tavis: good evening. i am tavis smiley. tonight, a conversation with a three-time tony winner, who is out with a memoir about his life. it is called "dropping names," and it features some of the biggest names in business, including marilyn monroe, rita hayworth, laurence olivier, and more. we are pleased to have our conversation with frank langella, coming up. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

tavis: always pleased to have frank langella on this program. he lasted joined us back in 2009. an oscar-nominated role for "frost/nixon," and he is out with a memoir, talking about many of the people he has met in show busins. his book is called, i love this, "dropping names: famous men and women as i knew them." >> it is good to be back. tavis: you were doing the media around for the "frost/nixon," and as we do with all of our guests, when they leave, we give them this month. it has our show logo on it,

"tavis smiley." he goes back to his hotel room, staying here in los angeles, one of the bungalows you were staying at. you're staying at one of the bungalows, and you go back and take the mug with you, and "the new york times" magazine comes in to do a photo shoot with you, and i had seen you and others, and leave it to one of my people who calls me at home on a sunday morning and says, "have you seen the "the new york times" magazine today? and i said no, and he said, "we are in it." i opened up the magazine. he told me to turn to the page with frank langella, and you are

sitting there, and my mug is in the shot. >> do you know how unimportant that is to me? tavis: but it is very important to me. >> the month. tavis: when you go home tonight, you pull that magazine out, and i want you to recognize my mug. >> an actor can die next to you in the dailies, and everyone is feeling kind of sad. tavis: anyway, thinking for taking my mother, even though you did not know what you are doing. anyway, can you see this? do you have a shot of this? i love this photograph. there it is. where is this? >> that was in pr about 1.5

years ago. it was shot by my daughter. she took it. and i thought it was nice, relaxing. the serious author picture, you know? something like that. >> yes. the first thing i noticed, and i love the title, "dropping names ," in the book, the cast of characters, in order of disappearance. a very creative. >> the fastest -- passing away of the first famous person, marilyn monroe. i thought, should i do it males, females, actors, politicians, what should i do? and i just thought i would do it in the order that they left the

planet. tavis: names, telling stories. before i jump into the fun part though, let me ask why the decision to tell your life story 3 your relationships with other people? >> because i think the life story is more interesting that way. i am the supporting player. when i tried to do a biography, i fell asleep over the pen. i did not win this award, or i did. i was disinterested because i have lived through it myself. someone else could write that, but whenever an extraordinary person walked into my life, any number of ways, i found i could

not stop writing about them. i was so interested in telling them about george c. scott or princess diana, all of the people in the book. i was much more interested in communicating. tavis: what is fascinating to me, and this goes back to the joke you told earlier about your own mug as opposed to my mog. there is a notion that stars are narcissistic, that it is all about them, all about ego, but the truth is we are because somebody loved us. >> we are also who we are who we are because someone did not love us. >> yes, and your story is about bouncing into people all throughout your life. i think that is a fascinating way to tell the story. so i just want to ask you, and i am just going to throw some names at you.

your story is so great. because you mentioned marilyn monroe already, your encounter with marilyn monroe? >> i was 15 years old, and i was born in a little town in bayonne, new jersey. a background laying down for me, a middle-class life in a small little town. so i save money, got on the bus, went to new york, looked around, not knowing what i was looking for, but i wanted lightning to strike that day. i wanted to be told at 15," yes, my son." i was on my way back, disappointed. and there was marilyn monroe. of course, when you are 15 years old, and out comes this magnificently beautiful woman,

and she stopped and arranged her white fox coat and looked at me and said, "hi." that is what i needed. one little tiny sign that there was someone outside my small little world. i cannot comprehend, but i knew that that meant i could go somewhere in my life. it was difficult to explain. that yearn for something that you could not express. tavis: and this is not just somebody, this is marilyn monroe, and you're trying to move into this field. >> i was trying to make a better life for myself. one of the things about the book that i learned in writing it is how extraordinary happenstance is in your life, and i turned that corner, being stopped by a light, i would not have had

this encounter. everyone in the book, many of them i met, so many of them happenstance. like rita hayworth or robert mitchum, or go into a race because the girl's parents i was going with where there, and it won, and i was in a private box. that is happenstance. tavis: you mentioned rita hayworth, but before i get there and a number of other beautiful women that you have had encounters with, elizabeth taylor, since you mentioned rita hayworth, and with marilyn monroe, no one has come close to persons. did you mean aesthetic beauty? you have had some relationships with some beautiful women. >> i did, but in terms of ms. munroe, remember, i met her when

i was 15, and then i saw her movies. she had a combination. she was lusciously beautiful, tremendously sexual, and the way her face was put together and the way her demeanor was, there is no actress i can think of that has done that combination. rita had incredible, straightforward eroticism. she is in much better actress than people give her credit for. robert mitchum and i were making it a horrible movie, one of the worst. it was aptly titled "the wrath of god," and it was, indeed, i think it was god's vengeance. it always makes me laugh when people win awards, and they say, "i want to thank god, to be as if he is sitting there. and anyway, it was 1972, and she

was going to play my mother, and robert was playing a priest, and we were making a terrible movie. we were in mexico, where everyone went to their own rooms and mocked their cells in. it was unhappy. and we had a relationship that was many, many things, and part of its was watching someone beginning to lose her mind with alzheimer's, not quite yet, but soon. tavis: what did you take away from that particular part of the experience, being that close to someone? >> i took away something that i did not know when i was writing this book. i took away how important parroting is and how much it affects, the images, as i say,

that rita was as far from her image as anyone i has ever known. many people in the book were not parented. by parentage, i mean a baby should be brought out of its mother and put on the mother's chest immediately, the way animals do, and look into the eyes of its mother. it gets and in print, but most of us do not. that thing about the cub that never got a lift or cuddled by others, so it went into show business. so many people in show business are damaged, and a great many are, unfortunately, giving in to the later years of their lives -- wife to whatever damage they were trying to recover from. sex appeal or whenever the thing was, and all of those become

important. and then one day, as is natural, the light fades and goes to the next, or the next current thing, and for most people, they feel lost out in this jungle, this wilderness, of, and who am i? it is why you see so many incredibly talented people with their mug shots in police stations. how could that actor possibly do that? all of the success in the world? he does not know who he is. tavis: what does it mean, the damage and the gift? you are saying that there are so many of these people, some of these great actors and of being not parent, -- >> we know about them because they got famous. but there are as many people watching who are as damaged and

that we do not know about. it is a myth in my opinion about the more damage to our, the more gifted you are, or the morgue gifted you are, the more damaged you need to be. you need to be healthy, strong, sensible. you need to act in spite of your neurosis, not because of your neurosis, and you have to get healthier as you get older. it is sort of romantic to think, smoking a lot of dope and all of that stuff, the better an artist you are -- >> i will come back to these persons in aoment. given that you have been in the business long enough to be around these people and around all of those distractions that you mentioned, whether it be drugs or alcohol, the narcissism, etc., how that you survived and appear to be as healthy as you are?

>> i do not know, i do not know. it's not that i hold myself higher or lower than any of the subjects, because i am as narcissistic and as damaged and as self-destructive as the next actor or the next person, but i think there is some core of strength that i did not know i had, in my worst times, somehow surviving the worst. hibernating. i did not go out, and i stayed away from as many bad experiences as i could. i stayed away from bad television, trying to stick with the theater, and then i try to survive by looking at it, seeing

it, facing it, and not blaming anybody for it. maybe that is the answer to your question. i came to a moment where i thought whatever happens in my life, it is going to happen to me. i am responsible for it. whoever is sitting in this chair, good and bad, i did it. it is up to me. if only my father had not done this. people look for something outside themselves to blame. they are comfortable in their failure. tavis: looking back on your career, not just great for the roles that you did take, but grateful for the once usage of absolutely would not do. >> whenever i have achieved some i am as defined by what i did not do as what i did. when i have highlights, highs in

my career, i noticed other actors you had had long periods of been parched dry and got a head, and all of a sudden, they were ubiquitous, everywhere. they took whatever. they were so anxious to be loved and to be validated once more, and then they sort of used up that wonderful moment. i think if i did anything right, i thought, ok, this was a high. "dracula" was a high. "frost/nixon" was a high. but let me not go to the candy store and take every kind of sweet that is offered to me. let me maintain some kind of discernment about how i would like to conduct -- >> -- tavis: when you had your moment, you are supposed to go to the candy store and get which you can. >> not only do you think that,

agents think that. i had publicity people, people to powder their nose, people to choose their clothing for them. they have an army that they have to support. i do not have but one person to support. and he has got lots of other clients, too. i think it just goes back to being responsible for yourself and only yourself. tavis: lest the audience think that all the people in here are actors, they are not. tip o'neill. you played one on television. >> i watched him very closely. tip o'neill, he was of a breed that no longer exists. he was not a head of hair. he was not politically correct. he was not afraid to show a tremendous hubris and strength and opinion. he said what he thought. he said, clinton, i met clinton as a young man, and i said, "i

knew that man would be president. and he just told me all of these things. playing a small part in "dave." i love this guy. thurgood marshall, tip o'neill, lyndon johnson. these were remarkably interesting, fabulously ugly in the best sense of the word meant. great looking guys, and they were politicians, of course, and they had to -- but there was something statesmanlike about them which we do not have much anymore. tavis: you may be onto something in that our culture now puts a premium on anyone being on television being aesthetically pleasing. whether one likes or dislikes mitt romney, he is not esthetically and pleasing. barack obama, not esthetically

and pleasing. there are others that we cannot say that about. i wonder with our politics that that has crept in so we cannot see a tip o'neill. we would not have a lyndon johnson anymore in the age of television. >> i think our culture started to change, and you are too young to know this, but with john f. kennedy, when he was shot, and this nation lost its innocence, and to this day, we'll grow more vulgar, more bitter, more angry a nation, less discerning in all of the art forms. if you notice any of the great shows of the 1960's or 1970's, when a great singer get up to sing, nat king cole, judy garland, she started a song, she sang it as written, and the camera never left their face. now, no one stays on camera for more than 30 seconds, and the audience applauds a high note before they are able to finish

their performance. performing as a performer does. we have lost, as i said, we have lost the discernment. we have sort of lost the ability to sit back and be quiet. there is like a conspiracy. like we are not supposed to get into a taxicab with somebody selling something. the stewardess is now doing commercials for the airlines, asking you if you want to do something for 30,000 miles. everything has become selling. i suppose and always was, but the days of having a limit and having some sense of, you know, you just do not go there. even commercials, i notice, are more violent. people are knocking each other down, throwing each other off bridges. what do kids think when they see this? tavis: every time you come on, you give me something to wrestle with an something to take away.

a conspiracy against silence. i like that. i may give you attribution, the first time i use it. >> now there are two things. i have got your mug. tavis: since you mentioned at john f. kennedy, there are a couple of accounts, and i do not have time to let you tell both of them, but jacqueline kennedy onassis. >> well, in 1961, i was a young boy in cape cod. i was seeing a young lady, several young ladies, because that is what you did in 1961 when you were 23. tavis: i love your honesty. >> and i was invited home, and the lunch guests, which she did not tell me about, the kennedys and others. four hours along with that group of people, watching all towered sing his music to the president of the united states, dancing on the coffee table.

an incredible thing for a 23- year-old. tavis: there are some people in the book whom you were not their favorite people. >> paul newman. some of the people with accused me of trashing, of the people trash for a living, it's most in the best newspapers, in every one of these encounters, there were people in whom i saw flaws, flaws i saw it myself, people whom i love for lots of reasons but he suffered from all of the human failings, and i wrote about it. i was determined two things. i was not going to write a darling book. wonderful, and is not everybody perfect? and i decided if i'm going to do

that, i was also going to say here is where i was not so much fun to be around, so, yes, people's drawbacks, as i perceive them. it does not necessarily mean they would have been there for someone else or certainly that they would have thought that way about themselves. >> i take that with the correction. >> with paul, you did. tavis: fortunately for them, we are out of time. >> and fortunately for them, they are dead. tavis: the rest of us that are alive and remain, we can read the text. i saw frank when he walked in, he is getting some great reviews, and i have not seen one bad review. everybody loves this book, and i think you will, too. it is from frank langella, "dropping names: famous men and women as i knew them," a great

book. i think you will like it. >> i am holding up among one more time. this is called a two shot. tavis: and wherever you are going to be photographed next, i will have it there. that will be a regular. >> every time i come see you, you will get a mug, and i will photograph it. do not die. tavis: and you do not go anywhere either. that is our show for this time. until next time, keep the faith. >> for more information on at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a look at the conversations that could be determining the presidential elections. that is next time. we will see you then. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or

boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs. >> be more. pbs.

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