Alan Alda will be presenting the Flame Challenge Prize winner during the 2013 World Science Festival, which takes place May 29–June 2.
Credit: Greg Kessler © 2012 World Science Festival

In his first memoir Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned, Alan Alda recalls that as a young child, his mother would often caution him to keep silent in public. “Don’t notice anything,” she’d admonish him. It’s no small irony that years later, he would play a universally beloved television character named Hawkeye.

Alda played that part for 11 years in the classic hit M*A*S*H and, more recently, tweaked liberal sensibilities as the Goldwater-like Arnold Vinick in The West Wing. He is a prolific writer and director with 33 Emmy nominations (six wins) plus three Tony nominations for his work on Broadway. And then there are the many memorable film roles, from Crimes and Misdemeanors to California Suite to, most recently, Tower Heist.

It’s no surprise that Alda’s perpetually in demand for films and TV, but what is surprising is where his heart is these days. His deep-rooted passion for science has evolved into a remarkable endeavor: He’s currently visiting professor at Stony Brook University’s Center for Communicating Science—a department he helped found in 2009 to train scientists to communicate more effectively with the public. As if that weren’t a sufficient departure from show biz, in 2012 Alda and the center also created the Flame Challenge, an annual international contest in which scientists are challenged to explain complex concepts to 11-year-old children. More so than any of his television, stage, or screen credits, Alda is palpably animated when conversing about these unique ventures.

Question: How did you become a visiting professor at Stony Brook University?
Alan Alda: I realized when I was doing Scientific American Frontiers for 11 years on PBS how important it was for the scientists to have really good communication skills. Science really surrounds us in our lives, and it’s at the heart of our economy. We all have to understand it better. So, in my travels, whenever I was at a university where they taught science, I would ask, did they think it would be possible to train scientists as communicators while they are training them as scientists? The only place in the country that really picked up on the idea was Stony Brook. And Howie Schneider, who runs the school of journalism, got very enthused about it and began the Center for Communicating Science. And I’ve been helping with that.

Q: This is a rather unusual move for a movie star.
AA: My relationship with science is as someone who’s curious and hungry to know, hungry to understand. So all I have to offer is my ignorance and my curiosity, which is a good combination, as long as they come together. Ignorance without curiosity is not so hot. But I actually do have something to offer, which is that I’ve spent my life communicating and thinking about how communication works.

Q: There should probably also be a center for communicating economics, public policy, law—all kinds of other disciplines, don’t you think?
AA: I can’t change the entire world [laughing]. Yeah, better communication would be terrific. I’ve often wondered what the “fiscal cliff” was [chuckling], or even what “Obamacare“ actually entails—it’s always been a little murky and could have been communicated better.

Q: And yet we’re voting on these things.
AA: I know that some members of Congress have not understood these subjects as well as they might want to. So, yeah, our lives depend on good communication. Good communication helps personal relationships, it helps bosses and employees get along better. We rely on it.

Q: Speaking of science, what’s the status of your play, Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie?
AA: We did a wonderful production of it at the Geffen Playhouse in California. Anna Gunn played Marie, and she was fantastic and that was wonderful for me to see. I’m constantly revising it. In the car on the way over here I was making notes on a couple of scenes. It sounds stupid if I tell you how many drafts I have.

Q: I’m a writer. Please, share!
AA: How about 100. I probably will be continuing to work on it until well after I’m dead. I love the character; she is a hero of mine and I want to tell that story as well as I can.

Q: You write, act, direct. Do you sing, too?
AA: I have sung twice on Broadway—in The Apple Tree and in a musical that lasted until the end of the first act. [Laughs.] It was called Café Crown. I have to work hard at singing. I was thrown out of the glee club in high school because I had trouble staying in the same key. I have this unique ability to sing in three keys at once. Seriously, I’ve gotten a lot better over the years. I sing when I have to.

Q: Would you star in a television series again?
AA: If they asked me to do a show that I’m interested in or that I’d get to work with someone that I’d like to work with. I like to work with Laura Linney, so I did her show [The Big C] a few times. I did ER and The West Wing. They were really interesting places to act. And 30 Rock. That was fun. Tina Fey is so brilliant. I’m in this wonderful position where I can do what interests me. And whatever comes along that interests me, I do. The rest of the time I bother scientists about communicating.

Alan Alda The Saturday Evening Post

Rachel Jupin saw her fair share of tough times growing up in the projects of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her father left her and her three siblings when she was 9. The family barely scraped by financially, let alone emotionally. “Let’s just say listening to my problems wasn’t high on Mom’s list,” Rachel says.

Fortunately for Rachel there was one person who really cared. “I could tell my Aunt Laurette anything,” Rachel fondly recalls. “She always had the time to listen. If it wasn’t for her, I really don’t know how I would have turned out.”

Rachel promised herself she would give her children all the attention her mother never gave her. She graduated from high school in 1966 and went to work for the phone company. There she met her husband, Michael, a telephone lineman. They fell in love and were married six months later. She quit her job, and the couple had four sons and two daughters. She showered them with love and attention. “I never wanted my kids to have to turn to someone else because I wasn’t there,” Rachel says. “So I became very involved in their lives, especially with their education.”

She was happy being a mom, but in her 30s, tough economic times forced her to go back to work for the phone company. But she had bigger dreams. An avid reader and writer, she decided to go to night school to earn an undergraduate degree in English literature. It took her eight years, but she finally graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts in 1995. Within a year, at the age of 48, she became a substitute English teacher at New Bedford High. “It’s the best job I ever had,” she says.

Rachel loved the job so much she went back to get her master’s in education, so she could teach full time. By 1998, she had her degree and the full-time job she’d dreamed of. She’d finally arrived. Or had she? As a full-timer, it was soon clear that teaching was not always the noble profession she had dreamed it would be. The job required her to be a disciplinarian, surrogate mom, and at times a referee. And the stories she heard were shocking. In her first semester, a student confided she was being physically abused at home. Another, when asked to write an essay about heroes, told Rachel she had none. The girl confided she was all alone in the world, shipped from one foster home to the next. Rachel took the girl under her wing, allowing her to hang out at her house when things got too tough at home, and helping her to realize she was loved and worthy of being loved. Till this day that girl visits Rachel and thanks her.

Our story could easily end here—the inspiring tale of an inner city child beset with hardship who not only made good, but did so by devoting her life to others. Instead, the story continues, as Rachel would play a part in preventing a national catastrophe. This second act of Rachel’s amazing story concerns her relationship with another young, troubled girl named Amy L. Bowman.

Just like Rachel, Amy came from a fatherless family, with a mother who didn’t have time for her. She’d been shipped from school to school and town to town. Like so many others, she found refuge in Rachel. It didn’t take long for Rachel to realize Amy needed someone who cared and was willing to listen. And it didn’t take long for Amy to realize that Rachel was that person.

“If you could sum up Rachel in a few words, it would be she is someone who sees the good in people,” says Amy.

Before long Amy was spending a lot of time with her new favorite teacher. And she had plenty to say. Rachel discovered a neglected, misunderstood, and terribly troubled teen with a whole lot more on her mind than school. “I had a lot of demons back then,” admits Amy.

“She came from a very dysfunctional family,” says Rachel. “Amy was abused from about four years old. She was looking for someone to talk to, and I was willing to listen.”

The Teacher Who Listened The Saturday Evening Post

Not only did Nicole’s father show up for her winter wonderland wedding in Vermont on December 29, 2012, he walked her down the aisle alongside her stepfather, Dan. Afterward, Nicole and her father danced to the perfect song for the occasion—John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Nicole Stefanowicz was only 6 when her parents divorced in 1993. It was a real shocker because she never saw them fight, and her father was a doting dad. “My mom worked on Sundays, so that was our special day together,” recalls Nicole fondly. “He was a terrible cook, so we had boiled hot dogs and ravioli, but I loved it because we were together.”

That all changed after the divorce.

Though Nicole’s mother recovered quickly—marrying a family friend who became a loving stepfather—her father Glenn spiraled into depression, anger, and alcoholism. “He really went downhill after that,” Nicole says. “It was hard to see him like that.”

Unable to accept his wife’s new relationship, in a drunken stupor, one day he vandalized the family car, forcing Nicole’s mother to file a restraining order. That was the end of Nicole’s contact with him. She didn’t see her dad for most of the next decade, only hearing occasional updates of how he had moved away to Vermont, was scraping by, was in and out of jail, and eventually wound up living on the streets.

Although Nicole knew she could do nothing to help her father, it planted the seeds of a caring heart in her—one she first noticed when a friend in high school had a drinking problem.

“I could see my dad in him,” Nicole says. “I wanted to fix people and make them better. I think secretly I wished I could fix my dad.”

Nicole became a community service devotee helping the less fortunate however she could. And a few years later, all those good works earned her a scholarship to St. Michael’s College in Vermont. When she arrived, one of the first things she did was look for her father. “Vermont is a small state,” Nicole says. “I figured maybe I could find him. But I couldn’t.”

She majored in journalism and threw herself into the volunteer work that was now part of her makeup. One thing led to another and soon she was working with the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) at St. John’s Hall, a permanent housing location for displaced individuals. From the moment she arrived, Nicole was thinking about her father. But she was totally unprepared for what was to come. As she walked past the mailroom one day, she noticed a mailbox with her dad’s first name on it. “I got really nervous,” Nicole remembers. “I sat down and started playing a game to take my mind off of things. But I couldn’t stop from thinking and hoping that maybe it could be him.”

Then, as the residents were called in for dinner, Nicole’s wish came true. “My dad came in carrying his bike, and was totally nonchalant when he saw me,” Nicole recalls. “He just said, ‘Hey, there. Let me put my bike away, and I will come down and say hello.’”

Her fellow volunteers and the staff at the shelter looked on in shock and confusion as Nicole proudly informed them that the homeless man they knew as Glenn was her dad. “I was so happy to see him,” Nicole recalls. “I didn’t even think about how crazy it was. I was just glad we were together again.”

The two made small talk after dinner and left promising they would see each other soon. But Nicole wasn’t about to leave it to chance. She began volunteering regularly at the center, just so she would be sure to see him. “We would take long walks together and talk, sometimes go to the mall,” Nicole recalls. “I just enjoyed being with him.”

She also enjoyed the work. Seeing how the center helped Glenn made her think of all the residents differently. They were no longer faceless social victims, but rather they were people’s fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. In her sophomore year, after a weeklong field trip working with Hope House Ministries—a group that caters to some of the most desperate of disadvantaged souls—she knew helping the less fortunate was her life’s calling. She switched her major to sociology, and began working a lot more with COTS. “That’s when I really began to think maybe my dad and I could have an ongoing relationship,” she says. But that notion would soon be tested in a big way.

As part of her continued commitment to charity work, Nicole went abroad the following semester. During her stay, she received word Glenn had gone back on the streets and was involved in a serious accident while riding his bike. The news terrified her. “I first thought he might be dead,” recalls Nicole. “I never really thought about that being possible before, and it really affected me. That’s when it really hit me how much I cared for him.”

When she returned to the U.S., she was happy to see he was safely back in the shelter. She realized she would never be able to fix all his problems, but she also saw that having him in her life was a gift.

When Nicole graduated from college the next year, her father surprised her. He showed up in a suit, nicely groomed, and perfectly sober to cheer on the graduate. “He was so proud of me,” Nicole recalls. “It really filled my heart to have him there with the rest of the family.”

Today, their relationship endures and grows, even though Glenn struggles to stay sober and faces mental and emotional battles. One night last year, he wound up in the hospital with a breakdown. He called Nicole crying and apologizing. When Nicole showed up, she found him cold, wet, and starving.

But, some time later, when Nicole recently told him she was getting married, he beamed with pride and promised her he would be sober for the wedding. “It’s beautiful that he wants to be there for me, but I love him whether or not he shows up,” Nicole admitted at the time.

On the big day, December 29, 2012, her father not only showed up for the wedding but also walked her down the aisle, then shared a dance with his daughter at the reception.

For Nicole, the most important thing is having a relationship with her father—even if it’s an imperfect one. And grasping that lesson has brought her peace, both in her personal life and in her career.

“For all those years I didn’t have him when I was younger, I felt like I was missing something, and now I don’t,” Nicole says. “I feel like I have a rich and full life that he adds to. As long as he can continue to do that, then whatever we can have together is better than what we would have apart.”

Photo by Todd Stoilov/courtesy Nicole Stefanowicz.

Inspiration: Father of the Bride The Saturday Evening Post

Photo credit Michael Yarish/AMC

Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, has a shelf full of Emmys and Golden Globes not to mention critical raves for the hit series now in its sixth season. The retro drama about a 1960s ad agency has left its mark on everything from fashion to the way we look at gender roles. So why is Weiner the first to admit he can be a little anxious about being at the top?

Maybe because he’s hardly an overnight success. He can laugh now about all the time he spent after grad school writing scripts, while his architect wife supported the family. Along the way, he wrote the pilot for Mad Men, but received nothing but rejections.

Weiner’s break came when he started writing for The Sopranos. That show was so hot it made his reputation, but even that wasn’t enough to sell HBO on Mad Men. Eventually it was AMC that took the gamble.

Weiner is charming—a great talker—but notoriously close-mouthed about where the series is going and whether the end is in sight. He’s already made his first bid to move to the big screen writing and directing with last fall’s You Are Here starring Zach Galifianakis and Jenna Fischer.

Question: How has success changed you?
Matt Weiner: I’m less combative. Finding an audience of even a few people after being rejected for a long time kind of recalibrates your perception of humanity, believe it or not. But I’m superstitious about the word success. It took awhile to realize that this really happened after years of privation and rejection. Ironically I’m the person who wrote, ‘Happiness is the moment before you need more happiness.’ So even the premise of the question, ‘How do you feel about success?’ is terrifying.

Q: What would you rewrite about yourself?
MW: I’ve got plenty of bad qualities that have not disappeared. I’m working on being more patient. That can be difficult to be around. I am very exacting. I think I can come off seeming unappreciative of the people closest to me sometimes because I have the complete expectation that I’m entitled to their affection. That’s probably my biggest fault—impatience.

Q: Are you different at home?
MW: I’m like every dad, I’m a joke. [He has four sons.] My anger’s a joke. My dissatisfaction’s a joke. My rules are a joke. I’m always fighting to enforce my authority. I work so much that when I come home and say, ‘Hey everybody, don’t do it this way,’ they’re like, ‘If you were here you’d know this is the way we do it.’ It’s like I’m powerless. You know what, once you take physical violence out of the equation, you really have no control over another person. [Laughs]

Q: Have you tried being a diplomat around the house?
MW: I lose my temper. I’ve got a bad temper. I’ll get mad and be swearing and using the ‘F’ word in the kitchen. Afterwards I’m so embarrassed and I look over at my kids in the next room and I’m like, ‘God, I hope they didn’t hear that.’ And I see they are laughing but trying to cover it up so they won’t embarrass me.

Q: What inspired you to be a writer and to stick with that unrealistic ambition?
MW: I had a lot of support from my parents. They loved and admired writers. We have a big poster of Ernest Hemingway in our hallway. I think that that mattered to me that they thought writing could be a heroic profession and a writer could make like a valuable contribution.

Q: What made you aim so high?
MW: I was a terrible student. I had a lot of mentors, teachers who encouraged me, kind of told me whether I believed it or not that I was a late bloomer. I gave a speech at my high school graduation and a dad in my class told me that I could be a TV writer. It wasn’t just any dad, it was Allan Burns who created The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And so I had that in my hip pocket. And then I went to college and did some acting and wrote poetry. Then I went to film school and was out of work for 5 years even though I was writing all the time. I tell people the hardest part about it was not knowing that it was going to be 5 years—it wasn’t that I was going do it, it was those years of not knowing when I was going to be a success.

Q: Don Draper the main character on the show says, ‘Everyone thinks this is temporary.’ Do you think that?
MW: I am extremely aware that the end is coming but not when. I’ve always had to sweat. I never have been sure Mad Men was going to go on again. I live and die by this thing. I want people to say, ‘That was the best season of the show ever.’ I want them to progressively say during the season, ‘That was the best episode of the show ever!’ I am always aspiring to keep it new and fresh. But you’re going to lose if you’re always trying to top yourself. You end up doing something crazy.

Q: You are pretty secretive about the plots of the episodes.
MW: I’m not trying to tease people. I just don’t want to give away to viewers what’s coming because not knowing what is going to happen is part of what keeps people interested. I think fans of the show, the ones who really love it, don’t want to know. But it is hard to talk about a new season without getting specific. At the beginning of a season I’m always like, ‘I’m starting a whole new story. If you don’t like it, then it’s not for you. But it’s not because it’s not as good as last year. It’s just different.’ No matter what happens you’ll be able to understand it. It’s a TV show, it’s not War and Peace.

Q: Are there lessons that having a huge hit have taught you?
MW: At a certain point you realize that being mature in this job is not thinking that you can do it all by yourself. You can’t forget that other people have the best stuff to offer and you need to be excited when you hear something you didn’t think about. I try to remember that I don’t always give enough praise. I get so much attention for my contribution to the series, and I wish I could share the glory a little bit more. I always mention the work of my producers and co-writers but it seldom gets printed. And I want people to know that that’s not my fault. That I try to share the wealth.

Q: What’s the right way to handle fame?
MW: I remember watching Jennifer Lawrence fall on the stairs as she went up to accept her Oscar. And I just thought, ‘If I were to write an acceptance speech, it would start like that.’ That moment to me was kind of like instant humility. She recovered with such grace and good humor. That’s a hard thing for people to understand. You just don’t want to attract the evil eye, become arrogant, rest on your laurels, and take it for granted.

Q: Does the great acceptance of the show give you more creative confidence?
MW: Trying to put a dream into words is a lot of what it is at the beginning of the season. And the ship leaves the port but you still don’t know if it’s any good. That’s the thing that never goes away. You don’t even know, even when the season’s over, even when you win an award, if you like pulled it off. And you know anyone who says they’re only interested in satisfying themselves is a fool.

Meet Mad Men Creator Matt Weiner The Saturday Evening Post

Fiji has accommodations for every budget, but, for those with extra to spend, Dolphin Island is the ultimate dream getaway, offering complete privacy and luxury. Photo by Geoff Mason/Huka Retreats.

All I can figure is that Tom Hanks lost his glasses in the plane crash. In the movie Cast Away, he spends years, washed up and alone on a Pacific Island. He gets skinny, grows a beard, nearly goes insane, and ends up spending huge amounts of time talking to a volleyball.

“Oh, yeah, he was on that island right there,” Pilli tells me, indicating a rock tower just around the point. From on top of those rocks, if Hanks had his glasses on, he wouldn’t have had any trouble at all seeing the village where I’m about to sit down to a wonderful meal of fish cooked in coconut. He probably could have even seen the resort one more island over, bures, the traditional Fijian houses, lined up neatly against the shoreline and a bartender who serves the strongest rum punch I’ve ever had.

We’re in the Mamanucas, a chain of islands to the west of Fiji’s main port town of Nadi, on Viti Levu—one of only two of more than 300 islands in the country big enough to show up on most world maps. And it didn’t take getting into a plane crash to get here; actually, the ferry ran right on time and was really comfortable [see "Travel Tips: Fiji," March/April 2013].

The Mamanucas look like Hawaii before it was Hawaii. They look like the background of every painting Gauguin ever did of a tropical paradise: mountains rising out of the sea, no transition between water and flower-stuffed jungle except lines of powdered sugar beaches. Villages are hidden behind lines of sheltering coconut trees, pandanus, and stuff I’ll never learn the name of but has leaves the size of dinner plates.

I catch a boat over to a beach on the far side of the island from where most of the film was set, unload a picnic lunch and string a hammock under a thatched shelter—a good idea to be under cover, since every now and then from the jungle comes the crash of a coconut falling out of a tree, and that just isn’t something you want to be under.

My ride steers his boat away and for the first and so far only time in my entire life I have a beach completely to myself (well, except once in American Samoa, but that beach was haunted, so technically, I was sharing it with the ghosts) with no chance whatsoever of anyone coming by.

The sand stretches as smooth as a pool table, except for my footprints and some tiny, delicate shells, like a kind of cowrie that’s been Dalmatian spotted.

Let’s face it: If the Garden of Eden had resorts, it would have looked like Fiji.

Which is why Tom wasn’t the first Hollywood star to wash up on Fiji’s shores. Cameras and crews have been coming out here since at least 1932, when Edward Sutherland shot Mr. Robinson Crusoe. No, you probably won’t find that one on DVD. Better chance of seeing Burt Lancaster play His Majesty O’Keefe, a 1954 hit where he realizes it’s more fun to be happy than rich as he walks the streets of Suva, Fiji’s capital (on the other side of the same island as Nadi) despite the fact that the weather forecast never says anything but “rain.” Gregory Peck stood in Suva’s rain during the production of 1974’s The Dove.

But here’s where Hollywood got Fiji very, very wrong: What all the films have in common is that you have to work for paradise, getting there can’t ever come too easy. A little suffering to purify you for the experience, like stripping off the skin from a sunburn.

Tokoriki Island Resort is a secluded, lush getaway in the Mamanuca Islands of Fiji. Photo courtesy 8Hotels Tokoriki Islands and Resorts.

Yet just like getting to the Mamanucas on a nice, shiny ferry, I didn’t work at all to get here. Fiji is just three hours from Australia, or about 10 from Los Angeles. And the islands have resorts so luxe that the staff actually looks offended if you touch your own bag.

And being here is zero effort. Everybody speaks fluent English, even out in the villages, and they might well be the friendliest people on the entire planet. The only voices you’ll ever hear raised are the constant shouts of “Bula!” the all-purpose greeting and expression of joy.

Isn’t pure joy better for your soul than Hollywood trial and tribulation?

And I’m about to get a whole lot of joy, because the sun’s going down and it’s time for kava.

Kava is the glue that holds Fijian society together, and it was the one thing the missionaries weren’t able to change about the islands. Because the truth is, before the arrival of missionaries in the early 1840s, the Fijians were not exactly known as the nicest people around; in fact, most sailors went a very long way out of their way to avoid Fiji. At least one missionary ended up as soup. At the death of a chief, a passel of his wives would be strangled, so he wouldn’t have to die alone. The Fijians maintained a more or less constant state of war, but at the same time, you can see something deeper was going on, because their war clubs—ironically still the most popular souvenir in all the shops—are works of art, like it would be rude to bash someone in the head with a club that wasn’t as beautifully made as possible, intricately carved and decorated.

But the missionaries, with that famed missionary perseverance, eventually stopped turning into soup and changed the entire local approach to life. Like they did across the tropics, the missionaries convinced people who lived in a hot, sweaty climate to wear clothes suitable for a New England winter. They stopped head bashing from being the sport of choice. And they built churches every 20 feet or so in most villages. When I walk through a Fijian village on a Sunday morning, hymns pour out of a half dozen chapels’ open windows.

But the missionaries couldn’t do anything about kava, and maybe one of the reasons why film crews love Fiji so much is that the national pastime is getting blitzed on kava every evening. Kava is made from the root of a kind of pepper plant. Grind the stuff up, mix it with water, and you get … well, a drink that both looks and tastes remarkably like mud. But mud that first makes your mouth go numb, and then, according to people who apparently have a much lower chemical tolerance than I do, instills you with a very relaxed, happy feeling. So relaxed that you might not want to move for several hours. Or, if you drink enough of it, several days.

Fabulous Fiji The Saturday Evening Post

Fiji is easily reached by Air Pacific, airpacific.com, which flies direct to Nadi from Los Angeles. They fly two-story 747s; if the plane isn’t too full, you can buy a full row of seats for yourself in the quiet upstairs for a few hundred extra bucks. Money well spent for the 10-hour flight.

Most resorts on Fiji will arrange your transport out from Nadi to the resort; the local airlines are Sun Air, fiji.to, and Turtle Airways, turtleairways.com. Very efficient ferry service is offered by South Sea Cruises, ssc.com.fj; they work with the resorts and offer Nadi to beach service to most major resort areas; from there, a resort boat will come out to take you the rest of the way if need be.

Fiji has accommodations for every budget, but the higher your budget, the happier you’ll be. A local guesthouse with meals might run $20/day. An ultra swank honeymoon-style spot can easily go $2,000/day. And there are plenty of options in between. The best place to start looking is on Fiji’s official website, fijime.com.

There are no bad islands in Fiji; it’s gorgeous from end to end. Whether you’re looking for a private getaway or a big party resort, you won’t have any trouble finding just what you’re after. The only warning is take it easy on the kava (you will be offered kava) until you know how it’s going to affect you.

Read more in “Paradise Found,” March/April 2013.

Travel Tips: Fiji The Saturday Evening Post

Born of Hollywood royalty, the Smash star, now 61, has found a new inner confidence. Illustration by John Jay Cabuay.

When Anjelica Huston enters a room, she commands your attention just as she does on screen. She’s an imposing presence, even a little intimidating—she’s just so tall!—until she breaks into that charming, mischievous grin. It’s quickly obvious that the actress is nothing like the scheming, tough-as-nails producer, Eileen Rand, whom she plays on the NBC series, Smash.

As Huston speaks, revealing a self-deprecating sense of humor that’s thoroughly endearing, it’s hard to separate the drama in her life from the memorable characters she’s brought to life, from the mob wife in Prizzi’s Honor to Morticia in The Addams Family.

Huston was born into Hollywood royalty. Her dad was legendary director John Huston. Her mother, John’s fourth wife, was Italian ballerina, Enrica “Ricki” Soma. Houseguests ranged from Marlon Brando to John Paul Sartre and John Steinbeck. She began acting in small roles, mainly in her father’s films. Then, just as she was coming into her own, her mother was killed in a car accident. That changed the direction of her life.

She moved to New York, and as a young woman, her grace, stature, and angular good looks led her to modeling. Richard Avedon photographed her for Vogue. The big change in her life came when her father cast her in Prizzi’s Honor, a part that earned her an Oscar and made her a star. She co-starred with her longtime love Jack Nicholson. They were together for 16 years, but once she got famous there was a lot more interest in them as a couple—always talk about the ups and downs of that relationship.

Finally, they split—another big life-changer.

When she and Nicholson parted company, Hollywood watched to see if she’d ever find her Mr. Right. The answer came when she walked down the aisle with celebrated sculptor Robert Graham–known for works like the Olympic Gateway at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in D.C., and the Duke Ellington Monument in New York’s Central Park. The handsome artist and the beautiful actress were a standout couple in the arenas of entertainment and art.

Graham also loved to draw beautiful women and their bodies. There was one star-studded showing of his work where people teased him about nude drawings that looked an awful lot like Anjelica. She casually deflected the questions by talking about “my fantastic husband” and playing up his many other accomplishments. The two were inseparable, so his sudden death from a heart attack four years ago left her shattered. Her many friends within and without Hollywood rallied around her, but she credits Smash—her first venture into series television—with coming at a “vital time” and finally filling a void in her life.

Question: I have known you for years. I listen to the laugh in your voice and you’ve got the greatest smile. Why do they keep casting you as these stern women like Eileen in Smash?
Anjelica Huston: [Laughing] Well, Eileen does have a good sense of humor. But it’s true, they like me to be these slightly sinister characters. It’s good to play against type, I guess.

“Sometimes I’m a wimp, and other days I think I can conquer the world.” Photo courtesy NBC Universal.

Q: And what would you say your type is?
AH: I really don’t match any stereotype. I never felt like I “fit in.” That’s probably what makes me a great observer.

Q: But doesn’t your character’s feistiness reflect you maybe just a little?
AH: I would like to be as scrappy as Eileen. I can certainly wrap my brain around her scrappiness. But sometimes I’m a wimp, and other days I think I can conquer the world. I wish I could plan it out a bit better.

Q: You get some steamy romantic scenes on the show. Do you get a kick out of that?
AH: It all depends on who with. But it certainly livens things up—particularly at my age. I remember at the very outset, two years ago, I said to the producers, ‘Please, give me a love interest.’ I think it’s important to see strong women who also have a very vulnerable side and who are allowed to have a sexy side.

Q: As the years pass, what has changed for you?
AH: The older I get, the more I look for a good time. I remember when I was in my 20s and 30s, I was always in some fight with a boyfriend or involved in some drama, something to feel bad about. I feel so the opposite of that now. I just like to have a good time, smile, and be with my friends. You know, tell a story, have a drink. I’m certainly not looking for angst.

Smash Star Anjelica Huston The Saturday Evening Post

The Arizona desert is all sharp edges and oven heat and bad intentions. But a few basic guidelines can make it feel like home. Photo by Rob Zabrowski/Shutterstock.

The Nazis escaped right about where the coyote is watching my dog. My dog, a failure in most basic dog departments, hasn’t noticed the coyote yet, because she’s busy trying to figure out exactly what this rabbit-like smell is. In a minute, the rabbit will break out of the brush, unnoticed, and I’ll offer the dog a drink of water that she won’t take. She’s lived here all her life, but she’s never learned the desert rules.

1. Nothing matters more than water.

I know the rules backwards and forwards, because I grew up in the Arizona desert, this part of the Sonoran that looks like the set of every Western movie you’ve ever seen. Along with all the other kids in my Boy Scout troop, I was strangely smug that I could survive, no matter what. We knew how to dig into the cool sand to rest when the temperature hit 120 degrees. We could build distress signals visible clear to the horizon. We knew what to do about rattlesnake bites (cut parallel, not in an X shape). We knew that cholla spines are barbed, and you can’t pull them out, so you have to push them further in. We figured the stories about the spines working their way to your heart and killing you were probably a lie, but we did know for sure how to get water from barrel cactus pulp, how to build deadfall traps for kangaroo rats and lizards.

Okay, to be honest, we would have died quickly should we ever have needed to actually try these things. My friend Corrine and her Girl Scout troop, no doubt as self-assured as we were, got lost in the desert for three days, with no food but a five-pound bag of watermelon Jolly Rancher candies. “Another day, it would have been Lord of the Flies,” she said, “and a day after that, the desert would have been eating our bones.”

2. Even if you know the rules, the desert is bigger and stronger than you will ever be.

Back then, of course, there was more desert; when I was a kid, friends lived on the edge of town, where their only neighbor was Frank Lloyd Wright, who was already refusing to face the lights of the growing city. Today the town goes on for an hour past where we used to float in the pool and watch the bats, in bunches thick enough to be mistaken for rain clouds, come out at twilight.

Still, even though it’s shrinking fast, every year the desert takes its toll. Helicopters fly in for rescues; hikers dehydrate, fall from ledges, think their cell phones are going to get them out of trouble. It pays to remember …

3. Absolutely everything in the desert would like to kill you.

It’s all sharp edges and oven heat and bad intentions. True story: A guy got drunk and started shooting saguaros. These are the quintessential desert cactus, tall and thin, their arms reaching for the sky like they’re being held up by bandits. Saguaros can grow over 25 feet tall, have roots miles long; and if it has rained recently, their hollow bodies can hold two tons of water.

Guy shoots saguaro. Saguaro falls over and crushes guy. Everybody in the city applauds.

The saguaros here in the park are dying from car exhaust pollution; even so, this is an oasis, several hundred acres of desert in the middle of Phoenix. The zoo and the botanical garden are across the road. People jog here, do orienteering, take nude pictures of each other against the red rocks. Hawks swoop after ground squirrels—one once passed my car, grabbed a squirrel, and headed back into the air ahead of me in less time than it took me to realize I was driving more than 70 miles an hour.

7 Rules of the Arizona Desert The Saturday Evening Post

Around Phoenix

Stay near Camelback Mountain: in Scottsdale, that means the beautifully restored Valley Ho, hotelvalleyho.com, which is sort of like walking into the backdrop of a Frank Sinatra movie.

Right in Old Town Scottsdale is the best place to look for desert art: Navajo rugs and Hopi kachinas (ask before you buy, there are a lot of knockoffs) and turquoise jewelry.

A bit more expensive, but right at the foot of Camelback and one of the oldest hotels in Phoenix, the Royal Palms, royalpalmshotel.com, is pure old-style luxury, with incredible views of the mountain.

Either hotel puts you close to Papago Park, Phoenix’s central oasis. On the west side, it’s just park—wander and see what untouched desert is like. On the east side, it’s the zoo and the Desert Botanical Garden, dbg.org, a great place to see how lush the desert really can be.

If that doesn’t satisfy your interest in plants, head out to the
Boyce Thompson Arboretum, ag.arizona.edu/bta, on the edge of the Superstition Mountains.

And by the time you’ve headed out that far, a stop at Lost Dutchman State Park, azstateparks.com/parks/lodu, is the perfect place for a desert hike in the rugged, cliff-strewn mountains. Or take it easier by driving the Apache Trail, which is an old stagecoach road through the mountains. It’ll take all day to get back to town, but, especially in spring when the flowers are blooming, there’s no prettier drive in the state.

Away from Phoenix

Tucson has the Saguaro National Park, some of the most pristine, beautiful desert anywhere, chock full of its namesake cactus. Tucson is also home to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, desertmuseum.org, which is sort of a zoo, sort of a botanical garden, and a great place to see the best of the desert up close. For lodging, go for old and full of character at the downtown Hotel Congress, hotelcongress.com, a local institution since 1919. Or move upscale
and to the outskirts of town with the Westward Look Wyndham Grand, westwardlook.com, which has been around just as long. And at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains, the swank never gets in the way of the view.

Finally, the most famous patch of desert in Arizona is that big hole in the ground: the Grand Canyon. Not so many cacti—it’s high desert, a completely different kind of ecosystem—but most people are too busy watching the sun light the rim of the canyon like a lava lamp to care about the greenery anyway. Spend the night right at the edge, at the El Tovar, grandcanyonlodges.com/el-tovar-409.html, or head over to Cameron and stay at the Historic Trading Post, camerontradingpost.com. For the record, the much less developed North Rim of the canyon is way prettier than the South, but everybody visits the south side because it’s easier to get to. If you do go to the north side, check the weather: The North Rim closes in winter when there’s too much snow.

High desert or low, the desert rewards the patient: The longer you stay, the more you’ll see, and the richer you’ll find the landscape.

Where to Stay, What to See in Arizona The Saturday Evening Post

There are things I liked as a kid that in my adult years I no longer enjoy, but my enthusiasm for snow has continued undiminished. My Grandpa Hank told me I wouldn’t like snow when I got to be his age. My grandfather was wrong about a number of things, but this was his biggest misjudgment.

I liked snow as a kid because it got me out of school. The cancellations would be announced on WGRT, our town’s radio station. Sometimes WGRT wouldn’t even wait for official word. They would predict the closing the night before, working themselves into a frenzy. My siblings and I would take their prophecies as gospel truth, put on our coats, and go for a walk around the block in the snow. I remember how the snow lit the night, and the smothered quiet, and the feel of snow landing on my exposed neck and running in rivulets to the collar of my long underwear. When we got home, Mom would make us hot chocolate, not the stuff in a packet with the pebble-hard marshmallows you dump into hot water, but the real kind with milk and cocoa and sugar. I would stay up late, sitting at my bedroom window, watching the snow fall, backlit by the street light. Cleo Walker would drive past in the snowplow, the strobe casting and retracting its yellow light against the houses. Cleo was a nice man, but it was hard to feel kindly toward a man working to get us back to school.

There were two sledding hills in our town. One of them was at the park but would be closed whenever a kid rammed into the basketball post at the bottom of the hill and cracked his head open. It was always the same kid, Donny Millardo, who had a permanent crease in his forehead from hitting the post.

The other hill was in our backyard. Kids from all over town would descend on our backyard. I went through 12 years of school without ever getting beat up. All the bullies wanted to stay on my good side so they could sled on our hill. Snow was my salvation. If our yard had been flat, I wouldn’t have lived past junior high.

The only thing I didn’t like about snow were the rubber boots my mother made me wear when the first flake hit the ground in mid-November. They had eight buckles, which iced over and froze shut. I couldn’t unlatch them until the spring thaw. There were five children in our family and I fell toward the end, so I wore hand-me-down boots from my brother Doug, who had the smallest feet in the state of Indiana. I would pull the boots on over my shoes, straining and grunting and stomping until the heel of my shoe cleared the back of the boot. I wore them all winter, even slept and showered in them, lest I snap a bone pulling them back on.

This was back in the day before good gloves. When I was a kid, only one kind of glove had been invented: the brown jersey glove. They were made of a special kind of cotton that absorbed 10 times their weight in water and within five minutes would freeze into an icy claw. I continue to like snow because it gets me out of work. On the days it snows, I shovel my driveway, clean my walks, spread salt, then drive over to my parents’ house and do it all over again. If I really want to avoid work, I shovel out my brother’s house, my sister’s house, and my neighbor’s house. Then I drive to the grocery store and buy doughnuts for the town workers plowing the streets. A good snow can occupy me for eight or more hours, by which time it’s too late to go to work. I can enjoy an entire day off from work and look virtuous doing it, even though I’m playing hooky.

We don’t seem to get as much snow as we did when I was a kid. It wasn’t uncommon, when I was five or six years old, for snow to be up past my knees. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Now it only reaches the top of my boots. I’m no weather expert, but I suspect this has something to do with global warming.

Still, to waken in the morning and see the glint and dazzle of snow upon the ground was, and remains, a deep and wondrous joy. I’m not sure what it was that turned my grandfather against snow, but I hope whatever it was never happens to me.

Snow Days The Saturday Evening Post

"I knew the chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim … but I just couldn’t walk away,” says Jacob. Photo by Doug Baines.

It was a typical hot and sweltering Chicago day in August 1972 when the emergency call came over the radio for Jacob’s firefighting crew to handle a small fire that had broken out in a downtown apartment building. They hustled as always to make it in record time. But even in the few minutes it took them to weave through the afternoon traffic, the small fire had grown to engulf the entire building. “It was already looking pretty hopeless when we got there,” says Jacob. By the time the 24-year-old fireman arrived on the scene most of the hundred or so residents had already made it out of the blazing seven-story inferno.

But the firefighters had to be sure everyone was safe. So Jacob and his partners hurriedly entered the building clad in their fire-retardant gear, busting down doors and checking for any remaining trapped tenants. “It was a real old building in pretty bad shape,” recalls Jacob. “Whole floors were crumbling faster than we could even get to them.”

The roaring fire had started on the fifth floor before spreading throughout the rest of the building. Ladders enabled the firefighters to rescue residents on the top floors, but the fifth floor was too far gone to risk entering. They heard no screams or sounds, but they had no way of knowing without a physical check if there was anyone left on the fifth floor clinging to life. “It was unreasonable for any firefighters to enter the fifth floor at that point,” says Jacob. “But I had a nagging feeling that there was still someone left inside.” Finally ground personnel, who were busy taking names and trying to account for everyone in the building, radioed the order to evacuate. “It was way past the point of recklessness to be in there,” recalls Jacob. “And they assured us everyone was out.”

But suddenly, as Jacob and his colleagues came out of the front of the building, a young, frantic woman came running up to them yelling at the top of her lungs, “My baby, where is my Kris?”

Jacob’s instincts had been correct. The woman who lived in Apartment 529 explained that she had left her 7-year-old son, Kris, alone for just a few minutes while she went down the street for some groceries. And ground personnel could not account for Kris anywhere. “I knew he was still in there,” says Jacob “I could just feel it. And the fact that I hadn’t heard him screaming or calling out signaled to me he was either in shock or had passed out from smoke inhalation. Either way I knew we didn’t have time to waste.”

Jacob and another firefighter made their way back up to the fifth floor while firefighters outside used ladders to look for any signs of life. Thick black smoke poured out of the windows and through the hallways. The heat inside had become so intense that it was about to overwhelm the firefighters’ protective clothing.
By the time Jacob and his partner made it up to the fifth floor the fire had grown so fierce, neither could see more than a few feet in front of them. Apartment 529 was engulfed in flames at the other end of the hall, and most of the floor was already impassable. “My partner looked at me and gave me the thumbs-down,” says Jacob. “As a fireman I knew he was right. The chances of us surviving if we went down that hall were slim, let alone anyone finding that boy. I had been in situations like that before where I had to accept the loss, and I dealt with it. But I just kept seeing that mother’s face in my head. I just couldn’t walk away from this one.”

Inspiration: The Gift of Life The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Jody Hewgill

Shirley MacLaine has lived a lot in her 78 years. She also famously insists that she’s lived centuries more in past lives.

Outrageously outspoken with a rapier wit, the Academy Award-winning actress, singer, and dancer is a Hollywood powerhouse. As a best-selling author, she’s fascinated us with her mystical preoccupation in everything from reincarnation to psychics and spirit guides. Even skeptics agree that her exploration of the far-out is an entertaining ride. Whether guesting on a talk show or walking the red carpet she always manages to get a gasp along with the laughs at her no-holds-barred one-liners.

MacLaine hasn’t given a thought to retiring or even slowing down—why should she? Her deliciously nasty turn as an old woman a small town loves to hate in Bernie, opposite Jack Black, earned rave reviews. Her latest book of witty observations, I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions, shows how she winks at looking back and looking forward.

And now she’s got a juicy co-starring role in the hugely popular Emmy-winning Masterpiece series Downton Abbey, as Lady Cora’s mother Martha Levinson, who arrives from New York to upset the household. That, of course, pits her against another icon of the big screen, Dame Maggie Smith, who plays the fearsome Dowager Countess Violet Crawley.

As we move forward in the new year, who better than MacLaine to give us a little perspective in her own irresistibly humorous and thought-provoking style?

Shirley MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

This isn’t the first time MacLaine has shared her perspective with Post readers. Below are some articles from the Post archives featuring the quick-witted star in the 1960s.

April 22, 1961

I Call on Shirley MacLaine

In this 1963 article from the Post archives, Pete Martin sat down with MacLaine, who, between numerous mid-interview hot-fudge sundaes, dished on her big break, her unconventional sex appeal, and her involvement in the famed “Rat Pack.”

November 30, 1963

Shirley MacLaine Sounds Off

MacLaine has never been afraid to speak her mind, and in this 1961 article from the archives, she gave readers her opinion on everything from marriage to politics to 1960s Hollywood.

November 30, 1963

Body by MacLaine

In 1963, the Post interviewed Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head, who dressed some of the most famous stars in Hollywood, including MacLaine. In this article from our archives, photos feature the actress in eight of the 73 costumes Head created for MacLaine’s starring role in What a Way to Go!

About: Shirley MacLaine The Saturday Evening Post

Heather Kahn discusses Kaptchuk’s research and what it might mean for the future of medicine in this “Voices of BIDMC Research” video series.

Ted Kaptchuk on the Placebo Effect The Saturday Evening Post

12 Blessings of Christmas
Church Christmas Tree
Stevan Dohanos
December 27, 1952

Grateful for the studded snow tires that anchor my car to the frozen earth, I follow the old dirt road as it crosses an icy creek, then winds through the snowy woods that extend for miles through the Vermont mountains.

It’s an incredibly beautiful day. Spotting the simple, 200-year-old Quaker meetinghouse in a sunny clearing ahead, I carefully slow to pull off the road, then stop by the freshly plowed path to its door.

To the north, there’s the sound of wood being chopped. To the east, a dog barks. But here there is only silence. As it has for nearly two centuries, this simple country church sits in a profound stillness rich with a sense of Presence. Leaning back in the sun, I relax for the first time in weeks.

This is my favorite time of year. My car is loaded with freshly cut pine boughs, candles, baskets of pine cones, dried seed pods, and lemon balm, plus garlands of balsam that I’ll use to drape over the door and decorate the deep windowsills of the old meetinghouse. But as I sit here in the warm sun, the rich fragrances of woods and meadow hold me in my seat—and remind me of the joyful blessings that will be woven into my life over the next several weeks.

1. The Blessing of Community

The Blessing of Community
Tree in Town Square
Stevan Dohanos
December 4, 1948

During the holiday season, the entire world seems in harmony: Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, Buddhists remember the enlightenment of Siddhartha, Jews recall the miraculous temple lamp that burned for eight days, Muslims welcome the new year based on the lunar calendar, and even nontheists join the expression of goodwill with colored lights and electric Santas that wave to passersby.

Down the mountain in the village of Bristol, the Christmas season begins on the first Saturday of December when villagers sweep the snow from their steps, light the village Christmas tree, and members of three churches around the village green hold their annual Christmas Bazaars.

“It looks like an old-fashioned Christmas card,” chuckles my friend Laurie Kroll. “Wreaths and greens are everywhere. St. Ambrose has a silver tea on one side of the green, First Baptist has soups and sandwiches for lunch on the other side, and the Federated Church around the corner has Santa.”

The members of each church have been knitting and baking for weeks to produce an abundance of foods and crafts, and each church becomes a small marketplace with tables of homemade jams and pickles, knitted hats, fruit-studded braided breads, and every kind of holiday ornament imaginable. It’s a fundraiser, sure—”One year we made enough to buy a new vacuum,” Laurie remembers—but more than that, it’s a time of coming together and remembering what we share.

2. The Blessing of Giving

Thinking about my friends in Bristol, I realize that there are probably few of us who won’t admit that gift-giving has strayed far from its humble beginnings of homemade crafts and food—particularly when we have to cart piles of wrapping paper and plastic packaging to the recycling center after Christmas or pay our credit card bills in January.

A few years ago, this really got to ecology author and activist Bill McKibben, who lives a few hills over from me near Ripton. “A bunch of us in what was then the Troy conference of the Methodist Church, were thinking that there was a lot of waste at Christmastime—all those batteries!” Bill recently messaged me. “But when we started talking with folks about new ways of celebrating Xmas, we quickly found out that there was something deeper here. People really dreaded the approach of Christmas, because it had all become too much—and they were incredibly receptive to the idea of doing it differently, with an emphasis on gifts of service.”

Bill and his friends persuaded a number of families to commit themselves to doing things for those with whom they normally exchanged gifts—walking an elderly aunt’s dog when the temperature drops into the single digits, for example. Bill subsequently wrote a book called Hundred Dollar Holiday, in which he proposed spending no more than $100 per family at Christmas. The result? Less running back and forth to the mall, less time spent desperately looking for hot toys and sales, less time tuned out with electronics—and more time spent sitting by the fire with family, sharing a potluck with friends, or taking a long walk outside, alone in the freshly fallen snow.

The 12 Blessings of Christmas The Saturday Evening Post