March 20, 2024 • 33 mins
Hollywood, California, 1932. In this poignant and introspective episode of The Passage, the Ferryman, voiced by the compelling Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, The Walking Dead), encounters a soul whose tragic end is as iconic as the Hollywood sign she leapt from. Peg Entwistle, voiced by Sinéad D’arcy, a name forever etched in Hollywood's lore, steps into the limelight one last time, her passage to the afterlife marked by the soft purr of a limousine's engine.
As the vehicle glides through the mists of memory and regret, Peg recounts her story, a narrative steeped in the glitter and shadows of the entertainment industry. With only one film to her name, her ambition to be a real actress—a beacon of integrity and artistry in a sea of commercialism—remains a poignant testament to her dreams.
Peg reflects on the complex struggle between art and commerce, between the authentic self and the personas crafted by studio magnates. Her tale is one of aspiration and despair, an intricate dance between the dazzling allure of fame and the stark reality of an industry that manufactures dreams with one hand while shattering them with the other.
Was Peg Entwistle a victim of a merciless entertainment machine, a system that viewed actors as commodities in the relentless pursuit of profit? Or was her downfall a consequence of her own self-doubt, a personal tragedy amplified by the unforgiving spotlight of Hollywood?
As the limousine journeys through the ethereal landscape, the Ferryman listens, his presence a silent witness to the unfolding drama. Peg's story is a mirror reflecting the eternal struggle of artists throughout the ages—seeking validation and meaning in a world that often values the superficial over the substantive.
In this episode of The Passage, listeners are invited to explore the fragile boundary between ambition and despair, between the radiant illusions of stardom and the stark realities that lurk behind the silver screen. Written by Kit Fay.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
What herd to shouts from the car, he's dead. Whether
he rebird to president or four hours, people must get
up and identifica.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This road is not on any map.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Their greatest fear.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
All I ask for in payment is a tale and
accounting of their lives and the great temporary that is
the land we're living.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
These are their stories. This is.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
The passage.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Hollywood, California, nineteen thirty two. Millions flood west from the
Great Plains, drought and dry blizzards, massive churning black clouds
of dust that can blast the hides off of cattle.
(02:49):
They flee with nothing but dead earth caked in their
ears and creases of their eyes, nothing but dust lining
their pockets, still spitting dirt from their teeth. Those unmoored
by environmental calamities search for opportunity. Here in the Golden State,
(03:14):
they come for greener grass. They pursue their dreams, while
the rest of the country sinks deeper and deeper into
what will become known as the Great Depression, making tramps
and cheats out of honest folks while putting the rest
over the ledge. The denizens of this place will they thrive?
(03:37):
And while factories across the land shudder and their promise
turns to rust, this place still sparkles, a hopeful beacon.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Shining out across the barren land.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
Why because this place mass produces and essential good dreams.
This decade will cement Hollywood's medium as the primary way
America will understand its own story, quixotic, shiny, flawless. While
(04:16):
the rest of the world starves, Hollywood is made richer
by peddling their stories of hope, intrigue, adventure, mesmerizing its
patrons to become something other than themselves for the price
of a ticket. Hollywood will take all of the intricate
ugliness of the American reality, and.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
We'll refine it and shine it and sell it back
to the people as a new narrative.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Americans will forevermore be suckers for spectacle at twenty four
frames per second. They will not only buy it, they
will believe it as though these were their own inventors.
And soon they will not know the difference between themselves
and their silver screen heroes. But the great Hollywood machine
(05:12):
eats as many dreams as it regurgitates. Countless penniless actors
will be lord in by the spectacle, and the dream
nameless starlets will get lost in this house of mirrorsgies.
(05:33):
Some will eventually catch their own distorted reflection him I'm
ready for my close up, Yet it will.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Be too late.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
They will not recognize the eyes staring back from the
other side of the glass, and in their confusion and
their undying desire to be something, to be someone special,
to matter to the world and become greater than life itself,
they will be chewed up and spit out by men
(06:08):
of means and dubious intention, Real talents who will be wasted,
real lives destroyed by the gears of this industry. One
such tale belongs to the soul I meet today, Though
her story is more than a two dimensional tale projected
(06:31):
onto a silver lenticular screen. Like so many others who
came before her, like so many others who will follow,
she had her own intricate tale as one of its
finest artists will one day tell me on their own passage.
(06:52):
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course,
on where you stop your story.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
H h, hello there, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I feel stone. I stood with all the world beneath
my feet, top of top, billing on the air, between
me and the stars. Most people get churned up and
(07:58):
spit out by the industry, but I sort above it all,
and that is how you make a name for yourself.
I wish there was an easier way, but it's all
the same in the end. If you want to be
(08:20):
a star, the only way anybody makes it there is
to give away your body and your spirit and everything
alive inside of you. You cannot have both life and immortality.
(08:43):
It must always choose. I was a real actress, a
serious actress, just all I ever wanted to be, except
to have any sort of hold in this world.
Speaker 8 (09:00):
To be great.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It's not enough being great for someone else is someone
else's game. Have you heard of me? Do you even
know who I am?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah? I do?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And who am I? Now? Am I me? Or am
I playing a part.
Speaker 9 (09:31):
Hard to know, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I get confused sometimes myself. Do you recognize me?
Speaker 10 (09:40):
Though I can.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Tell from the way you approach familiar, although I'm sure
I've never seen you before.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I'm here to offer you passage.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Tell me do you know my name?
Speaker 6 (09:59):
I you do?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Which one.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Peck had?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Vic Hazel? Certainly not the name my mother and father
gave me.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
No one here knows that.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Hmm. Yes, there were so many roles I accepted gladly,
but the ones thrust upon me by the act of
my birth were an agony in boor from beginning to end.
I hope those are not the ones for which I
have remembered.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It is time come with me.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Oh, thank you, kind stranger for offering your hand. I
can hardly see a thing in this big, blurry darkness.
Grip is so reassuring.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's just up here.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I am glad I do not have to walk this
path alone decide where to go. I'm good about hitting
my marks. I'm best going exactly when I'm told and
saying exactly and I'm told to say. I only need
to mess things off when left without direction, there is
(11:17):
a great freedom and knowing where to stand and what
to say, knowing the what and the whay, lets one
live in the far more interesting why and how?
Speaker 9 (11:29):
So much?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
When is it cold?
Speaker 6 (11:31):
Where we're going?
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Are you strange?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Sounds? Faintly out there in the story emptyness, I see
images of my life. It's living through space. I can't
see the horizon, but I must confess I'm not afraid.
Am I a fool for that? You don't talk much?
Everyone where I come from is talking all of the time,
(11:54):
and nobody ever.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Wants to listen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And anyways, I have so many thoughts inside my head
I wish I never thought at all, never mind saying
them out loud.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It is time for you to speak your own lines.
That is my price.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
This is your memo.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It's yours.
Speaker 9 (12:16):
Actually, I don't know what.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
To tell you. Somehow in this place I can't remember
my lines.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Why don't you begin by telling me the story of
your name?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Oh easy, I named myself peg Have to peg O
My Heart, a very romantic play about a young woman
from Ireland who finds herself in England and falls in
(13:10):
love with the man who lies her. At least I
never found myself in England. That joke I played perhaps
my greatest role at just seventeen and Ibsen's The Wild Duck.
Do you know that story?
Speaker 7 (13:30):
I played Headwig.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
She shoots herself in the chest. The reviews were tremendous.
Speaker 10 (13:38):
The story was about this family and the way they
survived dysfunction, with each member clinging to their own lives
that made life VERI The family had this bird.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
This wild duck, injured and living in their attic.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
Headwig the daughter.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
She adored that duck and it made her happy. And
though the duck was too injured to live the way
a duck should, even though it lived locked in an attic,
never seeing sunlight.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
Hadvik could believe her bird.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Was happy in her home, and that made her able
to believe that she was happy there too. When an
unwanted truth caused the father to turn on his wife
and his daughter, people claimed to Hedwig that he hated
the duck, and she decided to sacrifice it to win
her father's love back. When that did not work, she
(14:33):
sacrificed herself.
Speaker 10 (14:35):
Two shots, two lives, and two illusions ended in an instant.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Ibsen wrote, deprive the average human being of his life,
lie and you rob him of his happiness? Do you
come for everyone? My father or my stepmother.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
Have you met my mother?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
How did she outlive me?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I don't speak of my other passengers.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I see, but I assume you've seen them all. I
was five years old when I took the boat from
Wales to.
Speaker 11 (15:12):
America with my father.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
He told me we were running towards a brighter future.
But I think that he was running for my mother
on her illness. But of course, these things always catch
up to you in the end.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
My father always told me.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
She died, but I knew it wasn't true. He believed
me too young to remember, but I could see the
faint etches of her in my mind, like looking through
a cloudy glass. My father brought me to New York City,
to Broadway, where he dressed in black and stood in
the wings, commanding everything, and I got to watch it all.
(15:52):
I knew from the first time I set foot on
a stage that there was nowhere else in the world
for me. But there he married again, and she was
beautiful and kind. I performed in my very first play,
the school production of Peter Pan, where I played the
title role. My father was happy there altogether, underneath bright
(16:14):
lights and skyscrapers, until my stepmother got sick and died,
and then only a year later, my father was killed
by a motorist side. I loved New York and I
loved my father, and I loved my stepmother. And by
the time I was thirteen and we were both dead,
(16:37):
and I was in Ohio, and I could not help
but envy them. I lived there with my uncle, who
loved me but could not understand me.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
And when he moved to California to.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Work in the movies, I moved to Boston for a role,
and then back to New York City. I was in Hamlet,
you know, on Broadway. I did not speak, but I
poisoned the King. I studied the script so much that
I could have gone on for any role at the
(17:06):
drop of a hat. I believe I brought a great
seriousness to the Walk On roll, because after that came
more rolls and Ibsen and head fig in the Duck.
After Ibsen felt like I was always working for a time.
I originated roles in a string of premieres that mostly
did not last. And then what that did the comedy
(17:31):
none of the work of the richness of Ibsen, and
I ached for the satisfaction of depths and meaning of
characters I could fully inhabit. The more I struggled to
lose myself in the stories, the harder it became to
find myself again. I burned for a role with conviction.
Then from the wings entered Robert. He was ten years
(17:57):
my senior, with half my acting credit, which I felt
would give me the advantage between us. He sought me
intensely and directly, the way a director might court the
one big Starry envisioned for his leading role, no audition,
only an offer given with the confidence that I had
(18:21):
the chops to perform. My role as wife was my
most challenging yet and required all of my attention.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Robert, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He was violent. I screamed and I wept, and I
laid myself bare night after night. It was a wrenching
perform morments, heavy and serious and impactful, with all of
(19:06):
the weight of a good drama and no horrible silliness
to puncture the artistic tension. This role was so demanding
that I had no space in my head for my
own thoughts. Two years of nightly performances took their toll
(19:27):
on my brain and my bones, but so insidiously that
the ache folks familiar is my own hearty. When I
found out that my husband had been hiding a son
in a previous marriage for me, thus violating the terms
of our commitment, I felt only a relief clarity. For
(19:51):
the first time in my life, I walked down on
a contract. But with the the end of the marriage
came the end of the twenties, and nothing was as
it happened. I walked from a short, bitter marriage to
a short and bitter life.
Speaker 9 (20:10):
Then came the thirties.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And out went the lights on Broadway. Almost everyone making
theater was either making movies or suddenly unemployed. Gone were
the accolades, and gone was work.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
In New York.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
What is the value of an artist when people are starving?
What good is it to be a great actress in
a desolate time? The crowds that had once clamored for
attention at stage doors were now standing dirty faced in
(20:47):
soup lines, and I was on the brink of joining them.
I had no choice but to leave New York. I
accepted a part in a play all the way across
the country, joining my uncle in Hollywood. The long, arduous
journey from one coast to the other carried a weight
of terrible finality. Time works differently here, doesn't it. I
(21:15):
can see my life as if it's all happening now,
feels as though I only just met you, And yet
here too, I can see my headstone growing weathered in
my body, floating, sinking, and turning to dust in Ohio.
(21:41):
I cannot believe they buried me in Ohio. I can
see my uncle now, and I almost wish I hadn't
gone yet. I am glad to be here with you,
looking into the face of eternity, where all my life
feels like an instant. It seems in a few more
(22:05):
decades might have been a small thing to see what
I had time to see. All I can see now,
all my life and the people who loved me. You
feel like an old friend. But I suppose you would
have waited for me. Yes, the only friend who could
(22:27):
have been put off to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
and still be waiting forever.
Speaker 11 (22:34):
Unchanged.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It is true.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Yeah, I am at the end of every life.
Speaker 12 (22:41):
Though standing here now seeing it all, I begin to
feel that there was no success that could have made
me truly happy.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
My father and stepmother were dead, my real mother was
an ocean away. The space between me and everyone left
in my life felt at least as fast. With the
death of my Broadway career, I felt like an orphan
twice over. The move to California felt like an irreversible settling.
(23:21):
My uncle was happy to take me in again, which
was very kind. My first and final play in Hollywood
closed in just under two weeks to glowing reviews. I
did not long for fame, wealth, or even love. The
(23:42):
idea of turning my own life into something worth living
in felt so impossible to me that any small seeds,
say many of otherwise sown, intended and allowed to grow
for time seemed to me a wasted effort. Building a
(24:05):
life that I desired would interfere too greatly with my
need to escape the life that I had. All I
wanted was to live completely inside the lives of strangers.
I hated the part life had given me, and I
(24:28):
hated the part I had written for myself an equal measure.
I hope I am remembered for the parts I played
in more beautiful stories. I am terribly afraid my poor
job as Peg and her Sorry Tale will be my
(24:50):
most famous and my final act worth discussing. Hazel Clay
cousins in Thirteen Women.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
That was the film my only film.
Speaker 13 (25:11):
Hazel was a lesbian, and she killed her husband, and
she went to prison. She got to berculosis in prison,
and then she fell in love with the wife of
the doctor who was treating her, only to have her
heart broken.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
She starved herself to death in her hospital bed. Except
almost not that made it to the screen. It was
not my vanity that broke me. It was the unwriting
of a story I had lived for months in service of.
For months, I was Hazel more than I was Peg.
Speaker 7 (25:47):
To prepare for my performance.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
I prepared for my own death.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
To truly authentically betray a woman convinced to take action
against her own life, I had to become one. I
died again and again on my own, and then in rehearsal,
and then on camera, and then some test audience, never
sacrificed anything for art in their lives, could not appreciate
(26:12):
the story I had given everything inside of myself to tell.
And instead of honoring the life we had created, the
studio simply untoken. I did not know how to live
on after my own death in a world where it
had not happened. Why we stopped, Why are you looking
(26:35):
at me that way? That can't be the part you
want to hear about. Fine. There was a ladder leaned
against the h of the sign when I got there,
a prop perfectly placed for my final act. Please, wherever
we're going now, do not bring me to judgment?
Speaker 7 (26:55):
Is pig. I am Hazel, heart.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Broken and wasting into nothing.
Speaker 14 (27:00):
On purpose Henry Maddic pressing a shotgun in her own chest.
Peter Pan, leaving everyone and everything behind to live in
neverland and never ever ever grow up.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
I am the wild.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Bird with the broken wings, a great sacrifice to nothing.
Speaker 7 (27:20):
I laid there a long time at.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
The foot of the Hollywood Sign, staring down at the
place where the glittering val he met the twinkling night sky,
until every light blurred and all I could see above
and below me were stars.
Speaker 7 (27:37):
While who were standing here still?
Speaker 6 (27:39):
Please?
Speaker 7 (27:39):
I don't know where to go.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
It's time for the truth.
Speaker 8 (27:45):
I don't you the truth.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's time for you to tell yourself.
Speaker 7 (27:52):
I wish sad and jumped. That's the whole awful truth
of it, HM.
Speaker 15 (28:03):
Relies.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
As soon as my feet left the threshold and my
body felt suspended in the air, I tried to catch
myself on the way down. But I lost myself.
Speaker 15 (28:23):
Oh my whole body screamed and agon eve when it
put it on the ground, And I longed for the
cinematic power of an editor's scissors to unwrite my depth
for the second time.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
Even now, I.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Wish I could undo my undoer.
Speaker 16 (28:47):
I always make the wrong decision with love without direction
as to wear my featured land the biggest times of
my life, I've always been speaking someone else wrote for me,
wearing someone else's clothes and someone else's name and someone
(29:08):
else's life. I always loved living in every story except.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
For my own.
Speaker 15 (29:18):
I wish I had given the character a Peg a
better chance.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Truthfully, how do you not want to be remembered as Peg?
Only a Peg whose death was simply a footnote the
story of her life, instead of.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
The other way around.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Maybe I could have had my own go at remembering
not remembering, instead of worrying so much about the memories
of others. Oh, it's beautiful now, I see the road ahead,
(30:06):
stage lights marquise the crowded city, sidewalk, a stage door.
It's amazing, there's an end to all this inky, starry darkness.
Speaker 9 (30:20):
I was sure we could walk forever inside of it.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I can hear the sound of applause, firing of cameras,
fuzzy like through the edges of a fairly waking dream.
It is a more beautiful end than I could have
hoped for, and I'm glad to see where we are at.
Thank you friend.
Speaker 11 (30:47):
Then that sky out here, at the end of nothingness
is something spectacular.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
Oh, the breeze.
Speaker 11 (30:55):
Smells fresh and strange, and I can hardly remember the
last time I had the company of someone so warm familiar.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Maybe we could sit here a while before we go.
I have always thought there was a magic and sitting
silent in the dark looking up at the stars. But
it's time.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
Ah, a red carpet. Haven't you thought of everything?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
The double doors at the end of the carpet, beyond
them misier destination.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Well, mustn't keep my audience waiting.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Hey, yeah, break a leg peg. She was in love
with stories, made her own way across the ocean and
(32:06):
then across the continent in search of them. She imbued
each character she played with depth and purpose Bravo, but
she never took the same care with her own story,
instead allowing herself to chase after meaning.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
In the words of others.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Perhaps she will move forward with her heart and invest
it in her own existence. Perhaps she will find motivation
in her passage.
Speaker 17 (32:53):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Fairyman. This episode
features Shane Darcy as Peg and Whistle. Written by Kit Fay,
with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski. Our
executive producers are Nicholas Dakowski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script's supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
(33:14):
Music by Ben Lovitt, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
design by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Jan Campos, Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising
producer is Josh Than. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski,
Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is of production of
(33:36):
iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.
Yeah, I am the fairy man.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
The human spirit is my business. Their madness, their passion,
the wonderful and monstrous ways they burn out their brief candle.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I regret to tell you that very many American lives
in love.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
What herd to shouts from the car, he's dead. Whether
he rebird to president or four hours, people must get
up and identifica.
Speaker 5 (00:52):
I am here in the in between, to collect their
spirits and carry them to what comes next.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
This road is not on any map.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
It spans the thresholds between their most forbidden desires and.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Their greatest fear.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
All I ask for in payment is a tale and
accounting of their lives and the great temporary that is
the land we're living.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
These are their stories. This is.
Speaker 6 (01:38):
The passage.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Hollywood, California, nineteen thirty two. Millions flood west from the
Great Plains, drought and dry blizzards, massive churning black clouds
of dust that can blast the hides off of cattle.
(02:49):
They flee with nothing but dead earth caked in their
ears and creases of their eyes, nothing but dust lining
their pockets, still spitting dirt from their teeth. Those unmoored
by environmental calamities search for opportunity. Here in the Golden State,
(03:14):
they come for greener grass. They pursue their dreams, while
the rest of the country sinks deeper and deeper into
what will become known as the Great Depression, making tramps
and cheats out of honest folks while putting the rest
over the ledge. The denizens of this place will they thrive?
(03:37):
And while factories across the land shudder and their promise
turns to rust, this place still sparkles, a hopeful beacon.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Shining out across the barren land.
Speaker 5 (03:54):
Why because this place mass produces and essential good dreams.
This decade will cement Hollywood's medium as the primary way
America will understand its own story, quixotic, shiny, flawless. While
(04:16):
the rest of the world starves, Hollywood is made richer
by peddling their stories of hope, intrigue, adventure, mesmerizing its
patrons to become something other than themselves for the price
of a ticket. Hollywood will take all of the intricate
ugliness of the American reality, and.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
We'll refine it and shine it and sell it back
to the people as a new narrative.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Americans will forevermore be suckers for spectacle at twenty four
frames per second. They will not only buy it, they
will believe it as though these were their own inventors.
And soon they will not know the difference between themselves
and their silver screen heroes. But the great Hollywood machine
(05:12):
eats as many dreams as it regurgitates. Countless penniless actors
will be lord in by the spectacle, and the dream
nameless starlets will get lost in this house of mirrorsgies.
(05:33):
Some will eventually catch their own distorted reflection him I'm
ready for my close up, Yet it will.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Be too late.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
They will not recognize the eyes staring back from the
other side of the glass, and in their confusion and
their undying desire to be something, to be someone special,
to matter to the world and become greater than life itself,
they will be chewed up and spit out by men
(06:08):
of means and dubious intention, Real talents who will be wasted,
real lives destroyed by the gears of this industry. One
such tale belongs to the soul I meet today, Though
her story is more than a two dimensional tale projected
(06:31):
onto a silver lenticular screen. Like so many others who
came before her, like so many others who will follow,
she had her own intricate tale as one of its
finest artists will one day tell me on their own passage.
(06:52):
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course,
on where you stop your story.
Speaker 7 (07:00):
H h, hello there, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
I feel stone. I stood with all the world beneath
my feet, top of top, billing on the air, between
me and the stars. Most people get churned up and
(07:58):
spit out by the industry, but I sort above it all,
and that is how you make a name for yourself.
I wish there was an easier way, but it's all
the same in the end. If you want to be
(08:20):
a star, the only way anybody makes it there is
to give away your body and your spirit and everything
alive inside of you. You cannot have both life and immortality.
(08:43):
It must always choose. I was a real actress, a
serious actress, just all I ever wanted to be, except
to have any sort of hold in this world.
Speaker 8 (09:00):
To be great.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It's not enough being great for someone else is someone
else's game. Have you heard of me? Do you even
know who I am?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah? I do?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And who am I? Now? Am I me? Or am
I playing a part.
Speaker 9 (09:31):
Hard to know, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I get confused sometimes myself. Do you recognize me?
Speaker 10 (09:40):
Though I can.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Tell from the way you approach familiar, although I'm sure
I've never seen you before.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I'm here to offer you passage.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Tell me do you know my name?
Speaker 6 (09:59):
I you do?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Which one.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Peck had?
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Vic Hazel? Certainly not the name my mother and father
gave me.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
No one here knows that.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Hmm. Yes, there were so many roles I accepted gladly,
but the ones thrust upon me by the act of
my birth were an agony in boor from beginning to end.
I hope those are not the ones for which I
have remembered.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It is time come with me.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Oh, thank you, kind stranger for offering your hand. I
can hardly see a thing in this big, blurry darkness.
Grip is so reassuring.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's just up here.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
I am glad I do not have to walk this
path alone decide where to go. I'm good about hitting
my marks. I'm best going exactly when I'm told and
saying exactly and I'm told to say. I only need
to mess things off when left without direction, there is
(11:17):
a great freedom and knowing where to stand and what
to say, knowing the what and the whay, lets one
live in the far more interesting why and how?
Speaker 9 (11:29):
So much?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
When is it cold?
Speaker 6 (11:31):
Where we're going?
Speaker 7 (11:33):
Are you strange?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Sounds? Faintly out there in the story emptyness, I see
images of my life. It's living through space. I can't
see the horizon, but I must confess I'm not afraid.
Am I a fool for that? You don't talk much?
Everyone where I come from is talking all of the time,
(11:54):
and nobody ever.
Speaker 7 (11:55):
Wants to listen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
And anyways, I have so many thoughts inside my head
I wish I never thought at all, never mind saying
them out loud.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
It is time for you to speak your own lines.
That is my price.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
This is your memo.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
It's yours.
Speaker 9 (12:16):
Actually, I don't know what.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
To tell you. Somehow in this place I can't remember
my lines.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Why don't you begin by telling me the story of
your name?
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Oh easy, I named myself peg Have to peg O
My Heart, a very romantic play about a young woman
from Ireland who finds herself in England and falls in
(13:10):
love with the man who lies her. At least I
never found myself in England. That joke I played perhaps
my greatest role at just seventeen and Ibsen's The Wild Duck.
Do you know that story?
Speaker 7 (13:30):
I played Headwig.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
She shoots herself in the chest. The reviews were tremendous.
Speaker 10 (13:38):
The story was about this family and the way they
survived dysfunction, with each member clinging to their own lives
that made life VERI The family had this bird.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
This wild duck, injured and living in their attic.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
Headwig the daughter.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
She adored that duck and it made her happy. And
though the duck was too injured to live the way
a duck should, even though it lived locked in an attic,
never seeing sunlight.
Speaker 7 (14:07):
Hadvik could believe her bird.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Was happy in her home, and that made her able
to believe that she was happy there too. When an
unwanted truth caused the father to turn on his wife
and his daughter, people claimed to Hedwig that he hated
the duck, and she decided to sacrifice it to win
her father's love back. When that did not work, she
(14:33):
sacrificed herself.
Speaker 10 (14:35):
Two shots, two lives, and two illusions ended in an instant.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Ibsen wrote, deprive the average human being of his life,
lie and you rob him of his happiness? Do you
come for everyone? My father or my stepmother.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
Have you met my mother?
Speaker 3 (14:57):
How did she outlive me?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I don't speak of my other passengers.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
I see, but I assume you've seen them all. I
was five years old when I took the boat from
Wales to.
Speaker 11 (15:12):
America with my father.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
He told me we were running towards a brighter future.
But I think that he was running for my mother
on her illness. But of course, these things always catch
up to you in the end.
Speaker 7 (15:27):
My father always told me.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
She died, but I knew it wasn't true. He believed
me too young to remember, but I could see the
faint etches of her in my mind, like looking through
a cloudy glass. My father brought me to New York City,
to Broadway, where he dressed in black and stood in
the wings, commanding everything, and I got to watch it all.
(15:52):
I knew from the first time I set foot on
a stage that there was nowhere else in the world
for me. But there he married again, and she was
beautiful and kind. I performed in my very first play,
the school production of Peter Pan, where I played the
title role. My father was happy there altogether, underneath bright
(16:14):
lights and skyscrapers, until my stepmother got sick and died,
and then only a year later, my father was killed
by a motorist side. I loved New York and I
loved my father, and I loved my stepmother. And by
the time I was thirteen and we were both dead,
(16:37):
and I was in Ohio, and I could not help
but envy them. I lived there with my uncle, who
loved me but could not understand me.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
And when he moved to California to.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Work in the movies, I moved to Boston for a role,
and then back to New York City. I was in Hamlet,
you know, on Broadway. I did not speak, but I
poisoned the King. I studied the script so much that
I could have gone on for any role at the
(17:06):
drop of a hat. I believe I brought a great
seriousness to the Walk On roll, because after that came
more rolls and Ibsen and head fig in the Duck.
After Ibsen felt like I was always working for a time.
I originated roles in a string of premieres that mostly
did not last. And then what that did the comedy
(17:31):
none of the work of the richness of Ibsen, and
I ached for the satisfaction of depths and meaning of
characters I could fully inhabit. The more I struggled to
lose myself in the stories, the harder it became to
find myself again. I burned for a role with conviction.
Then from the wings entered Robert. He was ten years
(17:57):
my senior, with half my acting credit, which I felt
would give me the advantage between us. He sought me
intensely and directly, the way a director might court the
one big Starry envisioned for his leading role, no audition,
only an offer given with the confidence that I had
(18:21):
the chops to perform. My role as wife was my
most challenging yet and required all of my attention.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Robert, that's cool.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He was violent. I screamed and I wept, and I
laid myself bare night after night. It was a wrenching
perform morments, heavy and serious and impactful, with all of
(19:06):
the weight of a good drama and no horrible silliness
to puncture the artistic tension. This role was so demanding
that I had no space in my head for my
own thoughts. Two years of nightly performances took their toll
(19:27):
on my brain and my bones, but so insidiously that
the ache folks familiar is my own hearty. When I
found out that my husband had been hiding a son
in a previous marriage for me, thus violating the terms
of our commitment, I felt only a relief clarity. For
(19:51):
the first time in my life, I walked down on
a contract. But with the the end of the marriage
came the end of the twenties, and nothing was as
it happened. I walked from a short, bitter marriage to
a short and bitter life.
Speaker 9 (20:10):
Then came the thirties.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And out went the lights on Broadway. Almost everyone making
theater was either making movies or suddenly unemployed. Gone were
the accolades, and gone was work.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
In New York.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
What is the value of an artist when people are starving?
What good is it to be a great actress in
a desolate time? The crowds that had once clamored for
attention at stage doors were now standing dirty faced in
(20:47):
soup lines, and I was on the brink of joining them.
I had no choice but to leave New York. I
accepted a part in a play all the way across
the country, joining my uncle in Hollywood. The long, arduous
journey from one coast to the other carried a weight
of terrible finality. Time works differently here, doesn't it. I
(21:15):
can see my life as if it's all happening now,
feels as though I only just met you, And yet
here too, I can see my headstone growing weathered in
my body, floating, sinking, and turning to dust in Ohio.
(21:41):
I cannot believe they buried me in Ohio. I can
see my uncle now, and I almost wish I hadn't
gone yet. I am glad to be here with you,
looking into the face of eternity, where all my life
feels like an instant. It seems in a few more
(22:05):
decades might have been a small thing to see what
I had time to see. All I can see now,
all my life and the people who loved me. You
feel like an old friend. But I suppose you would
have waited for me. Yes, the only friend who could
(22:27):
have been put off to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
and still be waiting forever.
Speaker 11 (22:34):
Unchanged.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
It is true.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Yeah, I am at the end of every life.
Speaker 12 (22:41):
Though standing here now seeing it all, I begin to
feel that there was no success that could have made
me truly happy.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
My father and stepmother were dead, my real mother was
an ocean away. The space between me and everyone left
in my life felt at least as fast. With the
death of my Broadway career, I felt like an orphan
twice over. The move to California felt like an irreversible settling.
(23:21):
My uncle was happy to take me in again, which
was very kind. My first and final play in Hollywood
closed in just under two weeks to glowing reviews. I
did not long for fame, wealth, or even love. The
(23:42):
idea of turning my own life into something worth living
in felt so impossible to me that any small seeds,
say many of otherwise sown, intended and allowed to grow
for time seemed to me a wasted effort. Building a
(24:05):
life that I desired would interfere too greatly with my
need to escape the life that I had. All I
wanted was to live completely inside the lives of strangers.
I hated the part life had given me, and I
(24:28):
hated the part I had written for myself an equal measure.
I hope I am remembered for the parts I played
in more beautiful stories. I am terribly afraid my poor
job as Peg and her Sorry Tale will be my
(24:50):
most famous and my final act worth discussing. Hazel Clay
cousins in Thirteen Women.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
That was the film my only film.
Speaker 13 (25:11):
Hazel was a lesbian, and she killed her husband, and
she went to prison. She got to berculosis in prison,
and then she fell in love with the wife of
the doctor who was treating her, only to have her
heart broken.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
She starved herself to death in her hospital bed. Except
almost not that made it to the screen. It was
not my vanity that broke me. It was the unwriting
of a story I had lived for months in service of.
For months, I was Hazel more than I was Peg.
Speaker 7 (25:47):
To prepare for my performance.
Speaker 10 (25:49):
I prepared for my own death.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
To truly authentically betray a woman convinced to take action
against her own life, I had to become one. I
died again and again on my own, and then in rehearsal,
and then on camera, and then some test audience, never
sacrificed anything for art in their lives, could not appreciate
(26:12):
the story I had given everything inside of myself to tell.
And instead of honoring the life we had created, the
studio simply untoken. I did not know how to live
on after my own death in a world where it
had not happened. Why we stopped, Why are you looking
(26:35):
at me that way? That can't be the part you
want to hear about. Fine. There was a ladder leaned
against the h of the sign when I got there,
a prop perfectly placed for my final act. Please, wherever
we're going now, do not bring me to judgment?
Speaker 7 (26:55):
Is pig. I am Hazel, heart.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Broken and wasting into nothing.
Speaker 14 (27:00):
On purpose Henry Maddic pressing a shotgun in her own chest.
Peter Pan, leaving everyone and everything behind to live in
neverland and never ever ever grow up.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
I am the wild.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Bird with the broken wings, a great sacrifice to nothing.
Speaker 7 (27:20):
I laid there a long time at.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
The foot of the Hollywood Sign, staring down at the
place where the glittering val he met the twinkling night sky,
until every light blurred and all I could see above
and below me were stars.
Speaker 7 (27:37):
While who were standing here still?
Speaker 6 (27:39):
Please?
Speaker 7 (27:39):
I don't know where to go.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
It's time for the truth.
Speaker 8 (27:45):
I don't you the truth.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's time for you to tell yourself.
Speaker 7 (27:52):
I wish sad and jumped. That's the whole awful truth
of it, HM.
Speaker 15 (28:03):
Relies.
Speaker 8 (28:04):
As soon as my feet left the threshold and my
body felt suspended in the air, I tried to catch
myself on the way down. But I lost myself.
Speaker 15 (28:23):
Oh my whole body screamed and agon eve when it
put it on the ground, And I longed for the
cinematic power of an editor's scissors to unwrite my depth
for the second time.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
Even now, I.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
Wish I could undo my undoer.
Speaker 16 (28:47):
I always make the wrong decision with love without direction
as to wear my featured land the biggest times of
my life, I've always been speaking someone else wrote for me,
wearing someone else's clothes and someone else's name and someone
(29:08):
else's life. I always loved living in every story except.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
For my own.
Speaker 15 (29:18):
I wish I had given the character a Peg a
better chance.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Truthfully, how do you not want to be remembered as Peg?
Only a Peg whose death was simply a footnote the
story of her life, instead of.
Speaker 6 (29:36):
The other way around.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Maybe I could have had my own go at remembering
not remembering, instead of worrying so much about the memories
of others. Oh, it's beautiful now, I see the road ahead,
(30:06):
stage lights marquise the crowded city, sidewalk, a stage door.
It's amazing, there's an end to all this inky, starry darkness.
Speaker 9 (30:20):
I was sure we could walk forever inside of it.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I can hear the sound of applause, firing of cameras,
fuzzy like through the edges of a fairly waking dream.
It is a more beautiful end than I could have
hoped for, and I'm glad to see where we are at.
Thank you friend.
Speaker 11 (30:47):
Then that sky out here, at the end of nothingness
is something spectacular.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
Oh, the breeze.
Speaker 11 (30:55):
Smells fresh and strange, and I can hardly remember the
last time I had the company of someone so warm familiar.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Maybe we could sit here a while before we go.
I have always thought there was a magic and sitting
silent in the dark looking up at the stars. But
it's time.
Speaker 7 (31:26):
Ah, a red carpet. Haven't you thought of everything?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
The double doors at the end of the carpet, beyond
them misier destination.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
Well, mustn't keep my audience waiting.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
Hey, yeah, break a leg peg. She was in love
with stories, made her own way across the ocean and
(32:06):
then across the continent in search of them. She imbued
each character she played with depth and purpose Bravo, but
she never took the same care with her own story,
instead allowing herself to chase after meaning.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
In the words of others.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Perhaps she will move forward with her heart and invest
it in her own existence. Perhaps she will find motivation
in her passage.
Speaker 17 (32:53):
The Passage stars Dan Fogler as the Fairyman. This episode
features Shane Darcy as Peg and Whistle. Written by Kit Fay,
with additional writing by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski. Our
executive producers are Nicholas Dakowski, Matthew Frederick, and Alexander Williams.
First assistant director, script's supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein.
(33:14):
Music by Ben Lovitt, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. Casting
by Sunday Bowling Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Editing and sound
design by Dan Bush, Dialogue editing and sound mixing by
Jan Campos, Additional sound editing by Racket Sound. Our supervising
producer is Josh Than. Created by Dan Bush and Nicholas Dakowski,
Produced by Dan Bush. The Passage is of production of
(33:36):
iHeartRadio and Cycopia Pictures.
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