I was still shooting The King of Marvin Gardens in Atlantic City, staying at a Howard Johnson’s hotel. There was a private dining room off the lobby where the whole company ate meals together. On January 7, I was sitting in the dining room talking with the producer, Steve Blauner, and his wife. Jeff was beside me. Toby Rafelson rushed in from the lobby to tell me that Neil had just entered the hotel. I panicked, grabbed Jeff’s hand, and bolted through the swinging doors that led into the huge kitchen of the hotel. I didn’t know where I was headed—anywhere away from Neil. Startled chefs and kitchen help lifted their heads to stare at us as we ran the length of the kitchen and out the back door to a stairway. I didn’t want to go to our room or any room where Neil might look for us. We ran up the back stairs and I found the room of Julie’s boyfriend, Lenny Holtzer, who fortunately was in and let us hide out there.

I was determined to stay focused on my work, but in order to do that, I had to make sure Jeff was safe from Neil. I spent the rest of the day making plans to sneak Jeff out the back of the hotel, into a limo for the Philadelphia airport, and onto a plane for Detroit, where Bill would meet us. I’d fly back the next day. I wasn’t scheduled to work that day, so there was time to execute the plan. But once on the plane in Philadelphia, strapped in my seat beside Jeff and with a martini on the way, a stewardess brought me a message that the schedule had been changed and I had to shoot the next day. Jeff and I talked it over; he said he was not afraid to fly alone to Detroit, so I kissed him good-bye and got off the plane. Bill met him and he stayed in Detroit for the rest of the shoot.

When I got back to the hotel, I discovered Bruce Dern had managed to get Neil on a bus for New York, but not before Neil convinced Bruce that all his problems were my fault. This put a strain on my relations with Bruce for the rest of the shoot.

There was a big scene ahead in which Sally decides that her stepdaughter is now her meal ticket, and she takes her fancy clothes down to the beach, makes a huge bonfire, and burns everything. Then she buries her false eyelashes and cuts off her hair. We shot the scene all day up to the haircutting part. Bob wanted to see all the footage to make sure it was good before I cut off my hair because afterward it would be impossible to reshoot anything. I wore a fall over my hair for most of the picture, but it was the same length as my hair, so when I cut it, I’d be cutting my own hair with it. Often scenes like this are faked so the actress doesn’t have to cut off her own hair. But I wanted to. I knew there would be a realism to the scene if I were chopping off my own long hair that would be difficult to equal if I were only cutting the fall.

When working onstage, there often is a moment of communication between the actor and the audience that I call communion. It’s as though the actor’s soul extends and opens to the audience so that their souls join. When acting on film without an audience present, it is difficult to achieve this communion. But on the day we shot this scene I did. I felt the camera on me and through its lens, I time-traveled to the audience in the future. I opened to them and felt them move through time and into the lens of the camera and connect with me—in communion. Later, when I sat in the audience watching this scene at the New York Film Festival, I felt it happen. That was when I discovered that communion is not an event that is time bound if it’s done with full consciousness.

When I finished the haircutting scene, I walked up the beach and saw Julie sitting on the wooden steps of the boardwalk. She was huddled in a blanket and staring into space with a dazed look. I spoke to her and she murmured a reply without looking at me.

“Jules, you all right?” I asked.

She continued to stare, but nodded her head slowly. “I’m fine,” she said in a barely audible voice. I walked on with an uneasy feeling.

Julie and I had connecting rooms. I opened the door between our rooms and listened for her arrival. After a while she came in and I entered her room, again asking if she were all right.

She said, “I’m okay. Just a little weird, that’s all. The fire on the beach, the smell of the gasoline cans. It brought me back to when I was a child. I was in the backyard and my father was doing something with gasoline and he threw one of the cans over his shoulder, not realizing I was standing there.”

She was doused with gasoline that somehow ignited. Her shocked father then threw himself on her burning body. She spent the next six months in bed, her father coming to her room every day after work and spending the entire evening until bedtime with her. His guilt and overcompensation set up a dynamic that strained the whole family. Julie seemed far away and distant as she told me this story as though in a trance. Within two years, beautiful young Julie Robinson would burn to death in a mysterious fire that erupted through the electrical outlets of her apartment as she slept. No one else was even injured in the fire.