I had the good fortune on Saturday of meeting one of the most likeable figures in American pop culture: actress Cindy Williams, of Laverne & Shirley fame. She was talking about her new memoir, Shirley, I Jest!: A Storied Life, at a fundraiser for the Theatre Academy at Los Angeles City College, where she trained as an actress.
In her book, she mentions casually that to succeed in performance, “you need nerves of steel, the strength of an Olympic athlete, and the presence of mind of William F. Buckley.” Which of course made me quite curious: Was she, I asked her, an admirer of WFB in general? She responded that it was his “confidence” she liked — that’s what a performer needs. She thus deftly sidestepped the question of WFB’s opinions: I actually admired her for showing the “presence of mind” not to touch politics with a ten-foot pole. (I suspect that Laura “Shut Up & Sing” Ingraham would have approved also.)
Williams looks significantly different from the way she did when she was on Laverne & Shirley– but the difference is of a highly unusual kind. From the distance of, say, 40 feet, she looks as if she has aged considerably; but from right up close, she is strikingly beautiful and doesn’t appear to have aged much at all. I suspect that the she carries herself with the poise of an older person now, and that’s what accounts for the changed appearance from a distance. In any case, anyone who looks more attractive the closer one gets to him or her is fortunate indeed. (I understand that I look better the further the viewer stands from me, and I look my absolute best when I am not visible at all.)
In 1974, Cindy Williams was the female lead in The Conversation, a film directed and written by Francis Ford Coppola between the first two Godfather movies. I contend that it is still, 41 years later, the best film ever made.
SPOILER ALERT: If you have never seen The Conversation, STOP reading right now, and see that movie as soon as you can. In a plot twist of which even an O. Henry or an Edgar Allan Poe would have been proud, The Conversation convinces us for the first 90 percent or so of its running time that Cindy Williams’s character is a damsel in distress, whose husband is plotting to kill her. But at the end, it is revealed that the exact opposite is true: She and her lover have all along been plotting to kill her husband. Her performance is utterly convincing in both directions – she has the audience fearing for her safety for most of the film, and also finally completely accepting her as the villain. So I asked her: When you made that movie, had you read the whole script? In other words, did you know when you were playing the woman in danger that you would end up being the bad guy? “No!” she responded. “And neither did [Francis Ford Coppola]. He had not written the ending when we started filming.” A fascinating sidelight on a great film.
(Inside Joke for Conversation fans. Williams’s memoir is engaging, but I noticed a few typos. Maybe I should offer her my editorial services for her next one? After all: She’d edit me if she had the chance.)