The Best Year Of Her Lives

COVER STORY

Shirley MacLaine, at 50, is still a rising star

It gets applause, even gasps, night after night. It is a simple chorus-girl kick, the torso tilting back for balance, the long, long left leg surging straight up above the head. But it is also an emblem—of a career that has gone everywhere, yet still draws its inspiration and discipline from dance, of a body that at mid-century is still supple and streamlined and surefooted. It is a kick of jubilation, of pride, perhaps of defiance. And of beauty.

Last year, on her 49th birthday, Shirley MacLaine wanted to be alone with her dreams. She trekked up into the Rockies near Cripple Creek, Colo., and wished—or "projected," as she puts it—that during the next year, the film she was making, Terms of Endearment, would win an Oscar, and so would she; that her book on spiritualism, Out on a Limb, would become a bestseller; that a revamped version of her nightclub act would score a hit on Broadway. Anything can look possible to a woman who once danced an entire ballet on a broken ankle. But that almost greedy welter of ambitions might have seemed outlandish if it had been voiced in public by an actress whose early glory had faded in bad films and a scattershot career and who had said that politics or travel or a search for self-awareness meant as much to her as performing.

On her 50th birthday, Shirley MacLaine was in New York City, and she attended festivities all day long. Her publisher, Bantam Books, celebrated the climb of Out on a Limb to the top spot on the New York Times paperback-bestsellers list. At the 1,992-seat Gershwin Theater, where Shirley MacLaine on Broadway is grossing $475,000 a week, a house record, another bash was thrown by the show's producers. They had heard the star telling an interviewer that the only thing she had never done was to ride an elephant. So when MacLaine arrived at the theater, she was caught by surprise, and nuzzled, by Targa, queen of the Ringling Bros, and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The pachyderm obligingly knelt to help MacLaine aboard—"She was so sweet and kind," the star said—though Targa also unfurled her trunk and snatched up most of MacLaine's chocolate birthday cake. Perhaps the most exuberant event was the Broadway song and dance itself. MacLaine showed off her Joshua's-trumpet voice, her 50-year-old legs—"25 each," one appreciative observer remarked—and an appendage that has been with her so often of late that it has come to seem a part of her, the at-long-last Oscar that she won for Endearment.

What a difference a year makes: Shirley the Survivor has become Shirley the Superstar. The aging sprite has ripened into the overpowering character actress. The unfocused dilettante has been redefined as the Renaissance woman. The lovable kook with the carefree sex life and oddball ideas has been transmuted into a role model of a self-possessed, successful woman at 50. Shirley MacLaine, who always attracted affection, now commands respect. Her triumph is proof of the power of positive thinking—and action. MacLaine is lean, fit, happier and more attractive than ever. She has worked hard to keep limber physically and mentally, and she welcomes the birthday that saddens so many people: "I love the idea of 50, because the best is yet to come. I am going to live to be 100,