By Myself and Then Some (32 page)

Just about that time I received a lengthy letter from my father telling me the ‘Truth’ about my parents’ divorce. According to him, he had been the maligned and mistreated one – he had washed my diapers and bathed and fed me – he had given my mother everything – her family had turned on him – it was he who was responsible for what I was today. He signed the letter ‘your Father,’ then his full name. The letter was typed – dictated, no doubt. What was worrying him was that he had no answers if questions were posed to him about me. The letter upset Mother greatly. We sent it to Uncle Jack, who had all the files on my father. His history was unsavory and spoke for itself, as did his neglect of me and his sudden rebirth. It was always unsettling to me to hear from him, mainly because I had given him little thought in my growing-up years except for the fact of his rejection of me, which was my constant companion. To have him suddenly reappear full of negative opinions about my choices made waves on my smooth sea. I didn’t have curiosity about him then – I was resentful – I knew Mother and my family well enough to be absolutely certain they’d invented nothing. Their goodness and love stood tall and strong. Mother’s worry seemed to be that if I ever saw him, he’d make a scene, and now that I was famous he was capable of calling press conferences – doing anything to gain recognition. Maybe I inherited my sense of the dramatic from him.

The letter was filed and ignored. My life was happy and full – my days of needing a father had passed – there was no ground upon which I could ever meet him now. Sad in a way, but when a man chooses to
forget his child, he can expect the same behavior in return. It’s not deliberate, it just happens. The damage was done long before.

One afternoon I was waiting for Bogie to come home from a day at the races with Mark Hellinger. The phone rang – it was Mother, distraught. She’d stopped at a market in Beverly Hills to pick up some food for dinner. Droopy and Puddle, his daughter, were with her. As they emerged from her car, the dogs were hit immediately by another car – your average hit-and-run driver. Droopy was dead and the puppy hurt. I burst into a flood of tears. Where was Bogie? I needed him! Finally – late – he called. He was crocked. ‘Hello, Baby, meet us at LaRue’s, Mark and I are there now.’ Wonderful! I cried into the phone about Droopy – it had little effect. I should have known that a day with Mark meant a day with Johnnie Walker. I was furious with Bogie, but after more tears pulled myself together and got to the restaurant. Mark was smiling and happy – happy that Bogie was loaded and happy to see me. I got no sympathy from anyone. It was a night to forget. We ended up in the home of some silent film star – up until dawn – Bogie drunker than I’d ever seen him and drunker than he’d ever be again. He didn’t know where he was, and only every now and then would he relate to me. I hated what that much liquor did to him – I still hadn’t learned to drink, still hadn’t learned how to deal with people who did, still was twenty years old. It all made me feel angry – and inadequate and uncertain. I was fiercely jealous of Bogie. He never gave me cause, but partly due to my insecurity, and partly due to the fact that I thought him so dazzling, I was certain every other woman did – and many did. I never showed it, but I felt it. That morning he was finally poured into the car and I drove him home. The vision of Droopy lying dead was still in my mind – I only wanted Bogie to fall asleep so I could call Mother. After getting him yet another drink and getting him downstairs – no easy trick – he did pass out. I felt only relief.

Mother and I went to the Pet Cemetery in the Valley. A woman straight out of Charles Addams greeted us and asked if we would like to go to the Slumber Room to see our dog. All her talk was very solemn, at a whisper. There is often something funny at every sad occasion – in this case, she was it. We followed her into the Slumber Room, where dogs of all types were lying asleep in open coffins, one mutt in a box lined with tufted satin. Droopy lay with his head on one paw just as he’d slept in life. I reached out to touch him – he looked so
alive I thought he might be – but I touched stone. I quickly pulled my hand back and we quickly left the room and made arrangements for his burial. So, sadly, ended that chapter of my life.

Bogie was a Christmas baby, so I decided to give him a surprise party on Christmas Eve. He always did his Christmas shopping the day before and would come home at around six. We were supposedly going to Hellinger’s house for dinner. Our house had a Roman tub, about four by eight feet and five deep. I gathered Benchley, Butterworth, McCain, Nunnally, Hellinger, Delehanty, Sheekman, Pat O’Moore, Ray Massey – about twenty in all – and made them stand in the tub. They looked funny and silly, all with glasses in their hands, crushed together in a blue sunken tub – an unlikely sight. When Bogie came in I greeted him with a drink as usual. The tree was lit, the living room looked festive. It was very sentimental – our first Christmas as man and wife. Bogie wanted to go downstairs, but I said that something was wrong with the Roman tub – could he take a look at it first? I led him toward the door, opened it, turned on the light – all those ridiculous faces gathered in a bathtub shouting ‘Surprise!’ completely threw him off balance. It was the only surprise party he’d ever had – he couldn’t get over it. The evening was a success. I was a nervous hostess, but there was good food (all made by May), plenty to drink, and good friends. Bogie was like a kid – touched that I would go to all that trouble, touched that people cared enough about him to gather together. He’d never had occasion to test that before. It’s odd when I think of it. Here was a totally successful man of forty-six who’d never had a party in his own home, never had his house filled with friends, people who genuinely liked him. There were so many things for me to find out about Bogie – information uncovered at unexpected moments; just as I thought I had him figured, something new caught me unaware. Astounding – there were so many, many layers to this man that, as well as I knew him, I’m sure I never uncovered them all. I remember him handing me my Christmas present, saying, ‘I got tired of seeing all that tobacco in your bag.’ He was shy. The gift was a beautiful gold cigarette case with a ruby clasp and the inscription ‘For Mrs Me who never need whistle for Bogie.’ Out of the corner of his eye, he watched me open it, and when we looked at each other, trumpets sounded, rockets went off. We really loved – we had every hokey, sentimental, funny, profound feeling there was to have. I loved
presents, and I gave Bogie many always – half-birthday, half-Christmas – he’d grown up being cheated of them. He never bought me more than two things – usually one of them was extravagant. I always bought him something relating to the boat – something for his gold watch chain – clothes. He didn’t want anything. He didn’t care for jewelry – he wore his wedding ring on one hand, his father’s ring on the other, a watch and key chain, very occasionally cufflinks, and that was that. But I loved to shop for him – I had never bought anything for a man before. And I had never had any money until now. Carolyn and I always spent several days Christmas shopping together. This year we bought our first ornaments for our first trees – she and Buddy had finally gotten married that September. Christmas still seemed funny without snow, but I’d overlook that.

Bogie hated New Year’s Eve – that was the one night he refused to get drunk, just because everyone else did. Ornery. Our circle of friends was enlarging. Bogie had taken me into Ira Gershwin’s home – his wife, Lee (for Leonore), and Bogie had lived next door to each other in New York and had kind of grown up together. I was very much in awe of and at the Gershwin house. Milling around would be Oscar Levant, Harold Arlen, Arthur Kober, Harry Kurnitz, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Groucho Marx, Harry Ruby, Arthur Schwartz – the list was endless. They were friends, all bright, musical, and creative, mostly funny – that house was the warmest, most welcoming and sought after in Hollywood, and it played a large role in my California life and after. George Kaufman and Moss Hart were there when in town, Harold Arlen would play and sing, Ira would sing. The more often I went, the more time I’d spend beside the piano. I knew all the lyrics and my spirit was part of their music. And I finally met the mythical John Huston. He’d been best man when Jules Buck married my friend Joyce, so I’d met him briefly then, but that was before I was Mrs Bogart and I don’t count that meeting. Huston was another original. Aside from his extraordinary talent, he’s always been a personal mesmerizer. About six foot five, very thin, a man of soft voice and careful speech who seemed to travel loosely through life. He adored Bogie and vice versa – he was very funny, but devilish and socially undependable. I discovered this gradually. I was accepted immediately by him because I loved his friend. He didn’t like women much on their own.

The next few years were the happiest of my life – I was really on a
cloud. My life revolved entirely around Bogie. Though I worked a little, there was no doubt what took priority. We both changed as our lives together grew closer – we were so close that there was never a notion in anyone’s mind that anything or anyone could come between us. Our commitment was a life commitment.

Bogie and I made our third movie together –
Dark Passage –
and went to San Francisco for a month of location shooting. My first time in that beautiful city. We lived at the Mark Hopkins Hotel and spent many evenings at the Top of the Mark looking over the entire city and the Golden Gate Bridge. We generally lived a quiet, private newlywed life there. Toward the end of shooting, back in the studio, I became aware of Bogie’s nerves – if the phone rang, he’d tense up, didn’t want to answer it, didn’t want to speak to any except the closest. He’d noticed a bare spot on his cheek where his beard was not growing. The one spot increased to several – then he’d wake in the morning and find clumps of hair on the pillow. That alarmed him. It’s one thing to be bald with a rim of hair, an actor could always wear a hairpiece, but without the rim it would have to be a full wig. The more hair fell out, the more nervous he got, and the more nervous he got, the more hair fell out. In the last scene in
Dark Passage
he wore a complete wig. He panicked – his livelihood hung in the balance. A visit to the doctor was in order. He never went to doctors. The verdict was that he had a disease known as alopecia areata – in layman’s terms, hair falls out as a result of vitamin deficiencies. He was plain worn out – the years of mistreating himself in bars and an unsteady diet had added up to this. It would grow back, but he’d need B-12 shots twice a week – scalp treatments – more food – in general, more care. That was a relief to us both. His next film was going to be
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
with John Huston and he’d have had to wear a wig for that anyway.

George Hawkins and Louis Bromfield had given us a boxer dog as a wedding gift. We immediately named him Harvey – after me and that rabbit. He was a fantastic dog – actually he was not a dog at all, he preferred people and understood them. The first night we had him we locked him in our bathroom with newspaper all over the floor. He cried all through the night until I finally thought the hell with it, and let him into the bedroom. He never made another sound – nor did he mess the room. Harvey was the protector of the house and of us. If Bogie and I argued, he’d go to one, then the other, growling at us, trying to make
us stop. If he saw a suitcase being packed, he’d lie at our bedroom entrance with his back to us – he’d have nothing to do with us if we were leaving him. We tried to take him to the boat, but he didn’t know what to make of it. Standing on the slip, I called to him to get on board, snapping my fingers, saying, ‘Here, Harvey,’ whereupon he followed my hand and landed in the water. But the boat was too confining for him, so we gave up and his first time was his last.

We had also bought a new house. I was determined to have a baby and Hollywood Hills was not the place in which I wanted to live and bring up children, nor would there be room in our current house. I loved to have six people to dinner, and the space wasn’t right. And now I wanted land – I wanted to plant flowers. I’d been learning from our gardener, Aurelio, who loved the earth and watching things grow. Finally Bogie agreed that I could look. I found an enchanting house way up Benedict Canyon – not at all developed then, real country. It was owned by Hedy Lamarr, who said she’d give it to us if Bogie would make a movie with her. Bogie preferred to pay for the house. It was a house of tremendous charm, all on one floor – eight rooms (one a natural nursery), a pool, and an area in back for ducks, chickens, and turkeys. A minuscule version of Malabar. We both loved it – bought it and moved in. Carolyn and Buddy had moved to Coldwater Canyon, not too far from us.

The same year Bogie became the proud owner of the
Santana, a
racing yawl said to have been a designer’s mistake because she had a perfect hull. She was designed by Sparkman and Stevens and built by the Wilmington Boatworks. Her name represented a strong, hot wind that blows off the desert onto the Pacific. Bogie had wanted a sailboat from the beginning, long before I knew him, but couldn’t afford it. Dick Powell, another lover of the sea, had bought the
Santana
from William Stewart, who had had her built, but Dick had terrible sinus problems and needed dry climates, so he had to sell. The
Santana
could be sailed by two people. We went out for a Sunday sail with Dick Powell and June Allyson, who were married by then. The sea did for Dick what it did for Bogie. He became lightheaded – singing, laughing. He didn’t want to part with her. But Bogie was in love. If ever I had a woman to be jealous of, she was the
Santana
. Her sleek lines, the way she moved in the water. He learned everything about her from the first plank laid, every race sailed – she’d won the Bermuda race when Bill Stewart
owned her. When Bogie bought that boat he was enslaved – happily so – and truly had everything he’d ever dreamed of. We took her to Catalina alone the first weekend of summer. I was at the wheel – Bogie raised the sails. The bulk of my sailing knowledge was gleaned from that boat. I was less squeamish on the
Santana –
sailboats are steadier than cruisers, and with the auxiliary motor turned off, the sail to Catalina was quiet and beautiful. Only when the wind was slack did she slap with the swells, as did my innards. The crossings were fun. I’d go up to the bow and watch the dolphins playing as we plowed through the water – and flying fish. Only in California could a fish fly, I thought.