Stories From Candyland (15 page)

Chapter 10
1984 Was a Very Good Year, After All

I
love horror movies.

The first one I remember was
House of Wax
, which came out when I was seven. I knew something was up when my brother, who was well on his way to teenage mischief by then, told my parents that the movie was a love story. Even then I wondered why he wanted us to go see a love story when there were a lot of Westerns out. It was even stranger when they handed out 3D glasses, but I put mine on to see love up close.

It wasn’t a love story, but I fell in love that night with scary horror movies.

For those who don’t love horror (and that’s most of the people I know),
House of Wax
was one of those Vincent-Price-at-his-worst movies. Although I didn’t understand why someone would want to set fire to his own wax museum, I did realize someone had done something really bad, and the scenes of people melting like wax stayed with me for a long time.

Anyway, dead bodies had started disappearing from the morgue (a word I think I first heard on
Dragnet
, but I wasn’t sure). There was a lot of darkness and scary music, and this crazy guy wanted to make some girl into a wax figure of Marie Antoinette. At the time I didn’t know who she was, but later I made some dolls which I dressed like her. It was also my first time hearing the word
guillotine
(I never learned how to spell it, though, or had an occasion to use one). Blood was everywhere, people screamed; my mother couldn’t look.

My parents were horrified, my brother smirked, and I couldn’t wait until the next monster was ready to hit theaters to scare me.

To digress, when I saw that Paris Hilton was going to be in the 2005 remake of the film and that it wasn’t going to be in 3D, I decided I didn’t have to see it. I was very attached to my 3D glasses, and they were part of my original experience. Nope, a remake wasn’t necessary, and I wanted to keep my first memory of
House of Wax
.

The irony that
House of Wax
was my introduction to horror made itself clear years later. The movie co-starred Carolyn Jones, who married Aaron Spelling in 1953. So, while I was a preteen being frightened by Carolyn Jones in 3D horror, my husband-to-be was enjoying his new bride’s big-screen success.

Anyway, my life of horror films had begun. My attic, filled with beautiful Christmas decorations and patriotic Independence Day symbols, also has a section for Halloween. Over the years, I’ve collected some of the worst examples of witches with scary laughs, bloody creatures who lunge toward unsuspecting visitors, and enough devil and skeleton costumes to outfit an elementary school.

I can’t wait until the 99 Cents store, Costco, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Target all get their Halloween decorations on the shelves. There’s always something cheap and tacky there that I don’t own yet. As soon as the calendar turns to October, severed hands; cookie jars in the shape of pumpkins; dog toys that look like bloody body parts; and Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price lookalikes are strategically placed around my antiques and furniture. Dracula actually looks comfortable next to my fragile antique fans.

My favorite movie of all time is
Scanners
, the 1981 film known to most people as “the one where people’s heads explode.” In 1981, my kids were seven and two. I loved being their mother and Aaron’s wife. Every minute of the day was taken up with household and business chores. And yet I
somehow found the time to see
Scanners
five or six times when it first opened.

I don’t know what the appeal was. I remember one review that said the special effects were “uproariously revolting.”

The story concerns a prescription drug that creates unwitting “Scanners,” or people who can read others’ thoughts, invade their memories, and cause strangers’ noses to bleed and other involuntary reactions. As more heads start exploding, the government, of course, gets involved. An all-out war between Scanners and non-Scanners erupts, with blood, gore, and horror. Boy, I like that movie.

I like fantasy, too, and that goes back to my liking to tell stories about characters in my collections or paintings or my dreams.

Turnabout
was a 1940 movie that I must have seen for the first time on TV in the early 1960s. It is one of those old black-and-white movies with fuzzy sound, and it reminds me of
Topper
. I could never get enough of
Topper,
one of my favorite movies and TV series, because people got to do the impossible, like becoming invisible and watching and laughing at others. And the dog drank martinis!

Turnabout
is about a married couple who are bored with life and each other. Each thinks the other has a much better and more interesting life, and they wish they could trade places. Guess what! In the best tradition of later movies such as
Freaky Friday
and
Big
, and, with a puff of smoke,
everything turns upside down, and there are laughs and lessons for all.

I still remember scenes from this hysterically funny movie, when a statue the couple receives as a wedding present wakes up and exchanges the personalities of the husband and the wife. The next morning, the gender-confused couple exchanges clothes and schedules and heads out into their new lives. She dons a man’s business suit. He puts on what he calls a “frilly frock.” And so it goes, with complications, mix-ups, and fun. I remember reading later that the film was classified as a “screwball comedy.” That seemed to fit.

Of all of my husband’s shows—and, yes, I dutifully watched every episode of every series, often multiple times, even though I had read the scripts already—my favorite was
Fantasy Island
. Aaron really liked that one, too.

The title was deceiving because people expected a wish-granting scenario where their wish would be Mr. Roarke’s command.

What I liked about it was that it showed that there’s no free ride. People would arrive at beautiful and seemingly carefree Fantasy Island to get their fantasies fulfilled, and impeccably white-suited Mr. Roarke would use superpowers to make them happy. But as in real life, the story showed that there are no real fantasies without consequences. Important life experiences were brought home as “Da plane! Da plane!” departed each week, and we were all a bit wiser.

Be careful what you wish for. Life doesn’t always have happy endings, not even on TV.

I had my own movie fantasies, and they were named Cary Grant and Fred Astaire.

I used to have a dream, and it seemed to last for years: A prince on a white horse used to come to get me. He was supposed to take me to love and happiness ever after. It was a wonderful dream. But it never ended. We never left my bedroom or arrived at our destination.

I wanted to finish the dream and start my life with the prince. So, every night before I went to bed, I would write down where the dream had left off the night before, so my dream mechanism would know where to start. Sometimes I’d give myself hints, adding in parts of stories about Zorro, Cinderella, and Don Juan. My added inspirational suggestions didn’t help. My prince arrived, and then . . .

As for Cary Grant, I wanted him to teach me all about being the womanly version of his kind of suave, so I could become the kind of woman he would want to date. I wanted him to take me in his arms, tell me smart things, give me that smile.

Fred Astaire was the other man of my dreams (not counting the prince on the white horse). I wanted to be one of the women who danced with him and who could brag that she’d done it backward and in high heels. I wanted him to take off his top hat when I walked into the room and
sweep me into his arms. Astaire could sing
and
dance. I wonder if girls today feel that way about Justin Timberlake or Zac Efron.

Fade to 1989, when Aaron and I decided to give a big New Year’s Eve party for our friends and co-workers. Our guest list looked like a Hollywood fantasy. I cautioned myself to remember
Fantasy Island
and what nasty surprises might be waiting for us.

There weren’t any nasty surprises. It was another fantasy night in the life of the Spelling family and our friends. At one point, Cary Grant was sitting on one side of me, and Fred Astaire on the other. Thank goodness I didn’t have to choose. I blushed. I giggled. I cheered inside. I introduced Tori and Randy to Cary Grant and Fred Astaire. Aaron laughed. He knew all about my fantasy men.

The party was a success. Fred and I didn’t dance that night in the Chasen’s tent, but we did at other times. His recording of “My Funny Valentine” is my all-time favorite song. Fred had earlier pointed out a man trying to slip one of the giant martini glasses into his wife’s gift bag.

On his way out, Cary pointed to the wife of a famous Hollywood columnist who was dumping candy from the various candy dishes on the tables into her gift bag. “Happy Hollywood New Year,” he laughed. (Today, I own a Fabergé cigarette case that Barbara Hutton gave to Cary Grant; I bought it at an auction.)

Life in Hollywood is like anywhere else. It’s just more exaggerated.

I was afraid we wouldn’t make it to 1989. Despite my love of horror and fantasy, a film I saw decades earlier,
1984
, frightened me so.

The 1956 movie taken from George Orwell’s 1949 novel haunted and scared me for nearly three decades until the year 1984 finally arrived. When we were assigned the book in school, I refused to read it. The movie had been enough for me.

When I was a child going to movies, I didn’t know words like
foreboding
and
totalitarian
, and I never really thought about differences between fact and fiction. I hoped there was no
House of Wax,
but it might have been kind of fun to visit (as long as I would be allowed to leave).

Orwell painted a picture of far-distant future 1984 that was as sad and depressing as I could imagine. People didn’t look or act like the people I knew. Something was terribly wrong. Why did everything have a name, slogan, and a label? And why couldn’t I get this “Big Brother” out of my mind?

Heads blowing off and melting corpses were nothing compared to the scenario in
1984
. As the decades passed, I waited with fear and dread, always thinking I should really enjoy life because Big Brother and his evil love-hating, freedom-fearing pals were going to take over.

The real-life 1984 was one of the best years for the Spelling family. Since Aaron’s shows accounted for one third
of ABC-TV’s prime-time programming, the executives wanted to keep him happy. The four of us took a train journey across America (and back) to sail the QEII to Europe and enjoyed a family vacation far from the reaches of thought police or Big Brother.

I don’t think of those fears very often today, unless I see or read a reference to the book or movie. I turn away. The movie might look silly today, the way my favorite TV series with 1950s spaceships and kitchens of the future look to us now.

But I’m not taking any chances.

I think I’ll slip my copy of
Shall We Dance?
into the DVD player and escape for a little while. I still want to live a fantasy sometimes. Then I can go back to work.