Transcribing the Light: The Memoirs of Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine, American film, televison and theatre actress, dancer, activist, and author, was, in her own words, “born into a cliché-loving, middle-class Virginia family” in 1934. Her father, Ira O. Beaty, was a psychology professor, school administrator, realtor, and amateur musician. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne Beaty (née MacLaine), “a tall, thin, almost ethereal creature with a romantic nature,” was originally from Nova Scotia, Canada. A drama teacher who loved poetry and the theater, MacLaine’s mother introduced her to the ballet at age three, as a remedy for weak ankles. “There,” she wrote, “my imagination took anchor, my energy found a channel. What started as therapy became my life.” About her childhood, MacLaine said, “I have an orphan psychology, that’s what I’ve been told. See, my parents were always busy, so when I was about 11,          I had to get up early to get off to school by myself and then to ballet class. I was the one navigating the buses and streetcars. I had no one to talk to, because by the time I got home my parents were in bed. So to navigate those waters, just to make it home each day, I had to keep asking myself, ‘Who am I?'"

MacLaine spent the summer of her junior year in high school in New York, performing in the subway circuit production of Oklahoma!, then returned after graduation, writing, “I arrived in New York at eighteen, wide-eyed, optimistic, brave, and certain I would crash the world of show business overnight. Naïveté is a necessary personality trait in order to endure New York, and a masochistic sense of humor an indispensable quirk.” Born Shirley MacLaine Beaty, she shortened her name at a successful audition for the Servel Ice Box traveling trade show. One night while on tour, MacLaine decided to "spice the spice." Dancing as Queen of the Swans around a Servel Ice Maker in the show’s grand finale, she wore a beautiful white tutu, blacked-out front teeth, and a “saintly smile.” She was fired and sent back to New York.

MacLaine met producer and businessman Steve Parker at a bar on West 45th Street; four hours later, he asked her to marry him. She was, at that time, in the chorus of Broadway’s Me and Juliet. “Steve and I met in 1952,” she wrote, “but so intense was our involvement, we forgot to get married until 1954.” By then, she was an understudy for lead Carol Haney in the Broadway sensation, The Pajama Game. After Haney tore a ligament in her ankle, MacLaine went on with no rehearsals, having watched only four times from the wings. In her nervousness, she rushed a line, then realized she had to slow the tempo of her delivery. “Suddenly, the flow of communication that I had longed for all my life was there. It wasn’t the applause and laughter that fulfilled me; it was the magnetism, the current, moving from one human being to the others and back again, like a giant pendulum.” When she came off stage, Bob Fosse, the show’s choreographer, told her, “You were good. Good energy.” She recalled, “It was from Fosse that I realized energy was the primary requirement for a good performance on the stage, on the screen, and in life.”

The next night, producer Hal B. Wallis offered MacLaine a contract with Paramount Pictures. She eventually signed, went back to the chorus, and waited for Hollywood to call. Two months later, on again for Haney, she was spotted by a representative of director Alfred Hitchcock. “He was doing a picture called The Trouble With Harry” wrote MacLaine, “and was looking for an offbeat, ‘kooky’ actress to play the lead.” MacLaine won the Golden Globe New Star of the Year—Actress Award for her work in this film. She moved to Hollywood in 1955, and began filming her second picture, Artists and Models, about which she wrote, “Wallis took me from the shelf to garnish a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis product… I represented all the plain broads in the audience who could never get a man unless they pinned him to the floor. I guess that’s when I first realized it was possible to make people laugh and cry at the same time.”

Shortly before he moved to Japan in 1956, Parker told MacLaine, “If I stay in Hollywood, I’ll always be Mr. MacLaine.” Of her husband, she wrote, “he was definitely the person I cared most about, my primary relationship, and the man I would wait for until he established his own identity in the world… In the meantime, I was free to operate in and around the hills and dales of Hollywood any way I wanted, and he was free to do the same in Japan or wherever.” They would have an open relationship until the marriage ended in 1982. "I don't think we could have stayed together for 30 years any other way," Parker told TIME Magazine in 1984. "Shirley is a free soul who must have her run." A self-proclaimed serial monogamist, MacLaine was romantically linked with many famous men, among them actor Robert Mitchum, Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, comedian/actor Danny Kaye, actor/singer Yves Montand, Australian foreign minister Andrew Peacock, and journalist/author Pete Hamill. 

Between 1955 and 1970, MacLaine starred in 25 pictures; highlights include Some Came Running (1958) with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, The Apartment (1960) and Irma la Douce (1963) with Jack Lemmon, The Children’s Hour (1961) with Audrey Hepburn, and Bob Fosse’s directorial debut, Sweet Charity (1969). During this time she traveled widely, and became politically active at home, supporting Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, advocating for civil rights, and protesting the Vietnam War. In 1970, she published her first autobiographical bestseller; over the years, while continuing to perform to great acclaim in the movies, on television, and on stage, she would publish 13 more. These works—essentially a chronicle of MacLaine’s life journey, written with wit, candor, and courage—have challenged established Western mores and beliefs, and ultimately, the very nature of reality itself.

According to Kirkus Reviews, Don't Fall Off the Mountain (1970) is “pleasantly and loosely written and all on her own—which is the way Miss MacLaine does things—an autobiography of the appealing gamine screen presence who turns out to be a very different kind of person altogether.” In it, MacLaine evokes her middle class Virginia childhood with a kind of exasperated affection, recalling her supportive, if distant mother, her autocratic father, and her brother, actor and director Warren Beatty. “He was my kid brother and we were friends, in fact, allies,” she wrote. “We had to be, because otherwise we found ourselves… vying for favor as a result of the competition unconsciously imposed on us by our parents.” She credits an early immersion in the world of dance for a work ethic that would inform and sustain her, from her time on Broadway through Hollywood stardom, marriage and motherhood, politics, and world travel. “I learned something about myself that still holds true,” she wrote. “I cannot enjoy anything unless I work hard at it.” Her writing, said a 1971 Newsweek review, “possesses a vigor that seems consistent with her convictions… What makes her story so engaging is her balance and sanity, her willingness to reject or assimilate experiences with her eyes, mind and heart wide open.”

You Can Get There From Here (1975), picks up in Hollywood in 1970 where, MacLaine wrote, “Television was keeping the studios alive and television was what had mortally wounded them—television and the American culture itself… There was nothing in the trade papers… about Vietnam, or poverty, or racism, nothing about the way the whole brave American dream seemed to be crumbling around us.” Disenchanted with acting, she spent 1972 stumping for presidential candidate, George McGovern, saying recently, “It was a political-value-priority promise I made to myself.” In 1973, upon the invitation of the People’s Republic of China, she led an all-female delegation on a tour of mainland China. Soon after their arrival, the group began to fall apart. “I suppose most of what happened had to do with the fact that we were Americans of a certain generation, inculculated with the belief that Communism is bad,” she wrote. “Yet in China, we saw low food prices, and streets free of crime and dope peddling. Mao Tse-tung was a leader who seemed genuinely loved, people had great hopes for the future, women had little need... for superficial things... children loved work and were self-reliant...  All these things... shook us in ways that left no conventional response.”

As a writer and performer, much of MacLaine’s personal journey has taken place in public. While many considered her next book, Out on a Limb (1983) a radical departure from previous writings, the book was really a radical continuation, a chronicle of the next phase in her search for understanding. “My strongest personality trait,” said MacLaine to TIME Magazine in 1984, “ is the way I keep unsettling my life when most other people are settling down.” This time, as she was forced to seriously explore the validity of reincarnation, trance channeling, and human contact with extraterrestrials, she touched upon concepts that proved threatening to Western popular culture. With no little anxiety, she felt compelled to share what she had learned; luckily, the groundswell of an emerging New Age movement carried her forward. Ideas that had once seemed strange have become, if not widely believed, at least normalized. In the book, a non-physical entity told MacLaine something that is, forty years later, more relevant than ever: “The level of achievement in any civilization is judged by its spiritual evolvement. Technological advancement is important and attractive, but if it detains, detracts, or deters spiritual understanding, it bears the seeds of its own destruction.”

After her success in the films Turning Point (1977), Being There (1979), and Terms of Endearment (1983), MacLaine’s point of view began to shift. “Up till then,” she explained, in Dancing In the Light (1985), “I had been more interested in traveling, love affairs, political activism, my friends, writing, and living.” Now, as she started taking her acting more seriously,  she also began “a search for the recognition of higher consciousness.” She asked, “How could I really help others if I didn’t know who I was?” The book’s remarkable narrative is centered on events that took place during a 1984 run at Broadway’s Gershwin Theater. Along the way, she discovers the transformative power of positive affirmation, and relates an emotional reunion with a discarnate entity called Ramtha (who, along with a friend, supports her onstage when she is too ill to perform). She writes about her parents with bemused affection. The reason for exploring past lives, insists MacLaine, is experiential. “The only way any of it made sense was when it related to our own personal experience. If you hadn’t felt it, you couldn’t know it.” Learning she was, in a past life, “involved with the sociopolitical questions of the Founding Fathers of the United States,” she wrote, “They were spiritually aware, and in terms of leadership today, it [is] essential that [today's leaders] also have a spiritual support system that would keep them in touch with the recognition of their own higher knowledge…”

It’s All In the Playing (1987) isn't only about the making of the TV miniseries Out On a Limb (1986), it's also a magical mystery tour, a travelogue of MacLaine’s progress through multiple iterations of space, time and reality. “Fundamental to MacLaine's metaphysics," Magill Book Reviews wrote, "is that one is responsible for creating one's own reality, that whatever happens in one's life is part of a ‘script’ one has written... Even without the references to extraterrestrial visitations and altered states, the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of television—the personality conflicts, the intricacies of casting and dealing with network executives, and the difficulties of shooting on location in London, Sweden, and Peru.”  Central to this experience is MacLaine’s recognition of the female (yin) energy. She wrote, “I, a female, had motivated the entire project—experienced the spiritual search, written about it, and was now starring in the film about the book… The New Age was addressing itself to leadership by women, which meant not only that men would be required to make a fundamental adjustment in relation to female leadership, but that women would also.” About her ongoing spiritual journey, she wrote, “It was one thing to be metaphysically sophisticated… But quite another to relate to the world with simple love in your heart."

“I now realize,” wrote MacLaine, in the preface to her next book, Going Within (1989), “that it is impossible to understand anything of the world, its inhabitants, their suffering, their conflicts or the full potential of life itself until I am in touch with these same currents and truths inside myself. To understand and love others begins with understanding and loving oneself.” There are tried and true ways to get there, she insists, explaining how (and why) to put into practice certain techniques—or “spiritual technology”—that have existed in Eastern spiritual systems for millennia but have been lost to the West. Even for those who are familiar with concepts like “no time” and have worked with the chakras, MacLaine’s clear, grounded, intriguing presentation informs and inspires. Writes Magill Book Reviews, “critics may be surprised at how plausible MacLaine's arguments are beginning to sound. With her latest book, [her] metaphysics has seasoned somewhat, matured. Not that she has backed down in any way from pushing the limits of psychic understanding, but rather she has worked harder in Going Within to synthesize New Age ideas with the more accepted beliefs of science. MacLaine is at her best when she is anecdotal, sharing what she has seen and how she personally uses the New Age tools she describes.” 

MacLaine's next book, Dance While You Can (1991), opens with the filming of Postcards From the Edge(1990), and progresses through the production of a live tour; readers get a real sense of the hard work and dedication involved in the execution of two very different types of performance art. Throughout, MacLaine examines family dynamics: how she used the power of her mother’s sublimated creativity to fire the engine that drove her to overachievement; how she learned to pole vault over her father’s self-sabotaging fear of failure, and, in doing so, accomplished more than she otherwise would have. “Had the seeds for my success been sown and nurtured in the small middle class rooms of a home that housed potential creative giants,” she asked, “married to one another in an unspoken bond of frustration, with a hidden agenda to never live out their own dreams?” In a 1991 interview for Publisher’s Weekly she said, "I have been in the process of remembering who I am, for by doing that you are remembering the future and that you have a certain destiny. You remember what you planned to do, you remember your dreams. And through that, I came to realize… nothing is more important than this life and the people involved in it—your immediate orbit, your family.” 

“I have never understood why the concept of being famous—a star—never motivated me much,” wrote MacLaine, in My Lucky Stars (1995). “I wanted to be good at my work… I wanted people to like what I did. I wanted to be prepared, be professional, be imaginative, be a performer and an actress that people got a kick out of… my goals in Hollywood were limited. Yet, what I didn’t particularly care about was probably the secret of my success.” MacLaine ably demonstrates a sophisticated psychological understanding of self and subject, as she relates lessons learned from both positive and negative experiences in the entertainment industry. She muses on the nature of aging, power, and politics in Hollywood, and writes of her adventures as “mascot to the clan” (with its fascinating and frightening proximity to mob culture), how she coped with the seemingly pointless emotional turmoil created by her director and co-star on the set of Terms of Endearment, the recognition of a deep, recurring connection with Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, and a 3-year love affair with the incomprehensible Robert Mitchum, She has a few words to say about her ex-husband as well. “Why do these people emerge from my memories as leading players in my play?” asked MacLaine. “Because they set me on my course… they were the people destiny provided as my guides.” 

In 1994 MacLaine walked the Santiago de Compostela Camino, a 500-mile westward trek from France across Northern Spain, "a journey of the spirit" she documented in The Camino (2000). “I could say it was a mythological and imaginative experience," she wrote, "but then what is myth and what is imagination?” Completing approximately 20 miles a day, this physically grueling trip—essentially, an extreme version of walking meditation—provided MacLaine with more puzzle pieces to assemble in her ongoing search for the truth of humankind's origins and purpose. Ultreya, or “moving forward with courage,” denotes the pilgrim’s journey; MacLaine’s fear of random attacks by vicious dogs and the press complicated matters. She asked, “Would what should have been the spiritual understanding and resolution of a long and arduous pilgrimage back in time now become an adventure of escape…?” Although chock-full of mind-blowing revelations, and recollections of past lives on the Camino, and in Lemuria and Atlantis, the book's most profound insight is contained in this simple message: “The sorrow so much experienced in the world today can be regarded as the exercise of emptying ourselves… to make room for the joy that is rightfully ours in the future.”

To anyone paying attention, MacLaine’s strong suit has always been her formidable curiosity, paired with a writer's ability to synthesize research and experience into a coherent and fascinating narrative. In Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she writes, “I have spent most of my adult life endeavoring to educate myself in the truths that we are not traditionally taught and do not readily see. I have been privileged to be able to afford to travel around the globe searching out answers to these mystical, but fundamentally practical questions in many cultures… I am not an occultist (which simply means ‘hidden’). I am the opposite. I share everything publicly.” MacLaine opines on many thought-provoking topics: synchronicity and meaningful coincidence, alternative dentistry and medicine, the United States as the New Atlantis, humankind’s disastrous decision to separate into male and female halves (“In my view,” wrote MacLaine, “we chose the most difficult way to evolve and learn.”), extraterrestrial intelligence and the military-industrial cover-up (“We are not the preeminent beings in a universe that we know very little about.”), prophecy and physics, and ancient gods, angels and E.T.s. About past lives, she writes, ”There are many lessons to learn, many ways to learn them, and the soul is always intact and ready for the next advancement or life.”

I’m All Over That (2011) and What If... (2013) are shorter, punchier, and more "to the point" than her previous books, featuring themed chapters instead of running narratives. She explains, “People identify with other people; they don’t identify with subjects and information unless it relates to them… In the beginning of my spiritual questing and wanderings, people identified with me much more than they did after I’d found some answers. When I got specific and began to share the underpinnings of spiritual science… it got to be too dense for a lot of people.” Addressing an ever-evolving perspective, she says, ”When I look back on some of my experiences, I’m intrigued by which ones I recall as being important. There seems to be a separation of heart experience and mind/body experience. If I were to write a book today just about my travels, it would result in a different book from the ones I wrote in the past.” This is why it is a joy to read all of MacLaine’s writings: they're an invitation to witness her life's adventure through time, from many different angles. As she remembers, she asks, “What didn’t I see then? What deeper meaning did I miss?” A succinct, snappy format doesn’t prevent MacLaine from delving deep or telling her truth. Her new motto is “Shift Happens.”

In the wry, often laugh-out-loud funny Above the Line (2016), MacLaine describes the making of Wild Oats (2016), a screwball comedy filmed on the Canary Islands (which are thought by many to be the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis). She writes, “It isn’t often a person my age (eighty-one), with a past (this time around) of work pretty well done and a life exuberantly led, gets to experience a real-life movie while making a reel-movie movie on next to no money. Making a movie is the most useful experience I’ve found for getting to know more about myself.” As someone whose career began during Hollywood’s Golden Age, she makes it clear that this is also the story of independent filmmaking today: a chaotic, tumultuous free-for-all of egos, insecurities, truth, lies, and elusive funding. There is also professionalism, artistry, and comaraderie, above, below, and across the line. After years of MacLaine-directed snark, Kirkus Reviews had only good things to say about this book, writing, “The author's insider's portrait of the moviemaking world sparkles... MacLaine is wickedly honest about moviemaking, sincere and enthusiastic in describing her beliefs, and welcoming in the skepticism of others--it's all refreshing and fun.”

A channel in Sedona Journal wrote, “The domestic versions of cats and dogs were genetically engineered… benevolently by the Sirian-Pleiadian alliance in an effort to assist humanity as it became more densely engrained in the Earth plane... Cats and dogs are different physical forms of the same source [and] have melded into group unity consciousness yet still retain individual identities within the greater harmonic field... [They] are but fragments of the full consciousness and energy spectrum of their Sirian aspects... this expression is specifically and purposefully designed to be so, for these beings can become so bonded with the humans they serve that a unique third consciousness can evolve... that is extremely beneficial. When the third consciousness between humans and their pets is formed... It awakens within itself characteristics that neither of the parties involved have on their own... It stretches and expands [and] reaches back into the individual awareness of both human and pet and changes both.” In this spirit, MacLaine writes movingly about her profound relationship with Terry, whom she called, “my confidante, my sense of home, and my deepest venture into the intimacy of myself.” First published in 2003, Out on a Leash was updated in 2017 after Terry’s death.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, The New York Post’s Cindy Adams reached out to MacLaine, who told her she “couldn’t be happier. I’m out west. I’ve had this ranch for years. I love nature. I’m here with my animals and housekeeper. And watching what’s happening to show business. And wondering what’s happening to the world… Now, today, I’m interested in the beginning of mankind. I’m here at this time reading books and learning how all this started and going into my own interior. It’s my metaphysical language. Totally isolated here, you find your survival, your spiritual meaning. Isolation accentuates how to be without other people. Without materialism, power or influence. I find my inner spiritual self a lot more populated. There are new things inside. I’m watching mountains. Animals. Trees. Nature. I’m a survivor. I hear from friends. See, as much as possible you must try to be without fear.” When asked, in 2019, by the New York Times if she had any clues about her next life, MacLaine replied, “I don’t, and I’m not interested. First I’m going to take a rest.”