So, I’m sorry to say, Sally Kirkland is no longer with
us. If, that is, she ever was. My personal
feeling is that Sally came from another
planet, and only visited earth occasionally. She was, in any case, one
of a kind.
The highlight of Sally’s acting career was Anna, a
1987 indie in which she played the title role, that of a Slavic actress who has
survived political persecution. The showy part won her a Golden Globe, and she was
even nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. (Her competition included Glenn Close
for Fatal Attraction, Holly Hunter for Broadcast News, Meryl
Streep for Ironweed, and the winner, Cher, for Moonstruck.)
But I knew Sally before all that, when she was one of the
many aspiring movie people hanging around the Sunset Strip offices of Roger
Corman’s New World Pictures. An Actors Studio alumna who had also spent time
among Andy Warhol’s The Factory crazies, she helped out with casting, and also
played small but flamboyant roles like “Barney’s woman” in Big Bad Mama. She
performed in some major studio films too, like The Sting, Private
Benjamin, and JFK, mostly in parts that called for big emotions and
very few clothes.
Sally, you see, had a thing for nudity. A former model, she
was tall and lean, with augmented breasts. (Years later, she was to become a
very public crusader against breast implants.) When I was researching my former
boss for the biography that evolved into Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking
Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, she told me that
on screen she had a gift for appearing both physically and emotionally undressed:
“Combining the emotional nakedness with the physical nakedness—that’s something
that Roger’s always loved about my work.”
The 1999 in-person interview I did with Sally for that book
is something I’ll never, ever forget. We met at the Silver Spoon, a trendy West
Hollywood coffee shop near her home. When I entered, she (fully dressed) was ensconced
in a booth, beneath a large framed movie poster of herself in Anna. And
she was not alone. There was a young male assistant sitting beside her, taking
notes, and I realized I was expected to buy them both breakfast. She was also
the only person I interviewed for the Corman book who required me to sign an agreement
allowing her to check all her quotes and context before my book was published.
(When I later complied, she kept tinkering with her own brief bio at the rear
of the book to make sure pretty much every film she’d ever made was mentioned.)
We were studying our menus when two very attractive young
blondes walked through the door. They were wearing low-cut blouses and short-shorts,
and they looked to be identical. Twins? They were, it turned out, Sally’s acting
students, and she’d invited them along. And then . . . a third young lady
arrived. Yes, triplets. Sally proudly told me that, like her, they’d been
featured in a Playboy spread, and that they now—under her tutelage—were
getting ready to pursue acting careers. And I discovered I’d be buying breakfast
for myself and five other people. (The triplets sat, looking awestruck, as
Sally praised Roger to the skies for encouraging her directing aspirations and for
treating her like a member of his family.)
Sally Kirkland was, among many other things, a crusader for
a variety of causes. I of course have no way of knowing where she is now. But I’m
sure of one thing: wherever she may have ended up, it’s where the action is.
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