I believe Mary looked on me as a “womanizer.” It is a word I dislike, a prim, stuffy, frightened, middle-class word, and it demeans women. What it means to the people who use it is inaccurate in my case. I have been with a number of women outside my marriages. That number has been exaggerated. Was I “promiscuous”? Hell, no! The relationships I remember have been mostly with actresses with whom I had a strong bond of interest—the production of a film or a play. It was in most cases, believe it or not, a natural part of the work—so it seemed to me—happening as the problems of the production brought us closer. I became emotionally, then physically, involved with an actress because, for the span of a production, we had the same concerns and hopes. We relied on each other: I depended on her, she on me; that bond is as close as any imaginable. I became, for the time of that production, her all-powerful father figure, believing in her, supporting her through her bad hours, adoring her for her gifts. She was to depend on me for her security—who else is as close during those days?

I believe it is inevitable for a director and his actresses to connect in this way, the affairs arising out of interdependence and a need for each other. These “affairs” are not casual; they often amount to a kind of temporary marriage. They rarely endure past the course of the production, and in this sense, they don’t endanger other, more lasting, human bonds.