Memoir puts spotlight on life of TV guru Shayne
For the bulk of his career, Alan Shayne relied on the creativity of others.
After starting out as an actor, Shayne, who will turn 95 later this month, became a leading behind-thescenes player in film and television, working as casting director on movies including “Catch-22” (1970) and “All the President’s Men” (1976).
Then Shayne switched to producing, helping bring to life projects that included the original ABC miniseries version of “The Bourne Identity” (1988). He also was a top executive at Warner Bros. Television.
Since retiring in the early 1990s, Shayne has found a more personal form of expression with writing. The Boston native has churned out four books, including his recent memoir, “The Rain May Pass.”
The nonfiction work is a reminiscence of Shayne’s adolescent relationship with an older man in the summer of 1941: Shayne was then 15, and the man, Roger, was 30. Evoking an era in which gay people were on the margins of society, Shayne describes a friendship that, while fleeting, validated his own identity and his goal to pursue an artistic career.
Shayne, who will appear in a livestreamed event presented by Thurber House on Wednesday, spoke recently with The Dispatch from the home he shares with his partner, artist Norman Sunshine, in Washington Depot, Con
necticut.
Question: What inspired you to dive so deeply into your past?
Shayne: I always thought there was a fascinating story there to begin with. I wrote it first as a novel, and then I realized that it was all true. It was silly to call it a novel, and I rewrote it as a memoir.
This was a very wonderful relationship, and it informed my life. It really made me become an actor and think about literature, think about art, think about things that my family never bothered to encourage me to do.
Q: You felt that, since everything you were writing was the truth, why disguise it?
Shayne: I want to tell the truth and not sugar it over in any way, so I did. Strangely enough, as I went back and worked, I remembered everything. I still find it amazing, as I look at it, that I remembered such details, but that’s what happens, I think, when you write. You think you don’t know things, but they come back.
Q: You write about the first time you saw Roger on a beach in Massachusetts.
Shayne: It’s 1941. Nobody knew anything about gay life who I knew. My family certainly wouldn’t discuss it. There were no television shows about it. There was no internet. There was no way to find out the feelings that I began to have. ...
I went to the beach, and I was very lonely. I’d been working for my grandmother and didn’t meet any kids my own age. I kept staring at this man who was with some women, and somehow felt strangely about it. I’m not sure what I felt at the moment, except that I got very excited, somehow, when he looked at me. ...
The women he was with left, and suddenly he came over and talked to me. We went in swimming, and I wanted so desperately to have a friend. Suddenly I felt, “Oh, I can talk to him.” That was when I first said to him, when he asked me, that I wanted to be an actor. He, by the way, thought I was 18. I was quite big for my age, and only later did he discover I was so young.
Q: Do you think you would have found your way into show business without Roger?
Shayne: I don’t know. I had certainly been interested in acting, but I never told anybody. I did things in high school, but my family paid no attention to them and nobody else did. .... Somehow, when I talked to Roger, he took it seriously and encouraged me.
Q: When you look back over your almost 95 years, could you ever have imagined the greater acceptance of the LGBTQ community?
Shayne: No, not for a minute. Even
when I went to New York to be an actor, if agents knew you were gay or thought you were gay, they wouldn’t send you out on jobs. It was kept a big secret. It was going on, God knows, but it was not helpful to be an actor and to be known as gay. Whereas today, some actors are able to do that. It’s quite amazing.
Q: What do you hope people take from this book, particularly those who are the age you were at the time of the book?
Shayne: Well, I would hope that young people would read it. What’s interesting is so many adults have said to me, “Oh gosh, it brought back my first love to me.” I think people read it as a love story more than anything, at least adults do. It’s finding your first love, and it’s a very important love. It can be passionate and sexual and all those things, and set you on your path.
Q: When you are writing, do you feel you’re using the same creative batteries as when you were producing or casting?
Shayne: Each one was such a different experience, and I’ve always been able to kind of put myself completely into what I was doing. I think the most creative, obviously, is the book. ... I love producing, but, finally, I just didn’t want to do any of it anymore. I didn’t want to sit in that chair in that office in Hollywood and worry about actors’ salaries.
Q: You were the casting director on “All the President’s Men.” Why has that film endured?
Shayne: Well, it was brilliantly directed by Alan Pakula. ... I went to Washington and met the actual people so that I could at least have a sense of their quality — not necessarily to get lookalikes, but to get their quality. I met (Washington Post editor) Ben Bradlee, and the minute I met him — and he was charming — I thought, “My God, it’s Jason Robards.” ...
I was able, with Pakula, to get all the right people. I think the cast is amazing, not because I did it, but because when you look at that picture, each one seemed so real, at least to me.
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