Michael Learned: Shattering

Michael Learned. Photo courtesy of Harlan Boll.

I have had only one personal encounter with actress Michael Learned. In 1995 my friend Marian Seldes and press agent Sam Rudy invited me to a run-through of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, which was being held in a large rehearsal space and in preparation for a tour and a Los Angeles production. 

Marian had begun her relationship with the play in the role of  “B,” a woman she called  a  “sour mendicant,” who hunched and lurked and sneered at Myra Carter’s “A,” an imperious, racist woman of wealth who employed and insulted her. Christina Rouner had assumed the role of “C,” a young woman sent to the home of “A” to determine finances and history, and to be queried by the two older women. Rouner had studied at Juilliard under Marian’s watchful eye, and Marian told me that “I met this glorious pearl—look at her—and found a genius within. She can surprise so easily with her acting. May her beauty open doors, not close them.”

I had seen Three Tall Women five times—first at the Vineyard, then at the Promenade. Myra Carter enjoyed and deserved great acclaim for her performance as “A,” but she was exhausted by the woman she played. “I love Myra,” Marian told me, “but I dislike her bitterness. I’ve told her this. This is not unknown to her. I spent so much time shutting out her negativity.” Marian was now assuming the starring role once played by Carter, and it terrified her. “These are huge shoes to fill,” she had told me, “but I would never turn down this chance.”

Michael Learned was now “B.”

The run-through was wonderful. I soon forgot I was in a sunny loft-like space, and could see these women in the ornate, sterile bedroom of the old woman. In a corner of the space sat Michael Learned’s luggage. Marian later told me that she had stepped off a plane and into performance.

Like so many people, my relationship with Michael Learned began with her work as Olivia on the CBS television series “The Waltons.” I was ten years old when it premiered, and it was deemed “appropriate” for me by my parents. I loved the program then, and my mother had teased me for saying that Learned did so much while doing so little.  Even though Learned earned three Emmy Awards for her role, she was never—at least to my young eyes—caught acting. I could see Ellen Corby and Will Geer (excellent, yes) at work, applying adjectives to their actions. I never saw this with Learned. She was what a number of directors would call a listening actress: She lived in the scenes and responded, primarily with her eyes, but sometimes movement about the mouth, to everything and everyone. Both Mike Nichols and Tennessee Williams would tell me that this was their ideal among actresses, and they both wondered why the British gave us this more often than American actresses. “Bette Davis always layers her work,” Nichols told me. “I love her, but she isn’t merely enraged or mean: She acts mean and enraged. She enlarges her eyes. She shakes. She transmits an emotion, rather than merely experiencing it.”

Michael Learned experiences right in front of us.

A friend of mine who grew up in Alameda, California, told me about seeing Michael Learned in a San Francisco production of Miss Margarida’s Way, Roberto Athayde’s one-woman play about a schoolteacher who berates her class and the audience, and which is seen as representative of authoritarian power. Estelle Parsons earned praise taking on this part in New York (at least twice), and my friend spoke of his shock and admiration at seeing Learned, whom he knew as so lovely and poised and discrete on “The Waltons” ripping into the savagery of the part. “She was scary,” he told me, “and so, so sexy. She showed us the power of the dictator, the person who held you captive behind a locked door.”

Joanne Camp, Linda Lavin, and Michael Learned in Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig. (Martha Swope)

Michael Learned as Sara in Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig. (Martha Swope)

I remember watching Learned in Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig, so many icy currents of water coursing through her, slowly melting as love and affection and memory bring her a warmth that I felt surprised her character and which overwhelmed her audience. It was a transformative performance, but quiet, gentle: Learned isn’t given to big, intrusive scenes. Her character altered before our eyes, and I will always remember seeing her, as if she were posing for a portrait, beautifully dressed, composed, sitting on a sofa, lost in thought that we could all see troubled and challenged and liberated her. I remember telling Mike Nichols I had seen Learned in the play three times, and Nichols said he, too, had seen it multiple times. “I went to study Dan Sullivan [the play’s director], and I did, but I slipped into study of Michael Learned.” In a perfect world, I said, we would see Michael Learned and Jane Alexander (who had originated the role) in repertory, seeing both actresses as they examined the soul of this woman. “That is a perfect world,” Nichols. “Keep dreaming it.”

Watching Learned in “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” for Netflix, I could see all that I have loved about her work, distilled into a performance that was horrifying in its way, because we were seeing an emotional inquiry being forcibly conducted on an intensely private and decent woman. The grandmother of a serial killer, Learned gave us—clearly and primarily—a devoted grandmother ready to offer love and shelter to this boy. Learned’s emotions as Catherine Dahmer were as tidy and perfectly displayed as her kitchen, her utensils on the tray where her dinners were served. Catherine Dahmer persists in living, in going to church, in being a good mother and grandmother, and both her decency and her ultimate mental decline prevent her from fully understanding what Jeffrey is doing, has done. I felt happy for her that her faculties might never have allowed her to know what she was loving and hosting in her home.

I think it is a shattering performance.

I clearly love Michael Learned, the actress, but I would like to close with a story about Michael Learned, the woman. At the conclusion of the rehearsal for Three Tall Women, I was able to sit with her, Marian, and Ms. Rouner. At the time I was in discussions with Ellis Rabb about writing a book, and a chapter would have been about William Ball, a director long affiliated with ACT in San Francisco, and an important person in the life and career of Learned. Ball had recently died, but I was unaware that it was a suicide. Very quietly, and with emotion, Learned said that Ball had put some classical music on his Walkman, placed the earphones around his head, and then placed a plastic bag over his head, and---she paused, eyes welling—drifted off. Marian’s hands went to her mouth in shock. Rouner asked if Ball’s health had been a factor. No, Learned stated, her friend was facing some struggles, financial, and felt he couldn’t ask for help. I remember what Learned then said. “I can’t bear that he didn’t think he could come to me,” she said. “To so many people. I vowed then to let people know their worth.”

The following day Marian and I were speaking, and she said “How lucky am I? Working with this giant of a woman! So talented and kind and giving. I always want and expect the best, and here I have it again. Wasn’t she wonderful? Wasn’t that incredible what she said? I have to let her always know how valuable and worthy she is to me.”

Watch Michael Learned act. Watch how her characters transform. In “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” the horror of what we are experiencing is magnified by the image of Learned’s Catherine being in the orbit of evil, of moving ahead, of operating a faith that will soon fail her, or which might blessedly rob of her of all understanding.

Bravo, Ms. Learned. 

Evan Peters and Michael Learned in "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story." (Netflix)