Eve Roberts and Patty Siskind

00:02 Is it called rice crackers by the way name Eve Roberts age? 81 today's date January 20th, 2011 location of Jewish Museum in San Francisco relationship to partner a new date now, I just met him in the gift shop of this Museum and I had no idea what was going to happen to me and here I am telling everyone The Story of My Life.

00:37 And Patty, okay. My name is Patty siskin. I am 60 years old. Today's date is January 20th. We are at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and my relationship to Iva Roberts. Who's our major person today. I'm her niece and I want to hear about her life story 5 years old today's date is the 20th of January 2011 wear in San Francisco and I just met these lovely ladies today in the gift shop at to pay for it now. Yeah, I guess I'm curious Eve you seem like you're excellent asking question is trait for someone involved in theater. I think so is it I think so. No. No, not at all. That's how we learn.

01:33 And what we as actors or theater practitioners what we try to do all the time as find out as much as we can about life and if you're not curious you have a very small box in which to act so who am I I guess that's is that is that your first question? Okay. I'm still leave Roberts and that's not even my real name. My real name is Evelyn.

01:57 Frida Lipski lipsky I was born in 1929 and I weighed Less Than 3 lb and nobody thought I would live but as you can see I fooled him and I was sort of kept in a shoe box and there was no incubator. So they kept me on the radiator with lots of tender soft things around me and fed me with an eyedropper. I've heard these stories on nauseam. And now that a lot of my family is dead. I don't have to hear them anymore. I can tell him most of the time that I was growing up. I was seeing doctors constantly because everyone was sure I was going to die, but I didn't die. I just stay gave me in those days was called elocution lessons and elocution lessons were really a

02:57 Well now that we have The King's Speech. Everybody knows what elocution lessons are because that's what I had except. I had no one as wonderful as Geoffrey Rush teaching me, but my mother really is the one who wanted me to speak English very well because she encountered a lot of prejudice we Unfortunately they bought a house where we all move that was very pretty but she didn't check the neighborhood out and it had a lot of people in it who are not Jewish and who never seen Jews and who thought we all had long fangs and we're going to kill them but we changed all that they spoke Russian and they spoke Yiddish and first so they wanted me not to they wanted me to speak English. Well and I

03:57 I did as you can tell I'm talking quite nicely, but unfortunately, I don't speak Russian and I don't speak it if I understand Yiddish. It wasn't something that we were there with three kids in this family. And I think we would cheated in a way. I wish that they had let us know Russian and let us learn Yiddish, but that was something they spoke when we were not in the room when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about. Anyway, I resided really boring poems like Papa's letter is with God which was a poem about a little boy whose father is dead and he's in heaven and he goes to the postman and he says, please mr. Postman, please put up a stamp right of my forehead and mail me to heaven and take me there so that I can see my daddy and I used to recite this poem by had a sister who is now

04:57 Years older than I am and she was very very beautiful and very popular and whenever she wanted to get rid of the current boyfriend who is in the room. She asked me to recite that poem that works every time and all of them have the same name which was Sidney. I can't I was Sidney Trachtenberg Sydney muszynski. I cannot tell you how many Sidney's they were so I would stand on the kitchen chair so they could see me and as I got more passionate and more emotional in this poem our cat couldn't stand the sound and it started to howl and all the sudden he's would disappear so that took care of that. That was the beginning of your acting for that was the beginning of that was I knew I was successful and I figured I had to go on to repulse people that great actress and then I graduated to Edna st. Vincent Millay and poems about the war because the war was beginning. We had Hitler

05:57 We had air raid drills with black window shades that we would pull down when the sirens sounded. I don't know with you you're too young to even have you ever heard about this while we were always afraid that we were going to get bombed because England was getting bombed all of Europe was and choose we going to concentration camps and as a Jewish kid growing up. I was very much where my parents were very active in Jewish organizations. And when the sirens would sound the black window shades would come down so that if they were airplanes up in the sky, they couldn't see any light and it was very scary. I don't know how I got into that but I think it's important. I well and the Saint Vincent Millay is not what I was talking about. I didn't poem patterns by Amy Lowell which was about a woman whose husband is killed in the war and my brother was killed in the war in 1944, so

06:57 It was a very sad thing for our family and very very sad for my mother. I don't think she died six years later. My brother was a bombardier Navigator and he was so

07:11 Way ahead of his time. He was very smart. We lived outside of Boston. I don't know whether I've said that to you and he used to go to lectures at Jordan Hall in Boston, which would have speakers that were not

07:28 That we're not accepted by everybody a Henry Wallace. I don't know that you know that name I'm sure you don't but they would be speakers. Who later when Joe McCarthy was having his communist Purge. They were speakers who would be called communist there for bad people and my brother also adored music and there is wonderful picture of him that I have at home had a great profile and he was shot in profile in the Boston, listening to a concert and all the people around him look like the late George apley with canes and beards and listening with great backs stretch straight to this music except for one person on the end of the bench looking 16 years old with his head turned toward the camera. I'm sure

08:28 He didn't even know if he was being taken those he was being shot and it's just a wonderful picture and that was the essence of him. He had a very curious the where I'm going with this is to tell you that he enlisted as soon as he could because he really believed that it was important that every Jewish boy fight in the Army and he re-enlisted. He was in the aleutians first and he was scheduled he was a fluid B-26 which was called it. I think I know more water and I rather not say things. I don't know about I did look up everything I could about his death and I do know that the marauder was a plane that hadn't been perfected for quite a while and they lost a lot of it had an axis problem and

09:21 And anyway, he re volunteered after the aleutians and he went to Europe and he was stationed in England. I believe and on one of his the bombing missions and I think I'm sorry. I'm not sure where they were. They were flying over Germany and a great Munitions town at the time 1944 and on the way back the plane was shot down over France and my mother my mother Came From Russia with her six brothers and sisters and her father the mother never came and she raised everybody all the all the children. She was the oldest and her son her oldest son was her life and when he died she died.

10:09 So it's a sad story but I was very lucky cuz I was the third child and I watched an awful lot of stuff and when I was told that I couldn't be an actress. I said watch me and I wouldn't accept no as an answer and I went to the Goodman Theater in Chicago where I trained and the rest I can tell you about what you can keep asking questions, and I became Eve Roberts now. Why did I become Eve Roberts who the hell is that now that everybody's going by their own name Spielberg Streisand in my day, which was about nineteen when I became it professionals 4849 on up you have to have a name that people could pronounce cuz they were all dumb and they couldn't learn anything but Peters or Smith and I married a man in 1950 who I stayed married to for 30 years whose name was Ross and

11:09 And then I became Eve instead of Evelyn because by my voice teacher at Goodman great woman named Mary Agnes. While there may be people out there who also studied with are you and never forgot her and she started calling me Eve which she got out of Evelyn and I thought that was so much prettier than Evelyn and so I became Eve and then my first job was at the Cleveland Playhouse and they were doing mr. Roberts on stage and I married a guy named Rothenberg and it seems like a very handy little way to cook and that's how I became me Roberts. I wish I could tell you something more interesting than that, but that's how it happened. Well, I can't tell you to answer your question. Yes. I wanted to be free of any kind of

12:06 Identification, of course, I'm not and I was very young. I was 20 years old. And so probably your age has on you as well. It's it just gave me an identity. I mean, I always really wanted to be blue eyes and blond. I see what you mean. Yes. I was I looked very Irish in my youth and I had a lot of red hair and a lot of kind of adoration for Rita Hayworth. I was sure that I was the next Rita Hayworth

12:46 Anyway, if you want to know at 81 what I feel about it, I'm so sorry cuz I really am Evelyn Freedia lipsky. That's who I am. I am not this person. Although I am e Roberts to I mean, I am who I am by both people live very much. I introduce myself by Sam Liam. Daniel Pierce is my middle name is not are you Irish? I'm surprised you haven't actually met just about everybody. I was so lucky. I was the valedictorian of my class and Hebrew school.

13:40 And the rabbi I I had to do a poem called the Messiah I won't do it for you. Now. It was a little bit better than puppies letter is with God and and he thought I was destined to be an actress and then the superintendent of schools in Swampscott, Massachusetts, which is where I grew up with a man named mansur Frank mansur he was about six feet tall. He looked a lot like Abe Lincoln and he was a very gentle man and he was really meant to be an actor not the school. Superintendent has a funny name m a n s u r so it didn't you.

14:30 And he he he used to acting all of the community plays or in town. And as a matter fact my first non-paying apprentice job was with a company in Beverly, Massachusetts and we had all kinds of stars come in and I was the costume mistress God help me and God help them if Amtrak dancer was acting in a play there. But in any case he was a wonderful actor to my eyes and probably today I would still say the same thing and he begged he and the rechabites beg my mother who is stretched on the couch dying of grief to let me go to drama school and

15:15 It does it was nice of them. It really was so I'd say they were my mentors because they really believed in me.

15:26 And as you and as soon as you Grew Older and developed, you can work and acting up I guess where did you move after you were saying about the future house? Your first play was the Roberts Goodman Theater in Chicago is still there it now is legit. How is it was originally a marvelous when I graduated from high school. There was three places one could go to train as an actor one was the Goodman Theater one was the American Academy of dramatic art and the Pasadena Playhouse now every University major university has a BFA program, and I'm a retired Professor just to really confuse you from USC professor emeritus.

16:20 And I started teaching in 1970 and and I went on to teach it to SMU and at University while I started at the University of Washington and I ended up at USC and in between a little stay in Texas and Dallas. I've acted in all the Repertory companies in this country. And one of the things I'm curious about is I was always involved in what it was called, then title three, I think programs which the government paid for and we would go to schools in Boise, Idaho Pocatello all the places that you've always wanted to go to and see a play and the whole company would go from the Seattle rep. I was part of their whole company then these are the days of the Kennedys when the theaters were being funded when art houses were being funded and we would go out and do

17:20 Please like The Glass Menagerie of 11 in the morning and I high school and I have many stories to tell about that. I mean when we were in Boise.

17:32 We were getting ready to do a performance at 11 in the morning of The Glass Menagerie. I was playing Amanda and the technical head of our theater who's a man named Bob scales came back and said to me, I'm sorry Eve, but the principal will not stop the bells. So every 20 hours you're going to hear the bells for the kids to change classes, but they refused to stop them. He said, okay I said no, but I still have a choice and then after we finish the show he came back and he said, how'd you like the bells and I said, I didn't hear them and thinking that what a wonderful actress I was because I was so concentrated that I never left the bells interfere and then I found out he cut the wires and he became a hero as far as I was concerned. And before we left town, he put them back together again, but I'm sure they never forgot that we was there.

18:33 What was what was your favorite role you've ever played in? And how do you feel do you feel it's affected your behavior. I guess the hardest Rose, I mean Happy Days.

18:50 Which is by Beckett?

18:52 What's the hardest play I've ever done. It's 65 pages of one person me standing in a mound of Earth.

19:01 Talking about oh, what a happy day. Oh, what a happy day. And she's dying. It's a metaphor for that for dying. And then the second act the Earth has come up to her neck and she's almost buried and she keeps saying isn't it a happy day and she puts on lipstick and her husband is behind her behind the mound looking at pornographic pictures, but that's back it back. It was all he was a wild Irishman your Irish heavy reading a little bit. What good? Oh my god. Oh, yeah older Martin McDonagh now. Yes, I just saw the lieutenant of inishmore on have you know about that Lieutenant. I don't either, you know, we could look it up. Maybe somebody will write in and tell us what it is. I know that they used I just saw it at the Mark Taper this year and

20:01 Okay, they they used 500 gallons of fake blood in it. And I guess the Irish people as we know have gotten used to a lot of blood in the streets.

20:19 So even have a question yet. We don't have that much time left. I want to make sure we can you give us some profound advice for the rest of our years or some outlook on your life that you might want to share with us.

20:33 Well

20:36 I'm very lucky and I I now have six granddaughters and one great-granddaughter. I have three sons. I have a career that is not to be ashamed of and I have a lot of students out there which I never even realized Hill Facebook came along and I hear from them regularly and to some of them. I have meant of a person who may have had a big influence on them. I'd never know about these things. But you know now I do and I guess I put the little prince and I have a lot in common who says you you don't see things with your art your eyes you see them with your heart.

21:25 And the only thing I know is that you must you must continue to see and understand with your heart.

21:33 Because that's where all the gold is. Does that make sense?

21:39 It seems like you're spending that gold wisely and don't waste it.

21:46 How's Lily way to finish it? But that was only 20 minutes. Is there anything else you feel you're going to talk about know? It was nice meeting you and we met happenstance and I never thought I was going to end up this day doing this story. What does it cost to storycorps y corre y c o r p s as the strength to Central. I wish you was storycorps but it isn't like a lot of things you didn't go with your heart. You will secure I just this whole thing called professionalism and they can get in the way of things like friendship, but I feel very very much. So like I made a friend today are we had like wearing it all started with a dance in the gift shop?

22:46 Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you.