Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir (18 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

At 3:00
A.M
. the phone next to the bed in our apartment on First Avenue started ringing. I had come in from LA for three days in late March of 1960 to play a date in the Catskills (always a dependable source of some quick cash) and gone to sleep early, knowing that the show tomorrow at Brown’s Hotel in Loch Sheldrake would go late. Irritated, I picked up the receiver, hearing from afar the operator saying something about a collect call, before I hung it back up.

A few seconds later, it was ringing again. A little more awake this time, I heard Maury Lazarus, our friend and new obstetrician, his voice a tad testy, saying to the operator, “Tell him his wife just had a baby and that he should accept the call.”

That couldn’t be. When I had left Jo, in high spirits, less than twenty-four hours earlier, our baby hadn’t been due for another six weeks. I couldn’t bear the idea of missing the birth, and, even worse, the possibility that again something had gone wrong.

We had lost our infant son a little more than a year earlier, and Jo and I didn’t speak about it often. We were both too sad. A few months after it happened, I had to travel to England, and when I was there I decided she needed a distraction—in the form of a puppy. I know it was silly, but we needed cheering up. I had planned to surprise Jo with it upon my return. I had heard that the best Yorkshire terriers were bred by a Mrs. Ethel Mundy, and an English pal drove me way out into the country to her house in Wallington Surrey. When I rang the bell, twenty tiny Yorkies went berserk, yapping until Mrs. Mundy commanded, “That’ll be sufficient.” Immediate silence followed—it was very funny. I left with a three-month-old I named Alfie. (The night before I had seen the brilliant actor Alfie Lynch perform in
Oh, What a Lovely War!
at the Theater Royal Stratford East.)

Other than Alfie and our other Yorkie, Pablo, there was little that Jo and I found to love after we lost our son. We were shattered, and because the hole was so large that nothing could fill it, we sadly took it out on each other. So the grief, which had momentarily connected us in that Florida hotel room, began to tear us apart.

There were many silent fights and petty squabbles. We couldn’t agree on the simplest things, such as where to go to dinner or if we should go visit friends in the country for the weekend. In every decision or discussion I was looking for signs of accusation on her part. I spent so much time blaming myself, and taking full responsibility for everything that happened, that my guilt informed every aspect of our lives. I walked on eggshells, worried about setting her off. The result was that she reverted to the life she led before we were married. She resumed her singing lessons, went to yoga more often, and started calling her agent for auditions. We didn’t see each other much during the day, and when we came together at night it was often with friends who acted as a buffer.

It was amazing, therefore, that we decided to try for another baby. Like so many other couples, we never discussed getting pregnant again but instead relied on the nonverbal cues husband and wife give each other when they are too afraid to have direct communication. Maybe both of us knew on some level that if we were going to stay together that we would have to replace that loss. It would have been easy to simply drift further and further apart. So as time passed and the pain subsided, Jo and I found room to give each other another chance.

Within the year Jo got pregnant again, and we became obsessed with learning everything there was to know about natural childbirth. That we allowed ourselves to love each other again felt like a real gift, and I wanted to do everything I could to honor that. At Lamaze class, we got to know the other couples. With the realization that their hopes and dreams were so much like ours, we started to feel wonderfully ordinary. As Jo practiced getting into different birthing positions and I tried out massage techniques, we were like any other expectant parents. While we could never forget about Jeremy, we weren’t a couple grieving but one with a child on the way. I came to love those classes full of heavy breathing, learning how I could help Jo. I was no longer powerless.

After Maury woke me up in the middle of the night to relay the news that Jo had given birth to a healthy baby girl, I immediately called and woke up the Catskills impresario and agent Charlie Rapp, because I was getting on the first flight to LA. I had missed the main event, but I couldn’t miss another second. I had a daughter!

When I arrived at the hospital, Jo was just waking up. Radiant and happy, she held the most perfectly formed child with little bee-stung lips. I wept with joy and disbelief that our little girl—Jennifer—was in my arms.
Now we will be happy
, I thought.
Everything is just right.

Jennifer was a very good baby, and I took her everywhere with me, to the dry cleaner, lunch, the park to walk the dogs, wherever I went—always stating proudly to anyone who would listen, “This is my daughter.” I was enthralled by every aspect of caring for her, from diapering to bathing to giving her a bottle in the middle of the night. I was finally getting to do all those things that I had been good at as an eight-year-old at the Sovereign. Nothing ever made me so happy and whole. Settling into family life, I was in total heaven—complete. Even if Jo was cranky, I had Jennifer.

Our arguments continued to center on the question of Jo’s working. Whenever she got a call about an audition, there was a moment of whether she should or shouldn’t go.

“You don’t want me to, do you?” she asked, as if she believed that by asking me the same question again and again, she might get a different answer.

“You know how I feel,” I said. “But you do what you have to do.”

Jo would always make up her own mind about whether or not to go on an audition. If she didn’t go, she would be angry that she might have missed an opportunity. But if she went and didn’t get the part, she would be depressed. Either way, there was great upset at home.

I was getting a lot of work in television. Because of that, we returned to living full time in Los Angeles, where, not long after Jennifer’s birth, a wonderful little house we heard about was going on the market. Having a new baby, we wanted to settle into a home, so we bought the Mexican hacienda on an acre up on Woodrow Wilson Drive with a big assist from Jo’s father, Izzy. The plain stucco house was very small, but its windows looked out on a hill full of flowers, Italian cypress trees, and bright bursts of bougainvillea.

My parents came over a couple of times a week to fuss over the baby. Although my mother was a steamroller, Jo got along well with her. Grace loved to bring Jennifer little gifts such as a silver rattle or a china cup that she had painted herself. I was able to put the past I had with my mother aside enough that I truly enjoyed their visits. It made me happy to see my parents with my daughter in the picture of normalcy that I had always wanted.

I was more motivated than ever to make a living, which I did in a string of parts on Westerns, such as
Bronco,
and
Lawman
. All my guest roles were on Warner Bros. TV shows, where I got my start in 1959 when I was cast in
Maverick
, the comedy Western series about Texas poker players, which was in the top ten at the time. I got the part of Billy the Kid, which was, to say the least, creative casting. Although my father was a cowboy in
Borscht Capades,
I was not your typical outlaw.

I was thrilled about the role, so I never mentioned that I’d never ridden a horse before—and God, was I scared of horses! Particularly the gigantic, bucking ones they had on set. I hadn’t told the producers or director I didn’t know how to ride for fear they’d get someone to replace me. Thinking fast, I suggested that it might be interesting if I rode on the back of another rider’s horse. Well, the director loved the idea. But it didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined. In the scene where we, the bad guys, make a getaway, a stuntman rode the horse fast, took hold of me, and pulled me up behind him. It was so much worse than if I had just got on the damn horse myself! Thank God they got the shot on the first take.

The best part of working on
Maverick
, other than the subsequent roles it prompted, was becoming friends with James Garner. To the outside world we couldn’t have been more different. For starters, Jim was six feet two and I am five five. We made an odd couple wherever we went. Once, at a party, he and I went into a bedroom, traded clothes, and came out—ta da! Everyone laughed at my pants, which looked like shorts on Jim. We were like brothers with a slightly sick sense of humor.

In Jim, I found not only an unassuming charmer but also a fellow hardworking husband with small children, pursuing a tough career in the toughest place, Hollywood. Jo got on with Jim’s wife, Lois, and our families became close.

I loved our life on Woodrow Wilson Drive, working, making dinner with friends, waking up at dawn with our daughter. So it was with much difficulty that in the summer of 1960, when Jennifer was six months old, I left for Italy to film
Come September
. The movie boasted glamorous locations of Rome and Santa Margherita Ligure on the Italian Riviera, and a cast that starred Rock Hudson as a wealthy American businessman who spends each September with his Italian mistress, Gina Lollobrigida, at his villa by the sea. I had a role as a smart-aleck college kid (I was still playing a teenager even though I was twenty-eight!) who is part of a group of American students staying at the villa.

The part wasn’t much, but I took the job because I wanted to work with the director, Robert Mulligan, who was just off an artistic success with
Fear Strikes Out
, starring Anthony Perkins. Over the years, I’ve made a lot of movies for very little money and not much in the script for me, either, hoping that despite the size of the part and the pay just above scale, I could make an impact as I had with
About Face
. I already had a reputation as someone who didn’t just say my lines and call it a day. My input could be annoying, but it also could end up adding something valuable.

At the time of
Come September
I wanted more film work. The TV work had been paying the bills, but it was still only small parts. I had to continue to find a way to succeed and vowed to myself to make an impact on this movie. So when Bob shot a scene of the college kids, myself included, zipping through the hills of Santa Margherita Ligure on a Vespa, I gave it the old
as if
. I was less than comfortable on the motorized scooter, with a girl behind me holding on to my waist, but I didn’t dare tell anyone. It was not unlike getting on that horse in
Maverick
. And I wasn’t thrilled in another scene that had us wading into the Tiber’s freezing water, where raw sewage floated freely. But I wasn’t going to complain!

Working with Rock Hudson made up for swimming in the polluted river. After years of playing heroes and heartthrobs, he proved he was also a comedian when he starred in
Pillow Talk
—from the same writers who did
Come September
—which had come out the year before. Although he kept mostly to himself while in Italy, we ran lines on occasion and once went out to dinner at a nondescript trattoria. Again, there was that thing between us, that sixth, seventh, or eighth sense. It was never discussed, but we had a secret, built-in camaraderie, which combined intimacy and anonymity, as if you were telling your deepest secrets to the person sitting next to you on Flight 001 from New York to LA. He was full of seemingly contradictory qualities. Open and friendly and yet at the same time closeted and careful, he loved to laugh: big (like him), boisterous guffaws. But as soon as the camera was ready, Rock, the consummate professional, was, too.

Come September
wound up doing well at the box office. The real-life romance between the movie’s young stars, Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, was a publicist’s dream. The hipster singer-songwriter fell head over heels for the
Gidget
star on the set of his first film, and in the stuff from which Hollywood legends are made, they married three months later. The movie might have been a professional success for me, but it sent my personal life into disarray.

While I was shooting
Come September
in Italy, Jo got a job in a San Francisco production of
Threepenny Opera
. Work was always nosing its way back into her life with calls for auditions. But she didn’t have to audition for this part; she was asked to re-create a role with which she had great success when the show played Off-Broadway. There was no discussion about whether or not she would take the job. This was a part she knew. She was thrilled and said yes immediately.

For the nearly two months that she was up north with our six-month-old daughter and I was in Italy, we were uncomfortably out of touch, communicating but not really. Calling overseas wasn’t simple with the time change, but when we did talk, there was too much air on the phone. The old conflicts returned. I didn’t want her to work, let alone take our new baby on the road. Miserable and missing my daughter, I became paranoid. Who would be watching my child? The distance compounded my worries.

When we returned home from our different worlds, we were like strangers. Before we were married, Jo once mused that I might turn into her very own Richard Halliday. Halliday, who gave up his career as a studio executive to manage the career of his wife, the Broadway star Mary Martin, was her dream husband. Forget that Halliday was well known to be homosexual or that I didn’t want to do anything of the sort. I vetoed the plan immediately. “Those are two very different people from us,” I said.

“I know that,” Jo said.

When she started working again, I wondered if she still harbored the fantasy that, like Halliday, I valued her talent as an artist above all else. Although she was a wonderful actress and singer, to me she was first and foremost a wife and mother. I don’t know what kept me from seeing that she could have been all four. Was I trying to keep safe from a too-powerful woman, an issue that started with my mother?