Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (32 page)

While my mind was racing, the elevator was taking forever. It was one of those old relics that just eeeek their way down. Then I heard the door from the suite open and slam back against the wall. I kept pushing the button and looking straight at the elevator door: there was no way I was going to look down the hall and see who’d come out. And before I knew it, standing beside me was Al Freeman, Jr.

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’m too angry and upset.”

The elevator finally arrived, I got in, and he did too. And he followed me all the way to my room, talking the whole time, apologizing, recognizing that he’d been a prick (his word) but insisting that though this thing had gotten out of hand he was sure if I was willing to work at it we could put it back together again.

By now, of course, I was in tears and felt I had nothing left to lose. So I invited him into my room and we talked for about twenty more minutes. I told him how deeply he’d hurt me, that I was not thrilled to have a fever blister myself. Then he said, “Let me just call the producers and tell them we’re at least talking to each other, because they’re all pissing in their pants upstairs.” That made me laugh for the first time.

After he hung up, he called room service, ordered some brandy for himself and Coke for me, and proceeded to absolutely enrapture me. He talked for hours and hours and I was just agog. His manner, his eloquence, the obvious brilliance of his mind, his grasp of politics and black history, were dazzling. And he applied all that to the script, talked about how we could make it better, it didn’t have to be this white-bread thing they were trying to shove down everyone’s throats, we could really make a statement here.

Before Al left that room, we’d become allies. We were united for a cause and we stayed that way throughout the
picture. I cleaned up my act, lost weight, and the whole experience became a very intellectual, very stimulating time. I couldn’t wait to get up and go to work, to meet Al on the ferry going from Galveston to Port Bolivar and have him talk to me about what he’d seen in
The New York Times
. The crush I had on him was really more for his brain and his charm than wanting a physical thing, and gradually I realized that I’d rather have the crush than the actual love affair.

Al and I spent almost all our time together. We rarely hung around with the rest of the folks in the company, which is unlike me; I usually pal around with everybody. Because of the racial situation, being with Al was difficult in Port Bolivar, which was a depressing place anyway because of the weather. The air is so heavy there that you’re wet all the time, sweaty and smelly, and your clothes are wet, too, even hanging in the closet they’re wet. Al and I were flat out told we’d get in trouble at certain clubs: “You go one night, you go another, just don’t go there together.”

Al made a lot of trouble for Lamont Johnson, and I, of course, was now his cohort, so I was always backing him up. There were long discussions and arguments about scenes, and the poor guy was trying to direct on a television schedule. When Lamont wouldn’t agree with him, Al would say, “Okay, the hell with it. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll do it,” and then just walk through the scene. But when push came to shove, and the cameras were rolling for what was obviously going to be a valid take, he’d pull it together and give a performance and so would I. Basically, though, we were “the defiant ones” all over again.

Which was too bad because Lamont Johnson is the type of director I like to work with. He is a very urbane man, with a magnificent voice, and he knows enough not to plumb your soul with endless discussions. He gives you an idea of what he believes the scene is about, and then he has the courage to let you do what you do. I’ve worked with a lot of directors who don’t have that much sense, who go in there and just stomp on your sensitivities. Not that I believe actors are all little rosebuds that need to be handled with velvet gloves, but just as people need a physical space around them, actors need that same kind of space emotionally. If, without my
being overpowered by a director’s affection, there exists a healthy respect and confidence between the two of us, so he doesn’t interrupt when I’m playing a scene, he’s going to get what he wants and he knows it.

The
My Sweet Charlie
shoot lasted four weeks, and one day, with only a week left, Bob Banner, the producer, came into my motor home. He’d always been very friendly to me, warm hugs and stuff like that, but this time there was something in the air. We chitchatted for a while, and then he said, “What I’m about to tell you is very confidential, but I feel you should be filled in. It’s suspected that at least one person in this company is involved with drugs. We’re not sure how far it’s spread, but there is a great deal of concern. The police have become involved, it’s a very touchy situation.”

“Really?” I said. “Who?”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Marijuana.”

“No kidding.”

Now, Bob must have been thinking, “Jesus Christ, this woman is either absolutely psychotic or the most brilliant actress I have ever met.” Because what I didn’t know was that prior to his coming to see me, the local police, acting on a tip, had searched my hotel room and taken a stash of grass out of my closet. The one thing I had going for me, however, was my height, or rather lack of it. The shelf was so high that even if I stood on a chair it would have been impossible for me to reach the stuff.

Bob didn’t tell me any of this. I didn’t learn what had happened until much, much later, so I went on asking these innocent questions and assuring him that I would put the word out that everyone should clean up his act. Because in those days drugs were not all over the place the way they are now, especially not in the South.

I don’t know if I’d convinced Bob or if he just wanted to finish his picture and get out of Port Bolivar as gracefully as possible. But he called Universal, and the story is that someone there called the governor, and the governor called the local authorities and said, “Lay off that company, and lay off the girl.”

I’ve never had any idea who planted the drugs in my room, or tried to find out why; maybe some of the townspeople thought Al and I were having an affair and felt threatened by that. Nor, once I returned home, did I make any effort to clear my name. It hadn’t occurred to me that it’d been muddied, but indeed it had. People at Universal thought I was using drugs, and for years I had the reputation of being a doper.

If it hadn’t been so damaging, that would have been funny, considering that the only time I’d tried marijuana, years before at a party, it had made me nauseated, and I didn’t know what a bong was until my kids told me. As for cocaine, I never even saw any until a driver on a TV show offered it to me, and his ears must still be burning. If I had been doing drugs during those crazy years, that would have been easy compared to what I went through. As dreadful as any addiction is, at least you know what you’re dealing with.

During the filming Al told me that his next project was directing a brief run of the LeRoi Jones play, Dutchman, in Cincinnati, and he asked if I wanted to costar with Cleavon Little. I was incredibly honored, even if I wasn’t paid very much. Al could have asked me to stand at the top of the Empire State Building and whistle “Dixie” and I would have done it.

It was a great experience, palling around with Al and Cleavon. But Savannah, Al’s wife, was cold to me, which tainted Al’s attitude toward me and, of course, tainted mine toward him.

Work on the play was very difficult—it was a tough role, that of a hooker who picks up a black guy on a subway. We were not really ready on opening night, but we got through it, and when I came offstage I was exhilarated just to have accomplished that. I looked around for Al, and they told me he’d left. I thought that meant he’d gone to some restaurant where we were supposed to meet him, but no, he’d gotten on a plane with Savannah and left town. I guess he saw the first ten minutes of opening night and then took off. I could not believe my ears.

I started calling him in New York, even though I knew he couldn’t have arrived yet. I did that throughout the night
until I reached him. I was hurt, enraged, appalled by what I considered a severe lack of professionalism in a director. When he got on the phone I screamed something like, “What the fuck is the matter with you? How could you do this?” He didn’t say much, and for whatever reason, it was clear that we could never recapture the spirit we’d shared on
My Sweet Charlie
. I was going to have to just bite the bullet and move on. I was beginning to learn to make the best of things, a lesson I would learn and forget often over the next few years.

I
remember how the whole thing started, with a television appearance and a phone call. It was March 1970. I’d been on
The Merv Griffin Show
, I’d lost weight, my hair was very full and very sexy, I looked quite good. A couple of days later I got a message from the switchboard at the Sierra Towers that Desi Arnaz, Jr., had called. I knew he was Lucille Ball’s son, but I’d never met him, I had no idea why he’d called, so I kind of ignored it.

A few days later there was another message, this one saying that Desi wanted to talk about my doing some recording. But when I returned the call the first thing he said was “We’ve never met but I saw you on
The Merv Griffin Show
and what can I tell you, you looked magnificent, you’re so pretty,” and so on and on. After I thanked him, he asked me if I’d recorded recently and said that now that he was producing as well as working with his group, he’d love to get together and talk with me about it. We agreed to meet Friday night, and I swear that’s what I thought it was about. I thought I was going to a strictly business dinner.

Friday night came and Desi showed up in his Astin-Martin, and I didn’t immediately think, “Wow, what a great-looking guy.” I was just waiting to talk records. I don’t know why I asked him this question, but at one point I said, “How
old are you?” and he said, “Nineteen.” We drove to another house to meet a couple of his buddies, then on to dinner at La Scala, where Desi drank and there was a little talk about records but not much. When he drove me home he asked if he could see me to my door. I asked if he wanted a drink and he said, “Well, maybe I’ll have a little nightcap.” We sat around for a while, just chatting, and that was the first time it hit me that I was on a date. I’m a little slow about these things sometimes.

Desi called the next day and sounded different, much more personal. We agreed to have dinner Monday and it quickly became apparent that records were the furthest thing from his mind. I had to go to New York for a couple of days and he was very distressed about that. I arrived in the city on St. Patrick’s Day, and when I opened my hotel room door there were green flowers waiting for me and a note that called me his special little Irish leprechaun. I felt a little skip of the heart, and that was it. I called him immediately, and when I got back to L.A. we started going everywhere and doing everything together. It was the beginning of the romance. Though I’ve at times hesitated to say it, the truth is that I loved Desi Arnaz. I loved him very much.

Almost immediately, Desi and I became the media couple of the moment. Not only were we both young and attractive, but, having grown up in the public eye, we were both celebrities, lovers who needed no introduction. We hit all the right spots every evening, like a kiddie version of Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher: the fan magazines just couldn’t get enough of the story.

Desi was extremely bright, a very mature, gifted kid, and there was a lot of philosophical discussion and spiritual exploration going on between us. What I loved about him most, though, was his youthfulness. Zipping around in that unbelievable sports car, going to this house on the beach and that house in the mountains, always with an accelerated, living-on-the-edge energy—his was the kind of young and carefree existence I’d never experienced.

And though Desi did his share of drinking, overall his life was very healthy, full of tennis, touch football, bicycle riding, and water-skiing. At the time I wondered how he was
able to throw back so many gin and tonics and smoke so many cigarettes and still be able to get up the next morning and handle all that activity. The secret was that while I was twenty-three, Desi was only seventeen.

I didn’t learn or even suspect Desi’s real age for quite a while. I’d seen him served liquor in restaurants, he always acted much more mature than his age, and, don’t forget, he’d straight out lied to me. People have said, “Oh, come on. He had one of the most publicized lives in Hollywood, his birth was the most famous goddamn thing that ever happened on television. You could have checked the year.” Who goes around checking years? If you’re in love with somebody, you believe him. I’d asked the guy how old he was, he’d told me, that was all that mattered to me.

Once I discovered how young Desi really was, I was shocked, but that was nothing compared to the reaction Lucille Ball, who was the source of that information, had when she found out we were seriously involved. I’ve raised kids who are now in their twenties, and if one of them had come home at age seventeen with a twenty-four-year-old divorcee and gone up to his room with her, I would have died too. So I hold no grudge against Lucy for that kind of initial reaction. I do, however, still feel bitterness for the sorrow that she caused me by steadfastly refusing to see that I had only the best intentions toward her son.

While Desi’s father, Desi, Sr., was always extremely gracious, Lucy was just the opposite. She bore no resemblance to the woman we all saw on TV, and I don’t just mean that she wasn’t putting the bowl of spaghetti on her head. For whatever reason—the age difference, my divorce, the rumors about my drug use—Lucy felt she was in a crisis situation, and her attitude was efficient and cold, with barely a veneer of politeness. While I can certainly sympathize to an extent, when she took out after me she had the wrong villain, because I was nothing but absolutely honorable and gracious and in love, not the rapacious fiend she seemed to think I was. Lucy from time to time tried to tolerate me, at least I think she did, because I was invited over for the occasional dinner or movie, but I honestly don’t believe she tried hard enough. And sometimes, in later years, I’d wonder
if there weren’t moments when Lucy thought back and said, “Jeez, maybe Duke wasn’t so bad after all.”