| Show EM6HIEST Jane Wagner never went to college because there were no role models to point her in that direction Her father was a linotype operator on the Knoxville Journal When she was young she had taka great pleasure tn watching him work as ifhe were playing some wondrous organ When modem technology replaced himand he became a proofreader she felt on his part an immense sense of loss The family she thought was pure Southern Gothic no one in it was like those people who were in the sitcoms on television or in the Norman Rockwell coven Of The Saturday Evening Poet Life in that town seemed less than real almost distant Tire excepdonjo that was an occasional glimpse of reality on a movie screen or on TV When she was about 13 she saw Jane Wyman playing Lain in a televised version of The Class Menagerie The character in that play— so cut off from everyone around her even the people who loved her seemed as real to Jane Wagner as her own face in the mirror But from the time she did the reading she was hooked on the theater Buying the Times on Sunday allowed her to savor that distant world of the New York theater She did not think of bang a writer because the reading s of Canon McCullers and Tennessee Williams convinced her that everything she knew had already been written She spent several years working as an actress at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon Va overcoming her shyness enough to think she could try New York In 1938 absolutely alone with no connections she strived in the city determined to make her way as an actress A room at the Y might seem like a spare existence for some ' New Li rfion Fruit Tea T t FLAVORED DRINK CRYSTALS LET IT POUR! A Delicious and Uniquely Refreshing Taste It’s Decaffeinated! II St t jJ r " jpy J-- r4 buttohecinthebeginningatleastit ) vLRAORS " t Vh - O ! £URAllB WfcRlWlWLf &£ £SJ§5M8SC v I COUPOH New UPTON' gSggKsi l - t' ' a"' s v rr 'j' j wjl I 7 ' i - 4 - i tw2Ki£i " MMaMaweaMi MOTH SfOM J EaaTSLTSl MKlLtK M lie ravmcD soft bkwk "OP '£ "f I MM IMtaarfeMiiBM KM ! W UPSON’ RUT TIA ' LOOK SOUR '( ' I PW FRUIT TEA (any variety) I 9 IKKIS continued SS mmro mb b b ' ) V 13101 m -l 40 n 5 IPr4i was the college dormitory she had never stayed in She felt a sense of liberation in everything she did New York was a place of Absolute spiritual freedom Her early readings went well enough but she got no work and she was far too shy a person for the brutal meat market of theatrical nyouts that which made her want to be an actress made the very act of reading almost intolerable She had no agent Every tryout began to turn into a humiliation Slowly gradually like so many young hopefuls in the worlds of the aits she edged closer to defeat The exhilaration of being in the city turned to anxiety New York she began to realize was to a large degree about oneself— and because of Afr shyness she did this poorly could she ter she became successful look back and see herself with an odd clarity ofvision: a painfully awkward and lonely young woman in a cheap continued J MBEt'MT lAUM" |
