Anyone Who Had a Heart (11 page)

Chapter

10

Love, Sweet Love

I
t was 1965 and the war in Vietnam was really starting to heat up, but I was not yet in touch with my own political feelings. Hal had written the chorus for “What the World Needs Now Is Love” but then spent two years trying to find the first line of the opening verse until he came up with “Lord, we don’t need another mountain.” I wrote the music and the song sounded really good to me even though I thought, “Is this preaching?”

We had been doing all these R&B songs for Dionne, so I wondered if this one would be soulful enough for her. When Hal and I finished the song, I played it for Dionne because she was our artist and our flagship and always our first choice to record our stuff. She said, “Okay, it’s not my favorite song that you guys have written,” which meant she didn’t want to do it. I valued her opinion so highly that I just put the song in a drawer and forgot about it for almost a year. I figured, “Well, if she doesn’t like this, it can’t be any good.”

Ten months later, Timi Yuro, who had cut a song Hal and I had written called “The Love of a Boy,” which was a minor hit, opened at the Copa in New York. I had her come to my office so I could play her the song Dionne had turned down. When Timi started to sing, I began beating my hands on a table so she could hear how I wanted her to accent the lyrics. She said, “Oh, go fuck yourself,” and walked out the door. So it wasn’t as though I now thought Dionne had been wrong.

Hal and I were scheduled to record a couple of songs with Jackie DeShannon, who’d had a hit with “Needles and Pins” and written “When You Walk in the Room.” When she came to our office, Hal said, “Take out that song ‘What the World Needs Now Is Love’ and play it for Jackie,” and I said, “Really?” So I played the song and Jackie started to sing it and I said, “Holy shit, she sounds like the song was made for her.”

The way Jackie DeShannon could sing killed me, because she had that rough kind of imperfect voice that was absolutely perfect. Hal and I booked a session at Bell Sound and we cut “What the World Needs Now Is Love” with Cissy Houston, Dee Warwick, and Myrna Smith on background vocals. The record went to number seven on the pop chart at the same time that “What’s New Pussycat?” was at number three. Since then, “What the World Needs Now Is Love” has been covered by more than a hundred different artists.

Dionne definitely let Hal and me both know she was not happy we had given the song to someone else, but the truth was that she had turned the song down when we offered it to her first. Even though my relationship with Dionne was always strictly professional, she also wasn’t crazy about me being with Angie. While we were in London, the two of us went to see Dionne at the Savoy and she walked out onstage wearing a blond wig and I thought, “What the fuck?” I was speechless.

Angie Dickinson:
Dionne didn’t walk onstage that night in a blond wig because of me. She’s even blond on the cover of one of her albums. I think it was just a coincidence and I didn’t take it personally. I knew she didn’t like me but she wouldn’t have gone that far, I don’t think.

The way Dionne felt about Angie was nothing compared to what I had to go through with Marlene. Before I ever met Angie, I was conducting for Marlene at the Colonial Theater in Boston and Angie was in town, so she came backstage to say hello to Marlene. All the press guys wanted to get a picture of them because they both had great legs—Angie had gotten hers insured for a million dollars—so they had their photograph taken together.

After I stopped conducting for Marlene, I wrote some arrangements for her before she went off on a tour of South Africa. By now it was getting serious with Angie and me, and that was a big threat for Marlene, because she didn’t want me to marry anybody. Not just Angie. Nobody! While Marlene was in South Africa, she had voodoo dolls made up to look like Angie and put pins in them.

Angie Dickinson:
Burt and I were driving on the freeway in L.A. one day and he had just asked me to marry him and I didn’t answer him. He said, “I asked you a question and you haven’t answered it.” And I said, “Yeah, I know.” And he said, “You want to give me a nice birthday present?” And I said, “I’ll try.” And he said, “Marry me.”

I laughed but I still didn’t answer him. As we were driving, we saw this billboard for the opening of Hollywood Park and Burt said, “You know, the problem with getting married on my birthday is I wouldn’t be able to go to the track.” It was so funny and adorable and who wouldn’t say yes to that?

I was still working on
The Chase
and Burt said, “Let’s go to Vegas on Friday and get married.” He went to the track on his birthday, which was Wednesday, May 12, and on Friday I called the set around four in the afternoon and found out I was on standby and didn’t have to be there again until Tuesday. I told Burt, “I don’t have to work. Let’s go.”

Back then you could use anybody’s name to make a reservation a few hours before a flight was scheduled to leave and just go to the airport and find a parking place and get on the plane. Burt and I got seats on a seven or eight o’clock flight. We checked in at the Sands and I made two calls. One was to my mother in Burbank. She had met Burt, and I guess she liked him, but it didn’t matter. And then I called my best girlfriend June, who was married to Ricky Nelson’s older brother David, and I said, “I just wanted to tell you I’m in Vegas and I’m going to get married.” She said, “Oh good, we’ll come.” I said, “No, no, no, no. We just want to make it simple.” And she said, “No, we’ll come. You missed my wedding. I’m not going to miss yours,” and I didn’t have the guts to say no.

June and David had to get their children taken care of and got to Vegas at about 11 p.m. By then, Burt and I were already drunk but not stopping yet. While we were waiting for the Nelsons, we were having drinks with Chuck Barris, but we still had to get a license and have blood tests and all that crap.

Angie and I were both drunk and I didn’t know if David and June Nelson were ever going to get there. It was getting later and later and we had to get married and then I ran into a friend of mine in the casino. Chuck Barris, the game show guy, who I used to play basketball with in New York. I always liked Chuck and he was married to Lynn Levy, whose father was one of the founders of CBS. He was very drunk that night and I said, “Would you and Lynn stand in with us tonight? We’re going to get married.” And he said yes.

Angie Dickinson:
It was 3:45 in the morning by the time we got married. If you want to call it a wedding. I mean, it was in a chapel that was also a grocery store. Oh, God, yes. The Silver Bell Chapel. I think that was the night Burt fell out of love with me, because here we were sitting and waiting in a casino lounge and it just took the boom off of it. I didn’t feel it then but I think Burt felt it showed a weakness in me that I didn’t tell June and David not to come. If I had, we would have been married by ten o’clock. Subconsciously, I don’t think he liked that we had to kill time and it broke the spell.

That’s the whole story, except when it came to “Do you promise to love, honor, and obey?” Burt started laughing and almost couldn’t say that because it was just so hysterical to him. I think it was the “obey” that got him. You obey your parents and your teachers but you don’t obey your wife. It’s a terrible phrase and it shouldn’t be in there and I think that’s why many people write their own vows. It was ludicrous and Burt just laughed his head off. And we were drunk enough that I ended up laughing, too.

I think they offered us a recording of the ceremony to buy and we didn’t want it. Isn’t that awful? Because we could probably sell it now on eBay. We were just so tired by then. Burt and I were married on May 15, 1965, and the next day we went back to L.A. and got my Chrysler convertible, which was on loan to me from Universal, and we drove to Palm Springs for a two-day honeymoon. Then Burt had to go to New York and I went back to filming
The Chase
.

Angie and I had been married for maybe five days and she went off to shoot
The Chase
. I wound up in London. I went to see Marlene at the Dorchester and what I saw was the other side of her, the not-smart side. She still wanted me in her life to write arrangements and conduct for her whenever I could, but when I went up to her suite to play her some new arrangements so we could see what they sounded like, she just let loose.

“You married that cunt! That slut! How could you have done such a thing!”

As Marlene kept raving at me, I started backing out of the suite thinking, “It’s over between the two of us.” I was really puzzled. I had always thought Marlene was too smart to ever do anything like this. I mean, she had just crucified Angie in every possible way.

Angie Dickinson:
I knew Marlene didn’t like me for sure, but I didn’t know about the voodoo dolls. Burt told me she once said about me, “She has slept in so many barns.” He also told me she said, “Burt, nobody smiles that much.” And the problem with that was Burt felt the same way. He found me a bit naïve and thought nobody could love the sunset so much and I think he rather enjoyed telling me that story.

We got married in May and then I got a job in Rome to do
Cast a Giant Shadow
with Kirk Douglas. I said, “I’m going to take this job and two tickets to Rome come with it.” Burt, who was always so considerate of Marlene, said, “Great. Then I can let Marlene off the hook for my ticket.” So we went to Rome and his folks joined us. They used to go around the world on press junkets in those days and I think they were nearby.

I finished the picture and Burt had to do four or five shows with Marlene at the Edinburgh Film Festival. When we came backstage to pick her up after the first show, I was already in the car and Marlene and Burt got in. I said to her, “Oh my God. You were fantastic!” And she said, “Well, of course I was. I had to be. You were there.” I laughed. It was a cute remark.

What I remember about that show in Edinburgh is that after it was over, Marlene and I came out of the stage door together and just like always when she performed, all these people were waiting to get her autograph. Marlene saw them and pointed at me and said, “No, you vant him.” And they all looked at me and said, “Who’s he?” The amazing thing about Marlene was that right from the start she believed in me and was always really supportive.

Angie Dickinson:
After we got married, Burt moved into my house on North Bundy in Brentwood. It was not just kind of small. They don’t get any smaller. The house was so small that I put in a half bath for him as a gift. Oh, I wanted it, too. You’ve got to have two bathrooms. It’s one thing to go to a hotel for a couple of days with only one bathroom, and Burt’s place in New York had only one bathroom. But I mean, “Oy vey.”

After a while, Marlene and I got over what had happened at the Dorchester that night, and whenever she would come over to the house where Angie I were living for dinner, which was usually Kentucky Fried Chicken, potatoes, and coleslaw, the dance the two them would do was unbelievable. They either really adored one another or they fucking hated each other.

I would see that going on and I would say to myself, “How do I get out of this?” Even though I probably should never have told Angie what Marlene had said about her at the Dorchester, I had already done that. But Angie never came from the position of “I don’t want this fucking broad in my house.” Angie never did that. But the performances that went on when these two actresses got together were really something to see.

Angie Dickinson:
Marlene was nice to me at dinner but I knew it was a performance on her part. She was a mature lady who understood that if you can’t fight them, join them. For her, it was a no-brainer. Burt was delicious and Marlene adored him as a guy and enjoyed his company and wanted to be with him. She also simply could not function without him. He was her Svengali.

About a year after we were married, Burt and I were in New York and about to meet Marlene for dinner at a restaurant called Le Steak. It was only a couple of blocks away on Fifty-Seventh Street but we were late and I was nervous, of course, for all the right reasons. Burt led me in because he knew where she was seated. All the way at the back in a gorgeous fur turban, Marlene Dietrich was sitting at a table alone.

We walked in at least twenty, if not thirty, minutes late and Marlene just looked at Burt and simply said, “Hello, darling.” That was all. She didn’t even look at her watch and say, “Thank you,” which I would have done. I think it says so much about Marlene and her relationship with Burt. For her, he could do no wrong.

After Burt had stopped conducting for Marlene, I ran into her in Beverly Hills one day. I chased after her and said, “Marlene!” And then I said, “Burt would love to hear from you,” or “I’m so sorry things aren’t working out.” And she said, “
Finita la commedia
.” That was the last I ever saw or heard from Marlene. A love affair that had been so good for so long ended so sadly.

As I became more well known as a songwriter, I knew it was coming close to the time when I wasn’t going to be able to work with Marlene anymore. Still, I tried to come through for her on certain dates. I even groomed Stan Freeman, a brilliant piano player, to take over as her conductor, but she didn’t like him. Then I got her another conductor. I don’t think anyone is irreplaceable, but it finally became apparent to me that where Marlene was concerned, it was always going to be “No vun can replace Burt.”

Gary Smith:
The first time I ever met Burt was in 1965, when I created a television show called
Hullabaloo
. Burt walked into the office with Paul Anka, who was a good friend of mine at the time, and they said, “We’ve got a theme song for you.” I said, “Oh, that’s great.” They played me a little demo tape they had done and it was a good up-tempo song. Paul had done the lyrics and Burt had written the melody.

Unfortunately, our theme song had already been written by Peter Matz, our musical conductor, and as much as I would have liked the prestige of having a song written by Paul and Burt, I said, “Guys, it’s just too late. I can’t pull it away from him.” Paul was a hustler and he had probably pushed Burt by saying, “I know Gary Smith. Here’s my lyric. I can get an appointment with him in ten seconds.”