan Baez song. It’s beautiful. Richard Pinter is brilliant as the Witch Boy. I hope a lot of agents come.
Love,
Diane
And they did. The several agents who came seemed interested, but no one signed me up. At the end of my two years at the playhouse, Sandy Meisner sent me into the world of auditions with a nod, saying, “Someday you’re going to be a good actress.”
Hair
After the Neighborhood Playhouse, I hung out with other second-year students who were panicked about the future. We didn’t know where we would live, much less how to become working actors. Richard Pinter, my Dark of the Moon co-star, became a very close friend. Sarah Diehl and Nola Safro were around, and so was Guy Gillette, whose band, the Roadrunners, occasionally featured me singing songs like Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” (Insane, and a complete disaster.)
Luckily, Hal Baldridge from the playhouse got me a job at the Woodstock Playhouse, where I appeared in The Pajama Game and Oh! What a Lovely War. It was the Summer of Love, and somehow I met my first famous man, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary and “If I Had a Hammer” fame. He sort of took me under his wing for a couple of days. We were hanging out at his manager Albert Grossman’s place. I had no idea Peter was a political activist who organized peace festivals or that he marched with Martin Luther King. I felt awkward and uninformed with such sophisticated people and left early. He must have known I wasn’t ready for the big time, because I never heard from him again. To be so close to stardom and so far away was exciting but challenging and disappointing at the same time.
When I got my Actors’ Equity card, it was the end of Diane Hall. Apparently there was a Diane Hall in good standing. I decided to use Dorrie’s name instead of Di, Danielle, or Dede Hall for the part of “Factory Worker” in The Pajama Game. Snapping out of what must have been a self-induced stupor, I realized it was ludicrous to borrow my sister’s name, so I became Cory Hall for the stellar role of “Ensemble” in Oh! What a Lovely War. Cory and Dorrie? That’s when it dawned on me I could keep it all in the family by using Mom’s maiden name. Keaton. Diane Keaton.
Dear Gang,
I had an audition last night for a rock musical called Hair. I go back tomorrow for the final elimination. I’ve got my fingers crossed. I really hope I get it. I’m also supposed to try out for some sort of TV pilot, which doesn’t pay unless it sells. We’ll see.
I’m frantically looking for an apartment, but it’s so hard. The cheap ones go fast, even though they’re located in the worst, most rotten areas. Today I went to the Upper West Side. No luck. I’m thinking of going to a real estate broker. I know, I’ll have to pay a fee, but in the long run it’s probably better. This is more of a hassle than I expected.
Dorrie and Robin, I’ve started listening to Tim Buckley and Mimi and Richard Fariña. Are you into them?
Love,
Diane
Hello, all you Halls,
We’re in our 2nd week of rehearsal. Things are shaping up slowly, but I suppose that’s part of it. Get ready, it’s a really weird show, to put it mildly. I have three verses of a solo in a song called “Black Boys.” I’m just glad I haven’t been fired yet! Acting doesn’t seem to be a concern to the director, Tom O’Horgan. We look like hippies; we sing like hippies; we’re the turned-on youth of today. It doesn’t really appeal to me! I just wish I had more to do in the show.
Anyway, I love you all.
Diane
Hi, Everyone,
Well, I’m in a hit, we opened the 29th. No Woodstock this summer. A real job, and on Broadway.
After the show tonight, Richard Avedon is photographing the whole cast for Vogue magazine. Now, is that astonishing or what? And big stars have come to see it, like Warren Beatty (remember my crush on him from Splendor in the Grass) and Julie Christie, who is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and Liza Minnelli, and Terence Stamp, and Carol Channing. Apparently Hair is the in thing to see. People stand in lines every day to get tickets.
Things are pretty much the same. I’m certainly the same. Will I ever change? I’m still the dumbest person alive. One apparently does not grow out of stupidity. Oh, also I’m on a diet. Obese is an understatement. I’ve gotten carried away with the FOOD LIFE.
Dad, I hope you prepared your friend for Hair and the nudity. Is he coming soon?
Love, Diane
4
BIG YEAR
“Father Mother”
While I was watching fellow tribe members shed their clothes onstage every night, Mom switched from letters to journals. It was 1969. She had gone from a twenty-four-year-old woman feeling the newness of two loves, to an adoring mother who reaped the so-called “rewards” of being a homemaker in the fifties, to an adult who displayed hints of defiance in the sixties.
The process of learning how to explore her own unanswered questions came from the action of moving a pen across paper. How had she found time? Not while preparing the endless tuna casseroles and cheese enchiladas that became leftovers for four lunch boxes five days a week; not at the kitchen counter, with wilting Kellogg’s Corn Flakes sprinkled with wheat germ waiting to be cleared. When was she able to grab a few minutes for herself? Not after Dad was at work or we were in school; not before figuring out the best way to stretch the budget so she could buy the extras everybody always begged for. Did she have free time between the dishes and laundry, and mending our clothes, and renewing her license, and helping Dorrie with her homework? No.
I have free time, time enough to have written this memoir while working on a product line for Bed Bath & Beyond and editing a book for Rizzoli Publications on modern architecture, time to leave home and act in a Larry Kasdan low-budget indie in Park City, Utah.
Even though Dexter, Duke, and I carry on the Hall family tradition of sitting down to dinner every night, our “It takes a village” version of the evening meal is unrecognizable from those days at the kitchen counter on Wright Street. My role as “Father Mother” (coined by Duke) is nothing like Mom’s. I reside at the head of the table. Dexter and Duke flank me on either side. Members of Team Keaton attend, like Sandra Shadic—renamed Sance Underpants by Duke—on some nights, “La La” Lindsay Dwelley on others. Ronen Stromberg comes by too. I love our dinners, but I don’t make them. Debbie Durand does.
As “Father God” (another of Duke’s terms of endearment), I begin with the high points and low points of our collective day. Duke makes a face. I pretend to ignore it and attempt to expand our sense of community spirit by injecting subjects like Heal the Bay’s annual report card on the worst beaches of Southern California. Dexter says, “At least it wasn’t Santa Monica again.” “Right, Dex. Thank God.” On the sidelines, Duke teases Dexter about her interchangeable crushes on boys with names like Max and Matthew and Tyler and Corey and Chris B. and Chris L. Dexter responds by calling Duke an “annoying pest” and ratting him out, saying Duke’s school pants got thrown into the shower after swim