Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Sally Field explores her life, secrets in ‘Pieces’
Sally Field says she didn’t publish her memoir, “In Pieces,” to expose Hollywood or reveal aspects of her life: She wrote it for herself.
“I’m really trying to unravel my own childhood survival mechanisms that allowed me to survive as a child but got in my way as an adult,” Field says in a phone interview. “I had nothing to explain or even to tell. It was really my investigation, my exploration, to find pieces of myself.”
Even if she isn’t trying to shock early fans of “Gidget” and “The Flying Nun,” there are revelations that have recently made the news.
Along with sexual abuse by stepfather “Jocko” (actor and stuntman Jacques O’Mahoney), Field writes that she was pregnant during “The Flying Nun,” partied with the Monkees and was told by director Bob Rafelson not only to kiss him but to take off her top (she did).
Even though she always resented the inanity of her role as “flying” Sister Bertrille, it was a cast mate, Madeleine Sherwood, who took her to Lee Strasberg’s actors studio, a pivotal moment. Field also writes about making pot brownies for her husband when he got a draft notice during Vietnam and that later Burt Reynolds didn’t want her to play “a whore.”
That “whore” role, starring in “Norma Rae,” won Field her first Oscar.
‘Painting a picture of what there was’
Before writing about her career, Field goes into detail about her family, especially her beloved mother.
“When she looked at me, it was never through me, but into me, lifting me off the ground in an invisible embrace,” Field writes.
Young Margaret Morlan
was spotted by a talent scout for Paramount. She had already married and delivered Sally and son Ricky, but as her husband served during World War II, she studied with actor and director Charles Laughton. Her film career would consist mostly of minor movies, but Baa (Field’s name for her) and Jocko would encourage Sally and give her acting advice.
Later, even as her mother drinks and her ineffectual birth father shows up on weekends, Field aims more for truth than criticism.
“I’m just painting a picture of what there was. What she was and how it affected me,” Field explains.
Neither is her stepfather completely evil, sometimes pushing Sally to take risks, teaching her to ride a bike or swing from a tree. His acting experience gave her a bit of cachet when she shot films such as “Hooper,” which was about the life of stuntmen.
Relationship with Reynolds
Field made three movies with Reynolds, starting with the blockbuster “Smokey and the Bandit.” She wrote in her journal in 1976: “The script stinks, but when I talked to Burt he told me we would ‘improv’ our way through it. I can’t figure out why he wants me. I don’t seem like his kind of leading lady.”
Of their resulting relationship, Field now says, “He was a very big part of my life, but for a very short time.”
She hadn’t talked to him for 30 years, but after Reynolds died this month, Field indicated he might have found her portrayal of him in the book painful.
“I try to paint him as a total human being,” she says. “He was colorful and magical and all those things” but was “vulnerable in the last years of his life.”
‘Not an autobiography’
Field’s memoir takes readers through almost seven decades but ends as it begins, with her mother. As Baa became ill, Field was cast as Mary Todd Lincoln, filming “Lincoln” with Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis.
She doesn’t delve into some of her roles, such as those in “Forrest Gump” or “Mrs. Doubtfire,” or the new Netflix series “Maniac.”
Field the writer purposely adheres to her story, which she says is about her relationship with her mother and her development as an actress.
“Memoir is a very specific genre,” she says. “It’s not an autobiography; that’s a very different thing. Memoir is a story in a person’s life told by the person.
“There is a stretch of years when I was doing films that were all incredibly important, but they didn’t fit in this story. They were not about this tale that I’m telling.”