By Myself and Then Some (21 page)

Bogie had to return to Newport, as he didn’t want to leave his sister. Pat would take him. I cried as he drove away.

I would see Bogie again that Wednesday – Coast Guard day. In his July 12 letter he wrote:

Throughout this period I had to keep telling myself it would all come true for Bogie and me. I never believed that marriage was a lasting institution – for obvious reasons spawned in my childhood. I thought that to be married for five years was to be married forever.

Mother was not a cynical woman – on the contrary, she had fantasies of her own, romantic dreams. But she was horrified at the thought of a married man chasing me – much less a three-times-married man. She didn’t trust Bogie at all. When from time to time I would read her passages from Bogie’s letters expressing his worry and care for my well-being, she’d only say, ‘He
should
say those things.’ She knew how headstrong I was, but she lectured me anyway about character – his, if he had any, a man who cheated on his wife, and mine for getting mixed up with him. ‘He should have waited until he was free if he loves you so much.’ She just didn’t understand at all – she didn’t know him, didn’t know all the problems. I did – but as there always was an element of doubt in my head, her talks fed that element.

She and I had gone to another preview of
To Have and Have Not
with Charlie and Howard and she was flabbergasted. It must have been a shock to see one’s pure and innocent daughter behaving like a wanton, life-bitten woman of the world. Of course both of us wrote the entire family all about the movie – they were waiting breathlessly to see it. None of them knew anything of Bogie and me. Grandma, who was
true Old Country, would have been very upset. As far as her values went, Bogie had nothing going for him – he was too old for me, he’d had three wives, he drank, he was an actor, and he was Goyim. So I wrote her my usual letters – all about work, California – and we sent pictures to her. She hadn’t been very well and she missed her darling granddaughter – my year in California was the first in nineteen that she hadn’t seen me at least twice a week, except for school and camp. She needed her children around her and she had had them for most of her life. I always thought of what she might think or say when she saw me in the movie or if she learned about Bogie. Kirk had always been her favorite because he was Jewish. I hadn’t told Bogie I was – it had never come up, and religion as such was not important to him.

Infant me in baby carriage, 1925

Alone

Alone at Highland Nature Camp, Lake Sebago, Maine

Nine- or ten-year-old me at Highland Manor School

With my mother at camp

At camp (middle of front row – of course), 1937

At the Night of Stars with Burgess Meredith, 1941

Hostess at the Stage Door Canteen. John Carradine is at the mike, 1942

With Uncle Charlie

Mother and Lee