Pieces of My Heart (24 page)

My makeup man and close friend, Lon Bentley.
(PHOTO BY RODDY MCDOWALL, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

With my friend and golfing buddy Mike Connors.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

With my grandson, Riley, in the Aspen, Colorado, snow.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

A very proud grandfather with his grandson.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

Fulfilling every golfer’s lifelong dream—a foursome with close friends at St. Andrews in Scotland. From left are Marv Adelson, Steve DeMarco, Bud Yorkin, and yours truly.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

In Venice, with
(from left)
my friend Steven Goldberg, his wife, Elvia, and Jill.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

Jill, Courtney, and Katie celebrated with me when I was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002.
(PHOTO BY LEE CELANO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

My girls: Katie, Natasha, and Courtney.
(COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

As if all this wasn’t enough, Natalie brought Penny into my life. Penny was an Australian sheepdog; Cricket, Natalie’s other dog, was a mixed breed. Along the way, there was also Fifi, the basset hound, who was particularly adored by the children.

But it was Penny who became a special love for me, as she was for Natalie. She had gotten Penny while we were apart, and she appeared in a couple of Natalie’s movies. She was the most darling animal, and I just adored her. Unfortunately, she got old and developed problems. Finally, we took her to the vet for an examination and left her there. Later that day, we got a phone call telling us she had gone beyond the point of no return and he had put her down. We were both devastated—I don’t believe in letting animals die by themselves, let alone one I loved as much as Penny. We had both wanted to be there with her when her time came.

T
he first time we were married, we had spent time at a lot of the established restaurants around town—Chasen’s, Romanoff’s, Patsy d’Amore’s, Don the Beachcomber’s. But the second time around La Scala became our place.

Jean Leon, who owned La Scala, had originally been the maître d’ at Patsy’s. One day he hailed a cab for Frank Sinatra, and Frank tipped him $200. That was how Jean was able to pay the hospital bill for his first child. Jean bought a place on the corner of Beverly and Little Santa Monica where several restaurants had failed. That didn’t dissuade Jean; he had a vision of what it could become.

La Scala became the most successful restaurant in town, and without any publicity—Jean wouldn’t allow it. Everybody loved Jean, especially me. When I came back to America from Europe and didn’t have any money because of the custody battle, he carried me—he never charged me for anything. When you’re on top, everyone’s your pal, but it’s when you’re on your ass that you really find out who your friends are. Jean was my friend.

Jean eventually established his own vineyard in Spain and had his own wine: Chateau Leon. Whenever Natalie and I had a special occasion, we always went to La Scala. Jean loved to participate in the gifts I gave Natalie. Dropping a ring in some champagne was minor; Jean would put a bracelet or a necklace in a cake for me. Jean later opened another restaurant, in which Natalie and I were partners, but it didn’t do as well as La Scala, not that anything did.

After many years, Jean sold the restaurant, bought a sailboat, and achieved his lifelong dream of sailing around the world. Tragically, Jean, who smoked heavily, developed cancer of the larynx. He didn’t want people to see him that way, so he stepped back from business. Before he died, he lost the ability to speak, but we stayed in touch by faxing back and forth.

I
decided it was time to move into producing, so I set up my own production company. My first effort was Madame Sin, a TV project with Bette Davis, whom I had idolized for years. We had originally met in the early ’50s, when we were introduced by Claire Trevor, but Bette and I didn’t become close friends for another ten years.

The 1960s were a bad time for Bette; she wasn’t working much, but she gave an interview to the New York Times in which she cited me as a young leading man with humor and class. I called to thank her, and it turned out she was a big fan of It Takes a Thief. I asked her if she’d like to do an episode.

We wrote a show around a character named Bessie Grindell and provided Bette with a nice dressing room; the shoot went very well. While we were in production, Jack Warner threw a dinner for her, and it was preceded by a selection of clips from her great films at the studio, which gave the press agent John Springer the idea of putting her on the road with “A Night with Bette Davis.” That show made her a good deal of money over the years and gave her something to do when she wasn’t acting.

A couple of years went by, and I brought her the idea of
Madame Sin,
which was a pilot for a TV series in which Bette would play a sort of female Fu Manchu. Bette had never done a TV series, but there weren’t a lot of good parts in the movies in that period for her, and Madame Sin was a good part. For my part, producing was about asserting control—over casting, music, camera, director. I wanted a say. I also wanted to see if I had the necessary sense of balance.

We shot the pilot in Scotland. I wasn’t planning on being in the series itself, but I took a part in the pilot. The weather on location was difficult, and I went to Barry Diller, who was the head of ABC then, and told him I thought we were going to go over budget.

“How much?” he asked me.

“About $300,000,” I told him.

He picked up the phone and had a check cut for the overage. We didn’t actually go over by $300,000, and I was able to give him some of that money back. My point is that what Barry did wouldn’t happen today. The decisiveness he showed is a thing of the past because everything is now done by committee; no one person could cut a check for $300,000 in overages today, nor would anyone be disposed to.

I found that Bette was great to work with. The only time she was troublesome in her work was if you didn’t tell her the truth. If you tried to pull something on her, or if you weren’t as attentive as she felt you should be, then she would get worked up, and Bette Davis worked up was not something any sane person wanted to provoke. She had immediate access to all emotions, but the line to her anger was particularly quick.

Otherwise, she was a consummate pro, knew her lines backward and forward, and knew her work as well as everybody else’s.
Madame Sin
was a good movie and did well in the ratings, although it didn’t get picked up for a series; the network was worried about protests from pressure groups because Orientals were the heavies.

Madame Sin
was the beginning of our friendship. When we’d finished the picture, her daughter BD called me and said, “We’re setting up an appearance for Mom on
This Is Your Life,
and I want to be sure she looks good. Could you help us set it up?”

The cover story we devised involved a photo sitting to promote
Madame Sin
at John Engstead’s studio. I was going to be there with Frank Westmore, my makeup man and dear friend for thirty-five years, and Frank would be making her up for the photo session. Well, at the appointed moment, out stepped Ralph Edwards. “Hellooooo, how are you?” he said. “Well, this could be anybody’s life. It could be yours, Frank Westmore, or it could be yours, Robert Wagner, or it could be yours, Bette Davis.” I had this terrible sinking feeling that they had turned on me. But then Edwards said, “Bette Davis,
this is your life!
” and I was off the hook. Or so I thought.

After the surprise opening, we were supposed to get in our cars and go down to the studio, where the show proper was being taped. But as soon as we got in the car, Bette turned on me. “You son of a bitch!
You fucking son of a bitch!!
”

“Now, Bette….”

“Oh, fuck you!” She was just furious about being tricked into it because she didn’t like being tricked into anything.

The taping itself went fine; Olivia de Havilland was there, Bette’s first editor was there, I was there. And then Ralph Edwards said, “And here’s a person whose life you saved. Jay Robinson!”

And out came Jay Robinson, who had made a brief splash years before when he flounced around as Caligula in
The Robe
and
Demetrius and the Gladiators
. Jay Robinson made a little speech about how Bette had sent him a letter when he was in prison and by doing so saved his life. “I’d like to read that letter,” he said. “It was the only thing that sustained me.” And he pulled out the letter and read this very touching excerpt. Bette told Jay that he was the most wonderful actor she’d ever known and working with him was one of the highlights of her career and so forth. It ended with: “You will always be the closest thing in my life.”

And the audience went, “Aaaahhhh,” at Bette being so kind to a young actor in trouble. With the show over, we all piled into limos and headed over to the Bel-Air Hotel for the cocktail party that always followed a taping of
This Is Your Life
. As I got there, I come across Bette standing outside, smoking a cigarette as only she could, radiating rage to a distance of about twenty feet.

“Bette,” I said, “what’s wrong? The show went well, and that letter you sent to Jay Robinson was so touching, such a fine thing to do.”

“I never wrote that letter!” she yelled. “I don’t know who Jay Robinson is!
I never met him until tonight!
” Well, I looked around, and of course Jay Robinson hadn’t come to the party, because he knew Bette would kill him. I began to laugh hysterically. That just got her angrier. “Oh, Robert,” she said, “you laugh at idiotic things!”

That was the way our relationship went. She had something of a crush on me, and she was always getting angry, and I was always laughing at her and flirting with her and cajoling her out of her anger. When we went to Philadelphia to do the
Mike Douglas Show,
she locked herself in her room because she was under the impression that we were supposed to have had dinner the night before and she thought I’d stood her up. I told her, “Bette, if we were supposed to have dinner, we would have had dinner,” and proceeded to jolly her out of it.

Another time I visited her in Westport, where she was living, and we went into town for lunch. We arrived at the restaurant about 1:45, after the crowd had left. We walked in past a group of men who’d obviously had a three-martini lunch, and one of them said, “Jesus Christ, Bette Davis—a face that would stop a clock!”

That wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that she heard him.

We sat down, and she was understandably upset. “What do you think?” she asked me. “Should I get my face done?” All the actresses of Bette’s age—Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball, and so forth—utilized a system devised by a makeup man named Gene Hibbs that involved a system of rubber bands hidden by wigs that tightened their faces. It was a light, mechanical kind of face lift. At the end of the day, the wigs came off, the rubber bands were removed, and the faces would fall.

Obviously, this was very tender territory, but I decided to forge ahead. “I think it would be a great idea, Bette.”

“You do?”

“Sure. And while they’re doing the face lift, they can do your lips too.”

Those glorious Bette Davis eyes widened, and she stared at me. “My lips?
What’s wrong with my lips?
And what would people think?”

“Oh, Bette, who gives a shit what people think?”

After a great deal of back and forth, she eventually got the face lift, and we went out for dinner so she could show it to me.

“Well,” she said, “what do you think?”

“I think it looks great,” I told her.

“Great? You think this looks great? But what about
this
? And what about
that
….” She was unhappy. And this naturally combative woman was off on another diatribe.

Like many people of any given generation, she grew landlocked by age and lost touch with what was going on around her. Late in her life I picked her up to take her to a party at Roddy McDowall’s. Now, I didn’t know this, but Frank Zappa’s daughter Moon Zappa was an enormous Bette Davis fan. Moon found out I was taking Bette to a party and was in her car across the street watching for us. At the light, she pulled up alongside us and yelled out my name. I put the window down and yelled, “Hi, Moon. How are Dweezil and Ahmet?” She assured me they were great, I introduced her to Bette—which was the real reason for the whole exercise—the light changed, the car windows went up, and off we went.

Bette sat there staring at me. “What the fuck are you talking about? Moon and Dweezil and Ahmet? Who are these people?
Why do they know you?
”

Bette’s life was her work. Her basic character was that of a tough, loving broad from New England. When she had a script to study, she became totally involved and totally animated. She had tried hard to make the domestic side of her life work, but it hadn’t happened. The only truly trustworthy thing in Bette’s life was her talent. She was a very good cook, loved houses, and also had a tremendous sense of humor. And from what I have been given to understand by several men who knew, she was an extraordinary lover who could take a man over the moon and back.

But Bette was extremely demanding, and I’m sure she would have been exhausting on a regular basis. She had one habit that drove me crazy: she would hang up the phone before you were finished talking to her. Let’s say you would agree to pick her up at seven. She would say, “All right,” and then without saying anything else she would hang up and you would find yourself saying good-bye to empty air. It was maddening, rude, and also funny—peremptory behavior she probably believed was the star’s prerogative. I came to call this the Bette Davis Hang-Up, and she did it
all the time
.

When her daughter BD wrote
My Mother’s Keeper,
a calculated, vicious book about her, it was without doubt the worst thing that happened to Bette in her entire life. It was a very primal betrayal—Bette had financially supported BD for her entire life—but Bette’s devastation had nothing to do with money. Her daughter was the true love of Bette’s life. Bette never once stinted on anything for BD, and to see all the love and hope she had lavished on her wasted, flushed down the toilet by the rage of an ungrateful, unsuccessful child destroyed Bette, as it would have anybody. She would allude to it every once in a while, but she was the sort of woman who carried her pain inside rather than present it for public consumption.

I stayed close to Bette, although she never exactly mellowed. After she came back from Maine, where she shot
The Whales of August
with Lillian Gish, all she could talk about was how difficult Gish was. “She can’t hear!” she’d say. “Impossible,
impossible
woman!” Patience had never been Bette’s strong suit, and now she had even less. “Speak up!” she’d yell at Lillian. “You’re too old to be doing this. Why don’t you just stop?” Lindsay Anderson, the director, thought Bette was deranged. As if Bette didn’t want to be out there in front of a camera until she was one hundred too.