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Spring 2003 CONTENTS
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In The Bloodby Paddy O'Connell Macdonald
Thirteen years ago, I interviewed A.B. “Bud” Guthrie, UM alumnus, Pulitzer Prize winner, Academy Award nominee, and revered author of The Big Sky. The drive from Missoula to the Guthries’ home was brutal. After bouncing my Volkswagen Rabbit along rutted, dust-caked, two-lane highways, I rattled to a stop at a phone booth in Choteau, where I called Mr. Guthrie for further directions. Half an hour later, at the end of a narrower, ruttier, snakier road, I pulled up to Bud’s home. My legs clacked together like bamboo wind chimes. Carol Guthrie’s smile radiated hospitality as she ushered me inside the house, but my anxiety was unquelled. The punishing drive, coupled with my awe of the hegemonic Guthrie, rendered me witless. What I needed was a clever opening gambit. Instead, as Bud approached me, his hand outstretched to shake mine, I blurted the question foremost on my brain: “How can you live out here in the middle of nowhere?” Guthrie gave me this look, his pupils contracting to pinpoints of astonishment behind formidable, black-rimmed spectacles. Because to Bud, the surrounding landscape, particularly Ear Mountain, which loomed nearby, was his “fix on the universe.” Like Dick Summers, a recurring character in Guthrie’s novels, Bud’s vision of paradise was to be “close to the mountains but out on the plains, where a man could look west and see the jagged wall that separated the worlds and east where distance ran beyond the reach of his eyes.” He was a Montana man to his very core. A.B. Guthrie died in 1991, but passed on his love for Montana—as well as a daunting artistic legacy—to his daughter, Helen ‘Gus’ Miller, and granddaughter Eden Atwood, both of whom are UM alumnae and Montana residents. Although Gus Miller lived her first fourteen years in Lexington, Kentucky, she and her family summered in Montana, the place closest to their hearts. “It wasn’t exactly ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’” Gus says of her southern upbringing. “We only lived in Kentucky because my dad had a job there.” When her parents’ marriage broke up, Gus moved with her mother to Great Falls, where she attended high school for two years. After a stint at a private eastern academy, Gus was accepted at UM, where she “had about as much fun as the law would allow” before earning an English degree. Gus won a scholarship to New York University, where she earned her master’s degree in publishing, then landed a job as a reader at Viking Press. “I worked on the Montana chapter of John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, she says. “They needed someone to check it for accuracy.” She was also the first one at Viking Press to read the manuscript of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “I loved it!” Gus says. “I remember going to the editors and saying, ‘We must publish this book.’ As if, at age twenty-three, I knew anything.” “New York was exciting,” Gus says, “and like many young people, that’s what I saw at first.” Gus recalls taking her college friends, the Three Young Men from Montana—Dick Riddle, Pat Fox, and Bob Rubie—to see Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall “on my nickel.” Eventually, Gus says, the dirt and poverty of the big city encroached on the excitement, and she migrated west to San Francisco, where she became publicity director for the Mark Hopkins Hotel and met and married her first husband. Later, after the couple moved to Los Angeles, the marriage foundered, although they remain friends today. While working at an L.A. ad agency, Gus met Hub Atwood, a music arranger, and after a long-distance romance, they married and moved to Memphis, Atwood’s home. Unfortunately, her new husband’s charm masked a depressed personality, and Gus “became aware that the things that were important to him, I wasn’t privy to.” After seven years, the marriage ended and Gus, with five-year-old Eden in tow, returned to Great Falls, against her father’s objection. “He said I’d never make a living here,” Gus recalls. “I said, ‘Watch me.’” After working at Wendt Advertising for a year, Gus moved to KFBB-TV, where she was an account executive and later, sales manager. It was during this time that Gus met another television executive, Shag Miller ’47, “who persuaded me to marry him and move to Butte.” “I have two things to say about Butte,” Gus says, hunkering down in her chair and setting her huge eyes in the look. “One, it’s funky. Two, it has more of a city atmosphere than the rest of Montana. Behind its crumbling facades are vast libraries, art work, antiques, silver, crystal—there’s a level of sophistication in Butte I haven’t found elsewhere.” Ensconced in her new home, Gus laid low for a while, then “picked out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” First on her list was to answer UM drama Professor Jim Kriley’s call for help in starting up a Montana Repertory Theatre board, an entity which exists today as the Advisory Council. Gus also directed her energy toward the Art Chateau in Butte, serving on its board for six years, and the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, where she joined its regional board of trustees.
But Gus’s main focus has been the Butte Center for the Performing Arts Inc., where she was vice president for several years before taking over as president. “We’ve raised four million dollars for the Mother Lode Theater,” Gus says. “We have an endowment fund and a portfolio. My primary goal each year is to make up the shortfall so we don’t have to use the interest. “I love the theater,” Gus says, “and I love fundraising. It’s like fishing. You throw that line out, keep throwing it out, and eventually, someone will bite. You have to know what people’s interests are, and you have to know when to back off.” Recognizing Gus’s family legacy, her educational background, and her devotion to the arts, it’s difficult not to wonder why she hasn’t pursued artistic aspirations of her own. Like, say, writing. “It’s too solitary,” Gus answers. “I work best under pressure, with lots of people around me.” Waving her hands, Gus does a dead-on imitation of a harried stock broker: “Buy! Sell! I’ll take three of those!” After reflecting a moment, she adds, “I’m a fine editor. And I do write grant applications and occasional articles. Hate mail, if I get mad enough. But I regard myself as a sales person.” Intensely proud of her daughter, Gus is eager to throw in a parting plug. “Eden inherited my father’s talents,” Gus says. “And she can write to music—something my father could never do.” The Millers spend a month each winter in Palm Desert, a place Gus likes more now than she used to. “I’ve caught up with the demographic,” she says, then erupts in her throaty guffaw. “I have a good life. I’m one of the happiest people I know.” Perhaps one of Gus Miller’s and Eden Atwood’s biggest fans is Greg Johnson, artistic director of UM’s Montana Repertory Theatre, who has worked with both women. “Gus is my confidante,” Johnson says. “She has a finger on the pulse of what audiences will like. When I got here, she welcomed me with open arms, saying ‘these are the people you should meet, here are the places you should go.’ Gus peppers us with ideas. She’s an invaluable source of information, and generous with her time—raising money and lobbying for the fine arts at the legislature.” Johnson sees many similarities between mother and daughter. “To both of them, Montana as their home is basic to their being. They’re both intensely loyal. And they both have that artistic curiosity. Gus and Eden are involved in the world of language, the world of words.” Of Eden, Johnson says, “She’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. Eden’s a wonderful actress and singer—and she also writes songs. Eden’s very complex . . . quicksilver . . . one of those bright, shiny, elemental creatures who’s constantly changing, depending on where you find them.” I find Eden at home in an antique-filled, University-area home encircled by a wide porch. She appears relaxed and girlish, looking years younger than the vampy siren her fans see on stage. An internationally successful jazz singer, Eden has played gigs in Shanghai and Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok, as well as New York City, Chicago, and other western venues. “I believe that performing is a social service—a necessary service,” Eden says. “We tell our stories. At its highest level, performing allows you to give an unsentimental picture of your humanity. I needed to be an artist. I needed to get it out. “I grew up with good music—poetic lyrics with irony, subtlety, and innuendo.” Classically trained in piano, Eden showed an early interest in musical theater, which confounded the locals. “They’d say, ‘But you’re six feet tall. You should be playing basketball!’” Eden recalls, laughing. Thanks to Gus, a mother “who’s my greatest life supporter,” Eden’s passion for entertaining persevered. “My mother recognized talent early on and championed it. She made a great Mama Rose,” Eden says, then morphs into Gypsy Rose Lee’s stage mother: “Sing out, Louise!” Eden bellows, her suddenly-bassoon voice rattling the double-hung windows. Eden enrolled at UM after high school; higher education was interrupted, however, when her father’s death prompted Eden, at nineteen, to move to Chicago. Pursuing a musical profession, Eden studied voice, sang in clubs, and cut several records. She also married twice—briefly, decisions she now looks upon as her “tendency toward chaos.” During a hiatus in her career, Eden decided to return home to Montana, where she snagged a role in Swingtime Canteen, a Montana Repertory Theatre production. Opting to stay in Missoula and finish her degree, Eden applied for a job at Missoula Youth Homes as a childcare worker. “There’s a similarity between performing and working with children,” she explains. “I’ve always felt I could connect with kids in crisis.” The job proved to be a providential experience for Eden. “Kids can smell out a fake real fast,” Eden explains. As she worked with children, taught them about accountability, about choices and the ramifications of those choices, Eden soon realized that she had demons of her own to wrestle. “It was like finding my own tribe,” Eden says. “I was just like those kids.” In the process of teaching the kids, Eden learned tools to incorporate into her own life. “I saw them with love and compassion,” she says, “and then I learned to look at myself with love.” “Missoula Youth Homes changed it all for me,” Eden says. “It gave music back to me—brought music around to what it was: joyful. I needed to grow. I’m not working it out on stage now, singing songs that say, ‘why me?’” Eden, recently married to Missoula hydrologist Bruce Anderson, continues performing, playing clubs with her backup group, The Last Best Band. She also teaches voice, doing residencies around the state. “I’m a pretty good teacher.” Asked what’s next, Eden’s face splits into a wide grin. “More teaching, more singing. And kids!” she says. “Lots of kids.” Eden glows with calm and self-possession as she envisions her future. “Bruce is my reward for all the hard work,” Eden says. “He ‘gets’ me.” Of her grandfather, Eden says, “I remember him as intensely smart. And intimidating. He had high expectations. If you opened your mouth, it had better be smart or funny.” Gus remembers her father as “wonderful … and very funny. Few people knew that.” Bud Guthrie would approve of the Montana lives his progeny have made for themselves. As he said in his novel, Fair Land, Fair Land, “It was as good a life as any he knew and better than most.”
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