When I was about eight years old I used to go up on the roof of the apartment building where we lived on St. Andrews Place in Los Angeles, look out over the city and daydream about doing fine, heroic deeds that would make everyone admire or love me. I'd fancy I had rescued someone so that newspapers would headline "Little Girl Pulls Man from River" and print my picture. Things like that.
Or I'd look at the clear expanse of sky and the distant Hollywood hills and dream that I could step off the roof and fly- just fly by myself without benefit of plane or wings.
Does that sound silly? I don't think so. Most kids daydream. I did from my earliest memory. I still do. Naturally, I don't spend so much time at it any more! But in all truth I still indulge in some fine flights of fancy now and then.
My dictionary says a daydream is "undirected thought; hence an imaginary happiness." So what's wrong with that if you don't let the practice run away with you. I believe that daydreams often reflect ambition. Of course some of the childhood variety are ridiculous, and even I knew better than to step off the roof and try to fly. But some of my late daydreams turned into ambitions. Many of them came true.
My mother used to tell me, "If you want something hard enough and it is right for you, God will let you have it." So after a while I learned to do something about daydreams' to channel my energies toward concentrating and working to achieve the important ones. Lots of great inventors have been called daydreamers-- until they made their ideas work. Do you suppose any great story is written until it has been "dreamed up" in the author's mind? Or any great picture created by an artist until he has visualized it in his own mind? Perhaps Mr. Webster wouldn't call this "daydreaming"- but I do.
There's one thing to guard against, of course, and that's the type of daydreaming which excludes practical things; this means you're not directing any effort or concentration toward making the dream or ambition, come true.
While I was still six my sister Sherrye had asthma so badly that my parents sent her from Detroit to California to visit my grandmother. While she was away I imagined myself with her on "The Coast" It seemed millions of miles away to me, filled completely with cowboys and Indians, mountains and orange trees! I'd project myself into these surroundings. Then, I was deathly afraid of horses. But in my daydreams I was dressed as a cowgirl riding a spirited cow pony- and as I'd pass ranch houses the neighbors would all think I was a great rider and yell "Hi Rosetta!" [That was long before I became "Piper Laurie."]
We did move to California because the climate did Sherrye so much good, but at first there was no prospect of it. We never lived near a ranch but I did overcome my fear of horses and now I adore riding; it's one of my favorite sports.
I've been to the "mysterious Orient"- to Japan and Korea, to entertain G.I's. When I woke up in Tokyo the first morning I had to pinch myself and say "I'm really in Japan" to convince myself this wasn't another daydream. And I've travelled all over the U.S. And in pictures such as "The Golden Blade" I've worn costumes just as glamorous as any I ever dreamed up for a fairy princess.
When I was seventeen during the two weeks before I had my test at Universal-International I did plenty of daydreaming, too. The studio had me reporting every day for dramatic lessons before I took the test and Mother used to drive me out. I hadn't learned to drive yet. Each day as we turned from Cahuega Pass into Lankershim Boulevard to approach the studio my heart started to pound. I'd shut up my eyes and start imagining that I was already under contract, that the cop at the main gate was greeting me, that my picture was up on the billboards there.
I think I'll keep on with this daydream. I keep reminding myself of my Mother's advice: "If you want something hard enough and it's right for you, God will let you have it."