WEBVTT 1 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:31.760 It was all access when we were testing. 2 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:32.680 I see. 3 00:00:33.820 --> 00:00:35.560 Did I tell you I shot with the chicken on Monday? 4 00:00:37.080 --> 00:00:38.240 You did? Oh yeah, you did. 5 00:00:38.620 --> 00:00:39.600 I shot with Chicago Goat. 6 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.000 Good. 7 00:00:40.260 --> 00:00:41.600 He was a company in Detroit. 8 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:43.660 Right, his brother runs the office. 9 00:00:44.400 --> 00:00:45.540 That was really good. 10 00:00:45.880 --> 00:00:47.920 Yeah, we did a Robinson Jeweler spot. 11 00:00:49.160 --> 00:00:50.360 With Jewel Cadet. 12 00:00:51.260 --> 00:00:52.000 Jewel Cadet? 13 00:00:52.300 --> 00:00:56.000 Yeah, she's the designer. She designs the rings. 14 00:01:04.020 --> 00:01:07.260 Okay, we are rolling and recording. 15 00:01:09.740 --> 00:01:14.580 You had been reciting poetry since you were a child, right? 16 00:01:15.720 --> 00:01:16.940 Tell us about breakfast. 17 00:01:17.180 --> 00:01:20.740 Oh yes, because my father didn't like useless conversation at breakfast. 18 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.500 He said, if you haven't got anything to say, we don't talk. 19 00:01:24.340 --> 00:01:28.240 He said, I'd love it if you'd come down, all of you children, the three of us, 20 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:30.380 and recite me a poem every morning. 21 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:33.780 So that's what we finally did. That was our conversation at breakfast. 22 00:01:34.920 --> 00:01:35.840 Did you have a favorite? 23 00:01:35.840 --> 00:01:37.740 Oh, Captain, my captain. Yes, that was my favorite one. 24 00:01:39.880 --> 00:01:44.680 Our fearful trip is done. Our ship has weathered every rack the prize we sought. 25 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:46.360 That was one of my favorites. 26 00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:48.540 Oh, but we liked all kinds of poems. 27 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:52.380 My father liked poetry, so we had to please him. 28 00:01:52.380 --> 00:01:55.260 And he was a great friend of James Whitcomb Riley. 29 00:01:55.460 --> 00:01:59.400 Yes, he lived in Indianapolis. I remember him quite well. 30 00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:05.340 He lived on Lockerbie Street, which they never paved because that's the way it was when he was there. 31 00:02:08.120 --> 00:02:11.380 I remember James Whitcomb Riley. 32 00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:17.460 My father started a hospital, a children's hospital in his name, yes. 33 00:02:17.460 --> 00:02:22.520 And I went all over the state with my father asking for money for the children's hospital. 34 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:26.880 I remember so well. He'd always say, if you give me money for a children's hospital, 35 00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:28.920 then you won't have to spend money on old people. 36 00:02:28.940 --> 00:02:31.340 They'll be properly taken care of when they're young. 37 00:02:31.340 --> 00:02:32.760 And he got the hospital all right. 38 00:02:33.140 --> 00:02:37.300 I think it was the first-class children's hospital in the country. 39 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:45.540 Now, though you come from a family of doctors, your father was a doctor, your brother is a very famous doctor, 40 00:02:45.540 --> 00:02:52.900 your own feelings about doctors are not or about the help that a doctor can give you. 41 00:02:53.440 --> 00:02:59.100 You once wrote something about if you're sick, work on your mind. 42 00:02:59.380 --> 00:03:01.820 Doctors really can't do much to help you. 43 00:03:02.980 --> 00:03:11.420 Well, my brother said that. My brother said with heart problems, he said a doctor can't help a person who has heart problems. 44 00:03:12.040 --> 00:03:14.060 The patient has to know what to do for himself. 45 00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:17.880 That was my brother who said that, not me. So I just took it from my brother. 46 00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:22.180 So far I've never had any heart problems. I'm not going on one like that. 47 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:30.720 But I don't know. I don't go to doctors because they really can't help you. 48 00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:33.580 I'm not a Christian scientist at all. 49 00:03:34.100 --> 00:03:40.000 But the doctors of today don't take any interest. They don't. Don't you think that's true? 50 00:03:40.420 --> 00:03:42.320 Yes, I do. 51 00:03:42.320 --> 00:03:45.500 I've been to a few doctors here. They can't tell you. 52 00:03:45.560 --> 00:03:50.920 I can't sleep at night and I've been to doctors to see what they can give me to help me to sleep. 53 00:03:50.940 --> 00:03:55.860 And they always say, well, we can't help you. Something's wrong with you. You can't sleep. 54 00:03:56.040 --> 00:04:00.180 Well, I know that's true, but they can't tell you what to do. 55 00:04:00.540 --> 00:04:04.260 So what's the use of going to them? Expensive and a waste of time. 56 00:04:04.760 --> 00:04:08.320 You've always had trouble sleeping. 57 00:04:09.140 --> 00:04:11.740 Yes, I never was. My brother is the same. 58 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:18.280 He doesn't sleep either. Last night I couldn't sleep all night. It's just awful. 59 00:04:19.140 --> 00:04:21.700 Do you still get up in the middle of the night and take hot baths? 60 00:04:21.700 --> 00:04:27.040 Yes, and I get up and read. I come out in the kitchen and read because the lights are nice and bright there. 61 00:04:27.160 --> 00:04:30.200 I like bright lights. I come out in the kitchen, sit and read. 62 00:04:32.420 --> 00:04:34.220 And you have music playing. 63 00:04:34.460 --> 00:04:37.600 Yeah, I do that. I have one of those things right by my bed. 64 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:41.560 So that helps. It helps me to have something to do at night. 65 00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:44.340 You don't watch television? 66 00:04:45.640 --> 00:04:48.760 Yes, but in the middle of the night there isn't anything interesting that I've found. 67 00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:51.420 I watched it last night at Anna Karenina. 68 00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:58.040 Sometimes there are interesting things, and sometimes I sit up and watch those, 69 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:05.380 Tommy Carson and all those people. They're all kind of interesting, mildly interesting, I think. 70 00:05:05.380 --> 00:05:11.660 How do the guests on those shows compare? You've known a great many interesting people in your life. 71 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:17.300 How do the guests on those shows that you watch compare to the people that you've known? 72 00:05:18.200 --> 00:05:18.960 How do the what? 73 00:05:19.280 --> 00:05:22.580 How do the guests on the Johnny Carson show compare? 74 00:05:23.240 --> 00:05:25.820 They seem awfully interesting people to me. 75 00:05:28.180 --> 00:05:33.040 They aren't the kind of people that I would especially like because they're not interested. 76 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:36.220 Mostly they're not artists or dancers. 77 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:45.080 I don't ever remember his having a dancer on his show, Johnny Carson, but I think he's very witty, I think. Don't you? 78 00:05:45.220 --> 00:05:45.580 Yes. 79 00:05:46.060 --> 00:05:51.140 He's always got an answer, and he's always amusing. I find him amusing. 80 00:05:54.320 --> 00:06:03.160 Going back to Doctors for a moment, in 1982 you had an accident. We were mugged twice. 81 00:06:04.320 --> 00:06:08.180 The doctors told you you would never walk again. 82 00:06:09.100 --> 00:06:12.480 Yes, they did. Well, I fooled them. 83 00:06:13.640 --> 00:06:18.400 I have an artificial hip, and they put it in, and I had to stay in bed about a week. 84 00:06:18.400 --> 00:06:20.720 Then I got up and started to walk, and I walked fine. 85 00:06:22.220 --> 00:06:24.640 I can't dance anymore, but I can walk. 86 00:06:25.180 --> 00:06:33.940 I suppose at my age I probably couldn't dance anyway now, but I probably could have though because I was very sturdy. 87 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:40.100 If I hadn't had those two muggings, that was so unnecessary, you know. 88 00:06:40.840 --> 00:06:41.980 To say the least. 89 00:06:44.720 --> 00:06:53.940 You wrote at the time, or slightly afterward, after the doctors had told you that you wouldn't walk, that in order to cure yourself, 90 00:06:54.160 --> 00:07:03.460 you worked on your brain and your soul. You did a lot of thinking, and that's how you made yourself better. 91 00:07:04.720 --> 00:07:07.720 Well, that's interesting. I'm glad to know that. 92 00:07:09.700 --> 00:07:15.520 And you said you had a philosophy that it's important to keep pushing your body. 93 00:07:16.280 --> 00:07:22.160 Oh yes, I think you do have to. The body falls apart very fast if you don't work on it. 94 00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:32.000 I mean, I know so many older people who can't do anything. That's because they don't try. They keep doing it. 95 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:37.780 Well, my brother now, he plays tennis every day and keeps his body going. 96 00:07:38.260 --> 00:07:42.460 And some people do it, but most people I think don't. 97 00:07:43.300 --> 00:07:48.500 You also wrote about the importance to force your brain all the time. 98 00:07:48.900 --> 00:07:54.320 Yes, you don't want to let your brains fall asleep. It's very easy to do. Just don't think. 99 00:07:55.400 --> 00:07:57.520 What do you do to keep your brain active? 100 00:07:58.640 --> 00:07:59.120 Nothing. 101 00:08:05.720 --> 00:08:08.240 I don't think it works very well either. 102 00:08:09.540 --> 00:08:11.520 Come on Ruth, you read all the time. 103 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:16.800 Oh, I read. Yes, I read all the time. I love to read. I read everything. 104 00:08:18.160 --> 00:08:18.860 And you write? 105 00:08:19.820 --> 00:08:24.980 Well, you say I do, but I can't remember all the... I've written a lot. I don't know why. 106 00:08:24.980 --> 00:08:28.720 I think it's a bit compulsive. I forget it as soon as I write it anyhow. 107 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:41.420 When you look at the original manuscript of the things that you've written, the stationery is from hotels all over the world. 108 00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:50.580 Yes. I don't carry a proper tablet with me to write on. I just write on the top of the stationery, whatever happens to be around. 109 00:08:51.160 --> 00:08:52.160 How did you know that? 110 00:08:52.160 --> 00:08:55.500 I saw the originals. 111 00:08:55.640 --> 00:08:56.420 Oh, I see. 112 00:08:56.660 --> 00:08:57.840 And you write in pencil. 113 00:08:58.100 --> 00:08:59.240 Yes, I love to write in pencil. 114 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:04.300 And when do you write, Ruth? Is it the afternoons or the mornings? 115 00:09:06.460 --> 00:09:15.480 I would like to write in the morning. That's the best time to do everything, but I always go to class, so I can't write in the morning. So I do it whenever I can. 116 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:22.780 And what causes you to sit down and write? Is there an idea? 117 00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:26.700 I don't know. I have no idea. 118 00:09:28.640 --> 00:09:32.020 Do you write... you seem to write fairly frequently. 119 00:09:32.960 --> 00:09:39.660 I love to write. I adore it. But I don't know why. 120 00:09:39.660 --> 00:09:45.140 And you write fairly carefully constructed essays. 121 00:09:46.260 --> 00:09:52.080 Thank you. I didn't know that. I really didn't. I just write whatever comes to my head. 122 00:09:52.720 --> 00:10:01.180 I never went to school, really, so I never learned to write or learn mathematics or learn anything. I went on the stage when I was very young and never had any schooling. 123 00:10:01.660 --> 00:10:08.100 I graduated from high school and that was all. Then I went to New York schools that were useless. 124 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:10.440 Finishing school. 125 00:10:12.700 --> 00:10:16.660 You used to write letters to your mother very frequently. 126 00:10:16.820 --> 00:10:22.500 Yeah, those were very interesting. I read a lot of them the other day and they're terribly interesting because I told her everything. 127 00:10:23.940 --> 00:10:30.320 Everything I was doing, everybody I saw. Just told her everything. I think she must have loved getting those letters. 128 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:33.040 Did she write to you? 129 00:10:33.040 --> 00:10:33.460 Yeah. 130 00:10:34.340 --> 00:10:36.240 What kinds of letters did she write to you? 131 00:10:38.640 --> 00:10:44.720 Well, giving me advice and telling me what to do. She wrote me a lot. 132 00:10:45.680 --> 00:10:47.560 Did you listen to the advice? 133 00:10:47.580 --> 00:10:48.300 Yes, sure. 134 00:10:49.340 --> 00:10:56.140 She once said to you, men are all different, but husbands are all alike. 135 00:10:57.640 --> 00:10:59.600 Maybe she did. I don't remember that. 136 00:10:59.960 --> 00:11:01.040 Do you think that's true? 137 00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:08.740 Well, I've only had two husbands and they're so different, one from the other, that I'm not a good person to say that. 138 00:11:09.500 --> 00:11:14.980 They're very, very different. So I don't know. Well, the husbands are all alike. 139 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:17.200 What do you think your mother meant by that? 140 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:25.340 Maybe she meant that once you married somebody, maybe you were tied down. I don't know. 141 00:11:25.340 --> 00:11:29.360 I never was tied down by either my husband, so I don't know. 142 00:11:29.480 --> 00:11:34.280 But maybe that's what she meant. Because I guess in her day, if you got married, you were tied down. 143 00:11:34.540 --> 00:11:40.360 She had to come back from Germany where she was studying music and live in Indianapolis, which she didn't want to do at all. 144 00:11:41.280 --> 00:11:43.160 Maybe that's what she meant. I don't know. 145 00:11:44.160 --> 00:12:05.600 She once, you have written, played an important role in your life at a particularly critical time regarding a man that you were in love with Isamu Noguchi. 146 00:12:05.720 --> 00:12:06.440 Oh, yes. 147 00:12:06.980 --> 00:12:08.960 Do you remember what your mother... 148 00:12:08.960 --> 00:12:14.180 Yes. Instead of saying, oh, you must never see him, it was all very clandestine. 149 00:12:14.180 --> 00:12:16.680 My husband knew all about it, but it was awful. 150 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:21.240 So mother had Isamu and me come down to Highland Sport and stay a week. 151 00:12:21.500 --> 00:12:31.160 She said, if you stay here a week with me, I'll bet it'll be over. And it was. I finished it off completely. She was right. You see? 152 00:12:31.980 --> 00:12:33.100 A wise woman. 153 00:12:33.260 --> 00:12:34.080 Mm-hmm. 154 00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:46.720 I started to ask you before about the poetry to which you danced in words and music. Edna St. Vincent Millay. 155 00:12:47.100 --> 00:12:47.580 Yes. 156 00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:49.280 What did you dance to of hers? 157 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:51.520 Oh, well, you reminded me of... 158 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:53.340 I Burn My Candle at Both Ends. 159 00:12:53.480 --> 00:13:01.420 I Burn My Candle at Both Ends. It Will Not Last a Night, But All My Friends and All My Foe's. It Gives Such a Lovely Light. That was one of them. 160 00:13:01.420 --> 00:13:12.380 I don't remember what other ones of hers I did. She was a very popular poet at that time. She sort of died out, I think. They were sort of light and easy. 161 00:13:13.300 --> 00:13:16.540 And Li Po. That's a poet I don't know. 162 00:13:16.940 --> 00:13:22.720 You don't know Li Po? Well, of course, our translation is from the Chinese, so what the original Chinese is, I don't know. 163 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:35.800 But I loved his poems. A Pot of Wine Among Flowers. I Alone Drinking Without a Companion. I Lift My Cup and so forth. And so I don't remember it much more. 164 00:13:36.860 --> 00:13:39.980 And Carl Sandberg, you did a number of his. 165 00:13:39.980 --> 00:13:54.420 The songs, the Carl Sandberg songs. It was called Carl Sandberg's Song Bag. And he was from Chicago, I believe. And they were charming. Absolutely charming little poems. 166 00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:56.260 Ogden Nash. 167 00:13:57.320 --> 00:14:00.500 Yes, he was amusing. Do you know what ones I did? 168 00:14:00.880 --> 00:14:01.180 No. 169 00:14:01.180 --> 00:14:11.820 I don't remember what ones I did of his, but I did some of his because I did very serious ones and then I did little short ones to sort of liven the program up because it got too serious. 170 00:14:13.660 --> 00:14:15.440 And you did Dorothy Parker. 171 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:19.900 Yes, she was amusing too. What did I do? Have heard you say? 172 00:14:20.040 --> 00:14:22.000 No, it doesn't say. Just the names of the poets. 173 00:14:23.440 --> 00:14:29.840 No, it doesn't say just the names of the poets. Did You Do Men Seldom Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses? 174 00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:32.040 Oh, what was that from? 175 00:14:32.040 --> 00:14:34.920 That's Dorothy Parker's little... 176 00:14:34.920 --> 00:14:36.320 Great point. 177 00:14:37.320 --> 00:14:38.420 And Garcia Lorca? 178 00:14:38.860 --> 00:14:51.920 Yes, at Five in the Afternoon. It was exactly Five in the Afternoon. That was...I put it into Carmen, I think, if I'm not mistaken. I did four different versions of Carmen. 179 00:14:51.920 --> 00:14:58.440 I think I used Garcia Lorca's poems somehow in one of the Carmans. 180 00:15:00.100 --> 00:15:03.060 And then Amy Lowell, you did some of her poetry too. 181 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:05.140 What ones does it...doesn't say? 182 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:05.860 Doesn't say. 183 00:15:06.040 --> 00:15:08.440 Amy Lowell, I don't remember. I did so many. 184 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:09.680 Archibald McLeish? 185 00:15:10.300 --> 00:15:19.560 Yes. He was an interesting poet. Sort of an intellectual poet. I don't remember. I really...I'm surprised that I did all these because I don't remember them. 186 00:15:19.560 --> 00:15:25.480 If I started thinking about it, maybe I could remember. It was such a long time ago. 187 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:29.620 Oh, indeed. A very long time. Baudelaire? 188 00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:36.180 What did I do with Baudelaire? Does it say there? What did I do with Baudelaire? I don't remember. 189 00:15:36.540 --> 00:15:37.240 Eugene Field. 190 00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:38.040 Who? 191 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:39.120 Eugene Field. 192 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:42.020 Yeah. He was like... 193 00:15:42.020 --> 00:15:43.760 Children's kind of thing. 194 00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:47.580 And Belac, the French poet. 195 00:15:47.580 --> 00:15:53.360 Baudelaire Belac. Yeah, I remember the name, but what poems of his I don't know. I hadn't forgotten. I did so many. 196 00:15:54.380 --> 00:15:59.960 Those must have been very difficult programs to do, Ruth. How long did you perform when you did the words in music? 197 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:07.140 Oh, a solo program takes about two hours. The first part is an hour, and then they have an intermission, and then another hour. 198 00:16:08.500 --> 00:16:15.420 I did solo programs a lot because I didn't have anybody to dance with. And they were fun to do. I liked doing them. 199 00:16:16.380 --> 00:16:19.680 You weren't dependent on anybody except yourself. 200 00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:26.260 Very different from choreographing a ballet. 201 00:16:26.280 --> 00:16:27.080 Oh, yes. 202 00:16:27.160 --> 00:16:28.440 Where you're dependent on... 203 00:16:28.440 --> 00:16:28.960 Everybody. 204 00:16:30.680 --> 00:16:47.740 Okay. Going back now to Billy Sunday and the episodes, the four sermons that you decided to choose. 205 00:16:50.380 --> 00:17:00.960 David and Bathsheba, Joseph and Mrs. Potiphar, The Wise and Foolish Virgins, and Samson and Delilah. How did you pick those? 206 00:17:01.920 --> 00:17:07.700 Oh, how do I know? I have no idea. I thought they were subjects that everybody knew about. 207 00:17:07.700 --> 00:17:17.460 Everybody knows those four stories very well, and it's better to take something that the audience knows about, and then it's easier to do the ballet. 208 00:17:20.060 --> 00:17:29.060 And then eventually at the end, the way the ballet ends, is with Billy Sunday swinging the bat. 209 00:17:29.460 --> 00:17:30.320 Of righteousness. 210 00:17:32.320 --> 00:17:34.720 And knocking the devil out of the box. 211 00:17:36.940 --> 00:17:47.260 Yep. It started out with temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. That's the one. Yes. Ended with that. Same idea. 212 00:17:50.580 --> 00:17:53.120 What are the words exactly? Temptation is... 213 00:17:53.120 --> 00:18:00.500 Is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and letting him in. Now beyond that, I don't remember. I just remember that. 214 00:18:00.500 --> 00:18:09.480 It starts out, temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and letting him in. After that, I don't remember. 215 00:18:09.960 --> 00:18:14.360 I could have looked these all up for you if I'd known you were going to ask me these things. Well... 216 00:18:14.360 --> 00:18:15.820 I've got the music around, don't I? 217 00:18:16.600 --> 00:18:20.180 We're out of time on the cassette. Do you want to change it? 218 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:23.880 Okay. This is good. 219 00:18:24.560 --> 00:18:27.340 It is? Yes. We're getting lots of good stuff.